Topic: How To Invest

Pat: Thanks again for all of your helpful advice over the years. I would appreciate your thoughts on Main Street Capital Corp. and Starwood Property Trust. Thank you.

Article Excerpt

Main Street Capital Corp., $30.59, symbol MAIN on New York (Shares outstanding: 49.0 million; Market cap: $1.5 billion; www.mainstcapital.com), is a specialty finance company that lends to, and invests in, small and mid-sized firms, with a focus on those with yearly sales between $10 million and $150 million. Main Street has benefited from a recent major upgrade to its bond rating: in September 2014, Standard & Poor’s assigned it a BBB rating with a stable outlook. A BBB rating is defined as having “adequate capacity to meet financial commitments but more subject to adverse economic conditions.” It’s enough to qualify Main Street’s debt as investment-grade, making financing much cheaper for the company than for many other specialty finance firms with lower, junk bond-level ratings. Main Street yields a high 6.9%, but that high yield reflects the fact that it mainly lends to higher-risk borrowers. Its riskier loans may also mean that it will eventually suffer losses on its portfolio. Moreover, Main Street faces…