Golub Capital BDC Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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May 6, 2025
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Operator

Hello, everyone, and welcome to GBDC's earnings call for the fiscal quarter ended March thirty first of twenty twenty five. Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to remind our listeners that remarks made during this call may contain forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Statements other than statements of historical facts made during this call may constitute forward looking statements and are not guarantees of future performance or results and involve a number of risks and uncertainties.

Operator

Actual results may differ materially from those in the forward looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including those described from time to time in GBDC's SEC filings. For materials we intend to refer to on today's earnings call, please visit the Investor Resources tab on the homepage of our website, which is www.gallopcapitalbdc.com, and click the Events Presentations link. Our earnings release is also available on our website in the Investor Resources section. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. With that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to David Golub, Chief Executive Officer of GBDC.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. I'm joined by Matt Benton, our Chief Operating Officer and Chris Erickson, our Chief Financial Officer. For those of you who are new to GBDC, our investment strategy is the same as it's been since our IPO fifteen years ago. It's to focus on providing first lien senior secured loans to healthy, resilient middle market companies that are backed by strong partnership oriented private equity sponsors.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Yesterday, we issued our earnings press release for the quarter, and we posted an earnings presentation on our website. We'll be referring to that presentation during the course of today's call. Before I begin with quarterly headlines, I want to take a moment to celebrate our fifteenth anniversary as a listed BDC. GBDC is one of only a few BDCs to have successfully navigated multiple credit cycles over a long period of time. Since our IPO fifteen years ago, GBDC has delivered a 9.6% annualized total return, outperforming pure BDCs, leveraged loan indices and even the Russell two thousand, which returned 8.5% annually over the same period.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of our shareholders for their partnership over the course of the last fifteen years. With that, let me start with the usual headlines, and then Matt and Chris is going to go through operating results and financial performance for the quarter in more detail. And finally, I'll come back with our outlook for the coming period and take some questions. The headline is that GBDC had a solid quarter despite a challenging macro environment. It was a macro environment marked by shifting sentiment and an unusual level of policy uncertainty.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Here are the highlights. Adjusted NII per share was $0.39 that corresponds to an adjusted NII return on equity of 10.4%. Adjusted net income per share was $0.30 that corresponds to an adjusted return on equity of 8%. Adjusted net income per share included $09 per share of adjusted net realizedunrealized losses. While the vast majority of GBDC's portfolio continued to perform well in the quarter, we did see some weakness in the small tail of underperforming borrowers we've spoken about previously.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Finally, our new investment activity for the quarter was very selective. We closed on just 2.3% of reviewed deals. Now the risk of stating the obvious, this quarter wasn't it wasn't the one market participants were expecting. At the beginning of the year, there was broad optimism about continuing strong economic growth and about the potential for increased deal activity. That's not what played out.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

We ended the quarter and we've begun calendar Q2 with an uncomfortable level of uncertainty around tariff policy, an unusual degree of market volatility, decreased consumer confidence, and broader forces slowing growth. One of our goals today is to give you an assessment of how we're seeing these forces play out for GBDC and to explain both what we've done and what we're going to do to prepare further. If you're a longtime shareholder of GBDC, a lot of this is gonna sound familiar. Our playbook for navigating uncertainty has been the same for decades. It's to play offense by selectively looking for new loans, and it's to focus on early detection and early intervention.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Early detection means looking for borrower underperformance early, and early intervention is about working with sponsors and borrowers to address future potential problems proactively. Now I'll pass the call over to Matt Benton to discuss the quarter in more detail, and I'll come back at the end with some closing thoughts.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Thanks, David. I'm going to start on Slide four. GBDC's 30 nine cents per share of adjusted NII and 30¢ per share of adjusted earnings were driven by four key factors.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

First, overall credit performance remained solid. Nearly 90% of GBDC's investment portfolio at fair value remains in our highest performing internal rating categories. That said, credit wasn't perfect. We had unrealized losses from fair value markdowns on a small number of underperforming investments, and we recognized realized losses on two restructurings of investments that had been on non accrual status as of 12/31/2024. Second, earnings continue to be supported by high base rates and attractive spreads, consistent with recent quarters.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

