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Great Elm Capital Corp. 5.875% Notes due 2026 (GECCO)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Tue, Sep 16, 2014

$25.40

+1.20%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the Full Circle Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2014 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded September 16, 2014. At this time, I would now like to turn the conference over to Stephanie Prince of LHA. Please go ahead.

Stephanie Prince

Analyst

Thank you, [Shea], and good morning, everyone. This is Stephanie Prince. Thank you for joining us for Full Circle Capital Corp.'s fourth quarter fiscal 2014 earnings conference call for the quarter and fiscal year ended June 30, 2014. With me this morning is John Stuart, Full Circle's Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer; Gregg Felton, President and Co-Chief Executive Officer; and Michael Sell, Chief Financial Officer. If you'd like to be added to the company's distribution list, please send an e-mail to info@fccapital.com. Alternatively, you can sign up under the Investor Relations tab on the company's website. The slide presentation accompanying this morning's conference call can also be found on Full Circle's website under the Investor Relations tab at fccapital.com. Before I turn the call over to management, I'd like to call your attention to the customary Safe Harbor statement regarding forward-looking information. Today's conference call includes forward-looking statements and projections, and we ask that you refer to Full Circle's most recent filings with the SEC for important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these projections. Full Circle does not undertake to update its forward-looking statement unless required by law. To obtain copies of the latest SEC filings, please visit Full Circle's website under the Investor Relations tab. I'd now like to turn the call over to John Stuart, Chairman and co-CEO of Full Circle Capital. John?

John Stuart

Analyst

Thank you, Stephanie. Good morning and welcome everyone to today’s call. I will begin our discussion with an overview of our strategy, recent developments and results for the fourth quarter. Gregg will then review the portfolio activity and current portfolio composition, as well as provide a view on Full Circle's forward opportunities. Finally, Mike will give a detailed discussion of the quarter's results. On Slide 3, accompanying the webcast, we provide an overview of our investment strategy. Over the course of fiscal 2014 and continuing into fiscal 2015, we have implemented and continue to implement a plan designed to broaden our platform to include a greater breadth of investment opportunities that are available within our overall credit parameters. Over the year we have made important additions to our senior management. Gregg joined us in the second fiscal quarter of 2014 as well as additions to our broader investment team by adding senior professionals to address industry verticals in healthcare and real estate finance. The impact of these actions has been evident in the significant portfolio growth during fiscal 2014 in which we executed $92 million of investments, including $44 million of new and follow-on portfolio investments funded in the fourth quarter alone. While our focus has remained on lower middle market direct origination, in fiscal 2014 we focused on an expanded approach to our investment program designed to further capitalize on market inefficiencies. New investments included select primary and secondary market purchases of syndicated loan facilities as well as participations alongside other lenders in club deals through our direct origination efforts. Over the past year, we have continued to access the capital markets to strengthen and diversify our capital base. We raised equity capital in what we believe to be a very efficient manner through three offerings during the year…

Gregg Felton

Analyst

Thanks, John. I am pleased to report the increased origination activity in the second half of fiscal 2014 which resulted from expanding our avenues of asset production. Our broader approach to sourcing is evident from the transactions that we closed since the beginning of last quarter, which I will touch on just in a moment. We also believe that our expanded investment team will allow us to increase the pace of production as we’ve only just begun recently to build a more robust pipeline of investment opportunities in the healthcare and real estate verticals. As presented on Slide 5, we funded $44 million of investments in the June quarter. Of this amount, $35 million represented five new portfolio investments and the balance represented additional fundings to existing borrowers. Subsequent to the June quarter end, we committed an additional $14 million to three new borrowers of which $10.5 million has been funded to date. As you can see on Slides 5 through 7, our recent portfolio investments were across a broad range of sectors, including financial services, broadcasting, wireless communications, healthcare, real estate management as well as oil and gas. We are pleased with the diversity of opportunity we are finding across industries and we continue to see a diversity of opportunity in our pipeline. With the exception of RCS Capital, which we believe to be a particularly well priced second lien facility, each of these new investments is a first lien senior secured facility. With respect to realization activities, payouts have been somewhat muted after a spike in repayments in the second and third quarters of the year which totaled $32 million. That said, we did just recently receive one full realization after quarter end as U.S. Path Labs repaid in full the outstanding amount to -- under its credit…

