Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc. (CGBD) Stock Analysis
Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc.
Our tested checks disagree with each other, so the answer depends on something further down the page rather than on any one measure.
What each rating means, in numbers
Can it survive? — Middling. Safer than 44% of the companies we cover, judged on the warning signs that came before companies that really did fail.
Business quality — Very weak. Passes 1 of the 6 health checks we can measure — things like making a profit, turning it into cash, and not piling on debt. Across 131,000 company-quarters the weakest scorers went on to fail at 5.4% against 1.4% for the strongest, in every era and all twelve sectors.
How wild is the price? — Very calm. The share price swings about 22% in a typical year, which puts it in the calmest fifth. Out of every 100 companies that swung like this, about 0.3 went bankrupt within the year. Across the three periods we tested that ran from 0.1% to 0.7%.
What "tested" means here, and why there is no score out of 100
Tested means the read was measured against what actually happened afterwards, on a history that keeps the companies that were later delisted, using only figures that had been filed on the day they are used. Survival was ranked on companies that really did fail. What an owner keeps was tested across the universe from 2011 to 2025.
The full record of everything we have tested is on the research pages.
Which benchmark. Over the period we tested, the median listed company returned +5.8% a year while the S&P 500 returned about +13.9% — the index is weighted by size and was carried by a handful of enormous winners. So "beats the index" and "beats the other companies you could have bought" are different questions. Where a read says it picks better companies, it means the second one. None of these gets you an index fund's return, and we would rather say that than imply otherwise.
The quality read is the strongest thing we have tested: 131,000 company-quarters across 5,300 companies, where the weakest scorers went on to fail at 5.4% against 1.4% for the strongest, holding in every era and all twelve sectors. It still says less likely to break, not likely to beat the market — every band in that study lost to the index at the median, because the median listed company does.
Each read is shown on its own rather than merged into a single score, so you can see which part is strong and which is weak instead of taking an average on trust.
▾ What goes into the smart-money reading
Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend). See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.
Chance the S&P 500 falls 10% or more in the next three months.
Counted from every day since 2006. Says nothing about CGBD — see the board for how it is measured.
📍 Where to start on this page, and what to look at first
How to read CGBD
We are not publishing an intrinsic value for this one — the section below says exactly why. Everything on this page that comes straight from the filings and the tape is still here; treat the missing valuation as a known gap, not as a verdict on the business.
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1
Reported earnings & margins ↓
What the company actually reported — unaffected by the valuation being held.
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Balance sheet & book value ↓
Assets, liabilities and equity as filed.
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Who's selling & betting against it ↓
Insider and short-interest behaviour needs no valuation model.
CGBD's SEC filings give us limited machine-readable financials — common for some foreign or newly-listed filers that report under IFRS or file abbreviated statements. We can't run a full valuation on a partial dataset.
What to use instead: What we have parsed is shown below. As more complete filings arrive (or IFRS support lands), the valuation will populate.
Who owns CGBD, and how it moves
From the SEC's own filings: every fund manager over $100M reports its holdings each quarter, and every officer and director reports theirs. Each point is what was public at the time.
142 institutions reported holding it at the latest quarter-end.
Riskier than 55% of the stocks we cover
What this rating means, and what it does not
What this rank is — Middling. Riskier than 55% of the companies we cover. Out of every 100 companies ranked here, about 0.2% went bankrupt within the year, against 0.6% for the average company we cover. The rank comes from a model trained on every US filing since 2012, including 823 companies that really did fail, and scored each year by a version that had not seen that year.
What it is not — Not a trade. We tested shorting these names and buying puts, spreads, straddles and condors on them at real option prices, 2010-2025. Every version lost money: the market already prices the distress and the survivors squeeze. A high rank is a reason to read the filings and to size for a total loss, not a reason to bet against the company. A low rank says the balance sheet is calm, not that the price is sensible.
▾ The numbers, the logic, and why not to trade on it
The logic. A model trained on every US filing since 2012 — including 823 companies that went bankrupt or stopped trading under a dollar — ranks each covered stock by its chance of failing in the next year, from its latest filing, price history and credit conditions. The rank is a position among peers; the table is a count of what happened to stocks in each position, scored each year by a model that had not seen that year.
| Rank band | went bankrupt within 12 months | fell 80% or more (or failed) within 12 months | fell 50% or more (or failed) within 6 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| All covered stocks (average) | 0.59% | 4.21% | 8.51% |
| Other (construction, transport, services) (sector average) | 0.48% | 3.35% | 7.44% |
| riskiest 1% | 16.4% | 33.0% | 45.5% |
| next 2% (97-99) | 5.9% | 24.9% | 38.2% |
| next 2% (95-97) | 3.4% | 21.2% | 33.8% |
| next 5% (90-95) | 1.6% | 15.1% | 27.3% |
| next 15% (75-90) | 0.8% | 8.5% | 17.8% |
| next 25% (50-75) ← this stock | 0.2% | 2.7% | 6.2% |
| safest half | <0.1% | 0.5% | 2.1% |
Why not to trade on it. We tested shorting these names and buying puts, spreads, straddles and condors on them at real option prices, 2010–2025: every version lost money. The market already prices the distress, and the survivors squeeze. Use a high rank to read the filings and to size for a total loss — not to bet against the company. A low rank says the balance sheet is calm, not that the price is sensible.
