Capital Southwest Corp (CSWC) 2025 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Thank you for joining today's Capital Southwest fourth quarter fiscal year 2025 earnings call. Participating on the call today are Michael Sarner, Chief Executive Officer; Chris Rehberger, Chief Financial Officer; Josh Weinstein, Chief Investment Officer; and AB Baker, Executive Vice President, Accounting.

I will now turn the call over to Amy Baker.

Thank you. I would like to remind everyone that in the course of this call, we will be making certain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current conditions, currently available information, and management's expectations, assumptions, and beliefs. They are not guarantees of future results and are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements.

For information concerning these risks and uncertainties, see Capital Southwest's publicly available filings with the SEC. The company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, changing circumstances, or any other reason after the date of this press release, except as required by law.

I will now hand the call over to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Sarner.

Thanks, Amy, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our fourth quarter fiscal year 2025 earnings call. We're pleased to be with you today to discuss our fourth fiscal quarter, the 2025 fiscal year as a whole, as well as share our observations on the market in a rapidly changing environment.

Overall, 2025 was a very productive year for Capital Southwest, as we were able to make significant strides in strengthening both sides of our balance sheet. On the left side of the balance sheet, during the year, we grew our investment portfolio by approximately $300 million, or 21%, from $1.5 billion to $1.8 billion. The quality of our debt portfolio continued to improve as we further reduced our weighted average leverage in the investment portfolio to 3.5 times, maintained a solid 94% cash income as a percentage of total investment income, while decreasing our nonaccruals at fair value from 2.3% to 1.7%.

Additionally, our equity portfolio performed exceptionally well this year, as we grew unrealized appreciation from $38.5 million, or $0.85 per share at the end of fiscal year 2024, to $53.2 million, or $1 per share, as of the end of fiscal year 2025. This is an important metric, as we anticipate that a portion of this appreciation will be harvested as realized gains in fiscal year 2026 and thus will be available in our UTI bucket to support future dividend distributions. In fact, subsequent to quarter end, we have harvested realized gains of approximately $20 million on our equity investments in two portfolio companies, which will further grow our UTI balance.

On the right side of the balance sheet, we were extremely active during the year in diversifying our sources of capital. We raised over $300 million in new debt capital commitments this year in the form of a $230 million fixed 5.125% convertible bond issuance and an additional $75 million in new secured debt commitments on our two credit facilities. We utilized $140 million of the proceeds received from the convertible issuance to retire our January 2026 bonds, which we felt was prudent at the time to stay well ahead of our 2026 unsecured debt maturities in an uncertain economic environment.

Post quarter end, we received approval from the SBA for our second SBIC license, which allows for an additional $175 million in debt capital to support our direct lower middle market platform. Additionally, we raised over $180 million in gross equity proceeds on our ATM program during the year. Having continual access to the public equity market through the ATM program is a tremendous tool, which we can use in all market environments.

Finally, we recently had our BBB- corporate ratings from both Moody's and Fitch affirmed, as well as our secured debt rating from Fitch upgraded from BBB- to BBB flat. This year, we continued our long track record of producing steady dividend growth, consistent dividend coverage, and solid value creation. Despite a year in which our base rate, SOFR, shrunk by over 1%, we grew our regular dividend from $2.24 per share in fiscal year 2024 to $2.31 per share in fiscal year 2025, while paying an additional $0.23 per share in supplemental dividends.

Since the launch of our credit strategy, we have increased our quarterly regular dividend 29 times and have never cut the regular dividend, all while maintaining strong coverage for our regular dividend with pretax net investment income. In addition, over the same period, we have paid or declared 28 special or supplemental dividends totaling $4.18 per share, all generated from excess earnings and realized gains from our investment portfolio.

Dividend sustainability, strong credit performance, and continued access to capital from multiple capital sources are all core to our overall business strategy. Our track record in all these areas demonstrates consistent performance as well as the absolute alignment of all of our decisions with the interest of our fellow shareholders.

Turning to the quarterly results: During the fourth fiscal quarter, we generated pretax net investment income of $0.56 per share. However, our adjusted pretax net investment income was $0.61 per share after excluding one-time expenses related to the departure of our former Chief Executive Officer.

Additionally, as a result of gains realized in two equity investments during the quarter, we were able to increase our undistributed taxable income balance to $0.79 per share from $0.68 per share as of the end of the prior quarter. As mentioned earlier, this balance will grow meaningfully in the June quarter with our most recent exits.

