Earnings Labs

Investcorp Credit Management BDC, Inc. (ICMB)

Q4 2016 Earnings Call· Wed, Aug 31, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the CM Finance Fourth Quarter Earnings Release Conference Call. Your speakers for today’s call are Mike Mauer, Chris Jansen, and Rocco DelGuercio. [Operator Instructions] A question-and-answer session will follow the presentation. I’ll now turn the call over to your speakers. You may begin.

Mike Mauer

Analyst · Raymond James. Please state your question

Thank you, Operator. Thank you all for joining us today. With me today are Chris Jansen, my Co-Chief Investment Officer, and Rocco DelGuercio, our CFO. Before we begin, Rocco will first give you our customary disclaimer regarding information and forward-looking statements. Rocco?

Rocco DelGuercio

Analyst

Thanks Mike. I would like to remind everyone that today’s call is being recorded, and that it is the property of CM Finance, Inc., any unauthorized broadcast of this call in any form is strictly prohibited. Audio replay of the call will be available by using the telephone numbers provided in our press release announcing this call. I’d also like to call your attention to the Safe Harbor disclosure in our press release regarding forward-looking information, and remind everyone that today’s call may also include forward-looking statements and projections. We ask that you refer to our most recent 10-K filing for important factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from these projections. We will not update our forward-looking statements unless required by law. To obtain copies of our latest SEC filings, please visit our website at www.cmfn-inc.com. At this time, I’d like to return the call back to our Chairman and CEO, Mike Mauer.

Mike Mauer

Analyst · Raymond James. Please state your question

Thank you, Rocco. As we discussed on our conference call back in May, Rocco DelGuercio has joined as our new CFO and effective tomorrow, our Chief Compliance Officer. Rocco joins us from Credit Suisse with over 30 years experience, focused on both registered investment companies and compliance. I’m going to begin today’s call with a discussion of the leveraged finance market. I’ll then turn the call over to Chris to walk through our portfolio activity in the quarter, and Rocco will speak about our financial results. I will conclude with a discussion of our portfolio. Leveraged finance new issue volumes increased in the second quarter. As we often see, this coincided with tightening spreads and more borrower-friendly terms for debt documentation. Opportunistic refinancing activity, loan re-pricings and dividend recaps have returned. The average leverage multiple of new loans continues to increase, with some notable high multiple outliers leveraged well beyond what we were seeing even six months ago. Supply demand for debt is rarely imbalanced and the market tends to overshoot in both directions. In the broadly syndicated market, over two thirds of the issuance is covenant-lite and what LCD terms opportunistic transactions represented 46% of total issuance for the quarter. As middle market investors, we are somewhat insulated from some of the activity observed in the larger leveraged finance market. But over time, middle market does see the effect of the trends in the broadly syndicated loans. We are extremely selective in making our new investments passing on a number of deals due to structural considerations. The middle market continues to present an enormous set of opportunities for investors. While everyone’s definition of middle market is a bit different, we all agree it’s a broad and essential part of the business landscape in America. According to National Center on Middle Market, there are nearly 200,000 companies in the middle market. These companies need capital for growth to finance working capital to buy assets and to be acquired by sponsors. Non-bank lenders like us have the flexibility to lend on constrained by the OCC and FDIC and can structure deals that make sense for all parties involved. We’re excited by opportunities we see in the primary and the secondary markets. And as such, we have discipline to be patience and wait for the right borrower structure and terms before we deploy our capital. I’d now like to turn the call over to Chris to discuss our investment activity.

Chris Jansen

Analyst · Raymond James. Please state your question

Thanks Mike. We made three new investments during the quarter, although you will note two of these in our 10-K. I’ll explain that momentarily. We also had two investment realizations which included one of our three new investments. First, I’ll go through our new portfolio investments. As I mentioned on our last conference call, we invested in the first lien loan of Premier Global Services or PGI. PGI is a leading global provider of conferencing and collaboration solutions. This loan backs the LBO of the Company by Siris Capital. We also invested in School Specialty’s first lien loan. School Specialty is a leading distributor supplies and products to the K-12 school marketplace in the United States. Our yielded cost on this investment is approximately 10.7%. Our final new investment in the quarter was in the second lien loan for MW Industries. MWI designed to manufacture springs and fasteners. We got a small allocation in the process and we evaluate our ability to grow the position to a meaningful hold size. Ultimately, we decided to sell the position at our cost making MWI one of our two realizations during the quarter. As we sold before the loan funded, there were no cash flows and as such there is no IRR to report. Our other investment realization in the quarter was RegionalCare, which I spoke about on our last conference call. Our second lien loan was repaid at its 101 call premium in connection with Apollo’s decision to merge RegionalCare with Capella Healthcare. A realized IRR was 14.4%. Since quarter-end, we’ve had additional investment activity. Our second lien loan to Maxim Crane was repaid at its 101 call premium. Maxim was acquired by Apollo and merged with AmQuip Crane. Our realized IRR is 10.3%. The newly merged company, which combined Maxim and…

