Good morning, and welcome to the earnings conference call for the period ended June thirtieth, two thousand twenty-two for MidCap Financial Investment Corporation. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode. The call will be open for a question-and-answer session following the speaker's prepared remarks. If you would like to ask a question at that time, press star one on your telephone pad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the pound key. I will now turn the call over to Elizabeth Besen, Investor Relations Manager for MidCap Financial Investment Corporation.
Thank you, operator, and thank you everyone for joining us today. Speaking on today's call are Howard Widra, Executive Chairman, Tanner Powell, Chief Executive Officer, and Gregory Hunt, Chief Financial Officer. Some members of the management team are on and available for the Q&A portion of today's call. I'd like to advise everyone that today's call and webcast are being recorded. Please note that they are the property of MidCap Financial Investment Corporation and that any unauthorized broadcast in any form is strictly prohibited. Information about the audio replay of this call is available in our press releases. I'd also like to call your attention to the customary safe harbor disclosure in our press releases regarding forward-looking information. Today's conference call and webcast may include forward-looking statements.
You should refer to our most recent filings with the SEC for risks that apply to our business and that may adversely affect the forward-looking statements we make. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements or projections unless required by law. To obtain copies of our SEC filings, please visit our website at www.apollo.com. In connection with today's announcements, we will be launching a new website next week, which you will be able to find at www.midcapfinancialic.com. The two presentations on our website, our standard quarterly supplemental financial information package, and a second presentation which details today's announcement. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to our Executive Chairman, Howard Widra.
Thanks, Elizabeth. Good morning, everyone. Earlier today, we issued press releases, our quarterly earnings press release, and a second press release, which details several important strategic announcements, which we believe great value for our shareholders. Following my review of each of these announcements, I'll provide an overview of our results and discuss today's distribution announcement, discuss the market environment, review our investment activity, and provide an update on the portfolio. Lastly, Greg will review our financial results in detail. We'll then open the call to questions. Let me begin with today's announcement, which underscore Apollo Global Management's commitment to investor alignment, product innovation, and being at the forefront of the democratization of finance. These announcements reinforce the BDC's position as a pure play, senior secured middle-market BDC, providing public shareholder access to institutional quality private credit at a best-in-class fee structure among listed BDCs.
The BDCs will continue to invest almost exclusively in senior secured loans sourced by MidCap Financial, one of the world's leading middle-market lenders. As you know, over the last several years, we have shifted the BDC's portfolio into first lien corporate loans, primarily sourced by MidCap Financial, and away from junior capital and non-core positions. At the end of June, investments made pursuant to our co-investment order, which are primarily loans originated by MidCap Financial, represented approximately 85% of our corporate lending portfolio at fair value. Let me take a minute to remind everyone about MidCap Financial, which I co-founded in 2008. MidCap Financial is privately held by institutional investors and managed by Apollo Global. Over the last twelve months through the end of June, MidCap Financial originated over $21 billion in new commitments, including $4.7 billion June quarter.
Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, has 12 offices globally with approximately 250 employees. The company is led by an experienced senior management team that has worked together over 20 years and with 27 years of average industry experience. The BDC is in a fortunate, unique position to have access to loans sourced by MidCap Financial, given the strategic relationship between MidCap Financial and Apollo Global. Historically, MidCap Financial and Apollo, as its manager, have predominantly originated assets on behalf of U.S. and other global institutional investors. To support your security strategy, our board and advisor have established what we consider the industry-leading structure among listed BDCs. The new fee structure reduced management fees by approximately 50% to the lowest rate among listed BDCs.
In addition, the management fee will now be calculated on equity instead of assets, which provides a greater alignment and focus on that asset value. The new fee structure reduces the BDC's cost of capital, thereby expanding the universe of MidCap-originated loans that will meet the BDC's lowered required asset yield. MidCap Financial originates a significant amount of senior first lien loans that were previously below BDC's target yield, but which will now make sense for the BDC given its lower cost of capital. Specifically, the BDC's base management fee has been permanently reduced to 1.5% on equity, down from the equivalent of approximately 3.4% on equity. In other words, the base management fee expressed in terms of gross assets has been reduced to approximately 1.4% on assets to the equivalent of approximately 25 basis points on assets.
