David Dullum
Analyst · Jefferies
Thanks, Mike, and good morning, everyone, and happy sheltering wherever you are. We're at our station here and working away. And actually, we'd be very happy to report a very good operating results for the fiscal year ending 03/31/20 especially when we consider the challenges that we, along with a lot of other folks obviously, in the fourth quarter have to go through regarding COVID-19. So we actually ended our fiscal year 03/31/20 with adjusted net investment income of $0.90 per share. And we - at the same time, we increased our monthly distributions to an annual run rate of $0.84 per common share or $0.07 per month. This year has been a very active fiscal year. We exited 6 buyout portfolio companies and generated a combined net realized gain of over $43 million. We also made 3 new buyout investments for about $79 million during the year. Our net asset value, which is book value, of course, was $11.17 per share at 03/31/20, and that does compare to $12.40 at 03/31/19. This decline was in part the result of the reversal of net unrealized depreciation which was related to the 6 exits, the total of which was, of course, partially offset by the significant net realized gains from those exits.Also, valuations for the remaining portfolio, we'll talk more about this, reflect the COVID-19 impact, thereby contributing to this amount of unrealized depreciation at 03/31/20. The exits, though, have allowed us to reduce our borrowings, and therefore, we've ended the fiscal year with a very strong balance sheet and extremely low leverage. So this is very important, obviously, in this very uncertain environment with the pandemic.So let's talk a bit, though, about pandemic and some of the actions that we took and, as a result of that, sort of where we are with the portfolio. In general, a number of the portfolio companies obviously have been affected but to varying degrees. And we are continuing to actively monitor all the potential issues, and we are very engaged with the management teams which helps provide support as necessary for those companies.To give you an idea, very early in the shutdown phase, we did a number of things. First, we initiated a conference call format for all of our portfolio management teams in which we provided legal and human resource information and guidance to help navigate the various rules and regulations by state in that shutdown phase, so much of a learning process which is very helpful to our companies. Most of our companies actually were able and have been able to maintain their operations even if they're not at 100%, some vary from very high percentage of operation to a much smaller number, obviously, is based upon the industry that they're in.Similarly, number two, we help the companies navigate the PPP, which allowed a couple of our companies actually to access those loan programs where they were possible. That was very helpful.Third, each of our managing directors and our team worked with each portfolio company to assess the worst-case forecast and potential temporary capital needs as we look forward over the next 9 months to 12 months. Obviously, it's not easy to do that, but we really felt it was important to get on top of this. Fortunately, we are in a strong liquidity position as a fund. And therefore, we are able to provide support if our companies do face a temporary liquidity need as a result of COVID-19. So far, we've not had to provide much support either through additional investment or some accommodation on interest obligations that they may have to us, in other words, the debt securities.And fourth, we do continue now to this detail monitoring daily. And we are moving into more of this reopening phase with our companies through the HR and insurance guidance that's important to each portfolio company to navigate the rules and all the plans for bringing employees back to work safely and all the implications that may go along with that. Absolutely, we're looking forward to getting our economy back to work, and we're doing everything we can with our companies to be sure that they continue to contribute with that on a very aggressive basis.Now as a result of the large net realized gains that I mentioned earlier and similar to last year, we have opted to retain a significant portion of these gains and declare another deemed distribution to common shareholders. We do believe this is a very prudent action and especially in these uncertain times and further strengthens our balance sheet. As noted earlier, our fair values have been impacted by the effect of the pandemic mainly on market multiples, to some degree, and obviously, operations of some of our portfolio companies. Some have been impacted more than others, depending on the sector and their geographic location. Now depending on the duration of these lockdowns from the pandemic, we could obviously see some more devaluation as we roll through the next 12 months, and we're very sensitive to that and very much involved with keeping on top of this.So this is why I keep stressing this. It's in times like this that our fund vessel and investment is in a fortunate position to assist our companies. And we are proactively involved with all of them, which is a strength of this differentiated investment approach that we do bring to it, where we're providing both a significant portion of the equity and most of the debt in these transactions. And again, this provides an advantage in that we do have more flexibility with financial structuring of any one portfolio company and also the cash management, so again, bringing intense, as best as we can, management assistance internally and outside to help these companies through this period of time.I'd like, though - even with these challenges and these uncertainties that we face in the near term, it is still useful to briefly review because it helps us think forward to where we are and where we're going, to really briefly review some of our past results because they do provide the basis for the position that we're in to work and support our portfolio companies as we navigate the crisis and move forward. So very briefly, again, for the past fiscal years, from about 03/31/15 to 03/31/20, we have been able to grow our total assets from about $484 million to over $575 million at fair value. And this, of course, is inclusive of all the numerous exits' significant realized gains. So there's cash in and cash out, which has allowed us to grow very nicely and generate gains along the way. It's allowed us to also - for our regular monthly distributions, so we've been able to grow them from $0.72 per share annual run rate to $0.84 per share annual run rate for the fiscal year. And during fiscal '20, we also paid $0.21 per common share in supplemental distributions, and that's an area that we obviously look to continue in some fashion. Our NAV per share over the 5 years has increased from $9.18 a share to, of course, $11.17, as I mentioned.Our balance sheet, as a result of all of this, and this is one of the key points, is very strong. We have asset coverage right now of about 294% and availability on our line of credit with our bank syndicate of today of about $137 million. During this time, also, we had 28 companies in our portfolio at 03/31/20. Through that date, we have exited 22 companies, which is since our inception in 2005. In aggregate, these exits have generated over $220 million in net realized gains and about $30 million in other income on exit. The aggregate cash-on-cash return on the equity portion of these exits was approximately 4.4x.I mentioned all of this, it's important in looking back as a way to think about how we continue to manage and will manage from a conservative at the same time, the type of business that we are looking forward. And even though we're going to have to pull up our bootstraps and work in a slightly different way with our pandemic, we certainly look forward to believe we can maintain and continue the type of operation that we have exhibited over the last 5 years.So with that, what's our outlook? And focus right now for the near term, obviously, is helping our portfolio companies, maintaining our distributions to shareholders at the current levels. We actively continue to review potential new acquisitions as well, including a few that we were very close to before the pandemic hit and, in fact, are probably going to be able to keep moving forward on these. We obviously have to operate in a different type environment. We're all facing this, I know, with Zoom calls and lots of conference calls, et cetera. So the challenge for us in pursuing new companies, obviously, is maintaining our level of quality due diligence, being able to do it on a long distance basis. At the same time, also valuations are going to be a little bit more interesting. And we do believe that we are going to have acquisition opportunities where we will be in a position to take advantage of these attractive valuations as we look forward over this next year. So it's continuing what we're doing, taking a hard work with our portfolio companies during this period, but, at the same time, maintaining our approach to the type of business that we are and the success we've generated to date.So without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Julia Ryan, our CFO, so she can give you a bit more detail on the income statement and balance sheet. Julia?