SWK Q2 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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August 15, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Completed sale of royalty assets and majority of Mod3 subsidiary assets at approximately book value, simplifying SWK’s business and aligning market pricing with asset values.
  • Positive Sentiment: Returned $49 million to shareholders through a $4 per share special dividend and repurchased about 200,000 shares year to date, underscoring a strong capital return strategy.
  • Positive Sentiment: Generated a non-GAAP adjusted net income of $4.6 million in Q2 and maintains $234 million of performing first-lien loans yielding 14.1%, indicating a stable earnings run rate.
  • Positive Sentiment: Achieved non-GAAP tangible financing book value per share of $18.47, up 11.7% year over year (and $24.46 GAAP adjusted for dividends, up 6.8%), meeting the stated 10%+ book value growth target.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Mod3 asset sale involves a transition services agreement through mid-September with cost reimbursements, and normalized quarterly SG&A is expected around $2 million absent one-off legal expenses.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
SWK Q2 2025
00:00 / 00:00

There are 4 speakers on the call.

Speaker 1

Welcome to the SWK Holdings' second quarter 2025 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Susan Zhou, Investor Relations. You may begin.

Speaker 1

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining SWK Holdings' second quarter 2025 financial and corporate results call. Yesterday, SWK Holdings issued a press release detailing its financial results for the three months ended June 30, 2025. The press release can be found in the Investor Relations section of swkhold.com under News Releases. Today, we will be making certain forward-looking statements about future expectations, plans, events, and circumstances, including statements about our strategy, future operations, and our expectations regarding our capital allocation and cash resources. These statements are based on our current expectations, and you should not place undue reliance on these statements. Actual results may differ materially due to our risks and uncertainties, including those detailed in the Risk Factors section of SWK Holdings' 10-K filed with the SEC and other filings we make with the SEC from time to time.

Speaker 1

SWK Holdings disclaims any obligation to update information contained in these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Joining me from SWK Holdings on today's call is Jody Staggs, President and CEO, and Adam Rice, CFO, who will provide an update on SWK's second quarter 2025 corporate and financial results. Over to you, Jody.

Operator

Thank you, Susan, and thank you, everyone, for joining our second quarter conference call. Since we last spoke, SWK has worked to reconcile the gap between how the market prices our assets and our view of the underlying value. During the second quarter, we completed a sale of the majority of our royalty assets, and after quarter close, we completed a sale of the majority of the assets at our Mod III subsidiary. The sale of these assets was completed for approximately book value, a premium to where SWK has historically traded. During the quarter, SWK returned $49 million of the proceeds of these sales to shareholders through a $4 per share dividend. Additionally, year to date, SWK has returned an additional $3 million of capital to shareholders through the repurchase of approximately 200,000 shares of our common stock.

Operator

We believe these steps demonstrate the organization's focus on realizing the underlying value of our assets and ensuring that shareholders benefit from these realizations. These actions have simplified our business, and SWK's remaining financial assets are cash, $234 million of gross performing first-lien term loans with an effective yield of 14.1%, $12 million of gross non-performing reorganization royalties, $5 million of public equity warrants, and approximately 11 private warrants and earnouts, which are carried at $0 for GAAP purposes. Against these assets, we carry an $8.8 million general loan loss reserve. For the second quarter, both our non-GAAP adjusted net income and finance segment adjusted non-GAAP net income totaled $4.6 million. We believe this level is a reasonable run rate for the business going forward.

