Private Debt: Past, Present & Future

Greg Campion: Private debt markets have seen rapid growth over the last decade, growing from what was a small allocation for many institutional investors just 10 years ago to a much more significant and often core position in portfolios today. Can the growth of this asset class continue, or might economic and structural headwinds mean that trouble is on the horizon?

David Scopelliti: I know there are investors and allocators who think, " Wow, there's so many different managers out there. This has got to be a bubble," and so forth. And I think if you go then look under the underlying portfolio, you look at the covenants that these have. There's good structures. There's the ability to repay the loan. If you think about all of that, because those managers are incented to make sure they get the money back, because that's how they make money, I think it's a very different world than the bank. So I think the asset class has a lot more room to grow. I mean, our view is we think this is a three to five trillion dollar asset class in the next five to 10 years.

Greg Campion: That was David Scopelliti, partner and global head of private debt at Mercer, and this is Streaming Income, a podcast from Barings. I'm your host, Greg Campion. Coming up on today's show, my colleague and Barings' head of private assets, David Mihalick, sits down with Mercer's David Scopelliti for a wide- ranging conversation on the past, present, and future of private debt. This episode is the first installment of our new Investing Together series where we'll be hosting thought- provoking conversations with external partners just like David on topics ranging from private credit to real estate to insurance investing and more. With that, please enjoy this conversation with David Scopelliti and David Mihalick.

David Mihalick: David, thank you very much for joining me today on this episode of Streaming Income.

David Scopelliti: Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

David Mihalick: All right. As we get started, I'd love to hear a little bit about your role at Mercer and then also your career journey, what led you to being here today.

David Scopelliti: Sure. I'm global head of private credit at Mercer. And first, I've got to say I've got an absolutely fantastic team globally. This is the best team I've worked with in my entire career, and I've been doing this for 30 years, as you'll hear about my career journey in a second. In terms of what we're doing at Mercer, my role is in really overseeing our US business, our European business, and our Australian business. We manage about 25 different vehicles globally for our investors and our clients with all different types of risk return profiles and so forth in private credit. In addition to doing that, we also have a number of advisory clients where we're trying to help them think about building portfolios and private credit. It's an asset class that is maybe 12 or 13 years old, so it's still developing, still evolving, still growing, and there are a lot of questions. And we're still seeing more and more new investors come into the asset class. So they come to us as the global team. Our mission is to be the best performing and most respected private credit team globally in terms of what we do, so having that mission statement, we talk about it literally at the start of every one of our team meetings. But that's my role is really to coordinate all those team members and vehicles and clients to make sure they're happy and they're getting what they want.

David Mihalick: Okay. And now a little bit about your career journey, where have you been over the course of how many decades?

David Scopelliti: Yeah, so it's amazing. I'm in my mid- fifties, so I've been doing this more than a minute. I started off actually doing direct lending, so lending money to companies, finding, by the way, that sometimes it is not easy to get the money back, FYI. I've had to go through bankruptcies and out- of- court restructurings and some other fund things over the course. I'm sure, like you, those are interesting times and really learning times. But I've been on the GP side of the business, I've been on the LP side of the business, and I've done both private equity and private credit, so really being in the private markets and understanding how all the pieces go. I've made my way, and it's been a fantastic journey. And I tell young people, they're always looking for a plan, and I say, " Sometimes it comes to you. If this is what you enjoy doing, do it. Do it really well and opportunities will make themselves available." It's hard, I think, in this business, and you've been around like me, it's hard to exactly sketch out a trail. Sometimes just things happen for the right reasons.

David Mihalick: Right. The good advice is usually surround yourself with good people, and then let your career evolve and go where it feels right.

David Scopelliti: And frankly, have a mentor, and I've been lucky enough to have a few really good mentors, some who've been in this business and, frankly, some who've been CEOs that have come from different businesses outside of what we do in the investment management business. So they're the ones who sometimes have given me almost the better advice, because they've been running businesses and companies and Siri and Alexa don't do what we do yet, or ChatGPT. So I think we'll need us around for a few more years.

David Mihalick: Yeah. In terms of private debt, private credit, an asset class that's been around a long time, but I feel like in the last five years it feels like there's been an explosion. So can you talk a little bit about when you first got into private markets and how you've seen the asset class change over time?

