Earnings Labs

New Mountain Finance Corporation 8.250% Notes due 2028 (NMFCZ)

Q3 2013 Earnings Call· Tue, Nov 12, 2013

$25.52

-0.43%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to the New Mountain Finance Corporation, third quarter 2013 earnings call and webcast. All participants will be in listen-only mode. (Operator Instructions). I would now like to turn the conference over to Rob Hamwee, CEO. Mr. Hamwee, please go ahead.

Rob Hamwee

Management

Thank you and good morning everyone. With me here today are Steve Klinsky, Chairman of NMFC and CEO of New Mountain Capital; and Dave Cordova, CFO of NMFC. Steve Klinsky is going to make some introductory remarks, but before he does, I’d like to ask Dave to make some important statements regarding today's call.

Dave Cordova

Management

Thank you, Rob. I would like to advice everyone that today's call and webcast are being recorded. Please note that they are the property of New Mountain Finance Corporation and that any unauthorized broadcast in any form is strictly prohibited. Information about the audio replay of this call is available in our earnings press release. I would also like to call your attention for the customary Safe Harbor disclosure in our November 12, 2013 press release and on page two of the slide presentation regarding forward-looking statements. Today's conference call and webcast may include forward-looking statements and projections, and we ask that you refer to our most recent filings with the SEC for important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those statements and projections. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements or projections unless required by law. Any references to New Mountain Capital or New Mountain are referring to New Mountain Capital LLC or its affiliates and may be referring to our investment advisor, New Mountain Finance Advisers BDC, L.L.C. where appropriate. To obtain copies of our latest SEC filings and to access the slide presentation that we will be referencing throughout this call, please visit our website at www.newmountainfinance.com or call us at 212-720-0300. At this time, I’d like to turn the call over to Steve Klinsky, the Chairman of New Mountain Finance Corporation, who will give some highlights beginning on page four of the slide presentation. Steve.

Steve Klinsky

Management

Thanks everybody. Before turning the call back over to Rob and Dave, I wanted to welcome you all to New Mountain Finance Corporation's third quarter earnings call for 2013. Rob and Dave will go through the details, but I'm once again pleased to present the highlights of another strong quarter for new Mountain Finance. New Mountain Finance's pro-forma adjusted net investment income for the quarter ended September 30, 2013 was $0.35 per share at the high end of our previously announced range of $0.33 to $0.35 per share and which more that covers our previously announced Q3 dividend of $0.34 per share. The company's book value on September 30 was $14.32 per share, which is unchanged from last quarter, even after paying out the $0.12 special dividend in August. We're also able to announce our regular dividend for the current quarter ending December 31, 2013. The regular dividend will again be $0.34 per share, consistent with our previously communicated view that we have reached a fully ramped steady state dividend level. The credit quality of the company’s loan portfolio continues to be strong, with once again no new loans placed on non-accrual this quarter. We have had only one issuer default since October 2008 when the debt effort began, representing less than 0.3% of cumulative investments made to-date. The company invested $87 million in gross originations in Q3 and has closed and committed another $73 million since quarter end, keeping us fully invested and leveraged. Targeted yields on new investments continue to be consistent with our previously communicated expectations. Our portfolio continues to emphasize positions in recession resistant, acyclical industries pursuant to New Mountain's overall strengths and strategy. We continue to be very pleased with the progress of New Mountain Finance to-date and we are pleased to address you as fellow shareholders, as well as management. With that, let me turn the call over to Rob Hamwee, New Mountain Finance Corporation's Chief Executive Office.

Rob Hamwee

Management

Thank you, Steve. As always I’d like to start with a brief review of NMFC and our strategy. As outlined on page five of our presentation, NMFC is externally managed by New Mountain Capital, a leading private equity firm with more than $9 billion of assets under management and approximately 100 staff members, including nearly 60 investment professionals. NMFC takes New Mountains approach to private equity and applies it to corporate credit with a consistent focus on defensive growth business models and extensive fundamental research. Some of the key hallmarks of defensive growth business models include acyclicality, sustainable secular growth drivers, high barriers to competitive entry, niche market dominant, repetitive revenue, variable cost structures, and strong free cash flow. With this historically successful, business model focused approach in mind, our mandate since the inception of New Mountains debt investment program in 2008 has been to primarily target what we believe to be high quality businesses that demonstrate most or all of the defensive growth attributes that are important to us, and to do so with an industry that are already well researched by New Mountain or more simply put, we invest in recession resistant businesses that we really know and that we really like it. We believe this approach results in a differentiated and sustainable model that will allow us to generate attractive risk adjusted rates of return across change in cycles and market condition. To achieve our mandate, we utilize the existing New Mountain investment team as our primary underwriting resource. Turning to page six, you can see our total return performance from our IPO in May 2011 to November 8, 2013. We continue to be very pleased with both our absolute and relative return performance. As outlined on page seven, credit spreads were generally tighter since our last…

