Horizon Technology Finance (HRZN) 2026 年第三季法說會：NAV 下滑，儲備案量達 3.51 億美元

重點摘要

• Horizon Technology Finance Corporation (NASDAQ: HRZN) 公布 2026 年第三季每股淨投資收益 (NII) 為 0.19 美元，高於 2026 年第二季的 0.11 美元，但低於去年同期的 0.32 美元。
• 每股淨值 (NAV) 從上一季的 6.23 美元及去年同期的 7.12 美元降至 5.56 美元，主因承壓投資的資產減記。
• 在計入 9,800 萬美元的新增放款承作額、8,100 萬美元的提前還款與部分償付，以及 300 萬美元的預定本金還款後，季末總投資組合規模達 6.5 億美元。
• 已承諾、已核准及已授予的儲備案源較前一季增加逾 4,200 萬美元，達 3.51 億美元。管理階層表示，這有助於推動 2026 年第四季及未來的投資組合進一步成長，但多數撥款承諾仍取決於被投資公司是否達成里程碑。
• 債權投資組合殖利率達 14.7%，新承作投資殖利率則為 12.6%。幾乎所有債權投資均採浮動利率。
• HRZN 宣布 2027 年 1 月、2 月與 3 月每月配息每股 0.06 美元，主要基於其營運前景以及每股 0.24 美元的未分配遞延收入作為支撐。

核心財務數據

業務與營運表現

HRZN 於第三季完成 9 筆債權投資，總計 9,800 萬美元。6 筆貸款提前還款與部分償付共收回 8,100 萬美元本金並帶來加速確認收益，預定本金還款則總計 300 萬美元。

截至季末，該投資組合包含對 42 家公司的債權投資，公允價值總額為 6.21 億美元。分佈於 95 家公司的認股權證、股權及其他投資之公允價值為 2,900 萬美元。本季來自兩項投資的認股權證贖回產生了 200 萬美元收益，使過去 6 個月來自認股權證與股權的收益超過 430 萬美元。

儲備案源規模達 3.51 億美元，高於第二季末的 3.09 億美元。管理階層表示，目前的案源儲備為近期最強勁，且投資機會通常以滾動式 6 個月為週期推進，但具體時程與轉換率仍具不確定性。

HRZN 依據其 2,000 萬美元的買回計畫，以 4.90 美元的平均價格買回略高於 200 萬股普通股。該公司還任命 Manuel Henriquez 擔任其顧問公司的首席成長暨策略長，管理階層特別強調他在支援新增放款承作與策略發展方面的作用。

管理階層展望

管理階層預期第四季的提前還款規模將低於第三季。截至法說會召開時，該季約剩一半時間，公司僅錄得一筆相對較小的提前還款。

根據前三季平均約 3,000 萬美元的投資組合成長幅度，財務長 Daniel Trolio 表示，第四季成長可能略高於該水準，但不會大幅超出。

該公司目標是配置可用資本以達到目標槓桿率，並長期創造達到或超過已宣告配息水準的 NII。管理階層將成長展望歸功於擴大的儲備案源、可用槓桿及當前的定價策略，但未提供具體的 NII 預測。

風險與關注焦點

每股淨值 (NAV) 仍面臨來自承壓投資減記的壓力。在 HRZN 修訂後的五級信用評等制度下，季末有 12% 的債權投資組合公允價值被評為 4 級或 5 級，而 88% 被評為 1 級、2 級或 3 級。

管理階層表示，涉及積極資產追回程序的投資中，即便不是全部，也有絕大多數被列為停息資產。部分預期結果不如預期，且公司並未提供明確的穩定或復甦時間表。

創投市場仍高度集中於大型人工智慧融資案。管理階層表示，在總體經濟與地緣政治不確定性下，非 AI 公司的退場活動依舊低迷，並預期除 Anthropic 備受期待的上市案外，IPO 市場在 2026 年剩餘時間內將持續平淡。

分析師問答重點

• 承壓信貸：管理階層表示正透過多項非公開程序進行追討，致力實現資本回收最大化。由於結果仍具敏感性與不確定性，公司婉拒提供具體時間表。
• 第四季投資組合成長：公司預期提前還款金額將減少，並指出投資組合成長可能會略高於前三季平均每季約 3,000 萬美元的水準。
• 案源轉換：管理階層形容案源情況靈活多變，交易進度可能加速或延後。投資決策通常在滾動式 6 個月的期間內做出。
• 新增放款報告差異：財報公佈的 9,800 萬美元新增放款承作額與某些投資活動數據顯示的約 8,900 萬美元之間的差距，主要反映了透過合資企業出資的約 900 萬至 1,000 萬美元。
• 策略領導團隊：管理階層表示，在 Monroe Capital 交易案完成後，Manuel Henriquez 正藉由其經驗、人脈與關係為新增放款承作做出貢獻。

