Logan Ridge Finance Corp

NASDAQ:LRFC

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q2

[Operator]

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Logan Ridge Finance Corporation's Second Quarter Ended June 30, 2024, Earnings Conference Call. An earnings press release was distributed yesterday, August 8 after the close of the market. A copy of the release along with the supplemental earnings presentation is available on the company's website at www.loganridgefinance.com in the Investor Resources section and should be reviewed in conjunction with the company's Form 10-Q filed with the SEC.

As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded for replay purposes. Please note that today's conference call may contain forward-looking statements, which are not guarantees of future performance or results and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including those described in the company's filings with the SEC.

Speaking today's call will be Ted Goldthorpe, Chief Executive Officer, President, and Director of Logan Ridge Finance Corporation; Brandon Satoren, Chief Financial Officer; and Patrick Schafer, Chief Investment Officer.

With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Ted Goldthorpe, Chief Executive Officer of Logan Ridge Finance Corporation. Please go ahead, Ted.

[Edward Goldthorpe, executive]

Good morning. Welcome to our second quarter 2024 earnings call. As mentioned, I'm joined today by our Chief Financial Officer, Brandon Satoren; and our Chief Investment Officer, Patrick Schafer. Following my opening remarks, Patrick will provide additional details on our investment activity to date and Brandon will walk through our financials.

Before Patrick and Brandon to provide more details on our portfolio and financials, I would like to discuss a few key highlights from the quarter. During the second quarter, we continue to make progress towards our strategy of reducing the company's exposure to the legacy equity portfolio and increased the exposure to credits originated by the BC Partners credit platform. The benefits of such strategy resulted in a steady increase in our total investment income quarter-over-quarter.

Second quarter total investment income increased by $400,000 to $5.4 million and $5.0 million the previous quarter and by $100,000 as compared to the same quarter last year. Additionally, the underlying credit performance of our portfolio has remained strong with no new investments being placed on nonaccrual status during the quarter. Furthermore, the strength of the company's financial position and the outlook for the long-term earnings power of the portfolio has allowed the company to declare a third quarter distribution of $0.33 per share.

The dividend has almost doubled compared to the $0.18 per share distribution we declared in the first quarter of 2023 when we reintroduced in our quarterly dividend, highlighting the company's successful turnaround and story since we took over management back in July of 2021. Looking forward to the second half of 2024, we continue to see attractive opportunities in our portfolio and our pipeline to deploy our available capital. New deal activity has picked up pace and the syndicated markets have continued to remain open. Our borrowers have continued to rely heavily on private capital providers for M&A activity given the certainty they provide, resulting in tailwinds for our industry.

Having said that, a combination of continued private credit capital raising and a more competitive syndicated market alternative has led to meaningful spread compression in certain parts of the private credit market. According to [indiscernible] private data, private credit spreads for borrowers for greater than $100 million of EBITDA and those between $50 million and $100 million of EBITDA have both declined by approximately 75 basis points since the beginning of the year. That is compared to spread compression of approximately 50 basis points for our borrowers between $20 million and $50 million of EBITDA and just over 25 basis points for borrowers with less than $20 million EBITDA.

We remain focused on increasing shareholder value through the diligent deployment of capital, continued rotation out of legacy investment portfolio and by leveraging and maximizing the earnings power of the company's balance sheet.

With that, I will turn the call over to Patrick Schafer, our Chief Investment Officer.

[Patrick Schafer, executive]

Thanks, Ted, and hello, everyone. As of June 30, 2024, the fair value of Logan's portfolio was approximately $195.6 million exposure to 61 portfolio companies. This compares to 62 portfolio companies with a fair value of approximately $200.1 million as of the prior quarter and 62 portfolio companies with a fair value of $206.6 million as of [ June 30, 2023. ]

During the quarter ended June 30, 2024, while our pipeline of new opportunities remain strong, we continue to be prudent and judicious on the deployment front, specifically coming off a strong quarter of net deployment during the first quarter of 2021. In the second quarter, we deployed approximately $1.5 million in new and existing investments at approximately $5.6 million in repayments and sales, resulting in net repayments and sales of approximately $4.1 million for the quarter.