GBDC's investment income yield remained robust at 10.8% despite a sequential decline of about 40 basis points, primarily driven by certain loans resetting the lower base rates during the quarter. Third, a decline in GBDC's borrowing costs largely offset the sequential decline in investment income yield. Lower base rates reduced the interest expense on the 80% of our borrowings that are floating rate. On top of that, the debt stack initiatives we closed at the end of twenty twenty four and which we've spoken about before further reduced borrowing costs during the March. And fourth, earnings continue to structurally benefit from lower expenses due to GBDC's leading fee structure.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

I'm gonna turn to portfolio activity and credit quality in the quarter now. One the ways we responded to the high uncertainty that David mentioned earlier was by dialing up our conservatism about adding the GBDC portfolio. We prioritized quality over quantity in new investment activity, which actually led to a small decrease in the size of the portfolio as exits outpaced new investment commitments. Gross originations were $298,900,000 during the quarter with a hundred and $59,500,000 funded at close. This focus on quality over quantity showed up in several ways.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

We were highly selective closing just 2.3% of deals reviewed. We leaned on relationships and incumbencies with over 50% of our origination coming from repeat borrowers. We leverage our scale to lead deals acting as the lead or sole lender in 93% of our transactions. We focus on conservative LTVs at the time of origination, generally in the mid 30 to 40% range. And we focus on the core middle market, which we believe continues to offer better risk adjusted return potential than the large borrower market.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

The median EBITDA for our calendar q one twenty twenty five originations was $54,000,000, and our weighted average spread on new originations increased 30 basis points this quarter versus the last couple of quarters. We really believe our ability to play across the size spectrum is a valuable differentiator versus many of our peers that are limited to the large borrower market. Credit statistics remain strong quarter over quarter, and we continue to believe that we have a highly defensive portfolio that is well positioned for the emerging economic uncertainty. Investments in rating categories four and five remained at nearly 90% of the portfolio at fair value as of 03/31/2025. Investments in rating category three remained just under 9% at 8.9% at fair value.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Investments in rating categories one and two remain very low, representing just 1.4% of the total portfolio at fair value. As a percentage of total investments at fair value, nonaccrual investments increased modestly to just 70 basis points as of 03/31/2025. In the quarter, the number of nonaccrual investments remained at just nine following the restructuring of two former nonaccrual investments and the return of one former nonaccrual investment to accrual status on improved operating performance. These dynamics were offset by the placing of three loan investments on nonaccrual status. Let me take a minute to discuss the portfolio management process as we've undertaken in response to tariff uncertainty.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

As we've said repeatedly, early detection of potential vulnerabilities in our portfolio is a key focus. Our underwriting teams have reviewed GBDC's portfolio on a sectoral basis and on a name by name basis to identify potentially impacted borrowers. Our initial analysis suggests that the vast majority of our portfolio companies are relatively insulated from the direct impact of tariffs. Our risk analytic framework includes, a, analyzing credits by sector with a focus on sectors that we believe may be more vulnerable and, b, assessing borrowers on a name by name basis, evaluating potential exposure in areas such as revenue, supply chains, and liquidity. Based on the work to date, we have identified a short list of portfolio companies in a higher potential tariff risk bucket.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

We're prioritizing this subset of the portfolio for further discussions with sponsors and management teams to assess their mitigation plans and help them take steps to shore up potential vulnerabilities. We intend to remain in close contact with our sponsors and portfolio companies as they continue to monitor and assess the impact of tariffs and tariff related risks. Being a sole or lead lender in approximately 90% of our deals gives us a greater degree of access and influence than some of our direct lending peers. Continuing on slide four, let me briefly summarize distributions paid and certain balance sheet changes in the quarter. Total distributions paid in the quarter were 39¢ per share.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

