Art Penn
Analyst · Jefferies. Please go ahead
Thanks, Aviv. First, we hope that you, your families and those you work with are staying healthy. We are pleased to report that PennantPark continues to operate smoothly and effectively and remains committed to working diligently on behalf of our investors. We are going to spend a few minutes discussing how we fared in the quarter ended June 30, how the portfolio is positioned for upcoming quarters, our capital structure and liquidity, the value proposition of our stock, the financials and then open it up for Q&A. Despite the challenging economic conditions brought on by the pandemic, we are pleased that we accomplished several key goals this past quarter. We achieved a 7% increase in adjusted NAV as the market stabilized during the quarter. We also achieved our goals of reducing leverage and increasing liquidity. We are particularly pleased with our announcement of the formation of PennantPark Senior Loan Fund, PSLF, our joint venture with Pantheon, a leading global private markets investor. The initial $35 million equity investment made by Pantheon is in an existing portfolio of loans at an attractive price of $0.945 on the $1. They plan to invest an additional $30 million of equity over time into the JV at fair market value. Additionally, our leverage will decrease by about $245 million, which bolsters our balance sheet. The equity from Pantheon into our platform not only validates the value proposition of our existing portfolio, it also helps scale the PennantPark platform to continue to be a leading lending partner in the market and creates additional capital for future investment into the attractive new vintage of loans that we are seeing in the market. We believe that our rigorous underwriting process and disciplined approach has successfully positioned us to manage through the challenges ahead. We have an excellent team of talented and dedicated professionals, many with decades of experience managing through multiple economic cycles to help ensure the best possible outcome in this type of difficult environment. Although we never predicted a global pandemic, as you may know, we have been preparing for an eventual recession for some time. Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, we proactively positioned the portfolio as defensively as possible. Over the past several years, we have generally been moving into first lien secured positions, higher in the capital structure and into a more diversified portfolio. The overall portfolio was constructed to withstand market and economic volatility. As of June 30, average debt to EBITDA in the portfolio was 4.6x and the average interest coverage ratio, the amount by which cash income exceeds cash interest expense, was 2.9x. We had only one non-accrual on our book out of 86 different names in PNNT. This represents only 2.5% of the portfolio of cost and 2.3% at market value. We have largely avoided some of the sectors that have been hurt the most by the pandemic, such as retail, restaurants, health clubs, apparel and airlines, although PNNT does have exposure to oil and gas, which we will discuss later. The portfolio is highly diversified with 86 companies in 30 different industries. Since inception, PNNT has invested $5.9 billion at an average yield of 12%. This compares to an annualized realized loss ratio of about 24 basis points annually. If we include both realized and unrealized losses, the annualized loss ratio was only 37 basis points annually. This strong track record includes our energy investments, our primarily subordinated debt investments made prior to the financial crisis, and now some portion of the pandemic. You will recall that in 2007 just as today, PNNT was focused on financing middle-market financial sponsored transactions. Our performance through the global financial crisis and recession was solid. Prior to the onset of the global financial crisis in September 2008, we initiated investments, which ultimately aggregated $480 million. Our playbook then is similar to our playbook now. We focused primarily on the existing portfolio to preserve capital, while raising the bar and becoming even more highly selective on new investment. The investments performed well. Average EBITDA of the underlying portfolio companies fell about 7% to the bottom of the recession. According to the Bloomberg North American High Yield Index, the average high-yield company EBITDA was down about 42% during that timeframe. As a result we had few defaults and attractive recoveries on that portfolio. The IRR of those underlying investments was 8% even though they were done prior to the financial crisis and recession. We are proud of this downside case track record. We have had only 14 companies going non-accrual, out of 254 investments since inception over 13 years ago. Further, we are pleased that even while we have had those non-accruals, we have been able to preserve capital for our shareholders. Now, let’s turn to the outlook ahead in the coming quarters and how our portfolio is positioned. We have been communicating on a frequent basis with management teams and the private equity sponsor owners of our portfolio companies. As mentioned previously, we are gratified that our historical focus has protected us from some of the worst hit areas of the economies, such as retail, restaurants, health clubs, apparel and the airlines. We have been pleased with the way our portfolio companies have moved to rapidly adjust cost and have focused on shoring up liquidity. Looking forward to the quarter ended September 30 and beyond, there remains meaningful uncertainty about the timing and pace of the economic recovery and its impact on the portfolio. Nevertheless, where things stand today, our analysis suggests that the vast majority of the companies in our portfolio have sufficient liquidity to pay their interest payments as they come due in the coming quarters. With regard to investments in the energy industry, those investments represent 8.3% of the overall portfolio. There is no material update since last quarter. The quarter was challenging from a pricing perspective and oil prices were briefly negative, but RAM and ETX have suspended all drilling activities and reduced all non-essential capital expenditures expenses in personnel. Revenues and cash flow were materially reduced as the entire industry is conserving liquidity. While hedges in place were helpful, they only partially mitigate