Private Equity Holding Period Statistics: Averages, Trends, and the Exit Backlog

A private equity holding period, also called the hold period, is how long a private equity firm keeps a portfolio company: the length of time a fund owns the business between acquisition and exit. The traditional answer was three to five years. The current answer is closer to seven: Bain & Company reported that the average holding period for buyout assets at exit hovered around seven years in 2025, up from five to six years during 2010 to 2021, while its 2026 annual report put the buyout backlog at roughly 32,000 unsold companies worth $3.8 trillion.¹ In June 2026, Reuters reported Bain’s latest conference commentary at about 33,000 unsold companies.³

This guide compiles holding-period data across average and median measures, hold-at-exit and still-held metrics, the size and age of the exit backlog, sector differences, continuation funds, and the effect of time on returns. The numbers carry surprises: the median hold at exit fell in 2025 for the first time in five years even as averages sat near records, and only 3% of funds in the largest study of PE-backed IPOs fully exited at the listing itself. Every precise figure is sourced, with the data year stated in the text.

Metric note: At-exit averages, at-exit medians, and the age of still-held assets answer different questions. The methodology section separates those denominators so the article does not treat them as one time series.

Contents

1. The Private Equity Holding-Period Clock
2. Private Equity Holding Periods Today vs. the Historical Baseline
3. Holding Periods Are Stretching Across At-Exit Series
4. The Exit Backlog Is Large Enough to Stretch Liquidity for Years
5. Why Holding Periods Are Getting Longer
6. Sector Differences Mostly Reflect Deal Size and Financing
7. Continuation Funds Reset the Clock Instead of Ending It
8. Longer Holds Lower IRR Unless Value Keeps Compounding
9. Individual Investors Experience Hold Risk Through the Structure They Choose
10. What This Data Tells Investors
11. Private Equity Holding Period FAQ
12. Methodology and Caveats

The Private Equity Holding-Period Clock

A private equity holding period is the elapsed time from acquisition to exit: the period between buying a portfolio company and selling it through a strategic sale, sponsor-to-sponsor transaction, IPO, recapitalization, or continuation vehicle. The clock matters because it is not merely descriptive. It is the operating constraint under which a fund has to create value, return capital, and raise its next vehicle.

A typical buyout fund is built around a ten-year life, often with capital deployed over the first four to five years and exits expected in the years that follow. Extensions are common, but the economic model still depends on returning capital before the tail of older assets dominates the portfolio.

The industry’s base-case model historically assumed a much shorter ownership window. Harvard Business School researchers found in a 2015 survey that private equity firms commonly modeled investments around a five-year projection period.⁴ StepStone’s 2021 investor guide described three to five years as the typical portfolio-company holding period.⁵ Realized holds now often run beyond that model. The gap between underwriting convention and realized duration is the central fact this article measures.

Private Equity Holding Periods Today vs. the Historical Baseline

In institutional terms, the current private equity holding period is roughly seven years at exit for buyout assets, with median holds usually closer to five to six years. That is meaningfully longer than the industry’s historical underwriting baseline: three to five years as a traditional hold-period range, and roughly five years in many return models.

The distinction matters because “holding period” is not a single universal metric. Some sources measure average hold at exit, some measure median hold at exit, and others measure the age of companies still sitting in portfolios. The table below separates those measures so the current market can be compared against the historical baseline without mixing denominators.

Current average: about seven years at exit

Bain reported that the average holding period for buyout assets sold in 2025 hovered around seven years.¹ Preqin data put the global average at 6.1 years for companies exited in 2024 and 6.2 years for 2023.⁶ For North American buyout funds specifically, the average reached 7.1 years in 2023, measured through mid-November, the longest in Preqin’s data since at least 2000.⁷ On the still-held side, McKinsey calculated that the typical company sitting in a GP’s portfolio in 2025 had been owned for more than six and a half years on average.⁸

Median holds: lower than the average, but still above the old baseline

Medians sit lower because a long tail of very old assets pulls averages up. With Intelligence tracked the median hold at exit at 5.4 years in 2024, up from 4.3 years in 2017, with the first decline in five years arriving in 2025.⁹ S&P Global Market Intelligence, using the same provider’s data, reported fiscal 2025 medians consistently above five years against a 4 to 4.6 year range across 2017 to 2019.¹⁰ KPMG’s 2025 value-creation report put median holds above six years on its own sample, a reminder that provider universes differ.¹¹

Question	Best current answer	Metric	Data year	Source
How long do private equity firms hold companies?	About 7 years	Average buyout hold at exit	2025	Bain1
What is the global average hold at exit?	6.1 years	Average global PE hold at exit	2024	Preqin via S&P Global6
How long are North American buyout holds?	7.1 years	Average buyout hold at exit	2023	Preqin via S&P Global7
What is the median PE holding period?	5.4 years	Median global hold at exit	2024	With Intelligence9
How old are still-held companies?	More than 6.5 years	Average age of still-held global buyout inventory	2025	McKinsey8
How large is the PE exit backlog?	32,000 companies / $3.8T	Unsold buyout-backed inventory	2025	Bain1
What is the latest reported backlog count?	About 33,000 companies	Bain conference commentary reported by Reuters	June 2026	Reuters3

Sources as noted per row. Metrics and samples differ across providers and should not be read as one continuous time series.

