15
/ March
2010
The "bellweather" private equity firm files to go public
| BVR's partner Pitchbook announced this morning that Kohlberg Kravis Roberts has filed to sell $2.2 billion worth of stock in an initial public offering on the NYSE. The sale values the private equity firm at approximately $7.3 billion. Including debt, its value is closer to $9.3 billion. The firm reported an economic net income of $1.48 billion for 2009 with its private markets unit accounting for $1.1 billion. The incredible growth of KKR (and, by proxy, the growth of the PE industry) over the past decade is shown by the increase from $15 billion AUM for KKR in 2004 to $52.2 billion in 2009. In total, the firm's traditional buyout funds have generated a 25.8% gross IRR with a multiple of 1.9x since 1976. There are over 25 U.S. publicly traded companies involved in private equity investing, according to the PitchBook Platform. The Blackstone Group (NYSE: BX) is the only major private equity firm currently listed, although The Carlyle Group, Bain Capital and Apollo Investment Management are all candidates to go public sometime soon. Pitchbook and Business Valuation Resources are partners on the Pitchbook/BVR Public Company Comps Tool, which assists appraisers when doing guideline public company method analyses. |