Thank you for your continued patience. The meeting will begin shortly. If you need assistance at any time, please press 0, and a member of our team will be happy to help you. If you need assistance at any time, press 0, and a member of our team will be happy to help you. Thank you for your continued patience. Your meeting will begin shortly. If you need assistance at any time, press 0, and a member of our team will be happy to help you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to today's SLR Investment Corp. fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question-and-answer session. Please note this call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the meeting over to Michael Gross, Chairman and Co-CEO. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, and good morning. Welcome to SLR Investment Corp.'s earnings call for the quarter and year ended 12/31/2025. I am joined today by my long-term partner, Bruce Spohler, our Co-Chief Executive Officer, as well as our Chief Financial Officer, Shiraz Kajee, and members of the SLR Investment Corp. Investor Relations team. Shiraz, before we begin, would you please start by covering the webcast and forward-looking statements?

Thank you, Michael. Good morning, everyone. I would like to remind everyone that today's call and webcast are being recorded. Please note that they are the property of SLR Investment Corp., and that any unauthorized broadcast in any form is strictly prohibited. This conference call is also being webcast on the events calendar in the Investors section on our website at slrinvestmentcorp.com. Audio replays of this call will be made available later today as disclosed in our February 24 earnings press release. I would also like to call your attention to the customary disclosures in our press release regarding forward-looking statements. Today's conference call and webcast may include forward-looking statements and projections. These statements are not guarantees of our future performance or financial results and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Actual results may differ materially as a result of a number of factors, including those described from time to time in our filings with the SEC. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statements unless required to do so by law. To obtain copies of our latest SEC filings, please visit our website or call us at (212) 993-1670. At this time, I would like to turn the call back to our Chairman and CEO, Michael Gross.

Thank you, Shiraz, and thank you to everyone for joining our earnings call this morning. We are pleased to report that SLR Investment Corp.'s fourth quarter results solidified a strong year for the company, showcasing another quarter of broad stability in our portfolio, slow but steady portfolio growth, and a shift to asset-based lending investments with primarily liquid current assets as collateral that are supported by actively monitored borrowing bases. For those who have been following us for the last two years, we have shared a cautious view with our stakeholders about the increasingly fierce conditions within sponsor finance from the oversupply of capital. The broader investor community and media are now signaling concern of these conditions, the potential risk to forward returns, and ultimately an expectation of a wide dispersion in manager performance. While 2025 can be characterized by a surprisingly resilient U.S. economy that withstood tariff uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, and a government shutdown, the year in hindsight can also be marked as the beginning of a sea change in the maturing private credit industry. Sitting here today, with investor concerns and skepticism running high, we feel relatively insulated from many of the risks facing many of our peers because of our deliberate decision to hold the line with our underwriting standards, particularly in the overcrowded sponsor finance market, to safeguard SLR Investment Corp.'s performance and capital. We attribute the stability in our fourth quarter and full-year results to our multi-strategy approach to private credit investing, discipline, and our tactical asset allocation framework, which enables us to maintain investment and diversification across asset classes. Importantly, we are able to say no and pass on investment opportunities that do not meet our conservative lending standards. As credit investors, we are obsessively focused on downside protection. Turning to our fourth quarter…

Thank you, Michael. SLR Investment Corp.'s net asset value at 12/31/2025 was $996 million, or $18.26 per share, compared to $18.21 per share at 09/30/2025, and $18.20 per share at 12/31/2024. At year-end, SLR Investment Corp.'s on-balance-sheet investment portfolio had a fair value of approximately $2.1 billion in 100 portfolio companies across 31 industries, compared to a fair value of $2.1 billion in 109 portfolio companies across 31 industries at September 30. SLR Investment Corp.'s investment portfolio is funded by a combination of revolving credit facilities and the issuance of term debt in the unsecured debt markets to institutional investors. The company is investment grade rated by Fitch, Moody's, and DBRS, and more than 40% of the company's debt capital is comprised of unsecured debt at December 31. During the quarter, the company was active in the management of various credit facilities with multiple banks, including the closing of a new credit facility at the SSLP that enhanced the joint venture's borrowing flexibility and reduced the spread by 75 basis points. These actions, combined with others taken during the year, have improved borrowing flexibility via better advance rates, expanded the unsecured investor base, and extended maturities. The company does not have any near-term refinancing obligations, with the next unsecured note maturity occurring in December 2026. We expect to continue to prudently access the debt capital markets and issue unsecured debt as and when needed. At December 31, the company had approximately $1.2 billion of debt outstanding with a net debt-to-equity ratio of 1.14 times, which was within our target range. We believe we have ample liquidity to support our unfunded commitments. Moving to the P&L, for the three months ended December 31, gross investment income totaled $54.5 million versus $57.0 million for the three months ended September 30. Net expenses totaled $32.9 million for the three months ended December 31. This compares to $35.4 million for the prior quarter. Accordingly, the company's net investment income for the three months ended 12/31/2025 totaled $21.6 million, or $0.40 per average share, the same as the prior quarter. Below the line, the company had a net realized and unrealized gain for the fourth quarter totaling $3.5 million versus a net realized and unrealized gain of $1.7 million for the third quarter of 2025. As a result, the company had a net increase in net assets resulting from operations of $25.1 million for the three months ended December 31, compared to a net increase of $23.3 million for the three months ended September 30. On February 24, the Board of SLR Investment Corp. declared a Q1 2026 quarterly base distribution of $0.41 per share, payable on 03/27/2026 to holders of record as of 03/13/2026. I will now turn the call over to our Co-CEO, Bruce Spohler.

