Eagle Point Credit Co (NYSE:ECC) reported first-quarter financial results on Tuesday. The transcript from the company’s first-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
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View the webcast at https://viavid.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1728964&tp_key=1d134257ee&_gl=1aq481u_gaMTMxNDgyNDUzLjE3Nzg2NzY1MDc._ga_EB1RC3REG8*czE3Nzg2NzY1MDckbzEkZzEkdDE3Nzg2NzY1MjUkajQyJGwwJGgw
Summary
Eagle Point Credit Co reported a challenging first quarter in 2026, with a decline in NAV by 26.8% due to volatile loan prices and market conditions impacted by geopolitical issues.
The company deployed $100 million into new investments, achieving a weighted average effective yield of 18.9%, and emphasized opportunities from discounted loans despite short-term market pressures.
Eagle Point Credit Co announced a NAV rebound in April, increasing by nearly 9%, and maintained its quarterly distribution at $0.06 per share, reflecting confidence in its long-term earnings potential and strategic positioning.
Management highlighted the strategic focus on diversifying beyond CLO equity into infrastructure credit and other structured investments, aiming to enhance income and improve portfolio diversification.
The company’s effective yield on CLO equity based on fair value is significantly higher at 26.3% compared to amortized cost, indicating potential for higher future returns.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
Greetings and welcome to the Eagle Point Credit Company first quarter 2026 financial results call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press Star0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Darren Daugherty with Prospect Partners today. Thank you. Please begin.
Darren Daugherty (Moderator)
Thank you Operator and good morning. Welcome to Eagle Point Credit Company’s earnings conference call for the first quarter of 2026. Speaking on the call today are Thomas Majewski, Chief Executive Officer and Ken Inorio, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that the matters discussed on this call include forward looking statements or projected financial information that involve risks and uncertainties that may cause the Company’s actual results to differ materially from such projections. For further information on factors that could impact the company and the statements and projections contained herein, please refer to the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Each forward looking statement or projection of financial information made during this call is based on the information available to us as of the date of this call. We disclaim any obligation to update our forward looking statements unless required by law. Earlier today we filed our first quarter 2026 financial statements and investor presentation with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These are also available in the Investor Relations section of the company’s website, eaglepointcreditcompany.com. A replay of this call will be made available later today. I will now turn the call over to Thomas Majewski, Chief Executive Officer of Eagle Point Credit Company.
Thomas Majewski (Chief Executive Officer)
Tom Thanks, Darren. Good morning everyone. We’re glad you’re joining us today on Eagle Point Credit Company’s quarterly call. I’ll start by providing some perspectives on the recent quarter. CLO Equity faced challenging market conditions in the first quarter of 2026 and the company was not immune to those broader dynamics. While CLO fundamentals remain relatively stable, a decline in loan prices, especially in the software sector, and a cautious tone in the credit markets broadly due to the ongoing war in Iran, weighed on our financial performance during the quarter. The software sector was particularly an area of focus during the quarter as investors continued to assess the potential impact of AI on certain business models and revenue streams. Importantly, however, our exposure is principally through broadly syndicated loans, not middle market lending that’s commonly found in BDCs. The loans in our CLOs are typically larger, more liquid institutionally syndicated credits that have observable market pricing which can result in more immediate mark to market volatility during sector specific pressure. ECC software exposure at quarter end stood at roughly 10.8%. While there’s not one definitive number, many market sources would say BDCs typically have software exposure in the mid 20% range. While the volatility in loan prices impacted our quarterly valuations, we believe it also created opportunities for many of our CLO collateral managers to reinvest pay downs and sale proceeds into discounted loans with attractive forward return potential. While these factors led to a decline in CLO equity valuations during the quarter, we believe the market typically undervalues the reinvestment option embedded in CLOs during times of dislocation. The ability to buy loans at material discounts to PAR has allowed CLOs equity to deliver attractive intermediate and long term returns following short term periods of volatility. During the quarter, we deployed $100 million into new investments at a weighted average effective yield of 18.9% as we took advantage of compelling relative value opportunities created by a particularly uncertain macro environment. Throughout the quarter, we continue to actively manage our CLO portfolio by completing four resets and three refinancings of our CLO equity positions, resulting in weighted average CLO debt cost savings of 43 basis points for those CLOs. In addition to lowering our debt costs, the reset positions extended their reinvestment periods to five years. Our portfolio’s weighted average remaining reinvestment period or WARP ended the quarter at 3.4 years. This is higher than the market average of 2.8 years and also higher than our year end level of 3.3 years. This reflects our continued focus on extending the reinvestment optionality in our CLO portfolio. We also continue to broaden ECC’s opportunity set across credit while CLO equity remains central to the company’s strategy. As we’ve mentioned on the prior call, we have selectively increased our exposure to complementary asset classes including infrastructure credit, regulatory capital, relief portfolio, debt securities, and certain other structured and specialty credit investments. These investments are sourced through dedicated teams across the EaglePoint platform and are designed to enhance income, improve diversification and capture attractive relative value beyond just traditional CLO equity. One recent example of this strategy in action is a directly originated infrastructure investment that we made in the fourth quarter of 2020. We were able to successfully realize this investment just four months later, crystallizing an attractive return. This outcome demonstrates our ability to originate and monetize differentiated credit opportunities outside of CLO Equity while still maintaining ECC’s income oriented investment focus. As of March 31, CLO Equity represented 67% of our portfolio while Other Credit Asset Classes represented 31%. The balance was held in cash. As of March 31, our NAV stood at $4.17, per share and this represents a decrease of 26.8% from $5.70 per share at year end. For the first quarter the company generated a GAAP return on equity of negative 20.2% and during the quarter we paid 42 cents per share in cash distributions to our common shareholders. That said, ECC’s portfolio rebounded sharply. In April, our NAV increased to between $4.49 and $4.59 per share, a nearly 9% increase at the midpoint. Last week we declared three monthly distributions of $0.06 per share for the third quarter of 2026. This is in line with our distributions for the second quarter. Our current distribution level is aligned with the Company’s near term earnings profile and reflects our focus on maintaining a sustainable distribution over time. Separately, as disclosed in our recent public filings, members of our adviser senior investment team purchased more than 167,000 shares of the company’s common stock during the first quarter, reflecting their confidence in the Company’s long term value and our view that the current trading levels do not fully reflect the intrinsic value of our stock. Subsequent to quarter end, we completed the full redemption of our ECCW and ECCX notes. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Ken to discuss the financial results in more detail.
Ken Inorio (Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer)
Thank you Tom and thanks everyone for joining us today. For the first quarter of 2026, the company recorded NII less realized losses from investments of 19 million or 14 cents per share. This compares to NII less realized losses from investments of negative $0.26 per share in the fourth …
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