Craig Packer
Analyst · JMP Securities
Thanks, Jonathan. To close, I would like to provide some commentary on the market outlook and our positioning coming into 2022. Looking at the current market, as we’ve noted before, we have seen an increase in the amount of capital being raised in private credit to match the substantial amount of private equity dry powder that is being deployed. This has led to some ongoing pressure on spreads generally. However, we have also seen a commensurate growth in the direct lending opportunity set. More private equity sponsors are embracing direct lending solutions and, as adoption increases, they’re seeing the value of executing many of their larger financings in the private market. The flexibility and certainty direct lenders can offer are extremely valuable for sponsors pursuing large strategic buyouts and acquisitions. In addition, if we see increased public market volatility due to the Fed tightening cycle, we expect private markets to further benefit. So while spreads remain pressured, we are optimistic that we will continue to source high-quality, attractive investments as we are able to capitalize on the trend towards larger deals executed in the private market given the scale and breadth of our platform. Looking at Q1 specifically, we are seeing a moderated pace of origination and repayment activity relative to the very active past six months. However, we do expect to see deal activity pick up as the year goes on. I also wanted to spend a moment reflecting on where the portfolio stands and the many milestones we achieved in 2021. Last year, we added nearly 70 new companies and deployed a record $6.8 billion in total capital. Net of repayments, the portfolio increased by almost $2 billion to $12.7 billion today, primarily comprised of first lien and unitranche term loans. In addition, we were able to achieve a fully levered portfolio even as repayments increased to a more normalized pace. Our credit performance has been very strong, with minimal losses, and the vast majority of our borrowers continuing to perform in line with or exceeding our expectations. Despite spread pressure, we’re able to maintain our overall portfolio spread through careful credit selection and successful redeployment of lower spread investments. In 2021, we redeployed roughly $800 million of debt investments with spreads less than 550 basis points, decreasing our low-yielding investments from 15% to 7% of ORCC’s overall portfolio. We have also deployed additional capital into two strategic investments, Wingspire and our senior loan fund, which are generating increasing dividends and attractive returns. As a result of these efforts, ORCC is now consistently exceeding its $0.31 dividend and we expect to drive further increases in our net asset value over time. I’d also like to highlight that in the last six months, we generated an attractive ROE of roughly 9%. Our trailing 12-month return of 8.3% includes the six months where we were operating below our target leverage range. We believe going forward we can earn an 8.5% to 9% ROE, depending on repayments, and hope to increase that range over time through continued mix shift, increased dividend income from our strategic investments and further improvement in our cost of debt. Finally, to conclude, I’d highlight that this was also a transformational year for the broader Owl Rock platform. We ended the year with over $39 billion of assets under management, up from $27 billion a year ago. We continue to add expertise and resources to our team and made significant investments in our origination, underwriting, financing and portfolio management teams. Owl Rock recently announced the acquisition of the Wellfleet CLO business, making significant additional credit resources available to our team. We have deep private equity relationships, having transacted with over 100 sponsors since inception, in each quarter, that number continues to grow as adoption increases. As a result of our broad sourcing capabilities and rigorous underwriting process, we have experienced strong credit performance across each of our funds. Owl Rock has deployed over $50 billion of capital since inception and has an annualized loss rate of 5 basis points across the platform. We are proud of the platform we’ve built and how it continues to grow. When we look at the direct lending landscape, we believe that the market will favor the largest and highest-quality platforms. ORCC was our first fund when we founded Owl Rock in 2016 and is well positioned today to benefit from the continued growth and success of the broader Owl Rock platform. Thank you all for joining us today. And operator, please open the line for questions.