To DRIP or Not to DRIP (Seeking Alpha Article)

I just posted a Seeking Alpha article over here that outlines BDCs and whether or not reinvesting your dividends is worthwhile.

The companies to be examined for this article will be American Capital (ACAS), Apollo Investments (AINV), Ares Capital Corp (ARCC), Blackrock Kelso Capital Corp (BKCC), Kohlberg Capital (KCAP), Main Street Capital Corporation (MAIN), PennantPark (PNNT), Prospect Capital (PSEC), Solar Capital (SLRC) and Triangle Capital Corp (TCAP).

A look at High Dividend Stocks (BDC / Finance) and Ranking Them

(This article will also be cross-posted on Seeking Alpha, if you read the article there and have come back here, welcome to BDCR! If not, thank you for still reading. Due to some extensive work over these past few weeks, I now have some great historical data on the BDCR companies. This post is the first of hopefully many deep dives into the companies.)


It is quite common for a major financial website to post a link of "dividend darlings". A dividend darling list typically involves a group of companies that have a strong history of paying increasing dividends over their lifespan. If you look on Forbes, Investopedia or Seeking Alpha you will see lists containing some chosen companies.
This article will include a "dividend darling" list that is exclusively focused on BDCR-followed companies. Not only will the current dividend high-rollers be highlighted, but I will rank the companies based on history and dividend coverage. All of the information gathered is available on the SEC website and/or your favorite financial website (Yahoo, Google, DailyFinance, etc). I want to reward companies that have been around for awhile and ding those that are not paying and covering their dividends. This means that a company like American Capital (ACAS), which was once the top of the heap in terms of dividend payers, will now be more towards the bottom of the list.
Below is the criteria:

1. Is the company currently paying a dividend? I am penalizing a company that does not pay a regular dividend. I know owning ACAS over the past year with a 94% return would have been a far better total return, but I am looking at BDCs strictly on a yield-basis and not a total return basis for this article. 10 pts
2. Does the company have a strong dividend history? For example, Prospect Capital Corporation (PSEC) likes to publicize its history of dividend increases and consecutive dividends. One thing it fails to mention is that in May of 2010, the company slashed its dividend by 10 cents per quarter, skipped most of its June dividend and changed over to a monthly payout (which overall I believe was a good thing). This list will penalize a company for doing that. 3-6 pts (3 pts for never missing a dividend, 3 pts for never cutting a dividend)
3. Is the dividend currently covered by net investment income? I covered this in a previous post in which I explained why I believe it matters. Below you can see the updated chart. Again, the same situation applies where I multiplied a monthly dividend payer by 3 to turn it into a quarterly dividend. 3 pts
4. How long has the company been paying dividends? I believe companies that have successfully navigated the 2007-2009 period should receive an extra credit above those companies which may have IPO'd over the past two years. 1-2 years is 1 pt; 2-5 years is 2 pts; 5+ years is 3 pts

Given this format, the max score a company could receive is 22 (5+ years of consistent dividends covered by NII) and the minimum score is 1 (company is still in business). For the BDC-R companies, the range of scores was 21 as a max and 3 as a min.
click to enlarge image
Results

Discussion of Results
As you can see, most of the companies are in the higher range of the numbers. This is partially due to the sample selection (I do not track some of the newer BDCs at the moment) and the favorable market conditions for BDC companies.
The main negative on the scoreboard was dividend cuts. Only 5 of the companies listed here have not cut their dividend. Of those 5, PennantPark Investment Corporation (PNNT - first dividend June 2007) and Compass Diversified Holdings (CODI - July 2006) have been around for awhile. Solar Capital Ltd. (SLRC - March 2010) and Horizon Technology Finance (HRZN - December 2010) are new to the world.
The other major reason for taking away points is the fact that most of the companies listed do not cover their dividend with net investment income. This means that they are either not covering their dividend or are cannibalizing their portfolio to meet payout requirements. One such company is MVC Capital (MVC). It realized losses on portfolio companies at 23 cents per share so it could meet its dividend payment of 12 cents per share. By continuing this payout, it reduced its book NAV from 17.71 to 17.38 during the six month period ending April 30th 2011.
Only 7 out of the 26 companies are "safely" covering their dividend as of their last reporting dates, which safely means their NII is greater than or equal to their current dividend. These companies are PNNT, HTGC, Kohlberg Capital (KCAP), KKR Financial Holdings (KFN), Triangle Capital (TCAP), GLAD and MCG Capital Corporation (MCGC).
The Clear Winner
PNNT (PennantPark Investment Corp) comes out ahead of the pack with a solid dividend history and good earnings numbers. It scored a 21 out of a possible 22 and the only detraction was due to the firm's lack of longevity (only paying dividends since June 2007).
The first runner up is Hercules Technology Growth Capital. There has been a fair amount of good press on HTGC this year and it appears that the company has done a good job of backing up what people are saying about it Nicholas Marshi, one of the top posters on BDC companies on Seeking Alpha, did an extensive write-up on the company in March of this year.
Surprises
Former-troubled BDC KCAP (Kohlberg Capital) is also sitting high on the list. The company was hit with a shareholder lawsuit in 2010, a changing of auditors (it switched from Deloitte to Grant Thornton) and restatement of earnings (again check the SEC website for the filings). For example, the restated as of June 30th 2009 earnings adjusted total assets down by $25m, which slashed the NAV from 11.09 to 9.73 and gave more fuel to the arguments it had with its lender BMO. It appears that the company may have weathered the storm and could be worth a deeper look into its financial statements and conference call logs.
Disappointments
At the bottom of the list is EQS. While not a BDC, EQS was a strong dividend-paying stock for 8 years and at this point it is too early to tell if the new management will be able to revitalize the company. SAR (remember GNV Investment?) is also sitting at the bottom as it has yet to show any signs of breaking out of GNV's slump.