Scored from the filing of 2026-05-12; table generated 2026-09-18. Within Other (construction, transport, services): rank 55 of 100. Rough one-year odds for this stock alone: bankruptcy 0.1%, an 80% fall 0.7% (the model overstates the middle of the range).
▾ The logic, and why not to buy on it
The logic. Trained on 2,900 acquisitions since 2012, the model leans on size (small), age, retained earnings, asset growth, volatility and how many deals the sector has just seen. Announcement = the day the stock jumped, not the day the paperwork was filed.
| top 1% | 15.4% acquired within a year |
| next 2% (97-99) | 10.3% acquired within a year |
| next 2% (95-97) | 9.0% acquired within a year |
| next 5% (90-95) | 7.3% acquired within a year |
| next 15% (75-90) | 6.4% acquired within a year |
| next 25% (50-75) ← this stock | 4.8% acquired within a year |
| bottom half | 3.0% acquired within a year |
Why not to buy on it. A takeover paid a median +22% on the day — but even in the top band about 6 in 7 companies are not bought, and those lag. Buying the whole top list returned what the S&P 500 did (2012–2023), and adding "cheap" or "beaten-down" filters did not change that. Read it as context for a thesis you already have, never as the thesis.
How does CGBD stack up against its closest peers?
We take the 8 same-industry companies most similar to CGBD (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If CGBD is much more expensive on the same yardstick, that's a red flag — unless you have a specific reason it deserves a premium. For a leveraged business, FCF yield (in the table) is usually more reliable than EV/Sales, because revenue multiples ignore differences in margins and debt.
▾ What's "EV / Sales" in plain English?
EV (Enterprise Value) = market cap + total debt − cash. It's "what you'd pay to buy the entire company outright" — you pay the market cap to shareholders and take over their debt, but you keep their cash. EV is fairer than market cap alone because it includes the debt the new owner inherits.
EV / Sales = EV ÷ annual revenue. So "2.5×" means investors pay $2.50 of enterprise value per $1 of yearly sales. Higher = market is paying more per dollar of sales (usually because they expect future growth or fat margins).
p25 / median / p75 are the 25th, 50th (middle), and 75th percentile of the peers' multiples. Half the peers fall between p25 and p75. The median (p50) is the typical peer — that's the benchmark we compare to.
Bold middle number = median peer. Half the peers trade above it, half below. Computed over 8 same-industry peers; implausible multiples excluded.
⚠️ Important caveat: peer multiples only work if the peers are genuinely comparable. Always check the peer list below — if the auto-picker grabbed micro-caps or unrelated businesses, the comparison is noise. A medical-device giant priced against tiny biotech startups won't produce a useful signal.
▾ View peer list (8)
| Ticker | Company | Industry | Mcap | EV/Sales | EV/GP | EV/EBIT | FCF Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SLRC | SLR Investment Corp. | Unknown | $714M | — | — | — | — |
| XFLT | XAI Floating Rate & Alternative In | Unknown | $691M | — | — | — | — |
| TBLD | Thornburg Income Builder Opportuni | Unknown | $657M | — | — | — | — |
| SSSSL | SURO CAPITAL CORP. | Unknown | $655M | — | — | — | 4.7% |
| WHFCL | WhiteHorse Finance, Inc. | Unknown | $549M | — | — | — | 14.0% |
| RWAYI | Runway Growth Finance Corp. | Unknown | $1.0B | — | — | — | 13.6% |
| RWAYL | Runway Growth Finance Corp. | Unknown | $1.1B | — | — | — | 13.3% |
| SAZ | SARATOGA INVESTMENT CORP. | Unknown | $411M | — | — | — | — |
A lender to private mid-market companies — not a bank
A BDC is a publicly-traded fund that lends money to private mid-market companies (typically $10M–$100M loans). They\'re structured like REITs — must distribute 90%+ of taxable income, so they pay big dividends. The right metrics are Price / Net Asset Value (P/NAV), dividend coverage, and the non-accrual rate (% of loans not paying interest). Standard bank metrics don\'t apply because BDCs don\'t take deposits.
