Private Equity data for dissertation

Hello.

I plan to write my master's dissertation about the Private equity sector and I was thinking of analyzing PE Portfolios' Performance on its own (characteristic of success) and then compare it to the equity markets in terms of risk and return. However I don't exactly know whether I can find data on the composition of these portfolios.

Does anyone have any suggestions regarding the source of data or any other topic ideas (I didn't yet settle on one topic, I first want to know if it's feasible)? I mention that I have access to the Bloomberg Terminal.

Thank you. Victor

24 Comments
 

It will be difficult for you to find raw data because it's valuable. Your best bet would be to call on a friend who may have access to this information through a proprietary data base.

Pension funds and other public LPs typically have to report returns on investments in funds, so you could do some analysis of LPs based. This will be more fund based rather than direct investing based, but gives you a true representative of returns since data will likely be judged on a net of fees basis.

Another interesting topic that I've seen explored a few times is that vintage (timing) is much more important than strategy (distressed vs growth).

 
"mrb87"

You can check Preqin or the Calpers website (if they still have their investments listed). That said, it's pretty well accepted that nobody is hitting 25% IRRs these days. 2.0x maybe, but over a longer horizon. (2.0x and 25% is 4yrs, most funds have investment periods longer than that.)

mrb87, I think there are a few other factors that should be considered when evaluating the ability to achieve a 2.0x and 25% IRR (for a private equity firm):

1) A common way to calculate IRR is to take the cash outflows and cash inflows of the fund over the fund's entire life. Because PE funds generally don't call capital until days before an investment is made, the IRR clock doesn't start until just before the capital is invested. This has a massive influence on the IRR calculation.

2) While an investment might be held for 5 years, there are ways to distribute returns to LPs without achieving full liquidity. One common method is to do a dividend recap. I've had a few investments where 100% of the invested capital was returned within a few years due to debt paydown and earnings growth enabling me to re-lever the company and do a dividend. This has a very meaningful impact on IRR.

3) As a general rule of thumb, investments that underperform are held longer and homeruns get liquidity quickly to lock in returns. So while an average hold period could be 4-5 years, that may mean three years for investments that are returning 3.0x+ and seven years for the investments that return 1.5x or less. Again, this juices IRRs.

I've seen and worked for a handful of funds that hit or even blew past 2.0x and 25% IRRs (gross). Note that this is applicable for MM funds, I can't comment on whether this holds true for large cap or megafunds.

Lastly -- Cambridge Associates is probably the best place to get this data.

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This was all helpful. I'm doing a statistical evaluation of carry as a component of junior compensation, trying to figure out how meaningful carry could be. So, I figured I could assign a probability to fund ROI to approximate an expected value for ROI, leading to an expected carry value (model I'm running calcs carry based off gross ROI, and I run different return scenarios, each tied to probability of outcome out of 100%, to lead to an expected carry value).

On gross vs. net, it is definitely net that matters to LPs, but I was looking for gross to feed into the model. Also, I think gross is the easiest metric to compare across funds because it removes the variability in carry structures.

 

Many of the large public pension plans publish fund level returns for their portfolio. If you go to the CalPERS or UNTIMCO website they have the fund level returns published. It takes some trial and error to find which plan has the right fund in its portfolio but the information is out there.

 
"Z1196" Many of the large public pension plans publish fund level returns for their portfolio.

Came here to post this. I think all public pension plans, small or large, are required to make fund-level returns available. Not everyone takes the time to publish them online, but it's available.

"Son, life is hard. But it's harder if you're stupid." - my dad
 

Talk to advisor and see if you could get access to VentureXpert on the school's dime. If you need those data sets to finish your thesis, then the school should provide the means for you to access them.

 

Talk to your professors, most of which do academic research of their own and often share resources with professors at other universities. In these types of situations usually a professor will reach out to one of their peers at another school with access to VentureXpert. You simply describe what you need, and they give you a dump of the results.

Much more likely to have success in those channels versus trying to get it from some anonymous person on here.

 

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