Partners Group's Busiest Week Yet: A $2 Billion Beauty Bet, a Data Center Power Play, and a Record Exit
Published on 08/07/2026 at 13:02 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The Zug-based asset manager is firing on all cylinders. Within the span of a few days, Partners Group has unveiled two billion-dollar acquisitions, closed a marquee portfolio sale, and wrapped up fundraising rounds that pulled in tens of billions in fresh commitments. Yet beneath the flurry of deal announcements lies a more complicated story—one of fee pressure, investor redemptions, and a share price that remains a long way from its former glory.
A French Beauty Brand With Familiar Roots
The most eye-catching of the new transactions is Aroma-Zone, the French cosmetics label currently controlled by Eurazeo. Partners Group confirmed it has entered exclusive negotiations to acquire a majority stake in the company, with the Financial Times pegging the enterprise value at roughly €2 billion. Eurazeo, which first invested in Aroma-Zone in 2021 at a valuation of around €700 million, is expected to retain a meaningful minority position once the deal closes.
This isn't a leap into the unknown for Partners Group. The firm has been financing Aroma-Zone through its private credit arm since 2021, giving it a front-row seat to the company's remarkable trajectory. Over that period, Aroma-Zone has tripled its revenue, multiplied its store count sevenfold, and grown its active customer base beyond five million. The jump from €700 million to a reported €2 billion valuation underscores just how much value has been created—and how well Partners Group knows the asset it's now pursuing.
Powering the AI Boom
The second deal addresses a very different kind of demand. Partners Group has signed an agreement to acquire a majority stake in AVK Power Solutions, a UK-based provider of power supply systems for data centers, with an equity commitment exceeding $1 billion. The company sits squarely in the sweet spot of the artificial intelligence infrastructure boom, where hyperscalers and cloud providers are scrambling to secure reliable energy for their expanding server farms.
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Both transactions highlight the breadth of Partners Group's current investment appetite—spanning consumer brands on one end and mission-critical digital infrastructure on the other. The firm's portfolio is also showing signs of operational momentum: Unit4, a software holding, recently completed a refinancing of its existing credit facilities, while Foundation Risk Partners, a US portfolio company, managed to expand its EBITDA margin by 120 basis points through AI-driven initiatives developed in collaboration with Version 1, another Partners Group holding. Both companies were acquired in 2022 and have since doubled their revenue.
A Timely Exit at ?abka
On the divestment front, Partners Group completed one of its largest exits of the year on July 31, when Canadian retail giant Alimentation Couche-Tard acquired a majority stake in Polish convenience store chain ?abka Group. The timing couldn't be better: exits are the lifeblood of Partners Group's business model, generating realized gains that feed directly into performance fees—a revenue stream that has been under pressure.
That pressure was laid bare in the firm's business update on July 15, when Partners Group cautioned that performance fees would likely account for less than 20 percent of total revenue in the first half of 2026, well below the targeted range of 25 to 40 percent. The company attributed the shortfall to delayed exits in a challenging market environment. The ?abka transaction should help close that gap, at least partially.
Record Fundraising Masks an Evergreen Problem
The same update delivered plenty of good news on the fundraising front. Assets under management climbed to $186 billion as of June 30, up from $174 billion a year earlier. First-half capital commitments hit a record $16 billion, comfortably beating the analyst consensus of $14 billion and surpassing the $12.2 billion raised in the same period last year. The firm also confirmed its 2026 guidance for gross new business of $26 billion to $32 billion.
Fund closings have been coming thick and fast. On July 20, the Direct Infrastructure IV program closed with more than $15 billion in total commitments. Three days later, the Infrastructure Secondaries program wrapped up with over $5.5 billion, more than 70 percent of which came from new clients. Proceeds from portfolio sales added another $9 billion to the firm's coffers.
Yet the evergreen funds—open-ended structures that allow periodic redemptions—remain a persistent headache. Investor redemptions reached $3.8 billion in the first half, against new commitments of $4.2 billion. Reduced divestment activity in direct investments and weaker performance in mature evergreen strategies are expected to weigh on net asset growth by 1 to 2 percentage points in the second half. The tension is palpable: the traditional private equity engine is running smoothly, but the newer evergreen structures are proving a drag.
Market Reaction and the Road Ahead
The share price has responded positively to the recent deal flow, though it remains far from its highs. In Zurich trading, the stock gained as much as 1.58 percent on the day of the dual announcement, reaching CHF 732.60. In Frankfurt, the shares closed at €770.20, down 0.72 percent on the day but up 6.47 percent on the week. The stock currently trades at €777.00, having advanced 7.41 percent over the past seven trading sessions.
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Still, the recovery only goes so far. The shares sit 37.34 percent below their 52-week high of €1,240.00, set on September 2, though they have rebounded meaningfully from the 52-week low of €686.80 touched on June 26. The market capitalization stands at €19.64 billion.
The stock's fragility was on full display in early June, when a gating event at the $8.6 billion Global Value SICAV fund triggered a 16 percent single-day selloff, following allegations from US short-seller Grizzly Reports about inflated valuations—claims Partners Group has rejected. Jefferies analyst Tom Mills responded to the July update by cutting his earnings estimates by up to 9 percent and lowering his price target from CHF 760 to CHF 710, maintaining a "Hold" rating. He cited redemptions in certain evergreen products but noted the update contained no fundamentally new negative aspects.
All eyes now turn to September 1, when Partners Group publishes its full interim report with first-half earnings. That will reveal how deeply the performance fee shortfall has cut into the bottom line—and whether the recent wave of deal-making has already begun to leave its mark on the numbers.
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