Leading BDC NII analysis
leading bdc companies NII
26 days ago
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I'll research leading BDC (Business Development Company) companies and their Net Investment Income (NII) performance. Let me start by identifying the major BDCs in the market.Let me also load additional NII-related metrics (interest expense, operating expenses) needed to compute NII, and get price data for context.Now let me compute NII (interest income − interest expense) annual figures and TTM NII, plus dividend-relevant data.Let me reshape this into a table comparing NII across all BDCs.Net Investment Income by BDC (Interest income − Interest expense, $M annual)
| BDC | FY21 | FY22 | FY23 | FY24 | FY25 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ARCC (Ares Capital) | 875.0 | 1,015.0 | 1,383.0 | 1,503.0 | 1,537.8 |
| OBDC (Owl Rock / Blue Owl Capital) | 753.8 | 780.2 | 990.8 | 940.8 | 1,004.5 |
| FSK (FS KKR Capital) | 563.0 | 417.0 | 1,028.0 | 937.0 | 677.0 |
| GBDC (Golub Capital BDC) | 234.7 | 300.8 | 441.4 | 497.3 | 552.6 |
| MAIN (Main Street Capital) | 134.8 | 206.5 | 290.3 | 417.6 | 438.4 |
| HTGC (Hercules Capital) | 198.9 | 252.5 | 346.5 | 390.0 | 415.7 |
| TSLX (Sixth Street Specialty Lending) | 226.3 | 247.0 | 304.7 | 345.5 | 320.8 |
| PFLT (PennantPark Floating Rate) | 47.8 | 55.5 | 81.5 | 104.3 | 145.6 |
| CGBD (Carlyle Secured Lending) | 105.9 | 124.9 | 126.8 | 124.5 | 140.6 |
| NMFC (New Mountain Finance) | 116.5 | 119.8 | 150.1 | 139.5 | 116.3 |
Key takeaways:
- ARCC is the clear NII leader, generating $1.54B in 2025 — roughly 53% larger than the next name (OBDC) and ~3.5x MAIN despite MAIN being historically the highest-dividend-payer in the group.
- OBDC has steadily grown NII to ~$1.0B, supported by scale post its 2024 Blue Owl/Owl Rock merger.
- FSK shows the most volatile path: a dip in 2022 (rate/transitional reset), spike in 2023 from the FSK–KKR merger, then normalization.
- MAIN, GBDC, HTGC form a clear middle tier in the $400–550M range, all showing consistent NII growth.
- TSLX has plateaued around $320M after rapid 2021–2024 expansion.
- PFLT is the standout grower on a relative basis — NII has roughly tripled from FY21 ($47.8M) to FY25 ($145.6M).
- NMFC is the only major BDC in the group with declining NII (peak in 2023), reflecting pressure on spread income.
Definition used: NII = Interest income − Interest expense (pre-tax, pre-credits/ex-realized-gains basis reported by BDCs). Note that BDCs report a GAAP "NII per share" figure that adds back realized/unrealized credits and other non-cash items; the table above is the core spread earnings driver before those adjustments.
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