Tanner Powell
Analyst · Terry Ma with Barclays
Thanks, Howard. Beginning with the environment, middle market lending remains competitive and issuers continue to take advantage of this environment. Most deals continue to have aggressive structures and pricing. This borrower-friendly environment is due in large part to robust capital formation in the middle market debt space. Despite this challenging environment, we believe the combination of our strong origination platform, broad product suite, and deep sponsor relationships allows us to compete more successfully than many others. We believe that given our size relative to our funnel of investment opportunities, we can find attractive opportunities in today's market. That said, we expect only to put capital work if it makes sense for our shareholders in the long-term. We remain focused on credit selection, while patiently deploying capital. We continue to be pleased with our progress executing on our portfolio repositioning strategy. In this competitive environment, we are focused on opportunities that capitalize on Apollo's scale and areas of expertise, and can also take advantage of our ability to co-invest with other funds and entities managed by Apollo. In total, we deployed $359 million during the quarter. The weighted average yield on debt investments made was 9.4%, and excluding Merx, was 8.6%. Excluding Merx and revolver activity, we deployed $200 million, of which 59% was in transactions made pursuant to our co-investment order and were roughly evenly split between corporate lending, life science lending and asset-based lending transactions. AINV co-invested with MidCap in all of these transactions. We believe that our ability to co-invest with the broader Apollo platform improves our competitive positioning by allowing us to compete more based on size and certainty of execution rather than just on price. We believe that the scale of AINV and MidCap and other Apollo-managed capital on a combined basis makes us one of the largest market participants uniquely positioned to take on large commitments. Let me provide a couple of examples from the quarter, which demonstrates the benefits we are deriving from our ability to co-invest. First, the Apollo platform provided the entire $575 million credit facility for the take-private of Analogic, a company that provides advanced imaging components and ultrasound medical devices. The platform syndicated a portion of the commitment, allowing us to generate additional fees. AINV's final hold size was 40 million. For our second co-investment example, the Apollo platform underwrote a 345 million senior secured credit facility for Eagle Family Foods, a leading domestic manufacturer of canned milk, popcorn, and other salty snack products. Proceeds were used to refinance the entirety of Eagle's capital structure. AINV committed to 29 million of the facility. Away from co-investments, we deployed approximately 91 million into Merx Aviation to facilitate the buyout of junior interests in two aircraft securitizations, one of which was refinanced during the quarter at more favorable terms. Merx has taken over servicing responsibility for these two securitizations covering 45 aircraft. Aircraft servicing represents a new source of income for Merx. This is a natural progression as Merx has continued to grow it to a full-service aircraft leasing platform. Over time, we expect Merx to pursue additional servicing opportunities, which should enhance its operating performance and increase its enterprise value. Subsequent to quarter-end, Merx repaid approximately 46.5 million to AINV, thus reducing our exposure. At the end of June, AINV's investment in Merx was $503 million, representing 20.1% of the portfolio at fair value. Pro forma for the repayment, AINV's investment in Merx is approximately 456 million or 18.6% of the portfolio at fair value. As Howard mentioned, sales and repayment activity was modest. The weighted average yield on debt sales was 11.2%, and the weighted average yield on debt repayments was 9.1%. Moving to the portfolio's performance. Our oil and gas portfolio, including our hedge, had a net loss of $13.9 million and was essentially flat, including the impact of the hedge. A small part of the decline was due to a 4.3 million write-down on our investment in Glacier, due to lower-than-expected yield on a new site being drilled by the company. Most of the negative variance was due to an uptick in oil prices at the end of the quarter negatively impacting the value of the oil hedge. Because it is price-moved, the value of the hedge, which is based on short-term prices, moved down, while the lagging indicators used to value the oil and gas positions on longer-term consensus used did not move as much by the end of the quarter. During the quarter and post quarter-end, we have taken steps to reduce our hedge exposure by: one, reducing our hedge in conjunction with hedging strategies at the underlying companies; and two, repositioning the remaining hedge exposure to NAV more closely to the long-term valuation measures used to value our companies. Since quarter-end, the value of our hedge has improved given the movement in the price of oil. Moving on, during the quarter, we recorded a net loss of 12.5 million or $0.06 a share, during the period on our unsecured debt and equity investments in American Tire. During the quarter, the entire American Tire capital structure traded off significantly due to the recently announced loss of two major tire suppliers, which is expected to materially and negatively impact American Tire's profitability, its ability to service its debt obligations and its ability to refinance its capital structure at maturity. The two suppliers, Bridgestone and Goodyear, recently announced they're forming a joint distribution partnership, and for that reason, dropped American Tire as a distributor of their products. Given the outlook for the company, we exited our debt investment in American Tire. Now, let me spend a few minutes discussing overall credit quality. No investments were placed on or removed from nonaccrual status. At the end of June, investments on nonaccrual status represented 2.3% of the portfolio at fair value and 3% at cost. The risk profile of our portfolio is measured by the weighted average leverage and the interest coverage for our portfolio companies was relatively unchanged compared to the prior quarter. The current weighted average net leverage of our investments increased to 5.6x, up from 5.5x. The current weighted average interest coverage decreased to 2.3x, down from 2.5x. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Greg, who will discuss the financial performance for the quarter.