Good morning, welcome to the Sixth Street Specialty Lending, Inc. fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31st, 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded on Friday, February 17th, 2023. I will now turn the call over to Ms. Cami VanHorn, Head of Investor Relations.
Thank you. Before we begin today's call, I would like to remind our listeners that remarks made during the call may contain forward-looking statements. Statements other than statements of historical facts made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements and 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 from time to time in Sixth Street Specialty Lending Inc.'s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Yesterday, after the market closed, we issued our earnings press release for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31st, 2022, and posted a presentation to the Investor Resources section of our website, www.sixthstreetspecialtylending.com.
The presentation should be reviewed in conjunction with our Form 10-K filed yesterday with the SEC. Sixth Street Specialty Lending Inc's earnings release is also available on our website under the Investor Resources section. Unless noted otherwise, all performance figures mentioned in today's prepared remarks are as of and for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31st, 2022. As a reminder, this call is being recorded for replay purposes. I will now turn the call over to Joshua Easterly, Chief Executive Officer of Sixth Street Specialty Lending.
Thanks, Cami. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With us today is my partner and our President, Robert Stanley, and our CFO, Ian Simonson. For our call today, I will review our full year and fourth quarter highlights and pass it over to Bo to discuss our originations, activity, and portfolio metrics. Ian will review our financial performance in more detail, and I will conclude with final remarks before opening the call to Q&A. After the market closed yesterday, we reported fourth quarter adjusted net investment income of $0.64 per share or an annualized return on equity of 15.5%, an adjusted net income of $0.56 per share or an annualized return on equity of 13.6%.
As presented in our financial statements, our Q4 net investment income and net income per share, inclusive of the unwind of the non-cash accrued capital gains incentive fee expense, were both $0.01 per share higher at $0.65 and $0.57, respectively. For the full year 2022, we generated net investment income per share of $2.01 or return on equity of 12% and a full year adjusted net income per share of $1.27 or return on equity of 7.6%. The difference between net investment income and net income for the year was driven overwhelmingly by unrealized losses as we incorporated the impact of wider credit market spreads on the valuation of our portfolio. The impact of increased risk premiums was presented throughout nearly every asset class in 2022.
During the calendar year, LCD first and second lien spreads widened by 135 and 686 basis points, respectively. There has been a lot of talk about the lack of volatility in private asset marks. In this regard, we agree with Cliff Asness's description of this as volatility laundering. As we said in the past, for the reasons we outlined in our previous public shareholder letter, we believe that using inputs from the market is not only critical but required in determining fair value of assets. Of the $0.75 per share difference between our net investment income and net income results for 2022, the majority were 40% or 57%, was related to unrealized losses from credit spread movements alone that we expect to recover over time as credit spreads tighten or investments are paid off.
Twenty percent was driven predominantly from the decline in equity valuations. The remaining difference between net investment income and net income is primarily related to, one, the unwind on our interest rate swaps that are not subject to hedge accounting, and two, the reversal of unrealized gains that flow through net investment income upon realization. The overall health of our portfolio remains strong, with no changes in non-accruals from the last quarter. For the third consecutive quarter, our board has increased our quarterly base dividend, raising this figure by $0.01 per share to $0.46 per share to shareholders of record as of March 15th and payable on March 31st. Year-over-year, we've increased our base dividend by 12.2%.
We are also pleased to share that our board declared a supplemental dividend of $0.09 per share related to our Q4 earnings to shareholders of record as of February 28th, payable on March 20th. In the near term, we expect that net investment income will exceed our newly established base dividend level due to our increased earnings power. We determined $0.46 per share to be an appropriate level based on looking at the forward interest rate curve through 2025, which is subject to changes in the market. 2022 was a year characterized by spread income as a driver of earnings given repayment activity slowed in the wake of increased market volatility.
Portfolio turnover, which is calculated as total repayments over total assets at the beginning of the year, was 26% in 2022, compared to 43% and 41% in 2021 and 2020 respectively. The wider spread environment naturally caused a slowdown in repayment activity. Fee generating income represented a smaller portion of our total investment income for the year relative to historical trends. We generated a return on assets calculated as total investment income divided by average assets of 11.6% for 2022, compared to 11.3% in 2021, which was a year defined by record level of repayment activities. This further highlights the positive impact on the rise in reference rates in driving incremental returns for our shareholders.
Our year-end net asset value per share, adjusted for the impact of the supplemental dividend that was declared yesterday, is $16.39, and we estimate that our spillover income per share is approximately $0.77. We would like to reiterate that our supplemental dividend policy is motivated by, 1, risk distribution requirements, 2, not burdening our returns with excess friction costs incurred through excise tax, and 3, the goal of steadily building net asset value per share over time. Before passing it to Robert, I'll spend a moment on how we're thinking about the broader macroeconomic environment. Big picture, we're cautious. When we think about our portfolio, we are constructive on how we are positioned for the road ahead.
