Good morning, and welcome to the New Mountain Finance Corporation Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like turn the conference over to Rob Hamwee, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning everyone and welcome to New Mountain Finance Corporation's second quarter earnings call for 2021. On the line with me here today are Steve Klinsky, Chairman of NMFC and CEO of New Mountain Capital; John Kline, President and COO of NMFC; and Shiraz Kajee, CFO of NMFC. We hope that everyone is staying safe and that you and your family is remaining good health. Steve is going to make some introductory remarks, but before he does, I'd like to ask Shiraz to make some important statements regarding today's call.

Thanks, Rob. Good morning, everyone. Before we get into the presentation, I would like to advise everyone that today's call and webcast are being recorded. Please note that they are the property of New Mountain Finance Corporation, and that any unauthorized broadcast in any form is strictly prohibited. Information about the audio replay of this call is available in our August 4th earnings press release. I'd also like to call your attention to the customary Safe Harbor disclosure in our press release and on Page 2 of the slide presentation regarding forward-looking statements. Today's conference call and webcast may include forward-looking statements and projections and we ask to you refer to our most recent filings with the SEC for important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those statements and projections. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements or projections unless required to by law. To attain copies of our latest SEC filings and to access the slide presentation that we will be referencing throughout this call, please visit our website at www.newmountainfinance.com. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Steve Klinsky NMFC's Chairman who will give some highlights beginning on Page 4 of the slide presentation. Steve?

Thanks Shiraz. It's great to be able to address all of you today as both the Chairman of NMFC and as a major fellow shareholder. As we discussed on previous earnings calls, risk control has always been part of New Mountain's founding mission. Our firm as a whole now manages over $33 billion in total assets with a team of approximately 190 people. And with over 58,000 employees at our private equity portfolio companies in the field. We have never had a bankruptcy or missed an interest payment in the history of our private equity work, while generating over $52 billion of estimated total enterprise value for all stakeholders. We have applied that same team strength and focus on defensive growth industries to NMFC and our credit efforts resulting in an average net default loss of only nine basis points a year since we began our credit operation in 2008. As shown on Page 4 on May 19, 2021, we celebrated our 10th anniversary as a public company. Since our IPO and with the support of our shareholders, employees, sponsor clients, coverage analysts and lenders, we have paid out $874 million or $13.56 of regular cash dividends per share supported by $879 million of adjusted NII covering our regular dividend 101% with net investment income. We have accomplished this with just $79 million of realized default losses across over $8.4 billion of debt investments, which we have mostly offset with various portfolio gains. After quarter end, we monetized the portion of our position in Edmentum at an attractive gain, and we remain optimistic about potential gains at other existing portfolio companies. Overall, NMFC has delivered a 10.5% compounded annual return per share since the date of our IPO. Furthermore, book value adjusted for special dividends is now $13.94, which is…

Thank you, Steve. As we have throughout the COVID crisis, we continue to have extensive conversations with both company management and sponsors and update each portfolio companies scores on our heat map using the same criteria discussed in the past and as outlined on Page 8. The updated heat maps show the positive risk migration this quarter as summarized on Pages 9 and 10 with $211 million of positive inter green migration, $27 million of positive migration from yellow to green and $101 million of positive migration from orange to yellow offset by $32 million of negative migration, primarily concentrated in one specialty chemicals business that migrated to orange. This business has faced some market and execution challenges, but we believe there are a few specific initiatives that could result in near term improvement. Benevis, the dental practice management business that we discussed last quarter has migrated from orange to yellow as we continue to see signs of improvement in the underlying operating metrics as a result of the new management team and our private equity team's engagement. Overall, we remain pleased with the asset quality and credit trends across the portfolio. The updated heat map is shown on Page 11. As you can further see from the heat map, given our portfolios strong bias towards defensive sectors like software business and federal services and tech enabled healthcare, we believe the vast majority of our assets are very well positioned to continue to perform no matter how the public health and economic landscape develops. We continue to spend significant time and energy on our remaining red and orange names and believe as the impact of the pandemic, hopefully continues to recede in the months ahead, the majority of these credits will benefit materially. Page 12 outlines the quarter’s net asset…

