US-based management consultants Boston Consulting Group (BCG) expects private equity-backed medium and large companies in a number of sectors to set up open innovation and corporate venturing programmes as a way of helping their exit valuations.
In its 2012 Private Equity Report, BCG, which provides services to help companies improve their operations, said in order to show an internal rate of return (IRR) of 25% private equity firms would have to deliver an average annual growth in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) of 11% over a five-year period for the average deal with average leverage levels.
BCG said creating operational value from top-line (revenue) growth would be increasingly important as there were fewer so-called quick wins available for bottom-line (profit) improvement through cost cutting.
John Rose, a partner at BCG and report author, said: "Very few companies will be able to drive five years of Ebitda growth through cost-cutting or short-term revenue measures, such as one-off price increases. Instead, they will have to pull the medium-term levers, such as changing the pricing model, that can work over three to eight years, [ie after an exit horizon of five years]. The Ebitda trajectory has to be sustainable as if all the effort has gone into, say, short-term research and development then buyers will realize, especially in a discerning exit market."
Rose said he expected more medium-term private equity-backed companies to look at open innovation and corporate venturing to bring product innovation. However, he said it would likely be in specific industries, such as technology- or innovation-based sectors that used these venturing tools rather than companies with long product cycles that relied more on marketing and sales.
Germany-based chemicals company Evonik, which is minority-owned by private equity firm CVC Capital Partners, started its Evonik Ventures unit this year, following Silver Lake-backed Skype, which had made minority equity investments before its purchase by software company Microsoft last year.