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  Title	Earnings call transcript: Golub Capital misses Q1 2026 earnings forecast
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  External ID	24a0a9680f79dca0fd96b6c58883bb4a
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  Published Date	Feb. 5, 2026, 10:09 a.m.
  Summary	Earnings call transcript: Golub Capital misses Q1 2026 earnings forecast
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  Content	Golub Capital BDC Inc. (GBDC) reported its Q1 2026 earnings, revealing a shortfall against analysts' expectations. The company posted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.25, below the forecasted $0.38, marking a 34.21% negative surprise. Revenue also fell short, coming in at $207 million compared to the anticipated $210 million. Following the announcement, Golub's stock dropped 3.6% in premarket trading, reflecting investor disappointment. Key Takeaways Golub Capital's EPS missed forecasts by 34.21%. Revenue fell short of expectations by $2.98 million. Stock price decreased by 3.6% in premarket trading. The company faces significant industry headwinds, including lower base rates and muted M&A activity. Company Performance Golub Capital's Q1 2026 performance was marked by challenges, as the company contends with a tough market environment. Despite a robust focus on first lien, senior secured loans, the firm saw a decline in its investment portfolio value by 1.5% quarter-over-quarter. The company's strategic emphasis on selective underwriting, closing only 3.1% of reviewed deals, underscores its cautious approach amid market volatility. Financial Highlights Revenue: $207 million, down from the forecast of $210 million. Earnings per share: $0.25, below the forecast of $0.38. Net Asset Value (NAV) per share: $14.84. Quarterly distribution: $0.39 per share. Earnings vs. Forecast Golub Capital's EPS of $0.25 fell significantly short of the $0.38 forecast, resulting in a 34.21% negative surprise. This marks a notable deviation from previous quarters where the company generally met or exceeded expectations. Revenue also missed by 1.42%, a smaller but still significant gap. Market Reaction Following the earnings release, Golub's stock price fell by 3.6% in premarket trading. The stock's movement reflects investor concerns over the earnings miss and the broader challenges facing the company. The share price is now closer to its 52-week low of $12.53, indicating a bearish sentiment. Outlook & Guidance Looking ahead, Golub Capital anticipates challenging market conditions throughout 2026. The company expects a "Darwinian moment" in the private credit industry, focusing on selective loan origination and proactive problem-solving. Despite the headwinds, Golub remains committed to maintaining its variable supplemental dividend policy. Executive Commentary CEO David Golub emphasized the company's cautious yet resilient approach, stating, "We're worriers, not optimists, but this doesn't mean we're pessimists either." He also highlighted the rapid pace of technological changes, acknowledging, "Nobody really has all the answers here." Risks and Challenges Lower base rates and tighter spreads could pressure margins. Muted M&A activity may limit growth opportunities. High levels of credit stress present ongoing challenges. Potential disruptions in the software lending market due to AI advancements. Q&A During the earnings call, analysts focused on the impact of AI on software lending. Concerns were raised about potential disruptions, but Golub expressed confidence in the resilience of software business models. The company maintains a cautious but not pessimistic outlook on software investments. Full transcript - Golub Capital BDC Inc (GBDC) Q1 2026: Call Moderator/Operator : Hello everyone, and welcome to GBDC's earnings call for the fiscal quarter ended December 31st, 2025. Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to remind our listeners that remarks made during this call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. 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 GBDC's SEC filings. For materials we intend to refer to on today's earnings call, please visit the Investor Resources tab on the homepage of our website, which is www.golubcapitalbdc.com, and click on the Events and Presentations link. Our earnings release is also available on our website in the Investor Resources section. