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spk03: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Saratoga Investment Corp's 2025 Fiscal First Quarter Financial Results Conference call. Please note that today's call is being recorded. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following management's prepared remarks, we'll open the line for questions. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Saratoga Investment Corp's Chief Financial Officer and Chief Compliance Officer, Mr. Henry Steenkamp. Sir, please go ahead.
spk24: Thank you. I would like to welcome everyone to Saratoga Investment Corp's 2025 fiscal first quarter earnings conference call. Today's conference call includes forward-looking statements and projections. We ask you to refer to our most recent filings with the SEC for important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements and projections. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements unless required to do so by law. Today we will be referencing a presentation during our call. You can find our fiscal first quarter 2025 shareholder presentation in the events and presentation section of our investor relations website. A link to our IR page is in the earnings press release distributed last night. A replay of this conference call will also be available. Please refer to our earnings press release for details. I would now like to turn the call over to our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Christian Oberbeck, who will be making a few introductory remarks.
spk05: Thank you, Henry, and welcome, everyone. Saratoga's adjusted net investment income per share for the quarter increased by 12% as compared to last quarter, as stable interest rates have resulted in elevated recurring net interest margins on our portfolio relative to the past year. This quarter's earnings reflects elevated earnings power and quality versus a year ago, with a 19% increase in recurring net interest margin generated by the 9% increase in average assets under management and the sustained levels of increased interest rates and spreads on Saratoga's investments largely floating rate assets, while costs of long-term balance sheet liabilities are largely fixed. This quarter's net investment income of $1.05 per share significantly exceeded our recently increased $0.74 dividend by 42%. In addition, our ongoing development of sponsor relationships continues to create attractive investment opportunities from high-quality sponsors, despite the constrained general volume of M&A over the last couple of years. We believe Saratoga continues to be favorably situated for potential future economic opportunities as well as challenges. Saratoga's largely fixed-rate, interest-only, covenant-free, long-duration credit structure with maturities primarily two to ten years out positions the company well with the elevated level of interest rates delivering substantially increased margins and industry-leading dividend coverage versus largely fixed credit costs and limits risks from creditors in crisis situations. Most importantly, at the foundation of our elevated level of NII performance, is the high-quality nature, resilience, and balance of our approximately $1.096 billion portfolio. Our core BDC portfolio fair value, excluding our CLO and JV, and our two restructured Pepper Palace and Tholage investments, exceeds its cost by 3.3%. We have taken decisive action with respect to Pepper Palace and Zolage, assuming full control over both investments through consensual restructurings with the prior sponsors and establishing a combined remaining fair value of $4.4 million. The Zolage restructuring was completed during the first quarter, and the Pepper Palace restructuring is imminent. We are actively implementing management changes, capital structure improvements, and business plan adjustments, which have the potential for future increases in recovery value. With these two restructurings substantially completed, we have resolved uncertainties related to two of the three portfolio companies on our watch list. The overall financial performance and strong earnings power of our current remaining portfolio reflects the strength of the underwriting in our solid growing portfolio of companies in well-selected industry segments. We continue to approach the market with prudence and discernment in terms of new commitments in the current environment. Our originations this quarter demonstrate that despite an overall robust pipeline, there are periods like the current one where many of the investments we review do not meet our high-quality credit standards. During the quarter, we originated no new portfolio company investments while benefiting from 16 smaller follow-on investments in existing portfolio companies we know well with strong business models and balance sheets. With originations this quarter totaling $39 million versus $76 million of repayments and amortization, Our quarter-end cash position has grown to $93.3 million, improving effective leverage from 159.6% regulatory leverage to 171.2% net leverage, netting available cash against outstanding debt. Including the increase in cash since quarter-end through this week, net leverage improves further to 186%. Our credit quality for this quarter remained high at 98.3% of credits rated in our highest category, with three investments currently still in non-accrual, representing 1.6% of fair value. With 86% of our investments at quarter end in first lien debt and our overall portfolio generally supported by strong enterprise values and balance sheets in industries that have historically performed well in stressed situations, we believe our portfolio and leverage is well-structured for challenging economic conditions and uncertainty. Saratoga's annualized first quarter dividend of 74 cents per share and adjusted net investment income of $1.05 per share imply a 13.1% dividend yield and an 18.6% earnings yield based on our recent stock price of $22.59 per share on July 8, 2024. The over-earning of the dividend by 31 cents this quarter or $1.24 annualized per share, increases NAV, supports the increasing dividend level and portfolio growth, as well as providing a cushion against adverse events. In volatile economic conditions such as we are currently experiencing, balance sheet strength, liquidity, and NAV preservation remain paramount for us. On March 27, 2024, we entered into a special purpose vehicle and a new three-year financing credit facility with Live Oak Bank which provides for incremental borrowings in an aggregate amount of up to $50 million. We upsized this to $75 million in June and added two new banking relationships. Including this new facility at quarter end, we maintained a substantial $299 million of investment capacity to support our portfolio companies, with $136 million available through our newly approved SBIC III fund, $70 million from our two revolving credit facilities, and $93 million in cash. Saratoga Investments' first quarter demonstrated a solid level of performance with our key performance indicators as compared to the quarters ended May 31, 2023 and February 29, 2024. Our adjusted NII is $14.3 million this quarter, up 12% from last year and last quarter. Our adjusted NII per share is $1.05. this quarter, down 3 percent from $1.08 last year, and up 12 percent from 94 cents last quarter. Adjusted NII yield is 15.5 percent this quarter, up from 15 percent last year, and up from 14 percent last quarter. Latest 12 months return on equity is 4.4 percent, down from 7.2 percent last year, and up from 2.5 percent last quarter. Our NAV per share is $26.85, down 6% from $28.48 last year, and down 1% from $27.12 last quarter. And our quarter end NAV is $368 million, up from $337 million last year, and slightly down from $370 million last quarter. While this past year has seen markdowns to a small number of credits in our core BDC portfolio, Slide three illustrates how our long-term average return on equity over the last 10 years is well above the BDC industry average at 10.5% versus the industry's 6.7%, and has remained consistently strong over the past decade, beating the industry eight of the past 10 years. As you can see on slide four, our assets under management have steadily and consistently risen since we took over the BDC 14 years ago, and the quality of our credits remains solid, with only three credits on non-accrual, unchanged from last quarter. Our management team is working diligently to continue this positive trend as we deploy our available capital into our pipeline, while at the same time being appropriately cautious in this volatile and evolving credit environment. With that, I would like to turn the call back over to Henry to review our financial results, as well as the composition and performance of our portfolio.
spk24: Thank you, Chris. Slide five highlights our key performance metrics for the fiscal first quarter ended May 31, 2024, most of which Chris already highlighted. Of note, the weighted average common shares outstanding of 13.7 million shares in Q1 and Q4 increased from 11.9 million last year. Adjusted NII increased this quarter up 11.6 percent from last year and up 12.1 percent from last quarter. The increases in investment income from higher average assets were offset by first, increased interest expense resulting from the various new notes payable and SBA debentures issued during the past year, and two, increased base and incentive management fees from higher AUM and earnings. Total expenses for this quarter, excluding interest and debt financing expenses, base management fees and incentive fees, and income and excise taxes, increased from $2.3 million to $2.9 million as compared to last year and from $1.9 million for last quarter. This represented 1.0% of average total assets on an annualized basis, up from 0.8% last year and 0.7% last quarter. Increased expenses this quarter primarily related to legal expenses incurred with the restructuring activities as well as increased general regulatory, accounting, and compliance requirements. Also, we have again added the KPI slides 26 through 29 in the appendix at the end of the presentation that shows our income statement and balance sheet metrics for the past nine quarters, including a 36% increase in net interest margin over the past year. Moving on to slide six, NAV was $367.9 million as of this quarter end, a $2.3 million decrease from last quarter, and a $30.4 million increase from the same quarter last year. This chart also includes our historical NAV per share, which highlights how this important metric has increased 21 of the past 27 quarters, with Q1 down 27 cents per share, and with this quarter and recent reductions, primarily reflecting the specific asset markdowns already discussed. Over the long term, our net asset value has steadily increased since 2011, and this growth has been accretive as demonstrated by the long-term increase in NAV per share. Over the past five years, NAV per share is up $2.79 per share, or 11.6%. We continue to benefit from our history of consistent realized and unrealized gains. On slide 7, you will see a simple reconciliation of the major changes in adjusted NII and NAV per share on a sequential quarterly basis. Starting at the top, adjusted NII per share was up 11 cents, primarily due to the 4 cent increase in non-CLO NII from higher average AUM and 5 cent decrease in operating expenses. On the lower half of the slide, NAV per share decreased by 27 cents. primarily due to the 53 cents net realized loss and unrealized depreciation, more than offsetting the gap NII excess earned over the Q4 dividend. Slide eight outlines the dry powder available to us as of quarter end, which totaled $299 million. This was spread between our available cash, undrawn SBA debentures, and undrawn secured credit facilities. This quarter end level of available liquidity allows us to grow our assets by an additional 27% without the need for external financing, with $93 million of quarter end cash available and thus fully accretive to NII when deployed, and $136 million of available SBA debentures with its low cost pricing, also very accretive. We also include a column showing any call options of our debt, This shows that our $321 million of baby bonds, effectively all our 6% plus debt, is callable within the next year, creating a natural protection against potential future decreasing interest rates, which should allow us to protect our net interest margin if needed. Also new to our capital structure and liquidity is the Live Oak Bank three-year $50 million secured revolving credit facility that we closed in March this year. and subsequently upsized to $75 million in June. We remain pleased with our available liquidity and leverage position, including our access to diverse sources of both public and private liquidity, and especially taking into account the overall conservative nature of our balance sheet, the fact that almost all our debt is long-term in nature, and with almost no non-SBIC debt maturing within the next two years. Also, our debt is structured in such a way that we have no BDC covenants that can be stressed during volatile times. Now I would like to move on to slides 9 through 12 and review the composition and yield of our investment portfolio. Slide 9 highlights that we now have $1.096 billion of AUM at fair value, and this is invested in 53 portfolio companies, one CLO fund, and one joint venture. Our first link percentage is 86% of our total investments, of which 34% is in first lien, last out positions. On slide 10, you can see how the yield on our core BDC assets, excluding our CLO, has changed over time, especially the past two years. This quarter, our core BDC yield remained the same at 12.6%, with base rates relatively unchanged. The CLO yield decreased slightly to 12.4% from last quarter. The CLO is performing and current. Slide 11 shows how our investments are diversified through the U.S. And on slide 12, you can see the industry breadth in diversity that our portfolio represents, spread over 43 distinct industries, in addition to our investments in the CLO and JV, which are included as structured finance securities. Moving on to slide 13, 8.4% of our investment portfolio consists of equity interests, which remain an important part of our overall investment strategy. This slide shows that for the past 12 fiscal years, we had a combined $60.5 million of net realized gains from the sale of equity interest or sale or early redemption of other investments. This is net of the Zolage and Netreo realized losses this past quarter. This consistent realized gain performance continues to highlight our portfolio credit quality and has helped grow our NAV and is reflected in our healthy long-term ROE. That concludes my financial and portfolio review. I will now turn the call over to Michael Grishas, our Chief Investment Officer, for an overview of the investment market.
