PennantPark Floating Rate Capital Ltd. Q3 FY2022 Earnings Call

Good morning. And welcome to the PennantPark Floating Rate Capital's Third Fiscal Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Art Penn, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of PennantPark Floating Rate Capital. Mr. Penn, you may begin your conference.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to PennantPark Floating Rate Capital's third fiscal quarter 2022 earnings conference call. I'm joined today by Rick Allorto, our Chief Financial Officer. Rick, please start off by disclosing some general conference call information and include a discussion about forward-looking statements.

Thank you, Art. I'd like to remind everyone that today's call is being recorded. Please note that this call is a property of PennantPark Floating Rate Capital and that any unauthorized broadcast of this call in any form is strictly prohibited. Audio replay of the call will be available by using telephone numbers and pin provided in our earnings press release, as well as on our website. I'd also like to call your attention to the customary Safe Harbor disclosure in our press release regarding forward-looking information. Today's conference call may also include forward-looking statements and projections, and we ask that you refer to our most recent filings with the SEC for important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these projections. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements unless required by law. To obtain copies of our latest SEC filings, please visit our website at www.pennantpark.com or call us at 212-905-1000. At this time, I'd like to turn the call back to our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Art Penn.

Thanks, Rick. First, I'd like to welcome you as the new CFO of our BDCs. We're going to spend a few minutes discussing how we fared in the quarter ended June 30, how the portfolio is positioned for the upcoming quarters, our capital structure and liquidity, a detailed review of the financials, then open it up for Q&A. For the quarter ended June 30th, our net investment income was $0.29 per share, which includes $0.01 of other non-recurring income. The credit quality of the portfolio remained solid and the largest non-accrual investment, Marketplace Events, has returned to full accrual status. Our GAAP NAV decreased by 3.2%, driven primarily by a decrease in investment valuations. The decrease was largely attributed to mark-to-market adjustments resulting from the overall choppy market as opposed to specific credit-driven items within the portfolio. During the quarter, we continued to originate attractive investment opportunities and grow both the PFLT portfolio as well as the JV portfolio. At quarter end, the JV portfolio was $747 million, and we remain confident that we will execute on our plan to grow the JV portfolio to $1 billion of assets over time. We believe that the increase in scale and the JV's ROE will enhance PFLT's earnings momentum. From our overall perspective, in this era of inflation, rising interest rates and geopolitical risk, we believe we are well positioned as a senior secured first lien lender focused on the United States where the floating rates on our loans can protect against rising inflation. The portfolio of assets that is 100% floating rate, we're well positioned to substantially grow our net investment income as base rates rise, holding everything else constant in the portfolio, every 100 basis point increase in base rates translates into about $0.04 per quarter of net interest income. We have a long-term track record of generating value by successfully financing high growth middle market companies in five key sectors: business services, consumer, government services and defense, healthcare, and software and technology. These sectors have also been resilient and tend to generate strong free cash flow. As an aside, government services and defense is approximately 15% of the portfolio, inclusive of the JV and should be a beneficiary of the geopolitical environment. In many cases, we are typically part of the first institutional capital into a company where a founder, entrepreneur or family is selling their company to a middle market private equity firm. In these situations, there's typically a defined game plan in place with substantial equity support from the private equity firm to significantly grow the company through add-on acquisitions or organic growth. The loans that we provide are important strategic capital that fuel that growth and help that $10 million to $20 million EBITDA company grow to $30 million, $40 million, $50 million of EBITDA or more. We typically participate in the upside by making an equity co-investment, and returns on these equity co-investments have been excellent over time. Overall, for our platform from inception through June 30th, our $335 million of equity co-investments have generated an IRR of 28% and a multiple on invested capital of 2.5x. Because we are an important strategic lending partner, the process and package of terms we receive is attractive. We have many weeks to do our due diligence with care. We thoughtfully structure transactions with sensible credit stats, meaningful covenants, substantial equity cushions to protect our capital, attractive upfront fees and spreads, and equity co-investment. Additionally, from a monitoring perspective, we receive monthly financial statements to help us stay on top of the companies. With regard to covenants, virtually all our originated first lien loans had meaningful covenants, which help protect their capital. This is one reason why our default rate and performance during COVID was so strong. This sector of the market—companies with $10 million to $50 million of EBITDA—is the core middle market. Within the core middle market, we think our capital can add the most value. And we believe the opportunity to get the strongest package of risk return is in the $10 million to $30 million of EBITDA range. The core middle market is below the threshold and does not compete with a broadly