Good morning. And welcome to today's New Mountain Finance Corporation Second Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. My name is Tandy, and I will be your moderator for today's call. All lines will be placed on muted during the presentation portion of the call with the opportunity for question-and-answer at the end. [Operator Instructions]. I would now like to hand the conference over to our host Mr. Robert Hamwee, CEO of New Mountain Finance Corporation to begin.

Thank you and good morning everyone and welcome to New Mountain Finance Corporation's second quarter earnings call for 2022. On the line with me here today are Steve Klinsky, Chairman of NMFC and the CEO of New Mountain Capital; John Kline, President of NMFC; Laura Holson, COO of NMFC; and Shiraz Kajee, CFO of NMFC. 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 8th earnings press release. I would also like to call your attention to the customary Safe Harbor disclosure in our press release and on page two of the slide presentation regarding forward-looking statements. Today's conference call and webcast may include forward-looking statements and projections and we ask that you to 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 obtain 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 Steven Klinsky, NMFC's Chairman, who will give some highlights beginning on page five 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. I'll start by covering the highlights of the second quarter. Net investment income for the quarter was $0.31 per share more than covering our dividend of $0.30 per share that was paid in cash on June 30 and exceeding our prior guidance. Our net asset value was $13.42 per share a $0.14 or just 1.0% decrease from last quarter's net asset value, largely due to widening credit spreads in the market. The regular dividend for Q3 2022 was again set at $0.30 per share, based on estimated net investment income of at least $0.30 per share. This represents an annualized dividend yield [Technical Difficulty] 9%. As we discussed on previous earnings calls, risk controls and downside protection have always been part of New Mountain's founding mission. Our firm as a whole now manages over $37 billion in total assets with a team of approximately 215 people. We have never had a bankruptcy or missed an interest payment in the history of our private equity work. We have applied that same team strength and focus on downside protection to NMFC and our credit efforts. The great bulk of NMFC's loans are in a cyclical sectors with secular tailwinds, such as enterprise software, tech enabled business services, and healthcare services and technology. These are the types of defensive growth industries that we think are the right ones in all times and particularly attractive in the more challenging macro environment we are in today. We believe our portfolio continues to be well positioned due to this defensive growth investment strategy, as evidenced by an average net default loss of effectively zero since we began our credit operation in 2008. Our portfolio company risk ratings have improved again since our last earnings call despite the addition of two small positions to our non-accrual list this quarter. Over 90% of our portfolio is now rated green, and our riskiest positions continued to be reduced. Lastly, I want to remind you that although we have not had to use it, our dividend protection program remains in place to the extent earnings ever fall below $0.30 per share, which we do not currently expect. Rising interest rates will continue to positively impact our earnings power, as the team will explain on this call. Together, New Mountain professionals have invested over $700 million personally into NMFC and new mountains credit activities. I and management remain as NMFC's largest shareholders, and we continue to add to our positions in the most recent quarter. With that, let me turn the call back to Rob.

Thank you, Steve. We believe our portfolio continues to be very well positioned overall, particularly for periods of macro-economic volatility. The updated heat maps show the positive risk migration this quarter, as summarized on page nine, with five positions, representing $185 million of fair value improving in rating, and three positions, representing just $25 million worsening in rating. As Steve mentioned, we are pleased that over 90% of our portfolio is now rated green on our Risk Rating Scale. Conversely, our red and orange names, which represent our most challenged position, now represent the 2.4% of the portfolio meaningfully down from 8.4% last quarter. Starting with the positive movers on page 10, four of our formerly orange names migrated positively this quarter. Integro an insurance and benefits business improved to green after a publicly traded insurance broker signed a definitive agreement to acquire the business for evaluation that fully clears the first lien debt, which represents over 85% of our position, and likely covers at least the majority of the second lien debt depending on an earnout and equity performance of the acquirer. We felt it was prudent to place a portion of our $10 million second lien position on nonaccrual to reflect the uncertainty of full collectability of the [pick] [ph] interest. However, we believe the overall credit risk of our exposure has been reduced due to the signing of the transaction. Haven, formerly known as Pinilla, which as a reminder ceased operations at its plant on April 14, due to a fire migrated from orange to yellow as we further our work with insurance providers to assess coverage amounts and pay up times. The company already received an interim payment from the insurance carriers in late July. Permian and the distribution and logistics business also improved from orange…

