Laura C. Holson Boswerger
Analyst · Raymond James
I did, yes. Just starting on the dental side and physician business practice businesses, generally speaking, that is a sector that we've studied a lot at the firm level. It does have some good secular tailwinds when we think about just some of the demographics and the a cyclicality of a lot of those underlying niches. But I think as we've owned businesses in the space, as we've invested in many over the years as well, I think some of the learnings around that sector, in particular, is, number one, just at the top line, it's a business that you don't have a lot of pricing levers to pull, right, when you think about just reimbursement, and that's not a lever that really is available despite the fact that there are some good volume trends in many of these underlying sectors. And then I think more importantly, on the expense side, it's a business that's very operationally intensive and does really require excellent execution when you think about just managing the expense base, and it does have a decent amount of operating leverage in these businesses. So as we've kind of lived with this sector and gotten deeper on it, it is one that's very management sensitive also. And so it's an area that we've spent less time on as of late. When talking about the specific one that we downgraded, it is a bit more idiosyncratic. We don't think, in general, we're seeing headwinds across the stage for large. But certainly, as I said, because of how operationally intensive it is, it does require very specific execution. And therefore, just as a lender, it's not a space that we've been prioritizing on a go-forward basis. But that really is the one that we did downgrade, again, for some idiosyncratic reasons that John alluded to, specifically around just some underperformance on the volume side, but not necessarily a trend that we think is impacting overall. But again, just on a go- forward basis, less of a focus for us as we originate new deals. And then switching gears to the veterinary side of things. Again, another space that has a lot of good secular tailwinds, things that we like about it, just more people are getting pets. These pets are living longer. There's more types of procedures and things that you can do to help pets. So again, a lot of good things here. And then the additional benefit versus maybe the dental space is that you don't have that limitation from a top line perspective because it's typically cash pay, no reimbursement risk, et cetera. So there's a lot of things here that we do like about this space. You mentioned Alliance Animal Health, in particular, is one of our larger positions. It is, generally speaking, we feel like that space is performing quite well overall. We have seen some volume trends, not on that company, in particular, but just in general, the industry come off a little bit from what the COVID peak was, a lot of people got puppies and kittens during COVID, and those pets go to the vet 3 to 4 times in their first year of life, and then it's more like once a year thereafter. But as those pets age, we will expect to see the other side of that from a volume perspective. But again, more levers here, a little less execution intensive. And it's a space that we like quite a bit.