Ares Capital announced that it plans to make a public offering of 19 million shares of its common stock. Ares Capital also plans to grant the underwriters an option to purchase up to an additional 2.85 million shares of common stock. The offering of the shares will be made under Ares Capital’s shelf registration statement, which was filed with, and declared effective by, the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Ares Capital expects to use the net proceeds of this offering to repay certain outstanding indebtedness under its debt facilities and, to the extent not applied for such purposes, for general corporate purposes, which may include investing in portfolio companies in accordance with its investment objective.

BofA Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo Securities are joint book-running managers. Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and UBS Investment Bank are joint lead managers and RBC Capital Markets and Stifel Nicolaus Weisel are co-managers.