Rocco DelGuercio

Analyst

Thanks Chris. For the quarter, our net investment income was $4.4 million or $0.32 per share. As of June 30, the fair value of our portfolio was $272.1 million compared to $276.5 million at March 31. Our investment activity accounts for $4.6 million decline in our portfolio offset by a positive $200,000 increase in our net change in our marks. In our earnings release, you will note that we have reported our portfolio yield two ways. Historically, we have not included the effect of scheduled amortization payments in our yield calculation. However, scheduled par repayments are of increasing importance to us on how we think about yield, especially as we have made several first lien investments at a discount to par in recent months. We believe that calculating our portfolio yield with amortization included fairly represents how we think about yield in the context of our -- in our investment process. Going forward, this will be the yield that we will be reporting in our earnings release. As of June 30, weighted average yield of our debt portfolio at amortized cost without amortization was 9.57% compared to 9.71% at March 31, and 10.91% at June 30 2015. Weighted average yield of our debt portfolio including amortization was 9.8% at June 30, 2016, compared to 9.9% at March 31, 2016. Our debt portfolio was comprised of 88% floating rate and 12% fixed rate investments. Our average portfolio company investment was approximately $12.4 million and our largest portfolio company investment was $29 million. 57.7% of our portfolio is in first lien investment and 42.2% of our investments are second lien and we currently do not hold any unsecured investments. Additional information regarding the compensation of our portfolio is included in our Form 10-K filed yesterday. With respect to our liquidity, we had $18.4 million in cash, $18 million in restricted cash and $19.5 million of capacity under our $50 million revolving credit facility as of June 30th. We were 0.81 times levered as of June 30th, compared to 0.83 times levered at March 31. With that I will turn the call back over to Mike.

Mike Mauer

Analyst · Raymond James. Please state your question

Thanks Rocco. While our net fair value change this quarter was small, we had five investments whose fair values changed by over $0.5 million and two of these changed by over $1 million. I would like to go through each of these briefly. AM General, JAC Holdings and YRC all increased in value this quarter. AM General manufactures the iconic Humvee for military applications and it is also a contract manufacturer of the R-Class Mercedes Benz. JAC manufactures OEM roof rack systems for cars and light trucks. Both companies benefited from robust consumer demand. YRC Worldwide is a large less-than-truckload carrier; both YRC and AM General also benefited from tightening spreads in the broad syndicated market. As these two loans are more liquid than most of our holdings, market moves are in more significant input to fair values for these loans than for some of our other investments. Trident and Endemol were marked down in the quarter, both of these loans are performing, both are second lien loans. Trident is a health care company providing outsourced imaging and lab services. Leverage has increased since the time of our investment and Trident’s results have been behind budget, although their revenue and EBITDA have been stable over that time. Endemol is a company, I spoke about before. Our investment is the second lien in is listed in the scheduled investments under the name AP NMT Acquisition BV. It is a large independent TV programming company owned by Fox and Apollo. It produces both scripted and reality TV content. Like Trident, leverage is higher than our average portfolio company and results have been modestly behind budget and our mark reflects that. Our marks on our positions in the energy space did not change materially in the quarter. The price of oil has improved…

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will conduct the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Robert Dodd from Raymond James. Please state your question.

Robert Dodd

Analyst · Raymond James. Please state your question

On Bird and AAR for the non-accruals, what -- thank you for the color on those. What needs to happen for those -- since I actually come back on the call, is it -- obviously drilling activity, but is there restructuring underway where they could come back to a performing level even without the oil price rising or is it purely a function of activity in those basins and increase in oil price at this point?

Mike Mauer

Analyst · Raymond James. Please state your question

Let me answer that, Robert; thank you for the question. And thank you for the attention around these, because I think that we feel better than we have in quite a while about both these credits, but we also are a bit patient in a way we’re approaching those investments. So, there is two answers and first is do either of them need restructuring to the capital structure? The answer is on Bird, I am not sure that it does. I think that the most critical thing for Bird is to see sustained oil prices in the environment that we’re in, I’ll call that 45 plus or minus, anywhere in the 40 to 50, and as we break 50, it becomes even better. But it’s $25 to $35 that we saw early this year that is non-constructive and is non-sustainable from a Bird perspective or an AAR perspective. But I think the energy market and the oil level is the most important thing to see for Bird over the medium to longer term. On AAR, the debt load is a bit higher, so there maybe some restructuring there. I don’t think it will be significant. There is constructive dialogues that are going on. But again, that gets back to really the underpinning long-term is where is the oil price. And we have seen a pickup in activities for AAR. We have seen scheduled discussion of -- scheduled standing up of rigs in this $45 plus or minus environment in the DJ Basin. And so from our perspective, it’s making sure that we have a capital structure and their current cash flows can support the business, while we are not accruing, and we will be able to start accruing over the medium term assuming that there is a sustained oil environment around where we are. Hopefully that answers your question.