The incentive fee on income has also been permanently reduced from 20% to 17.5%. The performance threshold remains 7%, and there is no change to the total return requirement or catch-up provision. The incentive fee on capital gains has also been permanently reduced from 20% to 17.5%. The changes to the fee structure will be effective for the period beginning January 1, 2023. Moving on, we're pleased to announce that MidCap Financial has made a $30 million primary aligning equity investment in the BDC at net asset value, representing a significant premium to the current trading price. The BDC will issue approximately 1.93 million shares in connection with this transaction, which will be subject to a minimum two-year hold period. This investment serves to first validate the value of BDC senior investment strategy.
Second, provide the BDC powder to a loan sourced by MidCap Financial. Third, create a strong alignment of interest MidCap Financial on the BDC's performance. Pro forma for this investment, MidCap Financial will own approximately 3% of the BDC's common stock. In connection with today's changes, the BDC has elected to change its name from Apollo Investment Corporation to MidCap Financial Investment Corporation, which reflects key investment strategy of primarily investing in loans originated by MidCap Financial. For the sake of clarity, Apollo Global Management will continue to manage both MidCap Financial and the BDC. Throughout today's call, in order to avoid confusion, we'll refer to the BDC as either the BDC or as MFIC, and we will use MidCap Financial to refer to the latter, the lender headquartered in Bethesda. The BDC's ticker will be changing to MFIC. The ticker changes will be effective on or around August twelfth.
Moving on to new leadership promotions. I'm pleased to announce that Tanner Powell, who has served as president of the BDC since 2018, has been promoted to chief executive officer, in my place in that role. I've been named executive chairman of the board. John Hannan, who has served as chairman since 2006, will now serve as vice chairman. I will continue to serve as Apollo's global head of the direct origination and will remain involved in the day-to-day management of MFIC. Ted McNulty, who is a managing director in Apollo's direct origination business, has been promoted to president of the BDC and chief investment officer for our investment advisor. Ted brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the role.
He joined Apollo in 2014, and over the last several years has been instrumental in the successful monetization of the BDC's legacy assets. Last but not least, Kristin Hester, who has been a senior member of our legal team since 2015, has been promoted to Chief Legal Officer. Joseph Glatt, who served as the BDC's Chief Legal Officer since 2000 and was promoted to a new role as partner in Apollo's U.S. financial institutions. These promotions recognize the valuable contributions made by Tanner Powell, Ted McNulty, and Kristin Hester over the years. We are very excited about today's announcements, which will allow us to capitalize on the benefit of MidCap Financial's leading middle market direct platform, and which we expect will generate attractive risk-adjusted returns for shareholders. Next, moving to a summary of our results.
Net investment income for the June quarter was $0.37 per share, which reflects lower fee and prepayment income, partially offset by our recurring interest income. Results also reflect a higher incentive fee compared to the prior quarter. We recorded a net loss of $17.8 million or $0.28 per share on the portfolio during the quarter. We ended the quarter with net asset value per share of $15.52, down 27 cents or 1.7% quarter-over-quarter. We repurchased some stock during the period below NAV at a $0.01 per share accretive impact. Now switch our focus to our distribution.
Given the progress we have made portfolio, combined with the forthcoming reduction in our fee structure, we are raising our quarterly base dividend from $0.31 to $0.32 per share payable to shareholders of record as of September twentieth, 2022. We believe this dividend level is appropriate at this time. Future supplemental distributions will be declared as appropriate. With that, I'll turn the call to discuss the market environment and our investment activity.
Thanks, Howard. Beginning with the market environment, the public credit markets continued to experience volatility during the quarter as elevated inflation, rising interest rates, concerns about a possible recession, supply chain issues, and geopolitical uncertainty weigh heavily on market sentiment. Negative fund flows contributed to the volatility in the liquid loan market. Credit fundamentals, however, have remained relatively stable as leveraged loan default rates continue to hover near historical lows. Against this AUM macro backdrop, we saw a reduced level of M&A activity. This type of broader market environment can benefit private providers of private credit who offer borrowers fully underwritten solutions at agreed upon pricing and terms with certain execution irrespective of broader market conditions. Moving to investment activity, MidCap Financial, which as Howard mentioned, sources investments for the BDC, was very active during the June quarter with $4.7 billion of new originations.