spk13: Thanks, Henry. It's only been two months since we last caught up, so I'll focus on our perspective on the changes in the market since then, and then comment on our current portfolio performance and investment strategy. The overall deal market continues to reflect slower deal volume and M&A activity than in historical periods. While liquidity among private equity firms remains abundant, high financing costs and elevated levels of inflation continue to constrain the private equity deal market, which drives much of the demand for new credits. At the same time, some lenders have reentered the market as they've grown more confident in the macroeconomic climate. The combination of historically low M&A volume and an abundant supply of capital is causing spreads to tighten. as lenders compete to win deals. As a result, we're anticipating some pickup in payoffs due to lenders offering extremely aggressive pricing on some of our low leverage assets. Now, that said, we believe the risk-adjusted gross yields on first lien assets remain exceptional, and capital structures for new deals continue to be supported by strong equity capitalizations. Overall, while new deal volume is modest as compared to our historical levels, it continues to be a favorable market for capital deployment, especially at the lower end of the middle market where we compete. The Saratoga management team has successfully managed through a number of credit cycles, and that experience has made us particularly aware of the importance of, first, being disciplined when making investment decisions, and second, being proactive in managing our portfolio. In an environment that has seen ever-shifting expectations for the economy due to inflation and rising interest rates, among other factors, we have stayed largely focused on managing and supporting our portfolio. Our underwriting bar remains high as usual, yet we continue to find opportunities to deploy capital. As seen on slide 14, our more recent performance has been characterized by continued asset deployment in existing portfolio companies. as demonstrated with 24 follow-ons thus far this calendar year, including delayed draws, which we expect to continue. While we invested in no new platform investments this calendar year as of yet, we focused much of our time and resources on supporting our portfolio and managing a discrete few challenge credits. Overall, our deal flow remains strong, and our consistent ability to generate new investments over the long term despite ever-changing and increasingly competitive market dynamics is a strength of ours. Portfolio management continues to be critically important, and we remain actively engaged with our portfolio companies and in close contact with our management teams. The few discrete credits discussed in previous quarters that are experiencing various levels of stress remain unchanged, and I will touch on them shortly. But in general, our portfolio companies are healthy and 79% of our portfolio is generating financial results at or above prior quarter. 86% of our portfolio is in first lien debt and generally supported by strong enterprise values in industries that have historically performed well in stress situations. We have no direct energy or commodities exposure. In addition, the majority of our portfolios comprise the businesses that produce a high degree of recurring revenue and have historically demonstrated strong revenue retention. Consistent with last quarter, we still have three investments on non-accrual, namely Noland, Pepper Palace, and Zollich. Looking at leverage on this same slide, you can see that industry debt multiples have continued to come down slightly this year from their historically high levels. Total leverage of our portfolio was 4.27 times, excluding Nolan, Pepper Palace, and Zollich, while the industry is now again above five times leverage. Despite the success we've had investing in highly attractive businesses and growing our portfolio over the years, it is important to emphasize that we are not aiming to grow simply for growth's sake. Our capital deployment bar is always high and is conditioned upon healthy confidence that each incremental investment is in a durable business and will be accretive to our shareholders. Slide 15 provides more data on our deal flow. As you can see, the top of our deal pipeline is down from prior periods, in part because we made a conscious effort to improve the quality of our deal funnel, and in part because market activity is down considerably, as previously discussed. Overall, the significant progress we've made in building broader and deeper relationships in the marketplace is noteworthy because it strengthens the dependability of our deal flow and reinforces our ability to remain highly selective as we rigorously screen opportunities to execute on the best investments. As you can see on slide 16, our overall portfolio quality remains solid. While we are presently facing challenges in a few credits, I thought I'd take a moment to highlight that our team remains focused on deploying capital in strong business models where we are confident that Under all reasonable scenarios, the enterprise value of the business will sustainably exceed the last dollar of our investment. We can't be perfect, but we strive to be as perfect as possible, and we have not veered from our thorough and cautious underwriting approach. Over the dozen plus years that we've been working together, we've invested $2.2 billion in 116 portfolio companies. We've had just two realized losses on investment. Over that same timeframe, we've successfully exited 69 of those investments, achieving gross unlevered realized returns of 15.4% on $978 million of realizations. Even taking into account the current write-downs of a few discrete credits, our combined realized and unrealized returns on all capital invested equals 13.5%. We think this performance profile is particularly attractive for a portfolio predominantly constructed with first lien senior debt. We continue to have three investments on non-accrual, with Pepper Palace and Zolids classified as red and Noland as yellow. Noland has been on yellow for a while, and this quarter saw an improvement in the Q3 mark for the second quarter in a row, reflecting recent moderate improvement in the business and liquidity. Pepper Palace continued to suffer from poor performance and liquidity issues, reflecting the further $0.6 million markdown this quarter. The remaining fair value of this investment is $2.4 million. A transaction is imminent whereby we will restructure the balance sheet and take maturity control of the business. As part of this restructuring, the turnaround specialist we have been working with, who has substantial successful experience in similar situations, will invest significant equity in the business and become the CEO and a board member. And the solid restructuring on the balance sheet was completed during this first quarter, resulting in us taking over the company and actively managing this investment. We have in place a framework for an agreement that would have the previous owner invest meaningful dollars in the business and work in partnership with us with the immediate goal of returning the business to its former profitability levels and the ultimate objective of exceeding those levels. As part of the restructuring, we realized a $15.1 million realized loss for accounting, although we still have equity and a first lien term loan in the company with a current value of $2 million. As previously communicated, during the quarter, our net real investment was paid off, and we realized a $6.1 million loss on our equity. It is important to note, however, that this investment taken as a whole, including both our debt and equity, produced a positive IRR of approximately 5% without taking into account any potential yield enhancement that could be achieved through our residual escrow and earn out. In addition, the CLO and JV had $5 million of unrealized depreciation this quarter, reflecting primarily markdowns due to individual credits in our original CLO. Of note is the rest of the core BDC portfolio has continued to perform well, resulting in $1.2 million of net unrealized appreciation across our remaining 51 portfolio companies in Q1. Our overall investment approach has yielded exceptional realized returns and recovery of our invested capital, and our long-term performance remains strong, as seen by our track record on this slide. Now, moving on to slide 17, you can see our second SBIC license is fully funded and deployed, and we are currently ramping up our new SBIC III license with $136 million of lower-cost, undrawn debentures available, allowing us to continue to support U.S. small businesses both new and existing. Now, this concludes my review of the market, and I'd like to turn the call back over to our CEO. Chris?
spk04: Thank you, Mike.
spk05: As outlined on slide 18, our latest dividend of $0.74 per share for the quarter ended May 31, 2024, was paid on June 27, 2024. This is the largest quarterly dividend in our history and reflects a 6% and 40% increase over the past one and two years, respectively. The Board of Directors will continue to evaluate the dividend level on at least a quarterly basis, considering both company and general economic factors, including the current interest rate environment's impact on our earnings. Recognizing the divergence of opinions on when interest rate cuts will commence and at what pace, as well as expectations for the economy, Saratoga's Q1 over-earning of its dividend by 42%, $1.05 versus $0.74 per share this quarter, deleverages by building NAV and also provides substantial cushion should economic conditions deteriorate or base rates decline. Moving to slide 19, our total return for the last 12 months, which includes both capital appreciation and dividends, has generated total returns of negative 5%, uncharacteristically low and underperforming the BDC index of 27% for the same period. Our longer-term performance is outlined on our next slide, 20. Our five-year return places us almost in line with the BDC index, while our three-year performance is now slightly below the index, being impacted by the recent latest 12-month performance. Since Saratoga took over management of the BDC in 2010, our total return has been 655% versus the industry's 276%. On slide 21, you can further see our performance placed in the context of the broader industry and specific to certain key performance metrics. We continue to focus on our long-term metrics, such as return on equity, NAV per share, NI yield, and dividend growth and coverage, all of which reflects the growing value our shareholders are receiving. While return on equity and NAV per share are lagging the industry for this past year, that is primarily due to three discrete non-accruals we have previously discussed. Our dividend coverage and dividend growth has been one of the strongest in the industry, We also continue to be one of the few BDCs to have grown NAV over the long term, and we have done it accretively. And our long-term return on equity remains 1.6 times the long-term industry average. Moving on to slide 22, all of our initiatives discussed on this call are designed to make Saratoga Investment a leading BDC that is attractive to the capital markets community. We believe that our differentiated performance characteristics outlined in this slide will help drive the size and quality of our investor base including adding more institutions. These differentiating characteristics, many previously discussed, include maintaining one of the highest levels of management ownership in the industry at 12.5%, ensuring we are aligned with our shareholders. Looking ahead on slide 23, we remain confident that our reputation, experienced management team, historically strong underwriting standards, and time and market-tested investment strategy will serve us well in navigating through challenges and uncovering opportunities in the current and future environment, and that our balance sheet, capital structure, and liquidity will benefit Saratoga shareholders in the near and long term. In closing, I would again like to thank all of our shareholders for their ongoing support, and I would like to now open the call for questions.
