Good morning and welcome to the New Mountain Finance Corporation Second Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rob Hamwee, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning everyone, and welcome to New Mountain Finance Corporation’s Second Quarter Earnings Call for 2020. On the line with me here today are Adam Weinstein, Board Member of NMFC, John Kline, President and COO of NMFC and Shiraz Kajee, CFO of NMFC. Our Chairman, Steve Klinsky is unable to join the call today but will rejoin us on future calls. Before diving into the business update, we do want to recognize that we continue to live through a public health crisis that is taking a significant human toll on our community, across our country and around the globe. We hope that everyone is staying safe and that you and your families remain in good health. Turning to business, Adam Weinstein is going to make some introductory remarks, but before he does, I’d like to ask Shiraz to make some important statements regarding today’s call.

Thanks, Rob. Good morning everyone. Before we get into the presentation, I would like to advise everyone that today’s call and webcast are being recorded. Please note that they are the property of New Mountain Finance Corporation and any unauthorized broadcast in any form is strictly prohibited. Information about the audio replay of this call is available in our August 5, earnings press release. I would also like to call your attention to the customary safe harbor disclosure in our press release and on Page 2 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 to by law. 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. At this time, I’d like to turn the call over to Adam Weinstein, who will give some highlights beginning on Page 4 of slide presentation. Adam?

Thanks, Shiraz. Steve apologizes he’s unable to join this call and as Rob said, he will return on the next quarterly call. It’s great to be able to speak to all of you today as both the Manager of NMFC and as a fellow shareholder. The COVID pandemic has caused a great crisis for the nation both in human and economic terms. I want to express all of our hopes that you and your families are safe. Second, I want to summarize the overview charts on Page 4 and 5 to explain how NMFC itself is working to stay safe and secure throughout this period. New Mountain as an organization has always saw to explicitly emphasize downside safety and risk control as well as upside returns and therefore has emphasized defensive growth industries that can best survive unexpected market downturns. New Mountain started with private equity 20 years ago and now manages over $25 billion of assets including both private equity and credit. Risk control was heart of our founding mission. Happily, we’ve never had a PE, portfolio company bankruptcy or missed an interest payment in the history of our private equity effort. Similarly, as of today we’ve had only $74 million of realized default losses for just a 0.4% loss rate on a nearly $8 billion of total debt we have bought since beginning our credit arm in 2008. Meanwhile, we’ve had significant gains both in private equity and credit. NMFC has paid $781 million of total cash dividends since NMFC went public in 2011 or about $12.97 of dividends per share in all. As investment managers, our general belief is that the greatest mistakes in private equity or credit come when the industry melts beneath you. We have saw to avoid such mistakes by being laser focused on…

Thank you, Adam. While key quarterly highlights and our standard review of NMFC are detailed on Pages 6 and 7 respectively. Once again, this quarter, I would like to focus my time on getting into more detail on the crisis’ impact on asset quality, net asset value and leverage migration, liquidity and net investment income. As detailed on Page 8, in order to assess how the crisis is impacting our borrowers throughout the quarter. We’ve had extensive conversations with both company management and sponsors. Based on those discussions we have updated each portfolio companies scores on the two metrics we use to generate our overall risk rating. As a reminder, the first metric COVID exposure ranks from one to four, the degree to which a company has been directly impacted by COVID. The second metric, overall company strength is a combination of three sub-metrics. Pre-COVID business performance, liquidity and balance sheet strength and sponsor support which we rank on a scale of A to C. Based on our rankings for the two metrics and the resulting risk rating for each company. We once again plotted the overall portfolio accordingly to create the risk rating heat maps. The updated heat maps show that risk migration has been largely positive as summarized on Page 9. $377 million of assets have improved their ratings while only $90 million of assets have worsened in rating. One primary driver of these changes is the significant reopening of our retail healthcare portfolio companies, where average utilization is now generally running at 75% to 95% of pre-COVID levels. Another driver is momentum which as a leading provider of distant learning and credit recoveries software and services has seen a large benefit in the current environment. Offsetting this to some degree is ongoing COVID induced weakness primarily at…