NAV per share decreased by 9¢ on a sequential basis to $15.04, primarily because of net unrealized and realized losses. Debt to equity remained stable quarter over quarter ending at one spot one six terms with debt reduced by available cash and cash retained as debt securitizations for the purpose of paying down principal outstanding notes. GBDC's average net leverage during the quarter was one spot one seven turns, well within our targeted range of zero five eight five to one spot two five turns. In the quarter, we took advantage of attractive trading levels in the stock price to selectively issue equity on an accretive basis through our at the market offering program. And given the unprecedented levels of market volatility experienced at the end of the calendar quarter and following quarter end, repurchase shares on an accretive basis.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

The board declared a regular quarterly distribution of 39¢ per share, representing an annualized dividend yield of 10.3% based on GBDC's NAV per share as of 03/31/2025. Dividend coverage remains strong at a % today. Let's shift gears in terms of spot spots. Quarter over quarter, there was no change in the level of adjusted net investment income. GBDC generated 39¢ per share.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

We see further opportunity to optimize GBDC's balance sheet to drive higher earnings, including further borrowing cost optimization. For example, subsequent to quarter end, we extended duration on and repriced our syndicated corporate holder to the tightest level among our traded BDC peers. This highly attractive lower cost debt should begin to be reflected in our results for the quarter ended 06/30/2025. In addition, our well laddered unsecured debt stack and best in class ratings profile provides us with the flexibility to be an opportunistic issuer when credit spreads are attractive and to not have to issue when credit spreads have widened as was the case at the end of the quarter. And finally, investment portfolio rotation.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

We believe the successful monetization of certain nonearning equity investments and low yielding loans associated with prior restructured names with subsequent redeployment into new core middle market originations can potentially generate incremental NII. Include the obvious caveat that we have work to do to successfully resolve these things, and it's not gonna happen all overnight. So we have the skills and resources to do this. I'm gonna turn it over to Chris now to take us through our financial results in more detail. Chris?

Christopher Ericson
Christopher Ericson
CFO & Treasurer at Golub Capital BDC

Thanks, Matt. Turning to Slide seven, you can see how the earnings drivers Matt just described and distributions paid in the quarter translated into GVC's March thirty one, twenty twenty five, NAV per share of $15.04 Adjusted NII of $0.39 per share was in line with the $0.39 per share based distribution paid out during this quarter. Net realized and unrealized losses were $07 per share and $09 per share after reversing the $02 per share in unrealized appreciation on investments resulting from the purchase premium paid in the TCIC and GBT3 acquisitions. Together, these results drove a net asset value per share decrease to $15.04 Turning to slide 10, which details our origination activity for the quarter. Net funds quarter over quarter decreased modestly by $64,000,000 as exits and payoffs outpaced funded investments during the quarter.

Christopher Ericson
Christopher Ericson
CFO & Treasurer at Golub Capital BDC

And looking at the bottom of the slide, the weighted average rate on new investments was 9.7%. Investments that we paid during the quarter were at a weighted average rate of 10.4%. And as David and Matt described at the outset, these contributed to a lower investment yield on the portfolio compared to prior quarters. I'll reiterate that we did see a 30 basis point increase in the weighted average spread on new originations versus the twelvethirty onetwenty four quarter. It reflects our continued focus on the core middle market and our deal selectivity.

Christopher Ericson
Christopher Ericson
CFO & Treasurer at Golub Capital BDC

Slide 11 shows QVC's overall portfolio mix. As you can see, the portfolio breakdown by investment type remained consistent quarter over quarter with one stop loans continuing to represent around 87% of the portfolio at fair value. Slide 12 shows that QVC's portfolio remains highly diversified by portfolio company with an average investment size of approximately 30 basis points, consistent with prior quarters. Additionally, our largest borrower represents just 1.5% of the debt investment portfolio, and our top 10 largest borrowers represent below 12% of the portfolio. We are big believers in modulating credit risk through position size, which we believe has served QVC well in previous credit cycles.

