OCSL Stock: Two Dividend Cuts, Fee Waivers, NAV and Non-Accruals 2026

What OCSL is, and the dates that matter

OCSL is a business development company (BDC) that lends to middle-market companies and is run by an outside adviser, Oaktree Fund Advisors, LLC. The 10-Q says Oaktree is “indirectly owned by Brookfield Corporation and Brookfield Asset Management Ltd.” At June 30, 2026 the portfolio was $2.74 billion at fair value in 163 companies: 81.5% first lien debt, 3.0% second lien, 5.9% unsecured, 3.9% equity and 5.6% in two joint ventures, with 91.4% of debt at floating rates. Net assets were $1.38 billion on 88,086 thousand shares.

The fiscal year ends September 30, so the year that closed two weeks ago is not reported yet. The last three Forms 10-K were filed on November 14, 2023, November 19, 2024 and November 18, 2025. OCSL is a large accelerated filer, whose 10-K is due 60 days after year-end: November 29, 2026 is a Sunday, so November 30, 2026 (our arithmetic). The latest filing we found on EDGAR is the 8-K of September 16, 2026. This page therefore reads the quarter ended June 30, 2026, which is nine months of fiscal 2026. Two premises worth correcting: the merger with Oaktree Strategic Income II (OSI2) is finished, not pending, and OCSL is not the same thing as Oaktree's non-traded funds, which we cover separately (see the last section).

The dividend: two cuts, and a supplemental that moves

The board paid $0.55 every quarter from the fiscal year that began in October 2023 through the payment of December 31, 2024, plus a $0.07 special in December 2023 (and a $0.42 special with a $0.54 quarterly in December 2022). The first cut came with the results of the quarter to December 31, 2024. The earnings release says: “For the quarter ended December 31, 2024 and going forward, in addition to a quarterly base dividend of $0.40 per share, the Company’s Board of Directors expects to declare, when applicable, a quarterly supplemental dividend in an amount to be determined each quarter.” The second cut was declared on April 27, 2026 and explained in the May 5 release, where the chief executive said: “Due to our conservative use of leverage, we adjusted our cash dividend to $0.34 per share for the quarter ending June 30, 2026.”

At $0.33 a quarter the annual rate is $1.32, 11.1% of the June 30, 2026 price of $11.94 and 8.4% of the June 30 NAV of $15.70; on the $0.30 base alone it is $1.20, 10.1% of the price (our arithmetic). The record date for the latest payment was September 15, 2026, so that payment is already out. The next declaration is not scheduled in a filing: the board declared the December distribution on November 8, 2023, November 7, 2024 and November 10, 2025, which is a pattern, not a date the company has given.

Earnings against the dividend, quarter by quarter

The table sets each quarter's NII per share next to the distribution the board declared with those results (it is paid at the end of the next quarter). “Adjusted” NII is the company's non-GAAP measure, which removes accretion from the accounting of the two mergers and capital gains incentive fees (see the merger section).

Three things stand out. First, the earnings base shrank faster than the dividend until the second cut: NII per share was $0.62 in September 2023 and $0.55 a year later, then $0.45 in March 2025 and $0.38 in June 2025, while the $0.55 stood until the first cut in January 2025. Total investment income fell from $101.9 million in the September 2023 quarter to $69.4 million in June 2026 (-31.9%, our arithmetic); the release for the June quarter attributes the latest dip to “a lower average portfolio balance and a decrease in non-recurring income”. Second, the quarter to June 30, 2025 was the only one in the last eight where NII ($0.38) fell below the distribution ($0.40). Third, PIK interest (interest added to the loan instead of paid in cash) was 7.5% of investment income in June 2026, the highest in the table (the previous high was 6.7% in June 2025); the nine-month figure is 5.8%, $12.5 million of PIK interest on $214.9 million of income, plus $1.4 million of PIK dividends (our arithmetic).

The fiscal-year view is less comfortable than the quarterly one. From the 10-K's financial highlights:

For 2025 the $1.84 is the $1.64 the 10-K labels distributions of net investment income plus $0.20 it labels tax return of capital; for 2024 the $2.27 is the 10-K's total. In 2023, 2024 and 2025 NII was 96% of the distributions each year; only the cuts have put it above 100% again. The fiscal 2025 NII also had help from the fee waiver described next.