- Non-accrual rate — % of loans not paying interest. Above 3% is yellow flag, above 5% is red. In the 10-K\'s "Schedule of Investments".
- Dividend coverage — Net Investment Income (NII) per share vs. distributions per share. Below 100% means they\'re paying out of capital.
- Leverage ratio — debt-to-equity. SEC caps BDCs at 2:1; most run 1.0-1.5×. Higher = more dividend but more risk.
- Originations vs repayments — Is the loan book growing or shrinking?
Quality & solvency checks
Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.
What these health ratings mean, in numbers
Business quality — Very weak. Passes 1 of the 6 health checks we can measure — making a profit, turning it into cash, not piling on debt, not issuing shares. Across 131,000 company-quarters the weakest scorers went on to fail at 5.4% within a year against 1.4% for the strongest, and that held in every era and all twelve sectors. It says "less likely to break", not "likely to beat the market".
Why it matters: Cheap-looking stocks (low P/E or P/B) often have low Z-scores because the market knows the company is dying. Z-score warns you before you fall into a value trap.
Reference: > 3.0 = safe zone · 1.81–3.0 = grey zone · < 1.81 = distress zone
Full explanation →
BDCs are lenders — their balance sheets are loan portfolios funded with leverage, exactly the structure Altman Z misreads as distress. Judge them on Net Asset Value, the leverage ratio (capped at 2:1) and non-accrual rate instead.
Why it matters: High score = fundamentals improving. Low score = deteriorating. Especially powerful for filtering cheap stocks: cheap + high F-score historically outperforms; cheap + low F-score is often a value trap.
Reference: 7–9 = strong · 4–6 = mediocre · 0–3 = weak
Full explanation →
Piotroski F's checks (operating cash flow, gross-margin trend, current ratio, asset turnover) assume an industrial cost structure, so they misread asset-heavy or financial businesses like this one — a healthy REIT, utility, pipeline, BDC/fund or holding company can score low for reasons that aren't weakness. See the sector lens above for the metrics that actually matter.
A standard discounted cash flowDCF — Discounted Cash Flow — sums up all future cash a business will produce, adjusted for the fact that future dollars are worth less than dollars today.
Why it matters: It is the most fundamentally honest valuation method when applicable — but only works for companies with predictable, positive cash flow.
Reference: Best for: mature, profitable businesses. Fails for: pre-profit growth, banks, REITs.
Full explanation → (DCF) valuation is not meaningful for Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc. as the model projects no positive equity value under its assumptions, partly due to negative operating cash flow in the latest period. Investors are likely focused on the company's ability to generate consistent positive operating cash flow and manage its rising long-term debt. The market may be assigning value to the potential for strategic acquisitions in the lending space, which is not in the model. The #1 quantifiable risk is the continued increase in long-term debt, which has risen from $1044M to $1531M.
As of 4 months ago
Anatomy of a share
What you're buying per share. Bars are at the same scale so you can see the relative size of revenue, costs, cash flow, and debt — not just read them in a table.
What's free cash flow / what do these mean?
Revenue per share — how much the business earns from customers, divided by the number of shares outstanding. Top of the income statement.
Earnings per share — profit left after operating costs, interest, and taxes, per share. Two versions appear on this page and are not interchangeable: GAAP diluted EPS uses the company's weighted-average diluted share count during the reporting period (this is the "earnings" in "price-to-earnings"); net income per current share divides annual net income by today's share count. They differ whenever the share count has changed.
Owner-earnings free cash flow per share — the cash the business produces for shareholders. Savng's owner-earnings FCF subtracts capital expenditures and stock-based compensation from operating cash flow (SBC is a real dilution cost even though it's non-cash). This is deliberately more conservative than "standard" FCF, which subtracts only capital expenditures — so our figure is lower than the headline FCF you'll see elsewhere. FCF funds dividends, buybacks, debt repayment, and acquisitions; a company can report positive earnings yet negative FCF.
Debt per share — total interest-bearing borrowings divided by shares. High debt-per-share next to thin FCF-per-share is a fragility signal.
What you actually need to decide
Every stock price is a disagreement. Here's the single thing that must go right for the bulls, the single thing that breaks the thesis, and the concrete signposts to watch so you can update your view as real results arrive.
- Return to positive operating cash flow in upcoming quarters
- Stabilization or reduction in long-term debt levels
- Growth in net investment income per share
The trend, in plain numbers (FY2024 → FY2025, latest reported)
Straight from the financial statements — no model, no opinion. For a small or unprofitable company, the direction of these numbers usually tells you more than any single valuation.
- Free cash flow is negative at -$204.6M — the cash burn widened vs last year.
- Net income fell -21% to $70.0M.
Nothing was clearly improving year-over-year.