For the BDC, new corporate lending commitments totaled $195 million across 18 companies for an average new commitment of $10.8 million. New commitments made during the quarter by product were $100 million in leveraged lending, approximately $80 million in life science lending, and the remaining $15 million in lender finance. All new commitments were first lien floating rate loans with a weighted average spread of 622 basis points and a weighted average net leverage of 4.9x. 97% of new commitments were made pursuant to our co-investment order. Excluding revolvers, gross fundings for the quarter totaled $165 million, and sales and repayments totaled $121 million. Net revolver repayments were $1 million. In aggregate, net fundings for the quarter totaled $43 million.
We ended the quarter with net leverage at a high end of our target range given our visibility in the paydowns post quarter end. Net leverage at the end of June was 1.58 times. Adjusting for net paydowns post quarter end, including a $15 million cash paydown from Merx, and including the impact of the $30 million investment from MidCap Financial, which is expected to close in the next week, net leverage is currently approximately 1.45 times. As discussed on our last conference call, we intend to accelerate the reduction of our investment in Merx by selling aircraft and de-emphasizing its servicing business.
As you know, Merx is a successful global aircraft leasing management and finance company established in 2012 and led by Gary Rothschild, head of aviation finance for Apollo. At the end of June, AINV's investment in Merx had a fair value of $284 million, representing 11% of the total portfolio. During the June quarter, Merx sold three aircraft, reducing the number of planes in the fleet from 65 to 62. We expect our investment in Merx, as well as the income we receive from Merx, to decline each quarter going forward. At the end of June, two additional aircraft were under purchase agreement, including the freighter in the fleet which was sold in early July.
Despite uncertain macroeconomic environment, there are no signs of a slowdown in daily global flight activity, and we feel constructive about our plans to sell the planes owned by Merx. Turning to the overall portfolio, our investment portfolio had a fair value of $2.55 billion at the end of June across 140 companies in 27 industries. Corporate lending and other represented 80% of the portfolio, and Merx represented 11% of the portfolio at fair value. 94% of the corporate lending portfolio was first lien. The weighted average spread on corporate was 611 basis points as of the end of June. Our portfolio companies generally continue to experience strong fundamental performance. While feeling the impact of inflation, we believe our companies are generally able to pass through most, although not all of higher input costs they are seeing.
Our portfolio is generally weighted towards industries that are less impacted by inflation and supply chain issues. Moving to credit quality, our credit metrics remain very favorable. At the end of June, the weighted average net leverage of our corporate lending portfolio was 5.45 times, a slight increase quarter-over-quarter. Repayment of lower assets and the impact of funding delayed draw term loans. The weighted average attachment point was 0.2 times, and the weighted average interest coverage ratio was 2.8 times. No investments were placed on non-accrual status during the quarter, and our investment in oil and gas was restored to accrual status and also repaid $4.5 million to the BDC during the quarter. Glacier continues to generate strong cash flow to support the small loan balance, which is now $4 million.
At the end of June, investments on non-accrual status totaled $9 million or 0.3% of total portfolio at fair value. With that, I will turn the call over to Greg to discuss our financial results in detail.
Thank you, Tanner, and good morning, everyone. Beginning with statement of operations, total investment income was $53.4 million for the quarter, down 2.4% quarter-over-quarter. Recurring interest income rose due to the impact of higher base rates along with returning Glacier Oil to accrual status. Prepayment income was $1.9 million, down from $3.8 million last quarter due to the lower quarterly prepayments. Correspondingly, fee income was approximately $500 thousand, down from $1.3 million last quarter. Dividend income was flat for the quarter. The weighted average yield at cost on our corporate lending portfolio was 8% at the end of June, up from 7.7% at the end of March.
The increase in the yield was primarily due to higher base rates as the weighted average spread on the portfolio remained at 611 basis points. Net expenses for the quarter totaled $29.9 million, up $2.1 million quarter over quarter, primarily due to higher interest expense related to our credit facility, which bears a floating interest rate. As a reminder, AINV's incentive fee on income includes a total return hurdle with a rolling twelve-month look-back. Given the net loss of $17.8 million for the quarter, incentive fees totaled $1.4 million, up slightly from last quarter. Net investment income here was $0.37. During the quarter, we recorded a net loss of $17.8 million or $0.20 per share our portfolio.
