Portman Ridge Finance Corporation (NASDAQ:PTMN) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Patrick Schafer: No. It’s the same. So the investment from the combined investment was structured as again round numbers sort of 65% first-lien secured loan and 35% preferred equity investments or structured equity investment in the business. And so for Reagan Format as an example, you have a weighting between the two, but that you could think of that as the same as I think the loan, the borrowers technically for Dell Inc. and then the preferred equity that is technically EBSC, but I was just up to the parent company of Riddell.

Deepak Sarpangal: Got it. And I suspect that preferred equity must be convertible into common rate.

Patrick Schafer: It does have the potential to convert at certain metrics? Yes.

Deepak Sarpangal: Okay. No. I think it does. The first-lien loan looks great, right? It’s like 11% cash pay first-lien and then the preferred is 10% pick. So I figured there must be a conversion feature to me,…

Patrick Schafer: That’s right. What our expectation is overall return on that on that instrument would be meaningfully higher than 10%. But for accounting purposes that’s what we would otherwise be reflecting you know until there was some sort of catalyst.

Deepak Sarpangal: Okay. Great. Well, to me it seems like generally more of the same good stuff in the check off Mickey boxes you have low and declining non-accruals, deleveraging, paying down debt seemed like an even higher mix of senior secured loans this quarter, while working off the CLO and joint venture stuff and the more accretive buybacks another nice dividends, so appreciate the solid execution and the leadership. And I look forward to keeping that going. Thank you.

Patrick Schafer: Thank you, Deepak. I appreciate it.

Deepak Sarpangal: You bet.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Steven Martin. Please go ahead.

Steven Martin: Hi guys. So couple of questions, Pat, could you comment on PIC and what the trends have been? It looks like PIC is on a higher percentage of total interest income recently?

Patrick Schafer: Yes. I’m sorry. I was just pulling up the number Steve. Look, I think probably some of that is driven by we had significantly lower payment income. So my just look a little bit a little bit a little bit higher as a percentage because of that. I again, I’d say like the broad brush comment is, we don’t see a material change in sort of how we are going to market and pick first cash there has been there have been some competitors that you’ve seen in our market a little bit. And some folks have been willing to offer like the 1st year or 12 to 18 months as a partial pick option for borrowers is kind of like a trying to win a deal that’s not particularly prevalent candidly, but it is sort of out there every, every once in a while. But broadly speaking we don’t we don’t see material changes in our and our cash flows PIC but our cash flow PIC and kind of how we how we think about portfolio construction.

Steven Martin: Okay. On Slide 10, you made the comment that you only added one new portfolio company yet purchases and draws were almost $39 million. All the rest of that was existing portfolio companies and drawdowns on delayed terms?

Patrick Schafer: Yes, that’s right. It’s a comp against that. We had some revolvers delayed-draw term loans and existing — all-in existing borrowers and we had one new security if you will that wasn’t like I previously committed DDTL, but in addition borrowers. So, yes, again broadly speaking that is all from kind of the existing base. We’ll probably have — I don’t know the exact number, we’ll probably have two or three new borrowers this quarter just cost of activity in April and May, but yes, my statement is correct and what you see there is activity within our existing portfolio.

Steven Martin: Okay. And that you started to comment on the current quarter. Can you make any comments about what you’re expecting in terms of portfolio activity and your portfolio size versus the first quarter?

Patrick Schafer: Yes. No, I appreciate it. So, again, kind of similar to what we had said last quarter. I think — and what kind of I had alluded to when Chris Nolan asked the question. I think overall we would kind of expect to be, sort of, on the margin a net deployer. But kind of again it depends a little bit on timing of certain things like as an example for this quarter, we were up a little under $2 million from net deployments, both the Riddell transaction closed at the end of the quarter. And so that had been pushed two days would have looked like we were $6.5 million or $7 million of net receiver of capital. So, some of it depends a little bit on timing, but I think on the margin, you would expect us to — we would expect to be flat or slightly growing let’s say over the course of the year, Steve, and whether it falls kind of a little bit around the edge of a quarter might be a plus or minus here or there, but we kind of generally would be ourselves as a marginal net deployer of capital this year.

Steven Martin: Got it. Slide 11, non-accruals, the number of investments didn’t change. The costs didn’t change. I haven’t had a chance to go through the whole portfolio from the Q, but the fair value changed?

Patrick Schafer: Yes, a lot of this was driven by probably one security being marked down. You can even ultimately look at through, it’s a second lien security and Coltech [ph] USA is the name of the borrower. But it’s again obviously regardless of whether it is on accrual or now, we kind of go through from a fair value perspective. That’s again it was just a reflection of a markdown in a position that’s on non-accrual.