Regarding portfolio composition, as of June 30, 2024, 59.4% of the company's portfolio -- investment portfolio at fair value was invested in assets originated by the BC Partners credit platform. As of June 30, 2024, our debt investment portfolio represented 80% of the total portfolio at fair value, with a weighted average annualized yield approximately 11.4%, excluding income for non-accruals and collateralized loan obligations. This compares to a debt investment portfolio, which represented 80.8% of our total portfolio at fair value with a weighted average annualized yield of approximately 11.4%, excluding income from non-accruals and collateralized loan obligations as of the prior quarter and 82.2% with a weighted average annualized yield of approximately 10.8% as of [ June 30, 2023 ].

Notably, while the weighted average annualized yield, excluding income from non-accruals and collateralized loan obligations, remained unchanged from the prior quarter and increased by 60 basis points as compared to the prior year. As of June 30, 2024, 88.1% of our debt investment portfolio at fair value was bearing interest at a floating rates compared to 88.5% as of March 31, 2024, and 83.2% as of [ June 30, 2023 ]. As of June 30, 2024, first lien debt represented 65.8% and 64% of our portfolio at cost and fair value, respectively.

This compares to first lien debt represented 66.5% and 65.2% of our total portfolio on a cost and fair value basis as of March 31, 2024, and 66.1% and 66.8% of our total portfolio on a cost and fair value basis, respectively, as of June 30, 2023. The equity portfolio represents 15.2% and 19.0% of the portfolio on a cost and fair value basis, respectively, as of June 30, 2024. This compares to 15.2% and 18.2% of the total portfolio on a cost and fair value basis as of [ March 31, 2020 ].

Moving on to nonaccrual status. As of June 30, 2024, the company had 4 debt investments across 3 portfolio companies on nonaccrual status with an aggregate amortized cost and fair value, 17.2% -- $17.2 million and $10.1 million, respectively, or 8.5% and 5.2% of the investment portfolio at cost and fair value, respectively. This remains unchanged from the first quarter, which had 4 debt investments across 3 portfolio companies with a cost and fair value of 17.2% -- and $17.2 million and $10.6 million, respectively, or 8.3% and 5.3% of the investment portfolio's cost and fair value, respectively.

I'll now turn the call over to Brandon.

[Brandon Satoren, executive]

Thanks, Patrick. Turning to our financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2024. For the quarter ended June 30, 2024, Logan generated by $5.4 million of investment income, an increase of $0.4 million as compared to $5 million for the prior quarter. Total operating expenses for the second quarter increased by approximately $0.6 million to $4.6 million as compared to $4 million for the prior quarter. This was largely due to $0.3 million or $0.10 per share of certain nonrecurring incremental professional fees and other expenses incurred in the quarter as well as higher financing costs, primarily as a result of higher average outstanding debt. Our net investment income for the second quarter was $0.8 million or $0.28 per share, a decrease of $0.1 million from $0.9 million or $0.35 per share in the first quarter of 2024.

Again, the decrease from the prior quarter was largely due to non-recurring incremental professional fees during the quarter. Our net asset value as of June 30, 2024, was $88.7 million, representing a $1.5 million decrease as compared to the prior quarter net asset value of $90.2 million. On a per share basis, net asset value was $33.13 per share as of the second quarter, representing a $0.50 -- $0.58 per share decrease as compared to $33.71 as of March 31, 2024.

The decrease in net asset value quarter-over-quarter was driven by net realized and unrealized losses on the portfolio of $1.3 million as compared to the company's -- as well as the company's quarterly dividend payment exceeding the company's net investment income by $0.1 million. Finally, as of quarter end, the company had $4.3 million in cash and cash equivalents as well as $21.9 million of unused borrowing capacity available for deployment in investments originated by the BC Partners Credit platform.

With that, I will turn the call back over to Ted.

[Edward Goldthorpe, executive]

Thank you, Brandon. Before we go to Q&A, I just want to say to our shareholders, a big thank you for your continued support. This concludes our prepared remarks, and I'll now turn over the call to the operator for any questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Christopher Nolan from Ladenburg Thalmann.

[Christopher Nolan, analyst]

Any share repurchases in the quarter?

[Brandon Satoren, executive]

Chris, unfortunately not, we've been blacked out during the quarter, but we'll look to get that up and running as soon as we can, hopefully within the next -- in the next couple of weeks here.

[Christopher Nolan, analyst]

Sounds good. And then also, strategically, I mean, aren't the stars beginning to align for a merger between Logan Ridge and the other BDC you run. Given, it looks, like with the things profitable, Logan Ridge is now profitable, now dividend paying, but the valuation discrepancy on a price-to-book basis between the 2 entities is still quite significant.