Holding Periods Are Stretching Across At-Exit Series

Holding periods are getting longer on every at-exit series, and the stretch is recent. The North American buyout average ran about 4.9 years over the decade through 2013 and 5.8 years over 2014 to 2023, before spiking to 7.1 years in 2023.⁷ Medians moved the same direction from a lower base: 4.9 years for US companies exited in 2019,¹³ 4.5 years for global buyout exits in 2020,¹⁴ and 5.4 years globally by 2024.⁹

Period	Holding period	Metric and scope	Source
2004 to 2013	About 4.9 years	Average at exit, North America buyout	Preqin via S&P Global7
2017	4.3 years	Median at exit, global	With Intelligence9
2019	4.9 years	Median, US PE exits	PitchBook13
2020	4.5 years	Median at exit, global buyout	Bain14
2022	5.7 years	Average at exit, North America buyout	Preqin via S&P Global7
2023	7.1 years	Average at exit, North America buyout	Preqin via S&P Global7
2024	6.1 average / 5.4 median	At exit, global	Preqin6 / With Intelligence9
2025	About 7 years	Average at exit, global buyout; median posted its first decline in five years	Bain1 / With Intelligence9

Sources as noted per row. Average and median series come from different providers and samples.

The clearest evidence of the slowdown is cohort behavior, not annual snapshots. PitchBook’s vintage analysis, as of October 2025, found that only 16.6% of US companies acquired in the record 2021 cohort had exited within four years, versus 32.3% of the 2017 cohort at the same age. Entering year eight, 37.1% of the 2017 cohort remained unsold, against 26.4% of the 2012 cohort at that point.¹² Each vintage is exiting more slowly than the one before it.

The 2025 median decline deserves its own reading. With Intelligence recorded the first drop in the median hold at exit in five years,⁹ while Bain’s account of the same year notes that the companies exiting successfully were disproportionately funds’ best holdings.¹ Both can be true at once: a slug of mid-aged, high-quality assets finally selling pulls the median down while the aging tail keeps averages near records. A falling median in this market signals selectivity, not broad relief.

The Exit Backlog Is Large Enough to Stretch Liquidity for Years

The headline numbers

Private equity’s exit backlog is roughly 32,000 unsold companies worth $3.8 trillion, per Bain’s 2026 Global Private Equity Report,¹ up from about 29,000 companies worth $3.6 trillion a year earlier¹⁵ and $3.2 trillion in unexited buyout assets at the end of 2023.¹⁶ Reuters reported in June 2026 that Bain’s latest conference commentary put the backlog at about 33,000 unsold companies.³ The annual-report figure remains the cleaner full-year data point; the Reuters figure is the latest public commentary.

KPMG’s 2025 estimate puts more than $3.0 trillion stuck in the exit pipeline on its own count.¹¹ PwC’s mid-2025 numbers corroborate the scale from a third methodology: $3 trillion invested across 30,000 companies, with 30% of current investments held more than five years, and about $1 trillion of the total sitting in assets that, in a typical market, would already have been returned to investors, according to PwC estimates reported by Reuters.¹⁷

How the backlog has grown

Data year	Unsold companies	Unrealized value	Source
2023	n/a	$3.2 trillion	Bain Global Private Equity Report 202416
2024	About 29,000	$3.6 trillion	Bain Global Private Equity Report 202515
2025	About 32,000	$3.8 trillion	Bain Global Private Equity Report 20261
June 2026 commentary	About 33,000	n/a	Bain commentary reported by Reuters3

Source: Bain & Company Global Private Equity Reports, 2024 through 2026, and Reuters’ June 2026 coverage of Bain conference commentary. Buyout-backed company counts exclude add-ons where stated by Bain.

The trend predates the table. Preqin data cited by Reuters Breakingviews shows the value of unsold assets more than doubled after 2019,²⁷ and the pile kept growing through 2025’s exit recovery because new deals entered portfolios faster than old ones left.

Why it is not clearing

The arithmetic on clearing the backlog is unforgiving. Dividing $3.8 trillion by 2025’s $717 billion of global buyout-backed exit value implies more than five years of selling to work through the existing inventory even at the recovered pace, before counting anything bought in the meantime. That simple math explains why headline exit value can rebound while holding periods remain stretched.

