Investcorp Credit Management BDC, Inc. (NASDAQ:ICMB) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

There are now three business segments remaining. For confidentiality reasons, we can’t go into — we can’t give any additional information about the company’s performance. We continue to remain optimistic for a positive conclusion for our investments, and we think that the short maturity provides a driver for M&A or capital markets activities. Our gross leverage this quarter was 1.64 above our guidance of 1.25 to 1.5. Our net leverage was 1.56. As mentioned last quarter, we expect to see our growth in net leverage continue to converge. As of November 7, our gross and net leverage were 1.61% and 1.6%. As we have previously stated, the adviser will waive the portion of our management fee associated with the base management fees over one turn of leverage.We covered our September quarterly dividend with NII.

The company is expected to earn its dividend through the next quarter ending December 31. On November 11, our board of directors declared a distribution for the quarter ended December 31, 2022, of $0.13 per share and a supplemental distribution of $0.02 per share, both payable on January 10, 2023, to shareholders of record on December 15, 2022. While we are officially reducing the regular dividend of $0.15 per share, the net effect this quarter is unchanged from previous quarter. We believe that proactively setting the dividend at this level is appropriate as we continue to focus on a leverage range of 1.25 to 1.5 times. We believe the new dividend level continues to represent an attractive yield given the market price of IPM stock. Our portfolio is well positioned to navigate further market challenges.

The operating performance of our underlying portfolio companies continues to be strong. Looking ahead, we remain highly focused on risk management and finding investment opportunities with strong structural protection and attractive investment characteristics. Our ultimate goal has not wavered and is, as always, focused on capital preservation and maintaining a stable dividend. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the line for Q&A.

Operator: Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we’ll conduct the question-and-answer session. Our first call first, our first — the first person we have a question for is Sean-Paul Adams with Raymond James. Go ahead, please.

Sean-Paul Adams: Hey, guys. In relation to your markdowns for last quarter, you had a greater than average proportion of markdowns related to credit. Can you give us a little bit of the breakdown of your estimates of credit markdowns versus market spread adjustments for this quarter?

Michael Mauer : For the December quarter?

Sean-Paul Adams: Yes, sir.

Michael Mauer : Is that the question? The December quarter, we’re just starting to do our reviews for the quarter. So we really have no estimates at this point. I’ll let Chris make any general comments about the quality of the portfolio.

Chris Jansen: Yeah. Thanks, Mike. Overall, the portfolio is performing according to plan. I think like anybody out there who deals in credit, obviously, the sharp rise at short-term rates has given us some cause for concern on interest coverage levels. On the other side of that in the many years that Mike and I and the team have been doing this, we’ve never seen this level of interest coverage in deals. And that’s due to the fact that a lot of the deals we have, have 35% or 40% to 60% of equity underneath them. And just as far as the specific credits, Mike have walked through the couple of credits where we had some issues last quarter. This quarter, we’re not we’re not really thinking about anything too differently. But as Mike said, it’s very, very early on in the process. Hopefully, that’s helpful.

Sean-Paul Adams: Yeah, that’s perfect. Thank you.

Michael Mauer : Sure.