syndicated loan or high yield markets. As many of our peers have raised an enormous amount of capital, they are forced to focus on the upper middle market, which are companies with over $50 million of EBITDA. Those upper middle market companies can typically also efficiently access the broadly syndicated loan market and, as a result, our large peers need to aggressively compete with that market and among themselves. This results in transactions with leveraged high covenants being light or nonexistent, spreads and upfront fees being compressed, and decisions needing to be made quickly. Additionally, from a monitoring perspective, they generally receive financial statements quarterly instead of monthly. The argument you'll hear is that the bigger companies are less risky. That's certainly a perception and may make some intuitive sense, but the reality is different. According to the S&P, loans to companies with less than $50 million of EBITDA have a lower default rate and a higher recovery rate than loans to companies with higher EBITDA. We believe that the meaningful covenant protection of core middle market loans, more careful diligence, and tighter monitoring have been an important part of this differentiated performance. The borrowers in our investment portfolio are performing well, and we believe we're well positioned for future quarters. As of June 30th, the weighted average debt to EBITDA on the portfolio was 4.7x, and the average interest coverage ratio, the amount by which cash income exceeds cash interest expense, was 3.1x. This provides significant cushion to support stable investment income, even as interest rates rise. Based on this substantial cushion, even with a 350 basis point rise in base rates and flat EBITDA, our portfolio companies would still cover their interest two times on average. These statistics are among the most conservative in the direct lending industry. As of June 30th, we had only two non-accruals out of 123 different names in PFLT. This represents only 0.9% of the portfolio at cost and 0.1% at market value, which is a significant decrease from the prior quarter. As mentioned in my earlier comments, our investment in Marketplace Events has returned to full accrual status. Our credit quality since inception over 11 years ago has been excellent. PFLT has invested over $4.9 billion in 447 companies and we have experienced only 15 non-accruals. Since inception, PFLT's loss ratio is only six basis points annually. Against the market backdrop of rising interest rates, high inflation, and geopolitical risks, our target market remains active. Our experienced and talented team and our wide origination funnel are producing active deal flow. Our continued focus remains on capital preservation and being patient investors. Our mission and goal are steady, stable, and protect the dividend stream coupled with the preservation of capital, and everything we do is aligned to that goal. We seek to find investment opportunities in growing middle market companies that have high free cash flow conversion. We capture that free cash flow primarily in first lien senior secured instruments, and we pay out those contractual cash flows in the form of dividends to our shareholders. Let me now turn the call over to Rick, our CFO, to take us through the financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Art. For the quarter ended June 30th, net investment income was $0.29 per share, including $0.01 per share of other income. Operating expenses for the quarter were as follows: Management fees and performance-based incentive fees were $5.6 million. Interest expense was $7.4 million. General and administrative expenses were $800,000 and provisions for taxes were $100,000. For the quarter ended June 30th, net realized and unrealized change on investments was a loss of $16.9 million or $0.41 per share. There were no changes in the value of our credit facility and notes for the quarter. We sold 136,000 shares this quarter through the aftermarket program above our NAV, which resulted in $0.01 per share of accretion to NAV. As of June 30th, our GAAP NAV was $12.21, which is down 3.2% from $12.62 per share. Adjusted NAV excluding the mark-to-market of our liabilities was $12.02 per share, down from $12.41 per share last quarter. Our debt-to-equity ratio was 1.5x and our net debt-to-equity, after subtracting cash, was also 1.5x. Our capital structure is diversified across multiple funding sources, and we do not have any near-term maturities. As of June 30th, our key portfolio statistics were as follows: our portfolio remains highly diversified, with 123 companies across 45 different industries. Our portfolio was 87% invested in first lien senior secured debt, including 16% in PSSL, less than 1% in second lien debt, and 13% in equity, including 5% in PSSL. Our overall debt portfolio has a weighted average yield of 8.5%. 100% of the debt portfolio is floating rate, and 82% has a LIBOR floor, with the average LIBOR floor at 1%. As Art previously commented, as base rates rise, we are well positioned to participate on the upside. Holding everything else constant in the portfolio, a 1% increase in base rates translates into $0.17 per share annually of net interest income upside, and a 2% increase translates into $0.32 per share annually of net interest income.

Thanks Rick. In closing, I'd like to thank our extremely talented team of professionals for their commitment and dedication. Thank you all for your time today and for your investment and confidence in us. That concludes our remarks. At this time, I'd like to open up the call to questions.

And we'll take our first question from Ryan Lynch with KBW.

Hey, good morning Art and welcome, Rick. The first question I had was, if I look at your overall unrealized losses recorded in the quarter of around a little over $17 million. Is there a way to break that down? Can you give us a ballpark estimate of what percentage of that was driven by widening spreads and lower equity valuation? So more kind of technical mark-to-market versus specific credit events that were marked down?

