Private growth equity downturn may be your opportunity to upgrade

It’s time to look more closely at private growth equity.

Valuations of high-growth companies were knocked down in both the public and private markets in 2022 as growth hit a cyclical speed bump.

But innovation-driven secular growth plays out over the long term, and private growth equity can offer unique access to these megatrends.

As valuations stabilize and private market activity begins to pick up, managers may have the opportunity to buy high-quality companies at more attractive valuations and with improved investment terms. You may be able to upgrade your private growth equity portfolio with rare open capacity at well-established managers.

Here’s what we’re seeing in the private growth equity market—and why you may want to pay particular attention to it now.

Coming back to the market

In recent years, historically low interest rates helped drive record growth and valuations across high-growth areas of the economy, such as the technology sector.

But as interest rates rose sharply in 2022, equity valuations fell—particuarly for high-growth companies.¹While the reaction was immediate in the public markets, markdowns of Private companies started in the second half of 2022. We expect these markdowns will continue for several quarters. 

However, this correction is within our expectations for this point in the growth equity cycle (i.e., coming off the peak of a long bull market). And we seem to be closer now to the bottom of the cycle than the peak. One sign: Private market activity has slowed dramatically. Equity issuance has declined significantly, and the market for initial public offerings (IPOs) has been largely frozen for over a year. For example, in the U.S. stock market, there were 1,035 IPOs in 2021 versus 181 IPOs in 2022.

Private market activity may pick up again soon. Many companies had enough cash to avoid raising money in the challenging environment of 2022, but we expect many will have to come back to the market in the second and third quarters of 2023. This new fundraising activity will reveal what investors are willing to pay for growth in the current environment, and should help valuations find a new base.

General improvement in macro conditions, such as stabilizing or lower inflation, a pause in interest rate hikes or decreasing geopolitical risks, also would likely improve investor sentiment and could boost activity in the private markets.

Finding the opportunities

As private market activity picks up, we expect to see potential opportunities at every level of the investment process.

At the company level, we see potential in the relatively strong businesses fundamentals of early and growth stage businesses (in terms of scale, recurring revenues and high margins) relative to the last two big downturns. During the 2008–2009 financial crisis and the dot-com crash in 2001, high-growth companies were often smaller and sometimes valued on dubious metrics, such as “eyeballs,” rather than financials.

We do expect to see divergence in company performance. Companies with the strongest fundamentals may have the greatest chances of attracting the most capital and top talent, enabling further growth; those with weaker prospects may not survive. In turn, fund managers will seek to deploy capital where they have conviction, looking to take advantage of both lower valuations and better terms, which may ultimately lead to higher returns in their portfolios.

You may have opportunities to benefit even more directly. For example, with the drop in public equity valuations, some institutional investors may opt to sell private equity positions and reduce future commitments as they rebalance their portfolios, opening up the potential for you to buy rare capacity with experienced managers via both primary fund commitments and secondary strategies.

It also may surprise you to learn that correction era vintages have historically produced some of the strongest returns.²Exposure to these vintages may help balance out investments in 2019–2021 vintage funds, which will likely be impacted by their exposure to top-of-cycle valuations.

But timing cycles is extremely difficult for even the most sophisticated investors, which is why you may want to consider systematically diversifying private growth investments by vintage.

Tapping into megatrends and long-term growth

Buying into a company earlier in its lifecycle has historically contributed to greater value creation in private markets than public markets over time. Given the volatility inherent in younger, more rapidly growing businesses, as well as the long-term nature of company-building, investing in the category requires a long-term horizon.

In our view, some of the the most exciting innovations and strongest growth trends are occurring in industries where many well-regarded, fast-growing or pure-play companies are still private. These include:

• Continued penetration and growth of cloud-based software, also known as Software-as-a-Service (or “SaaS”), a market that is expected to be $917 billion by 2025 ³
  
• Next-gen artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies applied to automation and human assistance (e.g., ChatGPT)
• Internet platform-driven businesses that can scale globally from day one
• Continued penetration of ecommerce, which currently comprises only ~15% of U.S. retail sales ⁴
• Growing global cybersecurity needs in line with the world’s rapidly expanding digital footprint (i.e., as the digital surface area continues to grow, so does the need to secure it from bad actors)
  
• New consumer brands capturing changing consumer preferences and taking share from legacy incumbents
  

These are long-term trends. Combined with volatility, a changing macroeconomic environment and the process of building a company, investing in private growth equity requires a long time horizon, and potential returns typically come back over time.

We can help

Private growth equity is a way to participate in the megatrends that could potentially drive substantial economic growth over the next decade. Investments in young, rapidly growing businesses come with volatility and risks along the way; they also may result in a wider range of potential outcomes—from bankruptcies to highly successful IPOs.

Speak with your J.P. Morgan team to assess whether private growth equity suits your long-term goals. They can help you size your allocation so that it matches your appetite for risk and time horizon.

¹Interest rates are the most meaningful input for the discount rate used to value future cash flows in standard equity valuation models. A higher discount rate results in a lower valuation. Valuations of high-growth companies are more severely impacted because their cash flows tend to be further in the future.

²A study by Cambridge Associates, a global investment consultant, tracked 25 mature (over five years old) growth equity vintages and found that 100% of the top five vintages and 80% of top 10 vintages are from years when the growth-oriented NASDAQ stock index was down or declined in the following two years. Data as of June 30, 2022.

³Gartner, Data as of February 2022. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2022-02-09-gartner-says-more-than-half-of-enterprise-it-spending

⁴https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ECOMPCTSA. Data as of 3Q 2022.