私人股本似乎停滞不前，但并未暴跌

For the private equity industry, it’s the best of times and the worst of times.

最好的，因为私人股本公司有足够的弹药投入工作，他们有机会投资更多的年轻，成长中的公司。最糟糕的是，由于高估值降低了正在进行的交易数量，并开始抑制该资产类别的回报。

Valuations of私人股本targets have averaged about ten times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, probably the highest level in ten years, says Stephen Ellis, director of financial services equity research at Morningstar in Chicago.

“All of the publicly traded alternative-asset managers are struggling to put money to work,” Ellis says. At Apollo Global Management in New York, for example, undeployed capital currently stands at 32 percent of assets under management, compared with a common level of about 20 percent.

And why have valuations soared? “The big reason is that interest rates are so low that a lot of people are chasing alternative investments, looking for yield,” Ellis says. In addition, the stock market’s bull run of the past six and a half years has raised the value of public companies’ shares, giving them valuable currency to use in bidding against private equity firms for acquisitions, says David Erickson, a senior fellow in finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a former investment banker.

抑制私募股权收购的另一个因素是监管机构对杠杆贷款的打击。”这使得非品牌企业很难获得债务，”埃利斯说。他表示，在10月份之前的18个月里，私人股本经理的杠杆贷款下降了约50%。

The high valuations and lending constraints have reduced the number of global private equity deals announced this year to 1,527 as of November 10, a six-year low and down from 1,742 in 2014, according to research firm Dealogic. But the value of these deals rose to $230.7 billion, an eight-year high for the period and up from $223.4 billion last year.

The divergence shows the dominance of the biggest private equity players, analysts say. They are outperforming their smaller competitors “because of their ability to source large deals and raise larger funds where capital is a potential constraint, either due to market turmoil or skittish limited partners,” Ellis says. In the past two years, big-name managers such as Blackstone Group, Apollo and Carlyle Group raised jumbo funds of well over $10 billion each, he points out.

As for the drop in the number of deals, “I don’t see anything to convince me this is secular rather than cyclical,” says Ellis. “At some point, valuations have to come down, so these private equity managers will be able to invest.”

Whether they can generate the same high level of returns as in the past is less clear, says Gustavo Schwed, a clinical professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business who previously worked in private equity. Investors have been willing to take a risk on private equity because the industry has historically generated much higher returns than publicly traded stocks. “For any long period of time, private equity has dramatically outperformed public markets,” Schwed says. “But not in the years after the 2008 financial crisis.”

In the five years through 2014, U.S. private equity funds provided an annualized return of 15.8 percent, barely beating the 15.5 percent return of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index and trailing the Nasdaq Composite index’s return of 15.9 percent, according to research and advisory firm Cambridge Associates.

“我们正在密切关注此事，”施韦德说，他负责监督一家投资于私人股本的大学捐赠基金很难在短时间内做出判断。我们离说这不是一个好的资产类别还有一段距离，但我们确实觉得它必须继续跑赢公共指数。”

不过，施韦德和其他人表示，私人股本经理可能很快就会发现非常有利可图的投资。”很难像过去25年那样表现出色，但这些人都很聪明，善于重塑自我。”

The slips in Asian markets and in energy companies may provide investment opportunities, Wharton’s Erickson says. Already, private equity managers are shifting their focus from large buyouts to growth-oriented investments, Schwed says. “A lot of firms have built in-house operating teams, which is what’s necessary to create value in companies outside of financial engineering.”

Examples of growth investments include KKR & Co.’s $35 million commitment to Australian ultrasound technology company Signostics, announced Monday, and Carlyle Group’s August agreement to buy McLean, Virginia–based cybersecurity data firm Novetta for an undisclosed sum.

埃利斯说：“私募股权和其他任何东西一样，都是周期性的。”在某个时候，股市的利率会上升，估值会下降，”他说，这为私募股权投资创造了一个积极的环境。

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