The US economy faces a number of headwinds in 2020 and 2023 that are largely the result of inflation and the resulting shifts in monetary policy in 2022. The restrictive monetary environment will surely have an impact on growth. The idea of a near-term Fed pivot remains challenging until job growth slows and the consumer weakens. In summary, it feels like we're living in a transitionary period with restrictive Fed policy that will continue to dampen growth until we see an increase in unemployment and further demand disruption. A broad-based slowdown in the economy, coupled with the current rate environment, will cause some stress for borrowers. This highlights the importance of why we are focused on business models with high variable cost structures and with those that have pricing power.
82% of our portfolio by fair value was comprised of software and business services companies at quarter end, and are generally characterized by high levels of recurring revenue, predictable cash flows, variable cost structures, and pricing power. Our portfolio has shown resiliency to date, and we believe the underlying business models of our borrowers are robust and durable. However, we believe economic cycles do exist. As such, we will continue to focus on staying on top of the capital structure and operate in the middle of our target leverage range. With that, I'll pass it over to Robert to discuss this quarter's investment activity.
Thanks, Josh. I'd like to start by landing on some additional thoughts on the direct lending environment, and then more specifically, how it relates to the positioning of our portfolio, and the way we're thinking about current opportunities in the market. 2022 was a year that underscored the value proposition of private credit for borrowers. New issued leverage loan volume reached a 12-year low and was down 63% from 2021 as public credit markets were largely unavailable. As a result, private credit providers stepped in as the main source of financing solutions, given the ability to provide speed and certainty of execution despite instability in the broader markets. One of the main themes over the last few quarters has been the growing market share of direct lenders in the large syndicated sponsor financings.
Direct lenders with the ability to write sizable checks are benefiting from the opportunity to participate in larger transactions, which otherwise would have been financed in the broadly syndicated loan market. Notably, these investment opportunities present attractive risk-reward dynamics as deal terms have moved in a more lender-friendly direction, indicated by wider spreads, tighter documents, and lower leverage. We believe this shift in the underwriting terms reflects the appropriate compensation to lenders given the uncertain environment we're investing in today. We are well-positioned to take advantage of this opportunity in the market, given our ability to invest alongside affiliated Sixth Street funds. As capital has generally become more constrained, the power of the Sixth Street platform has allowed us to finance larger, more established companies while remaining selective.
We believe this creates a competitive advantage in today's investing environment as the number of direct lenders willing and able to participate in larger transactions is limited. In addition to the strong originations activity supporting this opportunity in the market in Q4, we have a robust pipeline for the first half of 2023, including several large financings that have already been publicly announced. As we have the ability to co-invest with Sixth Street affiliated funds on these transactions, we have flexibility to determine the optimal final hold sizes for our balance sheet. Turning now to our investment activity for the quarter. Q4 was productive with total commitments of $241 million and total fundings of $212 million across seven new portfolio companies, and upsizes to five existing investments.
We experienced $282 million of repayments from 7 full and 3 partial investment realizations. The increase in repayment activity was largely driven by idiosyncratic payoffs of our two largest investments by fair value as of 9/30 that we discussed on our last earnings call, Biohaven and then Frontline, which represented 58% of repayments for the quarter. For the full year of 2022, we provided $1.1 billion of commitments and closed $864 million of fundings. Total repayments were $654 million for the year, resulting in net portfolio growth of $210 million. Year-over-year, our portfolio grew by 11%, which reflects our deliberate effort to grow responsibly.
We were able to remain selective in the investments that we make, given the size of our capital base does not require us to be asset gatherers, but rather bottoms-up fundamental investors and focus on driving return on capital for our investors. 82% of total commitments this year were sponsored transactions within our specialized sector sub-teams. We continue to execute on our software and business services teams where we believe we have a competitive advantage and where the underlying companies have attractive revenue characteristics, high-quality customer bases, and robust business models. At December 31st, our top industry exposure by fair value was to business services at 14.4%. We'd like to take a moment to provide an update on one of our retail ABL investments that has recently been in the press, Bed Bath & Beyond.
As mentioned during our Q3 2022 earnings call, we had agented a FILO term loan commitment in September of 2022 to support the operational turnaround by the company and provide additional liquidity. As a result of this transaction, we hold a $55 million par amount commitment as of 12/31 of the FILO term loan, which represents less than 2% of our total assets as of year-end. On February 6, the company announced it was raising up to $1.025 billion of new equity capital through a public offering. This offering allows the company to avoid bankruptcy filing in the near term, which is a positive for all the company's stakeholders, including employees. Along with the capital raise, Sixth Street made an additional investment in a more senior position in the capital structure.