Fees: what Oaktree gave up, and what ended on September 30, 2025

The advisory agreement pays Oaktree a base fee on gross assets (assets including those bought with borrowings, excluding cash) and an incentive fee on income. Oaktree has waived, cut or reshaped its fees repeatedly since 2021: merger waivers in 2021 and 2023, a lower base fee in 2024, an incentive-fee waiver through fiscal 2025 and a new incentive formula from October 2025.

Two numbers show what the waiver was worth. In the nine months to June 30, 2025 the Part I fee before waiver was $20.4 million and Oaktree waived $18.5 million of it; the 10-K says $20.4 million was waived for the whole of fiscal 2025. On the roughly 86 million average shares implied by $152.6 million of NII and $1.77 a share, that is about $0.24 a share (our arithmetic), which is why fiscal 2025 NII of $1.77 would have been about $1.53, 83% of the $1.84 paid, had the fee been charged in full (our arithmetic; the cap would have limited the fee anyway, so treat this as an upper bound on the effect). The waiver was a temporary favor from the adviser, and the dividend was cut in January 2025 while it was in force.

What replaced it is the cap, and so far it works as a limit. In the June 2026 quarter the base fee was $7.0 million and the Part I fee $2.4 million, with nothing waived, against a Part I fee of $5.8 million before waiver ($0.4 million after) a year earlier. Base plus incentive fee was $9.4 million, 2.7% of net assets on an annual basis (our arithmetic). The 10-Q does not say what the fee will be if income rebounds; the release for the June quarter says that “higher income-based (“Part I”) incentive fees (net of fees waived)” were one reason NII fell from $0.39 to $0.37. Interest expense, the biggest cost line, fell from $89.8 million to $76.4 million over nine months (-14.9%, our arithmetic).

NAV and the price: $20.38 to $15.70, and a quarter off book

NAV per share was $20.38 at September 30, 2022 and $15.70 at June 30, 2026. The nine-month bridge from the 10-Q's financial highlights:

The March 2026 quarter took the large step down, from $16.30 to $15.69; the release says it was “primarily driven by realized and unrealized depreciation on certain debt and equity investments” and the chief executive cited “market-driven spread widening for software investments”. The June quarter then stood still, but with large moves inside it: unrealized appreciation of $0.54 a share and realized losses of $0.56. In dollars, Level 3 investments (those valued without market prices) had $49.2 million of realized losses and $41.4 million of unrealized gains in the quarter. A loan already marked down that is then sold or written off moves from one line to the other and leaves NAV roughly unchanged (our reading; the 10-Q does not match the two lines name by name).

The 10-K adds the quarterly range for fiscal 2025: the low sale price was $12.50 in the June 2025 quarter (74.6% of that quarter's NAV, our arithmetic) and $12.66 in the September quarter. Its Item 5 gives the last price before filing, $13.61 on November 14, 2025, “a 18.2% discount” to NAV at September 30, 2025 in the company's words. The 88,086 thousand shares have not changed since February 2025: OCSL sold no shares under its at-the-market program in the nine months to June 30, 2026 (it sold 168,055 in the same period of 2025 at an average $17.77, a price the 10-Q says includes supplemental payments by Oaktree), and we found no share repurchase program in the 10-Q. In February 2025 an Oaktree affiliate, Oaktree Capital I, L.P., bought 5,672,149 new shares for $100.0 million at $17.63, the NAV, and agreed not to sell them until February 3, 2026; at the June 30, 2026 price those shares would be worth 67.7% of what it paid (our arithmetic). The filings do not say whether it has sold any.

Non-accruals: from 10 names to 6

A loan is placed on non-accrual when the company stops recognizing interest because payment is in doubt. OCSL measures the share against debt investments (our census compares funds that use different denominators).

