Horizon Technology Finance Corporation (HRZN) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Greetings, and welcome to the Horizon Technology Finance Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Megan Bacon. You may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to Horizon Technology Finance Corporation's Second Quarter 2026 Conference Call. Representing the company today are Mike Balkin, Chief Executive Officer; Paul Seitz, Chief Investment Officer; and Dan Trolio, Chief Financial Officer. I would like to point out that the Q2 earnings press release and Form 10-Q are available on the company's website at horizontechfinance.com. Before we begin our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that during this conference call, the company will make certain forward-looking statements, including statements with regard to the future performance of the company. Words such as believes, expects, anticipates, intends or similar expressions are used to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to the inherent uncertainties in predicting future results and conditions. Certain factors could cause actual results to differ on a material basis from those projected in these forward-looking statements. And some of these factors are detailed in the risk factor discussion in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Horizon's CEO, Mike Balkin.

Thanks, Megan. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for your interest in Horizon. Today, we will update you on our quarterly performance and the current operating environment. Paul Seitz, our Chief Investment Officer, will take us through recent business and portfolio developments as well as the current status of the venture lending market; and Dan Trolio, our Chief Financial Officer, will detail our operating performance and financial condition. We will then take questions. In April, we completed our merger with Monroe Capital Corporation, significantly enhancing our available capital for investments and kicking off our next chapter of growth. To that end, we have been very active over the past several months, laying the foundation for sustainable and profitable long-term growth. That includes enhancing our underwriting and credit capabilities to improve the quality of our portfolio, optimizing the technology stack throughout our organization and making key investments in our people and our origination platform. We believe the investments we are making today and which we expect to make over the next several months are appropriately setting the stage for us to consistently grow our portfolio over time, steadily increase our NII and ultimately create additional value for shareholders. We have the right team and a scalable platform in place and the backing of Monroe Capital, one of the premier asset management firms in the country. It is now incumbent upon us to execute, and we expect to do so in the quarters ahead as we take the Horizon platform to the next level. Turning to our specific results for the quarter. We grew our debt investment portfolio for the third consecutive quarter, funding 9 investments totaling $73 million, while our total portfolio size ended at $677 million. We generated net investment income, excluding nonrecurring onetime merger expenses, of $0.18 per share, which covered our regular distributions, while our NAV per share ended the quarter at $6.23 a share. Our NAV per share was down $0.75 per share for the quarter, primarily due to write-downs of one of our larger investments, which Paul will discuss later. Based on our outlook and our undistributed spillover income, our Board declared regular monthly distributions of $0.06 per share payable in October, November and December of 2026. Consistent with our announcement prior to the closing of the merger, our Board also declared special monthly distributions of $0.03 per share, also payable in October, November and December of 2026. As we prudently work to deploy the capital from the merger and move towards our target leverage, it remains our goal to deliver NII at or above our declared distributions over time. We achieved a portfolio yield on debt investments of just under 15% for the second quarter at or near the top of the BDC industry. We finished the quarter with a committed and approved backlog of $228 million, up $48 million from the prior quarter end. We repurchased approximately 1.4 million shares of our common stock in the quarter, reflecting the confidence we have in our near- and long-term outlook. Additionally, on August 3, our Board approved an increase in the amount of common stock that may be repurchased under the stock repurchase program to allow the company to repurchase up to an additional $20 million of common stock. And finally, we continue to win attractive venture debt and small-cap public company investments while building our pipeline of loan opportunities. Despite our challenges, we remain excited about what we are building at Horizon. We will execute on our strategic vision, creating a sustainable growth engine and increasing our NII and NAV over time. Again, we appreciate your continued interest and support in the Horizon Technology Finance platform. I will now turn the call over to our Chief Investment Officer, Paul Seitz, to give you the details of our second quarter results and progress. Paul?