Our position, which is already underwritten to liquidation value, is improved as a result of the new capital raise and our more senior position in the capital structure. Obviously, this remains an ongoing situation, but at this moment, we feel good about our security. Our retail ABL capabilities have been a distinguishing feature of our investment strategy since we began the company back in 2011. We have executed over 25 transactions and invested over $1 billion of capital through TSLX. On these investments, we have taken 9 through the bankruptcy process without any losses. From a performance perspective, gross unlevered return on fully realized retail ABL investments is 20.8% as of 12/31. We have a core competency in managing these types of investments, and we look to continue to execute on this strategy through the same playbook we established years ago.
Moving on to the repayment side, one realization that we'd like to highlight is our investment in TherapeuticsMD, which demonstrates the positive impact of proactive asset management for our shareholders. Since our initial investment in 2019, the company faced multiple challenges, including impacts from COVID-19, resulting in underperformance relative to expectations. As the situation evolved, Sixth Street worked with the company's advisors toward a path to exit, including multiple amendments and a large partial paydown prior to our exit. In December 2022, Sixth Street's debt was fully repaid when the company licensed full commercial rights of its products. TSMD will continue to be a public company receiving milestone payments and 20 years of royalties on sales.
Through active portfolio management and extensive experience in the healthcare space, TSLX generated approximately 15.5% IRR and 1.4x MOM on the investment with a beneficial outcome for both parties. From a portfolio yield perspective, our weighted average yield on debt and income-producing securities at amortized cost increased to 13.4% from 12.2% quarter-over-quarter. The increase primarily reflects a rise in the weighted average reference rate reset of 115 basis points over the quarter. The weighted average yield at amortized cost on new investments, including upsizes for Q4, was 12.6% compared to a yield of 11.9% on exited investments. Looking at the year-over-year trends, our weighted average yield on debt and income-producing securities at amortized cost is up about 320 basis points from a year ago.
The significant increase in our yields in 2022 illustrates the positive asset sensitivity for our business from increased base rates beyond our floors, in addition to our selective origination approach across themes and sectors. Moving on to the portfolio composition and credit stats. Across our core borrowers for whom these metrics are relevant, we continue to have conservative weighted average attached and detached points of 0.9x and 4.5x respectively, and weighted average interest coverage decreased from 2.6x to 2.2x. The decrease in interest coverage is in line with our expectations from the impact of rising rates on the cost of funds for our borrowers. Our interest coverage metric assumes we apply reference rates as at the end of the year to the run rate borrower EBITDA.
We believe this is a better representation of our position of our borrowers as opposed to a look-back metric such as LTM. One additional nuance we'd like to highlight on interest coverage relates to the positioning of our portfolio towards software and business services. These businesses generally see more limited fixed charge requirements such as capital expenditures. Other more capital-intensive industries experience higher fixed charges in addition to financing costs, meaning interest coverage metrics likely understate fixed obligations of those businesses. As of Q4 2022, the weighted average revenue and EBITDA of our core portfolio companies was $152 million and $46 million respectively, representing an increase in both metrics from Q3.
Finally, the performance rating of our portfolio continues to be strong with a weighted average rating of 1.12 on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the strongest, representing no change from last quarter's ratings. We continue to have minimal non-accruals, with only one portfolio company on non-accrual representing less than 0.01% of the portfolio at fair value, and no new names added to non-accrual during Q4. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Ian to cover our financial performance in more detail.
Thank you, Robert. We finished the year with a strong quarter from an earnings and investment activity perspective. In Q4, we generated net investment income per share of $0.65, resulting in full year net investment income per share of $2.13. Our Q4 net income per share was $0.57, resulting in full year net income per share of $1.38. There was an $0.11 per share unwind of previously accrued capital gains incentive fees in 2022, which is a non-cash reversal. Excluding the $0.11 per share unwind for this year, our adjusted net investment income and adjusted net income per share for the year were $2.01 and $1.27, respectively.
At year-end, we had total investments of $2.8 billion, total principal debt outstanding of $1.5 billion, and net assets of $1.3 billion or $16.48 per share, which is prior to the impact of the supplemental dividend that was declared yesterday. Our ending debt to equity ratio was 1.13 times, down from 1.16 times in the prior quarter, and our average debt to equity ratio also decreased slightly from 1.15 times to 1.14 times quarter-over-quarter. For full year 2022, our average debt to equity ratio was 1.03 times, up from 1 times in 2021, and well within our previously stated target range of 0.9 times-1.25 times.
Our liquidity position remains robust with $866 million of unfunded revolver capacity at year-end against $178 million of unfunded portfolio company commitments eligible to be drawn. Our year-end funding mix was represented by 53% unsecured debt. Post quarter end, we satisfied the maturity of our $150 million January 2023 unsecured notes through utilization of undrawn capacity on our revolving credit facility. The settlement marginally decreased our weighted average cost of debt and had no impact on leverage. Moving to our presentation materials. Slide 10 contains this quarter's NAV bridge. Walking through the main drivers of NAV growth, we added $0.64 per share from adjusted net investment income against our base dividend of $0.45 per share.