The vast majority of our corporate lending portfolio is valued using a yield approach. Changes in market spreads are incorporated into the quarterly valuation of our investments in addition to other factors. On page 16 in the earnings supplement, we disclosed the net gain or loss over the past five quarters. NAV per share at the end of June was $15.05, a $0.07 decrease quarter-over-quarter. The decrease primarily attributed to the net loss on the portfolio, partially offset by $0.01 from an income realization. We were pleased that Kroll affirmed our investment in July. Our liquidity position remained strong with undrawn revolving capacity well in excess of unfunded commitments to borrowers. Consistent with our historical cadence, back to amend our revolving credit facility and. We are well positioned to benefit from rising interest rates.
Based on quarter-end rates, we estimate that 100 basis points and a 200 basis point increase in reference rate will result in annual incremental earnings of approximately $0.02 and $0.25 respectively. Regarding stock, during the quarter, we purchased actually $1.6 million of stock, which leaves $29.2 million of available authorization for future repurchases. That concludes our remarks, operator. Please open the call.
Certainly. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your touch-tone phone. You may withdraw your question at any time by pressing the pound key. Once again, to ask a question that is star and one. We will take our first question from Kenneth Lee with RBC Capital Markets. And, your line is open.
Hi, good morning, and thank you for taking my question. In terms of the announcement on the strategic as well as a potentially shifting investment strategy, what are your expectations for future ROE or expected targeted returns based on the new senior secured loan investments? Thanks.
First I'd say like it's not really a shifted investment strategy. It's really sort of a demarcation point where we think the investment strategy is sort of really the story going forward as we exit out of non-core and sort of we're moving away from Merx. The investment is the same. It's just there's a broader set of loans that may meet our criteria. The ROE, I would say, if you just took an apples to apples approach and said, the fees and everything else stays neutral, you'd have an increased ROE of like 2%.
If you assume some, you know, reduction in yield and some reduction in leverage from where we were now, you're talking about an increase of the ROE from, you know, the low 8s to the low 9s. You know, 10% increase in ROE. Sort of like as a base case. Obviously, there's moving parts right now including, you know, rising interest rates which should raise everything but just apples to apples basis, it should be around a 10% increase of the ROE.
Gotcha. Very helpful there. One follow-up, if I may. You talked about having some visibility in your pay downs. Just wondering if you could just give a little details behind that. Thanks.
Yeah, I think you know Kenneth thanks for the question. I would point to the guidance we gave in terms of the you know approximately 1.45 leverage. We had a number of things slip. Also as we alluded to knowledge of the strategic investment aligning equity investment being made. You know we're a little bit higher at the end of the quarter. Use that 1.45 as guidance there.
Great. Very helpful. Thanks again.
Our next question from Kyle Joseph with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hey. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. A lot going on, so apologies if I ask anything you guys covered. Just but focusing on repayment activity, obviously that came down, impacted fee income. Can you give us a sense for and I know you talked about near term repayments there, but just for the kind of the remainder of the year, you know, is that really a function of rates or volatility, recognizing those go hand in hand? Would you expect repayment activity to be kind of muted given the macro backdrop going forward?
Yes. I think you said it at the end there, Kyle, objectively M&A volume activity is down. That, you know, certainly affects us in terms of level repayments. All things being equal, would expect more muted activity in the back half of the year, absent some, you know, some of the prepayments that we alluded to in our prepared remarks.
Got it. Obviously credit remains sound right now. You know, what's the outlook here in terms of, you know, with inflation, how are companies adapting to rising rates? Kind of what are expectations for credit performance and then more broadly into 2023?
Sure. As we endeavor to do in every quarter, you know, we look at our overall portfolios, both at MFIC and MidCap more broadly. In the past quarter, when we take a composite of the, you know, roughly 90 companies that we have in our leveraged loan book, it was showing us low single-digit revenue growth and kind of mid-single-digit EBITDA growth, indicating you know, what we saw in the last quarter as well. You know, supply chain challenges and labor costs and resin costs going up have affected our companies. You know, we would note in a lot of cases there's a lag to recover.
