BDC lending to new borrowers in the quarter

## What this measures

The debt, at cost, that business development companies hold at quarter end in borrowers they did not hold the quarter before.

## Why it matters

New borrowers are the closest a schedule of investments comes to new deals. The pace of new lending is the activity side of private credit.

## How it is made

Palanor reads every BDC 10-K and 10-Q in the SEC's BDC data sets (inline XBRL, periods from August 2022) and turns the tagged schedule of investments into one row per holding: borrower, holding type, lien, base rate, spread, PIK rate, maturity, principal, cost, fair value. Some filers also tag subtotals on the same rows, so rows are pruned in steps and a filing counts only when its rows add up to between 85% and 120% of the total investments it reports. Amended filings replace the original. A quarter is the calendar quarter the balance-sheet date falls in, and it publishes once at least 60 BDCs pass the check and 80 days have passed since it ended. Debt is every loan and bond with a positive cost: first lien, unitranche, second lien, subordinated and unsecured. Equity, warrants, structured products (CLO and ABS tranches), fund and joint-venture interests and cash are left out. For each BDC in the panel in both quarters, Palanor lists borrowers this quarter that were not on its previous schedule and sums their cost.

## How to read it

Higher means more lending to new names. The series starts in Q1 2023 at $12.4 billion. The reading for Q2 2026 is $31.0 billion, from 146 BDCs. Over the series the high is $54.6 billion (Q4 2025) and the low $12.4 billion (Q1 2023).

## What it does not say

The panel changes as BDCs start and stop filing, and as new funds launch, so a move can come from who is in it as well as from credit. Marks are each lender's own fair values, set by its valuation process each quarter; they move with market spreads as well as with the borrowers. Holdings a BDC owns through a joint venture are counted where the BDC tags them on its own schedule. It is a proxy for new deals, not a count of new loans: add-ons to borrowers a BDC already held, and loans made and repaid within the quarter, are not in it. A borrower whose name the lender changes can look new.

## Source

Palanor calculation from SEC filings: the SEC Business Development Company (BDC) data sets and each filing's XBRL on EDGAR (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission; public domain).