Howard Levkowitz
Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is now open
Thanks, Katie. I am here with our TCPC team, and we thank everyone for participating on our call today. I will begin, with a review of our second quarter highlights and overview of our portfolio of activity and then update on the previously announced transaction between BlackRock and our external advisor. Our CFO, Paul Davis, will then review our financial results for the second quarter. After Paul’s comments, I will provide some closing remarks before opening the call to your questions. Now, let’s begin with highlights from the second quarter, which are summarized on slide four of our presentation. We delivered another strong quarter of originations in the second quarter, totaling $125 million as new and existing borrowers continue to rely on our deep industry knowledge and our flexible and tailored financing solutions. As shown on slide five, we earned net investment income of $0.41 per share in the second quarter, outearning our dividend by $0.05 and extending our record to 25 consecutive quarters in which net investment income exceeded our dividend. And today, we declared a third quarter dividend of $0.36 per share, payable on September 28, to holders of record as of September 14. We also renegotiated terms on our credit facilities during the second quarter, reducing borrowing costs and improving our overall cost structure for shareholders. Turning to our investment portfolio on slide six. At quarter-end, our portfolio had a fair market value in excess of $1.6 billion, 92% of which was in senior secured debt. We held investments in 97 companies across a wide variety of industries. Our largest position represented only 3.2% of the portfolio. And taken together, our five largest positions represented only 14.2% of the portfolio. As you can see on the chart on the left side of slide six, our recurring income is distributed across a diverse set of portfolio companies. We are not reliant on income from any individual portfolio company. In fact, on an individual company basis, over half of our portfolio companies contribute less than 1% to our recurring income. Additionally, over the last several years, we have positioned our portfolio to benefit from a rising interest rate environment. At quarter-end, 92% of our debt investments were floating rate, as demonstrated on slide seven. Our successful efforts to position our portfolio have been further enhanced by our predominantly fixed rate liabilities. Finally, in April, we announced that our advisor TCP had agreed to merge with a subsidiary of BlackRock. We successfully closed the transaction on August 1st, and are pleased with the strong investor support. As part of the transaction, TCP Capital Corp. was renamed BlackRock TCP Capital Corp. Upon closing the transaction, we also announced the appointment of Karyn L. Williams, as an Independent Director to the TCPC Board. Karyn has an extensive background in investing, governance and risk management, and we look forward to leveraging her experience. Moving on to our portfolio performance. While, the overall portfolio remains strong, NAV declined from $14.90 to $14.61 in the second quarter, primarily caused by markdowns on four of our holdings. Kawa, Real Mex, Green Biologics and AGY, which offset our NAV gain of $0.10 in the first quarter. While we’re disappointed in the performance of these four positions, they represent distinct and unrelated write downs on challenged positions we have discussed at length in prior quarters, which coincidently occurred this quarter. The largest right down was on our Kawa position where the sale contract was renegotiated. Real Mex has suffered from the increased cost of operating in California and was marked down in the second quarter in connection with its upcoming 363 auction. Despite an equity infusion earlier this year, Green Biologics has not met projections. And in the case of AGY, the markdown was driven by volatility in the end markets but the company continues to be fundamentally good business. Excluding the markdowns on these positions, NAV was flat quarter-over-quarter and the credit quality of our portfolio remained strong with debt [ph] from only one portfolio company on nonaccrual, which represented 0.3% of our portfolio at fair value. Slide eight provides an overview of our portfolio activity in the second quarter. Of the $125 million deployed, $111 million or 88% was in senior secured loans and notes. These include investments in six new companies and four existing portfolio companies. Follow-on investments in existing portfolio companies continue to be an important source of investment opportunities and reflect our strong borrower relationships and value we deliver to them. Our top five investments in the second quarter reinforced our commitment to maintaining a diverse portfolio and lending at the top of the capital structure. They include a $24 million senior secured loan to Domo, a data management company, specializing in business intelligence tools and data visualization; a $17 million senior secured loan to Adesto Technologies, a semiconductor manufacturer; a $16 million senior secured loan to Amteck, a national design build electrical contractor; a $15 million senior secured loan to FreePoint Commodities, a physical commodities merchant; and a $10 million aircraft secured loan to Mesa Air, a U.S. regional airline we know well and have financed for a number of years. Our other investments in the second quarter were spread across a variety of industries including marketing, sports, technology, insurance, and engineering and construction. Dispositions in the second quarter totaled $113 million and included a $19 million payoff of our loan to Caliber Homes; a $15 million payoff of our loan to Bon-Ton; and a $7.5 million payoff of our loans to Videology. Both Bon-Ton and Videology generated significant prepayment income, and the sale of our Gogo notes generated a significant gain. New investments in the quarter had a weighted average effective yield of 10.8%. And the investments we exited during the quarter had a weighted average effective deal of 10.6%. The overall effective yield on our debt portfolio at quarter-end increased to 11.6%. Given the competitive pricing environment, we’re very pleased to continue generating consistently strong risk-adjusted returns on our investments as we have done for two decades and throughout the several market cycles. TCPC’s consistent and strong performance has been a function of our long-term relationships with deal sources, portfolio companies and other constituents, our deep industry knowledge and our disciplined approach to sourcing, underwriting and managing our portfolio. As shown on slide nine, our dividends have returned $9.20 per share since our IPO. And as demonstrated on slide 10, TCPC has outperformed the Wells Fargo BDC Index by 36% over the same period. As you know, in the past few years, there have been many new entrants into direct lending and substantially more capital seeking investment opportunities in the middle market. Against this backdrop, we are very excited to partner with the largest global asset manager. As part of BlackRock, we will benefit from greater scale and resources and enhance stability to source transactions, a lower administration expense ratio, and access to new technology capabilities. Finally, we will be well-positioned to continue to attract the best talent to our team. We have already been working closely with our BlackRock colleagues throughout this transition period and are excited for the opportunities ahead. Now, I will turn the call over to Paul who will discuss our second quarter financial results. Paul?