Gladstone Capital Corporation (NASDAQ:GLAD) Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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And I can say that we are very optimistic that the fall bookings are at a multiple of what they were last year. So we’re positioned to restart it, but it was a little bit of a hangover situation between COVID, retail channels, consumer and a refresh on the brand that we are working through at the moment. We have stepped in with a more significant involvement and we’ve recruited external expertise to assist us in repositioning and taking advantage of the opportunity. This is a global business. It is selling U.S., it is selling international and so there’s a lot of opportunity to go get in that business and I think we’ve brought in some resources to help us with that process.

Bob Marcotte: Picking up on the originations for the back half of the year, that’s the challenge for us. I will say that we are, as I mentioned, expecting an uptick in prepayment activities and we’re very much focused on sifting through and finding good growth opportunities to redeploy that capital. I will say that once the business is grown and it’s got $20 million, $30 million, $40 million of EBITDA on sales, our exposure tends to be a little higher. And so when we restart the process and bring in earlier stage younger businesses in the lower middle market, the initial exposures tend to be smaller and it will take a period of time for those to grow and mature into credits of comparable size. So, we are planting the seeds today.

I think the deal that we referenced that has been closed is a nice transaction that is intended to be a roll up or add on platform that is interestingly in the elevator repair business. It’s a fragmented market that there are plenty of opportunities to grow. And those are the kind of situations we’re currently working on to expand. So I think we will continue to see add-ons to some of the younger companies in the portfolio and we will continue to see opportunities at the lower end of the middle market where we’ll see that. In terms of overall, I think the challenge will be to drive net growth over the course of the balance of the year. I think given what could be $150 million plus of prepayments plus or minus, if we can originate and stay ahead of that curve, I think that’s what we’re currently kind of shooting for.

But it’s not going to be a ton of net asset growth given what we’re expecting to be refinancing activity because we’re going to maintain our yield discipline. And we can certainly scale up, but our cost structure and returns just it doesn’t make sense for us to do that.

Operator: Mr. Gladstone, there are no further questions in queue at this time. I’ll turn it back to you for closing comments.

David Gladstone: So you guys are not working very hard, so we’re not getting enough questions. We want to get some more questions. Of course, we don’t have a lot of problems in the portfolio. So I guess, we’re not going to get many questions. That’s the end of this conference call, and we thank you all for calling in and see you next quarter.

Operator: This concludes today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation and have a great day.

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