Fidus Investment Corporation (NASDAQ:FDUS) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript August 4, 2023 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Jody Burfening - Investor Relations

Edward Ross - Chairman of the Board, Interested Director and CEO

Shelby Sherard - CFO, Chief Compliance Officer and Secretary

Conference Call Participants

Robert Dodd - Raymond James

Mickey Schleien - Ladenburg

Bryce Rowe - B. Riley

Paul Johnson - KBW

Eric Zwick - Hovde Group

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Fidus Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. I will now turn the call over to Jody Burfening.

Jody Burfening

Thank you, Savi, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Fidus Investment Corporation's Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. With me this morning are Ed Ross, Fidus Investment Corporation's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Shelby Sherard, Chief Financial Officer. Fidus Investment Corporation issued a press release yesterday afternoon with the details of the company's quarterly financial results. A copy of the press release is available on the Investor Relations page of the company's website at fdus.com.

I'd also like to call your attention to the customary safe harbor disclosure regarding forward-looking information included on today's call. Conference call today will contain forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the goals, strategies, beliefs, future potential, operating results, cash flows of Fidus Investment Corporation. Although management believes these statements are reasonable based on -- as of today, August 4, 2023, these statements are not guarantees of future performance. Time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate at the time of any telephonic or webcast replay.

Actual results may differ materially as a result of risks, uncertainties and other factors including, but not limited to, the factors set forth in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Fidus undertakes no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Ed. Good morning, Ed.

Edward Ross

Good morning, Jody, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. On today's call, I'll start with a review of our second quarter performance in our portfolio at quarter end and then share with you our outlook for the second half of 2023. Shelby will cover the second quarter financial results and our liquidity position. After we have completed our prepared remarks, we'll be happy to take your questions.

For the second quarter, we continued to enhance the earnings power of our healthy and high-performing portfolio by further building our portfolio of income-producing assets and benefiting from a widened spread. We grew our total portfolio to $928.7 million on a fair value basis at quarter end putting a fair amount of capital to work in a reasonably active second quarter. Although deal activity is still spotty, our relationships with deal sponsors, experience and industry knowledge continue to enable us to invest selectively in companies with predictable revenues, strong cash flow generation and positive long-term outlooks that meet our strict underwriting standards.