Dave Cordova

Management

Thank you Rob. For more details on the financial results and today's commentary, please refer to the Form 10-Q that was filed this morning with the SEC. Before we turn to Slide 20, I want to mention that we have included a structured chart as Appendix A in the presentation. Similar to prior calls, I will spend a moment reviewing the company’s structure as a brief refresher. The structure was set up similar to an UPREIT structure, whereby the public company Pubco has no direct operations of its own and its sole asset is its units of our operating business OpCo. The other units of OpCo are held by a private BDC owned by New Mountain’s private equity fund, AIV Holdings. This structure is a master feeder, whereby the financial statements for OpCo are allocated pro rata to Pubco and AIV Holdings based on their respective ownership. All discussion throughout this call and presentation is focused on OpCo and its operations. Additionally, OpCo owns the equity of a non-recourse vehicle, the SLF. This vehicle originates lower yielding first lien loans, but with greater leverage at 2:1. For GAAP asset coverage and presentation purposes, we consolidate this SLF vehicle into the operations of OpCo. Now I would like to turn your attention to Slide 20. The OpCo portfolio had approximately $1.04 billion in investments at fair value at September 30, 2013. We had approximately $17.6 million of cash and about $18.3 million of other assets, which includes approximately $11.1 million of interest in dividends receivable, much of which we've already received; $4.8 million of deferred credit facility costs. These costs get amortized over the life of our credit facilities, $0.3 million receivable from affiliates, and $2.1 million of other assets, including deferred offering costs and other prepaid expenses and assets. We…

Rob Hamwee

Management

Thanks Dave. Well, once again we do not plan to give explicit forward guidance. It continues to remain our intention to consistently pay the $0.34 per share on a quarterly basis for future quarters, so long as the adjusted NII covers the dividend in line with our current expectations. In closing, I would just like to say that we continue to be extremely pleased with our performance to-date. Most importantly, from a credit perspective our portfolio continues to be very healthy. Once again, we’d like to thank you for your support and interest, and at this point turn things back to the operator to begin Q&A. Operator.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). And your first question comes from Troy Ward with KBW. Troy Ward – KBW: Great, thank you and good morning gentlemen.

Rob Hamwee

Management

Hey Troy. Troy Ward – KBW: Hey Rob, I’ve got a couple of questions for you and then Steve, I’d like to actually ask you some brief kind of overarching question about what your seeing in private equity. Rob quickly on, you made the comment that you don’t anticipate near term equity as you expect portfolio repayments to cover originations. Can you give a little more specificity there on what you consider near term? Is that kind of just a look into the fourth quarter?

Rob Hamwee

Management

I mean, I think that extends into the first quarter as well Troy, unless there was a meaningful change in the market tone and then also just some hideous and crowded things we have in terms of repayment looking into late Q4 and early Q1. So I would extend near term into Q1 and we’ll have to see where the market goes from there. January is seasonally a very slow month as well, so we’ll have a better sense probably February and March of where we’re at. We’re very focused on just staying fully ramped, fully levered and continuing to be very selective in what we invest in. Troy Ward – KBW: I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cut of there. So is the expectation for the repayments, in the last couple of quarters they’ve been very steady, but it looks like, you don’t call it a $100 million, $115 million, is the expectation that that’s going to be increasing a little bit here in the fourth and first quarter or…

Rob Hamwee

Management

No, its sort of going to be, continue to be consistent. So it’s more a question of the origination flow that we find appropriate and acceptable and not dilutive to the yield. Troy Ward – KBW: Okay, and then one more. When you talk about the predecessor asset, obviously they are winding down. Is there any expectation of or desire on your part to wind that up and if not, when do you think that progression would be and the predecessor assets will go away.

Rob Hamwee

Management

Yes, I mean like you can see, they are mostly gone at this point. I mean I think that there is $100,000 of delta between the stepped up basis and the non-stepped up basis. So the combination of them continuing to wind up over the next couple of quarters, as well as you know we had just the 2.7 million shares left in the private equity fund and those shares get monetized, that will allow it to collapse the up being the C structure, which will also sort of happen. At that point will sort of accelerate for that final accounting and that would also allow it go away. So I think it wouldn’t surprise me if the first half of next year, that the whole concept just goes away, which obviously would greatly simplify our accounting reporting, etcetera. Troy Ward – KBW: Yes, we currently look forward to that simplicity.

Rob Hamwee

Management

Yes, you and David as well in the staff.

David Cordova

Analyst

Yes, absolutely. Troy Ward – KBW: Steve real quick here and I’ll hop back in the queue and let others ask, but Steve, we don’t get a great chance on some of these BDC calls to get a good great look in the private equity. So I’d appreciate some insight that you have. What are you seeing out there from a private equity angle, the multiples on private equity buyout, how much leverage? Where’s the leverage points and covenants and things like that you’re seeing in the private equity world right now?