Deal flow in the lower middle market was solid this quarter, with $150 million in total new commitments to four new portfolio companies and 15 existing portfolio companies. Add-on financings continue to be an important source of originations for us, as approximately 22% of total capital commitments during the quarter were follow-on financings in performing portfolio companies.

Over the last 12 months, add-ons as a percentage of total new commitments have been 38%. So clearly, a strong source of origination volume in deals we know well and where we have experience with the management team and sponsor.

As previously announced, our Board of Directors has declared a regular dividend of $0.58 per share for the quarter ending June 30, 2025. Additionally, our Board has declared a supplemental dividend of $0.06 per share, bringing total dividends declared for the June quarter to $0.64 per share.

From a market perspective, it is impossible to ignore what has transpired in the broader geopolitical arena over the past 1.5 months. The recent trade policy changes, as well as government cost reductions, have created uncertainty, which has impacted the lower middle market in the short term. This uncertainty has temporarily impacted the volume of underwritable opportunities.

Industries such as manufacturing, building products, and consumer discretionary products are all experiencing increased costs for parts and products from China, Mexico, Canada, and other countries impacted by the trade war. Recent budget cuts within the government sector have created uncertainty in the healthcare space in terms of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, as well as medical research.

The net result of this uncertainty is the potential for slower M&A and thus lower deal volume, offset by lower prepayments in 2025. Additionally, if these conditions persist, we may experience continued spread compression in the lower middle market, as lenders will compete harder for deals that fall outside the directly impacted industries.

The recent announcement of a 90-day agreement between China and the United States -- whereby tariffs on Chinese goods will come down to 30%, and China’s tariff on American goods will likewise decline to 10% -- has created some optimism that we’ll see a soft landing relative to the previous rhetoric. However, the announced agreement is temporary, and thus, we will remain vigilant in our underwriting standards until such time as we have a more permanent solution in place.

In terms of potential direct impacts to our existing portfolio, we have undertaken an in-depth review of our portfolio and the risks associated with these policy uncertainties. We have identified 7% of the debt portfolio at fair value which we would characterize as moderate risk. This means there is some exposure to tariffs, such as sourcing of components or inventory -- generally from China -- or customers of the portfolio company have some level of exposure to these same risks. However, only 1% of the debt portfolio at fair value has both moderate risk tariff exposure and a current loan-to-value above 50%.

In summary, our portfolio has limited direct exposure to tariffs, and those companies where the exposure is greatest are well positioned from a capital structure perspective. As a company, we will continually monitor any current or prospective policy changes as they develop and, on a real-time basis, analyze any impact on both our existing portfolio as well as the lower middle market in general.

Overall, as a predominantly first lien portfolio with a weighted average debt-to-EBITDA of 3.5 times and a balance sheet levered at 0.89:1, with significant liquidity and no maturities until October 2026, we feel confident that our balance sheet is well positioned to endure this market volatility.

Further proof of our market positioning: since the onset of the tariff-related volatility in the public equity markets, we are one of only five BDCs which have continued to trade above book at all times. From a historical perspective, Capital Southwest has only traded below book once since 2018, and that was for a few weeks during the COVID outbreak. Consistently trading above book allows us to continue to raise equity capital in uncertain times to deleverage the balance sheet, invest in new platform companies, and provide financing for add-on acquisitions for our existing portfolio companies.

Our investment strategy and performance have earned us the flexibility, which we believe is a key differentiator from many other BDCs.

I will now hand the call over to Josh to review more specifics of our investment activity and the market environment.

Thanks, Michael. This quarter, we deployed a total of $150 million of new committed capital, including $113 million of first lien senior secured debt and $3 million of equity across four new portfolio companies. In addition, we closed add-on financings for 15 existing portfolio companies, consisting of $33 million in first lien senior secured debt and $1 million in equity.

Our on-balance sheet credit portfolio ended the quarter at $1.6 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 19% from $1.3 billion as of March 2024. For the current quarter, 100% of our new portfolio company debt originations were first lien senior secured. As of the end of the quarter, 99% of the credit portfolio was first lien senior secured, with a weighted average exposure per company of only 0.9%.

