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Earnings Call: Q1 2020

Aug 6, 2019

Operator

Thank you for joining today's Capital Southwest first fiscal quarter 2020 earnings call. Participating on the call today are Bowen Diehl, CEO, Michael Sarner, CFO, and Chris Rehberger, Vice President of Finance. I'll now turn the call over to Chris Rehberger.

Chris Rehberger
VP of Finance, Capital Southwest

Thank you. I would like to remind everyone that in the course of this call, we will be making certain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on current conditions, currently available information and management's expectations, assumptions, and beliefs. They are not guarantees of future results and are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. For information concerning these risks and uncertainties, see Capital Southwest's publicly available filings with the SEC. The company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, changing circumstances, or any other reason after the date of this press release, except as required by law. I will now hand the call off to our President and Chief Executive Officer, Bowen Diehl.

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Thanks, Chris, and thank you to everyone for joining us for our first quarter fiscal year 2020 earnings call. Throughout our prepared remarks, we will refer to various slides in our earnings presentation, which can be found on our website at www.capitalsouthwest.com. We are pleased to be with you this morning to announce our quarterly results for the first quarter ended June 30, 2019. During the quarter, we continued to advance the credit strategy we laid out for our shareholders four and a half years ago, of prudently building a well-performing credit portfolio utilizing conservative late cycle underwriting principles. We continue to be committed and excited about our core investment strategy of building a predominantly lower middle market portfolio consisting largely of first lien senior secured debt with equity co-investments across the loan portfolio where we believe significant equity upside exists.

Executing our investment strategy under our shareholder-friendly, internally managed structure closely aligns the interests of our board and management team with that of our fellow shareholders in generating sustainable long-term value through recurring dividends, capital preservation, NAV per share growth, and operating cost efficiency. During the June 30, 2019 quarter, as laid out on slide six, we generated $0.44 per share of pre-tax net investment income, representing 42% growth over the $0.31 per share generated in the same quarter a year ago, while paying out a regular dividend of $0.39 per share for the June quarter, representing 34% growth over the $0.29 per share paid out in the same quarter a year ago.

We distributed $0.10 per share through our supplemental dividend program, funded by our sizable undistributed taxable income balance, or UTI, which was generated by excess income and capital gains accumulated from our investment strategy to date. As of June 30, 2019, we had approximately $19.5 million or $1.10 per share in UTI, providing visibility into continuing the quarterly supplemental dividend program well into the future. For the June quarter, the $0.49 per share paid out in total dividends generated a total annualized dividend yield of 9.4%, based upon our June 30, 2019, share price. We are also pleased to announce further growth in our quarterly regular dividend for the September quarter, as our board has declared dividends of $0.50 per share for the September quarter, made up of a $0.40 per share regular dividend and a $0.10 per share supplemental dividend.

This will mark our 15th consecutive quarter of increasing shareholder dividends. During the June quarter, we grew our portfolio on a net basis to $533 million from $524 million as of March 31, 2019, originating $35 million in new commitments and exiting one portfolio company for $20 million in total proceeds. Our senior loan fund, I-45, also continued its solid performance, providing a 17.7% annualized yield in fair value on our capital in the fund for the quarter. Additionally, during the quarter, we raised $4.2 million in gross proceeds through our equity ATM program and upsized our revolving credit facility by $25 million to a total of $295 million in total commitments from 10 banks. Turning to slide seven, we illustrate our continued track record of growing shareholder dividends as we continue to migrate the balance sheet towards target leverage levels through thoughtfully building a portfolio of well-performing income-generating assets.

Turning to slide eight, as a reminder, our investment strategy has remained consistent since its launch in January 2015. We continue to focus on a blend of lower middle market and upper middle market assets, providing us strategic flexibility as we have built the robust capability to seek attractive risk-adjusted returns in both markets. In our core lower middle market, we directly originate opportunities consisting of debt investments and equity co-investments. Building out a highly performing and granular portfolio of equity co-investments is important to driving NAV per share growth while aiding in the mitigation of any future credit losses. At the same time, our capability and presence in the upper middle market provides us the ability to opportunistically invest in a more liquid market when attractive risk-adjusted returns exist.

