# US Private Equity Deal Value Slid Again in Q3, and PitchBook Says Everyone Keeps Calling the Bottom Too Early > PitchBook's latest read on US private equity shows deal value and exit value both down double digits year over year in the third quarter. One of the report's own analysts says the industry has been predicting a turnaround every year, and the turnaround keeps not showing up. - Source: Media Broker Daily - Canonical URL: https://news.mediabroker.org/article/us-private-equity-deal-value-slid-again-in-q3-and-pitchbook-says-everyone-keeps-calling-the-bottom-too-early - Author: Media Broker Daily Editorial - Section: Branding - Published: 2026-10-12T16:46:09.827Z - Updated: 2026-10-12T16:46:09.827Z - Tags: private equity, PitchBook, KKR, M&A, deal flow, finance --- New third-quarter numbers from PitchBook give US private equity another quarter it would rather not talk about. Deal value fell 13.6 percent year over year, exit value fell 14.1 percent, and the firms doing the deals are managing more than 3 trillion dollars in assets while finding fewer places to actually put new money to work or cash old bets out. ## A slowdown that keeps getting called, and keeps not ending PitchBook analyst Kyle Walters put a name to the pattern rather than just the number: the industry has spent several years now predicting the turn is just ahead, and the turn keeps slipping. You hear it every year now, he said, describing a cycle of forecasts that assume recovery is close and then get pushed another few quarters down the road. The firm's own asset growth numbers back up how much the picture has changed, with annual AUM growth running at roughly 6 percent now, about half the 12 percent pace the industry got used to in better years. ## Why exits are the real chokepoint The deal value drop gets the headline, but the exit value drop is arguably doing more damage underneath it. When general partners can't sell portfolio companies or take them public at the pace they'd like, they can't return cash to the limited partners who fund the next round, and that backs up the entire pipeline. Fundraising has gotten noticeably harder over the past year and a half to two years as a direct result, concentrating successful closes among a smaller group of managers who can still show LPs a credible path to liquidity. ## The mega-firms are the exception, not the trend Not every firm is stuck in the same mud. KKR closed out a 300 billion dollar fundraising target in 30 months, a pace that underlines how capital is consolidating toward managers with the scale, track record and brand to keep attracting commitments even while the broader market contracts. That split matters for anyone reading the PitchBook numbers as a single story: the slowdown is real in aggregate, but it is landing unevenly, with scale increasingly acting as its own kind of insulation. ## What could still move Q4 Walters' near-term read is conditional on interest rates. If the Federal Reserve adds further hikes, he expects Q4 to look a lot like Q3, essentially flat. Deal makers have largely priced that scenario in already. Without additional hikes, he sees room for modest improvement, though he's careful to frame that as better than the trough, not a return to form, noting that current activity levels remain above the doldrums of 2022 and 2023 even in a down quarter. ## Why this is worth marketing and agency attention, not just the finance pages A slower private equity market is a slower market for the roll-ups, brand carve-outs and platform acquisitions that have fed a steady stream of rebrand and go-to-market work for agencies over the past several years. Fewer exits mean fewer newly independent or newly combined companies showing up with a fresh positioning brief and a marketing budget to match. The PitchBook numbers are a reminder that a chunk of that pipeline runs through PE deal flow, and deal flow is exactly what just got slower for the second straight quarter. --- Originally published by Media Broker Daily. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://news.mediabroker.org/article/us-private-equity-deal-value-slid-again-in-q3-and-pitchbook-says-everyone-keeps-calling-the-bottom-too-early.