Thank you, Shiraz. As Michael shared, we have continued to shift the portfolio toward our specialty finance strategies throughout 2025 due to their more attractive risk-adjusted returns. Our pipeline also reflects this continued momentum. Our specialty finance strategies currently offer higher pricing than sponsor finance loans, and greater downside protection through their underlying collateral support and tight documentation. We view these more favorable terms as a complexity premium that we earn through investing in structures that require significant expertise and infrastructure that most private credit firms do not have. Turning to the portfolio, at year-end, the comprehensive investment portfolio consisted of approximately $3.3 billion with an average exposure per borrower of $3.8 million. Measured at fair value, approximately 98% of the portfolio consisted of senior secured loans, with 95% invested in first lien loans. The 3% of our portfolio invested in second lien loans consists entirely of asset-based loans with underlying borrowing bases and no second lien cash flow loans. At year-end, our weighted average yield on the portfolio was 11.6%, which was down from 12.2% in the third quarter and 12.1% at the end of 2024. The sequential decline in yield was primarily due to two factors: the decline in base rates in the fourth quarter that began to impact results as well as timing due to the funding of our new investments towards the end of the December month and receipt of repayments earlier in the quarter. Overall, we believe our portfolio has been less impacted by changes in base rates and spread compression compared to the BDC peer group because of our lower allocation to cash flow loans, made possible through our current focus on the less competitive specialty finance investment sectors. Based on our quantitative risk assessment scale, our portfolio continues to perform well. At year-end,…

Thank you, Bruce. With hindsight, we think 2025 has the appearance of being marked as a consequential year for the private credit industry and for the value proposition of SLR Investment Corp. Over the last couple of years, we have been vocal about how the seemingly limitless access to private credit for investors can lead to the unsatisfactory achievement of marketed outcomes, especially given that the two key drivers of outperformance in private credit investing come from avoiding and minimizing credit losses and the use of leverage. As we see it today, the markets are clearly demonstrating an understanding of the private credit market’s maturation and recalibrating expectations to a more normalized default loss experience. While the private credit landscape has shifted dramatically, our core philosophy remains unchanged. Stakeholder alignment drives every decision at both SLR Capital Partners and SLR Investment Corp. Last year, SLR Investment Corp. surpassed its 15-year history as a publicly traded company, and this year SLR Capital Partners will surpass 20 years of operating history. As co-founders of SLR and co-CEOs of SLR Investment Corp., Bruce and I continue to lead a team that has largely worked with us since the start and are now responsible for more than 300 employees, including professionals at the five specialty finance affiliates within SLR Investment Corp. Our platform's value proposition has attracted very high-quality senior talents such as Mac Fowl from JPMorgan and others. Based on our team’s investment experience through multiple cycles over the past 30-plus years and our multi-strategy approach to private credit investing, we believe we are well equipped to continue outperforming across shifting private credit markets. SLR Investment Corp. achieved a net income ROE of 9.3% in 2025 and a total economic return of 8.1% over the last three years, which we expect to be…

Certainly, Mr. Gross. We will now open for questions. Once again, that is star one for questions. We will go first this morning to Erik Edward Zwick of Lucid Capital Markets.

Thanks. Good morning, all. Thank you for all the detailed comments on the individual lending verticals and outlooks there. A bit of a follow-up in terms of the pipeline within the ABL and equipment finance and more from the inorganic perspective. I know sometimes you review opportunities to acquire portfolios and/or lending teams. I am wondering if you could just update us on any recent activity or outlook for 2026 there.

Yes, great question. We have been very active. We do not win them all, because we are as disciplined in our acquisitions as we are in our individual investments. But I will say that the quality of potential opportunities is high, and as you may recall, one of the strategies that we have is to lend into some of these potential platforms as a way to get to know each other and see if there is an opportunity to bring them onto the SLR platform, rather than just lend them capital. So we have a number of those in the pipeline that are currently in portfolio that we have an active dialogue with. Those take time to germinate. So I would say that we do not see anything imminent, but we are very actively engaged in potential acquisitions.