Overall, we believe that maximizing the top end of our deal origination funnel in both markets is critical to generating strong credit investment performance over time, as it ensures that we consider a wide array of deals, allowing us to employ our conservative underwriting standards in a competitive market and thoughtfully build a portfolio that will perform through the economic cycle. Our on-balance sheet credit portfolio, excluding I-45, as shown on slide nine, grew to $382 million as of June 30, 2019, from $368 million as of March 31, 2019. We continue to heavily emphasize first lien senior secured debt lending to the lower middle market in our investment strategy. As of the end of the quarter, we had 76% of our on-balance sheet credit portfolio invested in lower middle market companies, while having 87% of the credit portfolio in first lien senior secured debt.

Turning to slide 10, we originated $35 million in first lien senior secured debt this quarter, consisting of two new portfolio companies and two add-ons to existing portfolio companies. One of the new portfolio companies was a club deal in the upper middle market, and the other was a first lien senior secured loan to a lower middle market company in which Capital Southwest is the sole lender. Both of the add-ons were in the lower middle market, with one being a Capital Southwest-led deal in which we brought in a co-lender, and one being a deal in which Capital Southwest is the sole lender. The weighted average yield to maturity on all originations this quarter was 11.1%.

As shown on slide 11, we also exited one portfolio company during the quarter for $20 million in total proceeds, generating a realized gain of $226,000 and an IRR of 10.9% on total invested capital. This continues our strong track record, as we have now had 26 portfolio exits since launching our credit strategy back in January 2015, generating $182 million in proceeds and a cumulative IRR of 15.7%. On slide 12, we break out our on-balance sheet portfolio, again excluding I-45, between the lower middle market and the upper middle market. As of the end of the quarter, the total portfolio was weighted approximately 77% to the lower middle market and 23% to the upper middle market on a cost basis.

We had 26 lower middle market portfolio companies with an average hold size of $12.5 million, a weighted average EBITDA of $8.8 million, a weighted average yield of 12.2%, and a leverage ratio measured as debt to EBITDA through our security of 3.4 times. Within our lower middle market portfolio, as of the end of the quarter, we held equity ownership in 69% of our portfolio companies. Our upper middle market portfolio consisted of 11 companies with an average hold size of $8.8 million, a weighted average EBITDA of $65.6 million, a weighted average yield of 9.9%, and a leverage ratio through our security of 3.4 times.

We should note that our balance sheet upper middle market metrics are shown excluding our investment in American Addiction, as the EBITDA is not meaningful and thus skews the total upper middle market portfolio ratios so as not to be able to clearly show the ratios of the remainder of the upper middle market portfolio. With respect to American Addiction, the company continues to struggle, albeit with recently improving operating metrics. Since American Addiction is a public company, we want to be careful not to effectively announce developments prior to the American Addiction management team appropriately communicating to their shareholders. What we will say is that the lender group continues to work with the company on solutions to the capital structure.

The company's leading market position in the substance abuse industry, the company's cost savings and business development initiatives, and its large owned real estate portfolio all provide reasons to be optimistic on the prospects of a favorable resolution. American Addiction remains rated a three on our internal rating system. As a reminder, all investments upon origination are initially assigned an investment rating of two on a four-point scale, with one being the highest rating and four being the lowest rating. Overall, we are pleased with the performance of the investment portfolio as a whole, as at the end of the quarter, of the 40 loans in the portfolio, we had four with the highest rating of one, representing 17% of the credit portfolio. We had 32 loans rated at two, representing 77% of the credit portfolio. We had three loans rated a three, representing 4% of the credit portfolio.