Christopher Ericson
Christopher Ericson
CFO & Treasurer at Golub Capital BDC

And as of 03/31/2025, '90 '2 percent of our investment portfolio consisted of first stream senior secured floating rate loans to borrowers across a diversified range of what we believe to be resilient industries. The economic analysis on slide 13 highlights the drivers of the change in GBDC's net investment spread to 4.9%. Let's walk through this slide in detail. We'll start with the dark blue line, which is our investment income yield. As a reminder, the investment income yield includes the amortization of fees and discounts.

Christopher Ericson
Christopher Ericson
CFO & Treasurer at Golub Capital BDC

GBDC's investment income yield fell 40 basis points sequentially to 10.8%. And as highlighted earlier, this was predominantly the result of a portion of GBDC's ninety nine percent floating rate investment portfolio re indexing throughout the quarter to lower three month and one month SOFR reference rates and to a much lesser extent, lower weighted average spread on debt investments in the portfolio, which was driven via net originations at lower spreads and some repricing activity in the existing portfolio. Our cost of debt, the PO line, decreased 30 basis points to 5.9%, reflecting our approximately 80% floating rate debt funding structure. And as Matt described earlier, we expect further improvement in GVC's weighted average cost of debt next quarter as we see the impact from the amendment of our syndicated corporate revolver. Net net, our weighted average net investment spread to Goldline decreased by a modest 10 basis points sequentially to 4.9%.

Christopher Ericson
Christopher Ericson
CFO & Treasurer at Golub Capital BDC

I'll now turn it back over to Matt.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Thanks, Chris. Let's move on to slide fourteen and fifteen and take a closer look at our credit quality metrics. On slide 14, you can see the nonaccruals increased slightly to 70 basis points of total investments at fair value. We completed restructuring of ERC Topco and reaction biology and returned JHC investment to accrual status in the quarter.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

In addition, we placed three companies on nonaccrual status resulting in no change in the number of total portfolio companies on nonaccrual status from the prior quarter. Slide 15 shows the trend in internal performance ratings I highlighted earlier. Of note, investments rated three, signaling a borrower could be out of compliance with debt covenants, remain low. It's just 8.9% of the total investment portfolio. And the proportion of loans rated one and two, which are loans we believe are most likely to see significant credit impairment, remain very low at just 1.4% of the portfolio's fair value.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

As we usually do, we're gonna skip past slide 16 through 19. These slides have more detail on GBDC's financial statements, dividend history, and other key metrics. I'll wrap up this section by reviewing GBDC's liquidity and investment capacity on slides twenty and twenty one. First, let's focus on the key takeaways on slide 21. Our weighted average cost of debt this quarter was 5.9%, down from the prior quarter, reflecting the debt funding structures transactions we executed in the fourth calendar quarter of twenty twenty four and before the impact of repricing our corporate revolver, which I discussed earlier.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Our debt maturity profile remains well positioned with 44% of our debt funding in the form of unsecured notes with maturities ranging from 2026 through 2029. The April 2025 corporate revolver amendment further enhanced our debt maturity profile, extending final maturity on the nearly 2,000,000,000 of total commitments under the facility through 2030. Consistent with our asset liability matching principle, 80% of GBDC's total debt funding is floating rate or swapped to a floating rate. The portion of the debt funding that remains fixed rate are the 2026 and 2027 notes that were issued with a weighted average coupon of 2.3. And as you've heard of them prior occasions, we did not swap them out for floating rate exposure.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Overall, our liquidity position remains strong, and we ended the quarter with approximately $1,200,000,000 of liquidity from unrestricted cash, undrawn commitments on our meaningfully over collateralized corporate revolver and the unused unsecured revolver provided by our adviser. We're well positioned with the level of capital and significant amount of liquidity for the period ahead. Now I'll hand it back over to David for closing remarks.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Thanks, Matt. So to sum up, GBDC had a solid second quarter against the challenging backdrop of weakening market fundamentals and high policy uncertainty.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Let me touch briefly on our outlook before we open the line for questions. We've talked for a number of quarters now about how consensus expectations have proven consistently wrong about big macro themes in the year since COVID. In 2020, we were told to expect a recession. In '21, it was transitory inflation. In '22, it was stubborn inflation.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

In '23, it was recession again. And in '24, we were told to expect dramatic reductions in interest rates. All of these predictions proved wrong, often often very wrong. After only a quarter, the big consensus prediction for '25 that we were gonna see a big pickup in m and a, that's also proved wrong. So what's the lesson here?