The exit machine has also shrunk relative to what it needs to digest. Reuters Breakingviews calculated that in the five years before the pandemic, buyout-backed IPOs and sales to corporate acquirers equated to about one-third of the industry’s portfolio value each year; since 2020, that average has dropped below one-fifth.²⁷ The portfolio grew while exit channels failed to keep pace.

The aging inventory

The US slice looks younger than the global picture, and the reason matters. PitchBook counted nearly 12,900 US PE-backed companies as of Q3 2025, with a median age of 3.9 years, up from 3.0 years in 2022; 30% were aged seven years or older and another 37% were four to six years old, leaving roughly one-third under four.¹² The low median is partly a denominator effect. Bain warned in its 2025 report that the abnormally large 2021 and 2022 vintages were holding down the median age of unsold companies and flattering the picture, since those deals were struck at peak prices and still have to exit.¹⁵

Why Holding Periods Are Getting Longer

Mid-2026 confirmed the recovery was still selective

By mid-2026, the private equity recovery remained selective rather than broad. Bain described the first half as another “recovery deferred” period: early optimism gave way to AI-driven software repricing, private-credit stress, geopolitical uncertainty, and renewed caution in investment committees. Bain said bid-ask spreads widened, investment committees pulled back, exit momentum stalled, and the transactions still clearing were mostly A-plus assets.²

That distinction matters for holding periods. A few strong exits can lift exit value, but they do not solve the inventory problem if middle-performing, older, or harder-to-price companies remain stuck in portfolios. Bain’s midyear report said exit activity had made little progress toward easing the liquidity crunch, distributions as a percentage of NAV remained well below average, and the implied capital cycle for buyouts was approximately seven years.²

The exit slowdown

Holds are stretching because the exit market shrank faster than portfolios did, and because the recovery has so far come back in dollars rather than in companies. Global PE exit value fell to a five-year low of $392.48 billion in 2024 across 2,227 exits, with trade sales accounting for roughly half ($193.6 billion over 1,177 deals), secondary buyouts 38%, and IPOs 12%.⁶

A recovery in dollars, not companies

2025 brought a real rebound with a narrow base. Global buyout-backed exit value jumped 47% to $717 billion, yet the number of exit transactions declined 2% to 1,570, and seven exits valued over $10 billion each contributed $155 billion, 22% of the total. Sales to corporate buyers grew 66% year over year.¹ The US told the same story: $621.7 billion of exit value across 1,300 exits through October 2025, against 1,369 exits worth $379.6 billion in all of 2024, value on pace to far exceed the prior year while deal count was merely on pace to match it.¹²

The sponsor-to-sponsor channel, historically a major release valve, looks healthier than it is. Global sponsor-to-sponsor exit value grew 21% in 2025, but without the Aligned Data Centers transaction, North American sponsor-to-sponsor exit value would have dropped 19%.¹ Strip one megadeal out and sponsors largely stopped buying from each other in North America.

The backlog clears by company count, not headline exit value. That is the cleanest way to read the holding-period data.

The slowdown is not uniform across private equity

The liquidity problem is most visible in larger, sponsor-owned assets that need large debt packages, clean valuation marks, and buyers willing to pay full price. Bain’s midyear “deal cost index” is explicitly based on US large corporate LBOs with more than $50 million in EBITDA, and Bain notes that steep purchase multiples and elevated capital costs have made those buyouts as expensive as they have ever been by that measure.² That should not be mechanically applied to every lower-middle-market acquisition.

Lower-middle-market companies operate on different mechanics. CapitalPad’s stated deal profile, for example, generally targets established, profitable US and Canadian operating businesses with $5 million to $30 million of enterprise value and $1 million to $7 million of EBITDA.²⁸ Bain also noted in its midyear report that buyers showed greater interest in companies with physical or labor-intensive components and domestically oriented revenue, because those businesses may be less exposed to near-term AI disruption and global volatility.² That maps to many lower-middle-market service, healthcare, light industrial, and business-services niches, but it does not make them immune. Financing costs, valuation gaps, buyer caution, and exit timing still matter.

The practical takeaway is not “large private equity is broken and the lower middle market is fine.” It is more precise: a seven-year hold problem in large buyout portfolios is related to, but not identical with, the exit risk in a single lower-middle-market deal. Investors should underwrite the specific company, sponsor, debt structure, buyer universe, and path to exit rather than treating private equity as one market.

The valuation mismatch

Underneath the exit math sits a valuation mismatch. The median PE entry purchase multiple rose from 11.3x EBITDA in 2024 to 11.8x in 2025,⁸ and the companies bought near those levels in 2021 and 2022 need exit prices that clear a high cost basis. Sellers who underwrote at peak multiples wait; buyers facing higher borrowing costs decline to pay them. Holding longer is what waiting looks like in the data.

