Performance Watch: How Blackstone’s PE vehicles fared in Q3 2020

As global markets recover from the coronavirus pandemic at their own pace, the latest quarterly reporting from private equity’s listed giants sheds new light on how the asset class fared during the crisis.

We examine Blackstone‘s private equity funds in the return of Private Equity International’s Performance Watch, which compares the firm’s Q3 2020 figures with those from the prior three quarters.

Blackstone’s corporate private equity portfolio appreciated 12.2 percent in the period which, combined with a 12.8 percent rise in the second quarter, wiped out the 21.6 percent decline it experienced in the first quarter as markets were pummeled by covid-19.

“The firm’s largest, fully invested fund, BCP VII, is weighted toward the technology sector, including investments like Refinitiv and Bumble,” chief financial officer Michael Chae said on an earnings call last month, adding that its predecessor, the $15.19 billion BCP VI, has had “broad-based appreciation in value” over the last two quarters, particularly in its public holdings.

Blackstone deployed $4.1 billion in the asset class during the third quarter, and committed to deploy a further $4.1 billion, including the acquisition of genealogy company Ancestry and the corporate carve-out of Takeda’s consumer healthcare business.

The interactive charts below depict seven of the firm’s private equity fund families based on its two previous quarterly earnings reports. The bubbles are sized proportionately to the size of the fund; toggle between the tabs to see how their performance differed between quarters.