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Crescent Capital BDC, Inc. (CCAP)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Wed, Mar 11, 2015

$13.40

+1.28%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. And welcome to the THL Credit's Earnings Conference Call for its Fourth Fiscal Quarter and Year -- Full Year 2014 Results. It is my pleasure to turn the call over to Ms. Stephanie Sullivan, Chief Legal Officer and General Counsel of THL Credit. Ms. Sullivan, you may begin.

Stephanie Sullivan

Management

Thank you, Operator. Good morning and thank you for joining us. With me today are Sam Tillinghast and Chris Flynn, our Co-Chief Executive Officers; and Terry Olson, our Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, please note that statements made on this call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended. Such statements reflect various assumptions by THL Credit concerning anticipated results are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to known and unknown uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. The uncertainties and other factors are, in some ways, beyond management's control, including the factors described from time to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although, we believe that the assumptions on which any forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, any of those assumptions could prove to be inaccurate, and as a result, forward-looking statements based on those assumptions also could be incorrect. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. THL Credit undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements made herein. All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this call. A webcast replay of this call will be available until March 18, 2015, starting approximately 2 hours after we conclude this morning. To access the replay, please visit our website at www.thlcredit.com. With that, I'll turn the call over to Sam.

Sam Tillinghast

Management

Thank you, Stephanie, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining this morning's call covering the results of THL Credit's fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2014. Our earnings announcement and 10-K were released yesterday afternoon, copies of which can be found on our website, along with the Q4 Investor Presentation that we will refer to during this call. I will be providing an overview of our quarterly financial performance and our investment pace. Additionally, I’ll offer some thoughts on the market and talk briefly on the energy investments in our portfolio and our underwriting process in that space. Chris will be discussing new investments, including the THL Credit’s Logan joint venture, which we announced in December and the overall portfolio. And Terry will take us through our financial performance in more detail. Then I will wrap up with some closing remarks. We are pleased with our financial results this quarter. Our net investment income for the quarter was $0.37 per share, compared to an ordinary dividend of $0.34 paid at the end of December. On a cumulative basis since inception, our net investment income has exceeded our dividends paid and as of December 31, we have approximately $5.8 million of undistributed net investment income or approximately $0.17 per share. We are pleased to announce that on March 6th, our Board of Directors approved a quarterly dividend of $0.34 per share for the first 2015, which is payable on March 31. This marks the eight consecutive quarters we have paid a $0.34 per share dividend. The Board also approved a stock repurchase program authorizing the purchase of up to $25 million of share for one year period and I will talk more on this shortly. The overall strong performance of our portfolio together with our leverage levels continues to provide…

Chris Flynn

Management

Thanks, Sam. As you can see in our press release, we deployed $119 million of capital during the quarter, including $77 million in five new investments. The first is THL Credit Logan JV or Logan, which I’ll talk about more in a moment. We also made investments in our last unitranche loan of LAI International, the first lien note of Dodge Data & Analytics and the second lien notes of BBB Industries. Finally, we added one investment in the subordinated notes of Flagship VIII, Limited, a CLO managed by Deutsche Investment Management. In addition to these investments, we made $42 million in investments in non-existing portfolio companies, primarily related to follow-ons and revolvers and delayed draw commitments funding growth and acquisition initiatives. In December, as you know, we formed and announced the joint venture was an affiliate of Perspecta Trust, LLC, THL Credit Logan JV, LLC or Logan, to invest primarily in senior secured debt investments. Logan has equity commitments totaling $150 million, of which, $120 million from the BDC and Perspecta committed $30 million. Funding such commitments will be driven part by our investment capacity overtime. As of December 31st, we had $16.8 million invested in Logan. At the end of the year, Logan had $31 million invested primarily in first lien liquid loans across 22 companies. Most of these loans settled in January 2015. Shortly after forming Logan, $50 million credit facility was put in place with Deutsche Bank. This commitment will support the early growth of the portfolio, which will look to expand as more equity is contributed. Initially, Logan will hold more liquid syndicated investment to build diversity and leverage within the portfolio and we expect overtime to increase the portion of directly originated loans to drive higher returns. The unlevered deals on the Logan portfolio…

