Monroe Capital Corporation (NASDAQ:MRCC) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Theodore Koenig: Yes, I think we’re mindful of, obviously, future performance potential of the portfolio. We did have a realized loss in the portfolio last quarter in the form of Port Townsend and when we consider our dividend distribution from the SLF to both partners, both us and National Life. We consider portfolio performance in the context of that distribution yield and it’s something that we assess as we always do when we make that dividend determination.

Robert Dodd: Got it. Okay. I appreciate that. And then just back to the horizon, Chris already asked the question, but I mean is there — I mean you have some recurring revenue software business within MRCC. You obviously have an entirely different fund that focuses on that. So, MRCC has sometimes taken opportunity to take advantage of other areas of expertise within Monroe. I mean that is the place. So, is there room — is MRCC grew a small sleeve of venture debt? Or is that just something you don’t consider appropriate for this vehicle at all?

Theodore Koenig: That’s a great question, Robert. We manage $16 billion across our platform. MRCC gets the benefit of the entire platform. And what we try to do is in our allocation policies, provide allocations of each deal we do across the platform when it’s appropriate for the specific fund for the investment vehicle. I anticipate that from time-to-time, there’s going to be highly attractive and accretive deals that we originate across the platform, whether it’s from Horizon, whether it’s in our software lending vertical, health care, sports, media, entertainment, and when the appropriate investment fits within the MRCC mandate as managed by our portfolio managers, Mick and Alex, you may see these assets. But we’ve been pretty good historically it’s sticking to our knitting and MRCC and developing a high-quality senior secured portfolio that’s got low leverage and good interest coverage.

As you know, venture debt businesses don’t necessarily have those two qualities. We may have good growth prospects. We may have good loan to value, good loan against enterprise value, but interest coverage and leverage are not usually the cornerstones of a venture debt portfolio. So, we’re going to tread slowly, I think, with MRCC in the venture debt area.

Robert Dodd: Got it. Thank you for that.

Operator: And from B. Riley, we’ll hear next from Bryce Rowe.

Bryce Rowe: Hi, good morning. I wanted to ask about balance sheet leverage and maybe just future visibility into repayment activity to help fund newer investments. So, obviously, you have a balance sheet leverage tick up above the high end of your range, certainly understand that can happen from time-to-time, but just curious if we should expect balance sheet leverage to stay at current levels or if you have some visibility into repayment activity that made you comfortable kind of going above the high end of the target?

Theodore Koenig: So, good morning Bryce and great question. So, as we manage the portfolio, we’re looking into the future in terms of repayments we expect from our borrowers were in close contact with our over 100 borrowers. We’re also looking into our originations pipeline, and we’re trying to the kind of cadence those two things, if you will. We had really, really strong origination activity during the fourth quarter, and our payoffs — projected payoffs came lighter than expected as we looked at our payout pipeline. So, we came in at the end of the year above our leverage targets. But the way we think about this going forward is we still maintain our long-term leverage target of 1.3 to 1.4 and would guide you in the short term to kind of the top end of that range, which is where we are targeting to manage the portfolio.