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

I think there's three lessons. Choose resilient strategies, stay humble, and prepare for multiple scenarios. Let me recap what we've done and what we're doing in keeping with these lessons. Start with choosing resilient strategies. As you know, our investment strategy is designed to be resilient.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

We focus on lending at the top of the capital structure to healthy businesses in recession resistant industries that are backed by relationship oriented, very talented private equity firms. This strategy has been tested through multiple periods of dislocation, and it's come out each time proving to be strong. We believe our long standing focus on the resiliency of our investment strategy means our portfolio is relatively insulated from the direct impact of tariffs and other trade related issues like FX exposure. Now I'm not saying there isn't still uncertainty, but our borrowers are primarily U. S.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Businesses with US centric supply chains that are selling to US customers. Most of our borrowers are in service industries. Few of them have meaningful exposure to imported raw materials or to export markets. And we believe sponsors and management teams have since the election been anticipating potential tariffs and developing mitigation strategies. We think this puts us in a relatively strong position.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Now there's still all the unknowns we talked about over the course of this call, and there's still the possibility of second order unknowns. We think it's important to stay humble about what we don't know. But it's also important not to be paralyzed by uncertainty. So what we're doing, again, consistent with my three lessons, is preparing for multiple scenarios. What that means first off is carefully reviewing and monitoring our portfolio for tariff related risks.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

You heard Matt describe how we're doing that, how we're following a rigorous sector by sector and name by name review process. The approach we're taking is similar to how we leverage the scale and expertise of our investment team during COVID and during the turbulent market conditions of 2022. We pivot resources. We seek to identify vulnerabilities early. We seek to engage with private equity sponsors and borrowers to take action early.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

What this reflects, I think, more than anything is that this isn't our first rodeo. We've been through a number of unprecedented times over the last thirty years. In each case, we were charged to deliver for shareholders by using the same proven playbook, and we've come out stronger on the other top. I'm confident that our playbook is once again gonna serve us well in this instance as we manage through this set of issues. And there's a silver lining to this challenging uncertain environment.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

We think this is the type of environment that historically has separated lenders with strong businesses and real competitive advantages from those that don't have those characteristics. We've already seen increased dispersion in performance among BDC managers over the course of the last few quarters, and we expect to see more of this in the coming period. We believe Golub Capital and GBDC will once again be on the good side of the performance dispersion sector. With that, operator, could you please open the line for questions?

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session.

Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Finian O'Shea with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Finian O'shea
Finian O'shea
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Hey, everyone. Good afternoon. David picking up at the end there.

Finian O'shea
Finian O'shea
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Certainly been fool's errand to predict the macro, but the the rate curve is pointed down at least somewhat, and NOI is, you know, basically right at at the dividend right now. So how should we think about the base payout going forward?

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Great question. Matt, you wanna you wanna take that up?

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Yeah.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Happy to. Thanks. Good to good to speak. Yeah. Acknowledge that we're sitting at a %.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Really, just like everybody, we're battling spread and base rate compression. But the short answer is that we feel about as good as we can given where we sit today despite, you know, what we're seeing from a forward curve compression perspective because we do have some potential near term levers that we can pull. The first, what I would characterize as in place lever is the pricing reduction on our JPMorgan credit facility that we executed on April 4. We'll get the full benefit of that in the June. I think as you if you think about your model, the benefit is pretty easy to calculate.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

If you want to think about it from a backward looking view, $1,000,000,000 drawn balance at 03/31 and assume a spread of 165 basis points versus the 1.75% where we were at today. Also, don't forget the unused fee dropped by five basis points on the undrawn amount of almost $900,000,000 So there'll be some pickup there. That'll be nicely accretive. The second, what I would call, in place lever today is that 80% of the liability stack is variable rate. This largely mitigates base rate reductions, not entirely.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