We believe our portfolio granularity speaks to our continued investment discipline of maintaining a conservative posture to overall risk management as we grow our balance sheet. The vast majority of our portfolio and deal activity is in first lien senior secured loans to companies backed by private equity firms. Currently, approximately 93% of our credit portfolio is backed by private equity firms, which provide important guidance and leadership to the portfolio companies, as well as the potential for junior capital support if needed.

In the lower middle market, we often have the opportunity to invest on a minority basis in the equity of our portfolio companies, in partnership with the private equity firm, when we believe the equity thesis is compelling. As of the end of the quarter, our equity co-investment portfolio consisted of 79 investments with a total fair value of $179 million, representing 10% of our total portfolio at fair value.

Our equity portfolio was marked at 142% of our cost, representing $53.2 million in embedded unrealized appreciation, or $1 per share. Our equity portfolio continues to provide our shareholders participation in the attractive upside potential of these growing lower middle market businesses -- often resulting from the institutionalization of the businesses by experienced private equity firms, as well as significant value accretion potential from strategic add-on acquisitions.

Equity co-investments across our portfolio provide our shareholders with the potential for asset value appreciation, as well as equity distributions to Capital Southwest over time. This is playing out in real time, as we have harvested four sizable exits in the past four months that produced significant UTI, which is now available for distribution to our shareholders.

Consistent with previous quarters, the lower middle market continues to be quite competitive, as this segment of the market is highly attractive to both banks and non-bank lenders. While this has resulted in tight loan pricing for high-quality opportunities that are not exposed to macroeconomic uncertainty, the depth and strength of the relationships our team has cultivated over the years has continued to result in our sourcing and winning opportunities with attractive risk-return profiles.

As a point of reference, currently there are 79 unique private equity firms represented across our investment portfolio. Additionally, in the last year, we closed 14 new platforms with financial sponsors with whom we had not previously closed a deal -- demonstrating our continued penetration in the market. Since the launch of our credit strategy, we have completed transactions with over 117 different private equity firms across the country, including over 20% with whom we have completed multiple transactions.

Our portfolio currently consists of 121 different companies, weighted 89% to first lien senior secured debt, 1% to second lien senior secured debt, and 10% to equity co-investments. The credit portfolio had a weighted average yield of 11.7% and a weighted average leverage through our security of 3.5 times EBITDA.

We continue to be pleased with the operating performance across our loan portfolio. All our loans, upon origination, are initially assigned an investment rating of 2 on a 4-point scale, with 1 being the highest rating and 4 being the lowest rating.

Overall, the portfolio remains exceedingly healthy, with approximately 95% of the portfolio at fair value rated in one of the top two categories -- a 1 or a 2 and approximately 5% of the portfolio in the 3 or 4 category. Cash flow coverage of debt service obligations across the portfolio remains robust at 3.4 times, with our loans across the portfolio averaging approximately 43% of portfolio company enterprise value.

We believe these performance metrics are indicative of a well-performing and conservatively structured portfolio. Our portfolio continues to be broadly diversified across industries, and our average exposure per company is less than 1% of investment assets, which gives us great comfort in the overall risk profile of our portfolio.

As Michael discussed earlier, there is currently heightened macroeconomic volatility, which has impacted our lower middle market sandbox. We began assessing these impacts on our portfolio late last year and continue to monitor the portfolio on an ongoing basis. Our monitoring process includes constant communication with our sponsors and portfolio companies to proactively assess any anticipated effects of recent and future policies on tariffs, immigration, healthcare reimbursement, and any other policies which impact the cash flow or long-term value of our investment portfolio.

To date, we have not seen an increase in revolver draws or amendment requests, which would serve as an early warning of portfolio company stress. While certain credits may experience an impact from these policies in the future, conversations with management teams and sponsors for the companies most at risk suggest there are mitigants to navigate the tariff environment. These include pivoting to countries with less exposure, price increases to customers, sharing the tariff burden with suppliers, and the potential for cheaper freight costs on imported items-- assuming freight volume slows meaningfully, which we have observed in the past few weeks.

Additionally, many of our companies have maintained elevated inventory levels heading into this uncertain time, thus enabling them to defer purchasing goods in the hopes of an improved outcome between the US and China. With the recent news of a temporary agreement, these actions seem to have been prudent.

For the deals we are currently underwriting, they continue to have loan-to-value levels ranging from 35% to 50%, resulting in significant equity capital cushion below our debt and reasonable leverage levels of 3 times to 4 times debt to EBITDA. However, with the market volatility, we and the entire lower middle market are in the process of pricing and leverage discovery for prospective deals.