David Scopelliti: Yeah. If you go back, again, I've been doing this 30 years to the early'90s where US money center banks, European money center banks, the Japanese banks, certainly, and even some of the Nordic banks were very, very active, Canadian banks, very active in what was the LBO business, whether it was in high yield bonds or just doing leverage lending, right? You think about in the'90s, we had a recession, we had this thing called highly levered loans that the Fed and the Comptroller of the Currency started looking at pretty intensely. And over the last 30 years, I mean, you have seen more and more groups now called direct lenders or private credit managers develop over time to really take up the demand that the banks have not met, as the supply of capital from banks has reduced really over a very long period of time. The GFC was an accelerator of that, banks pulling out of the market, and really in today's market, you see what's going on with inflation. The Fed's already putting more pressure on banks with higher capital reserves, and asking them really to cut back on lending as a way to deal with inflation. So you've had banks that who started this business and were in this business for a very long time, and today you obviously have private credit managers who, frankly, I think are more capable at sourcing assets, also underwriting those assets, and managing them to fruition. That faucet will wound to tune that full cycle is very different than you typically see in the bank, because with the bank, particularly if you hit a speed bump, they'd just sell the assets at a fraction, at the cents on the dollar out of some workout group. So the business definitely has changed. I think it's changed for the better, actually, because most private credit managers like yourselves who manage a lot of capital, your business is dependent on making good decisions, hiring great people, finding good deals, and so forth. The banks really didn't have those incentives. So I actually think it's a healthy environment to have asset managers who have the right incentives to make sure that they're underwriting the right loans, because anybody can make a loan. It's hard to get the money back, as you know.

David Mihalick: So given that, and then for an asset allocator, what are some of the mistakes you think people make when they're evaluating managers? And there's a wide variety, you have some of the household names that have been in the asset class for decades, in the last five years. Again, as we've talked about with the growth of the asset class, you've had a lot of new managers, whether they're a startup or a derivative of some other business they have, and everyone wants to start a direct lending shop, and then many have. I think there are pluses and minuses to big established platforms versus newer platforms, so what kind of things do you think allocators should be focused on when they're deciding who to partner with?

David Scopelliti: Well, the first step is always this whole asset allocation process, which is how much risk do you want to take, how much return do you need? And that's the first piece of the pie that you need to really think through before you go into the manager selection mode. As you think that manager selection, I use the framework of the five Ps. What's the product, who are the people, how are they performed, do they have a reputable process, and what's the price, terms, and conditions that we need to pay? So I think if you as an allocator, asset owner of any type have made a decision about your asset allocation, your risk return, then it informs where you go and which managers you go after. I do see allocators who, I think, two things. One is they look for very idiosyncratic strategies or things that are maybe not correlated. Music royalties is a great example. I mean, that has a capital need and there's a marketplace for that, but it's a pretty limited marketplace. There's a few people who play in that pool. And just to go into that because you feel it's not correlated, as opposed to going into that and a direct lending platform, I do see allocators who tend to go overspecialize in, quote, " uncorrelated" types of lending strategies, and I do think over time they'll find that experience is not exactly what they thought. Everything's interconnected, by the way. As much as the actuaries want to say certain things are uncorrelated to others, I think in today's world where we have streaming video of things happening over the skies in real time, the information flow today is very different than it was 10 or even 15 years ago.

David Mihalick: Yeah. I think that's a good segue, then, to my next question, which is as people come into the asset class, you need to think about how you diversify in the asset class. You can do that by selecting different managers within the same asset class. You can have different areas of the private markets that you put in a portfolio. So how do you think people should think about that and the best way to manage some of those correlation risks?

David Scopelliti: Yeah, I think you can think about it vertically, which is you could have a stack of different managers by region, by geography. That's usually the first cut. And then within that, you can start thinking about direct lending or structure credit, specialty finance, et cetera, et cetera. And certainly there's nothing wrong with if you have the resources to go through that vertical stack. I think that's great. I do think if you don't have the resources, and frankly, even from a return standpoint, going with a more horizontal manager that has capabilities throughout the credit markets, it could be direct lending, structure credit, real estate, what have you, and going to them to ask them, much like we've done what our partnership with you, is, " You have a big platform across credit, and we'd like to try to get the best ideas out of that." Because the market definitely moves over time, and we've seen the changes over the last three years in the market tightening spreads, widening spreads, things are moving around all the time. So being able to access the best deal flow off a platform on a horizontal basis, for us, that's one of the places that we go and what we look for. Not to say that we won't fill in with specialists in certain areas, because you really can't go horizontal, so we'll do a little bit vertical. But I think our preference is more horizontal than vertical at this point.

