Owl Rock Capital Corporation (NYSE:ORCC) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Craig Packer: Sure. Look, I would say, overall, most of our sectors are doing quite well. We’re continuing to see revenue growth. We’re continuing to see EBITDA growth. It’s a little bit slower growth but still growth, and we’re seeing generally strong performance across all of our industry groups. We continue to feel software is the best sector and performs the best and is continuing to see really strong results across the board from our software companies. We do a lot in the insurance space as well, insurance brokerage, if you will. That’s an area that we like and is not particularly sensitive to the economic cycle and that performs well as another example of a sector that’s performing. There are individual companies that maybe got impacted to the negative during COVID that are kind of experiencing a ramp, but I wouldn’t cause — I wouldn’t call it any particular theme on the positive.

In terms of a couple of sectors that are maybe — I won’t say underperforming, but where there’s a little — some pockets of weakness, certainly, in the consumer area, there are businesses that we have that were big COVID beneficiaries that are now seeing slower demand because that demand during COVID has moved away. People ordered their products or whatnot and aren’t ordering as much. And at the same time, there’s some buildup of cost pressure in some consumer businesses, and that’s resulting in some pockets of underperformance in consumer. Walker would be an example, although Walker’s got, I think, bigger issues, but that would be an example what I’m describing. Similarly, in the health care space, a small portion of our health care, not all of it, but a small portion were seeing pressures on labor costs, either just rising labor costs or inability to get labor that’s resulting in more overtime or lower capacity utilization.

At the same time, some of those providers are not able to pass through price increases immediately. They’ve got contracts and the like. So again, this is just a small portion of our health care business. I don’t want you to draw that observation to all of it. But those are a couple of examples of parts of our portfolio where there’s some underperformance, but relatively limited in the context of our book.

Operator: The next question comes from Mark Hughes with Truist Mark Hughes. We will move on to the next question. The next question comes from Kevin Fultz with JMP Securities.

Kevin Fultz: With leverage at your stated target, I know that the level of investment activity was largely driven by matching deployments to repayment activity. But I’m curious how you would categorize the investment landscape right now and how attractive are the deals you’re reviewing relative to other vintages. And also if recent turmoil in the banking sector has created even more compelling investment opportunities for Owl Rock.

Craig Packer: Sure. We said this last quarter. I’d say, again, I think it’s probably the best environment we’ve seen since we were a public company for new investments. Spreads remain elevated. Base rates are obviously high. In addition, we’re getting very attractive OID upfront and higher-than-typical call premiums. So what does that mean? We’re getting 12% to 13% on unitranche versus 7%, 7.5% a year ago. I don’t want to throw this word around lightly, but I think that’s pretty extraordinary to be able to earn 12% to 13% on first lien unitranche debt at 45% loan-to-value. I think it’s extremely good value and the deals we’re doing are of high quality as well. The businesses are of high quality. They’re large and they’re leaders in their fields.