Policy and macro uncertainty kept resetting the clock in 2025 and 2026. PwC’s May 2025 Pulse Survey found 30% of respondents had paused or revisited deals over tariff concerns, with overall M&A roughly flat at 4,535 deals totaling $567 billion through May.¹⁷ Bain’s midyear report then added new shocks in 2026: AI-driven software repricing, private-credit stress, and geopolitical/oil-price uncertainty.² An exit market that needs confidence to clear large transactions kept finding reasons to wait.

The LP contradiction

Pressure to stop waiting is building from the LP side. Distributions ran below 15% of net asset value for four consecutive years through 2025, an industry record, sitting at roughly 14% in the twelve months through Q3 2025.¹ Bain’s midyear report said the industry was coming off a four-year stretch of record-low distributions as a percentage of NAV, with more companies trapped in portfolios and an implied buyout capital cycle of about seven years.²

Yet the same LPs are not demanding fire sales. Bain’s midyear report cited an ILPA poll showing the majority of LPs begin losing confidence in a GP when the discount to the last mark exceeds 5% on a full exit.² LPs want cash back, but they also want realized prices that validate carrying marks. That contradiction sits at the center of the seven-year average.

Sector Differences Mostly Reflect Deal Size and Financing

The longest holds sit in the sectors that need the largest financing packages at exit. In Preqin Pro data reported by S&P Global Market Intelligence in December 2025, telecom and media carried the longest average holding period at 7.27 years, followed by energy and utilities at 6.96 and industrials at 6.34, with holds up across most sectors versus 2020.¹⁸ The analysis attributes the pattern to deal size: these sectors hold large companies whose sales require large debt packages, which higher interest rates made harder to assemble.

Sector	Average holding period (December 2025)
Telecom and media	7.27 years
Energy and utilities	6.96 years
Industrials	6.34 years
Consumer discretionary	6.28 years

Source: Preqin Pro data, reported by S&P Global Market Intelligence (December 2025).¹⁸

Sector readings move on thin samples and deserve skepticism at the decimal level. A June 2025 snapshot from the same provider had industrials on top at 7.5 years, with consumer discretionary at 6.6 and healthcare at 6.4, and showed telecom and media at 9.2 years on the strength of a single deal.¹⁹ The durable signal across both readings is the floor, not the exact ranking: every major sector now averages well above the five-year underwriting standard.

Continuation Funds Reset the Clock Instead of Ending It

A continuation vehicle, or continuation fund, lets a GP sell a portfolio company out of an aging fund into a new vehicle the same GP manages, with secondary investors supplying fresh capital and existing LPs choosing between cashing out and rolling their stake. It is the industry’s purpose-built answer to a seven-year average hold, and its growth tracks the backlog almost exactly.

A record secondaries market

The secondary market set another record in 2025 as liquidity demand spilled out of the frozen exit channel. Jefferies reported $240 billion of total secondary transaction volume in 2025, up 48% year over year, with LP-led activity at $125 billion and GP-led activity at $115 billion.²⁰

Period	Secondary transaction volume	What changed
2021	$132 billion	Prior full-year record, per Jefferies historical data20
2024	$162 billion	New record before the 2025 acceleration20
2025	$240 billion	+48% year over year; roughly split between LP-led and GP-led activity20

GP-led deals are now mainstream

The manager-led side is where the holding-period connection is most direct. Jefferies said GP-led secondary volume reached $115 billion in 2025, a 53% year-over-year increase and 48% of total secondary market activity. Continuation vehicles comprised the majority of GP-led transactions, and GP-led volume in the second half of 2025 alone nearly matched full-year 2024 levels.²⁰

Adoption is now broad among major sponsors. Jefferies reported that nearly 80% of the top 100 sponsors by assets under management had completed a continuation vehicle transaction by 2025, and that GP-led secondaries represented approximately 14% of sponsor-backed exit volume in 2025.²⁰

The denominator matters

Bain and Jefferies can both be right while quoting different continuation-fund shares. Bain says continuation vehicles grew 62% year over year in 2025 but still represented less than 10% of total PE exit value.¹ Jefferies says GP-led secondaries represented approximately 14% of sponsor-backed exit volume.²⁰ Those are not the same denominator: Bain is comparing continuation vehicles with total PE exit value, while Jefferies is comparing GP-led secondaries with sponsor-backed exit volume.

Scale is the caveat. A $240 billion secondaries market is large in absolute terms, but it is still small relative to a multitrillion-dollar backlog. Continuation vehicles relieve pressure without draining the tank. They are a release valve, not a full solution.

