Sponsor Exit Trends by Route: Sales, SBOs, IPOs and CVs

Introduction

When one exit route closes, sponsor-backed companies keep changing hands through whichever route is still open, and the multi-year exit mix records where the volume went. On Bain & Company's global count, initial public offerings (IPOs) supplied about $112 billion of buyout-backed exit value in 2021 and about $6.9 billion in 2022, while continuation vehicles (CVs), funds a sponsor raises to buy a company from its own older fund, grew from 5% to 14% of sponsor-backed exit volume on Jefferies' measure. Each route answers to a different source of money (corporate balance sheets, leveraged loans, public equity or secondary capital), so the trends diverge, and exit value has recovered faster than the stock of unsold companies.

Bain's Global Private Equity Report is the one series here that splits global buyout-backed exits by route across the whole cycle. Each year appears as first published, with shares computed from Bain's dollar figures; later reports restate earlier years, so a quoted change will not always match the prior level.

Each route follows its own financing. Sponsor-to-sponsor sales, or secondary buyouts (SBOs), depend on a buyer who borrows, so they fell hardest as leveraged loans repriced and jumped 141% in 2024 once syndicated markets reopened, the arithmetic behind what a second sponsor must believe to pay more. Corporate acquirers pay with balance sheets and shares, so their share rose to nearly 80% in 2023, and Bain's 2026 report has them leading again in 2025, singling out Energy Capital Partners' sale of Calpine to Constellation ($29.4 billion) and GTCR's sale of Worldpay to Global Payments ($17.6 billion), both completed in January 2026. In 2021 another $158 billion came through mergers with special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs).

Exit Mix

The split of a period's private equity exits across routes (sales to strategic buyers, secondary buyouts, IPOs and, in some series, continuation vehicles), measured by value or by count on one data provider's definitions. A value split is dominated by the largest deals, so a few transactions can move a route's share in a year.

Value Rose Faster Than Count

Bain's exit count rose 22% to 1,470 in 2024, then slipped 2% on a restated base in 2025 while value rose 47%. PitchBook's 2025 Annual US PE Breakdown shows why: sales worth $1 billion or more, its mega-exits, supplied 78% of US private equity exit value, against a five-year average of 57%.

Two Surveys, Two Route Leaders in 2025

PitchBook's US figures point the other way. Sponsor-to-sponsor exits rose 84.3% in value to $240.8 billion, against 44.7% for exits to corporates at $299.3 billion, while Bain has strategic sales up 66% and sponsor-to-sponsor up 21%, with North American sponsor sales down 19% excluding one data center deal. The series differ in geography, buyer classification and what enters their totals, so follow each route inside one survey and quote both bases when they disagree.

Listings are the route most exposed to public equity valuations. On Bain's figures they fell from 12% of exit value in 2021 to about 3% in 2023, and their 36% growth in 2025 came, in Bain's words, off a very small base. A listing sells a minority stake and sets a public price, and the fund realizes the rest through later sell-downs, as the coverage view of sponsor-backed IPOs explains, so a reopened window returns cash over years.

Reopened for Scale, Not Breadth

PitchBook counts 26 US IPO exits valued at $141.4 billion in 2025, against 20 at $45.5 billion in 2024 and a pre-pandemic average of 47 a year worth $43.5 billion, and credits the jump to a couple of outsized listings, Venture Global LNG and Medline among them. Listings were the one US route to grow by value in the second quarter of 2026, among the latest single-period exit figures; the queue still waiting to list is covered in the equity capital markets view of the sponsor IPO pipeline.

The CV is the one route whose share never fell across the cycle. Jefferies' July 2026 secondary market review sets CV volume against Dealogic's estimate of global sponsor-backed exit volume, including mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and IPO proceeds: 5% in 2020 and 2021, 7% in 2022, 12% in 2023, 13% in 2024 and 14% in 2025, holding at 14% in the first half of 2026. By number, PitchBook's continuation-fund-related exits in North America and Europe rose from 17 in 2020 to a record 147 in 2025 (PitchBook's later global count for 2025 is 158); Bain, measuring against all exit value, puts CVs below 10%.

Because the deal sits at fund level, coverage in a financial sponsors group (FSG) often spots the case and brings in private capital advisory, the handoff in when coverage brings a CV to private capital advisory. The general partner-led (GP-led) volume behind the trend is traced in how GP-led deals grew through the secondaries cycle.

Exit value roughly doubled between 2023 and 2025 on Bain's count, yet unrealized value kept rising: $3.2 trillion of unexited assets in the 2024 report, $3.6 trillion across 29,000 companies in the 2025 report and $3.8 trillion across 32,000 in the 2026 report. Exits that grow mainly in value clear the largest companies, not the population.

Holding Periods and an Aging Inventory

In PitchBook's US data, the median hold at exit peaked at seven years in 2023 and fell to six by the end of 2025, while the median hold of companies still in portfolios climbed to a record four years, a sign that sponsors are selling what buyers want while the rest age in place.

Exit Inventory (Private Equity)

The stock of sponsor-backed companies that funds have bought and not yet sold, measured by count, by unrealized value or, in PitchBook's version, by the years the current exit pace would take to clear it. It captures a backlog that a single year's exit value cannot.

On that measure, PitchBook's roughly 13,100 US companies at the end of 2025 equalled more than eight years of exits at that year's pace.

Marks, Bids and the Assets Left Behind

The second reason is price. Many owners who bought at 2021 multiples hold companies at carrying values buyers will not match, the bid-ask spread traced in the cycle from the 2021 peak through the rate reset. Bain's 2026 midyear report describes three tiers: high-quality strategic assets still attract buyers, a second tier often sells only if owners bend on valuation or use CVs, and older or weaker assets meet buyers too skeptical to engage at proposed marks.

Bain adds that distributions well below average as a share of net asset value imply a seven-year capital cycle for the buyout industry.

Each route brings different mandates, so its multi-year direction shows which work is gaining weight in a coverage book:

Two of these trends can turn quickly: sponsor-to-sponsor volume follows the loan market and listings follow public valuations. The other two behave like structural shifts, with strategic buyers holding the largest share of value throughout Bain's series and the CV share rising through trough and recovery alike. The market-driven routes set the timing of mandates and the structural ones their mix; forecasts belong with the sponsor outlook's scenarios.

Set against the inventory, the route mix is a thin slice: Bain's count of unsold companies is about twenty times its count of 2025 exits. Most future exit work lies with companies that have not yet found a door, each needing a route, a price and a buyer whose money is available when its sponsor is ready to sell.