I periodically update the private equity portfolio company holding periods data study to track this trend over time.

The longest median holding period for private equity owned portfolio companies was 5.6 years, back in 2014. This is intuitive because 5 or 6 years prior to 2014 represented those portfolio companies acquired at the peak of the market, just before the last recession. Consequently, the holding periods were extended, allowing more time to recoup from ill-timed acquisitions.

Since 2014, there has been a slight-but-steady downward trend in portfolio company holding durations – until now. The last data point on the right (2019 YTD, through August), represents the first trend reversal for this metric since 2014. Based on the last 5 years, I was expecting to report a median holding period of 4.6 years, but instead, the data shows:

2019 YTD Median Holding Period = 4.8 years

Following our interview with Emmersion, we reviewed our database of private equity platform investments in Latin America over the past five years. The following sectors were the most prominent private equity investment sectors in Latin America:

The cloud infrastructure is having a profound effect on technology, from storage to bandwidth to scale to price.

In recent years, massive technological platforms (servers) have been made available to large and small customers alike. It is, in fact, one of the most impactful advancements in technology in recent years. Due to the massive scale of these cloud computing platforms offered by Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure) and others, near infinite computational power is offered at a fraction of the price compared to just a decade earlier. Consequently, many applications that could not have previously existed (due to limited processing speed or scalable bandwidth requirements) may now exist economically.

In my previous blog about the growth of the private equity industry, I made a note to follow-up with a study of the number of portfolio companies held by private equity firms as a function of the PE firm size. This is that study.

Collectively, the private equity firms in our research database hold a median of 7 current portfolio companies (the average is 11.3).

The private equity sector has experienced tremendous growth over the last five years, in absolute number of private equity firms, in the funds committed to the sector, in the number of executives working in the industry and in the number of portfolio companies acquired.

In fact, private equity investments have become so prolific, that few industry sectors (if any) remain untouched by private equity. Ten years ago, many business owners, especially in the mid-market, were unfamiliar with private equity. Yet, today, most businesses have interacted with private equity in some fashion, either through an acquisition, growth capital injection, introductory meetings & preliminary conversations, or, at the very least, some form of marketing outreach.

Growth in Private Equity Firms

The graph below shows the trend in the number of PE firms over the past 5 ½ years, from our M&A Research Database at www.PrivateEquityInfo.com.

Because there are some caveats (discussed below) that play into the exact quantity of firms shown, this graph is best viewed as indicative of the overall trend in private equity over time. Clearly, the trend is one of growth. In fact, ~12% compound annual growth over 5.5 years.

As the legality of cannabis has shifted over time in some U.S. states, a few private equity firms have made investments in the cannabis industry. I thought it might be interesting to see how they have invested in this space and which firms have made those investments.

Below are private equity backed cannabis transactions from our M&A Research Database at PrivateEquityInfo.com.

We reported logistics as a sector of investment focus for private equity firms in May 2019. However, logistics, as an industry sector, has been increasingly more interesting to private equity firms for some time now.

Our M&A Research Database shows 544 current PE-owned portfolio companies in the logistics space and an increasing PE appetite for logistics companies over time.

When we think of private equity, most of us tend to think of largest firms, like Carlyle, Bain, Warburg Pincus, Advent International, KKR, HarbourVest Partners, General Atlantic, H.I.G. Capital, Blackstone in the U.S. Or, perhaps we think about some of the largest firms outside the U.S. – EQT Partners, CVC Capital Partners, Hg Capital and Bridgepoint. These are all big names and very successful firms within the private equity industry.

However, what most people do not realize is that these firms are in the minority. They capture a lot of the news headlines and the media spotlight precisely because they are large. But the reality is, most private equity firms are quite small.

Medical device companies often provide two attributes highly valued by private equity firms – high margins and good growth metrics. It’s no surprise then that we noticed a trend of private equity firms investing in Medical Device companies. Today, we explore this trend across a 20-year horizon (for platform investments).

Last month, we commented on private equity firms investing in IT security companies. Expanding on that, this study explores the overall trend of PE firms investing in Cyber, Internet or Data security providers. This is a significant growth market, given every industry’s increased reliance on IT, software and data, coupled with the devastating effects of a security breach.

Private Equity Investment Trend – Cyber Security

The chart below shows the number of private equity investments in cyber security companies (excluding add-on investments) over the last 20 years.

To be clear, I have only included security as it relates to IT, software, data, etc. and not surveillance, home security systems nor related companies that provide physical security as a service.