Thanks, Rob. Good morning, everyone. Since our last call in May, the overall investing environment across most asset classes has continued to be challenging. We have seen higher interest rates, inflation, geopolitical instability, and now tangible evidence of economic softness in certain area of the economy. Through this period, corporate direct lending continues to be one of the most resilient asset classes across all financial markets. Floating base rates, attractive spreads, secured debt structures, and low loan to value ratios have provided investors with valuable stability and otherwise difficult investing environment. Additionally, our strategy of making loans to non-cyclical defensive businesses provides added margin of safety compared to that of the overall lending market. While new deal activity remains materially lower than the latter half of 2021, we continue to see compelling investment opportunities in a market where spreads are at least 100 basis points wider than they were at the beginning of the year. The deal structures of most new direct loan investments remain attractive with sponsor equity contributions consistently in the 60% to 80% range. Finally, it is important to highlight that the overall direct lending market continues to take meaningful share from the syndicated loan and high yield bond asset classes as our private financing solutions offer an ease of execution, price clarity and capital certainty that is not currently available in these other markets. Page 14 represents an interest rate analysis that provides insight into the positive effect of increasing base rates on NMFCs earnings. As a reminder, the NMFC loan portfolio is 89% floating rate and 11% fixed rate while our liabilities are 54% fixed rate and 46% floating rate. Given this capital structure mix, we are long LIBOR and thus have material positive exposure to increasing rates. During to Q2 three-month LIBOR increased from…

Thanks, John. As shown on Page 19, we originated over $220 million in Q2 in our core defensive growth verticals, including enterprise software, healthcare services and technology and business services. We primarily funded these originations with repayments and a modest amount of sales, keeping us fully invested and at the high-end of our target leverage range. We continued to have great success targeting and sourcing high-quality deals within niches of the economy where we have the highest conviction. Since quarter end, overall deal activity has been steady but more borrowers continued to migrate to the direct lending market, as the syndicated market remains somewhat closed to new issue. As always, we remain extremely selective on credit and are focusing on the highest quality opportunities, and a widening opportunities that we expect to remain fully invested in our target leverage range as our deal flow absorbs any proceeds from ordinary course loan repayments, as well as any incremental capital raised through our ATM program. Turning to Page 20, we show that our asset mix is consistent with prior quarters. We're slightly more than two thirds of our investments, inclusive of first lien, SLPs and net lease are senior in nature. Approximately 7% of the portfolio is comprised of our equity positions, the largest of which are shown on the right side of the page. Assuming solid operating performance, and a supportive valuation environment, we believe these equity positions could continue to increase in value and drive book value appreciation. We hope to monetize certain of these equity positions in the medium term and rotate those dollars into yielding assets. Page 21 shows up the average yield of NMFC's portfolio increased from 9.8% in Q1 to 10.3% for Q2, largely due to the benefit of the increasing for LIBOR curve. Post quarter…

Thank you, Laura. 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 24, portfolio had over $3.3 billion in investments at fair value at June 30 and total assets of $3.4 billion, were total liabilities of 2.1 billion, of which total statutory debt outstanding was 1.7 billion, excluding three and a million dollars of drawn SBA guarantee debentures. Net asset value of $1.4 billion, or $13.42 per share was down $0.14, or 1% from the prior quarter. At quarter end our statutory debt-to-equity ratio was 1.27 to 1. However, net of available cash on the balance sheet net leverage is 1.25 to 1 within our target leverage range. Slide 25, we show historical leverage ratios and our historical NAV adjusted for the cumulative impact of special dividends. Consistent with our goal of minimizing credit losses and maintaining a stable book value over the long-term. You will see that current NAV adjusted for special dividends is in line with NAV from our IPO over 11 years ago. Slide 26 we show our quarterly income statement results. We believe that our NII is the most appropriate measure of our quarterly performance. The slide highlights while realized and unrealized gains and losses can be volatile below the line, we continue to generate stable net investment income above the line. For the current quarter, we earned total investment income of $72.8 million, a $4.2 million increase from the prior quarter. This was due to higher interest income from initial base rate resets and higher fee income in the quarter. Total net expenses were approximately $41.4 million, a $2.4 million increase quarter-over-quarter, due primarily to higher costs in all floating rate…

Thanks Shiraz. In closing, we are optimistic about the prospects for NFMC in the months and years ahead. Our longstanding focus on lending to defensive growth businesses supported by strong sponsors should continue to serve us 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 to the days ahead. I will now turn things back to the operator to begin Q&A. Operator?

