Recent consumer-focused PE vintages have a ways to go Consumer spending has been on the rise, but private equity managers of youthful consumer-focused funds still have a ways to go when it comes to either increasing overall value or realizing gains. The median fund of the 2010 vintage, for example, has a total-value-to-paid-in (TVPI) multiple…

PE Still Outperforms in the Long Run The key value-adding proposition of private equity fund managers is that they offer more stable, market-beating, safer returns across longer timelines that of course lead to relative illiquidity. And thus far, PE managers have made good on that value proposition. In addition to tracking vintage PE funds against comparable…

PE Fund Sizes Spike in 1H 2016 Across North America and Europe, both mean and median private equity fund sizes spiked in the first half of 2016. The average fund size came in at $803.9 million, just shy of the decade-high $838.9 million notched in 2007, while the median just barely set a new high…

What does PE’s capital overhang portend? Through the end of 2015, the private equity industry in North America and Europe had an overhang of no less than $749.4 billion. A plurality of that is concentrated in funds of the 2015 vintage, with a majority—55%—in funds closed in the past two years (funds return data is…

PE Buyers Are Still Not Taking Public Cos. Private Through the end of June, financial sponsors accounted for only 23% of all take-privates in North America and Europe. This isn’t necessarily a result of the overall incidence of take-privates… Subscribe to Read MoreAlready a member? Log in here...

US MM Transaction Sizes Indicate Concentration in the Core In the first half of 2016, the median size of buyouts in the US middle market declined slightly to $128.3 million, a slide of just over $11 million. Given PitchBook’s methodology of classifying the core middle market as transactions sized between $100 million and $500 million,…

PE Interest in US Lower Middle Market Slumps Temporarily After trending upward for over a year, private equity dealmaking in the US lower middle market (defined as transactions sized between $25 million and $100 million) fell sharply between 1Q and 2Q 2016. Granted, there were fluctuations in the upward trend, but 1Q recorded not only…

US PE sellers slowly reducing inventory of aging portfolio companies After climbing steadily for several years, the median hold period in the US by private equity firms roughly leveled off between 2013 and 2014. From there, the hold period for companies exited via IPO briefly leapt upward in 2015, only to plunge once more in…

IT Remains a Favorite of PE Firms As private equity activity in the U.S. has slackened, nearly every sector has experienced a decline in overall volume of investments, barring one. Only the information technology sector is seeing a rate of PE dealmaking comparable to that of last year, with 261 closed transactions through the end…

The decline in US private equity activity deepens US private equity activity continues to fall. Even if Q2 numbers are revised upward as time goes on, with additional datapoints backfilled, a quarter-over-quarter decline will still have occurred in the first half of 2016. As of early July, completed deal count for Q2 is more in…