完整法說會逐字稿

完整財報電話會議逐字稿

管理層陳述

Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to the Horizon Technology Finance third quarter 2026 earnings call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Megan Bacon, Director, Investor Relations and Marketing. Please go ahead.

Megan Bacon

Thank you, and welcome to Horizon Technology Finance Corporation's third quarter 2026 conference call. Representing the company today are Mike Balkin, Chief Executive Officer, Paul Seitz, Chief Investment Officer, and Dan Trolio, Chief Financial Officer. I would like to point out that the Q3 earnings press release and Form 10-Q are available on the company's website at horizontechfinance.com.

Before we begin our formal remarks, I need to remind everyone that during this conference call, the company will make certain forward-looking statements, including statements with regard to the future performance of the company. Words such as believes, expects, anticipates, intends, or similar expressions are used to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to the inherent uncertainties in predicting future results and conditions. Certain factors could cause actual results to differ on a material basis from those projected in these forward-looking statements.

And some of these factors are detailed in the risk factor discussion in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025. The company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Horizon CEO, Mike Balkin.

Michael Balkin

Welcome everyone and thank you for your interest in Horizon. Today we will update you on our quarterly performance in the current operating environment. Paul Seitz, our Chief Investment Officer, will take us through recent business and portfolio developments as well as the current status of the venture lending market. And Dan Trolio, our Chief Financial Officer, will detail our operating performance and financial condition. We will then take questions.

We made significant progress in the third quarter in terms of increasing our pipeline of opportunities with our backlog building to $351 million at quarter end. That is a testament to our scalable platform, the relentless work of our originations and credit teams, as well as our ability to co-invest with Monroe Capital. We believe we are successfully laying the foundation for Horizon's long-term portfolio growth and increasing NII.

NAV per share remains under stress due to credit pressures from certain investments. We believe we have made material headway in addressing these challenges, which should become more apparent as we move into 2027. Turning to our specific results for the quarter, we grew our debt investment portfolio for the fourth consecutive quarter, funding 9 investments totaling $98 million, while our total portfolio size ended at $650 million. We finished the quarter with a backlog of $351 million, up over $42 million from the prior quarter end, and which positions us to materially grow our portfolio in the fourth quarter and beyond.

We generated net investment income of $0.19 per share, which covered our regular distributions in the quarter, while our NAV per share ended the quarter at $5.56. Our NAV per share was down $0.67 for the quarter, primarily due to write-down of certain investments. Based on our outlook and our undistributed spillover income, our board declared monthly distributions of $0.06 per share payable in January, February, and March of 2027. As we continue to deploy the capital and move towards our target leverage, it remains our goal to deliver NII at or above our declared distributions over time.

We achieved a portfolio yield on debt investments of just under 15% for the third quarter, at or near the top of the BDC industry. We repurchased just over 2 million shares of our common stock in the quarter, reflecting the continued confidence we have in our near and long-term outlook. And finally, we continue to win attractive venture debt and small cap public company investments as we further build the top of our funnel and pipeline of loan opportunities.

As we close out 2026 with our strong balance sheet and increasingly robust pipeline, we believe we are in an excellent position to further grow our portfolio and drive long-term value creation for shareholders. To support that effort, we are pleased to create the new role of Chief Growth and Strategy Officer at our advisor and to appoint Manuel Henriquez to this position. We have had the benefit of Manuel working with our advisor since June, and this new appointment will help accelerate his positive impact on Horizon. We look forward to his contributions as we build on our momentum.

With the backing of Monroe Capital, one of the premier asset management firms in the country, we have the right team firmly in place, and we are executing on our strategic vision, which we believe will create a sustainable growth engine that will increase our NII and NAV over time. Despite our challenges, we remain excited about Horizon's future and the opportunity to take our platform to the next level. Again, we appreciate your continued interest and support in the Horizon Technology Finance platform. I will now turn the call over to our Chief Investment Officer, Paul Seitz, to give you the details of our third quarter results and progress. Paul?