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. With that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to David Golub, Chief Executive Officer of GBDC. David Golub, Chief Executive Officer, Golub Capital BDC : Hello everybody, and thanks for joining us today. I'm joined by Tim Topics, our Chief Operating Officer, and Chris Ericson, our Chief Financial Officer. For those of you who are new to GBDC, our investment strategy is focused on providing first lien, senior secured loans to healthy, resilient middle-market companies that are backed by strong and partnership-oriented private equity sponsors. Yesterday, we issued our earnings press release for the fiscal quarter ended December 31, and we posted an earnings presentation on our website. We'll be referring to this presentation during the call today. I'm going to start, as I usually do, with headlines and a summary of performance for the quarter. Then Tim and Chris are going to walk you through our operating and financial performance for the quarter in detail. Finally, I'll wrap up with some observations on current market conditions and our outlook for the coming period. Let's start with three headlines. The first headline is that despite four continuing industry headwinds, GBDC had an okay quarter. Not great, but solid, given the environment. Adjusted NII per share was $0.38, which translates to an adjusted NII ROE of 10.2%. Adjusted net income per share was $0.25 for an adjusted ROE of 6.7%, and GBDC paid a $0.39 per share distribution. So what are these headwinds? I described all four last quarter. First, lower base rates. Second, tighter spreads, not, not just in our market, but across almost every credit asset class other than subprime. Third, muted M&A activity, although the second half of calendar 2025 improved relative to the first half. And fourth, continued high levels of credit stress. The second headline is that we expect these headwinds to continue for some time, and we're planning for a challenging 2026. The third headline, consistent with our comments on last quarter's call, is that our board of directors revisited GBDC's dividend policy, and after careful evaluation and in light of the headwinds I just described, the board decided to reset the company's quarterly base dividend to $0.33 per share or about 9% of NAV per share. We also plan to maintain the quarterly variable supplemental dividend policy going forward. We believe this change is consistent with our four long-standing dividend priorities: maintaining a stable net asset value over time, minimizing excise taxes over time, adjusting our base distribution level infrequently, and paying as high a dividend yield on NAV as sustainable, consistent with those goals. Now I'll pass the call over to Tim Topics to discuss operating performance in the quarter in more detail. Tim Topics, Chief Operating Officer, Golub Capital BDC : Thanks, David. Let's begin on slide four. GBDC's $0.38 per share of adjusted net investment income and $0.25 per share of adjusted earnings were driven by four key factors this quarter. Let me walk through each of those in turn. First, overall credit performance generally remains solid. Approximately 89% of GBDC's investment portfolio at fair value remains in our highest performing internal rating categories. Investments on non-accrual status remain very low, at just 0.8% of the total investment portfolio at fair value. This level is well below that of our BDC peer industry average. Although adjusted net unrealized and realized losses increased to $0.13 per share, they were primarily related to fair value markdowns on a small tail of underperforming borrowers at GBDC, including $0.06 per share in markdowns on equity investments in these borrowers. The second key earnings driver: GBDC's investment income yield of 10% was down 40 basis points sequentially, mostly driven by lower base rates and to a lesser extent, lower weighted average spread across the portfolio. These negative headwinds were in part offset by the third key earnings driver, a continued decline in GBDC's borrowing costs, reflecting the impact of GBDC's predominantly floating rate debt capital structure. And finally, GBDC's earnings continued to benefit from a market-leading fee structure and one of the lowest operating expense loads in the public BDC sector. Now, shifting to investment activity. GBDC's investment portfolio decreased by a modest 1.5% quarter-over-quarter to $8.6 billion at fair value. We remained highly selective and conservative in our underwriting. We closed on just 3.1% of the deals we reviewed in the quarter at a weighted average LTV of approximately 43%. We leaned on existing sponsor relationships and portfolio company incumbencies for approximately 60% of our origination volume and made loans to 18 new borrowers. We continued to leverage our scale to lead deals, acting as sole or lead lender in 96% of our transactions in the quarter. We continue to focus on the core middle market, which we believe continues to offer better risk-adjusted returns potential than the larger borrower market. The median portfolio company EBITDA for our originations in the quarter was $81 million. Continuing on Slide 4, let me briefly summarize distributions paid and certain balance sheet changes in the quarter. Total distributions paid in the quarter were $0.39 per share. As David mentioned at the outset, our board of directors has updated the base distribution level to $0.33 per share, and in addition, we'll evaluate on a quarterly basis, a variable supplemental distribution that will seek to distribute 