Bruce Spohler
Analyst · KBW. Please proceed
Thank you, Rich. Today Solar Capital’s portfolio has the highest credit quality profiler ever. Overall our issuers are experiencing stable-to-modest earnings growth and the fundamentals are helping. Furthermore, we have no direct exposure to the oil and gas sector. Our predominantly senior secured floating rate portfolio construction should provide protection in the economic environment declines and/or interest rates rise. At March 31, the weighted average yield on our income producing investment portfolio when measured at fair value was 10%. The weighted average investment risk rating of our portfolio remains at approximately 2 based on our 1 to 4 risk rating scale with one representing the least amount of risk. Our one investment on non-accrual direct buy accounts for less than half of 1% of the portfolio at fair value with the other 99.7% of our portfolio performing at or above expectations. Credit fundamentals are strong across the portfolio. At the end of Q1, portfolio consisted of 42 companies, portfolio was comprised of approximately 60% senior secured loans, approximately 29% senior secured loans held by Crystal Financial, 7% subordinated debt, 2% preferred equity and just over 2% common equity and warrants. Including Crystal Financial’s four portfolio which again consists entirely of senior secured loans, approximately 90% of our portfolio is in senior secured investment. At March 31st, approximately 87% of our income producing portfolio was floating rate, which again includes Crystal’s full portfolio with measured at fair value. Now, let me give you a brief update on Crystal. At March 31, Crystal had a highly diversified portfolio of approximately $486 million of funded senior secured loans across 25 distinct issuers, with an average exposure of approximately $90 million. During the quarter, Crystal funded new loans totaling approximately $40 million and experienced repayments totaling approximately $30 million. All of Crystal’s financial investments of floating rate senior secured loans. At the end of Q1, Crystal has a net debt to invested equity ratio of 0.8 times. And for the first quarter, our investment in Crystal distributed to Solar Capital a cash dividend of $7.9 million, which is the equivalent of 11.5% annualized cash on cash yield, consistent with what they paid in the prior quarter. Now back to Solar. During Q1 Solar originated approximately $30 million of investments across one new and four existing portfolio companies. All of the assets we originated were senior secured and floating rate. Investments prepaid during the quarter were de minimis at approximately $6 million. Now let me highlight a few of our investments. We funded roughly $6.5 million investment of our $10 million commitment to a life science investment and the first lien term loan for AgaMatrix, which is a designer and developer of blood glucose monitoring system for people with diabetes. The yield maturity on this investment exceeds 10.5%. We also funded $10 million of the $20 million delayed draw term loan through Varilease Finance, which is an independent equipment lessor. As a reminder in Q3 last year, Solar invested in the same security. The loan-to-value on our investment is approximately 85% and our yields maturity is approximately 9.75%. Together with the add-on investment, we have a total investment now of just over $37 million and are looking to increase that going forward. We also increased our investment in Aegis Toxicology Sciences through an opportunistic secondary purchase of an additional $4 million of the company’s second lien term loan. Solar had originally funded a $21 million investment in the company in the first quarter of last year. Owned by ABRY, Aegis is a leading player in the specialty lab services segment. Our incremental purchase brings the solar total investment size to $29 million and our yield on the investment approximates 10%. We also increased our investment in Datapipe by $5 million via an add-on term loan to support the company’s add-on acquisitions. As a reminder, in Q3 of last year, we invested in Datapipe, which is a managed service provider. Solar’s whole position is now approximately $27 million and the investment there is a yield in excess of 9.5%. And finally, we funded a $5 million add-on term loan investment to Argo Turboserve, which is a specialized inventory management and logistics system. Solar initially funded our investment in Q2 of ‘14 and now with the add-on investment our whole size is $15 million. The yield on this investment is just over 9% and pro forma for this recent transaction total leverage is under 2.7 times. Now, I’d like to provide a brief update on our life science lending business, which is an important component of our growth and diversification strategy. During the quarter, we added three experienced healthcare investment professionals, effectively reconstituting at Solar, the core of the life science lending team of GE Capital that have been led by Anthony Storino who joined our platform early last year. Over the next several years, we believe there is a great opportunity to build a highly diversified portfolio of life science senior secured loans at a very modest debt-to-equity ratios, significant enterprise value protection and low loss given soft risk profiles. To target yields for these loans is 10% to 12%. Warrants and success fees are frequently provided to lenders as part of the financing, which can often enhance those 10% to 12% returns over time. At the end of Q1, we had a life science portfolio of approximately $65 million across eight issuers with an average investment size of $8 million dollars. We are extremely pleased with the results of our initial year in this business and anticipate increasing our exposure to this attractive asset class. On our February earnings call, we stated that our anticipated investment income in Q1 would be lower as we work to prudently reinvest the proceeds from our significant legacy repayments in Q4. We expected originations to be seasonally lower and repayments to approximately $5 million, resulting in modest portfolio growth in Q1. Sitting here today, one month into Q2, we can say confidently that the pace of transactions has picked up in second quarter and we feel very good about the level of repayments both in Q2 and the remainder of 2015 being relatively low. Reduce repayments, together with a solid origination pipeline should further facilitate portfolio growth. Based on our current visibility, we anticipate solid portfolio growth in Q2 and over the remainder of the year. Now I will turn the call back to Michael.