Terry Olson

Management

Thanks, Chris, and good morning, everyone. I’ll talk briefly on some additional financial highlights, but before I get into that, I would like to touch briefly on our borrowings. Prior to Q4, we utilized solely senior debt comprised of $107 million term debt L 3.25% and a $303 million revolver at L 2.25% to finance our investing activity in a cost effective way. In November we launched an offering of unsecured notes due in 2021 otherwise known as baby bonds at a fixed rate of interest at 6.75% of which we raised $50 million. This capital raise was a natural next step in the evolution of the right hand side of our balance sheet through diversify and extended our liabilities as we’ve grown, proceeds were use to repay outstanding amounts on our revolver. Net investment income for the quarter was $12.4 million or $0.34 -- $0.37 per share. Net investment income for all of 2014 was $48.2 million or $1.42 per share, up from $41.4 million or $1.37 per share in 2013. To highlight the NII drivers, we generated $24.1 million in investment income in the fourth quarter of which $20.5 million was from interest income on debt securities, including $0.6 million of PIK and $0.2 million for prepayment premiums. We also had $2 million of interest income from other income producing securities and $0.1 million of dividend income during the quarter. Other income included approximately $1.5 million -- other income included $1.5 million, included $0.8 million of fee income from our managed funds and accounts, and $0.7 million from what -- $0.7 million that were related primarily to commitment amendment and other administrative fees earned from our investments. We generated $91.9 million of investment income for the year ended December 31, 2014, $83.8 million was from interest income related…

Sam Tillinghast

Management

Thanks, Terry. Overall, we are pleased with the performance of our portfolio companies and credit quality. We continue to diligently monitor our underperforming and restructured investments as we seek to preserve shareholder capital and continue to deliver stable attractive returns. Given the state of the current equity markets, we will look to optimize our portfolio by deploying capital from repayments and sales, and new and follow-on investment opportunities, including the Logan joint venture and potential repurchases of our stock. We remained focused on covering our dividend and providing a strong return on equity to our shareholders through attractive yields on our appropriately levered portfolio with overall strong credit quality. And we expect to continue to be prudent in managing the right-hand side of our balance sheet as we keep the shareholder’s interest front lined. At this time, we'd like to open the line for questions, operator.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Greg Mason of KBW. Your line is now open.

Greg Mason

Analyst

Great. Good morning, guys. I wanted to dive into the Logan JV, just a little bit more in terms of your expectations for pace of deployment of the equity capital and then leverage. And then just kind of the open return expectations and kind of timeframe for that if you wouldn’t mind framing that out for us?

Chris Flynn

Management

Yeah. Sure, Greg. This is Chris. We are going to be patient as we deploy capital, but it’s our expectation to grow the program as prudently as we can. As you can see, I think as we announced, we are looking at unlevered return on the assets that we are booking now at 7%. So when you add leverage to that, that’s going to produce very attractive and in our opinion, a very attractive risk adjusted return and a strong ROE to our shareholders. So it’s a focus of ours going forward. As the equity base increases, we will add in more direct lending type assets as well, which we think will add value not only to our shareholders but also to our clients. If you look at the Deutsche Bank facility that we have in place, we are going to have up to two times of leverage on that and so if you do the rough math and look at our average yield in the portfolio, you’re looking around north of 12%.

Greg Mason

Analyst

What is the current cost on the DB facility?

Sam Tillinghast

Management

250, Greg, plus amount related season cost on the undrawn revolver but obviously, we are trying to get the $50 million drawn and deploy as quickly as we can.

Greg Mason

Analyst

Yeah. And what about -- when you have origination fees with -- the syndicated loans probably haven’t had too many of them yet, but when you move into more directly originated stuff, how are the origination fees going to work in that vehicle?

Sam Tillinghast

Management

You mean like the upfront fees?

Greg Mason

Analyst

Yeah.

