Blackstone Secured Lending Fund

Thank you for standing by. You're on hold for the Blackstone Secured Lending second quarter 2026 investor call. At this time, we're gathering additional participants and should be underway shortly. We appreciate your patience and ask that you continue to hold. Good day and welcome to the Blackstone Secured Lending Second Quarter 2026 Investor Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. If you require operator assistance, please press star zero. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Stacy Wang, head of stakeholder relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to Blackstone Secured Lending Fund's second quarter results conference call. Joining me today are Brad Marshall, chief executive officer, and Teddy Desloge, chief financial officer, along with other members of the management team available for Q&A, including Carlos Whitaker, president. Earlier today, we issued a press release with a presentation of our results and filed our 10-Q, both of which are available on the shareholder resources section of our website, www.bxsl.com. We will be referring to that presentation throughout today's call. I'd like to remind you that this call may include forward-looking statements which are uncertain and outside of the firm's control and may differ materially from actual results. We do not undertake any duty to update these statements for some of the risks that could affect results. Please see the risk factor section of our Form 10-Q filed earlier today. The audio copyright material of Blackstone may not be duplicated without consent. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Brad Marshall.

Thank you, Stacy, and good morning, everyone. Before we dive into quarterly results, I did want to thank my colleagues, Jon Bock and Kate Rubenstein, for all their contributions to BXSL over the past several years. John and Kate are both good friends of the firm and many of us here. And John in particular has been a longtime leading expert in the BDC space, as many as you know, and both will be missed by all of us at Blackstone. And we wish them the best of luck in their next endeavors. I thought I'd start by highlighting a few key observations from the quarter. First, we delivered healthy earnings again in the second quarter, supported by our shareholder-aligned fee structure. Second, repayment activity continued to accelerate this quarter, which helped drive realizations, potential additional income, and additional liquidity. Third, our deployment remains disciplined with new funding featuring strong credit profiles, thematic orientation, and attractive spreads. Fourth, we remain highly proactive with underperforming borrowers, leveraging our senior position, strong documentation, and deep restructuring expertise to protect long-term value for investors as seen at Blackstone Credit Insurance or BXCI for over 20 years. And finally, we continue to be constructive on the outlook for deal activity with M&A benefiting from strength in the U.S. economy. While the year started slower, activity levels as measured by new deals through BXCI's global private deal screenings improved during the quarter, particularly in June. Some of the areas where we are seeing new deal flow in the current market are where Blackstone has deep industry expertise and thematic conviction, including AI and digital infrastructure, infrastructure services, and life sciences. DXEL funded over $300 million during the quarter, adding five new borrowers to the portfolio, bringing our total to 313 companies. Generally, we are seeing new, recently committed deals across BXCI set up with less leverage, lower loan-to-values, and average spreads higher than in previous quarters. We will continue to use available liquidity selectively, focusing on areas where we believe we have distinct advantages and where we can leverage our scale, as we believe we have done successfully in the past.