We did reduce Agri-King to a 4 this quarter, making it the only investment rated a 4 in the credit portfolio. The investment is our first and only non-accrual among the investments made since launching our credit strategy four and a half years ago. As a reminder, Agri-King was placed on non-accrual during our December 2018 quarter. As illustrated on slide 13, we have established a portfolio well-diversified across industries, which we believe is well-positioned for late in the economic cycle. Further, our portfolio asset mix should provide strong security for our shareholders' capital. The portfolio remains heavily weighted towards first lien senior secured debt, with only 7% and 3% of the portfolio in second lien senior secured debt and the subordinated debt investments respectively.

Our last remaining legacy equity investment, Media Recovery, which does business under the banner SpotSee, represents 10% of the portfolio, and other equity co-investments as of the end of the quarter represented 6%. As we have mentioned on prior calls, Media Recovery is currently undergoing a sale process. The process is going well, and our expectation continues to be that this company will sell during the 2019 calendar year. Shown on slide 14 is at the end of the quarter, the I-45 portfolio was 95% first lien, with diversity among industries and an average hold size of 2% of the portfolio. The I-45 portfolio had a weighted average EBITDA of approximately $71 million and a weighted average leverage through the I-45 security of 3.9 times. We also excluded American Addiction from these ratios for the aforementioned reasons.

We should also note that the increase in weighted average leverage to 3.9 times from 3.6 times last quarter was driven primarily by the prepayment of two lower leverage loans in the I-45 portfolio during the quarter. Overall, we have been pleased with the solid performance of I-45 since its inception back in 2015. We and our partner in I-45, Main Street Capital, have invested approximately $500 million through the fund, primarily in first lien senior secured syndicated loans. Since inception, we have harvested 54 exits, generating $223 million in proceeds at a weighted average IRR on the exits of 11.3%. I will now hand the call over to Michael to review the specifics of our financial performance for the quarter.

Michael Sarner
CFO, Capital Southwest

Thanks, Bowen. As seen on slide 15, our investment portfolio produced $15.8 million of investment income this quarter, with a weighted average yield on all investments of 11.6%. This represents an increase of $1.5 million from the previous quarter, mostly attributable to net portfolio growth. The weighted average yield on our credit portfolio was 11.7% for the quarter, a slight increase from the previous quarter. As of the end of the quarter, there was one asset on non-accrual with a fair value of $7.9 million, representing 1.5% of our total investment portfolio. Excluding interest expense, we incurred $4.3 million in operating expenses this quarter, which was an increase of roughly $500,000 from the prior quarter. As noted on our prior quarterly call, the increase was expected as we incur seasonal expenses in the June quarter of each year associated with payroll taxes and the annual shareholder meeting.

Additionally, during the June quarter, we incurred a one-time charge for the accelerated vesting of restricted stock awards for a longtime employee upon his retirement. For the quarter, we earned pre-tax net investment income of $7.7 million, or $0.44 per share, compared to $0.42 per share during the prior quarter. We paid out $0.39 per share in regular dividends for the quarter, an increase of $0.01 per share over the $0.38 per share regular dividend paid out in the prior quarter. We continue to focus on growing our regular dividends in a sustainable manner, demonstrated by our cumulative regular dividend coverage of 108% over the last 12 months and 105% since the launch of our credit strategy four years ago. As Bowen mentioned earlier, we also paid out a supplemental dividend of $0.10 per share this quarter as part of our supplemental dividend program.

This program allows our shareholders to meaningfully participate in the successful exits of our investment portfolio. The program will continue to be funded from our UTI, earned from both realized gains on debt and equity, as well as undistributed net investment income earned each quarter in excess of our regular dividends. On slide 16, we illustrate our operating leverage, which as of the end of the quarter was 3.1%, excluding the aforementioned seasonal expenses and one-time charge, our operating leverage for the quarter was 2.8%, which continues to migrate towards our target operating leverage of sub 2.5%. We are fully committed to actively managing our operating costs in lockstep with portfolio growth and expect to achieve our target operating leverage over the next few quarters.

