Dwayne Hyzak
Main Street Capital Corporation
Dwayne Hyzak, CEO of Main Street Capital Corporation, shares how the firm’s distinct approach to lower middle market investing is fueling a new era of opportunity and value creation.
Houston-based Main Street Capital Corporation is not your typical asset manager. For over twenty years, the firm has built a portfolio of more than 180 private companies and established itself as a leader in relationship-driven investing. Offering long-term debt and equity capital to lower middle market companies, as well as debt capital to private businesses, Main Street targets companies with annual revenues ranging from $10 million to $150 million in its unique lower middle market investment strategy.
A CEO with Deep Roots
Dwayne Hyzak was appointed CEO of Main Street Capital Corporation in 2018 after more than 15 years with the company. “When I stepped into the CEO role, my priority was to continue to focus on what had made us successful historically, but to find opportunities do it even better and at greater scale,” he tells CEO North America.
Hyzak notes that the company’s unique strategy in the lower middle market has remained a top priority since he began with the firm. “I know people sometimes find it hard to believe, but from our perspective no one provides the type of solutions that we provide in our lower middle market strategy, which are highly customized, highly flexible financing solutions, including a combination of both debt and equity, to meet the needs of the companies and the individuals we partner with.”
Permanent Capital and Partnerships
A defining feature of Main Street is its permanent capital structure and its long-term approach to investing. “If you look at our portfolio today, over 25% of our existing lower middle market companies have been in our portfolio for longer than a decade.”
“We want to ensure all of our people fully understand what we do, why we do it, and why it’s valuable, not just for Main Street’s benefit, but also for the benefit of the companies we invest in.”
“That’s intentional,” Hyzak explains, “It’s something I wanted to focus on when I became CEO, and it’s something we continue to focus on now. It’s not just a differentiator for us, but also for our partners at the portfolio companies that we’re fortunate to be invested in. When you look at our unique lower middle market investment strategy, one of the biggest benefits I saw for us as a publicly-traded company executing our lower middle market strategy was our permanent capital base.”
“Our goal is to find highly capable, experienced, and successful owner operators who want a long-term partner. We aim to add value through the combination of their long-term track record, expertise, and experience managing their business, combined with our expertise and experience in acquisitions, finance and accounting, and succession planning. We believe this results in a great opportunity for future value creation.”
Focused Growth
“I think we’ve always had a really fortunate, favorable position in the marketplace,” Hyzak says. “We’re now in a position today versus eight years ago when I became CEO, where we have a broader team and a more experienced team that can go out and execute on what we believe is a great market opportunity.”
“I’d say from my standpoint and our team’s standpoint, we’re not planning to change anything. I think we’ve had a long-term track record of proven success and we just want to do more of the same in the future,”, he emphasizes.
The Firm’s goal is to organically grow the portfolio from its current 93 lower middle market investments today to between 110 and120 in the coming years. “A lot of investment firms go up market as they grow. That’s not our plan or strategy. We’re committed to expanding our reach within the lower middle market by growing our team and focusing on providing unique solutions to owner-operators facing generational transitions, just like we have for the last 20 years.”
“We’re very confident that we can significantly grow our capital to meet the investment needs that exist in the market. So, what we need to do is grow our people – it’s all about focusing on our hiring, training, and retention practices.”
Strengthening Teams and Processes
Main Street’s CEO believes the company’s distinctiveness lies in its unique lower middle market strategy focused on partnering with “best-in-class individual owner-operators.”
“Our goal is simply to find ways to be their partner and to be as flexible as possible, not just for the benefit of Main Street and our shareholders, but also for the benefit of that individual owner-operator and their management team.”
Today, the firm is intensifying its focus on hiring, training, and retaining top talent to meet growing demand. “We’re going to expand our team to have more people, more investment professionals, focusing on the lower middle market.”
Main Street Capital’s focus on partnership is reinforced through its annual Presidents Meeting, which brings together CEOs and Presidents from across its lower middle market investment portfolio to exchange best practices and build lasting relationships.
“I think we’ve seen significant value creation through these events. If you can get two individual owner-operators who are experts talking to each other and sharing best practices and discussing issues or opportunities, we believe that is incredibly valuable—frankly, much more so than what you’d get from a consultant or third party, given the depth of knowledge and experience these individuals have.”
He notes that the deep level of collaboration is something Main Street’s portfolio company teams value and genuinely enjoy. “If anything, the feedback we get encourages and motivates us to do more. We’re actively working to find ways to add value to our portfolio companies.”
Delivering Results
Main Street Capital’s recent financial performance underscores the strength of its disciplined long-term strategy. In 2025, the company achieved record total investment income of $566.4 million, net investment income of $352.7 million, and a net increase in net assets from operations, or net income, of $493.4 million.
Main Street also delivered total dividends to its shareholders of $4.23 per share, a new company high, and executed over $1.37 billion in portfolio investments during the year, including over $700 million in its unique lower middle market investment strategy.
Looking Ahead
Hyzak’s team remains bullish on the U.S. economy. “We’ve always viewed the U.S. as the best place to invest and we believe our U.S. focused strategies give us a broad range of partnership opportunities.”
“Both our lower middle market and private credit (direct lending) strategies are intentionally concentrated on U.S. domestic businesses. We believe the U.S. economy, along with the managers and employees of our U.S. based companies, continues to be the most attractive investment opportunity for us.”
He concludes, “We believe this focus will continue to provide us strong investment opportunities and attractive future returns.”