spk03: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or a comment at this time, please press star 1-1 on your telephone. If your question has been answered, you wish to move yourself from the queue, please press star 1-1 again. We'll pause for a moment while we compile our Q&A roster.
spk26: Our first question comes from Bryce Rowe.
spk03: Your line is open.
spk16: Thanks. Good morning, all. Can you communicate with the operator? Wanted to maybe start on just the environment for investing. You made some comments here around repayment activity possibly picking up.
spk25: And then, Chris, you made a comment about... Bryce, can you pause for one moment? Sure. Sure.
spk02: Operator, can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me?
spk21: Operator, are you still there?
spk03: One moment, Bryce. It looks like they're having a little technical issues.
spk24: Can you guys hear me? Yeah, Kevin, we can hear you. You just disappeared there for a short while.
spk03: Okay, so Bryce, you can go ahead and ask your question. Okay.
spk16: Hopefully you guys can hear me. I wanted to talk here on the investing environment. You made some comments around kind of repayment activity, possibly picking up, and then, Chris, you talked about cash having come in, I guess, subsequent to quarter end. If you could just provide a little bit more you know, commentary around that. And then also wanted to kind of get a feel for the environment for new transactions. Obviously, it's been pretty skinny over the last 12 months in terms of new deals into the portfolio. What is it that, you know, that you'd like to see that maybe you're not seeing to get some of these newer opportunities across the finish line?
spk13: Let me try to tackle that price and all good questions. Um, first of all, let me, let me give you a little bit of context for that. And I'm sure you're aware, you know, the deal volume overall, um, for in the U S especially for private equity backed deals. I think the corporate M and a environment is starting to pick up, but for, for PE backed deals, overall M&A activity is down kind of record lows, even below any recent period in years, except for kind of the height of the COVID experience, that first half of 2020. As a result, we're not seeing as much activity and opportunities to invest in new portfolio companies now. We're still seeing plenty of opportunities to support our existing portfolio companies, and you've seen us do that quite actively in the last few quarters. We have also had the benefit of not experiencing as many payoffs as a result of lower M&A activity. What is new, and as we pointed out, is that I think the combination of all of the capital that's sitting on the sidelines and the low new deal activity is causing some competition on price. And so you're seeing in certain credits, you're seeing people start to get pretty aggressive to deploy capital. And so for some of our lower leverage kind of deals where they're kind of obvious targets, where we've seen kind of more senior lender types, et cetera, come in, and offer more attractive financing, I think we may have some payoff experience there. But generally, sort of stepping back, we feel very comfortable that where we sit in the market, at the lower end of the middle market, and with the breadth of our relationships, as well as our portfolio, that we'll continue to have plenty of opportunities to deploy capital, and that in the long run, that'll outpace you know, kind of repayment activity that we may experience. I would highlight, you know, just as we step back and think about it, we think being in the lower end of the middle market is a great place to be from a credit quality standpoint. Also, in terms of just, you know, deal activity and our opportunity to generate new deals, we think that we've got really strong depth at that end of the middle market with really good relationships that will fuel, more opportunities to deploy capital. We feel really good about the verticals that we're in, you know, generally being non-cyclical and verticals that if you know them well, you can deploy capital very smartly. We feel terrific about the quality of our team. We think that our underwriting and our team is among the very best in the industry. And the risk-adjusted returns that you can get in senior debt complemented with equity co-investments We think it's just a great, great strategy, and in the long run, you know, that will continue to benefit our investors just as it has historically. In the present moment, though, and, you know, this will play out. We've been through a lot of different cycles. In the present moment, there's not as much deal activity, and, you know, it's kind of sort of what we're working through, if you will.
spk16: Got it. That's helpful, Mike. And then again, on maybe a couple follow-ups, the comment about cash coming in post-quarter end, can you just give us kind of maybe a pro forma cash balance since you did make that comment? And then also wanted to ask about the undistributed position and how you're kind of thinking about that, you know, as we think about, you know, maybe moving into the second half of 2024?
spk24: I might start with a cash position. You know, we don't generally disclose that price, but we did mention, as you said, you know, we had another deal repay and we have a couple of others that, you know, could potentially for the reasons that Mike described. And so, therefore, we felt it was worthwhile to, you know, just mention that, you know, obviously there's There's sort of net cash coming in thus far being only a month into the new quarter.
spk05: And with regards to the spillover question, the undistributed, that is an equation we're still working on. There's a lot of technical aspects to it as to the timing of declared dividends, magnitude of dividends, and the like. And that's something that we will be focusing more closely on in our next quarter. Okay.
spk16: Appreciate you guys taking the questions. I'll jump back in queue.
spk03: Thanks, Bryce. Our next question comes from Casey Alexander with Compass Point. Your line is open.
spk15: Hi, can you hear me? I know we had a little trouble there for a while. Good morning, Casey. Great, good morning. A couple of questions. First one for Mike. The LSEG lender survey has suggested that some larger private credit platforms, because of the lack of deal flow in the upper middle and the traditional middle market, have been coming down market some. Have you seen that form of competition creeping into your market?
spk13: We haven't seen much of it, Casey, but a little bit. I think one of the deals that we reference where you know, we might be facing a payoff is one where it's a really large senior lending institution that's pricing the deal at a level that candidly doesn't make any sense for us and we'll probably get paid off there. But, you know, outside of that, we haven't seen it much, but we are seeing a little bit of that, which suggests to me that, you know, there are players that are probably sitting on capital and are just looking for ways to deploy it, even if the pricing isn't really sensible.
spk15: Okay, that's great.
spk13: I will say this. I should say this, though, just before we depart that. From a day-to-day kind of where we play in the marketplace and who we compete against, it's not those groups. You know, are we subject to somebody, an institution like that, looking at a portfolio company that's been in portfolio for a while doing really well and they can come in and try to knock that off? Yeah, we're always subject to that a little bit. And this environment probably is right for that type of activity. But in terms of what we do and where we play in the market, we don't see those folks. They're not really set up to be underwriting the types of credits with the rigor that we do and the process that we do. And most of the deals that we do aren't really in their size range out of the box. So most of what we're doing tends to be smaller And you'll note that with just about all of our top 10 investments, all started off quite small, and then they grow over time as we support their growth. So, you know, in terms of what we're doing on a new portfolio activity standpoint and kind of building our portfolio over time in the marketplace that we reside in, we don't really see those large institutions very much. Companies can grow up, though, to the point where you're subject to that.
spk15: Right. That makes some sense that they might be a taker of your late cycle investments that you've bolted onto over time. So that makes some sense. Thank you. Henry, for you, we have the Live Oak facility and it looks like you're adding backs to the Live Oak facility. How would you characterize the cost in the terms of Live Oak compared to Encino Is it your plan to continue to add banks to that Live Oak facility and ultimately just have it replace the Encino facility?
spk24: It's a great question, Casey. I think firstly, what we loved about having the second facility is it allows us to broaden our relationships with new banks in a way that still achieves our goals of having a credit facility with a really strong structure. When that opportunity came along with a firm we know, Live Oak, it was a great opportunity. And then the upsize, as important as the extra 25 was, just because it creates more availability, we added two new banks to that in addition to Live Oak. And as you probably know, in the Antenna facility, there's also another bank as well. So we effectively now have five new relationships in the last two years in these two facilities. Encina still has, I think, almost two years left on it, so we don't need to make any decisions now around do we at some point go back to one facility that's just much larger, but they operate in a way that it really doesn't create much more cost or work for us in having the two facilities versus the one. It's just two different SPVs, but we're set up process-wise to deal with two versus one. It's not a problem. From a cost perspective, it's It's very similar. Um, the Live Oak facility just has a tiering. And so, uh, from a, from a, how, you know, how much we actually draw the, the rate comes down. So it starts off at the same rate, but as we draw more, every 25% more that we draw, we save 25 basis points.
spk15: Yeah. Well, I mean, the reason that, that, that I bring up the question is because the Encino is, is not the cheapest facility in the world and it has a pretty meaningful minimum draw. And so here we are sitting on $93 million of cash, and yet we have a minimum. It feels like an inefficient use of capital to a certain extent.
spk24: Yeah. I think it's a balancing act for us around having available liquidity for those moments when you not only just need to fund a deal, but you need it for much more important market activities or functions, et cetera. And so we sort of accept that as a cost of doing business. to have a very well-structured facility. But I hear you. Obviously, every single day, you know, I wake up and we try to make sure we optimize our capital and our cash in the most efficient way.
spk15: Understood. Last question, and I think you've done a much better job on the income statement of detailing where some of the other sources of income are coming from, such as the dividend income and the structuring and advisory fee income. It's still in this quarter. You had about $0.09 a share or let's call it $0.07 a share after accounting for incentive fee of other income. What's the texture of that other income? How much of that should we think of as one time this quarter? It's a pretty meaningful amount to be just dropped down into other.
spk24: Yes. No, I totally agree with you. We have split out the income statement in more detail as sort of the sources of that other income has expanded. You know, dividends become a bigger part of it. There's really, in other income now, it's primarily either amendment fees or prepayment fees that fall in there. And then I guess a little bit of monitoring fees as well. But probably two-thirds of that, I would say, is transactional in nature, Casey. So, you know... It's one-off in that quarter related to a specific deal, but you tend to have those types of events occur more recurring. So it's one-off items that sort of are recurring in nature because you obviously have prepayments that occur almost every single quarter, and you also have amendments that occur almost every single quarter. But it can be a little lumpy at some point, but I wouldn't view all of it as one-time.
spk15: Yeah, okay. Well, given your comments about, you know, at least having one payoff that you know of coming up in this quarter and your sense that some more are coming, it would thus be reasonable to expect some meaningful other income in the coming quarter? Yeah, I mean, that could be the case.
spk24: It's obviously specific to every deal, but, you know, that's not an unreasonable assumption. Yep.
spk14: Okay, great. Thank you. That's all of my questions. Thank you.
spk03: Our next question comes from Robert Dodd with Raymond James. Your line is open.