David Mihalick: So you mentioned things can move around a lot, which leads me to a question around valuations in private markets. I think that's something, particularly for people that may be newer to making an allocation, is how the valuation process works, how they should think about it during periods of volatility. As an anecdote, I remember being at a conference years ago and someone talking about their experience through the financial crisis, and they were talking about a particular private credit manager. And they said through that period, everything was off 20 or 30%, and this manager was never down more than three, which maybe that's true, but it also leads to the question of what are the underlying assets worth? So how do you think people, when they come into the asset class, what should they be aware of when they think about valuation and how different managers treat it?

David Scopelliti: Yeah, certainly I think there's been an evolution in valuation for that very reason, because it is not treated, right? There's no willing buyer and willing seller for a loan off a Bloomberg screen, which we see a lot obviously in the high yield market and the broadly syndicated loan market. Those markets are real trading markets. Somebody is buying at 98 and a half and maybe selling at 99. There's a lot of movement going on. If you think about access to information as a loan investor in a broadly syndicated loan or high yield market, you don't have the same visibility transparency into the financial data, one, and two, you don't have access to management, or if it's a private equity owned business, the sponsor or the shareholders. In the private market, you have a ton more information. You have full access to the management team and whoever the shareholder is, particularly if it is on the private equity side. So you can make a better, more fundamentally driven valuation decision than you can in the public markets, which are basically Bloomberg's going back and forth. So I think as investors look at this, and understanding the various valuation methodologies that are out there, having the manager do a third party valuation, certainly quarterly and annually, and then having the auditors then look at that at the end of the year, I think that should give investors comfort that you're not going to see the same level of volatility in private debt, only because it's a more fundamentally valued asset. There's enough firms out there now, there's enough, certainly here in the US, interval funds and BDCs and all the other 40 ACT funds. It's a requirement, and typically if, for the 40 ACT funds, as you well know, because you run a few of them, there's an independent board, right? So you have a lot of eyes on it. But I think as investors who are in the asset class, or certainly there're more investors who are going to come into it over time, I would say just make sure that this evaluation process, it includes a third party and a reputable third party. And I would say most of the credit managers I know that we deal with, and I'm sure that your counterparties and so forth are all thinking about this responsibly, because there is implications if you don't.

David Mihalick: Yeah. And I think, like you said, credible managers, I think, generally have a really robust, thoughtful process based on fundamentals. When you're in liquid markets, even asking the question about private markets is the presumption that liquid markets get it right, but the reality is there's a lot of technical factors that have nothing to do that can cause a loan or a bond to move 10, 15 points over a period of time. Is that a fair value? I guess there's a willing buyer and seller, but it may not reflect the underlying value of the actual instrument that you're trading.

David Scopelliti: And you look at the gilt crisis, I mean, you had a lot of UK pension plans and others who were selling rated assets from double B up at prices that were not reflective of the real value of the underlying instrument, but were reflective of how much liquidity was in the market at one point in time. And I think, listen, in the private markets, and I've said this a lot, it is both art and science in terms of evaluation. It should be 90% science, and then there's certainly has got to be some factor in judgment, particularly if you have access and knowledge of something, whether it's good or bad or neutral. That has to be really put into the valuation process, that judgment, which effectively, if you think about an LP when they sign a subscription document with you or any other manager, I mean, they're putting their trust in you that you have the judgment in order to make that valuation decision every quarter, and it's a big fiduciary responsibility.

David Mihalick: Yeah. You mentioned what happened in the UK and that rush for liquidity, so people selling what they can so the market gets disjointed. So then turning to liquidity and private markets, more and more open- ended structures and maybe some questions around a mismatch between the underlying assets and then the liquidity private by the fund. A lot of them obviously have gating items, you can only redeem so much, but how do you think about open- ended versus close end structures in the asset class, and again, some things that people should be aware of as they're considering different options?