With senior professionals and corporate infrastructure largely in place, operating leverage should continue to improve as the investment portfolio grows due to our internally managed structure. As Bowen mentioned earlier, our NAV per share as of the end of the quarter was essentially flat at $18.58 per share, as seen on slide 17. The slight decrease for the quarter was primarily driven by the $0.10 per share quarterly supplemental dividend paid to shareholders. Our total pre-tax NII return on equity for the quarter was 9.4%. On slide 18, we lay out our multiple pockets of capital. As of the end of the quarter, we had approximately $160 million in cash and undrawn commitments available between our balance sheet and I-45, with the earliest debt maturity at December 2022.

During the quarter, we added an additional $25 million commitment from a new lender to our credit facility, increasing total commitments to $295 million. Our balance sheet leverage ended the quarter at a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.69 to one. We feel good about our liquidity and capital structure flexibility and believe that it would allow us to thoughtfully grow our investment portfolio. With that being said, a strategic priority for our company is to continually evaluate approaches to de-risk the liability structure of the company while ensuring that we have adequate investable capital throughout the economic cycle. During the quarter ended June 30, 2019, the company sold 195,549 shares of its common stock under the equity ATM program at a weighted average price of $21.66 per share, raising $4.2 million of gross proceeds.

Cumulative to date, the company has sold 459,205 shares of its common stock under the equity ATM program at a weighted average price of $21.55. Raising $9.9 million of gross proceeds. We continue to believe our equity ATM program is a prudent and cost-effective way to issue equity over time at tight spreads to the latest trade, while selling equity on a just-in-time basis so it can be thoughtfully invested in income-generating assets. I will now hand the call back to Bowen for some final comments.

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Thanks, Michael, and thank you everyone for joining us today. Capital Southwest has grown and the business and portfolio have developed consistent with the vision and strategy we communicated to our shareholders four and a half years ago. Our team has done an excellent job generating significant returns for our shareholders. Everyone here at Capital Southwest is totally dedicated to being good stewards of our shareholders' capital by continuing to deliver strong performance and creating long-term sustainable value for our shareholders. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we are ready to open the lines for questions.

Operator

Certainly. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question at this time, please press star then one on your touch-tone telephone. If your question has been answered and you'd like to remove yourself from the queue, please press the pound key. Our first question comes from the line of Tim Hayes from B. Riley FBR. Your question, please.

Mike Crawford
Analyst, B. Riley FBR

Hey, guys. This is actually Mike on for Tim, and thank you for taking my questions. My first question is, when you look at slide 13, it looks like you added MRI to the graph, which implies a $53 million or so mark, which is largely unchanged quarter-over-quarter. I was just wondering if this is a reflection of more or less interest you're seeing from bidders, or I guess if you could just broadly provide any additional commentary on the sale process.

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Yeah. You're right. We put MRI spots on the chart. It has been previous quarters, a yielding equity. We denoted it as yielding equity. We just decided this quarter to be more specific and separate it out from our other general equity co-investments. I would say generally the sale process is going well. As I said in my prepared remarks, there's obviously interest in the asset and it's progressing forward. That's really from the sale process, really all I want to say, given the buyers looking at the business. We still think it'll exit before the end of the year. Our valuation process methodology hasn't changed. We incorporate DCF, we incorporate comps. We also incorporate a weighting from the valuations in the market, and as the valuation or as the sale process progresses forward, that weighting influence on the valuation increases over time.

we'll see in the queue this afternoon, we did have a $1.2 million write-up this quarter, so it's not exactly flat, as you said. as again, the weighting of the valuations in the market increases as an influence on the valuation over time, as the sale process progresses and you get more clarity and visibility on where it might ultimately trade.

Mike Crawford
Analyst, B. Riley FBR

Thank you. Thank you for that. just a follow-up, do you have any updates on the decision once the sale process is complete, or is that something you guys are still thinking about in terms of retaining versus paying out a special dividend?

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Yeah. The board's going to make that determination, and we'll make that determination once it sells. The answer is no, we don't have anything else additional to tell the market other than a reminder that we'll have the option to replenish the UTI bucket, first and foremost. The gain obviously very likely will be much in excess of that. The remainder of the gain, we have option, we can either retain it and do a deemed distribution to the shareholders, pay a 21% tax, or we can distribute it in a special dividend, or a third option, do a combination of both. The board, like I said, will ultimately decide that once the sale is complete, and we'll announce it.