Thanks, Rob. We are pleased to report that overall conditions in the direct lending market continue to be very healthy. Companies within most industries have very good access to capital and new sponsor back purchases are generally occurring at very high multiples across a range of industries. Companies with many of our – within many of our core defensive growth sectors, such as software, healthcare technology, field services and technology enabled business services have compelling momentum in their businesses and are attracting a particularly high level of sponsor attention. Interest spreads and loan structures across the direct lending market are consistent with what we have observed last quarter, reflecting the ongoing competitive lending environment. Despite the strong competition for new loans, we still believe that returns remain attractive both on an absolute basis and relative to other credit markets that we see. While deal flow has been solid over the last couple of months, we expect an acceleration in the second half of the year, based on the deal velocity that we see a New Mountain's private equity business and the building backlog of credit opportunities in our forward pipeline. Turning to page 16. We now show how potential changes in the base rates could impact NMFC's future earnings. As you can see, the vast majority of our assets are floating rate loans, while our liabilities are 55% fixed rate and 45% floating rate. NMFC’s current bounce sheet mix offers our shareholders consistent and stable earnings in all scenarios where LIBOR remains under 1%. If base rates rise above 1% as the economy normalizes or accelerates, there is meaningful upside to NMFC’s net investment income. For example, assuming our current investment portfolio and existing liability structure, if LIBOR reaches 2%, our annual NII would increase by 8.4% or $0.10 per…

Thank you, John. For more details on our financial results in today's commentary, please refer to the Form 10-Q that was filed last evening with the SEC. Now I'd like to turn your attention to Slide 28. The portfolio had $3.1 billion in investments at fair value at June 30, 2021, and total assets of $3.2 billion, where total liabilities of $1.9 billion of which total statutory debt outstanding was $1.5 billion, excluding $300 million of drone SBA guaranteed debentures. Net asset value of $1.3 billion or $13.33 per share was up $0.48 from the prior quarter. At June 30, our statutory debt to equity ratio was 1.19 to one, and as noted net of available cash on the balance sheet, the pro-forma leverage ratio would be 1.17 to one. On Slide 29, we show our historical leverage ratios and our historical NAV adjusted for the cumulative impact of special dividends. On Slide 30, we show our quarterly income statement results. We believe that our NII is the most appropriate measure of our quarterly performance. This slide highlights that while realized and unrealized gains and losses can be volatile below the line. We continue to generate stable net investment income above the line. Focusing on the quarter ended June 30, 2021, we earned total investment income of $66.2 million, a $1.2 million decrease from the prior quarter due to low fee income this quarter. Total net expenses were approximately $37.4 million, a slight decrease quarter-over-quarter. As discussed, the investment advisor has committed to cap the management fee for the 2021 and 2022 calendar years such that the effective annualized management fee this quarter was 1.25%. It's important to note that the investment adviser cannot recoup fees previously waived. This results in the second quarter NII of $28.8 million or $0.30…

Thanks, Shiraz. In closing, we are optimistic about the prospects for NFC in the months and years ahead. Our longstanding focus on lending to defensive growth businesses, supported by strong sponsors should continue to serve as well. We, once again, thank you for your continuing support and interest wish you all good health and look forward to maintaining an open and transparent dialogue with all of our stakeholders in the days ahead. I will now turn things back to the operator to begin Q&A. Operator?

Will now begin the question-and-answer session [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Finian O'Shea with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead

Hi, Finian.

Hi everyone. Good morning. First a small question on Edmentum. It looks like this puts you in a undistributed earnings situation in some way. I don't know if it's how the split is between the ordinary and capital income, but if you can give any color on that, and most importantly, will you be able to retain the spillover or is that something that you're – will this push you into a higher undistributed income situation?

It's a great question Fin and we're still running the accounting on that as the third quarter evolves. And we'll have much more to say on that after the end of the third quarter.

Okay. fair enough. And Rob, or I think John talked about this the second half backlog being very strong for, both in the private equity and credit side. Would you describe this as still being pent up demand from COVID or, more of a say secular shift in the demand for private credit from private equity perhaps being from the volatility we saw in COVID. But how comfortable do you feel about this sustaining, versus it all kind of going back to the syndicated market, say one to two years from now?

Yes, I'll take a crack at that and John may have some thoughts as well. But I think we're just seeing a permanent and ongoing shift. I don't want to say shift, it's just the scale of capital formation continues to increase pretty meaningfully. If you look at private equity fund size, really across the board and the velocity of transactions has really picked up. I do think COVID wasn't accelerant there because people realized they could get a lot done without always having to travel to South Dakota, or New Mexico, or wherever. And so we're seeing that very much in our own private equity business, we're seeing it very much in our sponsor clients, private equity businesses. And I think it's secular not temporary. And I think the role of private credit in that larger accelerated market it's here to stay. I think there's plenty for the syndicated guys to do, but there's more than ever for the private credit folks to do, whether it's both more deals as well as larger deals. And there are a variety of factors that will dictate whether a sponsor wants to go the private credit route or wants to go the syndicated route. But I think private credits, market share of an expanded market has more growth ahead of it as opposed to some cyclical downturn.

