CION Investment Corporation (NYSE:CION) Q2 2022 Earnings Conference Call August 11, 2022 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Michael Reisner - Co-Chief Executive Officer

Gregg Bresner - President and Chief Investment Officer

Keith Franz - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Finian O’Shea - Wells Fargo Securities

Operator

Good morning and welcome to CION Investment Corporation’s Second Quarter Ended June 30, 2022 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 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.

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

Michael Reisner

Thank you, Kevin. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us. I hope everyone is enjoying their summer. 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 second quarter results and our long-term strategy. Gregg will review our investment activity during the quarter, and Keith will provide additional detail on our financial results. After Keith’s remarks, we will open the call to questions.

During the quarter, we continued to execute on our long-term business plan of growing our portfolio through a measured growth strategy as we seek to provide excellent risk-adjusted returns to our shareholders while remaining very disciplined in our credit selection. This strategy generated strong second quarter results despite the conservative use of our existing leverage capacity. As a result, we were able to announce an increase in distributions for the third quarter by $0.03 a share or over 10%, from $0.28 per share to $0.31 a share, which we believe represents a meaningful return to our shareholders.