CION Stock: Dividend vs NII, NAV and Non-Accruals (2026)

The dividend against what CION actually earns

CION was a non-traded BDC until it listed on the NYSE on October 5, 2021. It lends mostly to middle-market companies, charges a management fee and a subordinated incentive fee on income, and is a regulated investment company, so it must distribute most of its taxable income. The number a holder should compare to the dividend is NII per share: income after expenses and before realized and unrealized gains or losses.

Sources: Q2 2026 earnings slides (NII, distributions, coverage; Q4 2024 includes a $0.05 supplemental) and the XBRL NetAssetValuePerShare series in the filings. Our recomputation matches the company: $0.29 divided by $0.30 is 97% and $0.25 divided by $0.30 is 83%.

Three things sit behind that table. First, the board did not announce a reduction. On November 3, 2025 management moved base distributions from quarterly to monthly starting January 2026, and the first monthly declaration was $0.10 for each of January, February and March. Three times $0.10 is $0.30, against $0.36 before: a 16.7% lower payout (our arithmetic). Second, the first half of 2026 earned $0.54 per share and distributed $0.60, so coverage was 90% even at the lower rate (our arithmetic). Third, Q3 2025 is the outlier: total investment income was $78.7 million, and the 10-Q says the increase was driven by income “from the restructure of certain investments”. Dropping that quarter, NII of $0.35, $0.25 and $0.29 added to $0.89 against $0.96 paid (our arithmetic).

The monthly base is declared through December 2026: $0.10 payable October 30, November 27 and December 28, 2026. The company's coverage slide, which runs from Q3 2024, shows one supplemental in that span: $0.05 in Q4 2024. What the company writes about future payouts is that base and any supplemental or special distributions “will be evaluated by management and the board of directors”.

Where the income goes: leverage eats about half

Source: Q2 2026 earnings release, consolidated statements of operations. PIK is interest paid in additional securities rather than cash; the three PIK lines are 7,868, 3,747 and 660. A quarter in which a quarter of income arrives as PIK is one where cash coverage is lower than the 97% suggests, but the release does not give a cash NII figure. Our BDC non-accrual and PIK comparison put CION first among the 36 BDCs it read on PIK share of income.

Interest expense of $23.8 million on $1.17 billion of debt, at a weighted average rate of 7.5%, is the largest cost. That is why the deleveraging in the last section matters more to the dividend than a few basis points of loan spread.

NAV: the equity sleeve moves it

NAV per share was $15.43 at December 31, 2024, $13.76 at December 31, 2025 and $13.57 at June 30, 2026. Adding the $1.44 declared in 2025 and the $0.60 declared in the first half of 2026 to the June NAV, the 18-month economic result is about +1.2% on the December 2024 NAV (our arithmetic, no reinvestment). Distributions have been roughly matched by the fall in NAV.

Sources: Q2 2026 earnings slides (quarterly operating results) and the Q4 2025, Q1 2026 and Q2 2026 earnings releases. Q2's $0.62 of earnings per share is made of $0.29 of NII and $0.33 of net gains, and the gains were unrealized: realized losses were $18.0 million. The comparable Q1 loss was $(0.45) per share.

Now the portfolio mix that creates this swing. At June 30, 2026, equity investments were $334.2 million at fair value, or 20.3% of the portfolio and 50.0% of net assets of $667.8 million (our arithmetic). Non-controlled affiliated and controlled investments were $402.99 million and $304.82 million, together $707.8 million, or 106.0% of net assets (our arithmetic). A holder of CION owns a first lien loan book and, on top of it, a large and concentrated equity and affiliate sleeve that is valued by the manager and does not pay a steady yield. The 10-Q puts 12.1% of the portfolio at fair value in non-income producing investments.

Portfolio mix and the new joint venture

Source: Q2 2026 Form 10-Q, composition tables and the “Current Investment Portfolio” table as of July 29, 2026. Internal risk ratings put 11.7% of fair value in the best category, 72.2% in category 2, 14.1% in category 3, 1.7% in category 4 and 0.3% in category 5. Ratings 3 to 5 total $264.5 million, or 16.1% (our arithmetic). Weighted average net debt to EBITDA of portfolio companies was 5.07x and interest coverage 1.87x, against 4.62x and 2.08x in March.

On September 17, 2026 CION formed Senior Loan Fund Partners, LLC with institutional investors. The venture issued $125.0 million of senior secured notes (SOFR plus 4.75%, seven-year maturity) and $59.7 million of membership interests, of which CION holds 80.0% as common and the investors 20.0% as preferred with an 11.50% cumulative dividend. It bought 20 first lien loans from CION, par $180.3 million, fair value $180.0 million, at 99.8% of par; net proceeds to CION were about $132.3 million. The preferred ranks ahead of CION's common interest. The $180.0 million is 13.8% of the June 30 first lien book (our arithmetic). What matters for the dividend: cash replaced loans that earned SOFR plus a spread, so some of that interest income is exchanged for JV distributions and fees that the Q3 10-Q will show for the first time. CION already holds the older CION/EagleTree JV, whose 14.0% notes CION holds ($36.0 million) and whose maturity was extended to December 21, 2027.

