Hercules Capital, Inc. (NYSE:HTGC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Seth Meyer: Yes. I would agree with that, Chris. I think that what we see is probably the ceiling absent any additional rate increases from the Fed. As we’ve said, we’re going with later stage companies that comes with tighter spreads and we’ve benefited certainly from the increase of spreads as the Fed has raised. And a lot of these loans, remember, were originated at times when rates were much lower. We continue to see a strong prepayment volume on the higher rates. And so we’re just trying to manage the expectations that the new originations largely will come in or just below the level that we’re at as far as spreads because they’re later stage companies. And that as the larger spreads pay off, we expect that this is likely our ceiling in the rates that we see. And again, absent any changes from the Fed. If they decide that they need continue to increase rates to stem inflation, then all bets are off as to what our ceiling is.

Christopher Nolan: And then I guess strategically given the increase in first lien and being more selective, focusing on later stage, should we assume that we’re not going to see any sort of yield expansion from just attractive market opportunities, you’re more likely to see real yield compression in coming quarters?

Scott Bluestein: Sure. Thanks, Chris. I don’t think we’re going to see yield compression and we’re really not forecasting any significant yield compression of note. We think despite the fact that we’re moving upstream, despite the fact that we’re positioning into more of a first lien book exposure. We’ll be able to maintain the core yields in that sort of high 13s, low 14s range. So we’re not expecting any contraction and we feel pretty comfortable despite the move upstream that we’ll be able to maintain core yields roughly where they are today.

Christopher Nolan: Great. Thanks guys.

Scott Bluestein: Thanks, Chris.

Operator: And thank you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from Ryan Lynch from KBW. Your line is now open.

Ryan Lynch: Hey, good afternoon. My first question was, could you just provide a little context of what drove the – approximately 30 million of unrealized depreciation on your debt portfolio this quarter?

Seth Meyer: Yes, sure, absolutely Ryan. So it was a number of things offsetting each other. The most significant is the loss on Convoy, which is about 50 million write down on the BDC. And contrasting that though was the appreciation on the remainder of the portfolio where the benchmark rates that we use to really model out what our market value should be for the existing portfolio had a compression in the yields. Whereas we did not see that in our originations and we felt that our portfolio was still coming along pretty strong with the exception of Convoy. So we had a slight uptick in the value of our portfolio of 20 million, and those two things were the offsetting amounts that were most material.

Ryan Lynch: Okay. That makes sense. And then my other question is kind of a two-part question. I think you mentioned you had 23 companies raised new capital in the third quarter, which was the strongest quarter you’ve had in the last 1.5 years. And so kind of a two-part question on that is, number one, you’ve talked about having a very strong portfolio for a long period of time. Why do you think was there any sort of driver behind why this quarter was so strong from a capital raising standpoint in your portfolio of companies? And then the second part of that was, maybe this correlation doesn’t make sense but natural to me if there’s a lot of your portfolio companies that are raising new capital this quarter, you would have seen an increase in prepayment activity.