Earnings Labs

Main Street Capital Corporation (MAIN)

Q3 2013 Earnings Call· Fri, Nov 8, 2013

$54.50

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. And welcome to the Main Street Third Quarter Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] This conference is being recorded today, November 8, 2013. I would now like to turn the call over to Ben Burnham with Dennard-Lascar. Please go ahead.

Ben Burnham

Analyst

Thank you, Craig, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us for the Main Street Capital Corporation Third Quarter 2013 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today on the call are Chairman, President and CEO, Vince Foster; and Chief Financial Officer, Dwayne Hyzak. Main Street issued a press release yesterday afternoon that detailed the company's quarterly financial and operating results. This document is available on the Investor Relations section of the company's website at mainstcapital.com. A replay of today's call will be available beginning about an hour after the completion of the call, and will remain available until November 15. Information on how to access the replay is included in yesterday's press release. We also advise you that this conference call is being broadcast live through an Internet webcast that can be accessed on the company's web page. Please note that information reported on this call speaks only as of today, November 8, 2013, and therefore, you are advised that time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate at the time of any replay listening. Our conference call today will contain forward-looking statements. Many of these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as anticipates, believes, expects, intends, will, should, may and similar expressions. These statements are based on management's estimates, assumptions and projections as of the date of this call, and they are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results may differ materially from the results expressed or implied from these statements as a result of risks, uncertainties and other factors, including, but not limited to, the factors set forth in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which can be found on the company's website or at www.sec.gov. Main Street assumes no obligation to update any of these statements unless required by law. During today's call, management will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, including distributable net investment income and distributable net realized income. Please refer to yesterday's press release for reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. Certain information discussed on this call, including information related to portfolio companies, was derived from third-party sources and has not been independently verified. And now, I'll turn the call over to Vince.

Vincent D. Foster

Analyst

Thanks, Ben, and thank you all for joining us today. I will comment on the performance of our investment portfolio, discuss our recent dividend announcement and our dividend outlook, highlight our origination activity and conclude by commenting on our lower middle market pipeline. Following my comments, Dwayne will cover our operating performance in more detail and comment on our third quarter financial results, our current liquidity position and certain key portfolio, our metrics. After which, we will take your questions. Our investment portfolio produced solid results for the third quarter. Our lower middle market investments appreciated during the quarter by $14 million on a net basis, with 21 of our investments appreciating during the quarter and 14 depreciating. Our middle market and private loan investments appreciated by roughly $1 million during the quarter. We finished the quarter with a net asset value per share of $20.01, a sequential increase of $1.29 a share over the second quarter. Our lower middle market companies ended the quarter with a $115 million of cash on their balance sheets. They also continued to exhibit very conservative leverage and debt service coverage ratios, which Dwayne will cover in greater detail. We are pleased to report, we recently announced that our board declared an increase to $0.165 a month in our monthly dividend rate effective for the first quarter of 2014. We expect to ask our board to declare our semiannual supplemental dividend in the $0.20 to $0.25 a share range within the next 2 weeks. During the course of our last conference call, I referenced our spillover taxable income of $46 million at June 30. As of September 30, we estimate that our spillover taxable income remained at a consistent level at $45 million. In order to manage potential increases in this amount, stay in…

Dwayne Louis Hyzak

Analyst

Thanks, Vince. We are pleased to report another quarter with operating results that are consistent with our long-term goals of generating sustainable growth in our recurring investment income and continued appreciation of our net asset value per share. For the third quarter, our total investment income increased by 29% over the same period in 2012 to $29.7 million. This increase was primarily driven by a $5.8 million increase in interest income, associated with higher levels of portfolio debt investments, and a $900,000 increase in dividend income from our portfolio equity investments. Third quarter 2013 operating expenses, excluding noncash share-based compensation expense, increased by $3.3 million over the third quarter of prior year to a total of $10 million. The operating expense increase included a $2 million increase in interest expense, resulting primarily from our issuance of 10-year notes in April of this year and a higher average outstanding balance on our credit facility when compared to prior year. We also incurred higher compensation-related expenses of $700,000 and higher other general and administrative expenses of $600,000 in comparison to prior year. Our noncash share-based compensation expense in the third quarter increased by $1.5 million over the same period of prior year, primarily due to $1.3 million of nonrecurring expense associated with the accelerated vesting of unvested shares restricted stock as part of the retirement of our former executive Vice Chairman. The ratio of our total operating expenses, excluding interest expense and excluding the nonrecurring portion of our noncash share-based compensation expense, as a percentage of average total assets, which we believe is a key metric in evaluating our operating efficiency, was 1.6% on an annualized basis for the third quarter of 2013, which is consistent with this metric from the third quarter of 2012 and which continues to compare very favorably…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our first question does come from the line of Bryce Rowe with Robert W. Baird. Bryce W. Rowe - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: A couple of questions here, and the first one is kind of around just optimal leverage levels. Obviously, we've seen the debt-to-equity ratio come down on an overall basis, including the SBA, into the low 50% range. So trying to get a feel for where you see cost taking that leverage level?

