PE sponsors are pushing harder on EBITDA right now than at any point in the last three years.
Hold periods are compressing. Exits are harder to execute. Sponsors need to show portfolio progress to their own LPs — and that pressure flows directly down to the management teams running the companies.
What I’m hearing from operators: the quarterly business review conversations have gotten sharper. The questions are more specific. And the finance teams that can answer them cleanly are getting a very different experience than the ones that can’t.
What “Can Answer Them Cleanly” Actually Means
A defensible EBITDA bridge. Not just the number — the story behind it. What drove the variance, what’s one-time versus recurring, and what assumptions are baked into the forward view. If that takes your team more than 48 hours to produce, that’s a problem.
A rolling forecast your sponsor trusts. Not a budget you’re defending. A live model that updates as the business moves and gives your board confidence that you know where the year is going before it gets there.
Investor-grade reporting that doesn’t require a scramble. Board decks that go out clean, on time, with the right level of detail. KPI dashboards that your sponsor can read without a translation layer.
The finance teams that have this infrastructure in place are having productive conversations with their sponsors. The ones that don’t are having difficult ones.
Neither outcome is about the business performance. It’s about whether finance can tell the story clearly.
Want to talk about this?
If your sponsor conversations are getting harder, the fix is usually infrastructure — not performance.
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