50% of the earnings in excess of $0.33 per share. Continuing on with other balance sheet updates. Net debt to equity remains stable quarter-over-quarter, ending at 1.23 times, within our targeted range of 0.85-1.25 times. During the quarter, we continued our opportunistic repurchasing of GBDC shares on an accretive basis. Total shares were purchased in calendar year 2025, grew to 5.5 million shares or $76.5 million in aggregate value. In the quarter, these capital management transactions resulted in $0.01 per share of accretion to net asset value. I'm going to turn it over to Chris now to take us through our financial results in detail. Chris Ericson, Chief Financial Officer, Golub Capital BDC : Thanks, Tim. Turning to Slide 7, you can see how the earnings drivers Tim just described and distributions paid in the quarter translated into GBDC's December 31, 2025 NAV per share of $14.84. Adjusted NII per share of $0.38, a $0.39 per share base distribution paid out during the quarter, adjusted net realized and unrealized losses of $0.13 per share, and a $0.01 per share of NAV accretion from share repurchases. Together, these results drove a net asset value per share decrease to $14.84. Turning to Slide 10, this details our origination activity for the quarter. Net funds growth, defined as funded commitments and delayed draw term loan and net revolver draws, less exits and sales and net of market value changes in portfolio fair value, decreased by $130 million for the quarter. This was primarily due to repayments and exits, outpacing funded new originations and delayed draw term loans and net revolver draws. Looking at the bottom of the slide, the weighted average rate on new investments was 8.6%, a decline of 30 basis points from the prior quarter, primarily the result of lower base rates at origination. Investments that repaid in the quarter were at a weighted average rate of 9.4%. Slide 11 shows GBDC's overall portfolio mix. As you can see, the portfolio breakdown by investment types remain consistent quarter over quarter, with one-stop loans continuing to represent around 87% of the portfolio at fair value. Slide 12 shows that GBDC's portfolio remains highly diversified by portfolio company, with an average investment size of approximately 20 basis points across 420 distinct portfolio companies. Additionally, our largest borrower represents just 1.6% of the debt investment portfolio, and our top 10 largest borrowers represent just 12% of the portfolio. We believe GBDC is one of the most diversified and granular portfolios in the public BDC sector, modulating credit risk through position size. As of December 31, 2025, 92% of our investment portfolio consisted of first lien, senior secured floating rate loans to borrowers across a diversified range of what we believe to be resilient industries. The economic analysis on Slide 13 highlights the drivers of GBDC's net investment spread of 4.6%. Let's walk through the slide in detail. I'll start with the dark blue line, which is our investment income yield. As a reminder, the investment income yield includes the amortization of fees and discounts, which decreased approximately 40 basis points sequentially to 10%. Our cost of debt, the teal line, decreased approximately 20 basis points to 5.4%, reflecting our approximately 80% floating rate debt funding structure. Net net, GBDC's weighted average net investment spread, the gold line, declined modestly quarter-over-quarter to 4.6%. Moving on to Slides 14 and 15, let's take a closer look at our credit quality metrics. On Slide 14, you can see that non-accruals increased quarter-over-quarter to 80 basis points of total investments at fair value and 1.3% of total investments at amortized costs, but remain at very low levels in absolute terms and relative to the broader BDC sector. During the quarter, the number of non-accrual investments increased to 14 investments as the return to accrual status of one portfolio company investment following a restructuring was offset by the addition of six portfolio company investments during the quarter. Slide 15 shows the trend in internal performance ratings. As Tim noted earlier, approximately 89% of the total investment portfolio remained in our top two internal performance rating categories. Investments rated 3, which signals a borrower may have the potential to or is expected to perform below expectations as compared to at underwriting, increased modestly to 10.1% of the total investment portfolio. The proportion of investments rated 1 and 2, which are the investments we believe are most likely to see significant credit impairment, remain very low at just 1.3% of the portfolio at fair value. As we usually do, we're going to skip past slides 16 through 19. These slides have more detail on GBDC's financial statements, dividends history, and other key metrics... I'll wrap up this section by reviewing GBDC's liquidity and investment capacity on slides 20 and 21. First, let's focus on the key takeaways on slide 21. Our