Sam Tillinghast

Management

Yeah. They would be split by the two partners, by us and Perspecta.

Greg Mason

Analyst

Okay. And then as we look at the ECI exit in the quarter, you said you had $2.2 million of income, some of that was deferred. How much of that was recorded in the income this quarter versus in future quarters?

Sam Tillinghast

Management

About a $1 million, Greg of the $2.2 million, we booked in income in Q4.

Greg Mason

Analyst

And when could that other $1.2 million hit?

Sam Tillinghast

Management

It could be into latest in the 2016 timeframe, but circumstance could allow us to bring it in earlier. We will be monitoring that over the next several quarters.

Greg Mason

Analyst

Okay. Great. And then one last question and I will hop back in the queue. You gave us $15.3 million so far in Q1. What are your repayments that you have seen or are coming shortly in Q1?

Sam Tillinghast

Management

Yeah. We had -- I think when Chris mentioned the $47 million today has comeback, one of the largely Studer and Country Pure. We also sold a little bit of Charming Charlie and some additional BBB.

Greg Mason

Analyst

Got it.

Sam Tillinghast

Management

Net both 30 today negative.

Greg Mason

Analyst

And I think you said, no major prepayment income or one-time items with Studer or those other repayments, is that correct?

Sam Tillinghast

Management

They were none. No, correct.

Greg Mason

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you, guys.

Sam Tillinghast

Management

You bet. Thanks, Greg.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Doug Mewhirter of SunTrust. Your line is now open.

Doug Mewhirter

Analyst

Hi, good morning. Actually, Greg snagged my repayment question, but I guess I will maybe step it up a little higher. So it sounds like with your leverage levels -- you are sort of content right now to sort of recycle your portfolio, add some incremental assets to your joint venture and possibly maybe use whatever is leftover to buyback stock as long it’s below net asset value, is that sort of the way you are looking at the portfolio right now?

Sam Tillinghast

Management

Yeah. Doug, its Sam. That’s -- I think, it’s a fair revenue how we are looking at it. In any particular quarter, we seem to get a lower base of $35 million higher. I think close to $70 million of repayment. So that’s a source of capital. We’ve got maybe a little bit room today under the revolver. We will keep it at our target leverage level. And we’ve got about $70 million of what we’ve characterize as liquid loans that we could sell. So there’s a few sources of liquidity to do new transactions as well as investment of Logan JV. And if we see the opportunity in our stock to repurchase of stock, we think it’s an attractive price, we may use some capital do that as well.

Doug Mewhirter

Analyst

Great. And could you speak to the overall, I guess, the qualitative environment for investing. I know there has been some volatility. I know most of volatility has been on a more liquid side. But in terms of, as you are sourcing deals, is there a sort of a hesitancy to close deals or maybe has some of the power shifted to the lender from the borrower now just because of the disruption?

Chris Flynn

Management

Doug, this is Chris. I wouldn’t say there is hesitancy on our part. I think we’ve shown since we’ve been public that when we see value and an attractive term where we’ll put assets out the door when we don’t, we’ll be [Technical Difficulty]. So in this environment, we didn’t see much attractive opportunities [Technical Difficulty] you saw the portfolio contract [Technical Difficulty] in Q4 when we saw much more attractive opportunities it grew. That’s going to be the style [Technical Difficulty] to invest on time. Market conditions, I’d say are -- we are looking -- we have five of them in countries so we have [Technical Difficulty] which allows this to be selective. That’s the key cornerstone of us. It’s a -- a lot of different things to look at. We were able to break [Technical Difficulty] if you will.

Doug Mewhirter

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thanks. That’s all my questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Chris York of JMP Securities. Your line is now open.

Chris York

Analyst

Good morning. Doug, took my question, but I did want to get a follow-up a little bit on the new yields for that $15 million new investment in Q1?

Terry Olson

Management

Yeah. Chris, this is Terry. Thanks. We -- it was about 10.5 % on the debt component that went in and it was an additional contribution to the joint venture as well so.

Chris York

Analyst

Got it. That’s it for me. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Jonathan Bock of Wells Fargo Securities. Your line is now open.