Longer Holds Lower IRR Unless Value Keeps Compounding

Where time stops adding value

Returns decay mechanically once a hold outlives its underwriting. Bain’s analysis of buyout funds with vintages from 2000 to 2015 found that fund-level IRR begins to stagnate around year seven and declines after that, with median TVPI flattening after year eight.¹ A fund’s later years are, by construction, its longest holds, so the flattening says those extra years of ownership stopped adding measured value. INSEAD’s work on performance measurement explains the arithmetic: IRR is time-sensitive and rewards early exits that lock in a high rate, so a longer hold drags the reported figure even when the exit multiple is unchanged.²¹

“12 is the new 5”

Bain’s midyear 2026 report puts the return challenge more bluntly: “12 is the new 5.” In Bain’s framing, a deal that might once have reached a 2.5x return over five years with 5% EBITDA growth may now require 12% EBITDA growth because entry prices and financing costs are both elevated.² Longer holds are therefore a value-creation test as much as a liquidity issue. The company has to grow enough to offset both the higher cost of capital and the extra time.

Even an IPO is not a fast exit

The clearest academic evidence on exit duration comes from Long Goodbyes, a 2020 study by Jenkinson, Jones, Rauch, and Stucke covering 564 fund investments in 330 US PE-backed companies that went public between 1995 and 2014. Only 3% of GPs fully exited at the IPO itself. The average post-IPO investment duration ran around three years, even though lockups typically expired after six months, and full exits took 2.5 years after lockup expiry on average, spread across 5.5 separate sales. In about a quarter of deals, GPs had barely changed their holdings five years after the listing.²²

Those slow sell-downs carried a price tag. The authors estimated the extended post-IPO holds cost LPs an extra 20% in management fees and carried interest, at least $10 billion across the study sample.²² Time in a fund structure is never free; the fees accrue whether or not the value does.

What aggregate returns say about the long-hold era

Dispersion cuts both ways, and single-period results can still be strong. CalPERS reported a preliminary 14.3% private equity return for fiscal 2024 to 2025, adding about $12.1 billion net of fees, a figure cited in November 2025 SEC remarks on private markets.²⁵ One institution and one year prove nothing about the asset class; they do show that patient capital in the right portfolio has continued to get paid through the logjam.

Individual Investors Experience Hold Risk Through the Structure They Choose

Everything above describes institutional portfolios. For an individual allocating to private equity, the holding-period data turns into a structural choice, because the hold an investor experiences depends on the wrapper around it.

Three ways investors experience private equity hold risk

Structure	What the investor owns	Typical liquidity experience	Main hold-period risk
Traditional PE fund	Blind-pool fund interest	Capital is called over time and returned as portfolio companies exit	Investor inherits the whole portfolio tail
Continuation vehicle	Existing company moved into a new vehicle	Existing LPs may receive a liquidity option or roll into the new vehicle	Valuation, conflict, and extended-duration risk
Deal-by-deal co-investment	Single-company SPV investment	Capital is tied to that company’s distributions, recapitalization, or exit	Concentrated company-specific illiquidity

Fund commitments. A blind-pool fund commitment is a bet on a decade, not on a deal. The stated fund life is typically ten years, but the University of California’s investment office discloses that private equity partnerships generally take 10 to 14 years to fully liquidate, with any reported IRR an interim estimate until then.²⁶ Capital is called over several years and returned only as exits land, and the distribution data above shows what happens when they do not: four straight years below 15% of NAV through 2025.¹ The LP holds the entire portfolio’s tail, including positions like the 37.1% of 2017-vintage US companies still unsold entering year eight.¹²

Deal-by-deal co-investment. The alternative is underwriting single transactions. In the lower middle market, the segment of established businesses often measured in the low single-digit millions of EBITDA, many deals are led by independent sponsors, dealmakers who acquire one company at a time and raise equity per deal rather than from a committed fund. The holding period in this structure attaches to one company: the position begins at that deal’s close and ends at that deal’s exit, with the roughly five-year underwriting assumption⁴ applied to a specific business an investor can evaluate before committing. For entry multiples, debt levels, and fund performance across the segment itself, see our lower-middle-market private equity statistics guide.

CapitalPad is a private equity co-investment group that lets accredited investors invest, deal by deal, in lower-middle-market acquisitions of established, historically profitable businesses led by independent sponsors, search fund operators, and self-funded searchers. Investors review and select individual deals rather than committing to a blind pool. CapitalPad typically invests $1M to $2.5M in independent sponsor transactions and also backs post-LOI search fund transactions, with check sizes varying by deal profile. Investors can participate from $25K per deal, and all co-investors in a deal are pooled into a single SPV.^{28, 29, 30}

CapitalPad says most deals are structured for a 3 to 7 year hold, with each deal’s target hold period disclosed before investors commit capital.²⁸ That target is useful, but it is not a guarantee. The entire point of the holding-period data above is that private equity exits can take longer than planned.

The fee structure interacts with time differently than fund economics do. CapitalPad charges a one-time 1.5% administration fee per investment, no annual management fee, and 20% of profits only after investors have received their full initial capital back.²⁸ A hold that stretches from year five to year seven therefore does not add annual management-fee drag in the same way a traditional fund structure can, the cost the Long Goodbyes data measured at the fund level.²²

Deal-by-deal selection matters for holding-period risk specifically because extension risk is hard to see inside a blind pool. The cohort data shows what a fund LP signs up for: a 2021-vintage portfolio had exited just 16.6% of its companies by year four.¹² An investor reviewing individual deals sees the sponsor’s exit thesis and target hold before committing a dollar; a fund LP commits before any deal exists. Neither structure controls when a buyer shows up, and nothing on this page suggests anyone should assume one will arrive on schedule.

