PennantPark Floating Rate Capital Ltd. (NASDAQ:PFLT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

So I don’t have a real answer for you now. Bonds are available today. They’re just expensive. Securitizations, we think, are available. They’re just expensive, or at least more — everything is more expensive than it was, obviously, 6, 9 months ago. All things equal, securitization is cheaper today than long-term bonds which you’d be locking in a high-fixed yield. So put some to shelf today, I think we — if it were today, we upsized the credit facility we just did. We just upsized this credit facility, $66 million last quarter. We probably upsize the credit facility or look at a potential securitization but we’ll monitor the markets and all options are on the table over the course of next year.

Paul Johnson: Got it. I appreciate that. And 2 more, if I may. One, just being on the unrealized marks for the quarter. I know you mentioned Walker & Dunlop’s, obviously marked lower. That’s a little bit more credit related. But the $20 million or so, obviously, excluding the liability adjustments. I was wondering if you could give any sort of general idea of how much of that is just mark-to-market versus other — any sort of credit issues or any other onetime issues that might be driving that?

Art Penn: I mean, look, I think Walker Edison is the one outlier in terms of unrealized mark-to-market loss. I think it was about $0.11 a share. But the rest of the items are very small, thankfully. So it’s really just market — we would say it’s just market issues and not actual credit deterioration other than in the case of Walkers and we feel very good about the portfolio. Overall, having a portfolio that’s kind of in the mid-4s debt-to-EBITDA does give us some nice cushion. We covered kind of interest coverage. And certainly, interest coverage for all of the underlying companies in our industry are going down by definition, we’re getting the benefit of higher floating rates. Interest coverages are going down. But even if you took a severe case of kind of interest rates going up, by and large, our portfolio is well positioned to weather the storm, both from the standpoint of credit stats and capital structure, as well as just the industries we’re in, by and large, tend to be more recession-resistant — recession-resilient industries.

Paul Johnson: Got it. And then last question for me just on inflation and sort of EBITDA trends for your borrowers. I’m just curious as you’re getting any sort of updated forecast or financial statements from your borrowers, where has that trended in terms of forecast for EBITDA growth? Is that continue to come down? Has that been fairly stable? And alongside that, inflation, I guess, just company’s ability to continue to pass that on. I think that’s pretty much been the case as long as inflation has been going on in the economy but have you started to see any limits to that?

Art Penn: Yes. No, we haven’t seen any limits on the ability for companies to pass on price increases at this point. On the other hand, I think the good news is items like container cost, shipping coming over from Asia or elsewhere is going down significantly. So we’re hopeful that as the end of ’22 rounds into 2023, the supply chain costs issues start — are diminishing, maybe the companies have less need for kind of price increases that they push along to their ultimate customers. In terms of EBITDA, a bunch of cross currents. Certainly, you’re not seeing it up into the right the way you were seeing it kind of post-COVID. So it’s more of a slight up to the right or flattish kind of environment we’re in. Some companies are more impacted than others. But by and large, from a portfolio standpoint, it’s kind of, I’d say, slightly up into the right as opposed to way up into the right which is kind of what you saw kind of post-COVID.

Operator: We will now take our next question from Mickey Schleien from Ladenburg Thalmann.