There was $0.11 per share reduction to NAV as we reversed net unrealized gains on the balance sheet related to investment realizations and recognized these gains into this quarter's income. The reversal of unrealized gains this quarter was primarily driven by the early payoff of Biohaven, which resulted in an unwind of $0.12 per share from unrealized gains to net investment income for the quarter. There were minor positive impacts from changes in credit spreads on the valuation of our portfolio and a positive $0.01 per share impact from portfolio company-specific events. Pivoting to our operating results detail on slide 12, we generated a record level of total investment income for the quarter of $100.1 million, up 29% compared to $77.8 million in the prior quarter.
The increase was driven by a rise in the contractual interest income earnings power of the business, as well as other income related to the Biohaven payoffs specifically. Walking through the components of income, interest in dividend income was $85.8 million, up 15% from the prior quarter. Other fees representing prepayment fees and accelerated amortization of upfront fees from unscheduled pay downs were $11 million, up from $429,000 in the prior quarter due to higher portfolio repayment activity. Other income was $3.4 million, up from $2.7 million in the prior quarter. Net expenses, excluding the impact of the non-cash reversal related to unwind of capital gains incentive fees, were $47.5 million, up from $40.3 million in the prior quarter.
This was primarily due to the upward movement in reference rates, which increased our weighted average interest rate on average debt outstanding from 4.3% to 5.6% and higher incentive fees as a result of this quarter's overearning. During 2022, base rates increased by approximately 425 basis points, the impact on earnings became evident in the back half of the year, given the lag in reference rate resets for borrowers.
Given the low financial leverage embedded in BDC, asset sensitivity has a larger impact than liability sensitivity and proved to be a tailwind for our business as we saw increased asset level yields drive return on equity. For a year characterized by spread income, the rise in interest rates and wider spreads resulted in the business exceeding the upper end of our beginning year ROE adjusted net investment income target of 11.5% or $1.92 per share for 2022. Net unrealized losses, largely from the impact of spread widening experienced in Q2 on portfolio marks, had a significant impact on our net income for the year, which we expect to unwind as credit spreads tighten or investments are paid off.
Based on our expectations for our net asset level yields, the movement in reference rates, cost of funds, and financial leverage, we expect to target a return on equity for 2023 of 13%-13.2%. Using our year-end book value per share of $16.39, which is adjusted to include the impact of our Q4 supplemental dividend. This corresponds to a range of $2.13 to $2.17 for full year 2023 adjusted net investment income per share. As we said, we expect to over earn our $1.84 per share annualized base dividend in the near term, and we'll continue to distribute over earnings to shareholders through our supplemental dividend framework. With that, I'd like to turn it back to Josh for concluding remarks.
Thank you, Ian. We believe we are transitioning from an era of easy money to a new macro super cycle that we believe will magnify volatility relative to recent history. With such volatility will come dispersion in returns and will elevate the importance of management's capabilities and skills. The irony is, however, that even in low volatility and low rate environment, return dispersion has already existed. Now we can only expect it to increase. Higher rates for the foreseeable future will most definitely cause stress for certain borrowers, followed by an uptick in defaults from the historical low levels we've experienced more recently. That being said, we anticipate credit issues to be heavily related to borrowers with weaker underlying business models, and we are confident in the durability of our portfolio companies.
We believe our track record of the past 12 years since inception supports our ability to continue to generate industry-leading returns for our shareholders. We have generated an annualized return on equity on net income since our March 2014 IPO of 13.1%. We attribute a large portion of our success that our shareholders have enjoyed to our ability to over earn our cost of capital by avoiding credit losses and appropriately pricing spreads on investments that take into account the cost embedded in operating our business. We remain constructive on the opportunity set ahead of us. We continue to experience elevated all-in yields on our assets, and we expect credit costs to remain low, given our investment selection discipline and the health of our existing portfolio.
We begin the year with significant liquidity and capacity to drive incremental ROEs, and are optimistic about opportunities to enhance our capital structure through the course of the year. With that, thank you for your time today. Operator, please open the line for questions.
Thank you. If you have a question at this time, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. One moment while we compile our Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Mark Hughes with Truist. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, Mark.
Mark, your phone might be on mute.
Yes, my phone was on mute. I'm so sorry. Good morning.
Morning, Mark.
Yeah, my question was, how are you thinking about fees, fee revenue in 2023? You've given some good guidance on NII. Just curious what you think the fee environment is going to be like.
Yeah, it's a good question, Mark. It's really hard to tell because it's a function of kind of repayment velocity. But to just give you some numbers, in 2,000, when we think about fees, we think about it in basically, I would say 2 categories, or 3 categories, which is accelerated OID, prepayment fees, and amendment fees and other income. That's historically been, I think in 2022, those fees were, let me do the math, about $0.37 per share. In 2021, those fees were 47, let me do the math real quick. 47, about $0.54, $0.56 per share. In 2023, we actually, in our guidance numbers, they're significantly below those levels, or we anticipate them to be significantly below those levels, that are embedded in our guidance.