Michael Sell

Analyst

Slide 9 which provides an overview of the fourth quarter financial highlights. For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014, net investment income was $1.5 million or $0.15 per share compared to $1.4 million or $0.18 per share in the fourth quarter of last year. Net realized and unrealized losses were $9 million or $0.88 per share. Unrealized losses on investments were $9 million or $0.88 per share. Including the unrealized losses, we recorded a net decrease in net assets resulting from operations of $7.5 million or $0.73 per share. Per share results are based on weighted average shares outstanding in the fourth quarter of 10.3 million shares, a 35% increase compared to the 7.6 million shares in the same period last year. This increase reflects the three common equity offerings that Full Circle completed in January, February and June of 2014. Net asset value per share was $6.38 at June 30, compared to $7.20 on March 31, 2014, primarily reflecting the unrealized losses experienced during the period. Slide 10 digs a little deeper into the composition of the portfolio, highlighting the predominantly floating rate nature of our portfolio. 82% of our portfolio of loans have a floating rate. We believe this positions us well for any rise in interest rates. 88% of our portfolio continues to be invested in senior secured loans. Please turn to Slide 11 which highlights the important balance sheet items. On June 30, our total assets were approximately $156 million, which includes $25 million in short-term treasury bills. At the end of the quarter, the investment portfolio at fair value totaled $125.2 million, well above the $90.1 million at March 31 reflecting the increased investment activity that John and Gregg spoke about. Total liabilities were approximately $83.3 million. This includes $21.1 million outstanding on our 8.25% notes that were issued last June and $8.4 million in outstanding borrowings on our newly expanded $60 million line of credit. We expect to fund future investments from that availability, as Gregg mentioned in his remarks. I will now turn the call back over to John and Gregg.

John Stuart

Analyst

Okay. We’d now like to open the call up for questions. Operator?

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And we do have a question from Mickey Schleien with Ladenburg.

Mickey Schleien - Ladenburg Thalmann

Analyst

Yes, good morning gentlemen. Four questions, actually. Could you give us an update on the status of FC Capital investment partners? Given that we are in the middle of September, any guidance on additional sales or exits, besides US Path Labs? When do you expect to file your 10-K? And what are the prospects for a stock offering? Because according to my figures, if you fund your investments with the credit line, you're going to get close, probably, to target leverage. That's it from me. Thank you.

John Stuart

Analyst

In terms of payoffs, Mickey, let’s hit that one, that’s probably an easier one. It’s John speaking. US Path Labs is the recent – most recent transaction to pay off. As you remember, last year we had a significant amount of payoffs happened. With the portfolio growth, we expect that the amount of payoffs based on percentage of portfolio not to be a significant as those loans and assets season and usually there is a lag between – when we have obviously protections against early repayment, so therefore there is usually a lag between repayment and – to fund the assets we put on the books and those assets are repaid. So we expect – certainly for this year, that payoff activity to be below that of last year. Other than that, we’re as up to date as anything with the disclosure on US Path Labs payoff just a couple of weeks ago. Mike, do you want to talk about the 10-K?

Michael Sell

Analyst

Mickey, this is Mike. We are currently in a process of wrapping up the 10-K process. As you know, we are a non-accelerated filer, so we have until of end of the month to get our 10-K on record with the SEC. As we previously disclosed, Rothstein Kass merged with KPMG right at our year end. So they are working through some bells and whistles on their side to get everything tidied up but we anticipate filing in the near term.

Gregg Felton

Analyst

With respect to FCIP – this is Gregg. We have looked to use that vehicle when we have investment opportunities as we mentioned are either outsized or don’t fit the profile of what Full Circle can pursue. We definitely have a pipeline of deals that might fit that profile. That being said, we certainly don’t feel comfortable providing any material guidance as it relates to our usage of FCIP but it’s there as – it’s an opportunity for us to provide an incremental source of capital for deals that can be accretive to Full Circle Capital Corporation, FCCC. The question as it relates to equity offering, as we mentioned in the commentary, we’ve really been trying to think about equity offerings as it relates to our pipeline of activity, and we hope you agree we have been somewhat opportunistic as it relates to issuing equity to support the pipeline. You are right to say that our pipeline is growing nicely and for sure the increased availability under our credit facility and the expanded nature of the credit facility are helpful to supporting additional availability for the assets that we are pursuing but we will certainly look at equity to the extent that’s sensible in the context of our pipeline, that we have deals that we can pursue that, that make sense and are accretive to our portfolio.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And at this time there are no further questions. I would like to turn the conference back over to John Stuart.

John Stuart

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. In closing, we always thank everybody for attending the call and we look forward to speaking with you on our first quarter earnings call which is coming up in mid November. Until then please feel free to reach out to any of the three of us, Mike, Gregg and myself, should you have any questions or comments on the matters discussed on today’s call. We look forward to speaking to you in November. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines at this time.