Thanks Rob. Since our last call market conditions have continued to materially improve. While direct lending deal flow continues to be sluggish. Secondary trading levels in the broader sub-investment grade credit markets have nearly returned to pre-COVID levels. This is particularly true in many of our core defensive growth sectors such as software, healthcare technology and technology enabled business services. While it’s hard to entirely explain the market strength clearly all risk assets are benefitting from tremendous liquidity in the system, the expectation for more Federal Reserve support and the fact, that the base rate is almost zero. Given these factors asset classes like direct lending broadly syndicated loans and high yield remain obvious places to receive enhanced yield over the risk-free rate. With regard to new deal flow, we believe the timing of new issue sponsor backed deals remains somewhat uncertain and is predicated on a decrease and infection rates and a resumption of more normal business activities. Turning to Page 16, we show how potential changes in the base rate could impact NMFC’s future earnings. As you can see the vast majority of our assets are floating rate loans with our liabilities evenly split between fixed and floating rate instruments? As of our last call in May, three months LIBOR was 54 basis points since then it has declined to 30 basis points as of June 30th and approximately 25 basis points today. While this decline has been in earnings headwind for our business in 2020, NMFC has benefitted from 1% LIBOR floors on 75% of its assets. Given where rates are today there is negligible downside from further rate decreases. Conversely, if rates rise overtime the earnings power of NMFC could materially improve. Page 17 addresses historical credit performance on the left side of page we show…

Thank you, John. For more details on our financial results and today’s commentary. Please refer to the Form 10-Q that was filed last evening with the SEC. Now I would like to turn your attention to Slide 26. The portfolio had over $2.8 billion in investments at fair value at June 30, 2020 and total assets of $2.9 billion. We have total liability at $1.8 billion of which total statutory debt outstanding was $1.4 billion excluding $300 million of drawn SBA guaranteed debentures. Net asset value of $1.1 billion or $11.63 per share was up $0.49 from the prior quarter. As of June 30, our statutory debt-to-equity ratio was 1.29:1 and as Rob mentioned net of $56 million in cash in the balance sheet. The pro forma leverage ratio would have been 1.24:1. On Slide 27, we share our historical leverage ratios and our historical NAV adjusted for the cumulative impact of special dividends. On Slide 28, we share our quarterly income statement results. We believe that our NII is the most appropriate measure of our quarterly performance. This slide highlights that while realized and unrealized gains and losses can be volatile below the line. We continue to generate stable net investment income above the line. Focusing on the quarter ended June 30, 2020. We earned total investment income of $67.7 million, a $9.5 million decrease from the prior quarter. $7 million of this decrease was due to assets sales, lower base rates and less fee income and only $2 million of the decrease was a result of non-accruals. Total net expenses were approximately $38.8 million, a $4.6 million decrease due primarily to lower debt service cost from a lower base rates and less debt outstanding. As in prior quarters, the investment advisor continues to waive certain management fees. The…

Thanks Shiraz. In closing, we remain cautiously optimistic about the prospects for NMFC in the months and years ahead. Our longstanding focus on lending to defensive growth businesses supported by strong sponsors should deserve [ph] us well in the uncertain environment likely to characterize upcoming quarters. While risks are more elevated than in the past and we cannot unequivocally discount more challenging scenarios. We believe our model is well suited with the current environment. We once again thank you for your continued support and interest in these difficult times. Wish you all good health and look forward to maintaining an open and transparent dialog with all of our stakeholders in the days ahead. I will now turn things back to the operator to begin Q&A. operator?

[Operator Instructions] the first question comes from Bryce Rowe with National Securities. Please go ahead.

I wanted to ask about some the comments you made about the deleveraging plan having been executed and possibly being kind of finished here. So just kind of curious, if you plan to operate the BDC at this level of net leverage here going forward. And then maybe speak to any thoughts on the debt capital structure and if you’re considering any changes in terms of secured versus unsecured. Just to give you more flexibility as we move forward here. Thanks.

Yes, for sure. So we’re generally comfortable at this point in time in the sort of low 120’s net of -- although we’re still monitoring things right it’s a function of how the environment continue to develop. And as we see natural repayments continue to come in, we can modulate that if it makes sense to be lower than that. We certainly have that path available to us. So it’s really sort of a dynamic equation and obviously we’re also tracking values that drive, that’s the other part of the leverage equation what the asset values are. But I think we’re going to continue to probably err on the side of being a little bit lower and just to make sure we have maximum safety, until the world returns to a more normalized environment. But right now we’re feeling pretty good about where we at and the leverage we have, to continue to react as the event warrants. And then in terms of the leverage mix, yes, I mean we’re definitely evaluating the trade-offs between cost of different forms of capital and flexibility of different forms of capital. And again we’ll continue to monitor that and similarly as the environment evolves, we’ll make some of those decisions. But we certainly appreciate the flexibility that comes with incremental unsecured versus secured. But again, through the crisis we had a pretty good experience working with our secured lenders. So we’re going to try to get to the right balance. Is that helpful, Bryce?