Thanks, Mike, and good morning to everyone. Our team has been hard at work over the past few months in all facets of our business in originations, underwriting and credit to name a few, to position Horizon for sustainable and profitable growth on a consistent basis. We are making excellent progress and remain excited for our long-term future. At the end of the quarter, our current portfolio stood at $677 million as our third consecutive quarter of debt investment portfolio growth was offset by the write-downs of large investments in one portfolio company. As Mike alluded to in his remarks, we learned in June 2026 that one of our portfolio companies, Soli, had its equity raising plan significantly impacted by cash burn in excess of its projections following its $32.5 million equity raise completed in 2 phases, one at the end of March and the other at the first half of April. As a result, we wrote down our entire $20 million equity holding, which we obtained in August of last year when we converted a portion of our debt investment as part of Soli's strategic merger and receipt of significant equity investment. We also wrote down $19 million of our debt investment in the company. We are focused on recovering as much value as possible from these investments. In the second quarter, we funded 9 debt investments in our target sectors totaling $73 million. We also made considerable progress in further building our pipeline, including larger venture loan opportunities in our target sectors. One of those pipeline opportunities, StarCompliance, closed in July. In Q2, we increased our committed backlog by approximately $50 million from the end of Q1, which positions us well to further grow our portfolio in the quarters ahead. In Q3, we expect another quarter of debt investment portfolio growth driven by our current pipeline. Along with the loans we have already funded in the third quarter, we have also been awarded 4 new venture loan transactions, which represent $87 million in total commitments. We will continue to be disciplined in originating and underwriting new loans. During the second quarter, we experienced 3 loan prepayments totaling $39 million in prepaid principal. Our onboarding debt investment yield of 12% during the second quarter remained consistent with our historic levels. We expect to continue to generate strong onboarding yields with our current pipeline of opportunities, which we believe will generate strong net investment income over time. Our debt portfolio yield of 14.9% for the quarter was once again among the highest yielding debt portfolios in the BDC industry. Our ability to generate industry-leading yields continues to be a testament to our venture lending strategy and our execution of such strategy across various market cycles and interest rate environments. As of June 30, we held warrants, equity and other investments in 96 portfolio companies with a fair value of $28 million. During this quarter, we were pleased to realize proceeds of $2.3 million from the redemption of warrants and equity in 2 investments. Structuring investments with warrants and equity rights is a key component of our venture debt strategy and a potential generator of shareholder value. As mentioned, we ended the quarter with a committed backlog of $228 million compared to $180 million at the end of the first quarter. We believe our pipeline of investment opportunities, combined with our committed backlog with most of our funding commitments subject to companies achieving certain key milestones, provides a solid base to prudently grow our portfolio over time. One item to note is that we have revised our internal credit rating scale. Effective June 30, we changed our internal credit rating scale from a 4-to-1 scale where 4 represented the highest credit rating to a 1-to-5 scale where 1 now represents the highest credit rating. This change was made to align us with the scale used by Monroe Capital and to improve consistency and efficiency across our adviser and organization, especially as we make and anticipate continuing to make co-investments with Monroe. As of quarter end, under the new 1-to-5 scale, 88% of the fair value of our debt portfolio consisted of 1, 2 or 3 rated debt investments, while 12% of the fair value of our portfolio was rated 4 or 5. We continue to collaborate with all of our portfolio companies and utilizing a variety of strategies to optimize returns and create future value. Turning to the venture capital environment. According to PitchBook, approximately $146 billion was invested in VC-backed companies in the second quarter, the second-highest quarter on record after last quarter's record $267 billion. First half 2026 deal value is already 30% above the full year total for last year, with 6 months still to go. Nearly all the investment, 86%, consists of large investments in AI. The market remains significantly bifurcated with companies at the very top receiving the lion's share of capital. The story is not much different in the exit markets. SpaceX completed the largest IPO of all time with a $1.7 trillion valuation and potential IPOs from OpenAI and Anthropic later this year also have the potential to exit at trillion-dollar valuations. However, excluding SpaceX, exit value was more in line with prior quarters and the IPO market continues to remain relatively muted for non-AI companies as the current geopolitical and macro uncertainty continues. Despite the top-heavy market, we believe significant opportunities remain for venture loan originations in both life sciences and tech as evidenced by both our growing debt investment portfolio and increasing pipeline of opportunities. We continue to believe venture debt remains a compelling option for high-quality companies to access additional capital. It has been an active first few months at Horizon post-merger. We have a significantly stronger balance sheet. We've accelerated the building of our pipeline of opportunities, and we continue to grow our debt investment portfolio through originating venture debt to small-cap public loans to high-quality leading-edge companies. We are confident that we are setting the stage for sustainable growth, improved financial performance and creating value for shareholders. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Dan Trolio.