Also the data, Kyle, as you know, you know, relates more to the March quarter. We expect, you know, those challenges to continue. That said, in aggregate, you know, do feel, you know, in terms of our underwriting, our detachment on where we're financing these companies and the equity cushion that we have and the, you know, from the sponsor behind us, that, you know, that credit will hold up and that, you know, we've graded the credit risk at a good place to weather any continued or, more pronounced volatility going.
Got it. Thanks very much for answering my questions.
We'll take our next question from Melissa Wedel with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Appreciate you taking my questions today. A few of them have already been asked, but I was hoping that we could walk through more perhaps on how thinking about leverage in the context of an increasing shift to, you know, the first lien strategy might have a bit of a lower yield. It sounds like you're not changing your target range on leverage. I'm wondering if, I guess, one, is that the case? Two, is there any shift in your thinking around where you'd like to run within that range in the current environment and more alignment with the MidCap strategy?
Yeah, look, I mean, a couple things, like the, you know, our leverage, as we talked about sort of, I think, on, you know, repeatedly over the last few years, we felt like was a, you know, not particularly, you know, as aggressive as perceived, sort of like the first lien focus of our book and the attachment point. Obviously we're, you know, we expect it to even go further in that direction given our cost of capital. That said, I think, you know, feedback we've gotten from all the constituencies is that that is not, you know, is sort of not a complete agreement with that.
I think, you know, whether we're moving our range or not, you know, I would say either you can look at it as moving our range down some or expecting to operate like in the 1.35%-1.5% range as opposed to what we articulated before as 1.4%-1.6%. You know, our expectation is to operate around that 1.4-1.45% range, which is as Tanner said before. I would say that we are, you know, leaning towards lower, even though the profile of our book will get more conservative. You know, look, we've made a lot of changes here with a goal towards this being, you know, a hopefully a relatively unique investment for individual investors available amongst BDCs.
One of the keys to that obviously is to have a you know a structure that all the constituencies feel really strongly about. We're focused on all parts of that. The reduction in the fees gives us a lot of room to be able to do that.
Yeah. The other point of emphasis there would be that, you know, with our new cost structure, which is on our management fees on equity, you know, we think that also enhances the alignment. Howard's points about, you know, taking the feedback from all constituencies are well understood and then also go to our thinking as we approach leverage going forward.
Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you. I guess as a follow-up, it would be helpful to understand if there's any real change in the way that your team will interact or engage with the MidCap folks. Could we dig a little bit deeper there? Is this just additionally leveraging more opportunities from that platform, or are there some sort of inside baseball changes in terms of the team vetting, selection, things like that?
No. No inside baseball changes to the way things will operate. Just to sort of understand, you know, it operates. Apollo is the manager of MidCap and is the, you know, the manager of MFIC. I am the primary portfolio manager for MidCap and have been, you know, since really sort of it's, you know, since inception. Tanner is effectively the primary portfolio manager for AINV or MFIC and will continue to be. Obviously, like, Ted will take a larger, broader role, but he's already had a pretty important and broad role before. The only inside baseball sort of there is Tanner moved to Bethesda about 18 months ago.
His day-to-day connection to everything we do at MidCap has been more since then, but that has nothing to do with these changes.
Thanks, Howard.
We'll go next to Ryan Lynch with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning. First question I had was, you know, I'd just love to hear, because I know you worked closely with MidCap in the past. I would just love to hear kind of a ballpark of what percentage of deals historically AINV could participate in kind of the MidCap deal flow, because I knew there were some lower flows that wouldn't necessarily fit into AINV. What sort of deal flow percentage, rough ballpark could you guys participate in historically with MidCap? Then with the new structure, what sort of change expect from more access to deals from MidCap?
Well, generally overall, like, MidCap originates through a variety of assets, some which are, you know, don't fit BDC mandate anyway, like real estate. You know, a percentage of the overall MidCap deals. Let me just sort of narrow the field a little bit and say the percentage of deals related to, you know, the product, which is a lot of products that originates that fit. Let's say loans like asset-based lending, you know, and effectively, you know, there's in the ballpark of 100 or 120 deals a year that close in those categories.
We can slice it in a bunch of about double the amount of deals available in those categories that are sort of now available. Really almost everything MidCap does in those categories, all the ones that don't end up being sort of relevant are the smaller ones. Because there's some asset-based loans that are too cheap, but for the most part, just smaller deals. Once they're divided up, the allocations based on sort of the size of the, you know, the relative balance sheet is small, that it doesn't make sense from like a cost valuation, all that perspective. It's the vast majority of what MidCap does in those categories.
