Telis Demos

What we're seeing are a lot of firms that are not banks.

You might call them like financial technology or fintech companies funding the lending they do through the private credit markets.

A lot of these companies do lending like buy now, pay later lending.

They do other kinds of consumer loans.

Usually they're smaller and shorter term loans.

There are people who might not have access to the normal types of credit, like say a credit card, but are actually a good bet from a lender's point of view.

Private credit can help them reach that because private credit can do sort of what it wants, right?

They don't have to follow as many rules.

That is the type of thing that might appeal to investors like you.

insurance companies or certain kinds of asset managers, this like insular sort of private market only for qualified individuals and institutions who might be willing to lend you a relatively small amount of money for a short period of time and to do that like over and over again.

It's something that has been on my mind for a while because I hear different things from different people about the state of the consumer.

If you talk to somebody at a big bank, you'll hear again and again, our consumer looks pretty good.

If you listen to the earnings call of...

A retailer or a discounter or a restaurant, you might hear very different things.

People are trading down.

They're not eating out as much.

They're still spending at the same level, but they're doing it less often.

You hear a lot of conflicting stories.

And so how do you square all these different stories, right?

Are they just telling different stories about different groups of people?