Sixth Street Specialty Lending, Inc. (NYSE:TSLX) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

And at some point, sectors are throwing out for no reason, and we think they’re interesting and we can deploy capital there. Think of that as energy, which our returns have been very good. At one part, it was retail consumer. And then software, we have a differentiated view. And so we’re really a relative value fire across a big top of the funnel. That is our business model. And so the answer is I don’t know the difficult part of capitalism — capital that was working is when there’s excess returns capital flow. And so you kind of have to keep checking and diving through the opportunity set, that is the power of the business. And so it might be retail — for 6 months or 9 months, it might be software as a services. It might be industrial. It might be energy.

It might be a small cap. It might be a large cap. The power of the platform that what we’re delivering to investors is our ability to cross those opportunities that where we have a closer to a platform where we can collaborate, where we can deliver that to people. And so that is what we have built for people. That’s what we’ll continue to lean on and so I know across environments, across opportunities that we’re just not a [indiscernible] business, and that is where the durability of the returns that come from.

Melissa Wedel: Okay. I appreciate that overview and reviewing of the opportunistic nature of what you guys are able to do. Maybe I should have rephrased my question a little bit just in terms of really sort of the pipeline on complicated investments and that idea of the good company, that balance sheet and a higher for longer impairment or you expecting more of that.

Joshua Easterly: I would hope so. I mean, I look at my macro view is it’s difficult for the set to pivot. We’ve been saying this for a long time if that hasn’t pivoted and that’s going to cause stress and capital structures. And so my hope is that will be — that like Equinox, that will be interesting. We did a depth in Q1, which is public for $0.99, which is a retail business. That liquidation is going very well. And so we like the opportunity that my hope that is kind of right into the — that’s trying to go now of the platform. You got me all excited about what the platform delivers for value-add. So sorry, I had to go down the rabbit hole.

Operator: And our next question will be coming from Bryce Rowe of B. Riley.

Bryce Rowe: I wanted to maybe just continue on this theme of churn within the portfolio and just churn generally within the industry. You all have clearly focused on putting money to work in ’22 and ’23 vintages and addressing any kind of maturities that we — that you have in ’24 and ’25 and those are now kind of more limited. So if you could kind of talk about or size up the opportunity from an origination perspective versus what we might see from a repayment perspective within the portfolio and what that might mean for kind of net portfolio growth as we look forward.

Joshua Easterly: I would — on the margin, I would think net portfolio growth is again hard because we’re very kind of opportunities that driven. But I would say, on the margin, payments will increase because of our vintage of ’22 and ’23 — and I would say on the margin, I would expect our balance sheet to remain stable and not grow as significantly as it did in the last 18 months. That would be my get look — we want to lean in environments where there’s really, really high risk-adjusted returns. We could agree that with ’22, ’23 and grow the balance sheet, and not everybody could do that given their access to capital. We did that. And then which will mean that portfolio term will increase on a gross basis. On that basis, the opportunity is that it’s going to be marginally less. And so I think that means that our balance sheet will be relatively stable, maybe slightly growing, but it’s not going to grow as the ended on a lasting few months.

Bryce Rowe: And then maybe one more for me on the capital structure. I mean you’ve been opportunistic in terms of raising both debt and equity. As you — and you’ve talked about kind of having prefunded the ’24 notes. Do you think about layering in another — I guess, another round of notes, given how open debt capital markets are today, just giving yourself that much more liquidity or available liquidity as we think about capital structure.

Joshua Easterly: Yes. I think we talked about this a little bit. I think it’s a good question. I actually think on the margin we hold 2 months liquidity today. So if you kind of think about — if you look at the post [indiscernible] of the ’24 notes. We have about $750 million of liquidity. And we can’t give it or the constraints debt-to-equity, which a range of 0.9 to 1.25. We can’t really use that liquidity. If you don’t think we’re growing the net asset value of the business through new equity raises. And so if we were to — our choices would be to give back unfunded commitments to banks, which I don’t think we want to do because that’s a low cost of capital if we were to raise more bonds. I just — I don’t see — we have — and that liquidity, I think, is very valuable and it’s really good insurance but it’s limited, given the constraint of our 1.25 debt-to-equity and how our capital looks today.