spk08: Hi, guys. A couple of questions on focus areas. First, on the non-records, I mean, last quarter, for example, you gave us a lot of detail about what was going on and all the drivers. of the issues of that business. I'm not looking to retread all of that, but with the restructuring and the partial realization write down, for example, there, I mean, was there anything that kind of trended differently that drove that or was that all kind of part of the plan when you gave us the detail last quarter in terms of the restructuring? Has anything changed or was that just a continuation? of what you already saw going on?
spk13: It was a continuation of what we already saw going on. We felt like those discrete credits are meaningful enough that we wanted to discuss it again and keep people informed of events there. But these are both credits that we are actively working. And I think there are a lot of elements of certainly those credits that we liked from the beginning that we still feel fundamentally are there in those credits, and we're going to work hard to try to recover as much capital as we can in each of those situations. But both of them, we've got a lot of wood to chop.
spk24: And, Robert, I would also just add that, you know, although we've restructured them now and there's a PIC component to some of the securities, we continue to keep them on non-accrual, as you probably noted, that we continue to say we have three investments on non-accrual going forward.
spk08: Got it. I appreciate that, Paula. Thank you. On the market color point that you're always very helpful on, I mean, Mike, on a significant number, 16 follow-ons, can you give us any color on what the nature of that, I mean, is this follow-on acquisitions that these portfolio companies are making? Is it incremental working capital that you're funding? Can you give us any color on on the nature of when you make a follow on what's the kind of thing that that's being used for today? Because obviously not no new platforms, but a lot of follow on activity. So any color on what that is?
spk13: Sure, most of the businesses that we invest in, not all of them, but most of them are pretty, have a pretty healthy appetite for additional capital. And most of that is to drive growth through M&A activity, through add-on activity. And so the majority of those follow-ons were really to do tuck-in acquisitions in existing platforms. And that's something that's worked out really well for us over the years, where we've come in and, in some cases, lent. I think our biggest portfolio company right now was one that started off as a $6 million debt piece with a $2 million equity co-investment, and that company kept coming back to market to execute on acquisitions that have worked out really well. So that strategy is kind of fundamental to what we do, and that's what the majority of those follow-ons were for. Got it. I appreciate it. That's what I expected you to say.
spk08: So can you reconcile for me, because I'm just not getting something about the market, not about what you're saying. I mean, as you said, I mean, the PE activity is low for new platforms. Most of the businesses you're involved with have a PE sponsor, but they're very active on the add-on front. They're not active on the new platform front, even though, you know, the cost of financing for both is relatively elevated. So what can you – can you – what is the differential driver? I mean, obviously, multiples are lower for – for add-ons maybe. But what's the drive of why people, the PE sponsors are perfectly willing to pay the incremental financing cost on an add-on, but not willing to make a new platform acquisition? What's the disconnect there? Is it the feedback on the pricing or what?
spk13: It's a really good question. And now this is a generalization, but it's, I think, the right perspective. A new platform opportunity typically yields a pretty healthy multiple. And so when a sponsor is looking at a new platform, they usually pay up for that new platform. It's gotten to a certain scale. It's something that gets marketed through a really competitive process, et cetera. And in a lot of these businesses, private equity firms have been very successful doing bolt-on acquisitions that are a bit smaller, that are very competitive, complementary to their core platform business and very accretive to execute with an add-on, but often those add-on acquisitions don't command platform multiples. They're typically a bit smaller businesses that may not have the value that you'd get for a platform, so you can execute on an add-on at a lower multiple and make it very accretive to shareholders, or to the owners. And we've seen that play out very effectively in other markets. But certainly in this market, I think a lot of the private equity firms are saying, geez, I think there's a marketplace where I can command a better exit on my business. It's performing really well. So now's not the time to sell. Let's kind of hold and figure out the best time to exit. But in the meantime, let's continue to do what we've done, which is go out and continue to build the business. And some of that includes add-on activity at multiples that are lower than where they execute on the original acquisition. Got it. Thank you for that.
spk08: Last one, if I can. How would you translate, like the spread to your point, the spread between what add-on acquisitions are going for right now or can be found for? versus platform acquisitions? Obviously, from your color, there's a big gap. Is that, I mean, is that historically large, presumably, or there'd be some different behavior in there? But I mean, how wide is that today versus other periods that you've seen in the market?
spk13: I don't know that it's much wider. When private equity firms are executing on a new platform, it's very commonplace for them to be thinking, what acquisitions can we do? There's an organic growth component. There's certainly somewhere the primary goal is to go and do acquisitions. And much of that's driven by the delta between what they think they can sell the company at larger scale versus what they can do when they execute on smaller add-ons. And so that delta, I'm not sure it's much different. Certainly, there's variability depending on where you're in the market and what end market they're operating in, but I wouldn't say that they're much, much different in this environment than they are in others.
spk05: Yeah, and one further comment I'd make on that is, again, it's all specific to the given investment, but some of these platforms, while they're acquiring a business at an X multiple, pro forma for the synergies and the cost savings and things like that, it can be a significant discount. And so you get, you know, so you got a multiple arbitrage on the on what you go in at, but then your pro forma arbitrage is even greater. And so that that's, you know, that's really the economics of these buildups. And people have done very well.
spk13: Yeah, got it. Yeah, that's a very, very good point. So very often the seller and an add on views the sale as though they're getting x dollars for it, right x multiple for it. But the buyer can look at the cost structure and say, I don't really need a lot of that redundant cost. So I'm actually buying it for something less than that. So there's a, it's kind of a win-win.
spk08: Yeah. Yeah. No, I appreciate that call. It all makes a lot of sense, but it seems like, you know, a lot of those dynamics like the bid ask, et cetera, that's true at any point in the market cycle. And it just seems that it's unusually skewed, not just for you, for everybody, unusually bonds right now. and something's got to give at some point, but thank you for your color.
spk05: Actually, I think it's a very good question, and I think maybe one other perspective on it, which again is gross generalization, but I think it's also different markets. Some of these smaller deals are owned by individuals, owned by families, owned by management teams, and they're selling into a private equity institutional environment. And so that, you know, they're, they're, they're selling for different reasons. You know, they might be selling because of life cycle, maybe they're, you know, they want to retire, you know, estate planning, you know, you'd have taken this long to, you know, they, they sort of like individually driven decisions where I think in the private equity market, uh, it's much more of a market decisions going on here. People may have paid certain multiples and they're not going to sell until they get a certain rate of return. And there's going to hold until they get that or, you know, can't hold any longer. So I think that the private equity platform marketplace is a different marketplace than this other one because different drivers, different factors. It's not pure rate of return, timing. Like a private equity firm could say, well, I'm going to hold this for another two years. But the 65-year-old manager is like, this is the time to sell my company. I want to move to Florida or do whatever I want to do. And so he's not going to say, I want to wait until I'm 67 because I don't like the market. He's kind of ready to move on.
spk08: Yeah, yeah, understood. Thank you.
spk26: Our next question comes from Eric Zwick with Lucid Capital Markets.
spk03: Your line is open.
spk17: Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Maybe first a follow-up on the fact that there were no new investment commitments in the quarter, and you mentioned that it didn't meet your standards. Curious if you could provide a little coverage, you know, a little color to that in terms of that leverage spread covenants. And I'm curious at all, it's all reflective of it all reflective of, you know, some weakening in the economy, or you're seeing some potentially sectors that you're just wanting to avoid more. So wondering if you could provide some awesome thoughts there.
spk13: Good question. I think it's not I can't tell you that it's spread or leveraged per se. I think the deal volume is down quite considerably, and we're already highly selective when we decide to support a portfolio company. And so when you take the combination of much lower deal volume and then just our rigor that we apply to any of our new investment opportunities, it just hasn't yielded results. I think I think one of the things that we're getting attuned to, I would say, is that pricing has come down pretty considerably. And so if you look at where pricing is on deals now, let's say, versus even a year ago, we've seen in some cases that pricing is 100 plus basis points lower than where it was. And so you kind of have to react to that in competitive processes as time goes on. So that probably
spk17: you know in a couple cases probably came into play as well got it thank you and other one for me just with respect to restructurings of knowledge and pepper palace you know you mentioned there's potential to create some future increases in recovery value and I know it's early days for both of those just kind of completing the restructuring but but how do you think about that from a your time standpoint have you said or will you set say like you know six months one year two year targets for improvement in the KPIs at those companies, or how do you think about it from a timing perspective?
spk13: We don't set targets in terms of, you know, we're going to give a sort of date certain and evaluate and otherwise make a, you know, kind of fundamental decision. I think like anything, we are constantly evaluating what the opportunities are, where we're positioned, where the company is positioned, and, you know, the best way to try to maximize value. And that's something that you're constantly assessing. And then you make a decision based on those facts. I think in both these deals, as I mentioned, there's some elements of the businesses that we think are attractive, but certainly have a lot of wood to chop. As I mentioned, we've got work to do to get them to a better place. So time will tell.
spk17: And maybe one last follow-up on that one, just in terms of the new management teams that are putting in place, how or where have you sourced those? And I guess kind of that's the crux of the question there.
spk13: Well, I think in Zolich's case, we actually went to the original founder of the business, who is still who had sold the business to the private equity sponsor and was still involved at a much lesser level. And we approached him to get involved in the business. And he's essentially kind of helping us operate it today. And he's the one that we referenced that we've got a framework for a deal going forward where he'll invest capital. Um, so he was a natural person who had started that business from scratch and had made it quite successful. Um, so we've got, you know, measured optimism that with kind of a renewed approach to thinking about the business and taking advantage of the market opportunities and some of the elements of the business model that we think are very sound, um, that there's a runway for us to improve its performance. And he feels that way, obviously, because he's investing capital, uh, new capital into the business. In the Pepper Palace case, we came upon somebody who had in a number of situations gotten involved in distressed credits and had made capital investments in those credits and turned around the businesses very successfully. So the person that we're working with there also has a track record of turnarounds just like this in similar type businesses. And that person will also be investing meaningful dollars in Pepper Palace.
spk17: Very helpful. Thanks for taking my questions today. Thank you.
spk03: And I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Christian Overbeck for any closing remarks.
spk05: Again, we thank you for your support and we look forward to speaking to you next quarter.
