Jonathan Gerald Bock
Analyst
Thank you, Brad. And I want to echo the points made on our BXCI platform scale before jumping into a few more highlights. Our scale allows us to be active with existing companies. We can expand our portfolio with new borrowers while also potentially enhancing the quality of our existing investments. And to Brad's point, we have over 110-plus, right, in our CIO office focused on investment management, portfolio insights and portfolio operations using extensive credit expertise to provide long-term views of the market regardless of the economic state. The team has developed a reputation for being a valued partner with the ability to provide speed, creativity, flexibility and certainty of execution. In an uncertain economic environment, not only does our CIO office leverage Blackstone's scaled insights to help identify and proactively mitigate portfolio risks, but our BXCI value creation program also supports our portfolio companies by seeking to enhance revenue and lower cost. For example, this quarter, BXCI achieved an estimated 13% savings on average on direct material and services costs for a health care provider and services company, simply by professionalizing spend management and leveraging our e-sourcing platform. Now with that, let's turn to Slide 6. We ended the quarter with $13.3 billion of investments at fair value, over a 17% increase from $11.3 billion year-over-year. In Q2, BXSL also added 15 new portfolio borrowers to our portfolio, while exiting 4 positions, netting a total of 295 companies. Ending leverage and average leverage ticked down slightly compared to prior quarter at 1.13 and 1.13x, respectively, remaining near the middle of our target range of 1 to 1.25x. Our weighted average yield on performing debt investments at fair value was 10.2% this quarter, consistent with last quarter. The yields on new debt investment fundings and assets sold and repaid during the quarter averaged 9.8% and 10.3%, respectively. Turning to Slide 7. 98% of BXSL investments are in first lien senior secured loans and 99% of those loans are to companies owned by financial sponsors who generally have significant equity value in these capital structures demonstrated by an average loan-to-value of 46.9%. Our portfolio also has an LTM EBITDA base averaging around $219 million, with year-over-year EBITDA growth of nearly 11%. This growth percentage is nearly 2x larger than that of companies in the Lincoln International private market database from last quarter. Turning to Slide 8, which focuses on our industry exposure. Recall, we focus on domestic businesses in less capital-intensive sectors with our highest exposures in the software, professional services and health care providers and services industries. This quarter, over 99% of the new private debt investments during the quarter were first lien senior secured positions with an average LTV below 40%, meaning there's a significant amount of capital beneath our loans. Our relentless focus on first lien senior secured debt in lower default rate industries is what we view as a defensive position for investors. We believe this is further evidenced when we look at the various portfolio metrics compared to the weighted average of our traded BDC peers just in the first quarter. Our low nonaccrual rate of 0.3% at cost compared to 2.7% for the market average. Our PIK as a percentage of total investment income at 6.4% compared to 11.3% for peers. And our stressed debt investments marked below 80 is at 0.7% compared to 4.3% for the market average. I'll conclude with some points on our documents and recent amendment activity. As a reminder, when we negotiate our credit agreements, especially as a leading lender, we place a significant focus on control and important document protections and have remained consistent with this approach. And if we take a look at our recent amendments, 2Q saw an uptick in activity, but nearly 90% of the amendments were associated with add-ons, M&A, DDTL extensions, immaterial technical matters or changes to terms. And with that, I'll turn it over to my colleague, Carlos.