New Mountain Finance Corporation (NASDAQ:NMFC) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Bryce Rowe: Hey, John. Let’s see, I wanted to maybe start on some of the origination activity and how it plays into repayment activity and how it plays into the balance sheet leverage. We talked about this last quarter, but it feels like you’re taking a slightly more conservative approach in terms of balance sheet leverage, and we’ve seen it come down for a couple of quarters in a row now. You just highlighted some repayment activity here subsequent to third quarter, and, so I guess the question is, do you think we’ll see that trend continue in terms of balance sheet leverage kind of working lower? And then as far as the activity for the third quarter, relatively muted origination activity, is that kind of work with this whole discussion around leverage? Or is it more just kind of a view of the macro environment and what you’re seeing in terms of investment opportunities?

Laura Holson: Sure. I’m happy to cover that. So in terms of just the deleveraging and kind of where we are. So we do have – we continue to have our stated range of 1 time to 1.25 times and is where we’re comfortable operating within that range from a leverage perspective. But as we tried to highlight, I think we are focused on trying to get more to the middle of that range because I think there had been several quarters in a row where we had been at the very high end of that range. And so just given the macro environment we’re in, we thought it made sense to kind of come down a little bit more towards the middle of the range. So that is what is reflected in our Q3 results here. I think it’s obviously hard to predict. It does bounce around a little bit depending on kind of repayments that we get.

But I think the repayments that we received after quarter end, I think we’re comfortable redeploying those proceeds and continuing to operate kind of more in the middle of the leverage range. So in terms of the Q3 originations, they definitely were more muted. As I said, that was intentional. I don’t think it’s necessarily reflective of the overall market, as we have been continued to be active and see good opportunities in some other pockets of capital that we have. But we did want to make that conscious decision to get a little bit more conservative from a leverage profile for NMFC. But as I said, kind of in the market commentary, we do continue to see some good opportunities. It’s not as fast and furious as it might have been a couple of years ago, but we are still seeing some.

And so I do think we’ll be able to redeploy some of those repayments that we received post quarter end into some attractive opportunities.

Bryce Rowe: That’s good stuff. Thanks, Laura. Then one more for me. John, I think you highlighted the yellow rated name getting repaid at par up from a mark around $0.70, and you made the comment that there were prospects for possibly more yellow rated names following that same path. Can you maybe speak to that in a little bit more detail?

John Kline: Sure. And I don’t have any specific yellow names. As I’m looking at the list of yellow names, I don’t have any specific names that I know we’re going to repay. But in general, I wanted to make the point that just because a name is yellow doesn’t mean that it can’t go back to green. It doesn’t mean that it’s on a one-way trip to red. And when we look at our yellow names, we do see names on that list that we do have some pretty good optimism around. They’re not yet performing in the way we want them to perform. But as I mentioned, I think there’s a good chance that we could see some good outcomes. So every time a yellow gets repaid, we’re very excited. And particularly a yellow that we had marked at a fair value of $0.70 [ph] when that gets repaid at par, even though it was a small position, it does feel very good.

Bryce Rowe: Absolutely. It’s a great outcome. All right. That’s all I had. Thank you so much.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] And we have a question now from Paul Johnson from KBW. Paul, you may proceed.