There has been a flight to industries where the tariff risk is less direct, and thus, the spreads for these deals have continued to remain tight. We have begun to see sale and financing processes for companies with direct exposure to tariffs being delayed or pulled, as well as leverage levels tightening for the companies that do come to market.

We would anticipate deal volume to continue to slow down for companies with direct or indirect exposure until the market perceives more certainty in economic policy. We have recently read that banks are beginning to take a risk-off stance in the middle market, but this has yet to filter down to the lower middle market, as we continue to see them competing for deals -- especially those in the service industries. If banks do, in fact, pull back, this may enhance our competitive position specific to our unitranche product.

As Michael mentioned earlier, we believe our balance sheet is well positioned with low leverage and significant liquidity, which should allow us to be opportunistic should the market become less competitive, resulting in more attractive risk-return profile deals.

I will now hand the call over to Chris to review the specifics of our financial performance for the quarter.

Thanks, Josh. Specific to our performance for the quarter, pretax net investment income was $28.5 million, or $0.56 per share. Adjusted pretax NII, which excludes one-time expenses related to the departure of our former President and CEO, was $31.3 million, or $0.61 per share.

For the quarter, total investment income increased to $52.4 million from $52 million in the prior quarter. The increase was driven by a $2.8 million increase in interest and dividend income, offset by a decrease of $2.4 million in fees and other income compared to the prior quarter.

As of the end of the quarter, our loans on nonaccrual represented 1.7% of our investment portfolio at fair value -- a decrease from 2.7% as of the end of the prior quarter. The reduction this quarter was a result of two portfolio companies being restructured and one portfolio company being sold. We placed one new company on nonaccrual, which post-quarter end completed a bankruptcy process and will likely be removed from nonaccrual in the June 30 quarter.

During the quarter, we paid out a $0.58 per share regular dividend and a $0.06 per share supplemental dividend. As mentioned earlier, our Board has declared a regular dividend of $0.58 per share, while also maintaining the supplemental dividend at $0.06 per share for the June 2025 quarter.

We continued our strong track record of regular dividend coverage, with 110% coverage for the 12 months ended March 31, 2025, and 110% cumulative coverage since the launch of our credit strategy. We are confident in our ability to continue to distribute quarterly supplemental dividends based upon our current UTI balance of $0.79 per share, the recent exits in the June quarter which will further increase this balance, and the expectation that we will continue to harvest gains over time from our sizable unrealized appreciation balance on the equity portfolio.

LTM operating leverage ended the quarter at 1.7%. Excluding the one-time expenses discussed earlier, our adjusted LTM operating leverage ended the quarter at 1.6%. Looking ahead, we anticipate our run-rate operating leverage to be in the 1.4% to 1.5% range by the end of our next fiscal year. Our operating leverage is significantly better than the BDC industry average of approximately 2.8%. We believe this metric speaks to the benefits of the internally managed BDC model and our absolute alignment with shareholders. The internally managed model has and will continue to produce real fixed cost leverage while also allowing for significant resources to be invested in people and infrastructure as we continue to grow and manage a best-in-class BDC.

The company's NAV per share at the end of the quarter was $16.70 per share, an increase from $16.59 per share in the prior quarter. The primary drivers of NAV per share growth for the quarter were accretion from the issuance of common stock at a premium to NAV per share, offset by net realized and unrealized depreciation on our investment portfolio.

We are pleased to report that our balance sheet liquidity is robust, with approximately $384 million in cash and undrawn leverage commitments on our two credit facilities, which represents 1.9 times the $197 million of unfunded commitments we had across our portfolio as of the end of the quarter.

Subsequent to quarter end, we increased our corporate credit facility by $25 million, bringing the total debt commitments on the facility to $510 million. Additionally, as of the end of the March quarter, 47% of our capital structure liabilities were in unsecured, covenant-free bonds, with our earliest debt maturity in October 2026.

Turning to our SBIC program: subsequent to quarter end, we received final approval from the SBA for a second SBIC license. This license allows us to access up to $175 million in additional SBA debentures over time, which is a cost-effective way to finance our lower middle market investment strategy.

