CION Investment Corporation (NYSE:CION) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call November 9, 2023 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Michael Reisner - Co-Chief Executive Officer

Mark Gatto - Co-Chief Executive Officer

Gregg Bresner - President and CIO

Keith Franz - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Erik Zwick - Hovde Group

Operator

Good morning. And welcome to CION Investment Corporation’s Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. An earning press release was distributed earlier this morning before market opened. A copy of the release, along with the supplement earnings presentation, is available on the company’s website at www.cionbdc.com in the Investor Resources section and should be reviewed in conjunction with the company’s Form 10-Q filed with the SEC. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded for replay purposes.

Please note that today’s conference call may contain forward-looking statements, which are not guarantees of future performance or results and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of a number of factors, including those described in the company’s filings with the SEC.

Speaking on today’s call will be Michael Reisner, CION Investment Corporation’s Co-Chief Executive Officer; Gregg Bresner, President and Chief Investment Officer; and Keith Franz, Chief Financial Officer.

And with that, I would now like to turn the call over to Michael Reisner. Thank you. Please go ahead, Michael.

Michael Reisner

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. As mentioned, I am joined today by Gregg and Keith, as well as other members of senior management, including my Co-CEO, Mark Gatto.

I will start our call today with an overview of our third quarter results, Gregg will review our investment activity during the quarter and Keith will provide additional detail on our financial results. After Keith’s prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions.

As we reported this morning, we had a very strong third quarter, which saw a continued resilient credit profile, an over 3% increase to our net asset value quarter-over-quarter and strong net income of $0.87 per share, an increase of 70.6% quarter-over-quarter and 45% year-over-year. Our net investment income of $0.55 per share continues to outperform our dividend.

As we did last year, we expect to be in a position to declare a year-end special dividend, while keeping our base dividend steady for now. The special dividend would be in addition to the two supplemental dividends previously announced. We previously declared a supplemental dividend of $0.05 per share for both the third and fourth quarters.