Thanks you. [Operator Instructions] So our first question comes from the line of Jordan Wathen of Wells Fargo. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Just a question on Edmentum. Obviously, you guys have chosen to hold on to this one. And you've added more over time. And the results have been pretty impressive with some capital gains. How are you guys thinking about that asset today? And is there a point at which it becomes too big as a percentage of the portfolio where it becomes something that you feel like you have to move rather than something it's just nice to have?

Yes, Hey, Jordan. So fortunately Edmentum has become as big as it has for a good reason, right, as the value has just grown so significantly. And also, we've taken a fair amount of cash off the table on Edmentum as we've sold down our position there, you may recall, at one point we owned over 40% of the company, and through a series of sales, we now own closer to 10% of the company. And so it's just that the enterprise value of the company has continued to grow so strongly that reflected despite the decreasing ownership percentage, the valuation continues to rise. All that said, it's like, I can't speak to exact specifics. It's certainly our intention to broadly monetize the equity portfolio over time and that's obviously a critical part of that. And I think, there's certainly a reasonable chance that we'd see Edmentum monetized in the quarters to come obviously, no guarantees there. But that is certainly a real possibility.

Okay, thank you. And then we know that the new pick preferred, you had to [KCS] [ph], could you guys talk about maybe how you're thinking about those higher yielding maybe more structured investments as part of the mega deals and what you're seeing out there? And what's interesting you and what isn't?

Sure, John, you want to address that one?

Sure. I think as we said in our comments, we think the deal environment is very interesting right now, we expect our sponsor clients to be very active in the markets. Generally, as I mentioned, the pricing for loans has gotten much more attractive, which is great. Structures are better equity contributions are big. And as you can see, we've been participating mostly on the unit tranche side, but selectively down the capital structure on pick preferred. And I think that's going to continue over the course of this year and next. Unit tranche will be our bread and butter. But when we see just really great compelling situations where we can buy a more of junior piece in the capital structure that has yield that makes sense as a yield enhancer for our overall portfolio, we're definitely going to do that. So and as I said, I think the environment will be good for both unit tranche and select preferred investments.

Okay. Thanks so much for taking the questions.

Thank you. There's a new question registered from Ryan Lynch of KBW. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. First question. Well, I also have actually just wanted to first give you a compliment on the slide deck, a ton of, I think helpful information both on the movements of some of the stress investments, improvements into clients, very helpful. And also Slide 15, actually showing the movements to NAV related to credit versus the NAV movements related to broad race spread movements was incredibly helpful. So really well done with the slide deck. My first question I wanted to talk about, you gave some commentary on your movements from interest rates and kind of broad based commentary, I was wondering if you guys had run any sort of analysis, you may or may not have, but on what you guys expect the potential impact for rising rates for the third quarter just because rates, they're moving so quickly, recently, and they reset kind of on the lag. And so as you mentioned, rates were very high the second quarter, but given most BDCs, haven't really gotten much of a benefit from that, because they're kind of resetting on this lag. And so I wonder if you guys have done an analysis of the potential impacts for rising rates as a reset at the beginning of the third quarter what you expect?

John, you touched on that a little bit, you want to give a little more detail around that?

Sure. It's something that we're constantly looking at. And as I tried to allude to Ryan, it's a little bit of -- it's constantly moving, because when we think about all the different floating rate exposures, we have our liabilities, in some cases will move every day, where we get a reset every day, to whatever the days, one month, LIBOR is different facilities are slightly different with regard to the resets. And then on the asset side, while companies tend to cluster at certain dates, in terms of resets, it's not totally consistent. But when we think about this quarter, there is a material tailwind. And as rates rise, companies are going to be forced to choose either one month LIBOR, three-month LIBOR, and in certain cases, they may take a bet and take a longer LIBOR contract. But in general, I'd say that's looking to be a real tailwind for us. And it's something that every month, we reevaluate and look at and I can just tell you, it is very positive, it's just difficult to put a precise number of cents per share, just given some of the movements that I tried to articulate, but it is positive. And as long as LIBOR goes up, our companies are going to be -- our assets, our loans are going to be forced to reset at those higher rates, which is a good thing, just given our asset liability mix that we discussed on Page 14.