spk03: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. So that concludes today's presentation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day. you Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Saratoga Investment Corp's 2025 Fiscal First Quarter Financial Results Conference call. Please note that today's call is being recorded. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following management's prepared remarks, we'll open the line for questions. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Saratoga Investment Corp's Chief Financial Officer and Chief Compliance Officer, Mr. Henry Steenkamp. Sir, please go ahead.
spk24: Thank you. I would like to welcome everyone to Saratoga Investment Corp's 2025 Fiscal First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference call includes forward-looking statements and projections. We ask you to refer to our most recent filings with the SEC for important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements and projections. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements unless required to do so by law Today, we will be referencing a presentation during our call. You can find our fiscal first quarter 2025 shareholder presentation in the events and presentation section of our investor relations website. A link to our IR page is in the earnings press release distributed last night. A replay of this conference call will also be available. Please refer to our earnings press release for details. I would now like to turn the call over to our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Christian Oberbeck, who will be making a few introductory remarks.
spk05: Thank you, Henry, and welcome, everyone. Saratoga's adjusted net investment income per share for the quarter increased by 12 percent as compared to last quarter, as stable interest rates have resulted in elevated recurring net interest margins on our portfolio relative to the past year. This quarter's earnings reflects elevated earnings power and quality versus a year ago, with a 19% increase in recurring net interest margin generated by the 9% increase in average assets under management and the sustained levels of increased interest rates and spreads on Saratoga's investments largely floating rate assets, while costs of long-term balance sheet liabilities are largely fixed. This quarter's net investment income of $1.05 per share significantly exceeded our recently increased $0.74 dividend by 42%. In addition, our ongoing development of sponsor relationships continues to create attractive investment opportunities from high-quality sponsors, despite the constrained general volume of M&A over the last couple of years. We believe Saratoga continues to be favorably situated for potential future economic opportunities as well as challenges. Saratoga's largely fixed-rate, interest-only, covenant-free, long-duration credit structure with maturities primarily 2 to 10 years out positions the company well with the elevated level of interest rates delivering substantially increased margins and industry-leading dividend coverage versus largely fixed credit costs and limits risks from creditors in crisis situations. Most importantly, at the foundation of our elevated level of NII performance, is the high-quality nature, resilience, and balance of our approximately $1.096 billion portfolio. Our core BDC portfolio fair value, excluding our CLO and JV, and our two restructured Pepper Palace and Solage investments, exceeds its cost by 3.3%. We have taken decisive action with respect to Pepper Palace and Zolage, assuming full control over both investments through consensual restructurings with the prior sponsors and establishing a combined remaining fair value of $4.4 million. The Zolage restructuring was completed during the first quarter, and the Pepper Palace restructuring is imminent. We are actively implementing management changes, capital structure improvements, and business plan adjustments, which have the potential for future increases in recovery value. With these two restructurings substantially completed, we have resolved uncertainties related to two of the three portfolio companies on our watch list. The overall financial performance and strong earnings power of our current remaining portfolio reflects the strength of the underwriting in our solid growing portfolio of companies in well-selected industry segments. We continue to approach the market with prudence and discernment in terms of new commitments in the current environment. Our originations this quarter demonstrate that despite an overall robust pipeline, there are periods like the current one where many of the investments we review do not meet our high-quality credit standards. During the quarter, we originated no new portfolio company investments while benefiting from 16 smaller follow-on investments in existing portfolio companies we know well with strong business models and balance sheets. With originations this quarter totaling $39 million versus $76 million of repayments and amortization, Our quarter-end cash position has grown to $93.3 million, improving effective leverage from 159.6% regulatory leverage to 171.2% net leverage, netting available cash against outstanding debt. Including the increase in cash since quarter-end through this week, net leverage improves further to 186%. Our credit quality for this quarter remained high at 98.3% of credits rated in our highest category, with three investments currently still in non-accrual, representing 1.6% of fair value. With 86% of our investments at quarter end in first lien debt and our overall portfolio generally supported by strong enterprise values and balance sheets in industries that have historically performed well in stressed situations, we believe our portfolio and leverage is well-structured for challenging economic conditions and uncertainty. Saratoga's annualized first quarter dividend of 74 cents per share and adjusted net investment income of $1.05 per share imply a 13.1% dividend yield and an 18.6% earnings yield based on our recent stock price of $22.59 per share on July 8, 2024. The over-earning of the dividend by 31 cents this quarter or $1.24 annualized per share, increases NAV, supports the increasing dividend level and portfolio growth, as well as providing a cushion against adverse events. In volatile economic conditions such as we are currently experiencing, balance sheet strength, liquidity, and NAV preservation remain paramount for us. On March 27, 2024, we entered into a special purpose vehicle and a new three-year financing credit facility with Live Oak Bank which provides for incremental borrowings in an aggregate amount of up to $50 million. We upsized this to $75 million in June and added two new banking relationships. Including this new facility at quarter end, we maintained a substantial $299 million of investment capacity to support our portfolio companies, with $136 million available through our newly approved SBIC III fund, $70 million from our two revolving credit facilities, and $93 million in cash. Saratoga Investments' first quarter demonstrated a solid level of performance with our key performance indicators as compared to the quarters ended May 31, 2023 and February 29, 2024. Our adjusted NII is $14.3 million this quarter, up 12% from last year and last quarter. Our adjusted NII per share is $1.05. this quarter, down 3% from $1.08 last year, and up 12% from $0.94 last quarter. Adjusted NII yield is 15.5% this quarter, up from 15% last year, and up from 14% last quarter. Latest 12 months return on equity is 4.4%, down from 7.2% last year, and up from 2.5% last quarter. Our NAV per share is $26.85, down 6% from $28.48 last year, and down 1% from $27.12 last quarter. And our quarter end NAV is $368 million, up from $337 million last year, and slightly down from $370 million last quarter. While this past year has seen markdowns to a small number of credits in our core BDC portfolio, Slide three illustrates how our long-term average return on equity over the last 10 years is well above the BDC industry average at 10.5% versus the industry's 6.7%, and has remained consistently strong over the past decade, beating the industry eight of the past 10 years. As you can see on slide four, our assets under management have steadily and consistently risen since we took over the BDC 14 years ago, and the quality of our credits remains solid, with only three credits on non-accrual, unchanged from last quarter. Our management team is working diligently to continue this positive trend as we deploy our available capital into our pipeline, while at the same time being appropriately cautious in this volatile and evolving credit environment. With that, I would like to turn the call back over to Henry to review our financial results, as well as the composition and performance of our portfolio.
spk24: Thank you, Chris. Slide five highlights our key performance metrics for the fiscal first quarter ended May 31, 2024, most of which Chris already highlighted. Of note, the weighted average common shares outstanding of 13.7 million shares in Q1 and Q4 increased from 11.9 million last year. Adjusted NII increased this quarter up 11.6 percent from last year and up 12.1 percent from last quarter. The increases in investment income from higher average assets were offset by first, increased interest expense resulting from the various new notes payable and SBA debentures issued during the past year, and two, increased base and incentive management fees from higher AUM and earnings. Total expenses for this quarter, excluding interest and debt financing expenses, base management fees and incentive fees, and income and excise taxes, increased from $2.3 million to $2.9 million as compared to last year and from $1.9 million for last quarter. This represented 1.0% of average total assets on an annualized basis, up from 0.8% last year and 0.7% last quarter. Increased expenses this quarter primarily related to legal expenses incurred with the restructuring activities as well as increased general regulatory, accounting, and compliance requirements. Also, we have again added the KPI slides 26 through 29 in the appendix at the end of the presentation that shows our income statement and balance sheet metrics for the past nine quarters, including a 36% increase in net interest margin over the past year. Moving on to slide six, NAV was $367.9 million as of this quarter end, a $2.3 million decrease from last quarter, and a $30.4 million increase from the same quarter last year. This chart also includes our historical NAV per share, which highlights how this important metric has increased 21 of the past 27 quarters, with Q1 down 27 cents per share, and with this quarter and recent reductions primarily reflecting the specific asset markdowns already discussed. Over the long term, our net asset value has steadily increased since 2011, and this growth has been accretive as demonstrated by the long-term increase in NAV per share. Over the past five years, NAV per share is up $2.79 per share, or 11.6%. We continue to benefit from our history of consistent realized and unrealized gains. On slide 7, you will see a simple reconciliation of the major changes in adjusted NII and NAV per share on a sequential quarterly basis. Starting at the top, adjusted NII per share was up 11 cents, primarily due to the 4 cent increase in non-CLO NII from higher average AUM and 5 cent decrease in operating expenses. On the lower half of the slide, NAV per share decreased by 27 cents. primarily due to the 53 cents net realized loss and unrealized depreciation, more than offsetting the gap NII excess earned over the Q4 dividend. Slide eight outlines the dry powder available to us as of quarter end, which totaled $299 million. This was spread between our available cash, undrawn SBA debentures, and undrawn secured credit facilities. This quarter end level of available liquidity allows us to grow our assets by an additional 27% without the need for external financing, with $93 million of quarter end cash available and thus fully accretive to NII when deployed, and $136 million of available SBA debentures with its low cost pricing, also very accretive. We also include a column showing any call options of our debt, This shows that our $321 million of baby bonds, effectively all our 6% plus debt, is callable within the next year, creating a natural protection against potential future decreasing interest rates, which should allow us to protect our net interest margin if needed. Also new to our capital structure and liquidity is the Live Oak Bank three-year $50 million secured revolving credit facility that we closed in March this year. and subsequently upsized to $75 million in June. We remain pleased with our available liquidity and leverage position, including our access to diverse sources of both public and private liquidity, and especially taking into account the overall conservative nature of our balance sheet, the fact that almost all our debt is long-term in nature, and with almost no non-SBIC debt maturing within the next two years. Also, our debt is structured in such a way that we have no BDC covenants that can be stressed during volatile times. Now I would like to move on to slides 9 through 12 and review the composition and yield of our investment portfolio. Slide 9 highlights that we now have $1.096 billion of AUM at fair value, and this is invested in 53 portfolio companies, one CLO fund, and one joint venture. Our first lean percentage is 86% of our total investments, of which 34% is in first lean last out positions. On slide 10, you can see how the yield on our core BDC assets, excluding our CLO, has changed over time, especially the past two years. This quarter, our core BDC yield remained the same at 12.6%, with base rates relatively unchanged. The CLO yield decreased slightly to 12.4% from last quarter, the CLO is performing, and current. Slide 11 shows how our investments are diversified through the U.S., and on slide 12, you can see the industry breadth in diversity that our portfolio represents, spread over 43 distinct industries, in addition to our investments in the CLO and JV, which are included as structured finance securities. Moving on to slide 13, 8.4% of our investment portfolio consists of equity interests, which remain an important part of our overall investment strategy. This slide shows that for the past 12 fiscal years, we had a combined $60.5 million of net realized gains from the sale of equity interest or sale or early redemption of other investments. This is net of the Zollich and Netreo realized losses this past quarter. This consistent realized gain performance continues to highlight our portfolio credit quality and has helped grow our NAV and is reflected in our healthy long-term ROE. That concludes my financial and portfolio review. I will now turn the call over to Michael Grishas, our Chief Investment Officer, for an overview of the investment market.