Okay, that's helpful. Then what are you thinking in terms of, I don't know if the best way to think about it is yield or spread, because obviously, you know, the rate has been accelerating higher. Is there a meaningful change of what you guys are expecting or willing to put on the books, you know, going forward or when this new fee structure goes into effect from a spread standpoint versus what you've done historically? Because obviously more flexibility, from a spread or on new loans, than we have done historically. I'd just love to hear if there's what sort of changes we should expect from that standpoint.
As we started first penciling this out, I guess what I would say is, and I'll caveat this afterwards is that, you know, having the overall spread book go down about 35 basis points would have, meaning like from 610 to 575 or something like that, would have basically split the difference between the shareholders and the lower spread. That seemed to make sense. That's average spread on the portfolio. That said, we don't expect that to happen right now because spreads are widening a lot, you know. Forget it. Forget the base rate going up. That's a separate issue. That's our widening.
If we go into a recession or even like a contraction, we would expect rates to continue to be higher, especially because there'll be more asset-based loans with higher yields. We'll have an opportunity to grow that category. You know, I think right now what we would say is we expect spreads to stay pretty stable, meaning, you know, the increase in spreads in the market will be offset by our reduction in yield. But we've originally been comfortable with about, you know, thinking that the book would sort of average down, you know, 25-35 basis points.
It could have went down 25-35 basis points, but just where spreads are going, that probably won't happen in the near term.
Right.
Just lastly, and it doesn't sound like this changes much, but I'd love to hear maybe MidCap's position. Obviously, you know, the middle market has been, you know, a really growing space, you know, we've been participating in that marketplace. You know, obviously, you know, broader, as Apollo Debt Solutions, which, you know, participates in that area a lot. Does this change, you know, the ease of your willingness to participate in that upper middle market space and co-invest with like, you know, Apollo Debt Solutions? Or is that something that we don't expect to change? Is that something that MidCap, you know, is not really interested in?
No, I don't think you'll see a change. I mean, I think there is overlap, synergy, something, whatever you want to call it in yields between $50-$125 million of cash flow. You know, the origination, the sponsor channel is combined between sort of Apollo's focus on the very largest sponsors and sort of the MidCap team on almost all the rest of the sponsors. You know, the execution in the middle of those ranges, depending on sponsors, you know, there can be shared underwriting. There's certainly the option for each BDC to participate in the deals that you know that the others might do.
For example, at ADS, you know, if there is a company with $70 million of EBITDA, and the deal is 5x, so it's a $350 million deal, and that's being done by MidCap and AINV and a bunch of our managed accounts, there's a very good chance ADS will be part of that. By the same token, we have a strong relationship with, especially if it came through our channel and it's got $100 million six times, I don't know, say a hundred, $750 million deal, that, you know, is more core to ADS strategy. We could potentially do a portion of that at AINV as well. But we will, you know, we will tend not to, not for any reason other than it's not sort of core strategy.
Last, I'll say there are always loans, we have many that grow, that are MidCap and AINV and then grow to the size, get bigger and refi, they always can grow with the company as well because those are sort of profitable and sort of generally, you know the credit. Nothing has changed. There is, you know, communication and sort of overlap, the programs overlap. For the most part they'll be separate. I think you'll see I'm totally making this up as a rule, but 10% overlap of assets.
Okay. All right. I appreciate you taking my questions and also very much appreciate the reduced fees and the overall just better alignment, you know, with shareholders to execute the strategy. Thanks.
Next question, Robert Dodd with Raymond James. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, thanks and good morning. Ryan just asked the vast bulk of my question. I do have another one. The supplemental dividend program that you did, obviously you did the base dividend this quarter. Looking at expanding our LOI, you're already covering the base dividend. I think you're gonna have excess. Can you give us any color? Obviously, no supplemental declared this quarter. The 32 is appropriate at this new fee structure until January. You know, any color on what the plan would be with any excess earnings of the dividend under the new fee structures you had kind of previously, the supplemental program. Is that likely to be reinstated or any color there?