David Scopelliti: Yeah, I would tell you it is, and obviously we've done this with our partnership with you, we have made it an open- ended structure for a number of reasons, but I would say the market is moving more and more toward open- ended evergreen type of structures. There's a number of reasons for that. One is a typical close end private debt fund. You have a ramp up period, you get to your top number, and then you come down pretty quickly. So unlike private equity, that drawdown is longer, that invested capital is there longer, and that drawdown is a lot longer period of time. We find as you just keep on underwriting fund two, fund three, fund four, fund five, you might as well just have said, " Okay. When we invested in fund two, wouldn't we have had it in evergreen? And if we like you, we'll just re- underwrite you effectively every year. And we have the ability to redeem at some point in time." The word liquidity, in interval funds there is liquidity, certainly if you're an investor in public BDCs. You're not investing in debt. You're investing in equity. I always like to make that point, but theoretically you have some liquidity in the market at any one time. But as I think about the structures going forward, more and more investors, whether it's through SMAs or through evergreen structures that are out there now, the market is definitely moving in that direction, which, by the way, gets back to the valuation point. You have to have a robust valuation process in order to both accept money over the course of a year in whatever intervals you want, and also to be able to redeem it, and investors really need to understand the balance between the two. We typically prefer a lot of the liquidating share classes, because it gives managers the time to have the assets naturally roll off. Some of the other structures where they're promising up to 5% liquidity, not an issue. But when everybody rushes to the door, and we've seen that lately, I won't mention anybody's names, but as we've seen that lately, it definitely causes concerns and pressures. And people then wonder, " Oh, I thought I could just get my money back." Well, on the retail side, that's definitely not the case. So you have to look at your documents.

David Mihalick: So the next question I have is 20 years ago maybe people had no exposure. Now people have five, 10%. Every sort of industry trend study you see expects to see that continue to grow, which is why so many managers are investing in building out capabilities. I mean, where do you see the limits for privates? I mean, people do need liquidity in the portfolio, obviously different investors have different needs for liquidity, but what limits do you see in terms of how much the markets can grow over time?

David Scopelliti: If you just look at supply demand in the market, the supply capital from banks continues to decrease, and they've been the biggest source of capital for companies and financial structures for many, many years. They're being replaced by insurance companies, pension plans, family offices, endowments, the whole gamut, and obviously now retail investors who are also coming into the asset class. Fundamentally, I think there is more demand for capital than there is supply, and I don't think that is just a here and now situation. I think that is a long trend that started in the early'90s and accelerated in the great financial crisis, and now, as we go into this interesting period, so post- COVID with inflation running and certainly regulators pulling back on the banks because they want them healthy, they don't want to go through another crisis where the bank banks are not healthy, you're seeing that demand for capital go into the private markets. So while there are more and more managers entering the marketplace, I mean, we've seen that and so forth, that's not a bad thing. I think they're there trying to fill the gap that is needed in the marketplace by businesses to finance. Credit makes everything go around. Without credit, the world doesn't function, trade doesn't function, so we're seeing more and more of that. And as the banks, interestingly enough, pull out of some of the trade finance, which they were stalwarts and for many years... I mean, you wanted to go to a bank to get some sort of trade finance or receivable financing, you could go there. They've really pulled back quite significantly. So I know there are investors and allocators who think, " Wow, there's so many different managers out there. This has got to be a bubble," and so forth. And I think if you go then look under the underlying portfolio, you look at the covenants that these have. There's good structures. There's the ability to repay the loan. If you think about all of that, because those managers are incented to make sure they get the money back, because that's how they make money, I think it's a very different world than the bank. So I think the asset class has a lot more room to grow. I mean, our view is we think this is a three to five trillion dollar asset class in the next five to 10 years.

David Mihalick: So you have a global perspective on the market. I'm just curious, as you look at North America, Europe versus Asia, the state of maturity of those different markets, number of players... I think North America's probably pretty mature. Europe has developed a lot. In our business at least, I think we see more growth in AsiaPac. Can you talk a little bit about the different geographies and what you see?