Yes, I don't have a lot to add. I think that was a great answer to the question. The only other thing I'd say that we see going on out there is over the last five years, it's pretty amazing to watch the evolution of our clients. A lot of our clients have gone from a fund sizes of a $1.5 billion to $3 billion, maybe $4 billion. And now a lot of these same clients are pushing $10 billion in size in some cases. And a lot of these clients are used to using the private credit lenders that exist in the private credit universe. And they're comfortable with the relationships that we all offer and they're comfortable with the terms and they know how we're going to act. And so I do think that there's just a natural shift upwards with the growth of our sponsor clients. And I think that's a healthy thing for the industry. I think that is one trend that really does soak up a lot of capital in the private credit market. The thing that I always say is while the private credit market is certainly competitive and there's a lot of capital in the market, I still feel like we all collectively struggle to grow as fast as the middle market, private equity firms that we serve. And so I think that does keep a certain amount of equilibrium in the market

Very well. That's helpful, and wanted to congratulate the team on the Edmentum outcome as well. It's great to see that's all for me. And thanks for taking my question.

Thank you, Fin. I appreciate it.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Ryan Lynch with KBW. Please go ahead,

Hey Ryan.

Hey, Rob, and team thanks for taking my questions. First off, congratulations on celebrating 10 years as a public company this quarter, that's a nice milestone.

Thank you.

My first question has to deal with, with Edmentum. I've been covering you guys for a long time and that's been the long windy road that you guys have had with that investment, some ups and downs with that, but you guys are stuck with it and have actually had a really good outcome. So, congratulations on that. And that's got to feel like a proud moment to crystallize some of those gains. But my question is regarding the exit that you guys made and bought a 30-year position post quarter, did you guys have the option to retain your full position as part of that transaction or to conversely sell your whole position as part of that? And depending on what your answers were to that, how did you guys come about to exit off one third, your position, if those two other options were on the table, which I'm not sure if they were or not.

Yes, it's a fair question. We really never entertain the possibility of exiting the full position, just given the growth path we see ahead of us. So we didn't really even solicit interest in that to see if that was doable or not doable. We could have rolled our entire position. But we did think it was important to take some chips off the table. You can see it in our Q2 numbers that reflect – before we sold later in July, 5% position, even for the right reasons, right? Like the value has grown so meaningfully, it just gets uncomfortable. And there was definitely demand in the newer investor group, even at this higher valuation. And so we sort of – we kind of tried to find the happy medium to preserve what we – we still think we're selling frankly cheap. But it’s important just from a diversity standpoint, because you use it once and you never know what's going to happen, right. So we, solomonically came to – and we did this in conjunction with BlackRock our partner solomonically came to the kind of one third, two third. There is no magic to that, it could have been fifty-fifty, it could have been twenty-eighty, but that was our best judgment as to the twin goals of one, de-risking and monetizing and bringing some cash in that can earn NII as opposed to equity on the one hand versus not selling too early and what I think is an incredibly strong cyclical winner with great execution capabilities.

Yes. That's helpful color. Yes. Never back into walk in some of those gains off, still lend some of the ride.

Exactly.

You mentioned New Mountain net base corporation had some nice games, from a valuation perspective. Can you just talk about what is happening in the underlying market there that's driving those gains? And how do you guys – how is the fair value for that asset determined based on the fundamentals that are going on and kind of the underlying end markets that operates in?