In our guidance numbers, they are about $0.22 per share. That's heavily weighted towards, again, another year of spread income. If you see velocity in the book, it's gonna be much, much higher. It's significantly below 22 levels and 21 levels if that's helpful.
Yeah. No, I appreciate the specifics there. Then when you look at the curve, you talked about keeping the base dividend at the, you know, the $0.46, informed by your look out at 2025, how much cushion, just, you know, generally speaking, do you still have over the dividend, you know, over those next couple of years?
Yeah. Significant. Well, I think we just went through the math on 2023, which 2023 has, you know, again, it's mostly spread income. Our per share guidance is, you know.
213.
$2.13-$2.17. The base dividend level is?
$1.84.
$1.84. There's really a lot of cushion. In 2024, similarly, again, we don't really model significant levels. We think about upside in fee income as kind of being upside to our guidance. In 2024, those levels of fee income are basically the same. Again, our base dividend is $1.84. We think, you know, we think we're significantly above that as well. We knew we were going to overearn for the next couple of years, but we didn't want to put ourselves in a position where we would have to cut the dividend. We set the dividend where we knew there was significant cushion the next couple of years, and we were just looking at the curve.
Good perspective. Yeah. Thank you very much.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Finian O'Shea with Wells Fargo. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, everybody. Good morning. A question on the large club deals. It looks like we have one this quarter with Avalara. Not singling in on that name. I don't think those are too typical for you to partake in. Can you talk about the threshold for what makes that kind of deal compelling? Is it company quality or terms as to why you so seldom invest in those? Then on the downside, perhaps, can you talk about the structural elements you do give up? How much less control you might have and so forth? Thank you.
Yeah. First of all, good morning, Fin. hope you're doing well this morning. look, we've talked a lot about this. In the upper middle market, and that large cap space has significantly changed given the environment we're in. pre, you know, 12 months ago, we, you know, it was obviously we thought was competitive and, offered, you know, little relative value, compared to the broadly syndicated market. that's completely changed. Quite frankly, that upmarket we find, that the marginal capital in those deals are able to drive better terms, and you can finance larger companies that are at scale. so, you know, as I think people know, we've been involved in most of those deals, that have been announced, including Emerson, which is, has yet to close, which we've led.
Maxar, which has yet to close, which we've led and other ones. We find there's a lot of value, and that the marginal capital is able to drive pricing and structural enhancements. Obviously, given the macro, you're financing those businesses in an environment where you have a known rate environment and kind of a known growth environment compared to those sources. We like the value that's being offered in that market. The trade-off is that they're clubs, you gotta think that you're with like-minded people and that that document works, and we think it does. Bo, anything to add there?
The only thing I'd add is you had a specific question on what we give up. I think, given that there's a scarcity value of capital, a lot of the terms and document-specific terms have gotten much tighter in these upper middle market deals over the past six months, and frankly, are not all that different from what you're seeing in middle market documents. You have a large margin of safety at low LTVs, a scaled business that's been completely experienced by the BSL market at very attractive risk-adjusted returns in this current environment.
Thanks, Fin.
Sure. That's helpful. Thanks so much.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Mickey Schleien with Ladenburg. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, everyone. Josh, in the fourth quarter, we continue to see middle market loan spreads widen, which is obviously good for your financial performance, assuming the credit quality holds up. It is stressing borrowers, as you mentioned in your remarks, with interest coverage declining to 2.2. I'd like to understand, you know, when we think about those trends, what is your outlook on how private lenders will behave this year in terms of spreads and the amount of leverage they're looking for on deals?
Yeah. Mickey, I think when you look at the LCD first lien, LCD second lien spreads, they actually tightened in Q4 slightly. Year-over-year, they're significantly widened, which we've hit. I just want to frame up, we did not see when you look at unrealized gains and unrealized losses, they were negligible given that you actually had spreads tightened quarter-over-quarter slightly. Look, credit quality is top of mind. It's what's historically driven performance or outperformance or underperformance. It's credit losses for the industry. It's been the biggest piece that drive. You know, when you think about the unit economics of the sector, return on assets, is a point of differentiation.
Fees and expenses are basically all pinned near each other. Financial leverage is pinned near each other. Cost of leverage is pinned near each other. It's really return on assets and credit costs that ultimately drive returns for the sector. That's gonna be a function of the portfolio that were built and that are in place now. We think our portfolio is differentiated and is robust given the nature of those businesses. It, it is in this economic environment where you have slowing growth and higher rates, you are most definitely going to have tails in credit. We have yet to see those in our portfolio, but they are most definitely emerging, most definitely, they're most definitely emerging in the broadly syndicated loan market. It's all about credit.
I don't know if I answered your question.
Appreciate that, Josh. That's it for me this morning.