Mike Crawford
Analyst, B. Riley FBR

Got you. Thank you. one more question. How does the pipeline look maybe compared to a year ago?

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Yeah. The pipeline is, as far as number of deals that are in the shop that we're reviewing, is up year-over-year. Hence my comment that the pipeline's strong. Market competitiveness is still very competitive. I wouldn't say it's more competitive today than it was six or nine or even 12 months ago. It's been very competitive for a while. Our pipeline, as far as deals we're reviewing, looks good. We're being very careful in diligence. We definitely have had a couple of deals that have closings have been pretty materially delayed based on diligence findings and needing to see a few more months of performance, that type of thing. That's pretty normal in our business.

It tends to make it, like I've always said, a lumpy business. Overall, we're pretty happy with the pipeline. We're certainly getting a lot of looks.

Mike Crawford
Analyst, B. Riley FBR

Got you. Thank you for that. Have you seen any changes in the upper middle market versus the lower middle market? Have you seen any improvements in the upper middle market or vice versa? </edited_transcript

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

No. We definitely right now continue to see the best opportunities in the lower middle market with a few exceptions. iEnergizer this quarter is actually an upper middle market deal. I would say still same environment largely in the lower middle market, and I would say generally same environment in the upper middle market. The upper middle markets, we all know the frothiness in that market. That continues today.

Mike Crawford
Analyst, B. Riley FBR

Got you. Thank you for taking my questions.

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

You bet. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line. Mickey Schleien from Ladenburg. Your question, please.

Mickey Schleien
Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann

Yeah. Good morning, Bowen. Wanted to follow up on that last question about upper middle market versus lower middle market. I think investors and analysts are struggling with the outlook for defaults and recoveries in those two different markets if the economy were to slow meaningfully down the road. When you look at those two markets, how do you gauge the risk-adjusted returns, and how do you judge the differences in the potential default and recovery probabilities in those two markets? </edited_transcript

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Yeah. Thanks, Mickey. I hope you're well. On that, I would tell you that, clearly a textbook view is, well, larger companies are more established, and therefore, they do better in a recessionary environment. While that's not wrong, the other thing that goes into that is structure and leverage levels. We're a first lien lender, and if we can lever a business appropriately versus the potential volatility of that business, then we're dollar one risk. We can control the dialogue and ultimately have much better control over our destiny, which is ultimately what our shareholders care about with their capital. In the lower middle market, where leverage levels are lower and structures are tighter, they're smaller companies, clearly. We've got to pick the companies correctly.

it's not correct to say that there aren't good, sustainable, full-cycle businesses in the lower middle market. We don't believe that that's the case. you have to have less leverage, and you have to have tighter structures. indeed, the market follows that largely because the lower middle market has definitely tighter structures, lower leverage. In the upper middle market, we all know, very loose structures, a lot of covenant-light deals, a higher leverage, even if they are larger companies. if you think about a full cycle in a recessionary environment, I've got a lot more options if I'm dollar one risk at a lower leverage level going into the cycle than I am even if I'm dollar one risk going into the cycle at a higher leverage level.

also in the lower middle market, absent a recession, when things are going well, we have some equity upside in our portfolio as well. as an investor, I see that and I'm like, "Okay, good times, I'm going to make some money. In bad times, I can control my destiny. The company survives, the capital structure survives, and we ride out the other side of a recession," which are typically, what, 18 months or so long. you can basically live to play for another day, and you've gotten appropriate full cycle returns for your shareholders. long-winded answer, but that's kind of how I look at those two markets. both have their advantages and their disadvantages, but that's why we do find full cycle, the lower middle market being more interesting.