Thanks for the update there. And then I am just curious, in terms of the tight spreads that are being witnessed in the public debt markets, are those impacting the spreads in the ABL and equipment finance opportunities you are seeing today, or because of some of the structural defense mechanisms you have in place, have you been able to maintain new spreads relative to the existing portfolio?

Yes. As Michael mentioned, the overall return has come down a little bit across all the strategies, but we still believe 11.5% or so compares extremely favorably to the market more broadly, and specifically the cash flow market. So we still like the opportunities. The structural protections help us on the risk side. Really, as we touched on, the lack of capital flows coming into these markets allows us to maintain our competitive position. Plus, the peer group here is smaller, but also extremely disciplined. Our peers share the same decades-long experience in asset-backed lending and appreciate that discipline is critical for their performance. So we find people to be very disciplined and not many new entrants.

And the last one for me, just your portfolio remains very clean from a credit perspective from almost any metric you would choose to look at it. I am curious, are you seeing anything that might be an early signal in terms of greater amendment requests or increased revolver usage, or anything noteworthy from that perspective?

The short answer is no. Private credit is a business of not sleeping at night, worrying about every name in your portfolio. As we mentioned, we do have a watch list; it is roughly 2%, and that is a constant. But what I would say is in our ABL strategies, and we touched on this in the comments, you have metrics that allow you to see more real-time the underlying performance of your borrowers and get a window into the broader economy domestically. Specifically, we get to see inventory turns, we get to see receivable collections, because we are monitoring those underlying pieces of collateral on a weekly and monthly basis. I would tell you that we are not seeing any themes coming out of that. It is very idiosyncratic—a one-off borrower here or there—but nothing that we can call a theme.

That is great to hear. Thanks for taking my question today.

Thank you.

We will go next now to Rick Shane of JPMorgan.

Hey, guys, thanks for taking my questions. Look, one of the advantages that you guys have is that your leverage is relatively low and you have capacity to flex that as you choose. You also talked about being opportunistic during market dislocations. If we sort of stay in this environment right now, should we expect you to be opportunistic, or should we expect the portfolio and leverage to be roughly flat, and you would be waiting for a more severe environment to take advantage of that liquidity?

I am going to answer it two ways. Part of what we are doing, to Erik’s questioning, is we always try to have a little bit of dry powder for potential acquisitions, and so that does inform how we look at the leverage ratio at any moment in time based on what we are seeing out there on the acquisition front as well as individual investment opportunities. We are blessed that we have multiple strategies. We are seeing good opportunities in the specialty finance strategies, particularly ABL, although we did mention that we are seeing life science pick up, and we also could see, as we get deeper into 2026, cash flow dislocation create opportunity for us, as we took advantage of back in 2023 when there was a dislocation in the cash flow market. So we are happy to take leverage up either through acquisitions or individual investments throughout 2026 to the high end of our target range, which is 1.25 times. Whether that will happen or not, we will see, because the other side of that equation is obviously repayments. As a lender, we celebrate repayment—that generates a memo internally. We are not so focused on deployment; we are more focused on getting repaid. As you can see, we have had an elevated level of repayments, and that has been very intentional where we have the ability to make that decision—do we stay or do we get repaid. By and large, we have been choosing to get repaid because either terms or structures or pricing have been less attractive than we would like. So that is the unknown for this year, although our crystal ball says we probably will see less repayments because I do see less capital coming into the market and a bit more discipline. So, long-winded way of saying we would like to see that leverage ratio come up in this environment because of the very attractive opportunities.

Got it. Okay. Not long-winded—fine. I have asked a few long-winded questions in my time, so appreciate the answer.

Thanks, Rick.

Thank you. We go next now to Heli Sheth at Raymond James.

Good morning. Thanks for the question. You mentioned M&A opportunities in the ABL business remain high. Any sort of shift in sentiment or outlook there? Does it seem more or less likely that some players may be willing to sell with all of the recent market noise?

Dislocation always forces people to rethink their business and access to capital. So if we go through a period of time like this for quite some time, I think we will see more opportunities and at better pricing. We have a team that is actively looking at many situations all the time. So we are hopeful something happens in the relatively near term.

Got it. Thank you. And then could you quantify how much spillover you have as of year-end?

We do not have any to speak of.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. And gentlemen, it appears we have no further questions today. Mr. Gross, I would like to turn things back to you, sir, for any closing comments.

No closing comments at this time other than to thank you for all your time today. We realize it is a busy earnings season, and with all the turmoil in private credit, it is quite busy. If anyone has any questions, or people who are listening to this call after the fact, please feel free to reach out to any of us to continue the dialogue. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Gross. Again, ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today's SLR Investment Corp. fourth quarter earnings conference call. Thanks so much for joining us, and we wish you all a great day. Goodbye.