Okay. That's fair enough. I understand. It's a complicated again kind of fluid situation, but I appreciate the commentary. You gave a lot of comments on kind of broader environment for deploying and lending money, which is very consistent what we've heard other direct lenders talk about how it's certainly become more favorable from a lending standpoint. I'm just curious, you guys have this equity co-investment program that you guys announced a while ago, does this environment, which has become certainly more lender friendly, but I would also assume purchase price multiples are also lower, which could be radically mean, it's a decent time to be making some equity investments. I'm just curious, in this current environment, do you see any sort of changes in your appetite to participate in the equity co-investments more or less than what you guys have done in the past?

Yes, I think it's a good question. I think we're not trying necessarily to time the market in terms of tops and bottoms, I think our approach will continue to be sort of slow and steady on the equity co-invest. And where there is something that just makes perfect sense. And we'll always do it in small dollars, but I do think our goal of building a really high-graded portfolio of equity co-invest, to further build book value over the long-term, is still very much on topic for us. And I would expect to see selective additions to that program, in the quarters ahead. But I don't think Ryan, we're trying to make a call and say, oh, gosh, the lows are in or now we're going to wait, because we think the lows will be six months. I think it's really more idiosyncratic from the bottom up, when we see something that really fits well, with the program we will add that. And that said, we are seeing some very interesting things. So I would expect to see a couple of additions in the next couple of quarters.

It's okay. That makes sense. So nothing really accelerating and decelerating from abroad for markets, it's more about today. The other question I had and it looks like your guys commented has come a long way, you guys implementing sort of those willingness to do those potential fee waivers of incentive fees. It looks like over the next couple quarters, given the trajectory of interest rates, of course, things could change. But I don't think you guys are going to have, pretty meaningful dividend coverage and actually over earning the dividend. I'm just curious, do you guys have in your mind, what is the stated policy that you guys choose to set the dividend at? Would you guys, is the policy that that you guys are fine, meaningfully over earning the dividend? And potentially growing a little bit of book value a quarter if you guys do have core earnings, well above the dividend? Or would you guys ever anticipate either raising the dividend or paying out that extra earnings in the form of like some sort of supplemental dividend, which you've seen some other BDC just trying to get a sense? Because I think we could be approaching a new territory that we haven't seen in a while where there could be some meaningful over in earnings -- the core dividend?

Yes, it's a great question. And it's something we spend a lot of time talking about. I think philosophically, we want to pay out our NII, we want to do it in a consistent way. So if we had a crystal ball and the crystal ball said, “Hey, base rates are reset for the next 10 years at 3.5%, and therefore, we're going to over earn the dividend for the next 10 years by x. We would consider raising the dividend to match that, the problem, of course, is we don't know what interest rates are going to be in 18 months, or two years, it's obviously a very volatile thing. So while -- I don't want to say we've never raised the dividend, at some point that could happen, I think our medium term plan is probably to over earn, potentially either book below book value, and or over distribute in the form of specials, but can continuously reevaluate and if we feel we've gotten to a new plateau, that is consistent in all, in virtually all cases, then we'd be reevaluate, but I think what we don't want to do is raise and then cut because, the Fed reverses direction, 18 months from now and LIBOR is back at or so forth back at 50 basis points. So that's the that's the tension we are navigating, I guess. But I do think, Ryan philosophically, yes, we want to distribute, NII fulsome way, and then we do feel good about having a little more cushioning for sure.

Yes. I think that makes a ton of sense. You certainly don't want to get over your SKIs and really just dependent on, with the broader market in the Fed goes with rates in order for you to earn the dividend. So that makes sense. That's all for me today. I appreciate the time.

Great, thank you, Ryan, I appreciate your interest. Thank you. As there are no further questions. At this time, I'd like to turn the call back over to Robert for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. Well, thank you, everyone. As always, we appreciate the time and the interest. And we're again -- we're always here to talk to and we look forward to communicating again next quarter and to the month ahead. And I hope everyone has a great end of the summer. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that now concludes today's New Mountain Finance Corporation earning call. I'd like to wish you a great day ahead. You may now disconnect your lines.