You saw the benefit of that this quarter. I would say the third lever that we have to pull would be modestly considering increasing financial leverage to the extent that we see effective opportunities. If you noted during the comments, our spread this quarter increased on new originations just given where we're focusing at the end of the quarter at leverage of 1.16 turns. So we have room to run there at the extent that we don't want to do that. It's pretty easy to calculate the accretive impact of moving higher within our target leverage range.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

And then finally, you know, our day count next quarter is gonna be higher, which is worth surprisingly a a decent amount of incremental adjusted NII, I. E. There'll be more earning days for GBDC next quarter. So I mean, listen, management of what we're always evaluating dividend levels versus our expected steady state profitability. These are big scenario planners over here.

Matthew Benton
Matthew Benton
Chief Operating Officer at Golub Capital BDC

If there is a scenario that we see where the combo of base rate and or spread compression is substantial up toward revisiting the quarterly dividend levels, we'll we'll certainly do it. But for now, we feel okay where we're sitting.

Finian O'shea
Finian O'shea
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Fair enough. Appreciate that. Do one more.

Finian O'shea
Finian O'shea
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Appreciating that that you all held back on on on deployment this quarter. Feels like a good move, pretty frothy quarter in hindsight. The repayments have also trended trended low. Like like, those have those have picked up for for a lot of peers as a percent of the portfolio. Just sort of question, like, are are we seeing anything there?

Finian O'shea
Finian O'shea
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Is it Is that also part of the formula? Are you focused on defending the names, doing the repricings, which would hopefully be abating by now? But yes, anything there on on the just low overall activity?

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Sure. I'll I'll take that.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

So, yeah, we went into the quarter, and and and I think everybody, including us, expected a pickup in activity. I was not a believer in this M and A super cycle talk, but I anticipated that we would see a continuation of trend from the last two quarters of 'twenty four. It didn't happen. Instead, we've seen a significant deceleration of deal activity even before the tariff discussions. It's decelerated even more as we look into Q2.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

So, you know, in that environment, we saw decreased deal activity and still very significant competition for the deals that were happening. So we saw in the first two months actually continued compression of spreads, and that's what led us to be very cautious because we thought that new activity was not as attractive as we would as we would like for it to have been. We wanted to to husband some powder for better times. And to your point, I'm I'm glad we did. We do we do consistently follow the same playbook.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

So if we write a credit and it's an existing borrower and it's looking to do something new, we consistently very aggressively defend incumbencies where where where we like the credit. That that's just a standard Dollar Capital policy. We think it served us well over over a very long period of time. I I think looking at at one quarter and trying to draw inferences about overall repayment trends, I I caution against that. I think I think that's hard to do because one quarter's worth of repayments can be very very heavily influenced by a small number of of of transactions.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

But I would tell you as a generalization, we're seeing private equity hold longer in hopes that we're gonna see a a better environment for for selling companies. And and that's the the dominant trend of the first four four four months of this calendar year.

Finian O'shea
Finian O'shea
Analyst at Wells Fargo

So very helpful. If I can sneak one more in, you guys did mention on on the portfolio tariff review, there were some names identified. You didn't name those, so I won't ask you to.

Finian O'shea
Finian O'shea
Analyst at Wells Fargo

But the like, bad is it? Should we expect a bit of a hit next quarter? Or is this still, you know, early stages, hopefully manageable? Thank you.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

I think it's gonna prove manageable.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

There there are a lot of unknowns. Right now, we we we're in this period of pause, and the administration is talking about hopeful signs of reaching a lot of trade deals. I'm hopeful that that comes to fruition. Right now, we identified some 10% of the portfolio that has some degree of exposure to imports and exports that warranted further study. That doesn't mean they're going to be impacted.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

That means they're warranting the further study. And and, you know, we we've been working with borrowers and and sponsors to to do the further study and to identify the the the the much smaller proportion of the portfolio that I anticipate will be meaningfully impacted. So I think we're in good shape on a first order basis then. The thing I worry about more is second order impacts. I think we may we may be headed toward a downturn if if if the pause isn't a well utilized pause to to establish more trade deals.