Non-accruals: 1.44% or 4.41%?

Sources: Q4 2025, Q1 2026 and Q2 2026 earnings releases; dollar amounts multiply those percentages by the portfolio totals in the filings ($1,696,980 thousand fair value and $1,826,086 thousand cost at December 31, 2025; $1,645,159 thousand and $1,775,622 thousand at June 30, 2026). The 10-Q itself gives only the fair value percentage (“1.4%”), and our non-accrual comparison therefore shows the cost side as not stated; the cost figure is in the earnings release. The roughly $78 million of cost on non-accrual did not change between December and June, but the carrying value fell from about 38% to about 30% of that cost. The company said no new names went on non-accrual in Q2 and none were downgraded.

Debt and what comes due

Source: Q2 2026 Form 10-Q, Note 8, plus the September 29, 2026 press release and the Note 14 subsequent events. Total debt at June 30 was $1,174.8 million; the company showed debt to equity of 1.76x, net debt to equity of 1.52x and an asset coverage ratio of 157% against a 150% minimum. If net assets fell by about $80 million, or 12.0%, with debt unchanged, coverage would reach 150% (our arithmetic); that is the June 30 buffer, and the September repayments widened it.

Removing the repaid items and adding the $30 million of new notes leaves $890.0 million of debt, with $327.5 million due in 2027, $100.0 million in 2028, $299.5 million in 2029 and $163.0 million in 2031 (our arithmetic). Of the 2027 amount, $200 million is the floating notes due November 8, 2027. The press release says CION executed its deleveraging plan “within our target date of September 30, 2026” and estimates pro forma net leverage of about 1.35x as of June 30. The trade-off is visible in the pricing: the new 2031 notes carry 8.00% and were issued at 97.00% of principal, versus 7.50% on the older notes.

Buybacks and the price gap

Source: earnings releases for Q4 2025, Q1 2026 and Q2 2026. Shares outstanding fell from 51,417,866 at December 31, 2025 to 49,202,704 at June 30, 2026, or 4.3% (our arithmetic). Authorization was raised by $50 million on July 30, 2026, from $80 million to $130 million. With $73.2 million used, about $56.8 million remains (our arithmetic). The Q2 buyback at $7.28 against a NAV of $13.57 added roughly $0.14 per remaining share to NAV (our arithmetic): buying at 54 cents on the dollar lifts per-share NAV, but it also shrinks the equity base against which the debt is measured.

The price table in the July 2026 N-2 gives the gap directly. The closing price was $6.40 on July 10, 2026, which the filing describes as a discount of approximately 51.2% to the March 31, 2026 NAV. Against the June NAV of $13.57 it is a 52.8% discount (our arithmetic). The first quarter of 2026 ranged from $9.86 to $6.55, while the high prices of the 2025 quarters were 12.1% to 27.7% below NAV. At $6.40 the $1.20 annual base is an 18.75% yield (our arithmetic), and the market is pricing a lower dividend or lower NAV than the company reports. The co-CEO says the stock is “significantly undervalued relative to our net asset value”, a view, not a figure. The price on October 19, 2026 is not in our sources; check a live quote.

How CION compares with other BDCs

CION screens among the most leveraged listed BDCs on our balance-sheet measure (1.74x debt to net assets in our listed BDC directory, against a median of 1.21) and, in our census, the lowest asset coverage ratio of the 79 BDCs that tag it in XBRL, at 157%. For a coverage comparison with the largest BDC, see our Ares Capital NII coverage page; for a lower-leverage first lien model, Golub Capital BDC and Barings BDC. Non-traded BDCs have no daily price, so a discount like CION's cannot be observed for them; they are listed in our non-traded BDC list.

What a holder can do with this

Track three lines at the next report: (1) NII per share against $0.30, now that interest expense should fall after the repayment of $114.8 million of Series A notes and about $200 million of JPMorgan advances; (2) the NAV bridge, to see whether the equity marks that added $0.46 in Q2 reverse; (3) the Senior Loan Fund Partners line and any change in first lien share, which was 77.7% on July 29. Check the dividend against NII, not against NAV or the yield on the screen.

The date to watch is November 5, 2026, when CION reports Q3. CION has declared its monthly base a quarter ahead each time (Q4 2026 on August 3), and no Q1 2027 declaration was filed as of October 19, 2026. Subscribe to be emailed when CION files its next report.

This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: CION Investment Corporation (CIK 1534254) Form 10-Q for June 30, 2026 (0001534254-26-000010), March 31, 2026 (0001534254-26-000006) and September 30, 2025 (0001534254-25-000015); Form 10-K for 2025 (0001534254-26-000003); Form 8-K earnings releases of March 12, May 7 and August 6, 2026 (0001104659-26-026777, -056729, -091692); Form 8-Ks of January 7, September 17, September 29 and October 1, 2026 (0001104659-26-001616, -108606, -111961, -112595); Form N-2 filed July 15, 2026 (0001104659-26-083934); SEC XBRL companyconcept NetAssetValuePerShare API. Primary texts are saved with the dataset. Calculations marked as our arithmetic use the displayed source inputs.