Paul Seitz

Thanks, Mike, and good afternoon to everyone. As Mike noted, our team made excellent progress in expanding our committed and awarded backlog and pipeline in the quarter, which positions Horizon to deliver sustainable and profitable growth on a consistent basis. At the same time, we continue to work diligently through a number of stressed credits to optimize returns on those investments and ultimately increase our NAV over time. At the end of the quarter, our current portfolio stood at $650 million, our fourth consecutive quarter of debt investment portfolio growth. Our growth was offset by write-downs of certain investments. As always, we remain focused on recovering as much value as possible from these investments. In the third quarter, we funded 9 debt investments in our target sectors, totaling $98 million.

Additionally, we made significant progress in further building our pipeline, including larger-size venture loan opportunities in our target sectors. In Q3, we increased our backlog by more than $42 million from the end of Q2. During the third quarter, we experienced 6 loan prepayments and partial paydowns, totaling $81 million in principal. We are pleased with these prepayments as they generated accelerated income, validated our investment structure, and provided us with additional capital to redeploy into new investments that can generate additional attractive risk-adjusted returns. Despite the uptick in prepayments in the third quarter, we anticipate a lower level of prepayment activity in the fourth quarter given the current macro environment.

Our onboarding debt investment yield of 12.6% during the third quarter was ahead of our second quarter's level, thanks in part to the current rising rate environment. We expect to continue to generate strong onboarding yields with our current pipeline of opportunities, which we believe will generate strong net investment income over time. Meanwhile, our debt portfolio yield of 14.7% for the quarter was once again among the highest yielding debt portfolios in the BDC industry. Our ability to generate industry-leading yields continues to be a testament to our venture lending strategy and our execution of such strategy across various market cycles and interest rate environments.

As of September 30th, we held warrants, equity, and other investments in 95 portfolio companies, as well as our RoHo joint venture, with a fair value of $29 million. During the quarter, we realized proceeds valued at $2 million from the redemption of warrants in 2 investments, and have now realized more than $4.3 million in proceeds from warrants and equity in just the last 6 months. Structuring investments with warrants and equity rights is a key component of our venture debt strategy and a potential generator of shareholder value.

As Mike mentioned, we ended the quarter with a committed, approved, and awarded backlog of $351 million, compared to $309 million at the end of the second quarter. We continue to believe our pipeline of investment opportunities, combined with our expanding committed backlog, with most of our funding commitments subject to companies achieving certain key milestones, provides a solid foundation to prudently grow our portfolio over time. As of quarter end under our new 1 to 5 credit scale, which we realigned to as of June 30th, 88% of the fair value of our debt portfolio consisted of 1, 2, or 3 rated debt investments, while 12% of the fair value of our portfolio was rated 4 or 5. We recognize the credit pressures on certain investments in the portfolio, and we continue to closely monitor all of our investments. As always, we are collaborating with investors in all of our portfolio companies and utilizing a variety of strategies to optimize recoveries and preserve value.

Turning to the venture capital environment, according to PitchBook, approximately $98 billion was invested in VC-backed companies in the third quarter. This results in year-to-date investments as of September 30th 44% higher than the prior record year of 2021, notably with 1 more quarter still to go. The impressiveness of this increase is tempered by the fact that nearly all of the investment consists of large investments in AI. Accordingly, the market is significantly bifurcated with certain companies at the very top receiving the lion's share of capital. Meanwhile, exit market activity remained muted for non-AI companies due to the ongoing uncertainty in the macro and geopolitical environment. Anthropic's anticipated IPO will almost certainly exit at a massive valuation later this quarter, but otherwise, we expect the IPO market will stay quiet for the remainder of 2026.

Despite the top-heavy market, we continue to believe significant opportunities remain for venture loan originations in both life sciences and tech, as evidenced by both our growing debt investment portfolio and the increase in our pipeline. We continue to believe venture debt remains a compelling option for high-quality companies to access additional capital. To sum up, we made significant progress in the third quarter in terms of expanding our pipeline, which positions us to sustainably grow our venture debt investment portfolio with high-quality investments. Combined with our strong balance sheet, we believe we are setting the stage to improve our financial performance over time and create more value for shareholders. With that, I will now turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Dan Trolio.

Daniel Trolio

Thanks, Paul, and good afternoon, everyone. We are continuing to make progress in growing our origination pipeline as evidenced by our stronger backlog while we closely manage our current investment portfolio. Along with a strong balance sheet, we continue to lay the groundwork to deliver sustainable long-term growth and create additional value for our shareholders moving forward.