It is. I have one more unrelated question. Just looking at the balance sheet. In the liability side, it appears the management fee and the incentive fee payable continue to go up. So just curious how you’re thinking about maybe liquidity relative to that. At what point do those fees get paid in cash to the advisor?

Yes, so I mean first quarter we did pay some of those fees based on our liquidity and the comfort we have - we talked about over $200 million of liquidity and you know a visibility. So we paid some of those post quarter which you’ll see in the next quarters’ results. But we continue to use that as a liquidity buffer and it’s just another way that the manager can support the BDC just to make sure it’s comfortable liquidity position as possible.

Great, that’s helpful. I’m sure the market participants appreciate that. So appreciate the comment Rob.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you.

The next question comes from Finian O’Shea with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Finian O’Shea: The leverage migration slide you provide us always very helpful. I would have expected it, all to still being the negative given you’re working on up through April, May financials now assuming across the portfolio. So how did leverage improve for about half the names? Does that reflect the sponsors putting money in or something else?

The leverage migration is from beginning of loan to present. So when you see improvement, if not just last quarter to this quarter. So it’s improvement from when the loan was extended and so that’s part of what’s going on. And then the other part is, many of these businesses have actually continued to increase their earnings and generate cash to decrease debt throughout the crisis just because they’re either positively positioned or un-impacted [ph] and that’s lot of the enterprise software some of the business services and healthcare names. So it’s a combination of those two things. Finian O’Shea: Thank you. I knew it was a dumb question.

It was not. Finian O’Shea: You mentioned $200 million liquidity I think that’s as of July 31 according to the slide. Does that reflect an additional portfolio sales or does that reflect your cash plus borrowing base?

Yes that reflects the cash plus immediately available on the revolver. So that’s immediately available liquidity. It’s obviously not inclusive of excess borrowings per the credit facility that their maximum sizes. So and it really, it does not reflect a lot of incremental post-quarter disposals. Finian O’Shea: Do you mean the revolver by the advisor revolver or all of the revolving facilities? Sorry if I missed that.

All of the available revolver including the advisor revolver availability but all of the again immediately available revolver facilities. Finian O’Shea: Okay. That’s helpful. And yes, the next logical question is that’s far shy of your available commitments. The way it looks like from the banks, so is this a reflection of the banks the valuing the assets in a much stricter framework or are they hair cutting the borrowing base meaningfully for your availability?

It’s not really that. It’s just we don’t have - we’ve always run with more commitment than asset to sort of fill the bucket right because we’ve historically been growing. So it really reflects that, tomorrow we could just call all that cash without any change to the borrowing base. But on top of that, if we bought some incremental asset. We would generate incremental borrowing base that we have availability for the commitments, if that makes sense. Finian O’Shea: Yes it does and final question on the debt profile breakout you do. Does the maturity, you provide does that reflect the revolving period or the final maturity of the facility?

It reflects the final maturity of the facilities. Finian O’Shea: So is it then safe to say that, your revolving period? I mean they’re all about two, 2.5 years out. Does that mean your revolving periods are pretty short?

Yes and in the major facility right, which is the big Wells facility. The revolver period is coming up before the end of this year and not surprisingly we’re pretty far along in expansion conversion around that facility. Finian O’Shea: Okay, great. That’s all from me. Thank you for all of the color again you’ve been providing throughout the COVID environment. We’re going to appreciate it. But we’ll speak to you soon.

[Operator Instructions] the next question is from Ryan Lynch with KBW. Please go ahead.

I think I said last call, but I just want to reiterate it again. I think the slide deck that you guys provide is the best one out there regarding kind of the COVID detail and movements in your portfolio, so very much appreciate that detail you guys provide there.

Great, happy to hear. Thanks.

And then I did have a question though and maybe I missed this. I didn’t see the quarter-to-date activity for the third quarter. I think you guys usually provide that. I don’t know if I missed that or not. But could you provide an update on kind of the originations and sales repayments for the quarter-to-date, third quarter.