Thanks Ryan. As I'm looking at kind of the big movers over the quarter, there were really very few big movers. I think Walker Edison equity was the biggest mover and that was down $2 million, as an example. But other than that, it's all kind of the market and credit spreads, and not idiosyncratic name spreads.

Okay. And then, congratulations on Marketplace Events coming back on accrual status. Can you just talk about usually negative events, and what went on with portfolio companies? Is this a positive event? Can you talk about what drove this change and this company's ability to pay its interest?

Yes, so there is a company—it's a home goods tradeshow business, which was obviously impacted by COVID. As the world is normalizing, as you know, the company's doing much better. So we believe that will be a temporary thing as the world normalizes. They're the leading company in their space. It's an excellent company with a very strong management team. They just were directly impacted by COVID.

Got that. It's kind of a COVID recovery story. Then just my final question that I had, the PSSL has grown significantly over the last several quarters. You mentioned you hope to get that to $1 billion at some point. Obviously, this is very dependent on market opportunities, just as you kind of sit here today, do you have any sort of rough estimate of a target year that you would like it to get to that size?

I mean probably in the next 18 months to two years. We have the ability today to ramp it to about $850 million or $875 million. We will look at some point to bring in another middle market CLO into that vehicle; we already have one. And that CLO financing, as you know, is low-cost, efficient, and long-term, and really optimizes our ROE. So it probably could get us to $850 million sometime in the next six to twelve months. Assuming we get a middle market CLO done, which the markets have been a little in turmoil, as you may know. Presumably, it will come back at some point, and that's when we could optimize it even further and take it from, let's say, $850 million to about $1 billion.

And we'll take our next question from Kevin Fultz with JMP Securities.

Hi, good morning. And thank you for taking my questions. You touched on this a bit in your prepared remarks. Clearly, rising rates will boost core earnings in the back half of the year, given the rate increases in the second quarter that will flow through in the third quarter earnings. Have you run the numbers on the incremental NII per share impact from the rising base, which we'll have in the third quarter?

Hi, good morning, Kevin. We've been thinking and working on this one quite a bit. There are, unfortunately, a lot of variables to account for, so I can't communicate a simple straightforward, easy answer for you. But let me give you a couple of statistics to help you with your own modeling. So 100% of the portfolio, as you know, is floating rate and at June 30, 11% of that was still subject to a floor and the net average floor was 1%. That compares to 59% at March 31 of the portfolio that was still subject to an average 1% floor. So, obviously, during the June 30 quarter, we captured already some of the rising rate environment. At June 30, some additional statistics: our average base rate was 1.9%. That compares to one-month LIBOR today of approximately 2.35%. So as the portfolio companies continue to roll their LIBOR contracts, and they have the option between one, three, and six months, we'll continue to see some increase in interest income NII coming from the rising rates. And again, we'd expect that small portion of the portfolio that's currently subject to the floor to exceed that floor and again, add incrementally to top and bottom line with the rising rate.

Okay, that's really helpful, Richard, and welcome. Just one more, if I may. In regards to portfolio positioning, just curious if there are any pockets or industries that you find particularly attractive in the current environment?

Yes, as you know, we have a big expertise and a focus on government services and defense. Not a lot of our peers are very focused on this industry. We've had a really good experience over many years, and I think it's about 15% of this portfolio. Given geopolitical events, there's really a tailwind against that industry right now. So we'll continue to lean into that industry. Obviously, we like the creditworthiness of the customers in that industry. We like the trends, we like the stability. So we probably lean into that sector even a little bit more than we have in the past. Healthcare is also a big expertise and a large sector for us. The demographic trends there continue to be very, very strong. Obviously, there are things you need to be careful about in healthcare, but we've had an excellent track record in healthcare—it is one of our biggest wins. So I think those are probably the two largest sectors where I think we keep leaning into. I think consumer, which is also a sector for us, we've gone out of our way to be conservative and cautious in that sector. We think we're well protected, so we're going to be a little bit more careful around consumer at this time until we see where the economy heads. Pleasure to have you, Kevin. Covered the stuff. So with that, I think it doesn't look like we have any more questions. I really just want to thank everybody for being on the call today. The next quarter is the quarter ended September 30th. That's our 10-K quarter. So reminder that due to the 10-K, we usually report a little bit later. I think we're kind of targeting mid-November for the next earnings release and the next call. So in the meantime, we really appreciate everyone's support and wish everybody a great rest of the summer.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.