Financials

Financials — Partners Group Holding AG (PGHN)

Partners Group is a Swiss-listed global private-markets manager that earns recurring management fees on USD 185 billion of assets under management, plus episodic performance fees when funds are realized above their hurdles [1]. Financially it is close to an ideal: a 63% EBITDA margin, a 55% return on equity, near-total conversion of profit to cash, almost no net debt, and a dividend it has raised every year since its 2006 IPO [2] [3]. The debate is not about quality — it is about whether the AuM engine still grows after the firm gated an USD 8.6bn evergreen fund in June 2026, an event that cut the share price by roughly a third.

All figures are in Swiss francs (CHF), the firm's reporting currency, unless stated. A USD-translated version of this page is available.

The thirty-second read

Sources: AuM, revenue, EBITDA margin and dividend per FY2025 Annual Report [2]; ROE per the alternative performance metrics section [4]; free cash flow derived from the consolidated cash-flow statement [5].

How Partners Group actually makes money

Before any number means anything, you have to know what drives profit. Partners Group does not put much of its own capital at risk; it manages other people's. Revenue has two engines that behave completely differently:

• Management fees — a steady toll, charged as a percentage of assets under management (AuM). In 2025 these were CHF 1,744m (including other revenues and operating income), about 68% of revenue, and they grow roughly in line with average AuM [2]. The fee margin — fees divided by average AuM — has stayed in a tight 1.18%–1.33% band since the IPO and was 1.24% in 2025, a sign of genuine pricing power [6].
• Performance fees — a share of investment gains, recognized only when funds are realized above a hurdle. These are large but lumpy: CHF 819m in 2025 (33% of revenue) versus just CHF 269m in 2022 [7] [8]. Crucially, up to 40% of every performance fee is paid straight back out to employees, so a performance-fee spike inflates revenue and personnel cost together and is largely margin-neutral [9].

The whole P&L flows from AuM. That is why the June 2026 evergreen redemption scare matters financially — it is a question mark over the asset base that the fee toll is levied on.

The year-wise statements

This is the audited record. Read it top to bottom: revenue is volatile because of performance fees, but the management-fee line, the EBITDA margin and the dividend grind steadily higher. FY2021 stands out — a once-in-a-cycle realization year (performance fees of CHF 1,197m) that revenue has only now surpassed.

Sources: revenue, EBITDA, EBIT, net profit and diluted EPS from the consolidated income statements in the FY2025 [7], FY2024 [10], FY2022 [8] and FY2021 [11] reports; EBITDA margin and ROE per company disclosure [9] [4]; net margin and pre-2024 ROE derived from reported financials; dividend per share is the proposed/paid dividend for each year [3].

Growth: high quality on fees, lumpy on performance

Split the revenue line and the picture clears. Management fees compound quietly — up from roughly CHF 1.1bn in 2020 to CHF 1.7bn in 2025, +12% on a constant-currency basis in 2025 even as a strong Swiss franc held the reported figure to +7% [12]. Performance fees swing violently around that base: CHF 1,197m in the 2021 boom, CHF 269m in the 2022 bust, and back to CHF 819m in 2025. This is the single most important thing to internalize about the income statement — a "down" revenue year is usually a down performance-fee year, not a broken franchise.

Source: "Management fees and other revenues, net" and "Performance fees, net" lines from the consolidated income statements, FY2021–FY2025 reports [7] [10] [11].

Where the fees come from

Private equity is still the engine (59% of revenue), but the growth story is infrastructure, which has more than doubled to CHF 531m since 2023, while real estate — the segment most exposed to the property downcycle — has stayed soft. Royalties is a new, tiny, fast-growing toehold.

Source: Note 1.2 Segment information, "Revenues from management services, net" by operating segment, FY2025 Annual Report (FY2023 from FY2024 report). Note: the segment-mix figures published in the run's structured data had Infrastructure and Real estate transposed; the audited segment note is used here [13] [14].

Margins and earnings quality: does profit become cash?

Margins are remarkably stable. The EBITDA margin has sat near 63% for five straight years (62.8% in 2025), and management runs the firm to a deliberate ~40% cost-income ratio on newly generated fees — i.e. a target ~60% operating margin [9]. Because performance-fee-funded pay flexes with performance fees, the margin barely moves whether performance fees boom or bust. The slight 2025 dip (EBIT margin 60.1% vs 61.3%) was franc strength and the integration of the Empira real-estate acquisition, not cost slippage [12].

Source: EBITDA margin development chart and EBIT margin disclosure, FY2025 Annual Report; FY2021 EBIT margin derived from reported EBIT and revenue [9] [12].

Cash conversion is excellent — and that is the real tell of fee-business quality. In FY2025 operating cash flow was CHF 1,515m and capex just CHF 21m, for CHF 1,494m of free cash flow — about 119% of net income [5]. One caveat for the beginner: FY2025 capex was unusually low because the prior two years carried the spend for the new Denver campus (FY2024 capex was CHF 141m) [12]. Even normalizing for that, free cash flow comfortably funds the dividend. Over a full decade, cash flow tracks profit closely — the gaps are timing of working capital (the short-term treasury loans the firm extends to its own funds), not earnings quality.

Source: net cash from operating activities less purchases of property, equipment and intangibles, consolidated cash-flow statements FY2016–FY2025 (pre-2022 years as reported in company filings) [5].

