Capital Southwest Corporation (NASDAQ:CSWC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Bowen Diehl: Yeah. I mean, across our consumer, I’m just thinking about the names. We have had a couple of cases where revenue has kind of slowed. In one case, you saw retailers resetting inventory levels to an anticipated throughput and so, basically, kind of in the short-term, if you’re selling into the retailers, your revenue go down, but if you kind of look at the sell-through, you get comfortable the revenue is not going to stay down and not really be down all that much yet. The first lien lender, I’m not sure it gives you credit worries, but as far as economic signposts for the U.S. economy or the U.S. consumer, yeah, I mean, I would put that in the category of what you’re saying about the U.S. consumer, but not really in those cases, most of them we don’t have equity investments in. But those — in those cases, not a lot of not credit concern, but definitely those signals.

Mickey Schleien: Okay. I appreciate and understand. One last question, if I can. With this quarter’s deleveraging of the balance sheet, I’d like to ask whether you’ve adjusted your leverage targets. And if not, where do they stand both on a total and regulatory basis?

Michael Sarner: So, historically, I think we’ve said we expected once the FDA got ramped that our regulatory leverage would be somewhere in the 0.9 to 1.1 range. And that’s — obviously, we sit right now at the very bottom of that range. I think our perspective is going into a potential cycle, we would like to delever, and you’d expect the expectations that if there are concerns and you’ll see us lever back up to some degree based upon depreciation. So, we got ahead of the curve from that perspective. But from a go forward basis, you’d expect to see us continue to stay within that 0.9 to 1.1 range. On an economic basis, we’re at 1.1, which is also within the 1.1% to 1.3% range we’ve discussed. And we think we’ll follow suit will vacillate inside that range.

Bowen Diehl: Yeah. I mean, obviously, as I tried to address in the prepared remarks, I mean, it’s through a cycle, you kind of want to be at the lower end of your range going into a recession. And if we don’t have a recession for some natural reason, and that’s great. We’re fine. But if we do, you want to maintain the ability to invest throughout the recession because risk adjusted returns, especially in the second half of the recession, can become really interesting based on past cycles, and then obviously, we mentioned stock buybacks as well. So, we want to be able to manage as we’ve always had a full cycle mentality. We want to be able to position the ship, if you will, to really perform and do well for the shareholders throughout the cycle.

Mickey Schleien: Yeah. I appreciate that. Those are all my questions this morning. I appreciate your time as always. Thank you.

Bowen Diehl: Thanks Mickey.

Michael Sarner: Thanks Mickey.

Operator: Thank you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Kevin Fultz with JMP Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Kevin Fultz: Hi. Good morning and thanks for taking my question. My first question is on credit. I’m just curious if you’ve seen an increase in amendment request and if you can discuss your expectations for that to potentially pick up in the near-term?

Bowen Diehl: Yeah. We had two for the quarter. I would say it’s increased slightly, but not really a lot. I mean, it’s not zero, but it’s kind of they’ve been request candidly, when a first lien lender gets to request for an amendment we get a fee. So, it’s a nice dynamic of a first lien lender book. So, it’s part of our business to have those amendments. But I wouldn’t say there has definitely not been a flood of increase of eminent, but there’s been some increase.