Yahoo Finance

John Kline

Thank you, Steve. I would like to begin by offering a broader review of our direct lending investment strategy and long-term track record. starting on page 8, we highlight our exposure to a diversified list of defensive non-cyclical sectors.
These sectors map to the industries where New Mountain has made successful private equity investments and where our firm's knowledge is the strongest. we seek to make investments in companies with durable growth drivers, predictable revenue streams, margin stability, and strong free cash flow conversion.
As you can see from the industry pie chart on page 8, we have virtually no exposure to cyclical, volatile, and secularly challenged industries. moreover, we believe that our portfolio has limited exposure to companies dependent on various forms of government spending and limited exposure to tariffs on foreign goods.
Our strategy has been consistent over our nearly 14 years as a public company, and it allows us to operate with confidence in any economic environment. Page 9 provides key performance statistics showing a long-term track record of delivering consistent enhanced yield to our shareholders by minimizing credit losses and distributing virtually all of our excess income to shareholders.
Since our IPO in 2011, NMSC has returned approximately $1.4 billion to shareholders through our dividend program, generating an annualized return of 10%. our dividend yield is approximately 11% or nearly 700 basis points over short-term risk-free interest rates.
MMFC's current portfolio invests in companies within high quality industries that are performing well and where our last dollar of risk is approximately 40% of the purchase price paid for the business. we lend primarily to businesses owned by financial sponsors who are sophisticated and supportive owners with significant capital that is junior to the loans that we make.
Turning to page 10, we would like to give a bit more detail on the strategic areas of focus for NMFC. we have successfully evolved our portfolio mix to 75% senior oriented assets, and from here we would like to maintain or increase that heavily senior oriented mix.
Within this category, we have our core first lien and Unitron loans, our well performing senior loan funds, and our net lease subsidiary, which owns a diversified groups of mission critical real estate occupied by defensive growth oriented businesses.
While senior lending represents the vast majority of our portfolio, many of our most profitable investments come from high conviction, junior capital positions. We selectively make these investments in instances where we have particularly high conviction investment views informed by the broader NMC platform and where risk adjusted returns are especially compelling.
This strategy has been effective for us in the past, and we believe it will be accretive to shareholder value going forward. additionally, we see a clear opportunity to increase the diversity of the portfolio, particularly within the TOP10 positions.
But over time, we seek to have each of our portfolio companies represent less than 2% of total AUM. we also continue to have a sharp focus on optimizing the cost, duration, and quality of our liabilities.
Our team has made great progress over the last year and seized more opportunities to improve the right side of our balance sheet throughout 2025. over the next 12 months, we expect that our liabilities will be approximately 75% floating rate inclusive of hedges, and we remain committed to building a high quality latter mix of unsecured bonds.
Finally, in addition to the Unitec partial sale, we expect to have future opportunities to sell certain equity stakes and pick investments. While our PI portfolio has strong credit quality and attractive and generates attractive shareholder returns, we remain committed to maintaining prudent overall levels of income.
Turning to page 11, the internal risk rating of our portfolio were roughly consistent with the prior quarter at approximately 97% green rated. similar to prior quarter, we have no companies rated red, and importantly, we had only $17 million of fair market value or one company moved negatively on our risk rating scale.
Our most challenged names marked orange represent only 1.2% of MMFC's fair market value, making them a negligible part of our portfolio.
The updated heat map is shown in its entirety on page 12 with 97% of our assets rated green, we believe our portfolio is well positioned to continue to perform no matter how the economic landscape develops. The vast majority of our investments continue to experience both top and bottom line growth consistent with our underwriting.
Turning to page 13, we provide a graphical analysis of NAV changes during the quarter, resulting in a book value of $12.55 a $0.07 decline compared to last quarter. overall, the quarter benefited from good core credit performance offset by modest declines in the value of inum and health systems.
Health Systems, a business that operates in the cybersecurity market, was the largest single name decrease during the quarter. The trading levels of this loan declined due to concerns around two of its smaller business segments that are facing headwinds from extended sales cycles and increased competition. we remain relatively positive on the prospects for the overall business as the company's most important division continues to grow.
Page 14 addresses NFC's non-accrual performance. On the left side of the page, we show the current state of the portfolio, where we have approximately $3.1 billion of investments at fair market value, of which only $38 million or 1.2% of the portfolio is currently on non-accrual. We show these statistics pro forma for the Unitec transaction, after which we'll have no non-accruing positions in that capital structure.
On the right side of the page, we show our cumulative credit performance since IPO. During that time, NMSC has made nearly $10.1 billion of investments while realizing losses of $67 million. This represents an average annualized net realized loss rate of approximately 12 basis points since IPO.
On page 15, we present MFC's consistent and compelling returns over the last 13+ years. Cumulatively, NMFC has earned nearly $1.4 billion in net investment income while generating only $67 million of cumulative net realized losses and only $49 million of cumulative net unrealized depreciation, resulting in over $1.2 billion of value created for shareholders.
I will now turn the call over to our Chief Operating Officer Laura Holson to discuss the current market environment and provide more details on NMSC's quarterly performance.

