Greetings. Welcome to CION Investment Corporation Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Charles Arestia, Managing Director and Head of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Good morning, and welcome to CION Investment Corporation's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. An earnings press release was distributed earlier this morning before market open. A copy of the release, along with the supplemental earnings presentation is available on the company's website at www.cionbdc.com in the Investor Resources section. It should be reviewed in conjunction with the company's Form 10-Q filed with the SEC. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded for replay purposes. Please note that today's conference call may contain forward-looking statements, which are not guarantees of future performance or results and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including those described in the company's filings with the SEC. Joining me on today's call will be Michael Reisner, CION Investment Corporation's Co-Chief Executive Officer; Gregg Bresner, President and Chief Investment Officer; and Keith Franz, Chief Financial Officer. With that, I would like to now turn the call over to Michael Reisner. Please go ahead, Michael.

Thank you, Charles, and good morning, everyone. Overall, we reported a strong third quarter with continued NAV appreciation and significant quarterly earnings. We reported $0.74 a share in net investment income for the third quarter, driven by robust transaction activity involving 20 of our portfolio companies with several fee events, new investments and repayments. As in past quarters, increased transaction activity tends to translate into higher earning quarters through increased transaction-related fees and other yield enhancement measures such as MOICs, exit fees and call protection. During the third quarter, we realized significant transaction-related accretion related to a portfolio company and is part of our opportunistic strategy. As we discussed on our prior call, we expected this transaction to close in the third quarter which contributed meaningfully to our net investment income. Excluding the income from this transaction, we still would have covered our base dividend for the quarter, which we believe reflects the ongoing earnings power of our portfolio. Gregg will discuss this transaction in greater detail later on during the call, but I want to reiterate how we view our opportunistic strategy as a differentiated component of our overall earnings potential. While these contributions can appear episodically, we consider these potential earnings to be a strategic component of our portfolio as we manage the business and the dividend over the longer term. We appreciate that the timing of these contributions can be difficult to predict, which is why we provided the additional context on our prior earnings call. Going forward, we plan to provide comparable guidance on any similar anticipated transactional income to help manage investor expectations in the short term, should conditions allow. As we have mentioned previously, we believe the volatility that these potential returns create tends to skew meaningfully to the upside versus consensus expectations and…

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. We've remained highly selective with new portfolio company investments in Q3 as we were highly active and focused on transaction opportunities within our portfolio of companies. We were also effectively at full investment during most of the quarter and worked to maintain our targeted net leverage range of 1.25x to 1.3x while simultaneously balancing the timing of expected investment pipeline investments versus repayment amounts. Most of our exiting repayments occurred towards the end of the quarter. During the quarter, we passed on a historically higher percentage of potential investments in new portfolio companies based on credit and pricing considerations as the continued hangover of record 2024 private debt fundraising still translated into lower coupon spreads, higher leverage levels and looser credit documents in the market. As Michael discussed in his remarks, market conditions continued to rebound in Q3 as stronger economic indicators and reduced concerns regarding tariffs have boosted overall economic sentiment in equity markets. We focused our Q3 activities on incremental opportunities with our own portfolio of companies as we had significant transaction and fee events with over 20 of our portfolio companies this quarter. We believe our continued investment selectivity and proportional deployment levels helped us to invest in first lien loans at higher spreads when compared to the overall private and public loan markets during the quarter. The weighted average yield for our funded first lien investments for the quarter based on our investment cost with the equivalent of SOFR plus 7% for our direct strategy and SOFR plus 14% for our opportunistic strategy investments. As we discussed in previous quarters, the majority of our annual PIK income is strategically derived from highly structured first lien investments or where PIK income is incremental to our cash coupon. Together, these categories…

Thank you, Gregg, and good morning, everyone. During the third quarter, net investment income was $38.6 million or $0.74 per share compared to $16.9 million or $0.32 per share reported in the second quarter. Total investment income was $78.7 million during the third quarter as compared to $52.2 million reported during the second quarter. This is an increase of $26.5 million or an increase of about 51% quarter-over-quarter. The increase in total investment income was driven primarily by higher interest income earned as a result of certain investments being restructured and other yield-enhancing prepayment fees recorded during the quarter, as well as higher transaction fees earned from originations and amendment activity when compared to the prior quarter. On the expense side, total operating expenses were $40.1 million, compared to $35.3 million reported in the second quarter. The increase in operating expenses was primarily driven by higher advisory fees due to higher investment income earned during the quarter. At September 30, we had total assets of approximately $1.9 billion and total equity or net assets of $773 million, with total debt outstanding of about $1.1 billion and 52 million shares outstanding. Our portfolio at fair value ended the quarter at $1.7 billion, and the weighted average yield on our debt and other income-producing investments and amortized cost was 10.9% at September 30. Our PIK income for the third quarter was largely impacted by one of our portfolio companies in connection with its amended loan facility. The amount capitalized was about $5 million for the quarter. And excluding this transaction, our PIK as a percentage of total income for the third quarter would have been lower and in the mid-teens level. At September 30, our NAV was $14.86 per share as compared to $14.50 per share at the end of June. The…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Erik Zwick with Lucid Capital Markets.

First question maybe for Keith, and I appreciate all of the commentary kind of walking through the puts and takes there and interest income for the quarter. Curious if you could kind of break it down either in terms of dollar terms or percentage terms, and what of that $51 million, what came from kind of regular ongoing interest payments? And what was more from the periodic in nonrecurring events?

Yes. I would think that on a baseline basis, we had interest income similar to what we recorded in Q2, maybe slightly up and then the rest of it came from the restructured investments that we experienced during the quarter.

And maybe a similar line of questioning on the PIK income in the quarter. You noted the $5 million of capitalized costs. So that was more onetime in nature? Is that the correct interpretation that $5 million...

I don't know if I would necessarily use that vernacular, but yes, that was a pick event that occurred uniquely in this quarter.

And then so the remaining, call it, $12 million or so, could you provide a breakout of that part, what is structured versus kind of credit related because I know you've got a fair amount that's structured by design?

Yes. No different than the pool that Gregg had mentioned on his comments that the majority of that is structured.

And then just curious, as you seem fairly optimistic about the originations outlook. And just curious if you could provide any commentary on the pipeline in terms of the size relative to maybe 3 months ago? And also just the quality of what you're seeing in terms of structure and in yield as you look forward to future activity?

Erik, it's Gregg. Definitely more robust than we've seen this year. More activity, it's broader based. There's definitely been a pickup in M&A, which is different from the first 2 quarters. And I would say, in terms of spreads and things like that, pretty consistent with what we've done in the past. I would say we definitely -- what I would call traditional middle-market type spreads.

This will now conclude our question-and-answer section. I would like to turn the call back over to Michael Reisner for closing remarks.

We appreciate everyone taking time out of their day to join us, and we look forward to communicating with you early next year. Thank you, everyone. Take care.

Thank you. This will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.