Thanks, Mickey.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Kevin Fultz with JMP Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, and thank you for taking my question. You know, as Bo mentioned in his prepared remarks, volatility in the public markets and the pullbacks from banks has created an increased opportunity for direct lenders to finance larger deals. I'm just curious what your appetite is to act as a syndication provider to potentially generate additional fee income.
Yeah. Look, when there's an opportunity, surely we'll take advantage of that. You know, we'll surely take advantage of that. That's historically been a relatively low level of attribution of our income. I think over the years, it's been somewhere between, at the high end, you know, if you look back $0.05 since 2013 and the low end 0 and this year $0.01. I mean, there surely will be an opportunity. I wouldn't lean in as a massive driver of outperformance of earnings.
Okay. That's fair. Then last one, you utilized the revolver to repay the 2023 notes. I'm just thinking about the right side of the balance sheet and your funding mix. Do you see additional opportunity to further optimize or diversify your funding profile in this environment? I guess if so, what structure is the most appealing?
Yeah. Look, credit, let me take a step back. I think we've done a really good job of this, which is we've always built into the economics of our business, holding more liquidity than the rest of the space. When you look at revolver size compared to assets or as a metric or availability compared to unfunded commitments, we've always created flexibility, so we were never a forced issuer. When you look at our business model this year, we have a lot of flexibility about when we issue or if we issue in the unsecured market, which quite frankly, we think is the most attractive way to access markets additional capital outside the revolver.
We have the flexibility to do so, given how much liquidity that we hold and that we burden the unit economics for and our shareholders are have paid for. What's really amazing when you take a step back is that we generated outsized return on equity compared to the space while holding more liquidity and paying for that liquidity option than everybody else in the space. I think that gives us a lot of flexibility. It gives us flexibility not to be a forced issuer. It gives us the flexibility in COVID to actually have liquidity to be able to invest in the market, which created outsized return on equity for the following two years.
We will most definitely be opportunistic about how we've built our balance sheet, just we've created a whole bunch of flexibility that we think benefits our shareholders. Ian, anything to add there?
I think the flexibility and being willing to pay for that flexibility just really proved its worth because it's now 3 years ago. We like that model, and we're comfortable with what that cost burdens us with, given the flexibility it affords us.
Okay, that all makes sense. I'll leave it there. Congratulations on a really nice quarter.
Great. Thank you so much.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Kenneth Lee with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. I just wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the asset-backed lending opportunities that you see over the near term and whether you could either be taking a more offensive or defensive stance around such opportunities given the macro backdrop. Thanks.
Yeah, we like that space a lot, the asset-based lending space. If you look at retail specifically, we thought in COVID, there was going to be a significant opportunity. That opportunity went away very quickly. We did a couple of deals in COVID. Then post-COVID, given kind of what happened on the macro level, the consumer is very strong. Consumers only could spend money by buying goods versus services or experiences. In the retail space, that meant that those companies had better earnings and better balance sheets than they ever had. That is changing. The consumer is starting to weaken and the retailers who have goods and services, I mean, who have goods, who sell goods and who have inventory, they have less market share of the consumer's wallet.
We expect that sector to continue weakening, which will provide an opportunity for us to provide capital into that space. We like that. You know, it's asset management intensive. It's, you know, you have to have a core competency in doing it, which we think we do. We think that opportunity set will grow, and we'll continue to allocate capital to it where we find good risk-adjusted returns.
Gotcha. Very helpful there. Just one follow-up, if I may. Within the portfolio, non-accrual rates are still de minimis. Wondering if you could talk a little bit more about what you're seeing in terms of amendment activity in the portfolio. Thanks.
I would say it's picked up slightly, but still really, really benign, compared to COVID. No really significant or material amendments. We are seeing amendments related to SOFR transition, which we think is most definitely positive, from LIBOR. All the new loans are LIBOR or SOFR based. I would say from a credit perspective, it's picked up a little bit, but nothing material, Steven.
Gotcha. Very helpful there. Thanks again.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Erik Zwick with Hovde Group. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. Just a question on the pipeline. It sounds like you've got pretty good visibility for, at least the next six months. Curious if you could provide a little color into the industry mix in the pipeline today and if it's, you know, fairly consistent with the current portfolio, or if there's any industries or sectors that you are, you know, targeting or staying away from today.
Yeah. Look, I would say it's consistent with some outliers. Emerson's an industrials business, which is a little bit of an outlier for us. We like that business a lot. We think Blackstone did a great job in buying that business. I think it's really, really interesting, which we led. We think it's kind of mid-cycle earnings, and the capital structure is built for this time. Maxar also a public to private, take private, is again, slightly in a different businesses. Is a satellite business. We like that business model. We like the visibility of revenues. We like the sponsor a lot. Then, you know, we'll always mix in kind of our, you know, small energy stuff.
Other than that, we're mostly focused on, you know, business services and software. We have pretty good visibility in the pipeline, for the next six months, as you mentioned.