Laura Holson

Thanks John. 2024 concluded in similar fashion to the rest of the year with episodic New Deal activity. spreads have tightened over the last 12 to 18 months as we've been in a less active deal flow environment and the syndicated market has been aggressive.
That said, we believe direct lending remains an attractive asset class in today's market. we have consistently found opportunities in our defensive growth verticals where we can make loans that attach at $1.01 in the capital structure at 9 to 10% on levered returns.
Deal structures remain compelling, with significant sponsor equity contribution representing the vast majority of the capital structures. we continue to expect an increased volume of M&A activity in 2025 for the reasons we've previously discussed.
Including the magnitude of dry powder for private equities, the ongoing pressure to return capital to LPs, as well as attractive financing markets for borrowers. the bid ask GAAP remains the question, as many of the higher multiple deals from the 2021 time frame age into maturity.
However, there are also a fair amount of pre-2021 deals that we expect sponsors are focused on exiting. the counter to the expected pickup in M&A activity is a backdrop of volatility and uncertainty across political and regulatory headlines and a continued high base rate environment, which is a tailwind to returns, but a headwind to deal activity.
We believe we're as well positioned as we can be. However, credit selection remains critical, particularly as there is minimal pricing and structural differentiation between borrowers. page 17 presents an interest rate analysis that provides insight into the effect of base rates on NMFC's earnings.
The NMFC loan portfolio is 86% floating rate and 14% fixed rate, while our liabilities are 49% floating and 51% fixed rate. pro forma for the 2022 convert and 2021 unsecured noes maturities over the next 12 months, we expect our mix will shift towards 74% floating and 26% fixed.
We highlight our sensitivity to interest rates on the bottom chart. while we would expect to see earnings pressure in the scenarios where base rates decrease, we are evolving our capital structure to help offset some of that pressure.
Namely, we have been swapping our new fixed rate exposure to floating rates, and we also have some opportunities to potentially refinance some shorter dated higher cost fixed rate debt. our 7.5% converts mature in October 2025, and our 8.25% baby bonds are callable in November of 2025, both of which represent opportunities to hopefully refinance at lower rates.
Moving on to page 18 in Q4 we originated $33 million of assets offset by $218 million of repayments and sales, driving deleveraging to the middle of our target leverage range. notable repayments in the quarter included Recorded Future, a software business that was acquired by a strategic, as well as second lien assets.
While I've mentioned the challenges of spread compression and direct lending, these market environments can be beneficial for de-risking. we've been able to take advantage of the hot market and exit a handful of assets that have opportunistically repriced where we believed recent performance either didn't warrant a repricing or re-underwriting informed a negative change in our credit view.
The depth of knowledge in our core defensive growth power alleys allows us to continuously refresh our thinking and stay close to an evolving landscape. turning to page 19, similar to last quarter, approximately 75% of our investments, inclusive of first lien, SLPs, and net lease are senior in nature.
Second lane positions represent just 7% of our portfolio, down from 8% last quarter and 15% in Q4 of last year. approximately 8% of the portfolio is comprised of our equity positions, the largest of which are shown on the right side of the page.
We continue to dedicate meaningful time and resources to business building at these companies, all of which we believe are making positive progress. as evidenced by the Unitec strategic Transaction announced earlier, our ability to own and operate businesses is a key differentiator.
We leverage the full operating capabilities of our private equity team and approach our credited equity positions like any other new Mountain Capital owned business. page 20 shows that the average yields of NMFC's portfolio increased to 11% for Q4, primarily due to the higher for longer shift in the Ford Sopher curve.
Generally speaking, even though spreads are tighter, as evidenced by lower yields on our originations compared to on our repayments, total yields remain attractive for the risk. page 21 highlights the scale and positive credit trends of our underlying borrowers.
The weighted average EBITA of our borrowers decreased slightly in the fourth quarter to $184 million due to the realization of some larger companies during the quarter, partially offset by underlying growth at the individual companies we lend to.
While we first and foremost concentrate on how an opportunity maps against our defensive growth criteria and internal new mountain knowledge, we believe that larger borrowers tend to be marginally safer, all else equal. we also show the relevant leverage and interest coverage stats across the portfolio.
Portfolio company leverage has come down slightly over the last several quarters. loan to values continue to be quite compelling, and the current portfolio has an average loan to value of 41%. the weighted average interest coverage on the portfolio increased to 1.8 times this quarter. we've seen sponsors continue to proactively support company liquidity and continued M&A activity.
This is a great indication that our portfolio consists of companies that are performing well and are able to attract additional investment and healthy evaluations finally, as illustrated on page 22, we have a diversified portfolio across 121 portfolio companies.
Excluding our investments in the SLPs and net lease funds, the TOP10 single name issuers account for 27% of total fair value and represent our highest conviction names. taking into account the partial monetization of Unitec, that position decreases from 3.5% to just 2.2% of fair market value. I will now turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Chris Corbett, to discuss our financial results.

