Now for what is always my favorite part of the show, not just speaking with an amazing guest, but how about the team that just rang the closing bell here at the New York Stock Exchange.
The president, CEO of Churchill Asset Management, Ken Ken Sell joins us now.
It's great to see you here, sir.
Great, great to see you, JD.
Talk to me first and fore.
Most, what was the experience like for you and your team down here and what brings you down here to ring the closing bell?
It was absolutely fantastic.
I must say every time I'm on the floor, the energy and the enthusiasm of folks here at the exchange is always incredible, and it was incredible again to do that, do that today.
What brought us here is our 20th anniversary for Churchill.
So 20 years of investing in private credit and super excited to be here and to mark such an incredible milestone for anyone, even potential would-be clients who are a bit unfamiliar.
What are some of the core values of your operation that have sustained the business over these last two decades?
Absolutely.
Investment in our people, partnership with our clients, commitment to long-term values have been a part of who we are from the. could not be prouder of our people, the relationships we've built over a 20 year history, and the commitment to fundamental values.
So we've started out 20 years ago with a commitment to private credit, core middle market private credit, and we're still there today doing exactly what we did 20 years ago.
So very proud of that.
What conviction about that space do you hold even more strongly today, I wonder, Ken Ken, than you did 20 years ago?
I would say the institutional.
The performance of private credit in the core middle market, the fact that it remains an incredibly strong risk adjusted return for our institutional investors all over the world.
We have over 5000 institutional investors all over the world.
We've delivered consistent return over a very long period of time.
So the quality of the underlying investments, the ongoing current yield that it provides, and the quality of the underlying businesses is.
To us and it's been that way for a long time through the GFC, through COVID, through higher interest rates, and here we are today 20 years later and fresh rounds of all-time highs as well for all those long holders of institutional investors.
I wonder what does the smart money ask you?
I wonder, are there particular parts of the market or your relationship with them as clients they want to learn more about?
Sure, well, the first question we get today is private credit now, a very hot topic, right?
For a long time we were operating and we were the, you know, we were kind of the quiet world.
Nobody.
Talk about suddenly private credit became everybody's focus and so what we hear all the time is talk to us about performance, talk to us about how your portfolio is doing, what are your underlying default rates, loss rates, etc. and the easy answer and very straightforward one is performance has remained incredibly strong.
They also ask us a lot now about the retail dynamics, right?
Private credit in the retail market, redemptions, those questions.
Fortunately for us we are 96% institutional.
We have had limited redemptions in our overall public vehicles, so in that sense we kind of check all the boxes if you will.
And I'd say the last thing is what does the environment look like today for investment?
What are terms like?
What are spreads like?
What are underlying credit quality like for new deals that you're doing today?
The short answer is absolutely fantastic.
I'd say the best opportunities we've seen in the last couple of years.
I've got about a minute left.
A lot of interest from retail investors in the so-called shiny thing.
Do you ever get institutional, the smart money guys coming to you and saying, Hey, what's the deal with sand disc or silver, these other things going parabolic, and what do you tell them about maybe avoiding the new shiny thing of the day?
Well, you know, I like to say that in many respects we were the tortoise versus the hare in our business, and the good part about private credit or the important part about private credit is for those of us who've been doing it a long time and do it well, is it's boring, OK.
It's, you know, being boring is not a bad thing, right?
It's consistent.
It's stable, delivers good long term returns, so it may not be the most shiny thing.
But it delivers long term returns to participants, for investors, for our parent company TIAA.
We manage capital for them.
They've been an important part of the success along with Nuveen.
So I want to just sound out a thank you for them and for all the success we've had.
Very grateful.
Boring is good when it comes to long term investing.
Exactly.
Don't forget Ken Kent taught you that, president and CEO of Churchill Asset Management.
What a pleasure.
Congratulations, Ken.
Nice to see you.
Thanks very much.