Finian O'shea
Finian O'shea
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Alright. Thanks so much, everybody.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Robert Dodd with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Robert Dodd
Robert Dodd
Analyst at Raymond James

Hi.

Robert Dodd
Robert Dodd
Analyst at Raymond James

Hopefully, you can you can hear me okay. On on one of one of the the issue about the you moved moved a little bit that market to to the quarter, like, at median EBITDA of 50,000,000, give or take. I mean, 50,000,000 is not a small company, but it is smaller. Can you give us a I mean, is that kind of what you expect to do as it seems to continue as they are kind of for the the rest of the year maybe in terms of doing those small companies? That's tend to be a little higher.

Robert Dodd
Robert Dodd
Analyst at Raymond James

The m and a cycle for those core market companies isn't quite as boom and bust as as the large market m and a businesses. But they are a little bit smaller, maybe not as as resilient if if there is a downturn. Can you give us thoughts on on how that plays out?

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Sure. So we long prided ourselves on being able to be a a lender and being able to be a partner to private equity firms across a broad range of different EBITDA levels from the the approximately 20 to approximately a hundred, you know, constitutes most of what we do.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

And the average is probably, if you can if you can mute, there's a lot of background noise. Thank you. We pride ourselves on being in this broad range, in the larger market, but playing in the larger market more opportunistically when market conditions are attractive. We found in the early part of this quarter, particularly that the larger market was not terribly attractive. The broadly syndicated market at the time was quite robust, and we were seeing relatively low spreads on new transactions in in the broadly syndicated market.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

So in that kind of set of market conditions, we're going to be even more inclined to focus on our core. So I I wouldn't characterize the the 54 as being unusual. If you look at our mean EBITDA by quarter over time, it's it's frequently in that range. Most of the portfolio, approximately two thirds of the portfolio is is typically in the range of of 30 to to to $70,000,000 in in EBITDA. That that's really our core specialty.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

I do like the the and I think your point, I do I do like the the risk reward dynamic and the competitive dynamic in that in that core middle market better than I like the lower middle market where companies are less resilient or in the upper middle market or or larger market where where market conditions can cause spreads to to compress to to the point where they're pretty tight. So so that's that's why we we focus on the core middle market. We think it's where our our our competitive advantage is the strongest.

Robert Dodd
Robert Dodd
Analyst at Raymond James

Got it. Thank thank you for that.

Robert Dodd
Robert Dodd
Analyst at Raymond James

And, yeah, sorry about the background noise. On just one more. On the three, you know, of course this quarter, any themes there? I mean, was any of that proactive step with a view to to tariffs? Or was it just the the normal idiosyncratic things?

Robert Dodd
Robert Dodd
Analyst at Raymond James

Or was was there any kind of thematic underpinning there? I mean, it's only three, but still.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

No. I would say there's no thematic underpinning, and it was not influenced by tariffs. You know, what we've said before is and and I think it's true of credit markets generally, not just for Dollar Capital.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Most borrowers have been performing well and have have adapted well to to the higher interest rates and changing market conditions, but there is a there is a tail. If you look at the broadly syndicated market, we've been operating now for some time with a default rate about 4.5%, about double the historical average. We have not seen that in our portfolio, but we have seen a little bit of an uptick in credit stress. And and the the the situation with our non accruals this quarter reflects that.

Operator

Thank you.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Paul Johnson with KBW. Go ahead.

Paul Johnson
Vice President at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)

Thanks. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions.

Paul Johnson
Vice President at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)

Just on the the small subset of companies sort of at risk for for tariffs. How is that or how is that reflected, I guess, or captured in your internal watch list? Were there any, I guess, names that were demoted in terms of risk ranking this quarter, or would we expect that to be more factored into next quarter's watch list?

