ARCC - Ares Capital (ARCC) Presents at Bank of America Securities 2024 Financial Services Conference (Transcript)
2024-02-21 15:17:06 ET
Ares Capital (ARCC)
Bank of America Securities 2024 Financial Services Conference Call
February 21, 2024 12:50 PM ET
Company Participants
Kort Schnabel - Co-President, Los Angeles
Conference Call Participants
Derek Hewett - Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Presentation
Derek Hewett
Good afternoon. I'm Derek Hewett from Bank of America Securities. I cover the Specialty Finance sector, including Business Development companies. With us today is, Kort Schnabel, he is Co-President of Ares Capital Corporation and also a partner and Co-Head of Direct Lending at Ares Management. So thank you for joining us.
So Kort, maybe – could you start off by providing a brief history of Ares Capital and then maybe discuss the investment strategy, and then your – what you believe is the competitive advantage of the firm?
Kort Schnabel
Sure. Thanks, Derek. Thanks, everyone. Great to be here to talk a little bit about Ares Capital Corporation today. So I guess on the history piece, starting there, we had our IPO at Ares Capital Corporation back in 2004. We went public with a portfolio of about $150 million of assets, about 30 portfolio companies, about 10 people, and over the last 20 years, have built our business into the largest publicly traded business development company in the world. We've got about $22 billion of assets now in the portfolio, a team of almost 200 people and 505 different borrowers. So we've been at this in a pretty long time, more than almost any other direct lender out there in the market. Importantly, we've operated through all different kinds of economic environments, political environments, interest rate environments, which I know is a big question today. And we've delivered what we believe are excellent returns, certainly industry-leading returns for our shareholders, delivering a 12% net investment return since inception for the stockholders, which actually is outperformance of 75% versus the S&P 500....
Ares Capital (ARCC) Presents at Bank of America Securities 2024 Financial Services Conference (Transcript)