Kris Corbett

Thank you, Laura. For more details, please refer to our quarterly report on Form 10k that was filed yesterday with the SEC. as shown on slide 23, the portfolio had over $3 billion of investments at fair value on December 31 and total assets of $3.2 billion with total liabilities of $2 billion of which total statutory debt outstanding was $1.6 billion. Net asset value of approximately $1.4 billion or $12.55 per share was down slightly compared to prior quarter.
At quarter end, our statutory debt to equity ratio was 115 to 1 and 111 to 1 net of available cash on the balance sheet, which is in the middle of our target range of 1times to 1.25 times. on slide 24, we show our quarterly income statement results. For the quarter, we earn total investment income of $91 million or 2% or 2% decrease over a prior year. Total net expenses of $57 million decreased 9% versus the prior year. This increase in expenses was a product of higher financing costs.
Our adjusted net investment income for the quarter was $0.32 per weighted average share, which covered our Q4 regular dividend. as shown in slide 25, we earned total investment income of $371 million for the year, which represented a decrease of 1% over the prior year. Total net expenses of $225 million increased 4% over the prior year.
Slide 26 highlights that 96% of our total investment income is recurring in the fourth quarter. for Q4, pick interest income represented only 10% of total investment income, whereas non-cash dividend from our preferred equity investments represented 9% of total investment income. This aligns with the asset mix strategy John mentioned earlier. Importantly, position positions generating non-cash income during the 4th quarter are marked at a weighted average fair market value of 94% of par, and over 94% of this income is generated from our green rated names.
additionally, over 75% of this income is generated by positions that included pick from inception to best enable these borrowers to execute on their strategic growth plans. turning the slide 27, the red line shows the coverage of our regular dividend. For Q1 2025, our board of directors has again declared a dividend of $0.32 per share.
On slide 29, we highlight our various financing sources and diversified leverage profile. Taking into account SBA guaranteed to ventures, we have $3 billion of total borrowing capacity with $1.1 billion available on our revolving lines subject to borrowing-based limitations. This represents our most significant availability since the inception of our business and more than covers our unfunded commitments of $244 million.
2024 marked a significant evolution of our capital structure. We issued our first two investment graded bonds. We enhanced our corporate revolver by increasing its capacity and extending its maturity while also lowering its spread. We also streamlined our asset-based credit facilities by lowering the cost of our Wells Fargo credit facility and fully repaying our higher cost Deutsche Bank credit facility.
This resulted in an increase of our floating rate liabilities mix from approximately 40% at December 31, 2023 to 50% at December 31, 2024 to more closely match our floating rate assets, while during the same period increasing our unsecured debt unsecured debt percentage from 51% to 79%, excluding SBA debentures.
Looking forward to 2025, the facilities outlined in red represent opportunities to refinance and reduce our cost of financing in the medium term. Further, we are targeting to increase our floating rate liability mix over the course of the next 12 months to approximately 75%.
Finally, on slide 30, we show our leveraged maturity schedule. We continue to ladder our maturities and have sufficient liquidity to manage upcoming maturities in 2025 and early 2026. Notably, over 60% of our debt matures in or after 2028, with near-term maturities representing an opportunity to continue to access the investment grade bond market. With that, I would like to turn the call back over to John.

