Partners Group's Twin-Barrel Offensive: A Data Center Power Play and a French Beauty Bet

Swiss private markets firm jumps 9% weekly after acquiring AVK Power and entering talks for Aroma-Zone, signaling renewed investor confidence.

The Swiss private markets firm closed out the week with its strongest session in months, as investors warmed to a flurry of deal-making that touched two very different corners of the economy. Shares of Partners Group finished Friday at EUR 788.60, up 2.28 percent on the day and 9.01 percent higher over the course of the week — a notable bounce for a stock that has spent much of 2026 in retreat.

The catalyst came in a 24-hour window that saw the Zug-based asset manager confirm two significant transactions. On Thursday, the firm announced it had agreed to acquire a majority stake in AVK Power Solutions, a British provider of power infrastructure for data centers, with plans to inject more than USD 1 billion of equity into the business. The deal, which will be supplemented with debt financing, positions Partners Group squarely in a segment that has become one of the most contested arenas in global infrastructure — the race to keep artificial intelligence's insatiable electricity appetite fed. AVK's existing management will retain a minority interest, and the plan is to build the company into a long-term energy-as-a-service platform for data center operators across Europe.

The same day, the firm confirmed it had entered exclusive talks with Eurazeo over a majority stake in Aroma-Zone, a French natural cosmetics brand. The Financial Times, which first reported the story on Wednesday, pegged the enterprise value at around EUR 2 billion. Neither party commented on the price, but the deal carries a certain symmetry: Partners Group has been financing Aroma-Zone through its private credit arm since 2021, and would now shift that exposure into its private equity portfolio. Eurazeo is expected to hold onto a significant minority position after the transaction closes.

Beyond the Headlines: Evidence of Operational Lift

The twin announcements have dominated the narrative, but the firm's midweek disclosure about an existing portfolio company offers a quieter — though arguably more telling — data point. At Foundation Risk Partners, one of the fastest-growing U.S. insurance brokerages, a program of AI-led transformation executed alongside Version 1, another Partners Group holding, has expanded EBITDA margins by 120 basis points. That translates to a USD 10 million improvement in financial performance. Both companies were acquired in 2022 and have since doubled their respective revenues — a case study in the firm's ability to manufacture value through operational engineering rather than acquisition alone.

That matters because the market's skepticism toward Partners Group has never been solely about deal flow. The stock remains 36.40 percent below its 52-week high of EUR 1,240.00, reached on September 2, 2025, and is still nursing a 25.67 percent loss for the year despite the recent rally. The summer months brought a wave of analyst downgrades — UBS moved to Neutral from Buy in early July, citing negative earnings momentum and anticipated redemption pressure in mature evergreen funds, while Bank of America, Jefferies and Oddo all trimmed price targets or ratings in June. Octavian held its Buy rating but cut its target. Those calls predate the current deal spree, however, and the share price response to this week's news suggests some investors are willing to give management the benefit of the doubt.

The Evergreen Question Lingers

The structural challenge facing the firm is not hard to locate. Client redemptions from its evergreen funds reached USD 3.8 billion in the first half of the year, and the company has guided that performance fees will account for less than 20 percent of first-half revenues — below the medium-to-long-term target band of 25 to 40 percent. Management also expects the evergreen segment to shave one to two percentage points off net asset growth in the second half. A short-seller report from Grizzly Reports in April, which alleged inflated valuations in the evergreen funds and which the company dismissed as baseless and defamatory, has done little to calm nerves on that front.

Yet the underlying business metrics tell a more constructive story. Client commitments climbed to USD 16.0 billion in the first half, up from USD 12.2 billion a year earlier and comfortably ahead of the USD 14.0 billion consensus. Assets under management stood at USD 186 billion at the end of June, marginally below the USD 186.7 billion analysts had expected. Proceeds from divestments totaled USD 9 billion in the first six months — matching the prior-year figure — and the firm closed an infrastructure secondary program at over USD 5.5 billion in late July. Full-year guidance for commitments of USD 26 to 32 billion remains unchanged.

The first-half report, due September 1, will show whether that range is within reach. Between now and then, the stock is likely to remain a high-volatility vehicle — one that has rediscovered buyers, but whose longer-term trajectory depends on whether the evergreen outflows can be staunched and whether the performance fee engine can be restarted. This week's deals address the growth side of that equation. The harder question is whether they do anything to fix the other half.