Our regulatory leverage ended the quarter at a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.89:1, down slightly from 0.9:1 as of the prior quarter. While our optimal target leverage continues to be in the 0.8 to 0.95 range, we are weighing the impact of the current macroeconomic landscape and intend to maintain a regulatory leverage cushion, which will mitigate capital markets volatility.

We will continue to methodically and opportunistically raise secured and unsecured debt capital, as well as equity capital through our ATM program, to ensure we maintain significant liquidity and conservative balance sheet construction with adequate covenant cushion.

I will now hand the call back to Michael for some final comments.

Thank you, Chris, Josh and Amy and all the employees who help us tell the story on a quarterly basis. And thank you, everyone, for joining us today. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we are ready to open the lines up for Q&A.

(Operator Instructions) Mickey Schleien, Ladenburg.

Yes, good morning everyone. Michael, at a very high level, notwithstanding your great insight into the backdrop for the market, how attractive do you think the current vintage of investments is in the lower middle market relative to the history of Capital Southwest?

Well, deals at the moment are somewhat binary. The deals that are coming to market today are in spaces and industries that we're actually interested in being in -- service industries like accounting and finance, HVAC, plumbing-type industries, marketing services, and data centers. Those are quality deals that don’t have a lot of the issues stemming from the policy changes that are still uncertain.

Deals that are more cyclical or have the issues we noted earlier are either being pulled from the market or delayed. So, I think the deals that we are going to underwrite here -- we still feel very good about. Our originations this quarter will probably still be somewhere between $125 million and $150 million in originations, including add-on acquisitions for quality companies in our existing portfolio and new platform companies.

So, I think there’s going to be fewer of them, but the quality of the ones we’re going to underwrite and close will be consistent and on par with what we’ve done historically. Josh, I don’t know if you have a different opinion or thought?

We continue to tackle the private equity market and cultivate the relationships so that we don’t have to be the best term sheet to win the deal-- because it’s relationship lending at the end of the day. We’re trying our best to find good risk-return profile deals and continue to find opportunities that are not exposed to the macroeconomic environment right now.

Okay, noted. At a high level again, could you just break out what were the main drivers of the net realized loss and the markdown in the credit portfolio?

Yes. So, the couple of companies that really drove the realized and unrealized losses this quarter were related to the restructurings we noted in our remarks. Two of those were on nonaccrual and were restructured during the quarter. So, it’s really those two companies that drove most of the net depreciation for the quarter. It wasn’t broad-based across the credit portfolio.

Yes, and I would add-- the appreciation in the quarter was very granular. You can see it in the strength of our weighted average debt-to-EBITDA dropping to 3.5%. We saw solid performance. To Chris’ point, there were a few companies that were on our watch list that had restructurings where we had to take write-downs that, from an accounting perspective, are realized losses. And so, that’s the net impact of the quarter.

Terrific. I’m glad to hear that. And lastly, tapping into the SBA debentures is a process. It’s great that you got the second license -- when do you actually expect to start to inject capital into the new SBIC subsidiary? And when will you be allowed to start to issue some debentures?

Yes, so I think that will probably start over the next three months or so -- certainly in the 9/30 quarter, probably not in the June quarter. The way that works is you’ve got to seed the second SBIC with some equity capital through new deals, which we expect to be doing shortly. Thereafter, we’ll start to draw on the debenture side. I’d say the first draws will be about three months from now.

And that new SBIC will ultimately have access to another $175 million. Is that correct?

That’s right. So, the family of funds for SBIC is going to have up to $350 million. We do have full access to that -- obviously subject to SBA approval along the way. But yes, we would expect that we’ll be able to draw the full $175 million on the second license.

Sounds good. Those are all my questions. Thanks for your time this morning.

Doug Harter, UBS.

This is actually Corey Johnson on for Doug. So I just want to make sure that I'm understanding this correctly. So we've heard from some companies about how the lack of exit opportunities for companies, just less capital markets activity in general has sort of led to companies running to be able to get lending direct lending.

So if I understand correctly, you guys are actually seeing -- and in context, you talked about that as a possibility of some spread widening. I think in the comments, you mentioned possibility of some spread compression, and that's just because you're seeing -- even though there might be more deals out there, the quality ones are ones that they're being competitively bid and thus, you're seeing some possible thinking there might be some possible spread compression from that?

