The 33,575 Company Problem Sitting in Private Equity Portfolios

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 18:12:13 GMT

The 33,575 Company Problem Sitting in Private Equity Portfolios

The New York Times reported this month that private equity firms are now holding 33,575

unsold por=olio companies, up from 32,451 at the end of last year, and more than double the

number si6ng on the shelf a decade ago. Exit sales in the second quarter of 2026 fell to roughly

one hundred billion dollars, about half of what firms closed in the first quarter. Even the

secondary market, where PE firms sell to each other, slowed almost 40 percent in the same

period, the weakest quarter in at least ten years.

Read that as a market signal, not just a headline. It is not only that buyers have gone quiet.

Many of these companies were never built to be sold. They were built to be owned, added to,

and eventually flipped, without much thought given to whether they would sSll be relevant,

modern, or diﬀerentiated by the time a buyer showed up.

We think the fix is not to wait for interest rates or deal volume to turn around. It is to go back

into these por=olios now and do the work that should have been happening the whole Sme:

thoughfully orchestraSng technology upgrades, sharpening market focus, and rebuilding a

company's story so it is credible to a buyer, a public market, or simply its own balance sheet.

That work looks diﬀerent depending on the company. For some, it means an honest AI strategy

that closes a real gap instead of a slide that checks a box. For others, it means finally connecting

operaSons, sales, and technology decisions so the business runs on evidence instead of habit.

And for a growing number, it means looking sideways instead of down, at what else the fund

already owns.

A firm holding several adjacent companies in the same fund oZen has a roll-up si6ng in plain

sight. Combine the right two or three por=olio companies around a shared technology

backbone and a unified go to market moSon, and you can end up with something genuinely

worth more than the sum of its parts. That is what we mean when we say 1 + 1 = 3: the

combined company can compete for contracts, talent, and mulSples that none of them could

reach alone. That is not financial engineering. That is orchestraSon, done deliberately, with the

same operating discipline PE firms already expect from themselves.

This is where Equitas Tech works. We bring a contrarian view into rooms that are used to

hearing the same playbook: fix the multiple, wait for the market, sell when it turns. We would

rather help a fund make its portfolio company worth owning and worth buying, whether that

ends in an acquisition, an IPO, or simply a business that finally throws oﬀ the cash flow it was

capable of the whole time.

If your fund is si6ng on a company that has been circling the exit for longer than anyone

expected, we would like to talk about what is holding it back and what it would take to change

that. Reach out to either of us directly or connect with Equitas Tech to start the conversation.

Chuba Udokwu, Managing Partner

Michael Centrella, Partner

Equitas Tech

Source: [Private Equity Is Stuck With 33,575 Unsold Businesses]

(hdps://www.nySmes.com/2026/08/10/business/private-equity-unsold-businesses.html), The

New York Times, August 10, 2026.

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