Yeah. You know, previously we had said we will declare supplemental, you know, pretty much equal to the amount above our base dividend each quarter. You know, with these changes as well as the interest rate changes, we have significant both, you know, to over dividend, and really over time. I think over time, we, you know, as Merx's plays through and these changes go through, we have the ability and to raise dividend over time, and that's our goal to continually do that. We also think there will be substantial dividends.
Whether they're declared, you know, once a year and paid over four quarters or declared over each quarter will sort of, you know, depend on both our, you know, where our spillover is, of which we have a substantial amount right now, and you know, where the earnings were. The answer really is yes, we expect there to be meaningful supplemental dividends paid, because there's, you know, we're covering. We're not gonna pay the excise taxes. We're gonna distribute to stay in, you know, to stay in compliance. You're right, there's quite a bit of room. We just effectively what we did is we raised the base dividend, and we got rid of sort of the, you know, our standing promise that we will distribute at least $0.05 of supplemental each quarter.
If you look at our earnings power, we have substantially more than that once the fee changes kick in.
Got it. Thank you. Thank you.
Once again, as a reminder to ask a question today, that is star and one. We'll go next to Derek Hewett with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Congratulations on the promotions and the enhanced shareholder alignment. My question revolves around credit. So based on the forward curve and kind of given the comments on the overall, and I think you had mentioned the MidCap portfolio EBITDA growth, could you comment on interest coverage and how high benchmark rates would need to rise before debt service coverage or interest coverage would trend closer to 1x versus the 2.8x today?
Yeah, sure. I might need to follow up with the specifics, but as we said in our prepared remarks, we're at 2.8 times. That test when we run through our portfolio companies, we're actually using actual interest expense historically. As you probably know, the LIBOR contracts at, you know, kind of especially in a rising rate environment like we've seen, you know, they're set in advance of the particular period. You know, right now we're at 2.8 times, and that reflects, you know, kind of, you know, probably on average three months ago LIBOR, which was as opposed to the 2.8 that we see today.
Something more like, you know, sub two or kinda in the mid ones. You have to be, you know, in excess of 100 basis points, but we can do that math and revert. A lot of cushion there, which is the good news. One of the aspects of our more stretched senior strategy on the MidCap side is that on average, you know, we are deploying into lower levered enterprises and thus, you know, better equipped to deal with the increase in interest rates.
Okay. Thank you for that. Then just in terms of, I might have missed this earlier, but in terms of portfolio, the BDC portfolio overlap, excluding Merx's, what portion of the BDC portfolio is also kind of co-invested with MidCap?
Yeah. 90, 97%. 98%.
Okay. Got it.
Darn near 100. Yep.
Okay, great. Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Finian O'Shea with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. First, a follow on this earlier question. I think you said, there's no changes on the inside. Can you bridge us to this sort of material concession that MidCap has made by investing at NAV? I think there are third party investors there, right? How do they look at it? Any color you could provide there?
Sure. I mean, MidCap has, you know, an economic relationship with Apollo as its manager. As part of that aligning investment, you know, we take into account the overall economic relationship with Apollo.
Which is sort of adjusted all the time. As an example, you know, we have taken great pains to ensure that all origination that's done anywhere to Apollo, including MidCap, AINV or, you know, MFIC now gets full economics on those deals, despite the fact that there have been, you know, other BDCs that have kept profits at the manager. The way that has been trued up before is that Apollo has paid for some of that origination, you know, paid MidCap as the manager, right? It's like something that would be irrelevant effectively to the AINV shareholders other than they're getting full economics. You know, we are, you know, the sort of strategic and economics relationship with MidCap and Apollo are sort of broad and complicated.
What this is an important strategic investment for MidCap because the growth of AINV is really important to growing MidCap's footprint and Apollo's footprint across the whole middle market. Our goal is really for AINV to grow. It's sort of like it makes sense strategically, but there's also lots of economics that are unrelated to, you know, this investment between the two parties.
Great. That's really helpful. Just expanding on somewhat there, I was gonna ask about future growth potential and in the event this and future better performance might drive you above net asset value. Can you talk about what your, you know, capital formation or raising plans would look like? There are a lot of models out there on periodic secondaries, on private to public. Some keep their shareholder bases very just sort of where you would fall on the spectrum. Any sort of initial thoughts?