David Scopelliti: I would concur with you on that. I mean, certainly the US is a very, very well- developed market, very mature. And you continuing to see new entrants come in with more specialized strategies here in this market. So I always like to say if you look at private equity. Originally in the private equity markets, you're a buyout fund. Well, today you're a growth fund, you're a healthcare fund, you're an operational turnaround fund. So that's specialization that happened in private equity over, say, 20 or 25 years has happened in private credit, certainly in the US over the last five to seven years, clearly, and then Europe is just a half step behind that. You see that specialization developing. Certainly if you're in the direct lending space, they're very, very well established managers in the space, which is what you would expect. As you go and you move toward APAC, you're dealing with a number of different rules of law in terms of both creditor protection and debtor protections. Not every market is the same. And I think as you think about going into those markets, you have to think about what rule of law is there, because if you're secured by assets in collateral, being able to actually go into court and get a judge to say, " Yeah, that's yours. Take it and then you can go do what you want with it," is pretty important. I'd say in the biggest part of APAC, being Australia, that is definitely a developed market. There's only so much there. Most of Australia is inaccessible. Really it's only the coast cities, but certainly it's a big enough market with mining and agriculture and things like that where there has been, I think, a very well- developed and even more developing, I should say, market for private debt. We see a lot of managers who are here in the US who've also gone to Australia. And what I would also say is you think about it from an investor standpoint, we've been talking about investments themselves and managers, but from an investor standpoint, you're seeing certainly Australia having really a lot of growth for private debt. Not only on the institutional side, but on the retail side. We're working with a group down there right now on the retail front, one of the first groups there to really look at that market, which is estimated a trillion dollars for high net worth money in Australia. I mean, it's a large market. So those are the kind of developments. So I think as APAC develops in terms of its structure and more managers are going into that space, you're going to see more allocators putting money into that region. I mean, as you well know from running this platform, currency is an important issue when you allocate capital, and that's one of the things certainly APAC investors think about as well too.

David Mihalick: Yeah, and that's certainly an area we're focused on in our business. And I think that local expertise, people talk about European private credit, but if you do have an issue in your portfolio in the UK versus France versus Italy, it's a very different process, and so having boots on the ground, people that understand the geographies, the risks when you're negotiating a credit agreement, depending on where the borrower is, the collateral is, that's a higher level of expertise you have to bring to the table in those geographies.

David Scopelliti: Yeah, I think it's a little easier in Europe. It's more focused and there's a lot of similarities in terms of rule law, and obviously with the European Union and so forth, I think it helps. In APAC, broadly speaking, there's a lot more diversity and heterogeneous types of structures out there. So it's a little harder to broad brush that than in Europe, to your point, where you can move on the collateral, even if you're in the UK and you have a German deal. You you know what you're going to get when you go into a German court. And I think that rule of law and that comfort in that makes it a lot easier for the managers to do loans, and frankly, as a allocator to give capital to that manager, because they have that expertise.

David Mihalick: Yeah. And especially a lot of more emerging Asia, the operations and assets may be in an emerging country, the sales may be all over the world, because so many of them are export driven economies. So there's a lot of layers to think about as you go into those kind of spaces.

David Scopelliti: Yeah, and we see trade finances actually one of the areas in that area that there's a lot of demand for it for that very reason, because there's a lot of trading that's going on and being able to finance those things. And then you add on the whole supply chain logistics issues, which we've been dealing with over the last couple of years, so during the pandemic. If you have goods on a boat sitting out of Los Angeles Harbor, somebody has to finance that at some point in time. So we've seen actually quite a bit of growth in that trade finance area, particularly in the APAC region.

David Mihalick: Yeah. So how do you see the interplay between, as private credit grows, private credit managers and banks? Because there are now multi- billion dollar tranches that would've been historically the bread and butter in the broadly syndicated loan market, a big fee generator for banks, and you're seeing more and more of those get placed in the private markets. And so there's a frenemy component, yet a lot of the private credit managers depend on the banks for financing, and so there's a lot of connectivity and there becomes competition over time. I think it's all relatively balanced and healthy now, but I do think you could continue to see pressure along that line.

David Scopelliti: I would say it is healthy. The banks certainly, they have other ways to make money, and with the restrictions and the higher capital ratios that have just been put onto them, and really the Fed and the comptroller asking them to pull back because of the money multiplier effect that lending has, they're going to be a smaller and smaller part of the market over time. And I think they've always had a really healthy relationship with the private credit market, because they provide some prescription lines to those funds, or they provide leverage to those funds, or they might be providing some sort of banking service just to wire money back and forth between LPs and GPs. So I think there's a lot of different ways for the banks to make money in the space, but I do think as they continue to retreat, if you will, from underwriting those big transactions and then syndicating them out to a lot of private credit managers and so forth, you're seeing private credit managers step in to basically underwrite all of those larger loans. There are some managers who are saying, " Hey, we're going to underwrite it and hold a billion dollars ourselves, because we have a$ 20 billion fund," and there are other managers who are saying, " Okay, we'll take it down and then we'll partner up either with our LPs, we'll partner up with other managers, but we can speak for that check." So being able to write those big checks is becoming an important part of the marketplace. Is it the only place you should be playing in private credit? No. I think that is one piece of it. There's a whole other universe of credit strategies and credit managers that you ought to look for. Diversity, we haven't talked about it, but diversification and private credit is absolutely critical. Having limited counterparty exposure is important, having that highly diversified. We've seen managers who have not had diversified portfolios in private credit, and if there's a hiccup, one of my great sayings is you can't paper over the roadkill, and you can't in private credit. Private equity, you can lose money on one deal and the other three, four, 10 deals you have in the portfolio should make up for that. That doesn't happen in private credit. And I think anyone who's looking to get into the private credit business in terms of on the LP side of the business or certainly looking at managers, that's the one thing they should be looking at is loss ratios for those managers. That really drives everything.