Jonathan Bock

Analyst

Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. Gentlemen, a question as it relates to stock buyback, and please forgive me if I have the definitions incorrect. But I see there is not a 10b5-1 plan, is that correct?

Terry Olson

Management

That’s correct, Jon.

Jonathan Bock

Analyst

So can you give us a sense as to the windows of opportunity that you have available to purchase stock because I understand it’s fairly restrictive. So would you be able to give us some color on when you are actually able to do so?

Terry Olson

Management

Yeah. At this point, I abstain putting in place the 10b5, which is not in place today Jon. We are pretty limited in the windows and those are -- those today are the windows that we as insiders are subject too. So it would be a pretty short window for this quarter, typically ends about 15 or a quarter closes up, and that opens two days after a quarter -- quarterly results were announced. So if we think of the next window, notable window that will open up for a period of time, it’s the like early may time frame after we do our earnings call to about mid-June would be the first big window we had. And again during those windows, we would evaluate several factors as Sam outline that were liquidity and quite frankly where our stock is trading as we thought about repurchases during those times.

Jonathan Bock

Analyst

Okay. So would it be your intention to move towards the 10b5-1 in order to limit the restrictive nature of -- and I think you mentioned, Terry, I mean I was always in a depression it was two weeks after the reported quarter like for example this one but you are saying its actually in the May timeframe is when you are able to do it. So would it be your intention to move towards more of an algorithmic set, where you just purchase at a set price below NAV?

Sam Tillinghast

Management

Hey Jon, it’s Sam. I’ll jump in here. Actually, there is something that we are continuing to discuss with our Board of Directors. We just had our meeting last week. We’ve got the share repurchased approved. And it’s something that we’ll continue to discuss internally with our management team and with our Board.

Jonathan Bock

Analyst

Okay. Great. I know it’s -- people appreciate the algorithmic nature of things, just because it takes all the difficulty of the table when the stock is in unattractive level. The next item is, you noticed and want to understand the ability to diversify the liabilities. Give us a sense of how you’re looking at NOI accretion here if we think about those at roughly 6.75% cost and then layer on expenses on top of that, getting well under the mid 9s in terms of cost relative to what one is deploying at. Would you consider that marginally accretive from an NOI perspective, not accretive at this point in the cycle where spreads are tight at times and people are -- where you can walk through decision, why now -- why that time was a perfect point to diversify liabilities, just given that there is limited NOI growth from the fact that you’re already at fairly high leverage levels?

Sam Tillinghast

Management

Yeah. It’s a fair question, Jon. I appreciate it. I think the way we look at raising the unsecured debt is a lot more holistic in terms of thinking about business. So we’re at point in time for our stock in many BDCs, the equity markets are pretty much locked up. So at what point in time, do you start to, for lack of a better word, strengthen, diversify, extend the right hand side of your balance sheet. So that in an environment, where an equity raise isn’t prudent, you’re also doing things to diversify yourself away from reliance on senior lenders completely. So I think from a -- it was as much a business decision as anything. And I think locking in a fixed rate over seven years, in an environment, where we think rates will rise is quite frankly a pretty small piece of the overall capital structure and a good play on our future rate increased environment.

Jonathan Bock

Analyst

Okay.

Sam Tillinghast

Management

As you think about just -- we don’t think about the 6.75% yield specific to an investment. We think about again all of our liabilities and all of our assets holistically in terms of generating ROE. And while I will tell you that it’s the $50 million of that rate, squeezes NII probably about a little less than a penny a quarter. I think at the end of the day from the business -- it's good from a business perspective to have a more what I’ll call fortress balance sheet of diversified liabilities.

Jonathan Bock

Analyst

Yeah. Appreciate that. And then pardon me, if I missed this just because I think you said you had roughly $70 million of, we’ll call it liquid securities that you could liquidate and redeploy and maybe they were just ringing on one of the previous questions. What was the amount of what you’d consider investable capacity that you would have beyond that $70 million of liquid securities?