the impact of low oil prices. We are encouraged that with the partial reopening of the economy, oil prices seem to have stabilized around $40 and may trend higher in coming months. On the positive side, many of our portfolio companies are in industries such as government services, defense contracting, software communication and cyber security, which collectively comprised a substantial portion of the portfolio and are less impacted by COVID. Our focus has been on traditional middle-market companies, where we have benefited from terms, covenants and structures much more attractive to lenders and those of larger companies. These terms enables us to see potential challenges and portfolio companies and be positioned to assist and protect our capital much sooner in the low to no covenant loans, which are typical of larger borrowers. Due to the covenant protections we have negotiated, we have been able to be at the table quickly with borrowers. As a result, we have negotiated increased protections, including more equity from sponsors as well as enhanced economics, including amendment fees and increased yield. Inevitably in certain cases, there may need to be a broader restructuring of a capital stack or two. As we have proven over 13 years in business, we are adept at dealing with and maximizing value over time in these situations. With regard to our financials, I will give some summary highlights and Aviv will go into more detail. Our net investment income was $0.16 per share above our dividend of $0.12 per share. Our GAAP debt to equity ratio, net of cash was 1.5x. Regulatory debt to equity ratio, net of cash, which excludes SBIC debt was 1.4x as many of you know in early 2009 in response to the GFC, we started marketing many of our liabilities, our credit facilities and bonds to market to better align our asset and liability values. This reduces the volatility of NAV in times of market volatility such as we have today. The additional benefit at that time and for the ensuing decade was that a reduced the volatility of our leverage as calculated for regulatory asset coverage test. Last year the SEC guided us that for the regulatory asset coverage purposes, they would prefer we marked liabilities and cost and not market which we now do for that test. As a result, we will be highlighting both GAAP leverage and regulatory asset coverage leverage with regard to NAV. Our GAAP NAV was $7.82 as of June 30 of approximately 1.4% from the prior quarter, which reflects both the markup of assets, offset by the markup of certain liabilities assuming liabilities were not market to market. Adjusted NAV would have been $7.46 up approximately 7% from the prior quarter. With regard to leverage we have been targeting a regulatory debt to equity ratio of 1.1x to 1.5x. Our net regulatory asset coverage ratio of 1.4x was within the range this past quarter. Pro forma for the creation of the PSLFJV with pantheon our net regulatory asset coverage ratio would be 0.9x. We have ample liquidity to fund a revolver draws and were in compliance with all of our facilities at June 30, we have readily available borrowing capacity and cash liquidity to support our commitments. We have a strong capital structure with diversified funding sources and no near-term maturities, we have $475 million revolving credit facility maturing in 2024 with the syndicated banks, $134 million of SBA debentures maturing in 2026 and $86 million of unsecured notes maturing in 2024, we’ve been consistent dialog with our lenders and are thankful for their support. Regarding our capital structure, over the last few quarters, we have discussed two initiatives. One of them has been our PSLFJV that is now in place, our other initiative is our application to the SBA, following up on the green light letter we received for our SBIC III. We are still in process with the SBA spend a minute on our new JV with Pantheon PLSF. Pantheon invested $35 million to take a 28% stake in an SPV that previously existed as a wholly owned subsidiary of PNNT as a result of this JV, the subsidiary and as $245 million credit facility from BMP moved off balance sheet. The portfolio PSLF is entirely first lien senior secured loans and as a fair value of $356 million, the Pantheon investment value to loans at $94.5 on the dollar, which is a small discount to the June 30 fair value of $96.6 on the dollar. As a result of the transaction is dilutive to NAV by about $2 million or $0.04 per share, the BMP facility moving off balance sheet a par due to the mark-to-market of that credit facility. The additional impact to GAAP NAV is $8 million or $0.12 a share. As a result of the impact on adjusted NAV is $0.04 a share and the impact on GAAP NAV in $0.16 per share. $22.5 million of $35 million invested by Pantheon was invested into the SPV, and the other $0.5 million was paid in cash to PNNT. The PNNT and Pantheon investments are split into approximately 70% subordinated debt and 30% equity, the subordinated debt has a LIBOR spread of 800 and a LIBOR floor of 1% target leverage for PLSF is 1.5x debt to equity. With regard to our stock price, we believe that the share price of PNNT does not accurately reflect the long-term value of the company. As stated earlier the average debt to EBITDA of our underlying portfolio as of June 30 was 4.6x. Translating this into the language value investors had stock price at PNNT today well below NAV and every company defaulted with the shareholders would own a portfolio of companies at a multiple of about 2x cash flow, even in a recession with potential decline in cash flow value investors should be able to appreciate that attractive low multiple. We continue to review and we will look to selectively make new investments. Our focus continues to be on companies and structures that are defensive have reasonable leverage covenant projections and attractive returns. The outlook for new financings is attractive, we believe there middle-market lending is a vintage business is upcoming vintage of loans is likely to be the most attractive we have seen since 2009 to 2012 time period leverage levels are lower equity cushion higher yields are higher and the package of protections including covenants are tighter after enjoying about 5 years of light of a late cycle market for middle-market lending it is refreshing to have attractive risk reward available to us. Let me now turn the call over to Aviv, our CFO, to take us through the financial results.