Partners Group's Balancing Act: A €6bn Refinancing Squeeze Meets a €2bn Shopping Spree
Published on 09/09/2026 at 11:02 | Editorial boerse-global.de
The private markets firm from Baar is doing its best to project business as usual. In the span of a few weeks, Partners Group has pushed into exclusive talks for a majority stake in French natural cosmetics brand Aroma-Zone — a deal valuing the company at roughly €2 billion — and sealed an agreement to back AVK Power Solutions, a European supplier of power infrastructure for data centres, with an equity cheque north of $1 billion.
Yet for all the dealmaking energy, the market remains unconvinced. The shares closed Tuesday at €712.60, a modest 0.7 percent gain on the day, but the longer-term picture is far less flattering. The stock has shed 9.0 percent over the past month and sits roughly 40 percent below its 52-week high of €1,187.50, reached back in January. From the year's start, the decline amounts to 33 percent.
The gap to the stock's 52-week low is now wafer-thin at 3.8 percent, a metric that captures just how little benefit of the doubt investors are extending the asset manager right now.
A €6bn Refinancing Test Looms Over Three Portfolio Companies
The immediate source of anxiety is a refinancing crunch. Bloomberg reported on August 31 that Partners Group is under time pressure to refinance around €6 billion of debt spread across three portfolio holdings: French beauty company Emeria SASU, industrial tape manufacturer Ammega Group BV and Swiss watchmaker Breitling AG.
These are not peripheral positions. All three sit within Partners Group's private equity portfolio, and a rough refinancing would do more than dent the affected businesses themselves — it would complicate the timing of future exits, precisely the area where the firm has already conceded weakness.
Just a day before the Bloomberg report, Partners Group acknowledged that performance income for 2026 would likely land at only 20 to 25 percent of total revenue, missing the medium-term target range of 25 to 40 percent, due to the timing of selected exits.
Should the refinancing stumble, the consequences would ripple outward: higher interest costs or less favourable terms would compress valuations across the three holdings and, by extension, weigh on the performance-related earnings that are already under pressure.
The Deal Engine Keeps Turning
Strip away the refinancing headache, however, and the operational story retains real substance. First-half fundraising reached $16 billion, with assets under management climbing to $186 billion by the end of June — evidence that capital inflows remain intact.
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The recent transactions reinforce that picture. Beyond Aroma-Zone and AVK Power Solutions, Partners Group had earlier closed a $1 billion private credit mandate in Asia. The Aroma-Zone deal, in particular, would mark a strategic shift: the seller is fellow financial investor Eurazeo, and the target is a consumer goods business with an established brand, moving Partners Group away from its recent emphasis on infrastructure and technology bets. AVK, by contrast, taps into the structural surge in electricity demand from data centres, a theme currently animating private equity investors across the board.
These moves look designed to signal that the firm remains both capable and willing to invest, despite a disappointing set of half-year numbers and the leadership transition announced just over a week ago.
A Complicated Signal From a Listed Affiliate
Adding to the ambient uncertainty is a development at Partners Group Private Equity Ltd., the London-listed fund managed by the firm but operating as a separate, independently quoted entity.
The fund announced Tuesday that it will put to a shareholder vote the introduction of a dual-class share structure featuring a so-called realisation category. Should demand for these realisation shares exceed 40 percent, the fund's board intends to pursue an orderly liquidation of the entire portfolio. The proposal concerns the fund's own structure rather than the operating business of parent company Partners Group, but it injects another variable into an already muddled picture.
Sentiment Remains Fragile Despite Technical Signals
The stock's technical position offers a sliver of counter-evidence. The relative strength index stands at 38, suggesting the shares are closer to oversold than overbought — an indication that much of the bad news may already be priced in.
Still, the share price continues to trade well below its 100-day and 200-day moving averages, and the 30-day decline of 8.9 percent (or 9.0 percent, depending on the measurement date) tells its own story about investor sentiment. The market's current stance is one of sellers holding the upper hand, with every negative headline about portfolio companies landing on an already battered share price.
Breitling's role as a flagship luxury holding makes its refinancing particularly consequential, while Emeria and Ammega represent more broadly diversified industrial and consumer positions. Together, they form a test case for whether Partners Group can navigate its portfolio through a period of elevated borrowing costs without lasting damage.
The coming weeks will likely determine whether the refinancing of these three companies resolves smoothly — and whether that, more than the already discounted leadership change, becomes the defining question for investor confidence in the firm.