We don’t have it in the deck because it was de minimis. We can get you those numbers, but if we had a page and we look it is like, there was nothing on it. So we just took it out. But activity has been de minimis through the beginning of the third quarter.

This is John; it’s actually on Page 23 because of the unique nature of the quarter. We detailed the sales on repayments and then at the bottom we showed the originations. But as Rob said, we didn’t break it out because there was a bunch of as I mentioned generally delayed draws that we didn’t support of our sponsor clients.

In Q2, right. But I think the question was around Q3-to-date. We looked at that and it was single-digit millions of activity, so we just took it out.

Okay, that’s helpful. It’s all I needed to. And then can you walk me through exactly the adjustment that you made the $1.6 million of non-recurring interest and incentive fee adjustment related to Permian. Can you walk me through exactly the nature of that adjustment and do you expect those adjustments to occur again in the third quarter?

Yes, I can take a first crack at it and Shiraz can jump in, if I’m missing anything. But effectively in prior periods right so not in - I think this year but if you go back for the last couple of years. We were accruing some income in Permian post the original restructuring of Permian which goes back some years. And then we got to the point, with the energy markets obviously all screwed up, where we deemed that accrual to be uncollectible. So we’ve written it off, it was $2 million of historically accrued income in prior period. It’s not in this quarter. We wrote it off in this quarter because we collected incentive fees on that $2 million at the 20% rate, so $400,000 of incentive fees. We refunded those incentive fees in this quarter, right because we didn’t earn them in the end. And that’s how you get to the $1.6 million net because we always track our cumulative, actual NII. We then reflect those prior periods adjustments in the chart on Page 19. So that cumulative adjusted NII reflects the period where the income is stripped out, retrospectively. Does that make sense, Ryan?

Yes, I think so, so if that is expected to continue those reversals. When you guys provide the $0.30 of operating earnings guidance in there, is that reflective - is that $0.30 guidance what you guys expect to earn from an adjusted operating earnings?

So yes, it is, although right now we don’t expect incremental historical reversals. But if we did, we would have put into this quarter like things can change in the next two or three months. But sitting here today I would say that we do not expect any prior period write downs. But you know obviously things can change in the next two, three months between now and next quarters earnings announcement.

Okay, got it. And then you mentioned the one non-accrual Benevis. Although it seems like things are actually improving a little bit there to this quarter. Can you just talk through how many loan modifications or amendments were made this quarter? What is your guys philosophy in providing those, what you guys hope to get as far as skews [ph] or structures in order to provide those modifications and for the modifications that occurred this quarter? Were any of them or what level them was the sponsor willing to provide additional capital in order to make those modifications?

Yes sure we really only had a handful of modifications and you can kind of see it’s sort of map to the heat map on Page 11. And the significant - obliviously majority -- do not need modifications because they’re paying, they’re in compliance with their covenants etc. Obviously Benevis was a full restructuring so I wouldn’t necessarily call that a modification. If you’re looking at the heat map on Page 11 just starting in the upper right-hand corner. The retail healthcare name that’s still up there, we did a modification there. Where we’re getting some extra interest and some fees and that’s continued negotiation. Permian obviously was a full restructuring. The education product there was a modification there and the sponsor put incremental capital in and the lending group gave covenant relief in exchange for that and earned some fees. Hospitality management we’re still working through the modification there. But that will be completed this quarter and that will result in some covenant relief and a few quarters of interest picking. Moving to the orange, talk about Benevis. UniTek we’re working through some modifications work there that will probably come into effect this quarter. The marketing services business highlighted there, there was a modification relief provided this quarter where the sponsor did put some fresh capital in and on the other retail healthcare name, there is also modification where the sponsor put some fresh money in. that’s pretty much it. And so that gives hopefully a sense of what that looks like.

Yes, thanks. That is extremely helpful color. And again I appreciate all the color you provided on the call as well as the significant detail you guys provide in your slide deck. So I appreciate the content.

The next question comes from George Bahamondes with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Wondering if you could help provide some clarity around upcoming maturity. So I know you have roughly $130 million of unfunded [ph] commitments. You referenced roughly $200 million of liquidity, so it seems like that’s covered with what you have. Just curious to get a better sense of maybe what you expect to kind of come do and mature over the next 12 months on the portfolio.

On the asset side.

Correct.

