WEBVTT

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- Christy, welcome.

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Given the current market,

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what concerns are private equity firms

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seeing in their portfolio companies?

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- Well, overall, there
are a number of challenges

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in the market right now.

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I'll talk about two that we think

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are primarily holding back the market.

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The first one is the availability
of credit to do the deal.

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I think with rising interest
rates and instability

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and frankly, a lack of conviction

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around the terminal interest rate,

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we really have had lenders
pulling back quite a bit.

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You know, the other issue
is that private equity firms

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that are sellers are
actually at a mismatch

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between the bid ask around the companies

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that they need to sell.

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So they're still focused on
hitting a certain multiple

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and we have to have
those two come together

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before I think we'll really
see some movement in the market

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and get back up to the volumes
that people are anticipating.

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- What about the opportunities?

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- There are also several opportunities.

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So, you know, while we've seen
fewer transactions and deals

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and sort of straight down
the fairway LBO deals

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there have been a lot of opportunities

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in the public to private markets.

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People have had renewed
focus on those opportunities

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and there have been some great ones.

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There have also been some
interesting opportunities

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in corporate carve outs
that we may not have seen.

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So that's two places that we are seeing

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a lot of activity right now.

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- What are investors and
portfolio companies' CEOs

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doing right now to drive value creation?

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- Well, it's really interesting.

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You would think that the focus

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was on costs and bringing down costs.

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Actually, it feels like the pandemic

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prepared a lot of investors
and portfolio companies' CEOs

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with the playbook.

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At the same time, you know,

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companies have been dealing with problems

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like inflation, supply
chain issues, et cetera,

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for a number of quarters now.

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So many have been focusing
on costs for quite some time.

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We're seeing a lot more
energy around the top line.

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So driving revenue,

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like digital marketing,
sales force, pricing,

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and a renewed interest in op model changes

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or org changes that are needed

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to support different digital initiatives.

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And of course, everyone now
is spending a lot of time

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thinking about the
impact of Gen AI as well.

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- Christy, thank you so much.

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- Thank you.