Operator
Hi, and thank you for standing by. This is Roy, and I will be your conference operator today. And at this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the offered link of the source announced net asset value and selected financial results for the fourth fiscal quarter, 2020. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any bad part noise. After the speech-referred remarks, there will be a question and answer question. If you would like to ask questions during this time, please press star, follow beta number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw a question, please press star 1 again. I would now like to turn the call over back to Jonathan, and you may now begin.
Good morning, and welcome to the Oxford Lane Capital Corp. 4th Fiscal Quarter 2026 earnings conference call. I'm joined today by Saul Rosenthal, our President, Bruce Rubin, our Chief Financial Officer, and Joe Kapka, Managing Director. Bruce, could you open the call with a disclosure regarding forward-looking statements?
Sure, Jonathan. Today's conference call is being recorded. An audio replay of the call will be available for 30 days. Replay information is included in our press release as issued earlier this morning. Please note that this call is the property of Oxford Lane Capital Corp. Any unauthorized rebroadcast of this call in any form is strictly prohibited. At this point, please direct your attention to the customary disclosure in this morning's press release regarding forward-looking information. Today's conference call includes forward-looking statements and projections that reflect the company's current views with respect to, among other things, future events and financial performance. We actually refer to our most recent filings with the SEC for important factors that can cause actual results to differ materially from the bills indicated in these projections. We do not undertake to update our photo-looking statements unless required to do so by law. During this call, we will use terms defined in the earnings release and also refer to non-GAAP measures. For definitions and reconciliations to GAAP, please refer to our earnings release posted on our website at www.oxfordlanecapital.com. With that, I'll turn the presentation back to Jonathan.
Thanks, Bruce. On March 31, 2026, our net asset value per share is $10.56, compared to a net asset value per share of $15.51 as of the prior quarter. As of April 30, 2026, the midpoint of the range of our estimated net asset values per share was $11.27. For the quarter ended March, we recorded GAAP total investment income of approximately $94 million, representing a decrease of approximately $23.8 million from the prior quarter. The quarter's GAAP total investment income consisted of approximately $90.8 million from our CLO equity and CLO warehouse investments and approximately $3.1 million from our CLO debt investments and from other income. Oxford Lane recorded GAAP net investment income of approximately $54.5 million, or 56 cents per share for the quarter ended March, compared to approximately $71.8 million, or 74 cents per share, for the quarter ended December 31st. Our core net investment income was approximately $100.7 million, or $1.03 per share for the quarter ended March 31st, compared with approximately $108.9 million or $1.12 per share for the quarter ended December 31st. As of the end of March, we held approximately $64 million in newly issued or newly acquired CLO equity investments that had not yet made initial distributions to Oxford Lane. For the quarter ended March, we recorded net unrealized depreciation on investments of approximately $381.4 million and net realized losses of approximately $38.4 million. We had a net decrease in net assets resulting from operations of approximately $365.3 million, or $3.74 per share, for the fourth fiscal quarter. As of March 31st, the following metrics applied. We note that none of these metrics necessarily represented a total return to shareholders. The weighted average effective yield of our CLO equity investments at current cost was 11.7 percent, down from 13.8 percent as of December. The weighted average cash distribution yield of our CLO equity investments at current cost was 16.7 percent, down from 19 percent as of December 31st. We note that the cash distribution yields calculated on our CLO equity investments are based on the cash distributions which we received or which we were entitled to receive at each respective period end. During the quarter ended March, we made additional CLO investments of approximately $500,000, and we received approximately $82.9 million from sales and from repayments. On May 14th, our Board of Directors declared monthly common stock distributions of 20 cents per share for each of the months ending July, August, and September of 2026. With that, I will now turn the call over to Joe Kupka.
Thanks, Jonathan. During the quarter ended March 31st, 2026, U.S. loan market performance declined versus the prior quarter. The U.S. loan price index decreased from 96.64% as of December 31st, 2025 to 94.63% as of March 31st. The decrease in U.S. loan prices led to an approximate 17-point decrease in median U.S. CLO equity net asset values. Additionally, we observed median weighted average spreads across loan pools within CLO portfolios decreased to 304 basis points compared to 311 basis points last quarter. The 12-month trial and default rate for the loan index increased to 1.4% by principal amount at the end of the quarter from 1.2% at the end of December. We note that out-of-court restructurings, exchanges, and subpar buybacks, which are not captured in the cited default rate, remain elevated. CLO new issuance for the quarter totaled approximately $47 billion, reflecting an approximate $8 billion decrease from the previous quarter. Additionally, the U.S. CLO market saw approximately $56 billion in reset and refinancing activity in Q1-2026, compared to approximately $74 billion in the previous quarter. Oxford Lane remained active this quarter, trading over $75 million in CLO equity and CLO warehouses. During the quarter, we also led or participated in numerous recessory refinancings, taking advantage of tightening liability spreads to lower the cost of funding and lengthen the weighted average reinvestment period of Oxford Lane's CLO equity portfolio from August 2029 to October 2029. We continue to evaluate existing investments for opportunities to improve the economics of our CLO equity positions. In the current market environment, we intend to continue to utilize our opportunistic and unconstrained CLO investment strategy across U.S. CLO equity debt and warehouses as we look to maximize our long-term total return. And as a permanent capital vehicle, we've historically been able to take a longer-term view towards our investment strategy. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Jonathan. Thanks, Joe.