Mickey Schleien
Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann

Just to follow up, if I can, Bowen. When you talk about cycles and weathering the storm, we're in the longest expansion in the history of the country, obviously off of a very low base. My sense is that a lot of the borrowers in a lot of BDC portfolios weren't around in the Great Recession. You don't necessarily have data to look at how revenues and margins behaved in 2008, 2009, and so forth. With that in mind, how do you underwrite the downside to a borrower that didn't exist or perhaps was a very different business model that far back in time?

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Yeah. It's a good question. One of the things we've said from the beginning is we do look at the Great Recession as an analog for the current situation. We've been doing that since 2015. You're right. Not every company we invest in was even here in 2008. I would tell you a lot of them were. Some of the ones that were a lot smaller, maybe had one special customer, large customer in 2008 and 2009, which skewed the results. A lot of times we have to go back, and we do, and you can do this when you work. We go back and look at the industry.

We look at other players that were there, and we do a pretty deep dive into exactly what was happening in that timeframe in that industry, and in that company with respect to suppliers, customers, customer behavior, pricing. we basically then construct a simulation of, and if we do a loan today, it's 2020 and 2021, a simulation of that same dynamic happening to the company. are we going to get that perfectly right every time? Of course not. I think we're going to get pretty close, and we're going to be right more than we're wrong. we've been doing that. Our deal teams go through a fair amount of work to construct that simulation or that downside economic case.

we've done that loan by loan, and from the very beginning, we believe that if we do that loan by loan, we're going to be better positioned as a whole, as a portfolio to weather that storm. Hence you see our weighted average leverage in our lower middle market portfolio is lower than many of the BDCs. That, I believe, in part reflects what I just said. </edited_transcript

Mickey Schleien
Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann

Bowen, just one last question because you jogged my memory about something I'd like to follow up on. Given that you've looked at a variety of industries, and I know the question I'm going to ask is going to be very much dependent on the industry, but when you look at '08 and '09 in the lower middle market, can you tell us broadly how did revenues behave and EBITDA during that recession? Again, I know comparing a software company to somebody manufacturing widgets, it's not a fair comparison. In broad brush strokes, how did they do?

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Obviously the answer is, as you said, it depends on the company and the industry. More fundamentally, we're trying to match the capital structure we're putting on that particular company and that industry to match the potential volatility so that your dollars stay within enterprise value and your interest continues to get paid. As far as a macro lower middle market asset class, if you will, stats, I honestly don't have that in front of me. I actually don't know the answer to that. We just always focus on a company-by-company basis.

Mickey Schleien
Analyst, Ladenburg Thalmann

Okay. I appreciate that and appreciate your time this morning. Thank you.

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Thanks, Mickey.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kyle Joseph from Jefferies. Your question please.

Kyle Joseph
Analyst, Jefferies

Hey, good morning, guys, and thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to just focus on yields. We've seen a modest bit of upward pressure on yields for the overall portfolio. Is that more of a sense of the portfolio mix rather than yields on new deals being higher than yields coming off?

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

It's probably a portfolio mix. We've done recently a couple of first-out, last-out deals where we'll sell a small first-out piece, which pays a much lower rate, and then we'll scrape the rest to our position, controlling the loan along the way. That's going to have an influence and might be-

Michael Sarner
CFO, Capital Southwest

Yeah. Without drawing on the debt overall, the overall yield went up based on the dividend. One from MRI produced a larger dividend this quarter based on it having additional free cash flows. In I-45, we had a refinancing of a portfolio company, that had a $400,000 gain that flowed through as a dividend to Capital Southwest. Those two enhanced the overall yield for the entire portfolio.

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

It's kind of all of those things.

Kyle Joseph
Analyst, Jefferies

Got it. Given sort of the rate outlook and everything, can you give us a sense of where you would anticipate that yield heading going forward?

Michael Sarner
CFO, Capital Southwest

Well, I think assuming the last cut, I think it's going to be flat, assuming the Fed doesn't make additional cuts in the future. What we would say is from our yields, the LIBOR reset date doesn't occur till the first of the next quarter. We're going to see a 25 basis point hit, and so that's about a penny a quarter reduction in yield.