debt funding structure remains highly diversified and flexible. Our debt maturity profile remains well-positioned, with 49% of our debt funding in the form of unsecured notes across a well-laddered maturity profile. Consistent with our asset liability matching principle, 81% of GBDC's total debt funding is floating rate or swapped to a floating rate, levels that we believe are among the highest in the sector. GBDC is well-positioned to continue to modulate the impacts of lower interest rates on investment income through offsetting lower interest expense on its borrowings. Overall, our liquidity position remains strong, and we ended the quarter with approximately $1.3 billion of liquidity from unrestricted cash, undrawn commitments on our corporate revolver, and the unused unsecured revolver provided by our advisor. Now I'll hand it back over to David for closing remarks. David Golub, Chief Executive Officer, Golub Capital BDC : Thanks, Chris. I spoke at the beginning of this call about the 4 headwinds our industry's been facing: lower base rates, tighter spreads, muted M&A, and a protracted credit cycle. I want to shift now to talk about the impacts of these headwinds. There are likewise 4 I want to highlight. First, private credit ROEs have come down, including across the BDC space. By our estimates, public BDC net returns are on average about 4 percentage points lower year-over-year, based on earnings reports through September thirtieth. We've seen similar findings from consultants who cover the broader private credit fund space. Now, this isn't a surprise. Funds of floating-rate loans are necessarily impacted by lower base rates, lower spreads, and credit losses. Second impact, dispersion between good managers and, let's call them, not-so-good managers, has increased. There's always been a lot of alpha in private credit. Now it's particularly high. Again, not a surprise. The overwhelming driver of alpha in private credit comes from minimizing realized credit losses, and periods of credit stress put this to the test. Third impact, the headwinds have generated a lot of press, maybe not as colorful as last quarter's cockroaches, but still plentiful. And fourth, we've seen shareholders respond. We've seen shareholders respond by revaluing public BDCs and by increasing redemptions from semi-liquid BDCs. So where does the puck go from here? One of the advantages that comes with age and experience is pattern recognition. Now, this moment doesn't feel exactly like prior periods, but there's some elements that rhyme, so I want to share my take. After a period of growth and new entrants, the private credit industry is maturing and will now, in my judgment, go through a Darwinian moment. Some firms will adapt and thrive, and some won't. This isn't a bad thing. We've been here before, and in some ways, this Darwinian moment, it feels a little overdue. And it's true, we're worriers, not optimists, but this doesn't mean we're pessimists either. Based on our experience through multiple cycles over the last 30-plus years, this is actually the kind of environment where we and other private credit specialists outperform. We have a playbook for doing that. It's a playbook that's served us well for decades, including through a number of periods more stressful than this one. The playbook involves being very selective when making new loans, focusing on early detection of borrower underperformance, working with sponsors on early intervention, and addressing problems proactively. Our approach, it's really all about minimizing realized credit losses and being ready to play offense as opportunities arise. We're confident that this playbook will once again serve us well as we manage through this one. With that, operator, could you please open the line for questions? Call Moderator/Operator : Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press the star button followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star one again. One moment please, for your first question. Your first question comes from the line of Finian O'Shea of Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Finian O'Shea, Analyst, Wells Fargo : Hey, everyone. Good morning. Thanks for having me on. So, David, to start, the big topic, of course, is software. You're not only one of the leading private credit firms, but one of the leading early investors in software, so of course, we'll ask you about that. I know this is a tough one, but any thoughts on the recent developments from AI firms that have, you know, spooked the software market and, of course, the private credit market? Do they give you concern in your software portfolio that's, of course, more enterprise SaaS-based, maybe concern, you know, from what happened in the last couple weeks, but also concern as to what the progress from AI might look like in a few years from now when a lot of these, you know, credits will still be on your books? Thanks. David Golub, Chief Executive Officer, Golub Capital BDC : Thanks, Finian. Yes, SaaSpocalypse. Let's