Sam Tillinghast

Management

Yeah. First on the -- the term liquid securities, you need to think about liquidity in the middle market as kind of a spectrum, right. So that $70 million is what we’ve identified would be readily saleable.

Jonathan Bock

Analyst

Okay.

Sam Tillinghast

Management

It’s possible that we would take a little bit longer push. Certainly there would be more securities that we could sell. In terms of capacity, I think we are currently in $25 million, $30 million that we could drawdown on the revolver but still remain within our target leverage range.

Jonathan Bock

Analyst

Great. And then, Sam, the last question for the JV and I apologize if I missed it. I understand that you will get long-term Deutsche as you build the portfolio. At what size does the portfolio of syndicated loan need to be before you are able to draw?

Chris Flynn

Management

John, this is Chris. We are actually utilizing the leverage today. If you look, it’s a -- what do we have now? We have $49 million of investments made today then there is only $20 million of equity capital invested.

Jonathan Bock

Analyst

Perfect. Okay. Great.

Chris Flynn

Management

Part of it is due to -- as you look through to that, one of the reasons as we structured the program out of the box as we did, maintaining that leverage or having access to that leverage diversification was critical. So, we don’t have a negative drag on the equity contribution we made to the joint venture. We want to have a double-digit type ROE as quickly as we can. I think we’ve been able to achieve that by building the portfolio slightly more liquid loans out of the box versus the longer term goal of doing more directly originated assets once that equity base increases.

Jonathan Bock

Analyst

Great. All right, guys. Well, thank you very much and congrats on the stock buyback. That’s excellent news, so thank you.

Sam Tillinghast

Management

Appreciate it, Jon.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from line of Greg Mason of KBW. Your line is now open.

Greg Mason

Analyst

Great, guys. Just a few follow-up questions here. Wanted to see if you could tell us a little bit about Tristar Management, I know that’s been down from 99% to 90% last quarter and now 86% of costs. I can’t really find much information about it. Just want to know if you can give us a little some color on Tristar.

Chris Flynn

Management

Yeah. Greg, this is Chris. It’s obviously is a portfolio company that we are focused on. We don’t want to go into too much detail at this stage because it’s obviously is a privately held business. We’d probably just highlight that the -- there is a couple of situations that we are in the process of working through and we felt, given the uncertainty of that, it created a situation where we should reflect that in a more. We’ll have more -- we are going to have more color hopefully in the near term. If you look at the business itself, it’s an asset light logistics company. It’s a very attractive company that we think long-term has good prospects but we are in the near-term working through potential issues, hence the reason why it’s reflected in a slight knock on the market.

Greg Mason

Analyst

We couldn’t really find a website on it. Could you just kind of tell us what they do? I know you said logistics company but….?

Chris Flynn

Management

So as you think about the bulk of the business, it’s a -- they run the brains, if you will, of these large warehouses that do pick and packs both in Canada and U.S. So if you walk through like a Sam’s Club warehouse, they may have like a million square foot facility and we don’t own the assets inside of it. We own the software and the systems. So products will come in and they will get shelved and then when store needs to be refurbished, we have machines and very few people would go on and grab that pick and deliver to the store.

Greg Mason

Analyst

Okay. Great. And then of the kind of $0.23 write-down in book value due to realized and unrealized marks, how much of that would you characterize as just mark-to-market versus credit impact in this quarter?

Chris Flynn

Management

The short answer is -- it's about 50-50.

Greg Mason

Analyst

Okay. Great. And then one last question. I think we saw in SEC filing in February for a Credit Direct Fund III, is that essentially a Greenway Fund III, does that impact the BDC at all?

Chris Flynn

Management

It won’t impact the BDC. It’s a similar to the Greenway vehicle as noted in the filing. It would be managed directly by the advisor.

Greg Mason

Analyst

Okay. Got it. All right. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it.

Sam Tillinghast

Management

Thanks, Greg.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And I’m showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Tillinghast for any further remarks.

Sam Tillinghast

Management

Thank you everyone. Well, we appreciate the questions and look forward to speaking with you next quarter.