Main Street Capital Corporation (NYSE:MAIN) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

I think companies are doing well, despite all the challenges and all the headwinds that you hear about in the broader business community or just the overall economy, these companies are doing well. And they’re concerned about the same uncertainties that everybody else is. But if you look at their expectations in terms of discussions with customers and their ability to drive operational improvements or efficiencies and manage all the parts of their business that drive value, I would say that they all have a fairly optimistic view, which is why we look at it. And we always leave that meeting very, very encouraged. But I’d say this year we left the meeting maybe more encouraged than we had in the past. And again, I’ll let David, if he has any comments he wants to add as a response there, as in terms of what we heard from president’s meeting.

David Magdol: I’d say that the only thing that is always interesting to talk to our portfolio company execs about is their specific drivers within each industry, because we have so many industries represented. It is a, generally what you’re hearing in the economy probably overlays with our portfolio companies. The great news is because they’re small, they can be nimble and react quickly to the changes that they’re seeing. So there was a lot of discussion with those that might have some headwinds in their industry, what they’re doing proactively to position themselves, and others are still seeing good, robust activity and capitalizing on that.

Robert Dodd: Got it. Thank you. And I really appreciate the call. And again, congratulations on the government of this quarter.

Operator: Next question, Mark Hughes with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Mark Hughes: Yeah, thanks. Good morning. The incentive fee income from the fund management business, I think, up nicely year over year. Is that at a reasonable run rate? Was there something unusually good this quarter? Or is this kind of if the market stays in a particular groove, this will be a decent run rate for you?

Dwayne Hyzak: Sure, Mark. If you look at our asset management business, one of the things that I would remind the group is that that business from an investment strategy standpoint is primarily focused on our private loan strategy. So when you look at Main Street’s results, you can kind of read through to the results that we’re seeing in the funds or the clients we have on the asset management business. So if you look at our results at Main Street in this quarter, you did not see a lot of non-recurring, unusual one-time items. It was, from our perspective, a very clean quarter from that perspective. So I would say that you should expect the results that we had in our asset management business would follow the same nature of income and earnings.

So when we look at the third quarter, the incentive fees were down a little bit from the second quarter, but we feel like it’s a really good base level of incentive fees, assuming the market continues to perform the way it has and we don’t see degradation or issues across the portfolio, which we’re not seeing today. So we feel really good about the quarter and we feel good about what that means from a look-through standpoint into the incentive fees we’re getting off the asset management business.

Mark Hughes: And then did you give any indication of kind of the underlying EBITDA or revenue growth for your portfolio companies, the lower middle market companies?

Dwayne Hyzak: We didn’t, Mark. That’s not a stat that we typically publish.

Mark Hughes: Okay, very good. And I think you — I’m not sure whether you were touching on your pipeline in terms of potential new investments, but I think you would also suggest that your opportunity for fair value appreciation through maybe some divesting activity, that that was elevated. Could you talk a little bit more about that? What needs to happen for that to come through?