Management & Leadership
Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc. is led by CEO Erik Ortkrass. The company operates as a business development company (BDC) providing financing solutions. John F. Frank, Jr. serves as Chairman of the Board.
Names marked "per latest SEC filing" come from Form 4 / Item 408 filings and take precedence over our AI-compiled roster when they differ.
What They Make
Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc. is a business development company that provides financing solutions, primarily senior secured loans, to middle-market companies. Its customers are private companies seeking capital for growth, acquisitions, or recapitalizations.
End Markets
Revenue Drivers
Why Is It Priced Like This?
Why Customers Pay
What we use instead: earnings (P/E, EV/EBIT), book value (P/B) — computed from the figures this company does report, shown in the sections below. Those numbers are unaffected by the missing cash-flow data.
The market's pricing for CGBD, despite the model implying no positive equity value, is likely driven by expectations for future interest income generation and the company's ability to manage its investment portfolio. The company has been profitable in 5 out of 5 years, which suggests underlying earnings power, even with negative operating cash flow in the latest period. The market may be assigning value to the Carlyle brand and its network, which is not in the model.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
The company funds itself through a combination of debt and equity raises, as indicated by the rising long-term debt from $1044M to $1531M.
Growth / Revenue DCF
Negative free cash flow: revenue/margin growth model used - standard FCF DCF is unreliable for companies still scaling.
Show advanced inputs
| Revenue Growth | 15.0% |
What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings FCF model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project its revenue segments independently; their combined effect is embedded in the historical revenue and cash-flow trend the model extrapolates. The calculator above can only approximate a segment's impact through the single consolidated growth rate — it cannot model any one line separately. For a true segment-level view, build a separate model from the company's segment disclosures.
Maturity & Competitive Position
Moat Signals
Net income has been positive in 5 out of 5 years, while operating cash flow has been positive in 4 out of 5 years.
Geography & Markets
Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc. primarily focuses on the U.S. middle market, providing financing to companies across various regions within the country. Exact geographic segment splits are not available from current data sources.
Geographic Risks
Market Signals
These are timing signals, not value signals — they describe the stock's recent price behavior, not what the business is worth. Use them for the "the thesis looks good, but is now the moment?" question. Each tile below explains what it's saying.
Why it matters: Short-term contrarian indicator. Extreme readings often precede mean reversion, though not always.
Reference: 30–70 normal · >70 overbought · <30 oversold
Full explanation → (14)39.3NeutralMomentum is balanced — neither overbought nor oversold.
Why it matters: When the fast line crosses above the slow line, short-term momentum is turning up; below, turning down. A timing cue, not a value signal.
Reference: Line above signal = bullish momentum · below = bearish
Full explanation →BearishLine below signalThe fast trend is below the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently downward.
Technicals describe price, not the business. A great company can have a "bearish" tape (a buying chance) and a weak one a "bullish" tape (a trap). Pair these with the valuation and health sections above.
QUALITY
Data Quality & Risk Flags (4 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (4)
- FCF negative: revenue/margin growth model projects future cash flows from revenue trajectory.
- INVARIANT: weighted IV is non-positive. Model may not be appropriate.
- Model implies no positive equity value under these assumptions. Valuation is speculative/low-confidence.
- Illiquidity discount 7% applied (small/micro-cap — harder to exit, demand a margin).
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From Carlyle Secured Lending, Inc.'s SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | — | 70.0M | $1.01 |
| 2024 | — | 89.0M | $1.58 |
| 2023 | — | 92.3M | $1.64 |
| 2022 | — | 85.6M | $1.49 |
| 2021 | — | 160.4M | $2.69 |
Cash Flow (5yr)
Capital expenditure isn't tagged in this filer's machine-readable data (the CapEx column shows "—"). The free-cash-flow column is therefore operating cash flow less stock-based compensation only — an upper bound on true owner earnings, not the real figure. Companies that report capex under a custom label (some large IFRS filers do) look better here than they are.
| Year | Operating CF | CapEx | − SBC & adj. | Free Cash Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | -204.6M | — | — | -204.6M |
| 2024 | 104.3M | — | — | 104.3M |
| 2023 | 230.6M | — | — | 230.6M |
| 2022 | 14.5M | — | — | 14.5M |
| 2021 | 75.4M | — | — | 75.4M |
How we define FCF: operating cash flow − capital expenditure − stock-based compensation (owner-earnings basis — SBC is a real cost to shareholders even though it's non-cash). This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses, though the DCF's starting value is a projected from revenue × terminal margin, not this single year.
Balance Sheet
| Total Assets | 2.8B |
| Total Liabilities | 1.6B |
| Equity | 1.2B |
| Total Debt | 1.5B |
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