Coverage of private credit tends to track lender returns: dividends, net investment income, share price movements. Fewer observers ask a more direct question. How are the companies that actually owe the money performing? Blue Owl Capital’s fourth-quarter 2025 disclosures provide a window into exactly that.
Across OBDC’s 234 portfolio companies, revenue grew 8% year over year during the fourth quarter, while EBITDA expanded by 11% (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/blue-owl-capital-corporation-announces-december-31-2025-financial-results-302692010.html). Both figures accelerated compared with 2024’s pace. These aren’t theoretical benchmarks or sector averages. They’re operating results reported by the borrowers themselves.
Numbers Behind the Portfolio
Blue Owl Capital Corporation ended 2025 with $16.5 billion in investments at fair value spread across 30 distinct industries. Non-accrual investments, loans where the borrower has stopped making interest payments, declined to 2.3% of the portfolio at cost and just 1.1% at fair value. That’s an improvement from 2.7% and 1.3% respectively at the end of September.
The direction of those figures matters alongside the absolute levels. Borrower performance was improving during a quarter when public markets were pricing software credit and leveraged loans as though conditions were worsening. The gap between what the portfolio was actually producing and what the broader market assumed about private credit was widening.
Software Borrowers Outperformed
Software companies within Blue Owl Capital’s lending book posted the strongest results. Trailing-12-month revenue growth hit 10%, and EBITDA grew 16% through December 2025. Management disclosed that 90% of software exposures sat in first-lien senior secured loans at roughly 30% loan-to-value (https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/02/19/blue-owl-obdc-q4-2025-earnings-call-transcript/).
The sector that drew the sharpest scrutiny from public credit markets was simultaneously posting the healthiest operating results inside the firm’s lending portfolio. That disconnect between sector-level fear and borrower-level performance is exactly the kind of gap private credit analysis is supposed to resolve. Blue Owl Capital’s borrower data told a very different story than the headlines.
Operating momentum at the borrower level has a compounding effect for the lender. When a company grows its earnings, the equity cushion sitting beneath the debt thickens. That creates additional downside protection that doesn’t show up in a headline non-accrual figure.