talk about it. Look, there's a real issue here. This is not just a market tantrum. I think underlying the recent market action, there are two core, you can call them perspectives or insights. The first is that AI is advancing more quickly than most people expected, and especially so in respect of tools that make coding easier. So this month's Claude advances are the latest manifestation of this trend, but it's a trend. The second is that, you know, some software companies are vulnerable to AI disruption as a result of this. I'd say we agree with both of these perspectives, and we think the market's right, that there are gonna be winners and losers from AI. We also think everybody, and this is implicit in your question, everybody needs to approach what's going on with AI with a bit of humility. Nobody really has all the answers here. This is a new technology, and it's been moving at a pace that even experts in the field have not expected. I wanna go into more depth on who we think are gonna be the winners and losers, but before I do that, I wanna talk about what informs our view. And you mentioned a few elements of this. Short version, we're specialists at this. We've been investing in software companies for 20 years. We've completed 1,000 software deals over that period. We're good at this. Over that 20 years, we've had only five defaults. We've had 0.25% of our $145 billion of software commitments is defaulted. We've got a great team. We've got 25 dedicated professionals. We've got over 200 years of combined experience in this space across multiple credit and technology cycles, and we've approached this in a way you'd expect, a very Golub way. We've developed our own underwriting approach. It starts with a proprietary risk mapping framework, and that steers us to business models that we think are attractive. It steers us away from business models that we think have various vulnerabilities. We've developed proprietary diligence templates that enable us to pressure test this resilience, and that includes AI risk. We've been looking at AI risk for years. So what does that lead us to like? Let me give you some examples. We like enterprise-critical platforms, and those platforms have some characteristics that are common to them. They have, you know, sticky, embedded workflows. They have long implementation cycles. It's hard for clients to switch to alternative products. We like market leaders that have proprietary datasets. Sometimes those are customer-generated, sometimes they're not. But AI competitors can't easily replicate proprietary datasets. We like working with sponsors who are experts. You know, they're leaning in early, they're themselves experts in AI. They're guiding their companies to be ahead of disruption. What don't we like? Well, you know, we have very little exposure to software that's focused on content creation, software that's focused on analytical overlays, software that's tool-based. We think there are gonna be a lot of losers in those areas. So, you know, we are always evaluating our portfolio. We're big believers in early identification of problems, but, you know, you go through a period like we're going through right now, in terms of market action, it leads to an immediate response at Golub Capital to review the portfolio. So we've been doing that in real time, and our conclusion so far is we feel quite confident in the portfolio. We're not saying that there is no AI risk. We're very knowledgeable enough to know that we need to stay very humble, and we need to stay very vigilant in looking at AI risk. But based on where we are right now, we feel very good about where the portfolio is positioned. Finian O'Shea, Analyst, Wells Fargo : Very helpful. Appreciate all that color. I'll just keep my follow-up on the topic, too. A lot of the inbounds come in and sort of question the loan to values, what that might mean. You know, it looks like you and peers are still investing in software at sort of normal capital structure parameters, but that's of course, you know, last quarter's data and all that. Has this, what we see in the public market, is there a sort of similar pause going on, whether it be on your side or the private equity side? Then, you know, kinda more importantly, if that does happen, do you think that means... Does that mean the risk amplifies? Like, if you compare it to healthcare services a few years ago, where those models were dependent on sort of roll ups to achieve their EBITDA synergies and so forth, like, is there that sort of element in software where higher cost of equity, higher cost of debt, will itself be a problem? David Golub, Chief Executive Officer, Golub Capital BDC : So I think it's early right now to reach conclusions, but let's talk about a couple of different scenarios. In one scenario, it becomes meaningfully more challenging for software companies, even good software companies, to access capital in the broadly syndicated loan market or the high yield market. I'd argue that's