spk13: Thanks, Henry. It's only been two months since we last caught up, so I'll focus on our perspective on the changes in the market since then and then comment on our current portfolio performance and investment strategy. The overall deal market continues to reflect slower deal volume and M&A activity than in historical periods. While liquidity among private equity firms remains abundant, high financing costs and elevated levels of inflation continue to constrain the private equity deal market, which drives much of the demand for new credits. At the same time, some lenders have reentered the market as they've grown more confident in the macroeconomic climate. The combination of historically low M&A volume and an abundant supply of capital is causing spreads to tighten as lenders compete to win deals. As a result, we're anticipating some pickup in payoffs due to lenders offering extremely aggressive pricing on some of our low leverage assets. Now, that said, we believe the risk-adjusted gross yields on first lien assets remain exceptional, and capital structures for new deals continue to be supported by strong equity capitalizations. Overall, while new deal volume is modest as compared to our historical levels, it continues to be a favorable market for capital deployment, especially at the lower end of the middle market where we compete. The Saratoga management team has successfully managed through a number of credit cycles, and that experience has made us particularly aware of the importance of, first, being disciplined when making investment decisions, and second, being proactive in managing our portfolio. In an environment that has seen ever-shifting expectations for the economy due to inflation and rising interest rates, among other factors, we have stayed largely focused on managing and supporting our portfolio. Our underwriting bar remains high as usual, yet we continue to find opportunities to deploy capital. As seen on slide 14, our more More recent performance has been characterized by continued asset deployment in existing portfolio companies, as demonstrated with 24 follow-ons thus far this calendar year, including delayed draws, which we expect to continue. While we invested in no new platform investments this calendar year as of yet, we focused much of our time and resources on supporting our portfolio and managing a discrete few challenge credits. Overall, our deal flow remains strong and our consistent ability to generate new investments over the long term despite ever changing and increasingly competitive market dynamics is a strength of ours. Portfolio management continues to be critically important and we remain actively engaged with our portfolio companies and in close contact with our management teams. The few discrete credits discussed in previous quarters that are experiencing various levels of stress remain unchanged and I will touch on them shortly. But in general, our portfolio companies are healthy and 79% of our portfolio is generating financial results at or above prior quarter. 86% of our portfolio is in first lien debt and generally supported by strong enterprise values in industries that have historically performed well in stress situations. We have no direct energy or commodities exposure. In addition, the majority of our portfolios comprise the businesses that produce a high degree of recurring revenue and have historically demonstrated strong revenue retention. Consistent with last quarter, we still have three investments on non-accrual, namely Noland, Pepper Palace, and Zollich. Looking at leverage on this same slide, you can see that industry debt multiples have continued to come down slightly this year from their historically high levels. The total leverage of our portfolio was 4.27 times, excluding Nolan, Pepper Palace, and Zollich, while the industry is now again above five times leverage. Despite the success we've had investing in highly attractive businesses and growing our portfolio over the years, it is important to emphasize that we are not aiming to grow simply for growth's sake. Our capital deployment bar is always high and is conditioned upon healthy confidence that each incremental investment is in a durable business and will be accretive to our shareholders. Slide 15 provides more data on our deal flow. As you can see, the top of our deal pipeline is down from prior periods, in part because we made a conscious effort to improve the quality of our deal funnel, and in part because market activity is down considerably, as previously discussed. Overall, the significant progress we've made in building broader and deeper relationships in the marketplace is noteworthy because it strengthens the dependability of our deal flow and reinforces our ability to remain highly selective as we rigorously screen opportunities to execute on the best investments. As you can see on slide 16, our overall portfolio quality remains solid. While we are presently facing challenges in a few credits, I thought I'd take a moment to highlight that our team remains focused on deploying capital in strong business models where we are confident that Under all reasonable scenarios, the enterprise value of the business will sustainably exceed the last dollar of our investment. We can't be perfect, but we strive to be as perfect as possible, and we have not veered from our thorough and cautious underwriting approach. Over the dozen plus years that we've been working together, we've invested $2.2 billion in 116 portfolio companies. We've had just two realized losses on investments. Over that same timeframe, we've successfully exited 69 of those investments, achieving gross unlevered realized returns of 15.4% on $978 million of realizations. Even taking into account the current write-downs of a few discrete credits, our combined realized and unrealized returns on all capital invested equals 13.5%. We think this performance profile is particularly attractive for a portfolio predominantly constructed with first lien senior debt. We continue to have three investments on non-accrual, with Pepper Palace and Zoll is classified as red and Nolan as yellow. Nolan has been on yellow for a while, and this quarter saw an improvement in the Q3 mark for the second quarter in a row, reflecting recent moderate improvement in the business and liquidity. Pepper Palace continued to suffer from poor performance and liquidity issues, reflecting the further $0.6 million markdown this quarter. The remaining fair value of this investment is $2.4 million. A transaction is imminent whereby we will restructure the balance sheet and take maturity control of the business. As part of this restructuring, the turnaround specialist we have been working with, who has substantial successful experience in similar situations, will invest significant equity in the business and become the CEO and a board member. And the solid restructuring on the balance sheet was completed during this first quarter, resulting in us taking over the company and actively managing this investment. We have in place a framework for an agreement that would have the previous owner invest meaningful dollars in the business and work in partnership with us with the immediate goal of returning the business to its former profitability levels and the ultimate objective of exceeding those levels. As part of the restructuring, we realized a $15.1 million realized loss for accounting, although we still have equity and a first lien term loan in the company with a current value of $2 million. As previously communicated, during the quarter, our net real investment was paid off, and we realized a $6.1 million loss on our equity. It is important to note, however, that this investment taken as a whole, including both our debt and equity, produced a positive IRR of approximately 5% without taking into account any potential yield enhancement that could be achieved through our residual escrow and earn out. In addition, the CLO and JV had $5 million of unrealized depreciation this quarter, reflecting primarily markdowns due to individual credits in our original CLO. Of note is the rest of the core BDC portfolio has continued to perform well, resulting in $1.2 million of net unrealized appreciation across our remaining 51 portfolio companies in Q1. Our overall investment approach has yielded exceptional realized returns and recovery of our invested capital, and our long-term performance remains strong, as seen by our track record on this slide. Now, moving on to slide 17, you can see our second SBIC license is fully funded and deployed, and we are currently ramping up our new SBIC III license with $136 million of lower-cost, undrawn debentures available, allowing us to continue to support U.S. small businesses both new and existing. This concludes my review of the market. I'd like to turn the call back over to our CEO, Chris.
spk04: Thank you, Mike.
spk05: As outlined on slide 18, our latest dividend of $0.74 per share for the quarter ended May 31, 2024, was paid on June 27, 2024. This is the largest quarterly dividend in our history and reflects a 6% and 40% increase over the past one and two years, respectively. The Board of Directors will continue to evaluate the dividend level on at least a quarterly basis, considering both company and general economic factors, including the current interest rate environment's impact on our earnings. Recognizing the divergence of opinions on when interest rate cuts will commence and at what pace, as well as expectations for the economy, Saratoga's Q1 over-earning of its dividend by 42%, $1.05 versus 74 cents per share this quarter, deleverages by building NAV It also provides substantial cushion should economic conditions deteriorate or base rates decline. Moving to slide 19, our total return for the last 12 months, which includes both capital appreciation and dividends, has generated total returns of negative 5%, uncharacteristically low and underperforming the BDC index of 27% for the same period. Our longer-term performance is outlined on our next slide, 20. Our five-year return places us almost in line with the BDC index, while our three-year performance is now slightly below the index, being impacted by the recent latest 12-month performance. Since Saratoga took over management of the BDC in 2010, our total return has been 655% versus the industry's 276%. On slide 21, you can further see our performance placed in the context of the broader industry and specific to certain key performance metrics. We continue to focus on our long-term metrics, such as return on equity, NAV per share, NI yield, and dividend growth and coverage, all of which reflects the growing value our shareholders are receiving. While return on equity and NAV per share are lagging the industry for this past year, that is primarily due to three discrete non-accruals we have previously discussed. Our dividend coverage and dividend growth has been one of the strongest in the industry, We also continue to be one of the few BDCs to have grown NAV over the long term, and we have done it accretively. And our long-term return on equity remains 1.6 times the long-term industry average. Moving on to slide 22, all of our initiatives discussed on this call are designed to make Saratoga Investment a leading BDC that is attractive to the capital markets community. We believe that our differentiated performance characteristics outlined in this slide will help drive the size and quality of our investor base including adding more institutions. These differentiating characteristics, many previously discussed, include maintaining one of the highest levels of management ownership in the industry at 12.5%, ensuring we are aligned with our shareholders. Looking ahead on slide 23, we remain confident that our reputation, experienced management team, historically strong underwriting standards, and time and market-tested investment strategy will serve us well in navigating through challenges and uncovering opportunities in the current and future environment, and that our balance sheet, capital structure, and liquidity will benefit Saratoga shareholders in the near and long term. In closing, I would again like to thank all of our shareholders for their ongoing support, and I would like to now open the call for questions.
spk03: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or a comment at this time, please press star 1 1 on your telephone. If your question has been answered, you wish to move yourself from the queue, please press star 1 1 again. We'll pause for a moment while we compile our Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Bryce Rowe. Your line is open.