The tradeoffs deserve plain statement. These are illiquid positions in single companies with no public secondary market, and this page’s data is a long argument that holds can run past target. The SEC’s framing from November 2025 applies: long-horizon investors who do not need interim liquidity may earn an illiquidity premium, while infrequent, subjective valuations can mask risk along the way.²⁵

What This Data Tells Investors

The seven-year average is a lagging indicator, and it may not have peaked. The record 2021 and 2022 vintages were bought at peak prices and are exiting at half the pace of the 2017 cohort at the same age.¹² Bain itself flagged that those vintages are holding down the median age of the unsold inventory and flattering the picture.¹⁵ As they move into the age bands where exits normally happen, they will either clear at prices that justify their cost basis or sit, and every year they sit pulls the at-exit averages higher. The 2025 median dip came from selling the best-positioned assets, not from clearing the tail.

Time is now a priced variable, not a rounding error. Bain’s vintage data shows fund-level IRR stagnating around year seven,¹ and INSEAD’s measurement work shows the IRR arithmetic punishing every additional year at a constant multiple.²¹ The Long Goodbyes study put a price on it: an extra 20% in fees and carry from extended post-IPO holds.²² When the market itself discounts extra time, investors should too.

Exit underwriting is the new entry underwriting. Distributions below 15% of NAV for four straight years broke the recycling loop that funded new commitments, and fundraising followed it down.¹ The pressure valves are real but limited: the secondary market reached a record $240 billion in 2025,²⁰ while continuation vehicles remained less than 10% of total PE exit value by Bain’s denominator.¹ Whoever owns a private company today, from a megafund to an individual co-investor, the question that deserves the diligence hours has moved from what the asset costs to who buys it next, and when.

Private equity is not one market. Large buyout portfolios, lower-middle-market sponsor deals, continuation vehicles, and single-company co-investments all share the same basic illiquidity problem, but they do not share the same deal size, debt package, buyer universe, or exit path. The better question is not whether private equity holds are long. They are. The better question is which form of hold-period risk an investor is accepting, and whether the potential return justifies tying up capital for longer than the base case.

Private Equity Holding Period FAQ

How long do private equity firms keep companies?

Private equity firms have traditionally underwritten holds of three to five years, but realized holding periods have stretched toward seven years at exit for buyout assets. How long a firm actually keeps a company depends on the exit market: when buyers are scarce and valuation gaps are wide, firms hold companies longer than the base case, which is why the backlog of unsold companies recently reached record levels.¹

What is the current average private equity holding period?

The current average private equity holding period is about seven years at exit for buyout assets, based on Bain’s 2025 buyout data.¹ That is longer than the old three-to-five-year rule of thumb and above Bain’s five-to-six-year range for 2010 to 2021. Other provider series show different readings because they measure different samples: Preqin data reported by S&P Global put the global average at 6.1 years in 2024.⁶

Are private equity holding periods getting longer?

Yes, on the main at-exit average and backlog-age measures. The industry’s old three-to-five-year hold period has stretched into something closer to a seven-year reality for recent buyout exits, based on Bain’s 2025 buyout data and earlier industry holding-period benchmarks.^{1, 5} The caveat is that medians can move differently in a selective exit market: if a group of high-quality mid-aged assets sells while older, harder-to-price companies remain stuck, the median can fall even as the average and backlog stay elevated.⁹

What is the median private equity holding period?

The median private equity holding period is usually closer to five to six years. With Intelligence tracked the global median hold at exit at 5.4 years in 2024, up from 4.3 years in 2017, and reported the first median decline in five years in 2025.⁹

Why are private equity holding periods getting longer?

Holding periods are getting longer because exit markets slowed, valuation gaps widened, financing became more expensive, sponsor-to-sponsor exits weakened, and many assets bought in 2021 and 2022 still need exit prices that justify their entry multiples. Bain’s June 2026 midyear report added that exit momentum stalled again in the first half of 2026, with liquidity still a major challenge.²

How big is the private equity exit backlog?

Bain’s 2026 Global Private Equity Report put the backlog at roughly 32,000 unsold companies worth $3.8 trillion. In June 2026, Reuters reported Bain’s latest conference commentary at about 33,000 unsold companies.^{1, 3}

Are private equity exits recovering?

Exit value recovered in 2025, but exit count did not. Bain reported that global buyout-backed exit value rose 47% to $717 billion in 2025 while the number of exit transactions declined 2% to 1,570. That is why the article treats the recovery as a recovery in dollars, not companies.¹

How do continuation funds affect holding periods?