actually a positive for private credit specialists like us, because that will mean more opportunities, that will mean better pricing, that will mean better, better, better capital structures. But we and others will need to make choices about which transactions we think are truly resilient and which we think are not. I, I'm confident we can do that. So I view that scenario, Finn, as generally a positive. There's a second scenario in which this is a blip, and the market comes roaring back, and you know, we quickly revert to where we were before this latest market action began. I think that's unlikely. I think there are enough real aspects to the insights about AI risk that we're likely not to see a quick bounce back. And then the third scenario I'd point to is sort of in between. It's one in which the market becomes more, what's the right word? Picky about which companies and which credits it likes and which ones it doesn't like. I think that third scenario is where the puck is headed longer term. But my guess is we're gonna go through scenario one to get to scenario three. Robert Dodd, Analyst, Raymond James : Very helpful. Thanks, David. Call Moderator/Operator : Your next question comes from the line of Ethan Kay of Lucid Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Ethan Kay, Analyst, Lucid Capital Markets : Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions here. Firstly, in your prepared remarks, you suggested you're planning for a challenging 2026. Just hoping you can kinda dig into that a bit. Is that, you know, more broadly, you know, related more broadly to, you know, the leverage lending sector? Do you also kind of foresee some kind of budding challenges at GBDC? And, you know, is this a commentary on both earnings and credit or, you know, one or the other? Just any expansion on that comment would be helpful. David Golub, Chief Executive Officer, Golub Capital BDC : Sure. So as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we think that the market environment right now is challenging. So if it's down, it's probably gonna go down a little more. Spreads are at pretty much a five-year low, and, while they feel like they've stabilized some, the back book is still not at the same level that the front book is at. M&A, which everybody went into this year saying, "Oh, this year it's finally gonna happen. We're gonna see the breaking of the dam." I'm still seeing a muted M&A environment, and I'd like to see... I'd like to see more. I'm not saying it won't happen. I'm saying we haven't seen it yet. And finally, on credit, I think, you know, we are in a credit cycle, and I've been saying this now for many quarters. You know, I think we're seeing elevated levels of credit stress in both the broadly syndicated market and in the private credit market, and everybody's working through their issues, including us. I think we're well-positioned, Ethan, relative to the industry. But I think there's been a fair amount of happy talk in the industry, and I wanna be very candid with you and with our investors that this is a challenging environment right now. You know, it's harder for us to produce the ROEs that we wanna be producing in the current environment than it's been in recent years. That doesn't mean that I'm not optimistic about GBDC's long-term prospects. I am. But I think part of our job is being very candid about when we're in an environment with headwinds and when we're in an environment with tailwinds. Ethan Kay, Analyst, Lucid Capital Markets : Understood. I appreciate that. And then one other. So I wanted to ask a bit about the deployment outlook. I know you kind of just mentioned you're not seeing, you know, a broad recovery in M&A yet, but you know, I guess if you do see that, right, leverage is kind of towards the top of the range, and you guys are actively buying back shares here, which looks prudent, but hoping you can give a bit of color on how you're kind of weighing these, you know, competing, you know, capital allocation opportunities in the face of maybe finite capital resources. David Golub, Chief Executive Officer, Golub Capital BDC : So I think you said it very well. We've got to balance multiple goals, and you know, in the context of shares trading at a meaningful discount to NAV, we will continue to be active in repurchasing shares because we think that's good for shareholders. We also, in the context of portfolio turnover, will be looking for the best opportunities to redeploy that capital in attractive new loans. So we've got multiple things that we're gonna be doing at the same time. We've got to find the right balance. Ethan Kay, Analyst, Lucid Capital Markets : Okay. Thanks very much. Call Moderator/Operator : Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Robert Dodd of Raymond James. Please go ahead. Robert Dodd, Analyst, Raymond James : Hi, guys. I hate to stick on kind of the software theme, but what do you think the risks are of sort of unknown unknowns? I mean, when you lay out the case of your