Less debt today, lower returns tomorrow?

According to our just-released 3Q Deal Terms Survey results, average equity contributions have climbed to 57% of EV year-to-date. That’s the highest percentage in our dataset, which includes survey results dating back to 2012. Whenever we release these datapoints, we caution taking them with a grain of salt, given the relatively small sample size. That said, we do think this data points to a reliable trend over the years—