As of September 30th, we had $211 million in available liquidity consisting of $108 million in cash and $103 million in available borrowing-based capacity under our existing credit facilities. As of September 30th, we had no outstandings under our $150 million KeyBank credit facility, $181 million outstanding on our $250 million New York Life credit facility, and $90 million outstanding on our $150 million Nuveen credit facility, leaving us with ample capacity to grow our portfolio of debt investments. Our net debt equity ratio stood at 1.12 to 1 as of September 30th, and netting out cash on our balance sheet, our net leverage was 0.82 to 1, well below our target leverage. Based on our cash position and our borrowing capacity, our potential new investment capacity as of September 30th was $387 million.

During the quarter, we repurchased just over 2 million shares of our common stock at an average price of $4.90 under our $20 million stock repurchase program. We expect to remain opportunistic with respect to our stock repurchase program given the dislocation between our current valuation and our confidence in the near and long-term outlook of Horizon.

Turning to our operating results, for the third quarter, we earned investment income of $24.1 million compared to $26.3 million in the prior year period, primarily due to lower interest income on our debt investment portfolio. Our debt investment portfolio on a net cost basis stood at $690 million as of September 30th, up 1% compared to $682 million as of June 30th, 2026. For the third quarter of '26, we achieved onboarding yields of 12.6%, ahead of what we achieved in the second quarter of '26. Our loan portfolio yield was 14.7% for the third quarter compared to 18.6% for last year's third quarter.

Total expenses for the quarter were $12.5 million compared to $12 million in the third quarter of '25, with net expenses for the quarter totaling $11.5 million as the advisor waived $1 million of its base management fee. Our interest expense of $7.8 million was in line with last year's third quarter. As a reminder, in connection with our merger earlier this year, our advisor agreed to waive up to an aggregate of $4 million of fees, or up to $1 million per quarter, beginning with this third quarter.

Net investment income for the third quarter of '26 was $0.19 per share compared to $0.11 per share in the second quarter of '26 and $0.32 per share for the third quarter of '25. The company's undistributed spillover income as of September 30th was $0.24 per share. Based upon our outlook and undistributed spillover income, our board declared monthly distributions of $0.06 per share for January, February, and March 2027. We anticipate that our expanded capital base and available leverage, our expectation for growth, and our predictive pricing strategy will enable us to generate NII that covers our distribution over time.

To summarize our portfolio activities for the third quarter, new originations totaled $98 million, which were offset by $3 million in scheduled principal payments and $81 million in principal prepayments and partial paydowns. We ended the quarter with a total investment portfolio of $650 million. At September 30th, the portfolio consisted of debt investments in 42 companies with an aggregate fair value of $621 million and a portfolio of warrant, equity, and other investments in 95 companies with an aggregate fair value of $29 million.

Our NAV as of September 30th was $5.56 per share compared to $6.23 per share on June 30th and compared to $7.12 as of September 30th, 2025. The NAV reduction on a quarterly basis was primarily due to the write-down on certain stressed investments. As we've consistently noted, nearly 100% of the outstanding principal amount of our debt investments bear interest at floating rates. As of September 30th, 98% of our portfolio will benefit from additional increases in their applicable pricing index. This concludes our opening remarks. We'll be happy to take questions you may have at this time.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

Our first question today will come from Melissa Wedel with UBS. Please go ahead.

分析師問答

Melissa Wedel

You mentioned, obviously NAV is under pressure on a couple of credits, but you also talked about some turnaround plans on a few of those. Could you help us dimensionalize sort of a timeframe to the extent that you can provide detail around some of the efforts on stabilization and how investors should think about, you know, a timeline on not just a turnaround there, but a timeline of what's going to happen, but just even stabilizing that space?

Paul Seitz

Yes, Melissa. This is Paul Seitz speaking. Thanks for the question. So we were running a few processes on certain names. You'll see the names in the schedule of investments. Won't go into too much detail regarding those processes, given sensitivity and the fact that they're, you know, private right now, but we, we had run up against a few shortfalls in terms of the outcomes we were expecting. Definitely unfortunate, but we are working diligently and very hard to recover as much capital as possible. I think it was a little shocking and surprising that these all kind of came about all at once, but there's been a lot of effort on our end to stabilize that in terms of the outlook. I don't really want to provide any forward-looking statements, but suffice it to say that we are all hands on deck in terms of making sure that the portfolio is stabilizing effectively.