moats, as everybody's calling them, you know, proprietary, entrenched, software, sticky software, proprietary data, et cetera, what are the risks from that those moats turn out to be not as deep as they are perceived to be at the moment. It seems like a market-wide phenomenon that the same moats are indicated by you and your competitors. And what's the—I mean, to put it bluntly, AI agents are quite good at scraping data and using it for their own purposes. So proprietary data might not stay proprietary in some cases. What are the risks you think that those moats evaporate, given the pace of AI? To your point, some of it's accelerating faster than experts would have thought a couple of years ago. Maybe it's gonna be better at building bridges across those moats two years from now than you currently think. David Golub, Chief Executive Officer, Golub Capital BDC : So, great question, Robert. Let's again think about this across a couple of different scenarios. So let's think about a scenario in which AI advances continue to be rapid. In those scenarios, where you have enterprise players with lots of customers, deeply embedded relationships, the risk that those companies have starts with slower growth. So the first impact that one would imagine from this would be lower equity valuations associated with lower growth trajectories, and that would be lower growth in terms of new logos, and it would be lower growth in terms of a bleeding of some existing customers. The second level of risk would be that the risk would be so significant that not only would you see it in slower growth, you'd see it in some negative growth. You'd see it in some reduction in revenues. I think, again, for good software companies, it's quite unlikely that you're going to see immediate collapse. You're going to see a melting as opposed to a meltdown. And then the third scenario would be the meltdown scenario. It would be AI comes up with a capability that's so strong relative to the incumbent product that it effectively replaces the incumbent product in a short period of time. I think that's the least likely of the three scenarios. So as we think about what's going on right now, you know, what this argues for, what my three buckets argue for, is that we likely should, you know, be focused first on equity market reaction, and then second on credit market reaction, because in order for AI to be a real problem for credit markets, you know, we need to see scenario two or scenario three. We gotta blow past scenario one, at least in a significant number of cases. Robert Dodd, Analyst, Raymond James : I appreciate that, Connor. It's very thoughtful. Thank you. The kind of follow-on to that point is to your point, if it's scenario one, and you're in these assets for, you know, they might be slower growing and the equity holders might lose capital, but you may have the opportunity, may or may not have the opportunity to get out. Would you expect going forward to do less software deals, given you know the... Is the risk return? Because they still seem to be, the ones that are getting done are still priced pretty tight. It's widening a little bit. But is that, given the risks are potentially so outsized, would you expect there to be a shift in kind of the amount of software you'd want to onboard into the portfolio over the next five years, Conor? David Golub, Chief Executive Officer, Golub Capital BDC : So my expectation, Robert, is that the market's gonna reprice risk. So it's hard to answer that question without making an assumption about how the market digests information and what that means in terms of go-forward spreads. The broadly syndicated market has repriced spreads. You know, you're not going to see new software deals come out at the same spread levels that existing borrowers are at, where their loans are trading at 95 or 90 or 85. You know, market's saying those deals are underpriced. So I think it's hard to answer your question without seeing some more data about how private markets digest what's going on right now, and in particular, what that means for pricing and structure and leverage in new deals. I will be surprised if Golub Capital doesn't continue to be a leading software lender. We're very good at this. We've got a deep set of relationships with the sponsors who are best in the business at this. But in terms of answering your question about a specific capital deployment goal, I think it's premature to answer that. Robert Dodd, Analyst, Raymond James : Got it. Thank you. Fair enough. Call Moderator/Operator : Your next question comes from the line of Paul Johnson of KBW. Please go ahead. Paul Johnson, Analyst, KBW : Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just sticking with software here, can you just maybe talk about, in general, software trends, maybe, sort of like pre-AI disruption risk or X, you know, kind of the... you know, the, the disruption risk that's, you know, getting priced into the market today. I ask is, the, the Golub Altman Index or the middle