Edward Goldthorpe
Analyst · Evercore
Thank you, Jim. The U.S. leverage finance market for the March quarter was strong due to better economic data, easing concerns on Europe and improved investor confidence. Despite strong new issuance, credit spreads tightened during the quarter as many fixed income investors rotated out of treasuries, seeking higher return in other fixed income asset classes. At March 31, the yield of the BofA Merrill Lynch CCC index was 12%, down 220 basis -- 226 basis points since December 31. Since the end of the quarter and particularly in May, the credit markets have softened somewhat as concerns about Europe have worsened. This quarter ended through yesterday, the yield on the CCC index has risen 67 basis points to 12.6%. Moving to our investment strategy, we believe that BDCs are very well-positioned to fill the void that exist in today's lending environment due to increased regulation and capital requirements for banks and other capital providers as a result of the credit crisis, as well as due to having permanent capital unlike other debt providers. Given this opportunity set, we acknowledge the need to broaden our investment strategy, including enhancing our proprietary origination efforts and increasing our exposure to senior secured debt. We expect to benefit from the increasing spreads between illiquid and liquid risk in today's marketplace. We're methodically working to transition our portfolio, but we will continue to monitor the high-yield market as well. In addition to diversifying more investment strategies, we intend to better leverage the Apollo Global platform, improve the utilization of our 30% investment bucket and strike a better balance between portfolio liquidity and volatility. Many of you have asked what the portfolio will look like going forward. While we don't know with certainty, I will provide you some potential ranges of our portfolio composition. Looking ahead 2 or 3 years, I expect our exposure to subordinated debt to decrease to about half the portfolio. First lien, stretch senior or other loans could be around 20% to 30%, equity around 5% or 10% and other investments, which can include our energy or collateral-based lending of around 10%. We're constantly optimizing our portfolio and looking to sell positions opportunistically and reinvest in other strategies. In fact, our recently established energy team in Houston has made 2 energy investments subsequent to quarter end. Moving to our investment portfolio, given the liquidity in our portfolio and our intention to broaden our investment strategy, during the quarter, we prudently sold some of our lower-yielding investments at or near par and reinvested those proceeds into other strategies, which we believe have more attractive risk return. With that said, during the quarter ended March 31, we invested $147 million in 4 new and 7 existing portfolio companies. We also received $218 million of proceeds from selected sales and $121 million from prepayments. Approximately 94% of the proceeds from sales and prepayments were from second lien, subordinated and equity investments. The yield on new investments was 11.4% and the yield on investments that were sold or repaid was 10.1%. This resulted in an increase in the overall yield of our debt portfolio to 11.9% compared to 11.7% at December 31. We will continue to rotate out of our -- some of our subordinated debt investments into other strategies that have more attractive risk-adjusted returns. We estimate that our current portfolio has approximately $1 billion of investments that could readily be sold at or near our current mark in today's environment. Before I discuss the specific changes to our portfolio for the quarter, I'd like to briefly discuss the portfolio activity for the full year. The full fiscal -- for the fiscal year ended March 2012, we invested $1.5 billion and we received $1.6 billion from sales and prepayments, of which more than half was coming from prepayments. We do not expect this high level of prepayments to continue in fiscal 2013. I will now take you through some specific portfolio activity for the quarter. Regarding new portfolio companies, we invested $20 million in the first lien bank debt of Aventine Renewable Energy, which is the fifth largest ethanol producer in the United States. We also invested $15 million in the notes of SOPHIA Finance, which is the leading provider of ERP software solutions and professional business services to higher education institutions throughout North America. We also invested $11.3 million in the dip term loan facility of Eastman Kodak, which provides imaging technology products and services to the photographic and graphic communications worldwide. During the quarter, investments were made in the following existing portfolio companies: $45 million in the second lien bank debt of Asurion Corporation, $26 million in the senior unsecured term loan of Lonestar Intermediate Super Holdings and $14.6 million in Intelsat, and we invested approximately $12 million in other existing portfolio companies. Notable exits for the quarter included our investments in N.E.W. Holdings LLC, National Healing Corporation and Babson CLO, amongst others. I'd now like to review some general portfolio statistics at March 31. We continue to be well diversified by issuer and industry with 62 portfolio companies invested in 30 different industries. The company's total investment portfolio had a fair market value of $2.7 billion, with 4% in first lien senior secured loans, 26% in second lien senior secured loans, 60% in subordinated debt and 10% in common and preferred equity measured at fair value. As I previously mentioned, the weighted average yield on our overall debt portfolio at current cost at March 31 rose to 11.9% compared to 11.7% at December 31. The weighted average yield on our subordinated debt portfolio rose to 12.7% compared to 12.6% from the prior quarter. And the weighted average yield on our senior loan portfolio rose to 10.2% compared to 9.7% at December 31. Since the initial public offering of Apollo Investment Corporation in April 2004 and through March 31, 2012, our invested capital was totaled over $8.8 billion and 166 portfolio companies in transactions with more than 100 different financial sponsors. At March 31, the weighted average EBITDA of our portfolio companies continued to exceed $250 million and the weighted average cash interest coverage of the portfolio remained at over 2x. Regarding our risk rating, the average -- the weighted average risk rate of our total portfolio improved 2.2x compared to 2.3x measured at cost at December 31, 2011, and 2.1x compared to 2.2x measured at fair value at December 31, 2011. With that, I will turn the call over to Eileen to further elaborate on some of our recent strategic accomplishments.