Michael Grisius
Analyst · Compass Point. Your line is open
Thank you, Henri. I will take a couple of minutes to describe the current state of the market as we see it and then comment on our current portfolio performance and investment strategy in light of the continued impact of COVID-19 and the unique economic environment. Market conditions continue to be affected by COVID-19, but to a far lesser extent than earlier in the crisis. We are seeing rebounding transaction volumes, tightening credit yields and a general lessening of risk aversion in the market. Earlier in the crisis, deals were mostly limited to existing portfolio companies either pursuing growth initiatives or seeking liquidity. This started a change in our Q2 and the trend we saw in Q2 of more originations with new platform companies continued into Q3. Quality deals are helping widen leverage and tighten pricing albeit not quite to pre-COVID levels. That said, Q4 was quite robust and there appears to be a positive outlook for 2021. Lenders in our market are for the most part staying disciplined with covenants and requiring deals to have healthy equity capitalizations. In uncertain economic times such as these, our underwriting bar remains higher than usual. Nonetheless, we are actively seeking and finding opportunities to deploy capital. We believe that compelling risk adjusted returns can be achieved by deploying capital in support of those highly select businesses that have demonstrated the strength and durability in the midst of this difficult environment. We have invested in 10 new platform investments since the onset of the pandemic, including five in this past calendar quarter alone. We also remain actively engaged with our portfolio companies. We have found that our portfolio companies have generally taken the right steps to help mitigate both the near- and long-term effects of COVID-19 on their businesses, and as we have mentioned before, many of them were also able to avail themselves of the paycheck protection program or PPP loan relief. All of our loans in our portfolio are paying according to their payment terms including now Roscoe since this quarter. We have opted to keep it on non-accrual for now as it still has past due interest telling. Tokamak and My Alarm center or the other two investments that remain on non-accrual, there have been no new non-accruals during calendar 2020. We also recognize an additional $6 million in unrealized appreciation this quarter, which brings our recovery of the Q1 fair value reduction primarily related to COVID-19 to almost 70%. As an overall portfolio, the fair value of non-legacy assets originated by Saratoga has approximately recovered to its cost basis. We believe this strong performance reflects certain attributes of our portfolio that we expect will help us as we navigate through this economic environment and we remain confident thus far in the overall durability of our portfolio, 75% of our portfolio is in first-lien debt and generally supported by strong enterprise values and industries that have historically performed well in stress situations. We have no direct energy exposure. In addition, the majority of our portfolio is comprised of businesses that produce a high degree of recurring revenue and have historically demonstrated strong revenue retention, and however, there are still plenty of uncertainties and therefore potential future adverse effects of COVID-19 on market conditions and the overall economy, including but not limited to the related declines in market multiples, increases in underlying market credit spreads and company specific negative impacts on operating performance could lead to unrealized and potentially realized depreciation being recognized in our portfolio in the future. Now despite this lack of clarity, we continue to believe that our well-constructed capital structure and liquidity will help us to navigate the challenges presented by COVID-19. We believe sticking to our strategy has and will continue to serve us best especially in the market we currently face. Our approach has always been to focus on the quality of our underwriting and as you can see on slide 13 this approach has resulted in our portfolio performance being at the top of the BDC space with respect to net realized gains as a percentage of portfolio at cost. We are close to the top of the list of only eight BDCs that had a positive number over the past three years. Furthermore, a strong underwriting culture remains paramount at Saratoga. We approach each investment working directly with management and ownership to thoroughly assess the long-term strength of the company and its business model. We endeavor to appear as deeply as possible into a business in order to understand accurately its underlying strengths and characteristics. We always have sought durable businesses and invested capital with the objective of producing the best risk adjusted accretive returns for our shareholders over the long-term. Our internal credit quality rating reflects the impact of COVID and shows nearly 93% of our portfolio at our highest credit rating as of quarter end, up slightly as compared to last quarter. Now looking at leverage on slide 14, you can see that industry debt multiples are trending downward from calendar Q1 to Q3. We expect that trend to have continued in Q4. Total leverage for our overall portfolio was 4.03 times decreasing from last quarter reflecting strength in portfolio company capitalization and the lower leverage of certain new deals. As we frequently highlight rather than just considering leverage, our focus remains on investing in credits with attractive risk return profiles and exceptionally strong business models where we are confident that the enterprise value of the businesses will sustainably exceed the last dollar of our investment. In addition, the slide illustrates our strengthening ability to generate new investments over the long-term even in the midst of a difficult market dynamics. During the calendar year 2020, we added 11 new portfolio companies and made 26 follow-on investments, including eight follow-ons that supported portfolio companies’ liquidity during COVID-19. This is easily the year in which we have executed both the most new portfolio company investments and most deal closings, reflecting ongoing emphasis on broadening our origination capabilities. Moving on to slide 15, our team’s skill set, experience and relationships continue to mature and our significant focus on business development has led to new strategic relationships that have become sources for new deals. We recently hired an additional senior resource to continue to grow this important function and demonstrate our focus on this strategic priority. The number of new business opportunities has been greatly impacted by COVID-19, although we are beginning to see more active deal pipeline. But what is especially pleasing is that a quarter of our term sheets issued over the past 12 months and four of our 11 new portfolio company investments are from newly formed relationships, reflecting notable progress as we expand our business development efforts. There are a number of factors that give us measured confidence that despite the decline in deal activity we can continue to grow our AUM steadily in this environment, as well as over the long-term. First, we continue to grow our reach into the marketplace as is evidenced by several investments we have recently made with newly formed relationships. Second, we have developed numerous deep long-term relationships with active and established firms that look to us as their preferred source of financing. Third, we continue to see plenty of investment opportunities in industry segments that are experiencing long-term secular growth trends and within which we have intentionally developed expertise. As you can see on slide 16, our overall portfolio credit quality remains solid. On the chart to the right, you can see the total gross on levered IRR on our $502 million of combined weighted SBIC and BDC unrealized investments is 12.5% since Saratoga took over management. More than two-thirds of the Q1 markdown to bounce back since then and what remains is across a wide variety of companies. We do not believe that the remaining unrealized depreciation changes our view of their fundamental long-term performance. The three largest depreciations in art are in our Nolan Group, C2 Education and ArbiterSports investments. All three of which are more dependent on in-person human interaction. Our investment approach has yielded exceptional realized returns. The gross on levered IRR unrealized investment made by the Saratoga investment management team is 16.6% on approximately $523 million of realizations. Moving on to slide 17, you can see our first SBIC license is fully funded with $222.3 million invested at cost as of quarter end. Our second SBIC licenses already been funded with $69 million of equity, of which $98 million of equity and SBA debentures have been deployed. There is still a $0.7 million of cash and $112 million of debentures currently available against that equity. And looking back at Q3 and really the whole year, the way the portfolio has proved itself to be well constructed and resilient against the impact of COVID-19 really came to the fore in the past nine months, demonstrating the strength of our team, platform and portfolio, and our overall underwriting and due diligence procedures. Credit quality is always our primary focus and while the world has changed significantly this year, we remain intensely focused on preserving asset value and remain confident in our team and the future for Saratoga. This concludes my review of the market and I’d like to turn the call back over to our CEO. Chris?