David Mihalick: Yeah. And I think whatever is to come from an economic cycle standpoint, you're going to see the quality of the underwriting that's happened over the last few years, whose portfolios withstand whatever economic volatility we had. Because you say you get your money back and you get your coupon, that's your upside, and your downside is you lose everything. And depending on how diverse the portfolio is, you can only have so many losses before you really destroy what is the expected return for the portfolio. As we wrap up here, David, I'd love to get along the lines of the macro environment. You've been investing since the'090s, had a varied career, seen a lot of different cycles, a lot of different things, fads come and go. What do you think about the world right now? I mean, 2022 was a tough year, bonds and equity both down. We come into January, it feels like everything's fine. The markets have all ripped higher, spreads are tighter, yet it doesn't feel like a lot has changed. So as you interact with your clients and talk about what's going on in the world, where's your head? I know no one's got a crystal ball, so I'm not asking you to predict the future, but just what are some of the things that you're thinking about?

David Scopelliti: To your point, there are so many different things going on in the market. Some of them are very connected, and some of them very disconnected. So the China reopening has one effect. Europe really, I think, having inflation still at very, very high levels. We saw something internally yesterday in terms of some inflation levels in Europe. And just what's going on in the US and all the geopolitical issues that are going on, and inflation, and energy, and so forth. It is a very interesting time, I'll say that, maybe it's the only word to use, to try to invest. I think we are prepared for some choppiness ahead. I think being in credit, if you're not prepared for any choppiness, you're not a creditor. You're an equity investor. Listen, we want to be hopeful, and hopefully we have a soft landing or just a touch and go, for those who know about planes, which I think you do. By the way, thanks for your service to our country on that front. But it's an interesting time. And I think one of the things that we're saying to clients right now is you don't have to go too far out the spectrum to get paid for risk. With senior secure direct lending deals really in the nine and a half to 10% range, unlevered, you get 10%. Let's put inflation aside, what we think the real inflation number is and what it'll come down. But if you can do that in today's marketplace, I think that's not a bad place to be. And yes, there will be some volatility, and yes, there'll be losses here and there. But the beauty about private debt, everybody's always been waiting for that other shoe to drop, " Oh, they're going to lose billions of dollars, all these private debt cats out there." Well, actually, you look at what happened during COVID where businesses stopped getting revenue, right? They were private equity owned, private credit was a lender to those structures. Because of the bilateral relationship, it's not a Bloomberg screen, you can actually talk to a CEO, a CFO, the board, the private equity folks. There's a way to manage through that. So I think whatever volatility that we may or may not be in store for over the course of the next year or two, I think the private credit market generally has the tools to manage through that period of known unknowns, if you will.

David Mihalick: Yeah. Well, and volatility is going to bring opportunity, right? And I think good companies endure through any cycle, good asset class is credit, right? Whether it's in the banking system or in private credit managers, credit is credit. And lending money to good companies, it works, time tested through multiple cycles. Well, I really appreciate you being here today. It was a great and insightful conversation, and really thank you for your time.

Greg Campion: Thanks for listening to episode number three of season eight of Streaming Income, and the first installment of our new Investing Together series. If you'd like to stay up to date on our latest thoughts on asset classes ranging from high yield and private credit to real estate and emerging markets, make sure to follow us and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. We're on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, and more. We publish a new episode every other week. And if you have specific feedback, you can email us at podcast @ barings. com. That's podcast at B- A- R- I- N- G- S dot com. Thanks again for listening, and see you next time.