Ares Strategic Income Fund (ASIF): 13.1% Asked to Leave, 5% Will Be Paid. The Tender Record Since 2024

What the fund is, in one paragraph

ASIF is Ares Management's non-traded business development company: a fund that makes senior loans to private, mostly sponsor-backed U.S. companies and sells its shares continuously at NAV to wealth-management clients. It opened in December 2022 at $25.00 a share, reached about $10.8 billion of NAV by late 2025, and at August 31, 2026 held 810 portfolio companies worth about $21.8 billion, 77.2% in first-lien loans and 92% floating-rate, per the September 22, 2026 8-K. There is no public market for the shares. The only way out is the quarterly tender offer, which the fund sizes at up to 5% of shares outstanding.

Eight quarters of tenders

Each row is the final Schedule TO-I/A the fund filed for that offer. For March and June 2026 the fund filed a corrected final amendment weeks later, citing "a third-party administrative error"; the corrected figures are used here and both versions are in the CSV.

The break is December 2025. Requests that quarter were about seven times the September figure, and the fund met all of them only because the tender rules let an issuer buy up to an additional 2% of its shares without extending the offer — the final amendment says it accepted 100% "as permitted by Rule 13e-4(f)(1)." From March 2026 it stopped doing that and paid pro rata, with an "odd lot" priority for holders of fewer than 100 shares in June and September, and, per the September amendment, no priority for repurchase requests in the case of death or disability.

At the September pace, the fund will buy back roughly 19 million shares for something over $500 million (our estimate: 5% of about 385 million shares at the August NAV), and about 31 million shares that asked to leave will still be in the fund.

Why the queue is not going away: money in

A fund like this can pay 5% a quarter without shrinking as long as new money comes in faster. That is what stopped. The fund publishes, in each monthly 8-K, the cumulative amount it has raised in its registered offering and private placements; the change between two consecutive 8-Ks is what came in that month (excluding reinvested distributions).

The June 30, 2026 Form 10-Q gives the same picture from the other side: proceeds from shares sold in the April-June 2026 quarter were $224.9 million across the three classes, against $1,021.1 million in the same quarter of 2025. The single strongest month in the series was the August 2025 8-K, which added $1,034.9 million; the September 2026 8-K added $44.8 million. The unregistered Class I sale reported in that 8-K was 297,543 shares for $8.0 million.

Two consequences follow, both in the filings. First, leverage rose: debt-to-equity was 0.76x at May 31, 2025 and 1.19x at June 30, 2026, easing to 1.15x at August 31 with about $4.1 billion still undrawn under its credit facilities. Second, the fund is shrinking: aggregate NAV was about $10.8 billion at the end of May 2026 and about $10.4 billion at the end of August.

NAV: $27.61 to $26.74

NAV per share is down 3.2% from December 2024 (our arithmetic), most of it in January and February 2026. In the first six months of 2026 the fund recorded $294.4 million of net unrealized losses on its portfolio, per the 10-Q. The fund's own performance figure is still strong — a 9.97% annualized total return for Class I since inception, per the September 8-K — because the monthly distribution more than offsets a slow NAV drift.

The distribution has not moved

The gross monthly distribution is $0.21430 per share for every class, the same figure in the 8-Ks of June 2025, January 2026, May 2026 and September 2026, and it is declared through December 2026. Class S and D holders receive it less their servicing fees ($0.1956 and $0.2088 net in September 2026). In the first half of 2026, net investment income was $493.0 million and distributions were $498.3 million — 98.9% coverage (our arithmetic from the 10-Q). This is the difference from Oaktree Strategic Credit Fund, which cut twice to bring its payout down to its income: ASIF's income still roughly pays for its distribution. What it cannot pay for is everyone who wants out at once.

Credit quality, as reported, is not driving the exits. Loans on non-accrual were 0.3% of investments at amortized cost (0.2% at fair value) at June 30, 2026, against none at December 31, 2025. The largest industry exposure is software and services at 21.3% of fair value at August 31, 2026.

One governance detail that fits the picture: the 2026 annual meeting was adjourned twice for lack of quorum, on June 24 and July 22, 2026, and the fund does not expect to reconvene it (8-K of July 24, 2026). Trustees serve until the 2027 meeting.

What a holder can do with this

• If you tendered in September: expect about 38% of your request to be paid at the August 31 NAV of $26.74 per share, less any early repurchase deduction that applies to shares held under a year. The rest stays invested and keeps receiving the distribution.
• If you are deciding for the next offer: in each of the last three quarters requests were 2.3 to 2.9 times what the fund would buy (our arithmetic). Tendering more than you need, expecting proration, is common in prorated funds and makes the queue look longer than the real demand; it also means the percentage you receive depends on what everyone else does.
• What would change the math: new money recovering toward the 2025 pace, the board raising the offer above 5%, or the flow of requests easing. The September request (50.4 million shares) was smaller than June's (56.9 million) — the first quarterly decline since the queue began.
• What to read: the final Schedule TO-I/A for the September offer (it will state the exact shares accepted and cash paid), the November tender offer document, and the monthly 8-K with the NAV and cumulative capital raised.

FAQ

All figures are from the filings cited, read on EDGAR on September 25, 2026. New capital by quarter is our arithmetic from the cumulative totals in the fund's monthly 8-Ks; the September 2026 repurchase amount and share counts derived from the 13.1% figure are our estimates until the fund files its final amendment. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.