Continuation funds can create liquidity for existing LPs and allow a GP to keep managing an asset, but they do not necessarily move the company to a new owner. Jefferies reported $115 billion of GP-led secondary volume in 2025 and said nearly 80% of the top 100 sponsors had completed a continuation vehicle transaction by 2025.²⁰

How do longer holding periods affect private equity returns?

Longer holding periods can reduce IRR when the exit multiple does not increase enough to compensate for the extra time. Bain’s analysis found fund-level IRR begins to stagnate around year seven and declines after that, while Bain’s 2026 midyear report said a deal that once needed 5% EBITDA growth to reach a 2.5x return over five years may now require 12%.^{1, 2}

Is the lower middle market affected by the same slowdown?

The lower middle market is affected by the same broad forces, including financing costs, valuation gaps, and buyer caution, but it does not operate exactly like large buyout portfolios. Bain’s record deal-cost index is based on US large corporate LBOs with more than $50 million in EBITDA, while CapitalPad generally targets companies with $1 million to $7 million of EBITDA and $5 million to $30 million of enterprise value.^{2, 28}

What holding-period questions should investors ask before investing in a private equity deal?

Investors should ask who the likely buyer is, whether the exit depends on sponsor-to-sponsor demand or a strategic buyer, what happens if the hold extends by two to three years, when the debt matures, whether the company can keep growing EBITDA during an extended hold, and whether the investor can tolerate no liquidity until exit. The most important question is not the stated target hold by itself; it is whether the business, capital structure, and buyer universe still make sense if the target date slips.

Methodology and Caveats

CapitalPad compiled this guide from institutional private equity data sources including Bain & Company, PitchBook, Preqin, S&P Global Market Intelligence, McKinsey, KPMG, Reuters, Jefferies, academic research, public pension disclosures, and CapitalPad’s own public investor and sponsor materials. Because provider universes differ, the article separates average hold at exit, median hold at exit, and age of still-held assets rather than treating them as one time series.

Holding-period data rewards careful reading, and most coverage of this topic gets at least one of these wrong.

Averages and medians are different answers. Bain and Preqin mostly quote averages, which the long tail of very old assets pulls upward; With Intelligence and PitchBook quote medians, which typically run lower. Any model or article mixing the two without labels will overstate or understate the trend. Every figure on this page states its metric in the sentence or the table row.

Geography and universe differ by provider. Bain, McKinsey, KPMG, and With Intelligence figures are global; PitchBook’s are US; the 7.1-year 2023 average covers the US and Canada. Provider universes also differ in which fund types and deal sizes they count, which is why the same year can produce a 6.1-year average from one source and roughly seven from another without either being wrong.

Several figures are partial-year. PitchBook’s 2025 exit and inventory figures run through Q3 or October 2025, Bain’s midyear 2026 deal and exit figures use data through May 18, 2026, and the 7.1-year 2023 reading was as of mid-November. Where this page cites a partial-year number, the cutoff is stated rather than presented as a settled full-year total.

The 32,000 and 33,000 backlog figures are not a contradiction. Bain’s 2026 Global Private Equity Report gives the cleaner annual-report figure: roughly 32,000 unsold companies worth $3.8 trillion. Reuters later reported Bain’s June 2026 conference commentary at about 33,000 unsold companies. This article uses both and labels the newer figure as conference commentary.

None of these caveats soften the central finding, which every provider confirms independently on its own methodology: private equity is holding companies at or near the longest levels in modern records, and the inventory of unsold companies is the largest in the industry’s history.