BDC Weekly Roundup 7/1/2011

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July weekend. The posts have been coming a much slower rate due to me working on some new ways to source data. My current process is too time consuming and does not allow me to do the kind of in-depth analysis I would like to do.

The BDCR Index fought back and rose 2.31% this past week from a level of 305.41 on 6/27/2011 to 312.63 for the week ending 7/1/2011. The major winners were KED (+10.21%) and ACAS (+9.30%) and the major losers were EQS (-1.25%) and TCAP (-1.12%).
Chart:

News:
ACAS - Raising money through another stock, AGNC - http://seekingalpha.com/article/276766-mreit-american-capital-agency-s-secondary-provides-a-19-yield
KED - Boosts dividend by 22.6% and the stock soars - http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Kayne-Anderson-Energy-bw-2437001925.html?x=0&.v=1
NGPC - Announces new CFO - L. Scott Biar

BDC Weekly Roundup 1/10/2011

The BDCR Index rose by 1.24% from a level of 314.72 on 1/3/2010 to 318.66 for the week ending 1/7/2010. The major winners were HRZN (+7.6%) and MVC (+3.5%) and the major losers were FSC (-1.55%) and KCAP (-1.48%).

Some notable news items:

ACAS - Cramer said to stay away from ACAS, http://www.cnbc.com/id/40885039?__source=yahoo|headline|quote|text|&par=yahoo
FSC - Had a record quarter of closings http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Fifth-Street-Finance-Corp-pz-1575909448.html?x=0&.v=1
GAIN - Glad sold off Chase Doors, http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Gladstone-Investment-prnews-4274206846.html?x=0&.v=1
MAIN - Made two new investments totalling $11.4m and expanded their credit facility
TCAP - Made a $9m investment in SRC

American Capital NASDAQ: ACAS

American Capital (stock price of 6.57 as of 10/25/2010) will be the first BDC that I am reviewing. They are one of the oldest and largest of the BDCs. Of note, they are also in a form of zombie status due to certain issues that arose during the financial crisis starting in 2008. Most of the material presented below was taken from the company's webpage www.americancapital.com, SEC filings and news articles found on Google.

Overview 

Directly lifted from the webpage - American Capital (Nasdaq:ACAS), with $15 billion in capital resources under management, is a publicly traded private equity firm and global asset manager. American Capital, both directly and through its global asset management business, originates, underwrites and manages investments in middle market private equity, leveraged finance, real estate and structured products. American Capital and its affiliates invest from $5 million to $100 million per company in North America and €5 million to €25 million per company in Europe. 

The company is headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland and has offices in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, New York in the US and international offices in Hong Kong, London and Paris. Judging by headcount, it appears the main offices in the US are its headquarters and the Dallas office. The company used to have a Pittsburgh office, but that office appears to have been closed over the summer in 2000. Also, it appears that office in Los Angeles and Philadelphia were also closed sometime within the past two years. It was founded in 1986 and taken public in August 1997. The IPO consisted of 7 million shares, up to 645,161 shares offered to the directors, officers and other employees of the company and up to 364,606 shares issued as warrants to the underwriters. An interesting note is that the company currently has over 340million shares outstanding The managers who took the company public (as per the Form N-2) were David Gladstone, Malon Wilkus and Adam Blumenthal. The company had a very successful run up until the end of 2008 when the company's stock price was crushed due to portfolio markdowns that triggered various credit events. If someone was fortunate enough to get out at that time, they would have recognized a Total Return of about 200%. Just in case you were curious, Total Return is equal to the actual rate of return of an investment over a given period of time including interest, capital gains, dividends and any distributions.

Originally this post was going to discuss the investments, management, loan issues (zombie company) and other major factors, but as I was writing them up, I realized it was a small novel to complete all of that information. So, I will space out the posts and add more meat to each section. The first section I will cover is the ACAS Investment mix and changing strategies. The firm's portfolio has changed quite substantially since the IPO in '97, so there will be some interesting charts.