Ted Goldthorpe
Analyst · Landenburg Thalmann
Great. Good morning, and thanks, everyone, for joining our first quarter earnings call. I’m sorry, it’s so early, but we’ve got four other guys in our space reporting and doing calls this morning as well. I’m joined today by our Chief Financial Officer, Jason Roos; and our Chief Investment Officer, Patrick Schafer. Yesterday afternoon, Portman Ridge announced its first quarter 2021 fiscal year financial results. I will begin with an update on the significant progress we’ve made towards our strategic goals and provide a high level overview of our first quarter results. I’ll finish with a discussion of our near-term priorities heading into 2021, including an update on our M&A pipeline activity, as it relates to the Harvest transaction. Following that, Patrick will give an update on our portfolio activity and status, and Jason will provide additional details on our financial results. In the first quarter of 2021, we continue to execute on our strategic plan of repositioning the Portman Ridge portfolio following the merger with Garrison in October of 2020. An immediate priority of ours was to reduce the combined leverage level after the merger, which was 1.8x on a net basis at close. Accordingly, we’ve proactively monetized an aggregate of $92.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2020 at or above fair value and utilize the net proceeds to repay approximately $88 million of the roughly $252 million in secured notes, which were assumed as part of the Garrison merger. This $88 million principal repayment was completed in the first quarter and as a result at quarter end gross leverage was 1.4x on a gross basis and 1.1x on a net basis compared to 1.7x gross leverage, and 1.4x on a net basis at year end. Having previously stated our long-term leverage range as 1.25x to 1.4x, we are pleased to achieve this range in a relatively short order without compromising price valuation or earnings. We continue to engage in sales of assets originated by Garrison in the first quarter with an additional $30.3 million sold above fair value. Looking ahead, while we continue to assess opportunistic asset sales in our portfolio, we do not plan to continue the proactive pace at which we sold legacy Garrison assets in the fourth quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021, as we are pleased with the state of the overall portfolio at this time. We’ve also continued to drive the shift in the composition of our portfolio. Portman Ridge is focused on secured loans with an emphasis on first lien investments. First lien investments now comprise 83% of the debt securities portfolio compared to 80% at year end and 60% at September 30. Pro forma for the Harvest transaction, we expect our portfolio will be similarly weighted to first lien securities. As we previously discussed, we expect over time to continue rotating our existing legacy assets, including those originated by Garrison and Harvest into higher yielding, directly originated loans per our lending strategy at BC Partners. Turning to financial performance for the quarter. We generate net investment income per share of $0.11 and earnings per share of $0.11. Non-recurring and one-time expenses impacted our earnings per share this quarter, including a $1.8 million realized loss on extinguishment of debt, which resulted in negative $0.02 impact. We also experienced professional fee expenses that were higher than typical due to increased legal expenses from our M&A activities and higher tax and audit fees during the quarter that equated to nearly $0.01 per share impact. Looking ahead in the second quarter and beyond, we remain cost-focused on multiple levels and expect the actions we are taking now will generate cost savings that will fully emerge with a passage of time. On April 30, we closed a private placement debt offering of $80 million in 4.875% senior secured notes – senior unsecured notes. We were pleased to have completed this transaction during an opportune time in the credit markets and will benefit substantially from interest expense savings going forward. We expect these interest rates savings and other cost efficiencies related to M&A will continue to rise as we manage a significantly broader asset base over which to spread our fixed costs that will flow to the benefit of shareholders. In other corporate news, we previously announced the renewal of $10 million stock repurchase program that was approved on March 11, 2021 by the Board of Directors. We continue to believe that buying back our stock makes sense for shareholders, but we are constrained by blackout periods and other restrictions around our M&A activities. Furthermore, we continue to take into account feedback from our shareholders and on that note, and our most recent proxy filed on April 23, we raised as a voting matter on June 7 Annual Meeting our intention to enact a reverse stock split within the range of 1 to 5 to 1 to 15 shares within one year of stockholder approval. We believe having our shares undergo a reverse stock split may provide greater flexibility for shareholders, particularly for institutional investors who often operate with under restrictions with respect to per share prices among other parameters. Finally, in December of 2020, we announced our plan to merge with Harvest Capital Credit Corporation. as discussed in previous calls, the Harvest transaction makes sense for Portman Ridge, for many of the same reasons that we noted for our previous mergers, including adding size and diversification to the existing platform, increasing the leveraging of public company expenses immediately, while improving trading liquidity, visibility and the capability and flexibility to speak for larger deals in the longer-term. The harvest portfolio will also continue to shift our portfolio composition to first LIEN assets. We’ve also noted that we expect harvest transaction to be deleveraging to the tune of 0.1 turns on both the gross and net basis. We are on track for an expecting closing to occur in early to mid-June of this year. We’re off to a strong start in 2021. Our portfolio is performing well. Non-accruals are continuing to trend downwards as percentage of the total fair value of the debt portfolio. And we expect this trend may continue based on current conditions. Having achieved a leverage ratio at the lower end of our target range, we are now in a good position to increase investment activity in the near-term through the BC Partners platform as we continue to rebuild and shift the portfolio composition to BC Partners originated assets. We will benefit from even greater flexibility once the expected Harvest transaction closes, which we anticipate will be a further de-leveraging event. Internally, we remain very focused on generating cost savings in all areas of the company in order to maximize value for our shareholders. And with that, I will turn the call over to Patrick Schafer, our Chief Investment Officer for a review of our investment activity.