I mean, I think, you know, we think the opportunity to invest in assets of this quality is much larger than AINV's capital base right now. We think that there is opportunity for people to, you know, drive good returns for the capital that would invest at NAV or well, you know, well above NAV. Meaning we're confident in our dividend and, you know, ability to sort of, you know, cover that well and grow it and pay supplementals as we've talked about before. You know, obviously we're also conscious though of our current shareholders being able to sort of, you know, drive upside for them as well.
The interesting thing is for us, those things don't conflict right now, and that's because, you know, we still have a little bit of a drag on our earnings, you know, sort of some old assets that are still not generating income. Raising money at NAV or above NAV spreads that out over a broader base and is accretive in and of itself, even to the existing shareholders. The answer is we would expect to, you know, grow our capital if we traded, you know, enough above NAV to sort of, you know, to support that because we just think that, you know, the opportunity is there. As you can see from the amount of origination coming through MidCap and now the amount that they raised.
Sure. Very helpful. Thanks for taking the questions and appreciate all the progressive moves you all made.
Our last question will come from Devdutt Sinha from Reddea r Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the questions and congrats on the overall positioning reset. Two questions. First on leverage and second kind of following up on that broadly within the Apollo ecosystem and growth goals. Is 1.35-1.5 versus 1.4-1.6 really just splitting hairs given, you know, how MidCap levers its own loan portfolio at a very different sort of level. And one could argue maybe something at 1.75 to closer to two would be even comfortable given where the loan book is heading.
Second, given the dependency you mentioned on trading above NAV to raise equity capital, the best vehicle to give access to middle loans to third-party investors, given ADS has I think around $2 billion within six months in the non-traded retail channel. How do you work around that limitation of always trading at NAV to grow and align with doubling the uncertain for Apollo?
The first question with regard to leverage is that, you know, our discussion with regard to risk related to leverage is that 1.5 times, 1.6 times, 1.4, it is all splitting hairs. It's all based on within the triple A or double A of the CLOs of this pool of loans if we CLO it. Right, and MidCap is leveraged higher. From a risk perspective, we always felt like, you know, that's very safe. The issue is we can't lever, you know, more than 2 times under the BDC rules. In fact, you have to have enough headroom because you can't control how sort of markets move and things get marked.
That's why we're talking about outside constituencies like the rating agencies and the analyst investors are comfortable with, you know, with more room. From that perspective isn't splitting because our discussion is fine. We get that. We agree there has to be headroom. We believe we have less volatile assets, and we've also taken great pains to have a very diversified portfolio. Of like the concentration risk of those type of marks. We can be at the high end of range that people are comfortable with for BDCs. You know, moving that range down, I think is meaningful 'cause it shows that like we're, you know, we want to be at the point where everybody's comfortable. That's the first answer.
With regard to it being the best vehicle, you know, there's pros and cons of every vehicle. You know, private BDCs are, you know, have liquidity but less liquidity. You know, they raise money at the NAV as it's marked at each quarter with fees. You know, they have different fee structures, which are better in some ways and not better in others. This is, I would say, you know, it's a reflection of Apollo overall, you know, this theme of democratization of finance and making the assets available as broadly as possible. These changes make this a investment, I think, for individual investors who want access to these type of assets.
Given the pros and cons, you know, the daily liquidity, you know, it gives people another option, which is actually fairly good. You know, 'cause you're compared to the BDCs, but if you compare it to investing in MidCap individually and invest in MidCap, period. You know, individuals actually can't then sort of, you know, either commingle the risk to take those assets. You know, you need assets that need to be institutional. The ability to get these assets at these fees is not terribly dissimilar to the fees that institutions are paying in those different structures. I, you know, think it actually is pretty meaningful, and I think if you looked at Apollo overall and said, "What's Apollo's focus over the next five to 10 years?" It's to grow assets and grow assets.
Obviously, all these asset managers wanna grow assets, but grow assets in a way that, you know, allows one set of people to access them. This is a really sort of, you know, good way, we think. Hopefully that answers the question.
Yeah, perfect. Thank you so much, and thanks for the good work as the CEO over the years.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll turn it back over to the management for any closing remarks.
Thanks. Thank you, everybody, for listening to today's call. On behalf of the team, thank you for your time today. Feel free to reach out, if you have any questions. Have a good day.
Thank you. This does conclude today's program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect.