Taylor Boswell
Analyst · KBW. Your line is now open
Thank you, Linda. Since our last report in May, the global economy has taken its first steps towards recovery. Carlyle's view is that this recovery will be unpredictable in slope and duration, as well as uneven across geographies and sectors. Signs of rebounding economic activity, particularly in China and Europe, are encouraging. While the potential for lingering weakness in areas where virus containment has been more challenged, like the U.S., weigh on our view, away from COVID, increasing tensions between the U.S. and China, as well as the pending presidential election, interject additional risks. The continuing macro uncertainty leads us to maintain a cautious perspective on the outlook for the real economy and markets. Over the same time, leveraged finance market conditions continued an impressive rebound, with secondary levels rallying alongside equities and other risk assets on government stimulus, better than feared macro data, progress towards vaccines, and economic research. That said, away from the high yield market, which is benefiting from strong technical demands, primary deal volumes were relatively light in Q2, due to the aforementioned uncertainty and a broad based slowing of M&A activity. However, the last eight weeks have begun to evidence a noticeable uptick, as market participants gain more confidence in a path to post-COVID normalization. While market-wide activity levels remain short of the robust pre-COVID period, our platforms sourcing advantages are creating sustained deal flow. In our core markets, we are generally seeing a combination of higher yields, lower leverage, and improved documentation. In addition, transactions are concentrating in sectors relatively unaffected by COVID, like technology and B2B commerce, further improving risk reward. Finally, while there remains meaningful competition, it is relatively less intense than in past periods. All in all, we regard this new investment environment as attractive, and one in which the resources have an insights available from our broad platform offer meaningful benefits. As such, we have been actively evaluating new investments in recent funds. CGBD closed four significant deals in the quarter, two of which were pre-COVID commitments, and two of which were entirely new transactions. And we will continue to selectively deploy capital into this undeniably complex, but compelling investment environment. Turning now to the portfolio. At this point, having the benefit of four months of intense engagement, it is fair to say that performance is tracking ahead of our prior expectations. The liquidity needs of our borrowers have been less than anticipated. We have seen a reversal in calls and unfunded commitments, and we place only one additional borrower on nonaccrual this quarter. In May, we discussed how we anticipate levered credit portfolios will move through three stages this cycle, an initial liquidity draw, followed by a significant amount of amendment activity, and ultimately, the longer-term work of value recovery and maximization for more heavily impacted businesses. CGBD navigated the first stage extremely well, owing to our diverse, well-constructed liability structure. We're now in the midst of that second stage, and we feel equally well positioned. We are finding financial sponsor partners to largely be supportive of portfolio companies, while management teams are enacting impressive change in response to this difficult environment. In amendment conversations, we generally feel that fair exchanges are being conducted, with lenders receiving risk reduction or incremental return when granting relief to borrowers, always with an eye towards preserving value of the underlying company. This amendment activity began in late March, will peak in the coming weeks with the formal delivery of Q2 financials, and should be largely completed by year-end 2020. Given the excellent work of our team into and through this crisis, our significant roles in these transactions, as well as the depth of partnership we have with the management teams and owners of our portfolio companies, we feel we have a high level of visibility into which portions of the portfolio will require relief, and are increasingly confident that the vast majority of those borrowers will ultimately present little risk of principal loss for CGBD. That said, significant risk remains both in the macro environment and within pockets of our own exposures. In order to better communicate portfolio risk, we made the decision this quarter to update our risk rating methodology. The prior methodology's heavy tie to trailing 12-month financial performance came up short and communicating shifting risk, as reporting would have lagged in this rapidly evolving cycle. Our new methodology, which more appropriately weights qualitative, quantitative, and transaction dynamics, allows us to report earlier with more clarity and transparency, what we know about current and prospective performance. You will see under the new method that deals rated three to five account for approximately 30% of loan portfolio fair value. To be clear, we expect the preponderance of borrowers rated three or below will perform through this cycle. Within this group, our value maximization efforts are particularly focused in the hotel gaming and leisure, food and beverage, and aerospace and defense sectors, which collectively represent one-third of risk rated three to five borrowers. Across all of our risk rated three to five borrowers, 85% of fair value are first dollar exposures, nearly all of which are covenanted. Meanwhile, the 15% of our risk rated three to five loans and second lien investments is invested in high-quality issuers, averaging over $150 million of EBITDA with significant liquidity runways. We believe both profiles provide a very favorable backdrop to support ultimate realized performance. Putting all this in the context of our depressed stock trading valuation, for NAV to decrease the levels approximating CGBD's recent share price, future losses would need to equate to over 70% of the fair value of our entire risk rated three to five loan portfolio. Needless to say, given the senior positioning of our portfolio and its current performance trends, we think this is highly improbable. In fact, we firmly believe our current asset valuations are prudent and appropriately reflect our portfolio's value. While we cannot predict with precision the amount and timing of value recovery or loss realization, we are confident that our portfolio will perform through the cycle, both in terms of NAV preservation and delivery against our revised dividend policy. We look forward to demonstrating the same to each of our constituencies, and appreciate all their support and confidence. Thank you again for your time. I'll now turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Tom Hennigan.