Kyle Joseph
Analyst, Jefferies

Okay. Got it. One last one from me. Obviously, this is dependent on market conditions, but can you remind us your sort of target leverage ratios in the near term, intermediate term, and longer term?

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Yeah. Target leverage ratios at the BDC?

Kyle Joseph
Analyst, Jefferies

Yeah.

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Yeah. Our target leverage ratio, we kind of define it as a fairway, but a fairway between kind of one to one, to as high as 1.2 to one. The speed at which we get there is completely dependent on originations and the culture here is we're not going to rush to get there. We're going to get there intentionally, step-by-step, as we find good deals to do. Longer term and intermediate and longer term is really to get leverage up to kind of that one to one, slightly above one to one, kind of economic leverage, I should say.

Michael Sarner
CFO, Capital Southwest

Yeah, I think Bowen said in past calls too, sort of a glide path. We're going to be issuing a little bit of equity off our ATM program and making certain we always have borrowing capacity on the debt side to sort of steadily move leverage up towards those levels and not just bring it up in a quick fashion or raise large amounts of equity and bring it crashing down.

Kyle Joseph
Analyst, Jefferies

Got it. That's helpful. Thanks very much for answering my questions.

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

You got it. Thank you. </edited_transcript

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris York from JMP Securities. Your question please.

Chris York
Analyst, JMP Securities

Hey, good morning/afternoon, guys.

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Morning.

Michael Sarner
CFO, Capital Southwest

Morning, Chris.

Chris York
Analyst, JMP Securities

Hey. Michael, you touched on my question a little bit here in your answer to the last question. Given that the Q is not out, could you elaborate on the drivers of the increase in the dividend from controlled portfolio companies in the quarter and whether you think this increase is sustainable?

Michael Sarner
CFO, Capital Southwest

Yeah. The two ones that I noted earlier, so MRI being the one control portfolio company and then I-45 being the other. The dollar amounts I think I noted were the MRI dividend increased by $150,000 and the I-45 was $400,000.

Chris York
Analyst, JMP Securities

Got it. are either of those sustainable, so the sequential increase quarter tick?

Michael Sarner
CFO, Capital Southwest

Yeah. Correct. No, neither of those are going to be sustainable going forward. That $500,000 is a one-time for this quarter. You'll see that it was sort of met by $400,000 of additional expenses this quarter that were not run rate as well.

Chris York
Analyst, JMP Securities

Okay.

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Yeah. Just to clarify. MRI's slight increase was a function of the cash flows at MRI. The I-45 was a refinancing that you suggested.

Michael Sarner
CFO, Capital Southwest

Sure.

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Most of it is the I-45.

Michael Sarner
CFO, Capital Southwest

Probably gets you to your question too, Chris. I would tell you the $0.44 of NII, I would say of that, the run rate on that was really around $0.43 going forward.

Chris York
Analyst, JMP Securities

Okay.

Michael Sarner
CFO, Capital Southwest

Yeah, if you take out the revenue one time hits and the expense as well.

Chris York
Analyst, JMP Securities

Okay. Just to be clear on the share-based comp, $400,000 of the $837,000 was non-recurring or one time?

Michael Sarner
CFO, Capital Southwest

No. of the $837,000, $150,000 was one time in nature and the rest is-

Chris York
Analyst, JMP Securities

Okay

Michael Sarner
CFO, Capital Southwest

ongoing and recurring.

Chris York
Analyst, JMP Securities

Got it. Those were my only questions today, so thank you very much.

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Thanks, Chris.

Michael Sarner
CFO, Capital Southwest

Thanks, Chris.

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude the question and answer session of today's program. I'd like to hand the program back to Bowen Diehl, Chief Executive Officer, for any further remarks. </edited_transcript

Bowen Diehl
CEO, Capital Southwest

Thank you, operator, and thanks everybody for joining us today. We really appreciate it. Appreciate all your support, and we look forward to keeping you apprised on the business as we move forward. Have a great week.

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.