Yes. I mean I think what we're trying to say is that because there are so many deals that are deemed sort of under non underwritable at the moment because of what we've seen. I mean, some of those industries, health care services with Medicaid reimbursement, new manufacturing companies that get their supplier inventory from China, some government services from DOGE. Any company is tied on the farming industry recessionary industries, which would be the by product of some of the policies, all of those deals are sort of risk off for a lot of companies.

And so now you're narrowing the amount of industries that you can focus on. And there's still a deep bench of capital chasing deals. And from that perspective, those we expect and hopefully we'll be proven wrong, that the spreads on those are going to tighten because people are going to want to deploy capital, and those are the deals that are going to feel safe to invest in.

Got it. And then I think you mentioned the possibility of there being some exits and realizations of this upcoming quarter. Can you maybe just like size that or let us kind of know the or any other opportunities that you see within the coming quarters? Do you have a line of sight in test that.

I think we said in the prepared remarks, we have two exits already subsequent to quarter end for proceeds a little more than $20 million in realized gains. And so obviously, that's a sizable amount for potential for our UTI bucket. There are some other portfolio companies with size that are starting to enter the market, but that's a little bit further down the road.

So I think we provide updates in the next few quarters. So I think that those two are sort of what we might have been hinting at in previous quarters. So we're pleased at execution on both.

Got it. And just my last question. I've seen that the PIC income has increased a bit over the last like some quarters. Is there any signings that you're seeing there? Any particular type of like companies? Or what are your thoughts in regards to how that may trend over in regards to credit quality over the next few quarters.

Sure. So we saw a few companies that had a pick toggle that elected in this quarter that they hadn't in previous quarters. And those honestly, those are like short lived in nature, so they'll come back off in time.

We do know that for the June quarter that we expect to see a few companies that are pictoggle expired and they are able to pay cash pay, so at the moment, I can probably say we expect that pick percentage to come down in the 5% to 6% range for reoccurring PIC.

Erik Zwick, Lucid Capital Markets.

Wanted to start with a question on the pipeline, just given you had pretty nice funding activity in the most recent quarter. So curious if you could, one, maybe kind of size up what the pipeline looks like today. Also curious about what that mix looks like in terms of new and add-on and also potentially what might be eligible to be funded by SBIC I. And I know you said you may not kind of be active on that more into the 9/30 quarter.

So if you're referring to the June quarter, is that correct?

Yes. Yes, kind of curious how pipeline is acting up so far.

Yes. I mean, obviously, it's still a little early, obviously, but I think we would tell you that we're looking at somewhere between -- probably in the running three to five new platform companies that let's say, somewhere in the $75 million to $100 million in new capital. And then we expect to see around $50 million on add-on activity because it's already been pretty active through today's date.

Yes. And I would just add to your second question, some of these new prospective deals will certainly be eligible for the SBIC. One thing I would remind everyone of is we're still reinvesting out of SBIC 1 as well to the extent that we have repayments there. So these deals are generally maybe 50% are eligible for the SBIC, we're funding SBIC 1, and we're going to begin to fund SBIC 2 certainly this quarter, but the debentures probably come in the next quarter.

That's helpful. And then two, just kind of looking at the industry diversification of your portfolio, your second largest concentration based on your pie chart is 9% in consumer products. And given that there is some concern in the market today regarding the lower end consumer. I'm wondering if you could just kind of remind me kind of the companies that you have there that you qualify or characterize as consumer what segment of the consumer market are they delivering their product to?

I mean obviously, it's kind of a tough question to ask because it's very granular and diversified. I don't think there's any one industry within consumer products. We just did a deep dive as part of the tariff exposure, we also did a deep dive just on the whole portfolio. And we really identify very few, if any, sub industries that we feel like we're overweighted towards in which we were -- have a concern on it from a recessionary perspective.

Now that doesn't say that in a recession and a deep recession that all companies will struggle to someone. -- but I don't believe it's anything that will be lumpy and therefore, kind of be moving in the same direction. One of the things we've done since the inception of our credit platform is downside case modeling on all of our deals. -- as it relates to the -- great Recession.

So we've taken the fostering of of being a little bit less aggressive on deals that cycle really hard the industry cycle is really hard in the great Recession. So generally speaking, at a very high level, I think a lot of our consumer products businesses would be focused more on the lower end with more value end of the spectrum. So give us some installation to that.

And last one for me. Just curious if there's any kind of new updates to communicate on the potential fried car fund.

