CION Investment Corporation (NYSE:CION) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call May 10, 2023 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Michael Reisner - Co-Chief Executive Officer

Gregg Bresner - President and Chief Investment Officer

Keith Franz - Chief Financial Officer

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to CION’s Investment Corporation’s First Quarter ended March 31, 2023 Earnings Conference Call. An earnings press release was distributed earlier this morning before market open. A copy of the release, along with the supplemental 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 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 the 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.

With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Michael Reisner. Please go ahead, Michael.

Michael Reisner

Thank you. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us. As mentioned, I’m 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 first 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 yet another strong quarter, marking the fifth consecutive quarter we’ve exceeded The Street’s expectations with total investment income increasing 17% sequentially quarter-over-quarter and net investment income increasing 25% quarter-over-quarter and 53% year-over-year. We believe that our continued ability to substantially outearn our dividend demonstrates the resilience of our business model and our ability to drive returns through a strategy laser-focused on senior secured floating rate loans originated from our diverse sourcing strategy.

Presumably, for the first quarter, our net investment income of $0.54 per share ou5earned $0.34 per share dividend we declared for the first quarter of 2023 and the net investment income of $0.43 per share we earned last quarter. Besides an increase in base rates, our income during the quarter was driven by equity dividends from deleveraging companies, realized earnings from our EagleTree joint venture, prepayment premiums and other yield-enhancing provisions embedded within our primarily first lien portfolio.