David Lund
Analyst · KBW. Please go ahead
Thank you, Kyle. And thank you, everyone for joining us on today's call. As you've heard today, we've continued to execute against our long-term strategy, building a best-in-class Venture Lending platform, diversifying our balance sheet to optimize our ability to further grow our portfolio in the active Venture Capital markets. In addition to our strong investment, activity and operating results, we bolster our balance sheet and improved our liquidity profile. Once again, our portfolio grew at a record pace. During Q3, we entered into $258 million of new commitments and deployed $151 million across 25 portfolio companies. This more than doubles our year-to-date commitments to $509 million, which is well ahead of plan in our first year as a public company. We funded $119.2 million in secured loans 15 portfolio companies, we found a $28.8 million in equipment loans to seven companies. We made $3.3 million of equity investments in five portfolio companies. Gross deployments were partially offset by approximately $92.4 million in debt principal repayments of which $73.6 million was from early principal repayments and $18.8 million was from normal amortization. In addition, we received $800,000 in principal proceeds from sales of our warrant and equity investments. Of the early repayments. $32.7 million was from equipment financings, and $40.9 million was unsecured loans. Levels of early repayments both in our portfolio and industry wide continue to remain high, reflecting an active year in equity and debt capital markets. We remain encouraged that so many of our portfolio companies are finding new sources of funding, allowing them to continue to grow while paying back our capital and generating returns on our investments. As a role -- excuse me, as a result of the $58 million in net investment activity and approximately $6.2 million of accretion of OID and $0.7 million of net realized gain, our portfolio grew at cost by approximately $64 million or 11.2% to $639 million compared to $575 million at the end of Q2. On a fair value base, our portfolio increase from $598 million to $677 million attributed to net deployment since [technical difficulty] and other activity I just mentioned plus $15.4 million of net unrealized appreciation. This $15.4 million increase was attributed to $18.4 million of unrealized appreciation in our equity and warrant portfolio offset by $3 million of depreciation in our loan and equipment finance investments. The unrealized appreciation and the warrant and equity portfolio was driven by a reversal of $10.5 million in unrealized losses, primarily in connection with a sale of one portfolio company and net unrealized appreciation of $7.9 million. The unrealized appreciation our loan portfolio was attributed to the flip of $1.2 million of unrealized appreciation to realize gains and unrealized appreciation of $1.8 million related to mark-to-market adjustments in our loan and equipment finance investments. Approximately 60% of our loan portfolio is in floating rate securities, up from 49% at the end of Q2 as we continue to reposition our portfolio to have a higher concentration of floating rate securities. Now, let's dig deeper into Q3 operating results. On a GAAP basis, we recorded a total investment income of $21.8 million comprised of approximately $20.7 million in interest income and $1.1 million in fee income. This represents a $2.3 million or 11.7% increase over the $19.5 million of total investment income recorded during the second quarter, and the year-over-year increase of 61% over the $13.5 million recorded in Q3 of 2020. Looking at the year-to-date period, total investment income increased by 48% to $58.6 million from $39.6 million in the first three quarters of 2020. This increase was primarily related to the record growth in our outstanding debt portfolio income derived from earlier repayments, and I worked to increase the yield of our investments across the board. Our effective yield on the portfolio for Q3 was 15.8%, which was in line with the prior quarter. For the year-to-date period, effective yields were 15.8% as compared to 14.6% in the prior year period. We incurred a total of $5.1 million of total interest expense and amortization of deferred financing costs on our various debt facilities as compared to $4.4 million in Q2. As we have mentioned, we took definitive steps in the third quarter to strengthen our balance sheet, closing an offering of $125 million and 4.375% notes due in 2026. These notes were the primary contributor to the increase in interest expense for the quarter. Our ongoing growth and success as a company have allowed us to lower our overall cost of debt and will help us drive incremental returns to our shareholders in the quarters ahead. For Q3, our weighted average cost of debt including interest and fee amortization was 7.1%, which was a decrease from 7.6% in the previous quarter. The decrease in the weighted average cost of debt was primarily due to the issuance of 2026 notes and a lower average balance outstanding under our credit facility. Our SG&A expenses were approximately $5.6 million during Q3 as compared to approximately $5 million during Q2. The increase of approximately $600,000 or 11.8% was primarily driven by higher variable compensation expense, higher consulting fees and slightly higher expense related to our new Phoenix headquarters. During the quarter, our Board of Directors approved the issuance of restricted stock awards to employees and awards to Directors under the non-employee plan. A total of approximately 593,000 shares were issued, and we incurred approximately $149,000 of expense during Q3. We estimate the ongoing quarterly expense related to these words to be approximately $800,000 per quarter. As a result of this operating activity, net investment income for the third quarter was $11.1 million or $0.42 per share on a basic basis, and an increase of 2.3% as compared to $10.1 million or $0.38 per share in the preceding quarter on a basic basis. As I noted earlier, we recorded net unrealized appreciation of $15.4 million in our investment portfolio. During the third quarter we’ve recognize net realized gains of $666,000 primarily related to the realized gains of $2.7 million from early repayments of equipment loans and $679,000 in connection with two warrant transaction offset by $2.7 billion loss on the sale of one portfolio company. Net Assets increased by approximately 5.1% to $399 million or NAV of $14.70 per share, compared to Q2 net assets of $379.7 million or NAV $14.33 per share. The quarter-over-quarter increase of $0.37 per share in NAV was primarily the result of the unrealized appreciation, as well as net investment income that exceeded our declared dividend of $0.09 per share -- by $0.09 per share. Our investment portfolio continues to perform strong with approximately 99% of our portfolio performing. We currently have two portfolio companies on non-accrual with a carrying cost of $13 million and a fair value of $7.6 million representing just 1.3% of the fair value of the debt investment portfolio. Our average risk rating for the quarter was 3.1 based on our one to five risk rating scale, with five indicating very strong performance. This rating was steady with 3.1 in the prior quarter. Moving to liquidity, available liquidity at September 30, 2021 is approximately $206 million, including approximately $25 million in cash and cash equivalents and a borrowing capacity of $181 million under our credit facility, subject to existing terms and conditions. Our leverage increase to 78% from 65% in the prior quarter driven by our additional borrowing during the third quarter, as we target a long-term leverage ranging between 115% and 135%. In addition, as we announced this week, we close a $300 million credit facility with KeyBank. KeyBank is leading the facility with a $75 million commitment and the facility can accordion to $300 million as we add banks to the lending syndicate. Rates under facility range from LIBOR plus 2.85% to 3.35% with variable advance rates depending on the characteristics of the loans in the portfolio. Finally, regarding our dividend on September 30, 2021, our Board of Directors declared a cash dividend of $0.33 per share for the third quarter of 2021. It was paid on October 15 and which generated coverage of 127% by our GAAP NII earnings for the quarter. We anticipate declaring a dividend for the fourth quarter of 2021 during December subjected to our Board of Directors approval. And with that, I'll now open the line for questions. Operator.