[Brandon Satoren, executive]

Yes, thanks for asking that question. I mean the -- it is something that we are obviously thinking about. And I'd also say naturally, our portfolios are becoming more and more like between both Logan and Portland. So I think your comment is pretty spot on.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Steven Martin of Slater Capital Management.

[Steven Martin, analyst]

Two questions. Back to the unrealized category. You had an unrealized loss this quarter. Was it something specific? Was it across the portfolio? Did something reverse?

[Patrick Schafer, executive]

Yes. It's generally speaking, one name is the bulk of it, American Clinical Solutions. The company has had like a bit of a challenging year as sort of there a cannabis and hemp testing business based in Florida and the year has been a little bit challenging as Florida is working towards recreational legalization this year during the election. So a lot of companies are sort of pulling back on spending in this area as they kind of wait to see where like everything shakes out with recreation.

So I think we generally expect there to ultimately be a bounce back once the election kind of goes through and for everything we understood -- we think recreation should pass, which is a huge benefit to the company, but even putting that aside, just kind of having a more settled environment will help them and their customers, sort of more consistently spent.

So that's kind of like the biggest one. And then the second one is a company called [ Avanti ]. It's a broadly syndicated loan, and that loan moved down a handful of points, and that was a driver. Again, we think that's mark-to-market as opposed to anythings that's credit driven.

[Steven Martin, analyst]

Got you. Major topic as always is the equity portfolio other than some slight changes in valuation and the degree keeps improving. It doesn't look like there was any change in positions?

[Patrick Schafer, executive]

No, that's generally right. So, again, as mentioned a couple of different times, I do think the M&A market in general over the course of this year will ultimately be a benefit for us here within Logan as there are -- we know there are a number of portfolio companies that hopefully will be looking to exit themselves. So we're optimistic that sort of the market environment will be fairly conducive. We did have one small exit [ U.S. FIO ] where, again, kind of similar to our playbook and a lot of other situations, we actually went directly to the owners and try to get negotiated and it was a relatively small number. I want to say it was about $500,000 or something and we had a marked at $350,000 $400,000, something like that. So that was relatively small. But again, kind of thematically just given where the macro is right now, we're able to sort of engage in those types of transactions where the last probably 18 to 24 months, it's been difficult to engage with owners in the company for things like that. So we are optimistic that we're on the -- we're able to transact in a couple of different of our equity portfolio companies. And hopefully, we can get those done by the end of the year.

[Steven Martin, analyst]

Yes. There are only a couple that really matter. There are a whole bunch of little ones. And most of the -- having done some research on the bigger positions, most of them are -- have been around for a while. I mean they're not young transactions.

[Patrick Schafer, executive]

No, that's right. Again, just going down the list of our largest ones and [indiscernible] was obviously -- is the largest that was acquired in 2019. So again, just kind of think about private equity schedule that you're coming up on sort of 5 years of a whole period. And it's -- as you can tell from our valuations, it's generally grown pretty nicely. So -- and the other largest one, which I think is [indiscernible], also, again, we've been in the name for quite some time, and it's been owned by the same sponsor for quite some time. So yes, you would likely think from a whole period perspective, those folks would kind of be at the point where they probably would be monetizing their portfolios.

[Steven Martin, analyst]

Yes. Just as a question, having looked at, I guess, it's Gladstone, who is the other degree holder, they have their equity mark substantially higher than yours. And it looks like it moved up again this quarter. Can you comment on when I say substantially, it's 20%, 25% higher than what you have the same shares marked?

[Patrick Schafer, executive]

Yes, Steve, I think they actually marked their down this quarter, but it is still meaningfully higher than ours. I'll get the numbers a little bit wrong, but I think they're at like $2.99 a share, and we're at $2.59 or something like that. But yes, again, I think, hopefully, from our perspective, we are a relatively small owner. Gladstone is a larger owner and perhaps they have better information than we do, but we like to try and keep our equity valuations that are pretty conservative mark until we have something real to substantiate from a valuation perspective.

[Steven Martin, analyst]

All right. As the previous caller, I would urge you to get back on the share buyback route.

[Patrick Schafer, executive]

Of course.

[Operator]

Seeing as there are no more questions in the queue, that concludes our question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Ted Goldthorpe for closing remarks.

[Edward Goldthorpe, executive]

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and we look forward to speaking to you again in November when we announced our third quarter 2024 results. Hope everybody has a great end of the summer and please reach out to us with any questions. Thanks.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.