Yes, so we have a number of things that are coming do, but for the most part. Our repayments come from early activity whether the company gets sold or the sponsor does the refinancing transaction. So we’ve actually got some visibility to a couple of those that we expect to close in either this quarter or the following quarter. And then obviously 2021, there are a number of maturities that occur. I don’t actually have that exact number at my fingertips. And then obviously on the liability side, Shiraz mentioned we have the one $90 million note that matures in 2021 and we’re pretty far down the path on figuring out the most efficient refi path option for that.

Great. We had a question on amendments someone just asked. I guess the next one looking at the credit performance Slide 18. You see a few of these have maybe [indiscernible] or did up significantly just wondering if you can kind of give me a sense of what the covenants are around some of these and when they kind of breakthrough that level, you see some of these that they’re fairly elevated from when they were purchased, what sort of benefits you get from doing that? I’d imagine that, there’s some sort of maybe fees that you’re getting or kind of how do you kind of think about leverage and kind of focusing within whatever covenants are in the dots when this underwritten.

Yes, it’s a good question. So clearly the ones that are most elevated and you can see them kind of in the bottom right in Page 18 and we can call most of those up by name because they’re already been restructured right and Edmentum, Benevis, UniTek, Permian. Right, so those are all have been restructured. Company CE, we talked a little bit about John mentioned that the marketing services company in the orange that I mentioned, the other comments -- sponsor put the money in, we gave some covenant relief, got a fee etc, that was this quarter. And then beyond that, if you go up to company CD, CC, CB etc. The drift becomes much more modest between one to two turns of drift which will typically not yet trigger a covenant. There’s typically two to three turns, before the covenant gets triggered. I believe one of these was covenant that was triggered and we negotiated appropriate amendment. I think we’ll see a couple of things as some weak quarters roll through in the next one to two quarters. But each situation is going to have its own pretty unique dynamic. It’s hard to generalize about what - where the specific covenant will be trigger and what the results of that trigger would be.

Got it, it helpful to kind of hear a bit more on how [indiscernible] probably seems. That’s it from me this morning. Appreciate you taking the time.

[Operator Instructions] the next question comes from Chris Kotowski with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Last quarter, looking at your chart on Page 11, which I really liked as well. You said that in particular for some of the moderately impacted A companies that you took comfort in the tremendous liquidity that they had on their balance sheet. I’m just wondering, if we stay in this kind of half open, half closed, semi-lockdown whatever we’re in state for another into the middle of next year. I mean, do these companies generally have enough liquidity to get through this. And I guess just as a general, do you think most of portfolio companies can continue to operate, if this - in this kind of environment and it goes on lot longer than we all think.

Yes, it’s very good question and it’s the same exact question we have and the answer is broadly yes. That we’ve actually been pleasantly surprised, the degree to which companies have maintained and even enhanced liquidity and show, cash runways measured generally in years, not months or quarter to this point. And part of that is, the burn has just been less because these things have even in this kind of like you say half open, half closed environment things -- and again for us it’s primarily the retail healthcare. They just open more quickly and to a greater degree and they’re forgotten [ph] cash flow breakeven and beyond much more rapidly than we originally modeled. And two, they just entered the crisis mode than very well capitalized with available both revolver balance as that they drew upon and just cash on the balance sheet. So we feel generally better than ever about the runway. Obviously, it has to get fully resolved at some point. But that point to be one or two years from now as opposed to, oh in three months we’re going to hit some cash wall across these companies.

Okay and then secondly just when you’re discussing the income statement highlights on Page 28, did I hear you said that the - if you look at the like roughly $8 million linked quarter decline in interest income. Did I hear you say that only $2 million of that was the non-accruals and the rest was just the movement in rates?

Yes, so it was - that’s generally right. I want to maybe reference to you to Page 14, it’s probably the best way to look at it. Well you can see that $2 million was the non-accruals and then it was a combination of lower rate, the deleveraging from the asset sales right, so we just have less asset earning [indiscernible] little bit of lower fee income and then that’s the bridge.

Right okay and I guess that’s it from me. That’ll be it. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] at this time there are no further questions. So this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Rob Hamwee for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thank you everybody as always appreciate the time, the interest, the good questions. As always, we’re available any follow-ups. But again it’s obviously kind of a funky time but we do feel pretty good about where we are at and we just want to keep being as transparent with people as we can be and look forward to staying in touch and talking to everyone in the weeks and months ahead. So thank you and have a great rest of the day.

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