Earnings Call Transcript - LIEN Q1 FY2026

Operator

Good day and welcome to Chicago Atlantic BDC Inc. First quarter 2026 on a conference call. All participants will be in the listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask a question. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. Please note this event is being recorded. I would like to turn the conference over to Lisa Kempz. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Lisa Kempz, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to the Chicago Atlantic BBC conference call to review the company's results. On the call today will be Peter Sack, Chief Executive Officer, Tom Jeffrey, Interim Chief Financial Officer, and Dino Colonna, President. Our results are released this morning in our earnings press release, which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website and in our supplemental earnings presentation filed at the SEC. A live audio webcast of this call is being made available today. For those who listened to the replay of this webcast, we remind you the remarks made herein are as of today and will not be updated subsequent to this call. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements that are not based on historical facts made during this call, including any statements related to financial guidance, may be deemed forward-looking statements under federal security laws. Such statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by those forward-looking statements. We encourage you to refer to our most recent SEC filings for information on some of these risk factors. Chicago Atlantic BDC assumes no obligation or responsibility to update any forward-looking statements. Please note that the information reported on this call speaks only as of today, May 14, 2026. Therefore, you are advised that time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate at the time of any replay or transcript reading. I will now turn the call over to Peter Sack. Please go ahead.

Peter Sack, CEO

Thank you, Lisa. Good morning, everyone. Chicago Atlantic BDC's record results this quarter demonstrate the benefits of our differentiated strategy. As the first publicly listed BDC focused primarily on lending to the cannabis industry, we remain uniquely positioned to participate in a market with limited competition. In an environment where other BDCs are struggling against credit performance, dividend coverage concerns, and interest rate uncertainty, Chicago Atlantic BDC has continued to strengthen its position. Net investment income for the first quarter of 2026 reached a record $10 million, or $0.44 per share. During the quarter, we executed on our pipeline, funding a record $93.9 million across seven portfolio companies, including three new borrowers. We efficiently utilized additional capacity on our credit facility, growing the portfolio to its largest level in company history. Today, we announced a $0.34 dividend, marking the seventh consecutive quarter at that rate. We continue to benchmark the company's performance against the broader public BDC industry, as documented in the Raymond James BDC Weekly Insights as of May 1, 2026, and Oppenheimer's BDC quarterly report as of March 27, 2026. Our weighted average yield on debt investments as of March 31, 2026, was 15.8% compared to 10.8% for the average public BDC. 100% of our debt portfolio is senior secured. 1.3% of our total investment portfolio has exposure to sub-debt, equity, or JV investments compared to other BDCs who have an average exposure of 25.5%. 94% of the portfolio at par is either fixed rate or floating rate at their respective floor, insulating the company against a drop in interest rates. A hundred basis point drop in benchmark rates would have an estimated annualized impact of less than 15 basis points on interest income. Importantly, our floating rate loans, combined with our rate floor protections, provides a structural advantage in portfolio construction. Only 2.6% of the portfolio at fair value has exposure to the software industry. We believe that our investments have very little overlap with the investments made by other public BDCs due to our unique investment strategy focused on underserved markets. The portfolio is under levered with only $54.5 million of debt as of quarter end with 0.18 times debt-to-equity ratio. This compares with the BDC average of 1.3 times debt-to-equity ratio, providing us with ample room to expand our liquidity and still below industry average for leverage. Lastly, we have no non-accruals compared with an industry average of 3.4% of costs. In addition to our record quarter in April, federal cannabis policy momentum accelerated meaningfully. The Department of Justice took a significant step announcing that state-licensed medical cannabis products will be removed from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3. This represents the most significant federal policy shift in decades. The rescheduling will eliminate the onerous 280E tax code, meaning that medical cannabis will be taxed like a normal business on pre-tax income and no longer taxed on gross profit. Operators with medical cannabis market exposure will benefit with increased cash flow and strengthened balance sheets over time. We foresee this as favorably impacting the credit quality of our borrowers, although each business will be impacted differently based on their medical market exposure. We await the administrative hearing scheduled for June 29th when the rescheduling of recreational cannabis will be considered. The outcome of this hearing, expected to conclude by July 15th, could have tremendous impact on the economics of the broader cannabis industry in the U.S., including increasing capital markets and M&A activity, which Chicago Atlantic is well-positioned to benefit from. While the current regulatory trajectory supports improved industry economics, we believe ongoing federal constraints and industry complexity will limit new large-scale lending competition in the near term. Consistent with our historical approach, we will maintain our rigorous underwriting standards based on today's regulatory framework, not potential future regulatory reform. In conclusion, relying on our niche strategy enables us to operate in markets with limited competition and generate yields above our BDC peers. By focusing on underserved segments of the debt market, we benefit from strong pricing power with meaningful downside protection. We believe cannabis and the lower middle market remain structurally attractive relative to larger markets, with less competition, stronger lender controls, and stable underlying credit fundamentals. The company's performance through volatile markets underscores the resilience of our business model and its ability to support a consistent dividend. Now we'll turn it over to Tom to discuss the numbers in greater detail.