John Kline

Thank you, Chris. We are pleased to have a strong start to 2025 with the Unitec sale as an important catalyst. Credit quality remains good. Our portfolio is more senior than ever before, and we have made substantial positive changes to our liability structure with more opportunity ahead.
In closing, we once again would like to thank all of our stakeholders for the ongoing partnership and support and look forward to speaking to you again on our next call in May. i would now like to turn things over to the operator to begin Q&A operator.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. [Operator Instructions] and your first question today will come from Robert Dodd with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

John Kline

Hello everybody.

Robert Dodd

And congrats on the quarter, particularly Unitech. So, well, after the quarter end, on Unitech if I can and I realize you said there'd be more more details on the 11 call, but at the exit evaluation of Unitech, not exit but partial realization, how does that enterprise value stack up with the enterprise value used to inform the mark at Q4?

John Kline

Sure, it's, as Steve mentioned, it's modestly higher, but overall the big picture.

Robert Dodd

Yeah.

John Kline

It would be in line to modestly higher.

Robert Dodd

Got it. thank you. And then on, one of the other things I think, in in the prepared remarks, I think it was, I said that there's, some uncertainties in the market, maybe it's going to slow activity a little bit in the in the near the early parts of the 2025 and that's kind of a recurring theme from from your competitors this quarter.
How in in that, in light of that, potentially, how comfortable do you still feel about Unitec aside, lowering your pick exposure as we go through the year because obviously that was a target, but it's partly informed by the fact that you thought there would be an active market this year. So how do you think those things go together?

John Kline

I think we, along with many of our competitors think that this year we will be active, but I think it is fair to say it's been a slower start than we would have expected.
And so, but when we think about the opportunity to reduce some of the pick positions, I think we will have we will be able to show some progress based on what we're seeing on the Q1 call. So we feel good about it. And beyond Q1, we'd be opportunistic that we can continue to work down pick positions. So I wouldn't say the market environment has changed our view or or our outlook for for that, strategic goal.

Robert Dodd

Got it, thank you. And then just, I mean in In terms of allocation, you you want to increase senior, which is obviously first li loan funds, net lease, would you Is the expectation you keep the mix between those three the same or is there one of those areas in particular you'd like to increase more?

John Kline

No, I think it's safe to say that we would, within that category, the mix will stay the same.

Robert Dodd

Got it, thank you. And then just, overall.
Any kind of markets do look like they may be leveled out, but do you think that Is that a temporary thing or things kind of, recalibrate or or do you think we're we're at kind of the bottom on like for like obviously it depends where you are in the market, but, what are your thoughts on on that going through and then just tied to that, how much, you walked away from some of the pricing because you didn't think credit risk was appropriate, how much of the portfolio is left. Do you think that that's potentially vulnerable to kind of repricing activity?

Laura Holson

Yeah, on the first point around spreads, we do feel like they have stabilized. I mean, we're seeing unit tranches now, for high quality companies in the 450, 475 to 500 area depending on, all the circumstances. And to be H1st, they've been hovering there for a while, so we haven't seen, meaningful movement. I think to the extent that M&A picks up the way we expected to, we would hope and expect the spreads to pick back up alongside that.
But we don't, we have not seen, material further pressure downward, and we feel reasonably confident that we will not, particularly if M&A starts to pick back up again. to your second question about just repricing, we certainly have seen multiple waves of repricing in the syndicated market. I think within our portfolio specifically, the majority of deals that could reprice probably at this point have gone through that exercise.
I mean, keep in mind, a lot of our sponsored clients. Are pretty sophisticated. They have capital markets teams that are really, mining their portfolios to make sure they're doing their best to capture all those opportunities. And so I think the vast majority is really kind of rolled through already, but so we feel reasonably good, at least on that point got it. thank you.

John Kline

Sure, thank you.

Operator

Again, if you have a question, please press star and then one. Please stand by as we poll for questions. no further questions, this will conclude our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to John Klein for any closing remarks.

John Kline

Great. Well, thank you everyone for joining our Q4 2024 earnings call, and we look forward to speaking to you very soon in May. thank you.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.