Thanks, Paul, and good morning, everyone. Following our merger with MRCC in April, with a significantly stronger balance sheet and a growing origination pipeline, we believe we are laying a strong foundation to deliver sustainable long-term growth and create additional value for our shareholders moving forward. As of June 30, we had $229 million in available liquidity, consisting of $135 million in cash and $94 million in funds available to be drawn under our existing credit facilities. As of June 30, we had no amount outstanding under our $150 million KeyBank credit facility, $181 million outstanding under our $250 million New York Life credit facility and $90 million outstanding on our $150 million Nuveen credit facility, leaving us with ample capacity to grow our portfolio of debt investments. Our debt-to-equity ratio stood at 0.97:1 as of June 30, and netting out cash on our balance sheet, our net leverage was 0.65:1, well below our target leverage. Based on our cash position and our borrowing capacity, our potential new investment capacity as of June 30 was $459 million. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 1.4 million shares of our common stock at an average price of $4.54 under our stock repurchase program. In addition, on August 3, 2026, our Board increased the amount of common stock that may be repurchased under the stock repurchase program to allow the company to repurchase up to a total of $20 million of common stock. We expect to remain opportunistic with respect to our stock repurchase program, given the dislocation between our current valuation and our confidence in the near- and long-term outlook of Horizon. Turning to our operating results. For the second quarter, we earned investment income of $25 million compared to $24.5 million in the prior year period, primarily due to higher interest income on our debt investment portfolio. Our debt investment portfolio on a net cost basis stood at $682 million as of June 30, up 4% compared to $655 million as of March 31, 2026. For the second quarter of '26, we achieved onboarding yields of 12%, in line with what we achieved in the first quarter of '26. Our loan portfolio yield was 14.9% for the second quarter compared to 15.8% for last year's second quarter. Total expenses for the quarter were $17.4 million compared to $12.7 million in the second quarter of '25 due primarily to $4.4 million of nonrecurring onetime expenses related to our completion of the merger with MRCC. Our interest expense of $7.8 million was $0.4 million lower than last year's second quarter, while our base management fee was $3.1 million, up $0.2 million from the prior year period. As a reminder, our adviser agreed to waive up to $4 million of base management fees and incentive fees, or $1 million a quarter, starting in Q3 2026. Net investment income for the second quarter of '26 was $0.11 per share compared to $0.19 per share in the first quarter of '26 and $0.28 per share for the second quarter of '25. Net investment income for the second quarter of '26 was reduced by $4.4 million, or $0.07 per share, by the nonrecurring onetime merger expenses. Excluding merger expenses, net investment income would have been $0.18 per share, which would have covered our regular distributions. The company's undistributed spillover income as of June 30 was $0.33 per share. Based upon our outlook and undistributed spillover income, our Board declared monthly distributions of $0.06 per share for October, November and December of '26. In concert with the Board's announced intent at the time of the MRCC merger, our Board also declared $0.03 per share special distributions, also payable in October, November and December of '26. We anticipate that our expanded capital base and available leverage, our expectation for growth and our predictive pricing strategy will enable us to generate NII that covers our distribution over time. To summarize our portfolio activities for the second quarter, new originations totaled $73 million, which were offset by $6 million in scheduled principal payments and $42 million in principal prepayments and partial paydowns. We ended the quarter with a total investment portfolio of $677 million. At June 30, the portfolio consisted of debt investments in 43 companies with an aggregate fair value of $648 million and a portfolio of warrant, equity and other investments in 96 companies with an aggregate fair value of $28 million. Our NAV as of June 30 was $6.23 per share compared to $6.98 per share on March 31 and compared to $6.75 as of June 30, 2025. The NAV reduction on a quarterly basis was primarily due to the write-downs related to our Soli investments that Paul previously discussed. As we've consistently noted, nearly 100% of the outstanding principal amount of our debt investments bear interest at floating rates. Of those investments, approximately 61% are already at their interest rate floors, which should mitigate the impact of any decline in interest rates. Conversely, rising interest rates will increase the earning income on 99% of our portfolio investments. This concludes our opening remarks. We'll be happy to take questions you may have at this time.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Melissa Wedel with UBS.

First, I wanted to say thanks for providing the detail that you can on the company-specific developments that drove that large write-down during the quarter. I'm curious, based on the way you characterized it, it sounds like it was pretty company-specific, but are there any other read-throughs that you have from that particular investment to other companies or industries?

Melissa, thanks for joining us today and nice to meet you, and this is Paul Seitz. Yes, we don't really discuss company details specifically per our policy. But what I could say about this event in particular is that this company faced some fundraising headwinds, and we're currently working through the process to maximize and recover as much value as possible.

Okay. One of the other things I wanted to follow up on now that the merger is in the rearview mirror, when you think about future activity and pipeline, you've talked about having the capacity to look at larger transactions. And I'm wondering if you could elaborate on that maybe. Are you looking for potentially slightly larger company exposure or bigger bite sizes? Or are you thinking about increasing portfolio diversification going forward?

Yes. I think all of that is in play. Given that we're part of Monroe, we have the ability to partner with them on certain deals and where that makes sense, we will definitely do that. The goal, obviously, is to grow the platform so that we can take larger bite sizes and larger tickets and deals, but also to be able to play into the growth phase and growth stage rather more. So I think all of that is in play. A diversified portfolio is always nice. Growing ticket sizes is nice, but we're always going to do what's best to make sense for the portfolio where we're at right now with a vision for the future that we can get to.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to management with Mike Balkin for closing comments.

Thank you all for joining us this morning. We appreciate your continued interest and support in Horizon, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon. This will conclude our call.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.