Robert Dodd

Analyst · Raymond James. Please state your question

That does answer the question. Thank you. Another one on -- not a non-performing asset, a good asset here, land holding. So, that’s carried above par, presume prepayment penalty. I think if I remember right, it went into 102 down from I think above that before the end of June. What do you think the probability of asset repaying is because obviously it’s a fairly pretty good yield, pretty good size and nice prepayment penalty as well if it happens but what do you think the probability that’s been through the end of the year?

Mike Mauer

Analyst · Raymond James. Please state your question

Well, let me answer, there are couple of ways. As you probably are aware, we normally do not just in our script go through any partial pay downs; we wait until we fully realize. Land holding is one where we have received a partial pay down in July. The partial pay down was approximately 50% of it, $11.98 million at the premium; the IRR on that piece realized was a little over 15%. And we are in the process of -- we have got two or three things that hopefully over the next four to six weeks we will reinvest in. I don’t want -- one of those is similar yield first lien category; the others are first liens also but more in line with the investments that Chris talked about in the 10% to 11% range. So, land holdings right now, the debt -- the total debt Chris is 30?

Chris Jansen

Analyst · Raymond James. Please state your question

Yes, altogether is about 50 [multiple speakers]

Mike Mauer

Analyst · Raymond James. Please state your question

Including the [multiple speakers] And the term debt is 30.

Chris Jansen

Analyst · Raymond James. Please state your question

30

Mike Mauer

Analyst · Raymond James. Please state your question

Which we are first lien against all of the plant and property; the equipment has a separate lien which is on top of that 30 and the cost base is well in excess of $200 million on that $30 million that we have advanced. So, we love that loan. And I think to your point, at some point, they will refinance it. But we think that at this point, they have not given any signs that it’s going to happen soon. And that has brought down our gaming exposure little bit further.

Robert Dodd

Analyst · Raymond James. Please state your question

Thank you for the color and congratulation for the stable quarter.

Mike Mauer

Analyst · Raymond James. Please state your question

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Greg Mason from Ares Management. Please state your question.

Greg Mason

Analyst · Ares Management. Please state your question

Great, good afternoon guys, appreciate you taking my questions. Just had a question on your comments about looking at the dividend related to long-term net investment income, being able to cover that? And if we look at this quarter, you had $0.32 of NII versus the $0.35 dividend and you didn’t have any incentive fees. Can you just walk us through just some of your -- without giving guidance but just seems like those two numbers seem to be far away from each other as you look at having the dividend being covered by NII over the long run?

Mike Mauer

Analyst · Ares Management. Please state your question

Well, I’ll just say Greg you’re right. Without giving guidance and without -- that’s why I tried to walk through it the way I did, which is we feel pretty comfortable about the dividend level for the September and December quarters at this point. And we are going to look during December and into the first quarter of 2017 at that level, and that is a Board level discussion. And we have started that discussion and education about where the market is, where we are, where our portfolio is. And so that is something that will develop over that time. But beyond that, I would be giving more guidance than I think is appropriate right now.

Greg Mason

Analyst · Ares Management. Please state your question

Okay. And then, just as we think about modeling the earnings going forward, if we look at the current dividend on the current book value of 11.90, it’s a 11.8% return on book equity. Others have written about the kind of the mass to meet that work. And I think, you probably have to do like 13 plus percent type of yields. You did 10.6% yields this quarter; I think that’s been pretty stable over the last few quarters. Just your views as we go into year-end, what you’re saying in terms of yield opportunities, is there an opportunity to do greater than kind of the mid 10% asset yields or is this kind of the appropriate level for the risk you guys are targeting?

Mike Mauer

Analyst · Ares Management. Please state your question

Our target right now is in that mid-10, I will call it 10 to 11. There are a couple we’re looking at that there in the 8.5 to 9.5 that are secured four, five times by assets that we love, first lien and there is another one that’s 12.5% to 13%. Okay? But on an average, I think the 10 to 11 is appropriate.

Greg Mason

Analyst · Ares Management. Please state your question

Okay, great. And then, one last question, your comments on the incentive fees coming back in Q1, are they not being paid now because of the three-year look back or because of the target dividend that you gave at the IPO?

Mike Mauer

Analyst · Ares Management. Please state your question

It is zero today because of the three-year look back. It would be partially earned, not fully earned without that.

Greg Mason

Analyst · Ares Management. Please state your question

And then, so, to that end, given that’s a three-year look back and some of the issues happened in 2015, can you help us think about why that kind of kicks back in, in Q1 of 2017, so that be kind of two years into the three-year look back?

Mike Mauer

Analyst · Ares Management. Please state your question

Yes, because we had excess capacity in that look back going into December quarter. And we -- as a result of the write downs, we use some of that excess plus we dipped into trigger the look back. Because there is a maximum you can payout, and we weren’t paying out the maximum prior to December last year.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time.

Mike Mauer

Analyst · Raymond James. Please state your question

Operator, thank you. And we’d like to thank everyone for taking the time and calling in. And as always, we are available. Thank you.