market, index that you guys put out, I've noticed that the tech, sector revenue growth has kind of fell off over here over the last several quarters. And, you know, what, what has kind of been the, underlying trends, I guess, broadly for, for that industry? Maybe kind of what's driving- David Golub, Chief Executive Officer, Golub Capital BDC : Sure. Paul Johnson, Analyst, KBW : the slower growth there. David Golub, Chief Executive Officer, Golub Capital BDC : Sure. Thanks, Paul. It's a great question, and I think important for us all to be focused on some of those trends, in addition to be thinking about, you know, longer term AI risks. So if we look at the Golub Altman Index numbers in sequence, what we see is that the technology/software area has been, over time, persistently growing faster than the rest of our portfolio. Having said that, like the rest of the portfolio, we've seen some slowdown in year-over-year growth in that sector. And if you then kinda peel back this onion some more, what we see is selectively a slowdown in bookings. And this isn't just true in the Golub Capital portfolio. I think across software in both larger companies and mid-sized companies, we've seen over the course of the last two years, some slowdown in new bookings trends. Said differently, corporate clients are moving more slowly to adopt and pay for new software products relative to the prior period. So, you know, why is that? Well, it's hard to figure out that next layer of the onion, 'cause there's actually a bunch of different reasons. Part of it is companies dealing with cost pressure. Part of it is companies digesting prior investments in tech. I don't think it's a generalized move away by corporate customers, a generalized move away from adopting new software applications and using them to improve their businesses. I think that's continuing. I think we're seeing a bit of a cyclical pattern right now, where software bookings are lower than they've been, and I think that will likely come back. Paul Johnson, Analyst, KBW : Very helpful, David. Appreciate that. And maybe just last question, on your portfolio at GBDC. I was wondering if you can kind of share, if possible, you know, how much of the portfolio or of the software book, you know, is ARR based structures? And I guess any additional color on that in terms of, you know, conversion and companies near cash flow break even, that type of thing. And maybe more broadly as well, just, you know, how you think about kind of the defensive structure or the thesis around that, with those types of deals, kind of given the risk increasing today. David Golub, Chief Executive Officer, Golub Capital BDC : Sure. So just for those of you who are not experts, what Paul's referencing is loans called ARR loans or recurring revenue loans, where the rubric for the credit underwriting is not traditional EBITDA coverage or interest coverage data. It would be more based on revenue multiples and expectation of that turning into EBITDA in a few years' time. So we were early originators of ARR loans, as you know, about 10 years ago. We've actually reduced the exposure to ARR loans in recent years as pricing has gotten tighter in those loans, and we think the attractiveness of them has reduced. So the proportion of the GBDC portfolio that's in ARR loans has actually gone down meaningfully in recent years as a lot of our older ARR loans, loans converted to EBITDA loans, converted to traditional loans, and as we've reduced the volume of new ones. I will look to see after this call, Paul, at what we've disclosed on this and what we can disclose, but that's the generalized trend. Now, I do think in addition to spreads being tighter, that in an environment in which bookings trends have, you know, gone down, I think ARR loans are tougher. Not to say they're all good or all bad. But, you know, this is always a situation where you need to judge individual loans on their merits. But, you know, it's a... It's been a more challenging space. Paul Johnson, Analyst, KBW : Got it. Once again, very helpful, David. Appreciate it. That's all for me. Call Moderator/Operator : There are no further questions at this time, and with that, I will now turn the call over to David Golub for closing remarks. Please go ahead. David Golub, Chief Executive Officer, Golub Capital BDC : Thank you, operator. I just wanna thank everybody for their time this morning. As always, if you have any questions that we didn't get to today, please feel free to reach out, and we look forward to following up with you next quarter. Call Moderator/Operator : Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. We thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your line. This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C. See trades before they happen Investing.com's AI chart analysis visually reads your charts to spot patterns in just 1 minute—while highlighting only the top indicators that matter right now. 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