9fin's Q2 BDC watchlist flags 118 credits marked down 5 points or more

9fin's Q2 2026 BDC Watchlist identifies 118 credits whose weighted average fair value marks fell by five percentage points or more between the first and second quarters, a set carrying $4.19bn in fair value. More than half of those credits mature in 2029 or sooner, which means the report's most stressed names carry both a fresh quarterly markdown and a short runway in front of them.

Compiled with 9fin's BDC Valuations Tool, the report ranks the 118 credits by the size of their aggregate mark declines and lists which BDCs hold them and which sponsors have the most names on the list. Information technology, which the report counts as including software, accounts for just under 36% of the affected fair value, a share driven by the largest positions in the set rather than the number of names.

The screen behind those numbers measures breadth, not severity: a credit qualifies on a five-point move in a weighted average mark, and the summary does not separate a credit that slid from 98 to 93 from one that slid from 80 to 75. The $4.19bn is the aggregate fair value of the flagged credits at the period's end, not a tally of writedowns, a distinction worth keeping in mind when the figure is quoted as damage.

A quarterly markdown of that size, read plainly, indicates a revision of some magnitude—one large enough that the valuation process reached a different conclusion about a comparable set or a company's own numbers than it had three months earlier. The levers a lender typically reaches for from there are familiar: the company grows into its capital structure, the sponsor puts in more equity, or lenders extend and amend. Each takes time, and each works better with more of it.

That majority of the 118 credits comes due in 2029 or sooner, leaving the three levers a short runway, and it is shorter still for names already marked down once on a quarterly comparison.

The summary does not name individual credits, separate software from the rest of information technology, or give a count of sponsors, and it does not say what the watchlist held in prior periods, so the 118 arrives without a baseline. The next set of marks will provide one, and the question then becomes whether those maturing by 2029 clear their dates or return for more time.