Bain Capital Specialty Finance, Inc.

Please stand by, we're about to begin. Good day and welcome to the Bain Capital Specialty Finance first quarter ended March 31st, 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. To register to ask a question at any time, please press star 1 on your keypad. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. We are standing by if you should need any assistance. I'd now like to turn the call over to Catherine Schneider. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Jamie. Good morning and welcome everyone to the Bain Capital Specialty Finance first quarter ended March 31st, 2026 conference call. Yesterday after market closed, we issue our earnings press release and investor presentation of our quarterly results, a copy of which is available on Bain Capital Specialty Finance's investor relations website. Following our remarks today, we will hold a question and answer session for analysts and investors. This call is being webcast and a replay will be available on our website. This call and the webcast are property of Bain Capital Specialty Finance and any unauthorized broadcast in any form is strictly prohibited. Any forward-looking statements made today do not guarantee future performance, and actual results may differ materially. These statements are based on current management expectations, which include risks and uncertainties, which are identified in the risk factor section of our most recently filed annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequently filed quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, as well as other filings with the SEC that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated. Forward-looking statements made today include, without limitations, statements regarding dividend sustainability, investment pipeline leverage targets, credit quality trends, and the potential impact of AI disruption on portfolio companies. Bain Capital Specialty Finance assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements at this time unless required to do so by law or by the rules of the NYSA, on which our securities are listed. Lastly, past performance does not guarantee future results. So with that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Michael Ewald.

Thanks, Catherine, and good morning, and thanks to all of you for joining us here today on our earnings call. I'm joined here by Mike Boyle, our president, and our chief financial officer, Amit Joshi. In terms of the agenda for the call, I'll start with an overview of our first quarter results and then discuss the broader market environment and our positioning. Thereafter, Mike and Amit will discuss our investment portfolio and financial results in greater detail. And, of course, we'll leave some time for questions at the end. So beginning with our financial results, net investment income per share for the first quarter was 42 cents, representing an annualized return on equity of 10.0%. Our net investment income fully covered our regular dividend during the quarter, demonstrating the continued earnings power and resilience of our portfolio. Q1 earnings per share were 5 cents, primarily driven by net unrealized losses across our investment portfolio. These losses were largely attributed to idiosyncratic credit weakness within certain portfolio companies, as well as broader market driven valuation adjustments stemming from credit spread widening and multiple compression during the quarter. Subsequent to quarter end, our board declared a second quarter dividend of 42 cents per share, payable to shareholders of record as of June 15th, 2026. Our Q2 dividend equates to an annualized yield of 10.0% based on ending book value as of March 31st, 2026. Credit performance across the portfolio remained fundamentally sound. Non-accrual levels continue to remain low and stable as no new investments were shifted to non-accrual during the quarter, and our borrowers generally demonstrated healthy operating performance and resilient credit fundamentals despite the more uncertain macroeconomic backdrop. In fact, the first quarter was an increasingly challenging market environment characterized by heightened public market volatility, investor concerns surrounding AI disruption risk on software valuations, renewed inflationary pressures fueled by geopolitical uncertainty, and and retail outflows from private credit vehicles. These factors contributed to a more cautious and selective risk environment across broader credit markets. Against this backdrop, our pace of new investment activity moderated during the first quarter, with our funding split between supporting new portfolio companies and providing add-on financings and fundings to existing borrowers. BCSF continues to benefit from Bain Capital's private credit platform, whose longstanding presence, deep relationships, and extensive expertise in the core middle market position us favorably in the current market. While much of the recent net retail outflows have been concentrated among large-cap private credit managers, potentially tempering new investment activity in that space, our platform remains well-positioned to serve as a consistent, long-term capital provider to our target core middle market borrowers. We remain focused on our long-standing investing tenants of disciplined underwriting, maintaining meaningful control over our debt tranches and strong financial covenant protections. Spreads on our Q1 new originations average approximately 550 basis points on a weighted average basis, while net leverage levels remain prudent at 4.4 times EBITDA. Looking ahead into the second quarter to date, we have begun to see a pickup in volumes for new investment activities. The current investing environment for lenders has been moderately more favorable as we have observed pricing widen by an additional 25 to 50 basis points, reflecting the market's increasingly cautious tone. As we discussed in detail on our previous earnings call, BCSF software exposure, including software adjacent companies, represents approximately 13% of our total portfolio. Our private credit platform has remained disciplined and highly selective in investing capital, enabling us to thoughtfully target the areas of the market where we see the most compelling risk-adjusted opportunities. While the past several years have been characterized by significant capital formation and heightened competition across sectors such as software and technology, we maintained a measured underwriting approach and resisted the broader trend toward increasingly aggressive structures. In addition, given our history in the space and broad investment platform, we have expertise and experience in a large number of diverse industries thereby limiting our over-reliance on any one sector. Importantly, evaluating the potential risks and implications associated with AI-driven disruption is not a new exercise for our platform. We believe BCSF is uniquely differentiated amongst its peers through the breadth of expertise and institutional knowledge embedded across Bain Capital's broader credit platform, as well as adjacent business units including ventures, tech opportunities, and private equity. These teams have all been actively incorporating AI related risk assessment and management frameworks into their investment process for several years, allowing us to continuously refine our underwriting standards and integrate best practices and proprietary insights into our own investment framework. Over the years, our software investment strategies remain intentionally centered on mission critical systems of record software and highly specialized vertical software businesses that serve deeply embedded and essential functions within their respective markets. During the first quarter, we conducted a comprehensive risk reassessment to evaluate the potential substitution risks that emerging AI technologies may pose across our portfolio companies. Based on this analysis, the majority of our software investments carry a relatively low risk of AI-driven disruption, reflecting the differentiated nature and resilience of these businesses, as well as our disciplined investment approach and framework when we first evaluated these companies. Importantly, our software portfolio companies continue to exhibit strong underlying credit fundamentals, supported by healthy operational performance and consistent earnings growth since the time of underwriting. As of quarter end, median LTV in that segment is approximately 37%, when adjusted for current enterprise value multiples. And these borrowers maintain solid interest coverage levels of approximately 2.0 times. Looking ahead, we believe BCSF remains well-positioned to navigate the current market environment. Our portfolio continues to demonstrate solid underlying health and is supported by a well-diversified liability structure, strengthened by the issuance of unsecured debt earlier this year to proactively address our near-term 2026 maturity. While we ended the quarter at the upper end of our target net leverage range of between 1.0 and 1.25 times, we believe we remain in a position to capitalize on attractive investment opportunities as the portfolio continues to generate healthy levels of repayment activity. Against this backdrop, we believe BCSF's regular dividend of 42 cents per share can be maintained in the current environment. However, at the same time, we will continue to thoughtfully evaluate our dividend policy alongside our board on a quarterly basis, consistent with our disciplined approach to capital management and long-term shareholder value creation. I will now turn the call over to Mike Boyle, our president, to walk through our investment portfolio in greater detail. Mike.