Melissa Wedel

Okay, I appreciate it can be -- those things can be sensitive and uncertain on timeline. Going back to a comment on the call about repayment activity being particularly elevated in 3Q and then expecting that to sort of normalize in the fourth quarter. Also looking to try to dimensionalize that in the context of some nice momentum on the origination side that you talked about headed into the fourth quarter. I mean, should we be thinking about that more in line with some of what we saw in 2Q earlier this year?

Daniel Trolio

Yes, you know, as far as the fourth quarter, we got a month and a half left. As we noted, we did have 1 prepayment to date on a smaller side. Nothing in our future projections right now, but it's still got a month and a half. When I -- if you're thinking about estimating it, I'd look back the last 3 quarters, you can see we've grown the portfolio by average about $30 million. I probably would be expecting a little bit higher than that this fourth quarter, but not significantly.

Melissa Wedel

Okay, got it. That's helpful. Thank you.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

Our next question will come from Paul Johnson with KBW. Please go ahead.

Paul Seitz

So in terms of the processes you were running, I guess all these, the loans that you, or the companies that you've been managing out of the stressed credits, I mean are all of those found within the non-accruals today, or are there more of those investments, potentially some equity investments with just non-accrual income-generating investments attached to them?

Daniel Trolio

Yes, I'd say the majority of them, if not all, are in the non-accrual bucket that will be labeled as such on the schedule of investments.

Paul Seitz

Got it, okay. And then just 1 technical question, but you mentioned the $98 million originations quarter on the call, I think it's also in the press release too as well, but just looking at the investment activities it says $89 million. I mean, I'm just curious what the difference is there, is it just commitment versus funded or... But I guess what's like the $10 million sort of difference between the $98 million?

Daniel Trolio

That's probably just location, where that other $9 million to $10 million was funded in the joint venture. Okay. And so that is, yes, technically 98 as far as earning assets put on the books, it is just different locations of where they're sitting.

Paul Seitz

Got it. Okay. And then the pipeline, you know, it sounds like that's been building. You've been working to expand that as well. Just curious, so what's kind of like the expected timeline, I guess, in terms of how long you think it would take to start seeing some of those investments come through, and I guess how much of that activity went through this quarter as well?

Paul Seitz

Yes. So, you know, our pipeline is always fluid and so deals can be delayed. They can accelerate. There's, you know, it's a bit nuanced and idiosyncratic at times, but we're confident that our pipeline is strong and, you know, that we're going to have some decent conversion on it. You know, right now, I think the pipeline typically is on a rolling 6-month basis as far as the deal activities. So any deal that's on the pipeline now hopefully is, you know, we have some sort of decision within 6 months from now.

Michael Balkin

Yes, Paul, this is Mike. I would say that we're extremely encouraged by the backlog and the pipeline we have. It's the strongest we've had in quite a while. And so we're seeing lots of activity, and we're very pleased with how things are going right now.

Paul Seitz

Got it. Yes, that's great to hear. And the last one for me, I guess, would just be with the recent appointment of Manuel Henriquez to Chief Strategy Officer, I'm just curious, you know, what you're hoping to kind of get from that, you know, given there's obviously been a lot of, you know, changes and modifications here to the investment strategy with the Monroe merger. Yes. But just curious to get your thoughts there in terms of what you're hoping to benefit with the BDC?

Michael Balkin

Yes, well, sure. It's a good question. And actually, Manuel has been working with us for a little while here now, and we're very happy with having him on board. And he's, you know, obviously he built a great business at Hercules, and so we're able to take a lot of the learnings and experience he had there and try to apply them to things we're doing here at Horizon. Obviously, Horizon's gone through a lot of changes over the last several years, and so a lot of the experience that he brings to the table is valuable. He's helping significantly in the origination side of the business and we believe will continue to benefit from his contacts and relationships, so stay tuned, but it's incumbent upon us to put the numbers up on the board and we're excited about what we see happening.

Paul Seitz

Great. Appreciate it. I look forward to it. That's all from me. Thanks.

Michael Balkin

Thank you.

Operator

And this will conclude our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mike Balkin for any closing remarks.

Michael Balkin

Thank you all for joining us this afternoon. We appreciate your continued interest and support in Horizon, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon. This will conclude our call.

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines at this time.

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