Additional information about Oxford Lane's fourth fiscal quarter financial performance has been uploaded to our website at OxfordLaneCapital.com. With that, operator, we're happy to poll for any questions.
Operator
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask questions, press star 1 on your cell phone keypad. To withdraw your questions, please press star 1 again. And we'll be standing by briefly for the questions to come in. Thank you. Your first question comes from Eric Zwick with Luz J's capital market. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Good morning, all.
Hoping Jonathan to start just on a question in terms of, you know, kind of understanding the primary drivers of the unrealized depreciation in one Q. I mean, it seemed like for most of, you know, 25, it was, you know, the tightening spread, but it seems like it may have been a little bit different just more due to kind of reduced activity in the secondary market in 1Q. It's a perception right there, and we've been kind of curious if that's persisting here into 2Q at this point.
Eric, yeah, so I think there were a few different factors. As you said, the loan compression on the assets continued, so not quite to the extent we saw in 2025, but we did see that continuing, and CLOs did lose additional spread in Q1. Additionally, we saw, you know, the loan market sell-off driven by the decrease in tech and software names, and finally we did see a pullback in buyers for CLO equity. So bid-ask spreads really blew out, and there were just a lack of buyers, so that hurt the mark-to-market on our positions as well.
Joe, would you say, and this is a follow-up to Eric's question, would you say that for this most recent quarter, technical factors, bid-ask spreads and flows of funds, or more fundamental factors such as continued U.S. Indicated Corporate Loan spread compression, which of those two were, in your estimation, the more relevant?
I would say it was a combination of those. Definitely the national off hurt substantially, but especially towards the end of the quarter when there was just a definite lack of buyers, that hurt as well. Since quarter end, we've definitely seen a pause for the time being on continued loan compression, but we are now seeing loans above par approach 40% to 50%, so there could be additional loan repricings, but we've definitely seen a healthier market. April was a very strong month for CLO equity. We've seen a lot of buyers step back in, so things at least quarter to date have stabilized for sure.
That's definitely helpful, and the estimated April NAV that you provided this morning would suggest just that, and it sounds like it's continued through May, so that's good to hear. In terms of the deployment into new investments in the quarter, You know, $500,000 is relatively light compared to historicals. And I guess some of that reflects, one, just kind of the market dynamics that you talked about. There just wasn't a whole lot out there, potentially for sale. But I guess as, you know, things have potentially improved here in the second calendar quarter, are you seeing more opportunities to put capital to work at this point?
We are, Eric. Certainly in the secondary market, liquidity has improved. The spread seemed to have tightened fairly meaningfully, and trading activity just overall has stepped up pretty dramatically compared to a month or two ago. So the answer from our perspective is certainly yes.
Good to hear it. And then just in terms of, you know, kind of given the unrealized appreciation, hopefully that continues to unwind and you see some recovery there. But just given that we don't know exactly how, you know, sustained this improvement could be, how are you thinking about leverage in the portfolio today?
I'm thinking from a – I think we're all thinking, Eric, from a fairly conservative perspective. We went into this most recent downturn at a level of overall leverage that I think has proven to be reasonably manageable. And in terms of a percentage of leverage, a percentage of debt to equity on our balance sheet, we certainly would be not looking to increase that through the issuance of any additional debt that wasn't used to repay existing debt.
That's helpful. And last one for me, Jonathan, I couldn't type fast enough. You mentioned the dollar amount of CLO investments that have yet to make their initial distributions. Could you just provide that for me once again?
Sure. It was $64 million as of March 31st. Excellent.
Well, Jonathan and Joe, thank you for taking my questions this morning.
Operator
Thank you, Uno, for the questions. And with that, I will turn the call back over to Jonathan Sohan, CEO.
We would like to thank very much everybody who participated in this call and everyone who's listening on the replay.
Operator
We look forward to speaking to you again soon. thanks very much ladies and gentlemen let's conclude today's call thank you all for joining you may now disconnect