Thanks. I appreciate the detail there. Just one more quick one from me. I'm just curious where floors are today for new commitments. Were you able to put those in?
They are most definitely. Unfortunately, I don't think we've been able to push them up. They're most definitely in the 75-100 basis points. I think 80 basis points, so 75 to 100. I wish we most definitely would be able to push them up, but the market's not there yet.
Thanks for taking my questions today.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes on the line of Melissa Weadelt with JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. A lot of my questions have been asked already, but I thought it would be interesting to touch on just sort of the activity levels in 4-Q. Certainly, we were surprised by net exits during the quarter. Given that you're expecting a few larger exits already that you had talked about during the third quarter call, I'm curious if there was some deal slippage into the first quarter or if that's sort of commentary on how you're seeing the opportunity set right now.
Right. Melissa, I think I totally get the question. I think just so to put most of our exits in Q4, we knew in Q3, and we tried to tell people in our Q3 earnings call, which was Frontline.
Biohaven.
Biohaven. I think there was a couple more, but those were the big drivers of the Q4 exits.
Melissa.
Right.
Prepayment fees and amortization of upfront fees.
Yep. apologies if my question wasn't clear. I guess, what I was looking to explore a little bit more was the level of capital deployment during the quarter, especially since you knew about, some of the larger exits. The fact that, it was a slower fourth quarter for you guys compared to previous years, is that a function of deal slippage into the first quarter?
I got it.
Is that really commentary on the opportunity set?
I got it. It's actually, when you look at our activity levels in Q4, I would say it's very up, it's significantly up. The commitments we made in Q4 are way over historical levels. They happen to be related to mostly take privates that have time periods on that will close in the first half of Q of 2023. The opportunity set was as strong as it's ever been. It just happens to be that they were, you know, they were shaded large cap, take privates, which have a regulatory process for that inventory to be turned into funding. That commitments to be turned into funding.
Got it. Thanks, Josh.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Lynch with KBW. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. I just had one question. You talked about on one hand, kind of big picture, you're cautious given the dynamics of inflation and the shift in monetary policy and how that impacts growth. On the other hand, you talk about your portfolio being mostly in software business with high, high, variable cost structures and pricing power. I'm just curious, you know, as you study your portfolio and monitor it closely in this kind of current, changing dynamic environment, what are some of the key metrics or trends that you guys are monitoring? Is there anything that you guys are seeing thus far, that is sort of a concerning trend?
No. I think revenue growth was like 7% for the quarter. We obviously look at revenue growth on an annualized basis. Revenue growth has most definitely slowed, although it's still positive. We look at things such as growth margin, churn, customer acquisition costs. I would say, on the churn side, flat quarter-over-quarter. We grew on the customer acquisition costs by a little bit. But the portfolio, I think is in pretty good shape. By the way, it people talk about things in averages. It's kind of the wrong way to think about it because you're kind of stuck with the tails. I think when you look at our portfolio and look at the tails, we feel pretty good that there's no significant tails.
Bo, do you have anything to add on that?
The only thing I would add is, you know, we also look at bookings as, you know, as an indicator for future revenue growth. We saw a real demand destruction in Q3. We're closely monitoring Q4 across our portfolio, especially across the business services side. You know, early returns on the bookings, you know, across the portfolio have been actually relatively strong in Q4. There's a question if, you know, that was just a lot of pull-through demand that people were trying to get their budgets spent this year. That was, you know, the early indications are pretty positive on the booking side across the portfolio in Q4.
Okay. That's good to hear. Just on that point, I mean, we've seen, I guess has your software companies, have they started to... I guess if the fundamentals are fine, maybe this is not a concern. Have they started to reduce those fixed charges in their business? We've obviously seen a lot of layoffs happening in the public software companies.
Yeah.
which obviously you know, shows the strength of the business. Has your portfolio company started to make those shifts yet? Or is the business performing well enough that that's not really been an impact?
Yeah. I think in the tails, we have some that are starting to look at their costs, and we like that and encourage that. Look, I think if you think about the environment we were in post-COVID, up until last year in a zero rate environment, everything kind of economically hurdled. You can make the math work for anything. There was a lot of dollars spent and investment made that should have probably not been made across both public and private markets, both on the investment side and inside companies. I think on the margin, you're seeing a little bit of people looking at their cost structure.
Obviously not the levels that you see in big tech, but most definitely, to us that's a sign of good management team.
Folks are trying to get more efficient. We would expect that. The great thing about the business is they have very durable business model.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Gotcha. Okay. That's all for me this morning. I appreciate your time.
Hey, hey, Ryan, just on one topic.
Yeah.