Operator

Our non-GAAP tangible financing book value per share totaled $18.47, a year-over-year increase of 11.7% after considering the $4 per share special dividend and achieving our stated goal of 10% plus book value per share growth. On July 15, the Aptar Group exercised its option to acquire the majority of the Mod III assets for a predetermined purchase price totaling $6.9 million, which includes the $3.3 million of payments SWK had already received. We view this as a successful outcome and in the best interest of SWK shareholders, our former Mod III colleagues, and Aptar. We wish Paul and the team the best and look forward to following their success under the Aptar banner. With that, I will turn the call to our CFO, Adam Rice, to review the quarter's financial results.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Jody, and good morning, everyone. Yesterday, we reported earnings for the second quarter of 2025. We reported GAAP pre-tax net income of $4.6 million, or $0.37 per diluted share. Our reported second quarter 2025 net income is $3.5 million after income tax expense of just over $1 million. This includes a $1.2 million decrease in year-over-year finance receivables segment revenue and a $500,000 increase in year-over-year pharmaceutical development segment revenue. The $1.2 million decrease in year-over-year finance receivables segment revenue was primarily due to a $3.4 million decrease in interest and fees due to paydowns, payoffs, and the sale of the majority of our royalty portfolio. The decrease was partially offset by a $2.2 million increase in interest and fees earned due to add-on funding and newly funded finance receivables.

Speaker 2

The previously mentioned paydown funding activity is typical as SWK continually manages return of capital as well as capital deployment. As of June 30, 2025, our GAAP book value per share was $20.23, an 11% decrease compared to $22.72 as of June 30, 2024. When adjusting for the $4 per share dividend paid during the quarter, the GAAP book value per share was $24.46, a 6.8% increase year over year. Overall operating expenses, which include interest, pharmaceutical manufacturing, research and development expense, general and administrative expense, and provision for credit losses, were $5.4 million during the second quarter of 2025, compared to $9.9 million in the second quarter of 2024. Mod III operating expenses were $1.2 million in the second quarter of 2025, compared to $2.5 million in the second quarter of 2024.

Speaker 2

The finance receivables segment operating expenses were $4.2 million in the second quarter of 2025, compared to $7.4 million in the second quarter of 2024. The finance receivables operating expenses further break down for the second quarter of 2025 to general and administrative expense of $2.2 million, provision for credit losses of $800,000, and interest expense of $1.2 million. For the second quarter of 2024, general and administrative expenses were $2.2 million, provision for credit losses was $4.1 million, and interest expense was $1.1 million. The decrease in finance receivables segment operating expenses was mainly due to a $3.3 million decrease in provision for credit losses. The decrease in provision for credit losses is most notably attributable to $500,000 of asset impairments in the second quarter of 2025 versus $4.3 million of asset impairments in the second quarter of 2024.

Speaker 2

Turning to our share repurchase program, we bought back just under 60,000 shares for a total of $900,000 during the quarter. Since quarter close, we have repurchased an additional 88,000 shares for a total cost of $1.3 million. With that, I'll turn it back over to Jody.

Operator

Thank you, Adam. The management team and Board focused on achieving value for our shareholders, as demonstrated by our actions year to date. Our remaining loan book is healthy, and we believe the second quarter's results are a reasonable proxy for the earnings power of the business going forward. With that, let's open the line to questions.

Speaker 1

Certainly. At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Your first question for today is from Scott Jensen, a private investor.

Speaker 3

Hey, good morning, Jody and Adam. Congratulations on a nice quarter. With the Mod III sale, obviously, we'll see a bump in revenue in the third quarter. What about the costs associated with that business going on to Aptar? Do you have any recurring costs that remain on your side of the ledger? What would that maybe SG&A impact be now that Aptar owns it?

Operator

Let me take the first stab at that. I wanted Adam maybe to speak a little bit to this as well and some of the accounting around it. Third quarter will be a little bit messy because we did agree to a transition services agreement, which runs through mid-September. We are getting those costs reimbursed. All the cost of the business went to Aptar on the close. There's no ongoing cost at Mod III. It was an asset sale. We still own the Mod III shell, and there is some IP in there that we'll try to monetize. All the costs have gone. There may be a little bit of challenges or sort of some lingering costs in the third quarter.

Operator

In terms of the costs going forward, if I just look at our finance segment financials, which is everything but Mod III, so that includes all the corporate costs, we had $2.3 million of G&A in the quarter. I think when we looked through that, there were a few transactions going on in the quarter. Of course, we had legal spend. Normalized SG&A was in the ballpark of $2 million, which is our goal, to be at that level. I think that that's a reasonable level, obviously assuming no sort of one-off legal spend.