Steve Klinsky

Management

Yes, I mean I think it’s a bit of a bifurcated market. For loans that are large enough to be syndicated broadly to not just BDC buyers, but all types of buyers. It continues to be a very friendly market for borrowers and credit is quite available, low covenants or no covenants are available and so I mean it’s a good debt market from a private equity buyers point of view. What we’re seeing, because what we’re seeing has been very good deal flow for our own firm, because we have a large team now that proactively chooses sectors and dives down into sectors sometimes for years to find specific companies. So we just announced an acquisition of a company called Alexander Mann Solutions last week. There’s another one that we signed up, but haven’t announced and so we find good opportunity flow. I think other firms are – I think it depends whether you can avoid auctions or not. I think the auction environment is not particularly attractive for private equity firms, but if you can find proactive things its still quite attractive. And the multiples are – the strong S&P and the strong stock market raises multiples in general, but I think there’s still good acquisitions out there. Troy Ward – KBW: And then one final question Steve is thinking back, one of the questions we get a lot is are the BDC’s more relevant to the private equity players today than they were say five or definitely 10 years ago. When you build a capital structure inside a private equity buyout, where do you typically source your senior or your subordinated debt today versus where you sourced it five years ago? Has that changed at all?

Steve Klinsky

Management

Well again, I think it’s a two part market where we’re doing things that are pretty large loans in the multi $100 million size that are easily syndicated to CLO’s and broadly I think it’s the same sources of capital. I mean it’s the major investment banks, the major commercial banks doing it. I think the sort of loans that our BDC is sourcing are usually smaller, nicher, more specialized type loans and New Mountain itself hasn’t played as much in that size as a buyer, but we study those industries as a lender, so it helps us on the lending side. So I would say it’s the same. I mean BDC’s have grown, but there’s still a very small part of the total debt market, so I think it’s pretty much the way it was seven years ago. Troy Ward – KBW: Good color. Thank you guys.

Rob Hamwee

Management

Thank you. Operator?

Operator

Operator

Yes. Again thank you. (Operator Instructions) And the next question comes from (Inaudible) from Wells Fargo Securities.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Good morning and thank you for taking my questions. It looks like purchase levels were up just slightly at the OpCo facility. Are quarter-to-date originations more or less in line with those leverage levels on the portfolio today?

Rob Hamwee

Management

Yes.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Alright, and then another question on the quarter-to-date originations. Originations this quarter were more or less first, secondly mix that you guys traditionally have focus on. But the largest investment quarter-to-date is Crowley I believe.

Rob Hamwee

Management

Yes.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

And the preferred equity position, 12.5 yield I believe. What kind of attracts you guys to that investment and how did you source it, given that it kind of stays from your traditional focus?

Rob Hamwee

Management

Sure. Well, it does not stray from our traditional focus from a business and industry standpoint. We’ve known Crowley, which is a very large family owned logistics, shipping and logistics business through a portfolio company on our private equity side called Intermarine, which competes in the Jones market, the protected Jones shipping and logistics market, the same what Crowley does. So our private equity team member who are involves the Intermarine, got to know the Crowley management team, including the senior Crowley family member who runs the business quite well over a period in the last three or four years and we actually looked at different ways to do things on the private equity side, Intermarine, vis-à-vis our (inaudible) with Crowley. We got to know their market position very well; we got to know the team and their capability really from the inside out. So this is a perfect example of how the synergies between the private equity side and debt side work and when Crowley was looking to raise some subordinated capital to support the growth of their business, they turned to us and we actually really led the structuring and ultimate syndication of that, what turned out to be a $200 million raise for them, of which we funded $35 million and we are very pleased with the way that was able to be structured. It is a preferred stock because of some capital treatment issues they were trying to deal with, but it really had many of the characteristics of a more senior security and according to them to get the right accounting treatment. Of course important to us to get the right protection, so we were able to structure that in a way that makes sense. But again, in business we know very well, with the team we got to know very well not just in three weeks of diligence, but over literally years of talking about doing different things.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Alright, that’s great color. And then just one last question; from the release, the 0.71 pro-forma debt-to-equity, is that for everything with the equity raised portfolio growth and kind of a normalizing of the investments payable?

Rob Hamwee

Management

No, so that’s things that were as of 09/30. So with literally just commitment and purchases that did not – that were on the books but did not fund at 09/30. So it excludes stocks that happen every month including deals that we signed up post 09/30 and including the equity rate. But because you pro-forma even further for that, we kind of right back I think in the high sixes with a few things that should fund doing that to get us right back to that point, plus or minus.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Alright. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the quarter.

Rob Hamwee

Management

Great, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And there are no more questions at the present time, so I’d like to turn the call back over to management for any closing remarks.

Rob Hamwee

Management

Okay great, thank you. Well again, happy to have another strong quarter. I appreciate everyone’s time and interest and look forward to talking to people either offline or certainly in our next quarterly call in 2014. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.