Which I think you did hit on a little bit, which is, I think this. We talked about it in our read script, but I think the space gets. I think people get wrong, which is software businesses might have higher financial leverage, but they have less fixed charges given no CapEx spend. You kind of have to look at leverage in a EBIT basis or an EBITDA minus CapEx basis or operating cash flow minus CapEx. When you look at that metric. I think those businesses have, you know, or, you know, on a leverage basis are in line or less than, you know, like the industrial space or specialty chemicals, et cetera. I think you have to burden cash flow by all fixed charges, just not fixed charges related to financial leverage.
Mm-hmm. Gotcha. No, I understand the point. I appreciate the time today.
Thank you.
Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Dodd with Raymond James. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. I've got 2 questions, if I can. The first one goes back to the guidance and kind of follow-up to Mark Hughes in your answer to that. I mean, so the guidance embeds $0.22. I mean, if I look back, the lowest full quarter period you guys have ever had was $0.35, which that's still 50% higher than the 22. You've only had 2 quarters in your history of less than $0.05, right? So, you know, is it that you're being extremely conservative or is your view that there's a high risk that 2023 the market in 2023 is even more disrupted than it was in 2022, in which case very low activity levels would make sense.
You know, is it, is it a market view that's informing on that, or is it just being very conservative?
Yeah. It's a good question. I think you've asked this question last year, a similar question maybe last year.
Maybe.
Look, we don't model activity. We don't really model activity level. We've never sorted that. We've updated guidance throughout the year based on activity level, but we've never modeled it at the beginning of the year. It's just too hard. It's based on credit spreads, effectively based on credit spreads or some, you know, idiosyncratic things that happen in our portfolio. If those are known, we most definitely model them. Given that none of those are known and we don't model directional credit spreads that drive portfolio churn, we've just never historically modeled it. It's not modeled really this year as well.
I think, you know, when you look at activity levels such as OID and prepayment fees, I think the assumption is we use, you know, kind of 2-3-year portfolio turnover on an individual basis, which drives some level of those fees. In a tightening market spread environment, average portfolio life will be much lower or activity level will be much higher. We just don't model it. I don't think it's a market view. I think it's just, you know, how we build our models that we leave room, you know, that's the upside in the model, because it's very difficult to model.
I appreciate that. I really appreciate that comment. It's not really a market view. It's a more important thing. Second one, if I can.
It. Just real quick. If you ask me to, like, give you my best guess, I would say that we're that there are the market will be bifurcated, which will be good companies will have access to capital in 2023 and 2024, which will probably drive some activity level. You know, people will have to deal with the tails. Credit spreads are starting to come in a little bit. You've seen it in Q4. I think you've seen it year to date. So that, you know, that is a leading indicator of activity levels probably or portfolio turnover increase in the, in our book.
Un-understood, and you don't have a lot of tails in your portfolio. No, it's actually. On the other question. After the repayment of the unsecured in January, you were at about 40% unsecured of your capital stack, which is, you know, which is acceptable, right? Towards the lower end of what you've historically run, and it's towards the lower end of what the rating agencies want, et cetera. It's not gonna go down again until November 2024, right? What's your feeling where you'd really like that to be? Understand that right now it's a pretty expensive environment for unsecured. Are you comfortable at 40 for now?
I think we are. I think, look, we built our balance sheet. We built our. It's a function of how much revolver capacity one has. We have a ton of revolver capacity and liquidity. We've paid for that. It's burdened our economics. It's burdened our economics in the sense that we pay commitment fees on that on the unused portion. We've paid upfront fees on that. We've burdened our economics, and we like paying for that insurance to allow us to ride out moments where the unsecured market is not as attractive. Although spreads have started coming in significantly in the last, you know, two to three months. We'll be opportunistic. We'll most definitely at the low end.
You know, if there's portfolio growth, it'll creep a little bit lower because our mix will be the marginal portfolio growth will be funded on the, on the revolver on the secured side. I wouldn't say it will be, you know, flat from here on out because that assumes no portfolio growth. The portfolio growth on a marginal basis would be funded with revolver. We most definitely will be back in that market. We like that market. You know, I think we're one of two people in the space who have at least a triple B flat rating.
Mm-hmm.
I think it's us and Ares. We're one of the two higher rated people in the space. We like that market. We have access to that market, and we'll most definitely be opportunistic. We've paid for an insurance and, you know, since we paid for it, we're gonna use it. We've priced that into our economics for our shareholders. Hopefully that answers your question. Ian, I don't know if you have anything to add.
I think it does answer the question. Just maybe more directly, Robert, we're pretty comfortable just given the options that we have available to us.
Got it. It answered my question for sure. Thank you.
Thank you. I am showing no further questions, and I'd like to turn the conference back over to Josh for any further remarks.
Great. Thank you so much for the interactive call. We appreciate people getting on the new format of the call, vis-a-vis the web or the change of the lack of dial-in. We really appreciate it. We look forward to chatting with people in the spring. I hope everybody has a nice end of the winter and the beginning of the spring. We'll be back for our Q1 earnings call soon. Thanks so much.
Thanks, everyone.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.