No, I don't think there's anything explicit to communicate there, and I would say more so that there's a little delay there based on what's happened. I think a lot of funds we've been looking at are some of the domestic and some are international.

And there's definitely a pause from our perspective on the international end as to capital being deployed in in the US market. So it's still something that we feel very confident and aggressive towards achieving. But I would say from the last time we've spoken to today, I don't think there's much more progress and just a little bit more of a pause.

Robert Dodd, Raymond James.

Congrats on the quarter. Two questions from me. First, going back to the prepared remarks, I think you said there could be some spread impact given increased competition for the non-tariff impacted industries. I mean how would you what potential scale do you think you could see there in terms of incremental spread compression on that?

And then also like tied to that, it's like how much of that is also what we might see in like weighted average spreads on originations, because obviously, I'd expect non-tariff impacted businesses to be lower spreads already -- and if you do more share of those kind of businesses, I mean, you see how much of it is like like-for-like with competition? And are you seeing bigger players move down market versus how much of it is just -- is potentially a mix thing?

Yes, I wouldn't think that it would be a material spread compression. I think the point would be more we certainly wouldn't see widening. And we've gotten a lot of questions or had a lot of conversations as to whether or not we see widening spreads, given the macro environment. And I think the counter to that is still a lot of dollars chasing potentially fewer deals. So I wouldn't expect widening for sure. But I wouldn't -- if there was some spread compression, I wouldn't expect it to be material. We've seen -- I think everyone has seen that the BSL market blew out in the last two months.

The lower middle market is slower to react, and it's just a little more insular than -- and so we haven't seen that. I mean what we would tell you specific to Capital Southwest is we're averaging around 5% to 7% on the new deals we're seeing. But having said that, the ranges are as low as 5.5% and as high as 7.5%.

And we would tell you some of I think Josh and I would say that was probably 100 basis points wider certainly in 2023. And the other part of our aspects of it is we're also seeing the DDTLs that get funded or from older vintages, generally speaking, prior to 2025, and those are usually 7% plus. So we've seen only a limited amount of compression in our portfolio. I think this quarter, we had 10 basis points of spread compression.

And then the other reduction had to do with SOFR coming down by 25 basis points. So I think that kind of frames Josh's comment and then us on a specific basis, I think that kind of frames where we think we are kind of around that 7% range.

Got it. Got it. No, I appreciate that. Then on UTI, you're still over balanced. I mean $0.80 at the end of this quarter, $20 million, I mean, that's adding in the ballpark of $0.50. So you could be coming out of Q2 with almost two full quarters at the increased dividend, including the supplemental almost two quarters of dividend and spillover and potentially growing further.

I mean what's your comfort level on how high you would want that balance to potentially go. I mean in the past, you have distributed specials, sometimes to work it down when you've had a period of material gains. I mean, Kind of can you give us your thoughts on how much that could go up before you'd want to deal with it with maybe some kind of one-time distribution?

Yes. I mean it's a great question. It's one we think about a lot around here. I would tell you, I don't know if our approach might be different, somewhat different than others. I mean our intent here is to create realized gains as well as having stocked away some pennies when SOFR was extremely high, and we knew that was coming back to build up the UTI balance, but that we want to distribute to our shareholders.

So you rightfully identify the fact that we'll likely have a dollar balance-ish, coming out of the June 30 quarter, and we do have some anticipation of that balance going sizably higher. I don't believe that unless that we exceed our UTI maximum that will do a special dividend, what I would say is that UTI balance is there to support our regular dividend. It's also there to support that supplemental. If we do play out a scenario where we're pushing $1.52, we would see that $0.06 up little dividend increase.

And I don't think that we have a -- I don't think we have a number in mind on how big we want it. I think I could tell you, we probably don't want any less than $0.50, but our intent at the end of the day is to return capital to shareholders. And we believe the most beneficial away from a shareholder value is to do it in a programmatic basis, which is to pay out in the supplemental. I don't think we've seen the value for our shareholders in doing specials.

It quickly reduces liquidity. It quickly increases leverage by reducing NAV, and it doesn't have a long-term impact from a trading perspective of distributing a $0.50 at a time. So I think you should expect to see the supplemental being where it is or stronger in the coming quarters.

This does conclude the question-and-answer session of today's program. I'd like to hand the program back to Michael Sarner for any further remarks.

Thanks again to everyone for joining today. We look forward to speaking to you guys next quarter. Take care, and goodbye.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.