Triago: Large Buyouts Lead NAV Recovery, VC Trails

Private equity placement agent Triago today sent out the first edition of a new quarterly newsletter, which includes data on fund valuations and secondary pricing.

The most notable stat is that large buyouts are leading the NAV recovery, rising 10.4% in Q4 2009. It was followed by special situations (6.7%), mid-market buyouts (5.7%), energy (1.6%) and venture capital (.06%). If you go back and look at the five quarters ending in Q4 2009 — including negative results from Q4 08 and Q1 09 — large buyout NAV is up 12%, while venture capital trails the pack with a positive 3% mark.

Triago writes:

Continuing a three-quarter long recovery, net asset values rose 6.6 percent in the last three months of 2009, led by large buyout portfolios. Net asset value mark-ups at large buyout funds sharply outpaced other categories – increasing 10.4 percent in the quarter versus gains of 6.7 percent, 5.7 percent, 1.6 percent and 0.6 percent respectively for special situations, middle market buyout, energy and venture capital categories. Large buyout funds, written down more than any other category as stock prices and earnings plunged in the seven months following Lehman Brothers’ collapse in September 2008, were helped the most in the fourth quarter by sales and EBITDA figures that for many portfolio companies exceeded targets as global economic recovery gathered steam.

On the secondary pricing side, Triago reports that large buyouts also were the big winners — with prices climbing to over 95% of NAV in April and May of this year (European large buyouts slightly outpaced U.S. counterparts). Venture capital was again the weakest sister, at 84 percent (and 80% YTD).

Download the entire newsletter here.