Vincent D. Foster

Analyst

Yes, we're going to fund the next round of investments with debt. What really happened is we had the SBA debentures that were 7, 8, 9 years old coming due, and we wanted to refinance those. It was not completely clear how to do that in terms of timing, et cetera, with SBA. It was kind of a new issue to us, a new issue to them. And so we went ahead and did the equity offering. It turns out we could go ahead and repay those debentures themselves. We ended up kind of with a temporary lower debt level than we think is optimal. But I think you'll see us return to normal leverage levels. There's not -- we haven't had a change of philosophy. It's just kind of the coincidence of those 2 things. Bryce W. Rowe - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: Okay. And then just around, I guess, that repayment with the SBA, obviously, you frame it as a re-optimization of the duration of the SBA debentures.

Vincent D. Foster

Analyst

Yes, and rates as well. Bryce W. Rowe - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: And rates as well. I mean, are they -- is the SBA sensitive to the rate side of that equation? Does it need to be with the duration optimization? Is that being narrowed?

Vincent D. Foster

Analyst

They are rate-insensitive. It's just a -- it's a market mechanism, and the sensitivity is more around -- it's really not sensitivity, it's just trying to come up with a protocol for someone like us who's relatively unique who is in a refinancing position as opposed to having a permanent fund. It's unusual on the program to refinance. Bryce W. Rowe - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division: Right, okay. And then I guess last question, more technical, I assume the draws so far this quarter, it hasn't pulled yet and no pull in early March. Is that correct?

Vincent D. Foster

Analyst

That's correct. Either early March or early April, I don't remember. So we're just -- we're borrowing at about 1% until then.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our next question does come from the line of Robert Dodd with Raymond James. Robert J. Dodd - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division: Just looking at the lower middle market where you've seen, obviously, a high level of activity so far and there's still quite a bit of pipeline. Are you seeing anything change -- obviously, I mean, change in terms of term. I mean, we've heard of a bit further up in the middle market private equity, but for somewhat larger companies. It's -- some of the multiples never got quite aggressive. I mean, that's not normally the strategy plan, but is any of that creeping down into some of the transactions you're all looking at in terms of basically at this pricing being mature. It doesn't look like, obviously, on the leverage levels, but any color you could give us on that?

Vincent D. Foster

Analyst

That's a good question, Robert, and it's really not a function of the overall market. But as we've kind of commented on in the past, when you are transacting with a $3 million or $4 million EBITDA company, you can get that transaction completed at -- maybe in between 4.5x and 5x EBITDA for your enterprise value. As you start looking at a $7 million, $8 million, $9 million EBITDA company, then you're probably transacting at, like, 5.5x level. And so we've had some enterprise value creep probably less than a multiple. That's what we've noticed and that's kind of always been the case, and we've expected that. And what you hope you're getting as an offset for that slightly higher price is a higher-quality company, less team and dependency in management, less customer concentration, stuff like that. I haven't seen any impact to point of view in terms of the overall "market."

Dwayne Louis Hyzak

Analyst

I agree with Vince. The other thing to always remember, Robert, that our structure is highly unique. We are providing both the debt and equity. We're not just competing with people on a pure leverage buyout or other kind of change of controlled transaction. You put this in a different part of the market from a competitive standpoint because there's a significantly fewer number of players that will provide that highly structured solution. Robert J. Dodd - Raymond James & Associates, Inc., Research Division: Yes, absolutely. Understood. Just kind of a follow-up on that, with a pretty strong pipeline, obviously, this year, that doesn't seem or make changes obviously to be kind of accretive in terms of things needing to be done by the end of the year. So do you expect things to just kind of -- we'll have a solid Q4 and maybe not have the step change, Q4 to Q1, in terms of activities that we've seen last year?

Vincent D. Foster

Analyst

Yes, I think if you are a seller, Robert, the difference between transacting in December and January is merely a few months deferral in paying your capital gains tax. The capital gains tax is now at 23.8% for those dollars. So having to pay it in December versus maybe a quarter or 2 later, depending on how they make their estimated payments and file the returns, that doesn't really change anything. Actually, what we really like to do is transact around the quarter end or year end so you don't have short-period tax returns and interim accounting accruals and difficulty in measuring working capital and stuff like that. So you'll see a lot of activity for us attempted to be transacted around quarter end.

Operator

Operator

And at this time, there are no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to management for any closing comments.

Vincent D. Foster

Analyst

Great. Well, thank you all for joining us, and we look forward to speaking to you again early next year.