Sources & References

1. Bain & Company, “Private Equity Outlook 2026: Gaining Traction,” Global Private Equity Report 2026. https://www.bain.com/insights/outlook-gaining-traction-global-private-equity-report-2026/
2. Bain & Company, “Control the Controllable, Weather the Rest: Private Equity Midyear Report 2026” (June 8, 2026). https://www.bain.com/insights/private-equity-midyear-report-2026/
3. Reuters, “Slow exits, tighter cash flow hang over private equity at Berlin conference” (June 11, 2026). https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/slow-exits-tighter-cash-flow-hang-over-private-equity-berlin-conference-2026-06-11/
4. Gompers, Kaplan & Mukharlyamov, “What Do Private Equity Firms Say They Do?,” Harvard Business School Working Paper 15-081 (2015). https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/15-081_9baffe73-8ec2-404f-9d62-ee0d825ca5b5.pdf
5. StepStone Group, “A Comprehensive Guide to Private Equity Investing” (2021). https://www.stepstonegroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/A_Comprehensive_Guide_to_Private_Equity_Investing.pdf
6. Preqin data, reported by S&P Global Market Intelligence, “Private equity exit value falls to 5-year low” (January 2025). https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/articles/2025/1/private-equity-exit-value-falls-to-5year-low-86896433
7. Preqin Pro data, reported by S&P Global Market Intelligence, “Private equity buyout funds show longest holding periods in 2 decades” (November 2023). https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/articles/2023/11/private-equity-buyout-funds-show-longest-holding-periods-in-2-decades-79033309
8. McKinsey & Company, “Private Equity: Clearer View, Tougher Terrain,” Global Private Markets Report 2026. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/private-capital/our-insights/global-private-markets-report/private-equity
9. With Intelligence, “Private Equity Outlook 2026: The Beginning of a Durable Recovery.” https://www.withintelligence.com/insights/private-equity-outlook-2026/
10. With Intelligence data, reported by S&P Global Market Intelligence, “Global private equity exit volume declines in Q1 2026” (April 2026). https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/articles/2026/4/global-private-equity-exit-volume-declines-in-q1-2026-100418326
11. KPMG, “Value Creation in Private Equity” (October 2025). https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmgsites/xx/pdf/2025/10/value-creation-in-private-equity.pdf
12. PitchBook, “2026 US Private Equity Outlook” (data through Q3 and October 2025). https://pitchbook.brightspotcdn.com/39/d6/c95f31104a96a8376a8ac9afd087/2026-us-private-equity-outlook.pdf
13. PitchBook, “Extended Holding Periods in PE,” Analyst Note (Q1 2020; 2019 data). https://files.pitchbook.com/website/files/pdf/Q1_2020_PitchBook_Analyst_Note_Extended_Holding_Periods_in_PE.pdf
14. Bain & Company, Global Private Equity Report 2021. https://www.bain.com/globalassets/noindex/2021/bain_report_2021-global-private-equity-report.pdf
15. Bain & Company, “Private Equity Outlook 2025: Is a Recovery Starting to Take Shape?,” Global Private Equity Report 2025. https://www.bain.com/insights/outlook-is-a-recovery-starting-to-take-shape-global-private-equity-report-2025/
16. Bain & Company, Global Private Equity Report 2024. https://www.bain.com/globalassets/noindex/2024/bain_report_global-private-equity-report-2024.pdf
17. PwC estimates, reported by Reuters, “Private equity sits on $1 trillion amid uncertainties as M&A stalls” (June 2025). https://www.reuters.com/business/private-equity-sits-1-trillion-amid-uncertainties-ma-stalls-pwc-says-2025-06-18/
18. Preqin Pro data, reported by S&P Global Market Intelligence, “Private equity buyouts record longer holding periods in 2025” (December 2025). https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/articles/2025/12/private-equity-buyouts-record-longer-holding-periods-in-2025-96348743
19. Preqin Pro data, reported by S&P Global Market Intelligence, “Valuation mismatch prolongs private equity buyout holding periods” (June 2025). https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/articles/2025/6/valuation-mismatch-prolongs-private-equity-buyout-holding-periods-90848130
20. Jefferies, “2025 Global Secondary Market Review: Another Record-Breaking Year” (February 2026). https://www.jefferies.com/insights/the-big-picture/2025-global-secondary-market-review-another-record-breaking-year/
21. INSEAD Global Private Equity Initiative, “Measuring Private Equity Fund Performance” (2019). https://www.insead.edu/sites/default/files/assets/dept/centres/gpei/docs/Measuring_PE_Fund-Performance-2019.pdf
22. Jenkinson, Jones, Rauch & Stucke, “Long Goodbyes: Why Do Private Equity Funds Hold Onto Public Equity?” (2020). https://www.darden.virginia.edu/sites/default/files/inline-files/JJRS%20Feb2020.pdf
23. Harvard Business School Working Paper 24-066, “Does the Case for Private Equity Still Hold?” (2024). https://www.hbs.edu/ris/download.aspx?name=24-066.pdf
24. Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, “How Do Public Pension Plan Returns Compare to Simple Index Investing?,” Issue Brief 24-13 (June 2024). https://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/IB_24-13-1.pdf
25. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, remarks of Mark Uyeda on private markets (November 2025; CalPERS data). https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/uyeda-remarks-diversification-deficit-opening-401ks-private-markets-112025
26. University of California Regents, private equity IRR disclosure (June 2021). https://www.ucop.edu/investment-office/_files/updates/pe_irr_06-30-21.pdf
27. Reuters Breakingviews, “Buyout barons risk choking on their stuck assets” (March 2025), using Bain, Dealogic, and Preqin data. https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/buyout-barons-risk-choking-their-stuck-assets-2025-03-13/
28. CapitalPad, Investor Overview. https://capitalpad.com/invest/
29. CapitalPad, “How Independent Sponsors Raise Capital: The Deal-by-Deal Bottleneck.” https://capitalpad.com/how-independent-sponsors-raise-capital/
30. CapitalPad, Self-Funded Search Co-Investment Group. https://capitalpad.com/self-funded-search/