> Essentially no company bought out by private equity manages to remain high-quality.
PE is a big category. Most PE-purchased companies are entirely boring and aren't imploding like these companies you hear about in the news.
I know it seems like every PE backed company just explodes immediately because that's all we hear about in the news, but the selection bias of news stories means you're only hearing about the interesting stories where there's something to report on. Nobody is reporting on PE-purchased companies that are quietly continuing to operate.
Serious question: you have some examples of a company post-PE where you might say "this place still has quality?"
I guess that's a hard pitch in general, given people always complain. But there are some companies in the world whose image has improved over time, so maybe there are some PE companies that have righted the ship and where the brand does not feel like a shell of itself?
The most obvious example I can think of is Steinway. It was not a traditional PE shop buying it(at the time very famous hedge fund bought it for to reorg), but it is still a privately owned company and I've not heard anything bad about the pianos.
Yahoo is an example of this. They were bought out by PE Apollo in 2021 and they consolidated their businesses, such as selling the Japanese arm of their business. I still occasionally use Yahoo finance and it does not seem to have degraded to much and will is what I deem as having quality.
Most PE deals aren't in the $3.5b range nor are they in the mostly overvalued "software platform" category. Those are ripe for razing to the ground staff-wise.
Regardless, PE in general works on the basis of slashing costs first. When has that led to a better quality product?
PE is a big category. Most PE-purchased companies are entirely boring and aren't imploding like these companies you hear about in the news.
I know it seems like every PE backed company just explodes immediately because that's all we hear about in the news, but the selection bias of news stories means you're only hearing about the interesting stories where there's something to report on. Nobody is reporting on PE-purchased companies that are quietly continuing to operate.