FS Credit Opportunities Corp. (NYSE:FSCO) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Andrew Beckman: Sure. So, our dividend policy is to kind of pay out net income. But we also believe it’s important to make sure we earn what we pay out. There are closed-end funds out there that over-distribute and don’t cover their dividend. We don’t think that’s kind of prudent. And if you look at our dividend and our net income, you’ll see that they’ve kind of increased. We had that 15% increase kind of in July. And we’ll continue to assess the dividend as we see our net income trends materialize.

Robert Paun: Okay. And then, another one on leverage. Can you talk about how you utilize leverage at the Fund?

Andrew Beckman: So we look for alpha at the investment level, and we are not looking to kind of be a highly levered fund that’s really using leverage to kind of generate returns that differentiate us from the market or kind of on-the-run credit instruments. We think it’s a better way to produce differentiated returns and also protect downside. At quarter end, as mentioned, our debt-to-assets was approximately 34%. That did include a cash balance that was above average due to some of the preferred that was maturing. So if you kind of adjust for cash, our debt to assets was probably just sub-30%. We have given out roughly 33%, 34% as the right long-term average and don’t see that changing right now.

Robert Paun: Great. And then the next one on non-accruals. What is the non-accrual rate as of June 30th?

Andrew Beckman: So the non-accrual rate as of June 30th is approximately 2%. The thing I should mention is because of our event-driven strategy, sometimes we purposely buy investments that are not accruing, because we think they are trading at sizable kind of discounts to intrinsic value. So I just want to point out that the 2% includes things that may have been specifically purchased while non-accruing.

Robert Paun: Great. So next question. Equity exposure increased to 10% of the portfolio at the end of June. What drove that increase?

Andrew Beckman: So the increase was not driven by new purchases. It was primarily driven by appreciation. So events — positive events and positive performance on instruments that are in that bucket. I would say, we are generally not buying common equities. So if you look at our equity portfolio, it’s primarily comprised of warrants that we may get as part of loans, private loans that we make, that could appreciate or warrants that we could kind of exercise, debt positions that we might convert from debt-to-equity. And then there is definitely one sizable position in there that is preferred stock, which is a bespoke investment that we made and it’s a company that doesn’t really have any debt. But for competitive purposes, the company preferred to have its liability show up as kind of preferred stock.

So we basically structured a preferred stock investment that looks and smells very much like a debt security and has covenants that doesn’t really allow any debt in front of us. And that goes in that equity bucket, but that is accruing and paying a dividend

Robert Paun: The next question is a follow up on fees and the fee structure. What are the exact percentages for management fees and incentive fees?

Andrew Beckman: So our management fee is 1.35%, that was reduced from 1.5% upon our listing. And our incentive fee is 10% on investment income, subject to a 6% hurdle, based on net assets, and we do not have capital gains incentive fee.

Robert Paun : Great. Thank you, Andrew and Nick. Looks like that we’ve addressed all the questions in the chat. Thank you all for joining us today. If you do have any follow-up questions, please feel free to reach out to us, to myself, Robert Paun, Head of Investor Relations, and we look forward to speaking with you on our next call. Thank you.

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