Jim Boyle, Medline CEO, celebrates with others as medical supplies giant Medline (MDLN) holds it’s IPO at Nasdaq stock market site in Times Square in New York City, U.S., December 17, 2025.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
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After years of waiting for valuations to bounce back, private equity is finally taking its medicine – exiting more deals, but at lower prices.
The number of global private equity exits rose 5.4% last year to 3,149, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. Yet the total value of those deals declined 21.2% year over year to $412.1 billion, the data showed.
The dynamic is emblematic of an industry under pressure to monetize aging assets, and one that’s finally recalibrating its expectations. The challenges go back to 2022, when the S&P 500 plummeted 19% amid rising rates. Many PE firms opted not to mark down the value of their portfolio companies, creating a gap for what potential buyers – either through sale or IPO – were willing to pay, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Years of stalled exits have created a backlog of tens of thousands of companies that have yet to find a way out. As a result, investors in private equity funds – known as limited partners, or LPs – have seen lower amounts of cash returned to them. That, in turn, has made LPs hesitant to plow more capital back into private equity. Fundraising declined 11% in 2025 to $490.81 billion, the second consecutive annual slowdown, according to S&P.
The shift also made private equity firms more hesitant to deploy capital in new deals. There was growth in U.S. private equity deal value in the first half of last year, but the number of deployments was flat. This implies “concentrated success in executing larger deals, but an ongoing stagnation in overall deal activity,” according to a report from PwC.
There are also signs that this larger-fund cohort within private equity is benefiting on the monetization side as well. Blackstone, which reported earnings last week, said that its private equity portfolio generated $10.8 billion in realizations from exits in the fourth quarter. That was the highest quarterly total of the year, which saw $33.9 billion worth of realizations, according to the firm’s investor presentation.
On Blackstone’s earnings call, President and Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Gray said that “realizations have begun to accelerate.” The firm’s chief financial officer, Michael Chae, added that, “in terms of net realizations, the backdrop has become much more constructive … overall, our embedded value and realization potential are significant and we are very optimistic in the multiyear outlook for the firm.”
Blackstone and a consortium of its peers were able to take medical supplies company Medline public in December – the largest private equity-backed IPO ever listed in the U.S.
Medline, which manufactures and sells everything from exam gloves, wound care and protective apparel, raised more than $7 billion in an upsized offering. The stock has surged nearly 30% since its debut, which bodes well for further IPOs of private equity-backed companies.
This week, we’ll hear from several more private equity firms when they report earnings. KKR is set to disclose its fourth-quarter figures on Thursday, while Carlyle is slated for Friday. Apollo is scheduled to release results on Feb. 9.