The peak at cost was March 31, 2025, $217.4 million or 7.6% of debt investments, when fair value was $125.6 million. Today the loans still on the list are carried at 41.4% of their cost (our arithmetic: $47.0 million over $113.6 million). The company's chief executive said in the August release: “We are pleased with the progress we made in reducing our non-accrual investments”. The company-level list, our sum of every debt line flagged non-accrual in the schedule of investments of each 10-Q (the totals match the earnings releases to the thousand), shows how that happened:

Four readings. First, who left: Astra Acquisition dropped off between December and March, and Dominion Diagnostics, All Web Leads, Mosaic Companies and Thrasio between March and June; the schedule shows only that the lines no longer carry the flag, not whether the loan was repaid, restructured or written off. Second, who joined: Pluralsight, flagged in December 2025 at $10.5 million of fair value on $14.6 million of cost and marked at $0.8 million by March. Third, concentration: Dialyze ($30.2 million at cost), SIO2 ($29.0 million) and BAART ($28.2 million) are 77% of the $113.6 million that remains (our arithmetic), and Dialyze has been carried at about $5.9 million (19.6% of cost at June 30) at all four dates. Fourth, what the debt table leaves out: SIO2 Medical Products is a control investment, and its common stock appears in the schedule at $40.1 million of cost and no fair value, which is not in the non-accrual totals because they count debt only.

OSI2 and OCSI: the mergers that still show in the numbers

OCSL absorbed Oaktree Strategic Income Corporation (OCSI) in March 2021 and Oaktree Strategic Income II (OSI2) on January 23, 2023, issuing 15,860,200 shares to former OSI2 holders. Both were accounted for as asset acquisitions, which set a new cost basis on the acquired loans and creates a non-cash accretion that adds to GAAP interest income. The accretion is running off: $974 thousand in the June 2025 quarter, $641 thousand in March 2026 and $281 thousand in June 2026, so the gap between GAAP NII and adjusted NII ($0.37 and $0.37 in the last quarter) is closing. When the OSI2 merger closed the advisory agreement was amended on January 23, 2023 to waive $9.0 million of base fees and to keep merger accounting out of the incentive fee calculation; the 8-K says the amendment was meant “to eliminate certain unintended consequences of the accounting treatment of the Mergers on the incentive fees payable to the Adviser”. The OSI2 credit facility with Citibank was repaid and terminated on May 14, 2025. We found no pending merger in any filing through October 16, 2026.

Debt: 1.05x, a $350 million maturity in January, and a 7.000% refinancing

Total debt to equity was 1.05x at June 30, 2026 (1.02x net of cash), against 1.12x at December 31, 2025, and asset coverage 194.16% against a 150% covenant minimum. The company targets 0.90x to 1.25x. Principal debt was $1,451.0 million: $501.0 million drawn on the revolver and $950.0 million of notes, 35% secured and 65% unsecured, at a weighted average rate of 5.9% including swaps. Cash was $39.9 million and $659.0 million of the revolver was undrawn, subject to the borrowing base. By September 4, 2026 principal debt was $1,401.0 million, $451.0 million of it secured, per the prospectus supplement.

The 8-K of September 16 says OCSL expects to use the proceeds “to reduce its outstanding debt under its senior secured revolving credit facility and for general corporate purposes”, and that it may reborrow on the revolver to make investments or for general purposes, “including repaying our 2.700% notes due 2027 at maturity”. The underwriting 8-K puts net proceeds at $296.5 million. The new notes pay 7.000% fixed, against 5.744% on the revolver over the nine months to June 30 and 2.700% on the 2027 notes, 4.3 points below the new coupon (our arithmetic); the 2027 notes are swapped to floating, so their effective cost is closer to the revolver's. Payments due in less than one year at June 30, 2026 were $426.6 million with interest. The last filed covenant table (March 31, 2026) shows net assets of $1,382 million against a minimum of $871 million and asset coverage of 1.92 against 1.50.

The portfolio, the yield and the joint ventures

The weighted average yield on debt investments was 9.3% at June 30, 2026, 10.1% a year earlier and 12.7% at September 30, 2023. New debt investments in the June quarter came in at 10.0%: $206.4 million of commitments against $262.8 million of repayments, exits and sales, so the portfolio kept shrinking ($2.77 billion to $2.74 billion in the quarter). The two joint ventures are 5.6% of the portfolio: Senior Loan Fund JV I ($113.2 million at fair value, debt to equity 2.1x, $1.4 million of dividend income to OCSL in the June quarter after none in March) and OCSI Glick JV ($41.3 million, 1.9x). Unfunded commitments were $235.4 million, $208.3 million excluding the joint ventures.