spk16: Thanks. Good morning, all. Can you communicate with the operator? Wanted to maybe start on just the the environment for investing, you know, made some comments here around, you know, repayment activity possibly picking up.
spk25: And then, Chris, you made a comment about – Chris, can you pause for one moment?
spk02: Sure. Operator, can you hear us? Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me?
spk21: Operator, are you still there?
spk03: One moment, Bryce. It looks like they're having a little technical issues.
spk24: Can you guys hear me? Yeah, Kevin, we can hear you. You just disappeared there for a short while.
spk03: Okay. Yeah, Bryce, you can go ahead and ask your question. Okay.
spk16: Hopefully you guys can hear me. I wanted to talk here on... on the investing environment, you made some comments around kind of repayment activity, possibly picking up. And then Chris, you talked about, you know, cash having come in, I guess, subsequent to, to quarter end, if you could just provide a little bit more commentary around, around that. And then also wanted to kind of get a feel for the, the, the environment for, for new transactions. Obviously it's been pretty, um, pretty skinny over the last 12 months in terms of, um, new deals into the portfolio. What is it that, you know, that you'd like to see that maybe you're not seeing to get some of these newer opportunities across the finish line?
spk13: Let me try to tackle that, Bryce, and all good questions. First of all, let me give you a little bit of context for that. And I'm sure you're aware, you know, the deal volume overall for in the U.S., especially for private equity-backed deals, I think the corporate M&A environment is starting to pick up, but for PE-backed deals, overall M&A activity is down kind of record lows, even below any recent period in years, except for kind of the height of the COVID experience, that first half of 2020. As a result, we're not seeing as much activity and opportunities to invest in new portfolio companies. Now, we're still seeing plenty of opportunities to support our existing portfolio companies, and you've seen us do that quite actively in the last few quarters. We have also had the benefit of not experiencing as many payoffs as a result of lower M&A activity. What is new, and as we pointed out, is that I think the combination of all of the capital that's sitting on the sidelines and the low new deal activity is causing some competition on price. And so you're seeing in certain credits, you're seeing people start to get pretty aggressive to deploy capital. And so for some of our lower leverage kind of deals where they're kind of obvious targets, where we've seen kind of more senior lender types, et cetera, come in and offer more attractive financing, I think we may have some payoff experience there. But generally, you know, sort of stepping back, we feel very comfortable that where we sit in the market, at the lower end of the middle market, and with the breadth of our relationships as well as our portfolio, that we'll continue to have plenty of opportunities to deploy capital and that in the long run that'll outpace, you know, kind of repayment activity that we may experience. I would highlight, you know, just as we step back and think about it, we think being in the lower end of the middle market is a great place to be from a credit quality standpoint also in terms of just, you know, deal activity and our opportunity to generate new deals and We think that we've got really strong depth at that end of the middle market with really good relationships that will fuel more opportunities to deploy capital. We feel really good about the verticals that we're in, generally being non-cyclical and verticals that if you know them well, you can deploy capital very smartly. We feel terrific about the quality of our team. We think that our underwriting and our team is among the very best in the industry, and the risk-adjusted returns that you can get in senior debt complemented with equity co-investments, we think it's just a great, great strategy. And in the long run, you know, that'll continue to benefit our investors just as it has historically. In the present moment, though, and, you know, this will play out. We've been through a lot of different cycles. In the present moment, there's not as much deal activity and, you know, it's kind of
spk11: sort of what we're working through, if you will.
spk16: Got it. That's helpful, Mike. And then again, on maybe a couple follow-ups, the comment about cash coming in post-quarter end, can you just give us kind of maybe a pro forma cash balance since you did make that comment? And then also wanted to ask about the undistributed position and how you're kind of thinking about that, you know, as we think about, you know, maybe moving into the second half of 2024?
spk24: I might start with the cash position. You know, we don't generally disclose that price, but we did mention, as you said, you know, we had another deal repay and we have a couple of others that, you know, could potentially for the reasons that Mike described. And so, therefore, we felt it was worthwhile to, you know, just mention that, you know, obviously there's sort of net cash coming in thus far being only, you know, a month into the new quarter.
spk05: And with regards to the spillover question, the undistributed, you know, that is an equation we're still working on. There's a lot of technical aspects to it as to the timing of declared dividends, magnitude of dividends, and the like. And that's something that we will be focusing more closely on in our next quarter. Okay.
spk16: Appreciate you guys taking the questions. I'll jump back in queue.
spk03: Thanks, Bryce. Our next question comes from Casey Alexander with Compass Point. Your line is open.
spk15: Hi. Can you hear me? I know we had a little trouble there for a while. Good morning. Okay, great. Great. Good morning. A couple of questions. First one for Mike. The LSEG lender survey has suggested that some larger private credit platforms, because of the lack of deal flow in the upper middle and the traditional middle market, have been coming down market some. Have you seen that form of competition creeping into your market?
spk13: We haven't seen much of it. Casey, but a little bit. I think one of the deals that we reference where we might be facing a payoff is one where it's a really large senior lending institution that's pricing the deal at a level that candidly doesn't make any sense for us and will probably get paid off there. But outside of that, we haven't seen it much, but we are seeing a little bit of that, which suggests to me that There are players that are probably sitting on capital and are just looking for ways to deploy it, even if the pricing isn't really sensible.
spk15: Okay, that's great.
spk13: I will say this. I should say this, though, just before we depart that. From a day-to-day kind of where we play in the marketplace and who we compete against, it's not those groups. Are we subject to somebody, an institution like that, looking at a portfolio company that's been in portfolio for a while doing really well and they can come in and try to knock that off? Yeah, we're always subject to that a little bit. And this environment probably is ripe for that type of activity. But in terms of what we do and where we play in the market, we don't see those folks. They're not really set up to be underwriting the types of credits with the rigor that we do in the process that we do and most of the deals that we do aren't really in their size range out of the box so most of what we're doing tends to be smaller and you'll note that with with just about all of our top ten investments all started off quite small and then they grow over time as we support their growth so you know in terms of what we're doing on a new portfolio activity standpoint and kind of building our portfolio over time in the marketplace that we reside in, we don't really see those large institutions very much companies grow up to the point where that whether you're to that, right, that makes some sense that they might be a taker of your your late cycle investments that you've bolted on to over time.
spk15: So that makes some sense. Thank you. Henry, for you. And we have the Live Oak facility and it looks like you're adding backs to the live live up facility. How would you characterize the cost in the terms of Live Oak compared to Encino? And is it your plan to continue to add banks to that Live Oak facility and ultimately just have it replace the Encino facility?
spk24: Yeah, I mean, it's a great question, Casey. I think firstly, what we loved about having the second facility is it allows us to broaden our relationships with new banks in a way that still achieves our goals of having a credit facility with a really strong structure. So when that opportunity came along with a firm we know, Live Oak, it was a great opportunity. And then the upsize, as important as the extra 25 was, just because it creates more availability, we added two new banks to that in addition to Live Oak. And as you probably know, in the Antenna facility, there's also another bank as well. you know, we effectively now have five, you know, new relationships in the last two years in these two facilities. Encina still has, I think, almost two years left on it. So, you know, we don't need to make any decisions now around, you know, do we at some point go back to one facility that's just much larger. But they operate in a way that it really doesn't create much more cost or work for us in having the two facilities versus the one, you know, it's just two different SPVs. But We're set up process-wise to deal with two versus one. It's not a problem. From a cost perspective, it's very similar. The Live Oak facility just has a tiering, and so from how much we actually draw, the rate comes down. So it starts off at the same rate, but as we draw more, every 25% more that we draw, we save 25 basis points.
spk15: Yeah. Well, I mean, the reason that I bring up the question is because the Encino is not the cheapest facility in the world, and it has a pretty meaningful minimum draw. And so here we are sitting on $93 million of cash, and yet we have a minimum. It feels like an inefficient use of capital to a certain extent.
spk24: Yeah. I think it's a balancing act for us around capital. having available liquidity for those moments when you not only just need to fund a deal, but you need it for, you know, much more important market activities or functions, et cetera. And so, you know, we sort of accept that as a cost of doing business to have a very well-structured facility. But I hear you. Obviously, every single day, you know, I wake up and we try to make sure we optimize our capital and our cash in the most efficient way.
spk15: Understood. Last question is, And I think you've done a much better job on the income statement of detailing where some of the other sources of income are coming from, such as the dividend income and the structuring and advisory fee income. It's still in this quarter, you had about $0.09 a share or let's call it $0.07 a share after accounting for incentive fee of other income. What's the texture of that other income? How much of that should we think of as one time this quarter? you know, it's a pretty meaningful amount to be just dropped down into other.
spk24: Yeah. No, I totally agree with you. We have split out the income statement in more detail as sort of the sources of that other income has expanded. You know, dividends become a bigger part of it. There's really, in other income now, it's primarily either amendment fees or prepayment fees that fall in there. And then I guess a little bit of monitoring fees as well. But But probably two-thirds of that, I would say, is transactional in nature, Casey. So, you know, it's one-off in that quarter related to a specific deal, but you tend to have those types of events occur more recurring. So it's a little bit of a – it's one-off items that sort of are recurring in nature because you obviously have, you know, prepayments that occur almost every single quarter, and you also have amendments that occur almost every single quarter. But It can be a little lumpy at some point, but I wouldn't view all of it as one time.
spk15: Yeah, okay. Well, given your comments about, you know, at least having one payoff that you know of coming up in this quarter and your sense that some more are coming, it would thus be reasonable to expect some meaningful other income in the coming quarter? Yeah, I mean, that could be the case.
spk24: It's obviously specific to every deal, but, you know, that's not an unreasonable assumption. Yep.
spk14: Okay, great. Thank you. That's all of my questions. Thank you.
spk03: Our next question comes from Robert Dodd with Raymond James. Your line is open.
spk08: Hi, guys. A couple of questions on focus service. First, on the non-recalls, I mean, last quarter, for example, on knowledge, you gave us a lot of detail about what was going on and all the drivers involved. of the issues of that business. I'm not looking to retread all of that, but with the restructuring and the partial realization right down, for example, there, I mean, was there anything that kind of trended differently that drove that, or was that all kind of part of the plan when you gave us the detail last quarter in terms of the restructuring? Has anything changed, or was that just a continuation of of what you already saw going on?