The balance sheet: a weapon, not a constraint

Partners Group runs a deliberately "balance-sheet-light" model — it manages assets rather than warehousing them. Net debt, on the firm's own definition (bonds plus drawn credit facilities, less cash and the short-term treasury loans it extends to its funds), was just CHF 400m at year-end 2025, up from CHF 122m, against available liquidity of CHF 3,721m [4] [15]. Funding is conservatively structured:

• Five fixed-rate, senior unsecured CHF bonds totalling CHF 1,330m, coupons 0.40%–2.40%, laddered from 2027 to 2034 — no wall, and the nearest is a CHF 500m, 0.40% bond due June 2027 [15].
• A newly upsized EUR 3,000m (CHF 2,791m) syndicated facility that carries no financial covenants — the firm drew CHF 1,056m of it for working capital and treasury [16].

The one nuance an investor should watch: drawn credit facilities have climbed (CHF 240m → 715m → 1,056m over three years) and the firm holds CHF 1,657m of short-term loans to its own funds [17]. This treasury-bridging activity is what makes "net debt" look like it is rising; it is collateralized against unfunded client commitments and short-dated, but it is the reason the balance sheet is busier than the asset-light label suggests [15].

Source: consolidated statements of financial position, FY2025 (2024–2025), FY2024 (2023), FY2022 (2021–2022) and FY2021 (2020) reports [17] [18] [19] [20].

The firm also invests ~CHF 1.7bn of its own balance sheet alongside clients (GP commitments, seed capital, associates) — a deliberate alignment tool, not a trading book, and the source of the CHF 75m investment result in the financial line [21].

Returns on capital and what management does with the cash

This is where the model shines. Return on equity was 55% in 2025 (47% in 2024) [4]. Part of that is genuine — an asset-light fee machine needs little capital — and part is amplified by the fact that the firm has bought back over CHF 1bn of treasury shares, shrinking the equity base. Capital allocation is shareholder-friendly and consistent:

• Dividend: proposed at CHF 46.00 per share for 2025, +10%, a 95% payout of diluted EPS, and a 16% per-year growth rate sustained since the 2006 IPO [3]. In 2025 the firm paid out CHF 1,092m in dividends.
• Buybacks: CHF 334m of treasury shares purchased in 2025 (CHF 76m disposed), held for employee plans and flexibility — shares outstanding edged down to 25.78m [22] [23].

A near-95% payout ratio is the flip side of the asset-light model: with little need to reinvest, almost all profit is returned. The risk is symmetrical — in a weak performance-fee year, EPS (and therefore the dividend headroom) compresses.

Source: net profit per consolidated income statement; dividend per share per the dividend section, FY2025 Annual Report [7] [3].

Valuation: a quality compounder repriced by a redemption scare

Nothing is cheap or dear in isolation. Here is the context that matters. At CHF 657 the stock trades at about 13.6x trailing earnings and 14.1x the FY2026 consensus EPS of CHF 46.46, with a ~7% dividend yield — a steep de-rating from the ~20x multiple it carried at its CHF 980–1,030 highs only six months earlier. The trigger was not earnings: in June 2026 Partners Group capped redemptions on its USD 8.6bn Global Value SICAV evergreen fund at 5% of NAV per quarter after withdrawal requests neared 10%, and warned other evergreen vehicles could follow — sparking a private-markets sector sell-off and a ~17% one-day drop in the shares.

Source: price CHF 657.2 (23 Jun 2026) and shares outstanding 25.78m per the run's market data and the FY2025 outstanding-share note; trailing EPS CHF 48.45 per income statement; FY2026 consensus EPS CHF 46.46 per analyst estimates; dividend CHF 46.00 [7] [23].

How it screens against the listed alternative-asset managers. Partners Group is smaller than the US giants and, on a headline P/E, optically cheaper — but the comparison needs a health warning. PG reports under IFRS and deconsolidates its funds, producing "clean" ~51% net margins and a ~13.6x P/E on GAAP-equivalent earnings; the US managers report on a complex GAAP basis (often consolidating insurance balance sheets) and are valued by the market on fee-related and distributable earnings, not the reported net income used below. Treat the table as a size-and-shape map, not a like-for-like multiple.

Sources: Partners Group revenue growth, ROE and net margin from its FY2025 report [2] [4]; peer market caps, growth, ROE, margin and GAAP P/E derived from competitor financial data, as reported. The auto-selected peer set's "EQT" resolved to EQT Corporation (US oil & gas), a non-comparable, and CVC data was unavailable — both are excluded.

Source: financial outlook (new client assets and performance-income guidance), FY2025 Annual Report [24].

What the financials confirm, contradict, and what to watch

Confirmed: This is a genuinely high-quality business. Five years of ~63% EBITDA margins, 55% ROE, ~119% cash conversion, near-zero net debt, CHF 3.7bn of liquidity, and an 18-year unbroken dividend record are the financial signature of a durable, capital-light franchise with real pricing power [4] [15].

Contradicted / the catch: The same statements show two soft spots. Earnings depend on lumpy performance fees and a near-95% payout leaves little buffer if a realization year disappoints; and the rising drawn credit facilities plus growing short-term fund loans mean the "asset-light" balance sheet is doing more financing work than the label implies [3] [17].

The whole investment case now turns on the asset base, because every fee dollar is a function of AuM.

The first financial metric to watch is net new AuM / net client flows — specifically whether evergreen and private-wealth redemptions keep accelerating. Management's 2026 guidance of USD 26–32bn of new client assets is the number that validates or breaks the fee engine; if net flows hold, the 13.6x multiple and 7% yield look like a quality business on sale, and if they roll over, both management fees and the dividend lose their footing [24].