Blackstone Private Credit Fund Increases Regular Monthly Distribution
Blackstone Private Credit Fund, a non-traded business development company sponsored by private equity giant Blackstone (NYSE: BX), has increased its regular monthly distribution.
Blackstone Private Credit Fund, a non-traded business development company sponsored by private equity giant Blackstone (NYSE: BX), has increased its regular monthly distribution from $0.174 per share to $0.190 per share, which represents a 9.1 percent annualized distribution yield for Class I shares based on the July net asset value per share of $25.02.
For Class S shares, the increase represents an estimated net distribution of $0.1722 and an estimated 8.3 percent distribution yield. For Class D shares, it represents an estimated net distribution of $0.1848 and an estimated 8.9 percent distribution yield.
The distribution increase will become effective for the October 2022 distribution, paid around November 29, 2022 to shareholders of record as of October 31, 2022.
Blackstone said that the distribution increase is driven by the BDC’s “strong earnings, the quality of its portfolio, and the positive impact from rising interest rates.”
“With nearly 100 percent of the portfolio invested in floating rate debt which benefits from rising rates, and [Blackstone Private Credit Fund’s] low fee structure, [we] believe this creates an opportunity to raise its regular monthly distributions to more appropriately align with its earnings power,” the company said in filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Blackstone Private Credit Fund is the industry’s first perpetual-life BDC and broke escrow on January 7, 2021. The fund is part of Blackstone Credit’s direct lending platform, which provides privately originated, senior secured, floating rate loans to U.S. and European middle market companies. Since inception, the BDC has raised $23.3 billion in its private and public offerings, as of August 24, 2022.
As of July 31, 2022, the fund’s aggregate NAV was $22.1 billion, the fair value of its investment portfolio was $47.7 billion, and it had $27.2 billion of debt outstanding (at principal). The average debt-to-equity leverage ratio during July 2022 was approximately 1.17 times.