Tom Jeffrey, CFO

Good morning. Thanks, Peter. I want to highlight the investor presentation that was filed with the SEC this morning that serves as our earnings supplemental. I'll start with the investment portfolio. We have 40 portfolio company investments. 24% of the portfolio is invested in non-cannabis companies across multiple sectors. The average credit investment size is approximately 2.3% of our debt portfolio at fair value. While approximately 94% of the debt portfolio is insulated from interest rate declines through fixed rate structures or interest rate floors, the portfolio retains meaningful upside through favorable convexity in a rising rate environment. The gross weighted average yield of the company's debt investment portfolio is approximately 15.8%, which is in line with last quarter's yield, and none of our loans are on non-accrual status. As of March 31, 2026, the company had $54.5 million of debt outstanding, all of which was drawn from the revolving line of credit. As of May 13, 2026, the company had approximately $51.5 million of liquidity, comprised of $50 million of borrowing capacity under its $100 million credit facility, subject to a borrowing base and other restrictions, and approximately $1.5 million of cash on the balance sheet. Subsequent to quarter end, the company filed a shelf registration statement with the SEC to allow the company to issue up to $500 million in securities, including debt securities, to increase our available liquidity beyond the credit facility and create additional financial flexibility. We believe the opportunistic use of additional leverage deployed into high-quality, high-yielding assets and be accretive to earnings and supportive towards shareholder returns. Turning now to the financial highlights for the first quarter. Gross investment income increased to $16.7 million from $14.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2025, primarily due to higher interest income. Net expenses for the quarter were $6.7 million compared to $5.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, this increase was driven by an increase in interest expense from the utilization of the credit facility to fund new originations. Net investment income for the quarter was a record $10 million, or $0.44 per share, up from $8.3 million, or $0.36 per share, in the fourth quarter of 2025. The increase was driven by increases in both interest income and fee income on strong deployments and partially offset by changes in expenses. In our investment portfolio, we recognized a net unrealized loss this quarter of $1.4 million, which was due to the impact of widening spreads, not underlying credit performance. net assets reached a new high of 304.2 million at quarter end. Net asset value per share was $13.33 compared to $13.30 in the fourth quarter of 2025. At quarter end, there were 22.8 million common shares issued and outstanding on a basic and fully diluted basis. I will now turn it over to Dino to talk about our origination efforts.

Dino Colonna, Other

Thanks, Tom. The first quarter of 2026 was our most active origination period to date from both a gross and net deployment perspective. We funded $93.9 million in new debt investments, including a $38.3 million refinancing to our largest borrower, which we believe remains an attractive investment for the portfolio, now with an extended duration. Three of the seven portfolio companies we transacted with were new borrowers to the BDC. Of these new debt investments, 100% of them were senior secured, and 83% are fixed rate or floating rate loans at their respective floor at quarter end. Net investment activity for the quarter stood at $32 million. During the first quarter, we had loan repayments and amortization totaling approximately $63.4 million, which included refinancings of $42.1 million and $21.3 million in paydowns and amortization. As of the end of the first quarter, there were approximately $13.7 million in total unfunded commitments for the portfolio. Since quarter end, one borrower fully repaid a $7 million loan. The pipeline across the Chicago Atlantic platform as of quarter end, which includes cannabis and non-cannabis opportunities, totaled approximately $810 million in potential debt transactions. The breakdown of the opportunity set includes approximately 482 million in cannabis opportunities and approximately 328 million in non-cannabis opportunities. Our non-cannabis origination pipeline expanded meaningfully throughout the quarter as companies increasingly looked past broader macro uncertainty and reengaged in strategic activity. While larger lenders seemed to take a more cautious posture at the start of the first quarter, we saw a clear inflection point mid-quarter with a notable pickup in deal flow and financing demand. We also expect activity in cannabis to pick up throughout the remainder of the year as regulatory tailwinds start to filter through to industry fundamentals and M&A appetite. Regardless of which way activity or competition for financing shifts or regulatory reform plays out, we will remain disciplined in our approach to underwriting. As the BDC sector continues to navigate macro uncertainty, we believe performance dispersion across BDCs will continue to widen. While peers face pressure from mark-to-market volatility, yield compression, and evolving dividend dynamics, we see these as largely market-driven repricing events rather than broad-based BDC industry deterioration. In this context, differentiation matters. Our focus on cannabis and the underserved lower-middle market positions us in a less competitive segment with savable pricing dynamics and strong lender protection. Combined with our disciplined, underwriting, and senior-secured portfolio, we believe we are well-positioned to capture attractive risk-adjusted returns while managing downside risk and delivering sustainable returns for our shareholders. Operator, we're now ready for questions.

Operator

Thank you, Sue. we will now begin the question and answer session to ask a question you may press star and one on your telephone keypad if you're using a speaker phone please pick up your handset before pressing the keys if at any times your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question please press star then 2 at this time we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster first question come from Pablo Zuenic with Zuenic Associates please