Speaker 3

Okay, thank you.

Speaker 2

Yeah, and I would just add to that. Jody's really nailed it. There will be some third-quarter noise related to ins and outs as we sort of see Mod III out of our ecosystem. The ongoing costs are pretty minimal, especially when you consider, if you look at the guaranteed revenue agreement we had in place and how Mod III was carried over the last several quarters, it was relatively neutral on a net basis. I think that's really what you'll see. I don't think you should see any big surprises one way or another.

Speaker 3

Okay, great. I've got some kind of higher-level questions. The first is, do you see or what's your read on changes at the FDA affecting underlying portfolio companies and some of the companies that you invest in? Do you see any impact, risk, things like that due to some of the changes that seem to be going on?

Operator

Yeah, you know, we've spent a fair amount of time talking about regulatory changes and risks in the portfolio. Initially, it was tariffs. We reviewed all of our companies and had them do an analysis and felt that we had sort of minimal exposure there. I think there's maybe like three or four different regulatory things going on. One is sort of FDA. I mean, it's a little hard to hypothesize on where this leads out. Near term, I guess the current thought is that there could be fewer drugs approved. That doesn't really impact our portfolio. We don't have any drug companies or device companies that are pending some type of approved product, so not a big concern there. The second, broadly speaking, our call is like pricing risk, pharma pricing risk, and this takes all kinds of different forms.

Operator

We don't think anything we have is any of our borrowers are too at risk. If you look at the specialty pharma companies we have, Eton is a rare disease situation, and that's kind of a whole unique pricing structure, but nothing we've seen thus far really scares us there. A couple of our companies are not that, but are fairly low-priced. If you look at Ocufer, the shield product, it's a low-priced product. I don't worry too much about rebates or negotiations there. Journey is dermatology, and a lot of that's cash pay, so I'm not too worried about that. The area that probably we've had a little more concern about has been NIH, sort of scientific funding cuts. We've got a couple of companies that are vendors into that channel.

Operator

We've got one CDMO, and then there's a company we have that sells life science tools, and they definitely have seen some impact from these cuts. I don't think it's drastic or material to the ongoing business, particularly as a lender, but I know they've lost some orders along the way. It's probably worth saying that that whole space has really had a tough go the last couple of years. If you look at the biotech, their customer base went through kind of a classic boom-bust cycle, and we're potentially kind of in the bottom of that bust cycle. It's been a tough go for all those folks for really a couple of years.

Speaker 3

Understandable. My other kind of global question is, we've just seen so many, and it's the talk of the town, private credit, and everybody coming in and raising funds and people who probably have no business coming into the space. That doesn't prevent them if they've got access to capital. How do you see that affecting, you know, deal flow, people willing to, you know, take more risks than you'd be willing to? Are you comfortable just sitting back, buying back stock, waiting for a better pitch? How do you see that development in the marketplace?

Operator

Yeah, you know, and thanks, you've sent me a bunch of articles. I know we've traded notes on that. There definitely is more capital that's come in over the last couple of years. I know we've talked a bit about some of these retail products, general funds, and private BDCs, and the need to deploy capital. We're aware of that. I think if you look here to date, we've been fairly tempered on the deployment side. We've been able to add some onto existing performing borrowers, which is always great. I think we've made one new loan to an Australian company that was a little bit off the run, and we felt good and fine about that one, kind of a core deal for us. We've been pretty disciplined. I think there's still the ability to put money to work in a small fund setting like SWK Holdings.

Operator

The fact of the matter is it's capitalism. Money comes in, returns come down. We've got to just be a bit more careful given our cost of capital in particular. That probably explains some of the, I think, measured pace we've had on deployments this year.

Speaker 3

Thank you. I'll get online and see if anybody else has a question. Congratulations. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you.

Speaker 1

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one. We have reached the end of the question-and-answer session, and I will now turn the call over to Jody for closing remarks.

Operator

Great. Thanks everyone for joining the call. Thanks for continued support of SWK Holdings. Hope everyone has a wonderful day and a fantastic weekend. Bye-bye.

Speaker 1

This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

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