spk13: It was a continuation of what we already saw going on. We felt like those discrete credits are meaningful enough that we wanted to discuss it again and keep people informed of events there. But these are both credits that we are actively working and I think there are a lot of elements of certainly those credits that we liked from the beginning that we still feel fundamentally are there in those credits, and we're going to work hard to try to recover as much capital as we can in each of those situations. But both of them, we've got a lot of wood to chop.
spk24: And, Robert, I would also just add that, you know, although we've restructured them now and there's a PIC component to some of the securities, we continue to keep them on non-accrual, as you probably noted, that we continue to say we have three investments on non-accrual going forward.
spk08: Got it. I appreciate that, Paula. Thank you. On the second one, I mean, the market color point that you always, you're very helpful on giving us all that. I mean, Mike, on, you know, what was it, a significant number, 16 follow-ons. Can you give us any color on what the nature of that, I mean, is this follow-on acquisitions that these portfolio companies are making? Is it incremental working capital that you're funding? Or can you give us any color on on the nature of when you make a follow on what's the kind of thing that that's being used for today? Because obviously not no new platforms, but a lot of follow on activity. So any color on what that is?
spk13: Sure, most of the businesses that we invest in, not all of them, but most of them are pretty, have a pretty healthy appetite for additional capital. And most of that is to drive growth through M&A activity, through add-on activity. And so the majority of those follow-ons were really to do tuck-in acquisitions in existing platforms. And that's something that's worked out really well for us over the years, where we've come in and in some cases lent, I think our biggest portfolio company right now was one that started off as a $6 million debt, piece with a $2 million equity co investment. And that that company kept coming back to market to to, you know, execute on acquisitions that have worked out really well. So that strategy is kind of fundamental to what we do. And that's what the majority of those follow ons were for. Got it. I appreciate it.
spk08: That's what I expected you to say. So can you reconcile for me because I'm just not getting something about the market, not about what you're saying. Um, I mean, as you said, I mean, the PE activity is low for new platforms. Most of the businesses you're involved with have a PE sponsor, but they're very active on the add-on front. They're not active on the new platform front, even though, you know, the cost of financing for both is relatively elevated. So can you walk me through, yeah, what is the differential driver? I mean, obviously multiples are lower for sponsors, for add-ons maybe. But what's the drive of why people, the PE sponsors are perfectly willing to pay the incremental financing costs on an add-on, but not willing to make a new platform acquisition? What's the disconnect there? Is it the bid on the pricing or what?
spk13: It's a really good question. And now this is a generalization, but it's, I think, the right perspective. A new platform opportunity typically yields a pretty healthy multiple. And so when a sponsor is looking at a new platform, they usually pay up for that new platform. It's gotten to a certain scale. It's something that gets marketed through a really competitive process, et cetera. And in a lot of these businesses, private equity firms have been very successful doing bolt-on acquisitions that are a bit smaller, that are very competitive, complementary to their core platform business and very accretive to execute with an add-on. But often those add-on acquisitions don't command platform multiples. They're typically a bit smaller businesses that may not have the value that you get for a platform. So you can execute on an add-on at a lower multiple and make it very accretive to shareholders, or to the owners. And we've seen that play out very effectively in other markets. But certainly in this market, I think a lot of the private equity firms are saying, geez, I think there's a marketplace where I can command a better exit on my business. It's performing really well. So now's not the time to sell. Let's kind of hold and figure out the best time to exit. But in the meantime, let's continue to do what we've done, which is go out and continue to build the business. And some of that includes add-on activity at multiples that are lower than where they execute on the original acquisition. Got it.
spk08: Thank you for that. Last one, if I can. How would you translate this spread to your point, the spread between what add-on acquisitions are going for right now or can be found for? versus platform acquisitions. Obviously, from your color, there's a big gap. Is that, I mean, is that historically large? Presumably, or there'd be some different behavior in there. But I mean, how wide is that today versus other periods that you've seen in the market?
spk13: I don't know that it's much wider. When private equity firms are executing on a new platform, it's very commonplace for them to be thinking, what acquisitions can we do? There's an organic growth component. There's certainly somewhere the primary goal is to go and do acquisitions. And much of that's driven by the delta between what they think they can sell the company at larger scale versus what they can do when they execute on smaller add-ons. And so that delta, I'm not sure it's much different. Certainly, there's variability depending on where you're in the market and what end market they're operating in, but I wouldn't say that they're much, much different in this environment than they are in others.
spk05: Yeah, and one further comment I'd make on that is, again, it's all specific to the given investment, but some of these platforms, while they're acquiring a business at an X multiple, pro forma for the synergies and the cost savings and things like that, it can be a significant discount. And so you get a multiple arbitrage on what you go in at, but then your pro forma arbitrage is even greater. And so that's really the economics of these buildups, and people have done very well on them.
spk13: Got it. Thank you. That's a very good point. So very often the seller in an add-on views the sale as though they're getting X dollars for it, right, X multiple for it. But the buyer can look at the cost structure and say, I don't really need a lot of that redundant cost. So I'm actually buying it for something less than that. So there's a, it's kind of a win-win.
spk08: Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate that call. It all makes a lot of sense. But it seems like, you know, a lot of those dynamics, like the bid-ask, et cetera, that's true at any point in the market cycle. And it just seems that it's unusually skewed, not just for you, for everybody, unusually skewed bonds right now. And something's got to give at some point, but thank you for your, your, your, your, your color.
spk06: Actually, I think, you know, it's a very good question.
spk05: Um, and, and I think maybe one other. You know, perspective on it, which again is gross generalization, but, um, I think it's also different markets. You know, some of these smaller deals are, are, you know, kind of, they're, they're owned by individuals owned by families, uh, owned by management teams, and they're selling into a private equity institutional environment. And so, you know, they're, they're, they're selling for different reasons. You know, they might be selling because of life cycle, maybe they're, you know, they want to retire, you know, estate planning, you know, you'd have taken this long. So, you know, they, they sort of like individually driven decisions where I think in the private equity market, uh, it's much more of a market decisions going on here. People may have paid certain multiples and they're not going to sell until they get a certain rate of return. And there's going to hold until they get that or, you know, can't hold any longer. So I think that the private equity platform marketplace is a different marketplace than this other one because different drivers, different factors. It's not pure rate of return timing. Like a private equity firm could say, well, I'm going to hold this for another two years. But the 65-year-old manager is like, this is the time to sell my company. I want to move to Florida or do whatever I want to do.
spk17: and so he's not going to say i want to wait on 67 because i don't like the market he's kind of ready ready to move on yeah yeah understood thank you our next question comes from eric zwick with lucid capital markets your line is open thank you good morning everyone um maybe first a follow-up on the um the fact that there were no new investment commitments the quarter and you mentioned that they didn't meet your uh standards curious if you could provide a little coverage uh you know a little color to that in terms of the leverage spread covenants and i'm curious at all it's all reflective of it all reflective of you know some weakening in the economy or you're seeing some you know potentially sectors that you're just wanting to avoid more so wondering if you could provide some awesome thoughts there uh good question i i think it's not
spk13: I can't tell you that it's spread or leveraged per se. I think the deal volume is down quite considerably, and we're already highly selective when we decide to support a portfolio company. And so when you take the combination of much lower deal volume and then just our rigor that we apply to any of our new investment opportunities, it just hasn't yielded results. I think I think one of the things that we're getting attuned to, I would say, is that pricing's come down pretty considerably. And so if you look at where pricing is on deals now, let's say, versus even a year ago, we've seen in some cases that pricing is 100 plus basis points lower than where it was. And so you kind of have to react to that in competitive processes as time goes on. So that probably... you know, in a couple of cases probably came into play as well.
spk17: Got it. Thank you. And other one for me, just with respect to restructurings of knowledge and pepper palace, you know, you mentioned there's potential to create some, some future increases in recovery value. And I know it's early days for both of those just kind of completing the restructurings, but, but how do you think about that from a, you know, time standpoint, have you set, or will you set say like, you know, six months, one year, two year, targets for improvement in the KPIs at those companies, or how do you think about it from a timing perspective?
spk13: We don't set targets in terms of, you know, we're going to give a sort of date certain and evaluate and otherwise make a, you know, kind of fundamental decision. I think like anything, we are constantly evaluating what the opportunities are, where we're positioned, where the company is positioned, and, you know, the best way to try to David Wiltshire- maximize value and that's something that you're constantly assessing and then you, you make a decision based on those facts. David Wiltshire- I think in both these deals, as I mentioned, there's some elements of the businesses that we think are attractive, but certainly have a lot of wood to chop, as I mentioned, we've got work to do to to you know get them to a better place so time will time will tell.
spk17: And maybe one last follow up on that one, just in terms of the new management teams that are putting in place, how or where have you sourced those? And I guess kind of that's the crux of the question there.
spk13: Well, I think in zoologist case, we actually went to the original founder of the business, who was still who had sold the business to the private equity sponsor and was still involved at a much lesser level. And we approached him to get involved in the business. And he's essentially kind of helping us operate it today. And he's the one that we referenced that we've got a framework for a deal going forward where he'll invest capital. Um, so he was a natural person who had started that business from scratch and had made it quite successful. Um, so we've got, you know, measured optimism that with kind of a renewed approach to thinking about the business and taking advantage of the market opportunities and some of the elements of the business model that we think are very sound, um, that there's a runway for us to improve its performance. And he feels that way, obviously, because he's investing capital, uh, new capital into the business. In the Pepper Palace case, we came upon somebody who had in a number of situations gotten involved in distressed credits and had made capital investments in those credits and turned around the businesses very successfully. So the person that we're working with there also has a track record of turnarounds just like this in similar type businesses. And that person will also be investing meaningful dollars in Pepper Palace.
spk17: Very helpful. Thanks for taking my questions today. Thank you.
spk03: And I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Christian Overbeck for any closing remarks.
spk05: Again, we thank you for your support and we look forward to speaking to you next quarter.
spk03: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. So that concludes today's presentation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.
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