Yes, so I think there's two things going on there. One is pretty obvious, which is just cap rates as a function of base rates declining, right? Obviously we’ve all seen base rates come in. But more recently, it's really been more about the risk premia. And just the – the quality of the real estate. I'll give you one example, the biggest driver of the gains this quarter was a collection of properties we have in the infield LA market. And it's just such a scarce asset. And what you see is our rents are really under the market. So we have incoming, I don't want to say weekly or daily, but we have met multiple times a month, incoming, unsolicited bids on those properties from people at extremely low cap rates. And those cap rates are a function of the view of long-term, very long-term, real estate investors that this real estate is, can be when our lease expires, which is 10, 12, 14 years down the road can be really at much higher values. And they are obviously not making any more infield LA and for all kinds of reasons around Amazon and delivery and other trends that type real estate is incredibly valuable. So, it's things like that that are driving. Obviously, there's some rate risks, right. If treasuries exploded upward, we'd see that part compressed. But I think the secular component and the quality of the real estate being recognized that's here to stay irrespective of rates. So it's really those two pieces that drive that. And we are constantly evaluating whether it makes sense to hold these certain of these assets, or at some point we're just not earning enough that we may elect to sell one or more assets.

Okay.

Which finally would crystallize the gain from unrealized to realize.

Yes. Got you. That's very helpful commentary on what's going on in the underlying business there. And then the last one I had was in the prepared comments, you mentioned kind of a long list of companies potentially on the repayment watch list, which would make sense, I think, just given your guys' portfolio composition of software, technology-enabled healthcare, business services. I mean, those are very desirable sectors right now for direct lenders given the fundamental performance through COVID. Do you guys feel that your guys' pipeline is strong enough to if those repayments kind of come to fruition, do you guys feel like your pipeline is strong enough to be able to at least offset those with, new originations? And if you guys are – do see an accelerated level of repayment or prepayment activity, should we expect potentially an increase in accelerated OID or fees associated with these prepayments that could increase the portfolio yield of these in the near term while this is going on, or are these kinds of more longer dated assets where some of those accelerated fees have kind of already run off?

Sure. Hi Ryan, this is John. I think, as I said, in my comments, we feel like there will be a lot of velocity in the portfolio. There will be a lot of repayments on existing assets. And that's life as a lender and especially life as a lender that tries to target really quality assets. We just know we're going to constantly receive paydowns. And we really feel that we're very well prepared for that when we look at our pipeline and just the amount of opportunities, just generally that are out there, we do feel very confident, that we can very successfully fill any gaps that are left from repayments, or prepayments, et cetera. And I think on the point around accelerated OID and just extra income that comes from prepayments, that is definitely true. And it's a mixed bag. Some are going to be longer lived assets and some are going be shorter lived assets. And so I think as velocity is our friend when it comes to releasing a certain amount of modest income. So, that is – I would call it a modest tailwind.

Okay. Understood that's helpful. Those are all my questions. I appreciate the discussion today and nice quarter guys.

Thanks, Ron. Appreciate that

[Opeartor Instructions] The next question comes from Bryce Rowe of Hovde Group. Please go ahead.

Hi, Bryce.

Hello. How are you?

Good, thanks.

Good. I've got kind of a higher level question. I think people have appreciated the introduction of the heat map during COVID and clearly you've continued to show that as we've moved away or are moving away from the peak of it is that something that you guys plan to kind of keep as a best practice? And does it kind of get to a point where there just aren't enough investments in the red or the orange buckets to continue to use that and show that to us on a quarterly basis? Just trying to try to understand how you kind of feel about the use of that and how it kind of came together during COVID? And I'm sure it was a helpful exercise. So just any commentary around that would be helpful.

Yes, sure. It's a very good question. And one where we're debating, frankly, there was some talk about maybe retiring the COVID element of it this quarter, and then Delta kind of made us say probably not yet. Listen, hopefully, there'll be a day sooner rather than later, where we're just not all talking about COVID as one of the two or three main drivers of asset values and risk factors. Sadly that day is not here in August of 2021. But when that day arrives, I think, it's our view that at some point the horizontal access of COVID impact is no longer a relevant metric, but we do kind of like the spread of green, yellow, orange, red, and I'd love to say that one day all our assets will be green and that may be the case. But we all know in the real world, there are always assets that struggle for one reason or another. So I think we'll always have some version of the heat map and investors seem to like it a fair bit. And it's a good management tool for us. So I think the heat map will always be with us, but the metrics may change a little bit over time. And again, hopefully sooner rather than later vis-à-vis the COVID metric.

Yes, okay. All right. That was all I had. It just kind of popped in my head and I just thought I'd ask you. I appreciate the color and great quarter.

Yes. Great. No thank you

[Opeartor Instructions] This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Rob Hamwee for any closing remarks.

Great. Thank you. And thank everybody. We as always appreciate the time, and attention and interest. Again, people know always where to find us if need be and look forward to speaking to you all in the months ahead. Thanks. Have a great rest of the day. Bye-Bye.