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

I think it's gonna take more time for that to play out, Paul. Bear in mind, you know, the Verizon date announcement for April 2, it was after the quarter ended.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

There certainly wasn't an economic impact of tariff issues in the March 31 quarter that we could see in financial results. So this is this is all right now analytic and and and anecdotal, and we're gonna we're gonna need to see how results play out over the course of the coming quarters.

Paul Johnson
Vice President at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)

Got it. And then just on the refinancing activity, it's been said repayments have been on the lower end the last few quarters here. Can you give us an idea of just how much, I guess, of the portfolio you might think is roughly just, I guess, exposed to potential refinancing, continued refinancing activity and getting repriced lower share?

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Well, I'll give you a different answer than I would have given you in February. I I think we were still seeing a significant amount of refinancing activity in January and February, and I and and and we're seeing, you know, scarcely any now. And and I think the main reason for the change is that we've we've seen the pendulum shift directions. We've gone from a market that was becoming more and more borrower friendly to one that's now becoming more lender friendly. Visible in the broadly syndicated market through lower prices and higher spreads on new issue.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

And we've seen some degree of a shift in spreads and new issue in our market. So unless we see another fairly significant shift, a win direction shift, I'm not concerned about a lot of spread tightening refinancing activity in our portfolio in in in the coming period.

Paul Johnson
Vice President at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)

Thanks for that. That's that's good to hear. And then, you know, just on this sort of very brief April, you know, period of volatility, I realize we're talking about a very short window of time here, but I'm just curious to to hear if if you at all noticed any sort of dispersion in terms of the scale of of lenders in in the market in terms of any sort of smaller scale players that were constrained in any way or even from the borrower side, you know, an affinity to work with more more, you know, larger scale type of of lenders, if there was any sort of noticeable trend there as as the market became volatile.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

It it's early days, but but I think this kind of marketplace to place to our strengths and and relationship strengths in particular. So and we've been involved in this month in a number of different situations where sponsors had reasons to choose either one or a small group of lenders that they wanted to work with. And so I I I feel like this has been a good a good period for us from a share standpoint in attractive transactions. But I I don't wanna drop too too many conclusions from it because it's only a month. I I I think I think we've gotta give this more time.

Operator

Thank you. That's all for me. I'll now turn the call over to David Gollum for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Great.

David Golub
David Golub
Chief Executive Officer at Golub Capital BDC

Well, I just wanna thank everyone for listening today, and I appreciate all of your your time and your questions. As always, if there's something that we didn't cover today that you're interested in, please feel free to reach out, and I look forward to engaging with you next quarter. Thank you.

Operator

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

Operator

Please wait. The conference will begin shortly.

Executives
    • David Golub
      David Golub
      Chief Executive Officer
    • Matthew Benton
      Matthew Benton
      Chief Operating Officer
    • Christopher Ericson
      Christopher Ericson
      CFO & Treasurer
Analysts
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Key Takeaways

  • GBDC delivered a solid quarter with adjusted NII of $0.39 per share (10.4% NII ROE) and adjusted net income of $0.30 per share (8% ROE), despite $0.09 per share of net realized/unrealized losses driven by a few underperforming credits.
  • Credit quality remains robust with nearly 90% of the portfolio in the top internal ratings, non-accruals at just 0.7% of fair value, and continued emphasis on first-lien senior secured loans to middle-market borrowers.
  • New investment activity was highly selective, closing only 2.3% of reviewed deals, with a median borrower EBITDA of $54 million, a 30 bp increase in weighted average spread, and 93% of transactions where GBDC acted as lead or sole lender.
  • Liquidity and leverage are well managed, ending the quarter with $1.2 billion of available liquidity, 1.17x average net leverage, a 5.9% weighted average cost of debt, and proactive reviews of ~10% of the portfolio for potential tariff exposure.
  • Looking ahead, management plans to maintain its resilient first-lien strategy, optimize borrowing costs further, rotate non-core assets into higher-yielding loans, and uphold a 39¢ dividend (10.3% annualized yield) backed by strong coverage.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Golub Capital BDC Q2 2025
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