Partners Group's Balancing Act: New Deals Mask a Looming €6bn Refinancing Wall

Partners Group's deal activity masks a €6bn refinancing burden at Emeria, Ammega, and Breitling, with Emeria's leverage above 11x EBITDA.

The Zug-based asset manager is projecting an image of relentless deal-making activity, yet the numbers tell a more complicated story. Partners Group Holding AG announced a fresh investment in French cosmetics retailer Aroma-Zone on Thursday, adding to a flurry of portfolio moves that includes a €1bn credit mandate from an Asian institutional investor and the sale of Swedish industrial properties.

But beneath this surface-level momentum sits a substantial refinancing challenge. Three portfolio companies — Emeria, Ammega, and watchmaker Breitling — carry roughly €6bn in debt that comes due by 2028, with the property services group Emeria representing the largest single headache at around €3.5bn in borrowings maturing between 2027 and 2028.

The Emeria Problem

Emeria's leverage has ballooned to more than eleven times EBITDA, according to reports, and Partners Group is weighing a €200m capital injection alongside TA Associates to steady the ship. Credit ratings on the affected portfolio firms have already slipped to junk status, with the underlying loans trading below par. Creditors, for their part, are pressing for clearer communication about the path forward.

The refinancing squeeze reflects how aggressively leveraged buyout structures are straining under higher interest rates. Jefferies has responded by cutting its price target on Partners Group shares by roughly a third.

A Tale of Two Entities

It's worth distinguishing between the Swiss-listed Partners Group Holding AG and the London-listed Partners Group Private Equity Ltd., a separately traded fund managed by but distinct from the parent company. The fund vehicle published its half-year report on Thursday, revealing an 8.6 percent decline in net asset value on a total-return basis for the first half.

That same fund returned roughly €111m to investors in distributions, supplemented by €22m in dividends and €13m through buybacks. These figures relate exclusively to the fund entity and shouldn't be read as a proxy for the holding company's operational performance.

Fee Pressures and Redemption Waves

The fund management business faces its own headwinds. The evergreen Partners Group Global Value SICAV, with $8.6bn in assets, saw redemption requests equivalent to 9.8 percent of fund assets in the second quarter — nearly double the 5 percent cap the platform can enforce. The stock has shed around 13.6 percent since that news emerged over a month ago.

Consensus estimates for the first half of 2026 point to revenues of CHF 1,127m, anchored by management fees of CHF 918m. Performance fees, however, are expected to collapse from CHF 314m to CHF 207m — a decline of more than a third — with projected EBITDA of CHF 711m and net income of CHF 537m.

The Counterweight: New Business

On the positive side of the ledger, new client commitments reached $16bn in the first half, against a full-year target of $26bn to $32bn. The Aroma-Zone investment — the size of which remains undisclosed — follows the recent exit from Taiwanese bubble-tea chain Gong cha, which was acquired by Bain Capital. Partners Group had participated in the 2019 financing of that deal with $200m alongside TA Associates.

The property side also shows activity: Swedish logistics firm Logistea AB completed its purchase of two light-industrial properties in Tampere and Oulu from Partners Group last week.

Market Skepticism Persists

None of this has moved the needle much on the share price. The stock closed Monday at €778.40, down 2.6 percent on the day, leaving it 27 percent lower year-to-date. At 37 percent below its 52-week high of €1,240.00 from September 2, the shares sit just 13 percent above their own 52-week trough of €686.80.

The Asian credit mandate, announced roughly two weeks ago, provided only a modest 1.7 percent bounce. Investors now face a genuinely mixed picture: solid fundraising and portfolio activity against a concrete €6bn refinancing burden spread across the next two years. How convincingly management addresses the Emeria situation in its upcoming results will likely determine the stock's near-term direction.