What changed in the filings and what comes next

The latest filings are the prospectus supplement of September 9, the underwriting 8-K of September 11 and the closing 8-K of September 16, 2026, all for the 2031 notes. Nothing in them updates NAV or income. The next documents are the earnings release and, probably the same day, the Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2026: the prior three came out between November 14 and November 19, and the SEC deadline is November 30, 2026. The numbers that settle the open questions: NII per share against the $0.33, whether the board declares a supplemental again, NAV against $15.70, whether non-accruals fall below six, the Part I incentive fee under the new cap, and how the January 15, 2027 maturity of $350 million is funded.

Oaktree's other vehicles

OCSL is Oaktree's listed BDC. The same manager runs non-traded vehicles whose holders face a different problem, repurchase limits instead of a stock price: see our pages on Oaktree Strategic Credit Fund and Oaktree Asset-Backed Income Fund. For where OCSL's non-accrual share sits among 36 BDCs, see our census of BDC non-accruals; the list of listed BDCs and the list of non-traded BDCs put the NAVs side by side. A comparable read of another September-fiscal-year BDC is our page on Golub Capital BDC.

What a holder or reader can do with this

This is a checklist built from the filings, not a recommendation.

• Treat the $0.30 as the dividend and the $0.03 as a bonus. The company's own wording is that the supplemental is “to be determined each quarter”. In the June quarter NII was $0.37.
• Compare NII with the whole distribution in dollars. June: $32.5 million of NII against about $29.1 million of distributions at $0.33 on 88,086 thousand shares (our arithmetic). The cushion is $0.04 a share a quarter, about $3.5 million (our arithmetic).
• Read the non-accrual table by company, not the percentage. Three names are 77% of the cost left; the fall from ten names to six is why the headline looks better.
• Ask what fee you are paying now. The waiver has ended; the cap limits the incentive fee but is not a waiver.
• Compare price with NAV on the day you look. The last NAV in a filing is $15.70; the stock was at 76.1% of it on June 30, and the next NAV comes with the fiscal 2026 results.
• Know the maturity. $350 million falls due on January 15, 2027, and the revolver is the stated way to repay it.
• If you also hold a non-traded BDC, put its non-accrual rate and PIK share next to these (see the census above).
• Tax. The split between ordinary income and return of capital is on your Form 1099-DIV; the 10-K shows $0.20 a share of return of capital for fiscal 2025. We do not give tax advice.

This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice. We do not give price targets or say whether to buy, sell or hold.

FAQ

All figures are from Oaktree Specialty Lending Corporation's SEC filings read on EDGAR on October 16, 2026 (CIK 1414932): the Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2025 (accession 0001414932-25-000022) and, for the fiscal year 2024, 0001414932-24-000016; the Forms 10-Q for June 30, 2025, December 31, 2025, March 31, 2026 and June 30, 2026 (0001414932-25-000016, -26-000005, -26-000012, -26-000017); the earnings releases (Exhibits 99.1 to the 8-Ks) of November 14, 2023, February 1, April 30 and August 1 and November 19, 2024, February 4, May 1, August 5 and November 18, 2025, and February 4, May 5 and August 5, 2026 (0001193125-23-276608, -24-021339, -24-123583, -24-190514, -24-261293, -25-019601, -25-108562, -25-172986, -25-285254, -26-036643, -26-204937, -26-333737); the 8-Ks of January 23, 2023 (0001193125-23-012750), November 14, 2025 (-25-282894), September 11, 2026 (-26-389266) and September 16, 2026 (-26-393060); and the preliminary prospectus supplement of September 9, 2026 (-26-385965). Ratios, sums across quarters, the company-level non-accrual totals (our sum of the debt lines flagged in the schedule of investments, which match the reported totals) and the dates derived from filing rules are our arithmetic; adjusted NII is the company's non-GAAP measure. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.