Platinum Equity Co-President Louis Samson on PE Hub Podcast: Creativity, Cultivating Relationships Key to Success in Current M&A Environment

Platinum Equity Co-President Louis Samson appeared recently on the PE Hub Private Equity Spotlight podcast. During the just over 40-minute discussion with PE Hub Editor-In-Chief Mary Kathleen Flynn and a Francisco Partners senior executive, Samson emphasized Platinum Equity’s deal activity this year, the firm’s willingness to explore creative solutions to create exit opportunities, the firm’s ops capabilities being a true differentiator, and other notable observations on the private markets over the past year. Here are highlights from the discussion:

Thoughts on the various paths to exits in an uncertain time.

What’s attractive is what delivers the outcome you’re looking for. Finding that requires more creativity, more work, and a different process than the standard fare, and cultivating relationships and rapport. It’s always been part of what we do. When we buy a company, it’s unoptimized, it belongs to a strategic who isn’t going to be well-positioned to navigate the optimization process in the public eye. Perhaps the (strategic) isn’t willing to or isn’t equipped to do it, but its ultimate home is often not that confusing and therefore you have to build a rapport with these guys. Public company CEOs, they don’t get fired for not doing a deal; they get fired for doing a bad deal.

If they’re your logical buyer and there’s no trust and it’s on your terms and it’s on your timeline, the odds of success are low. If you have a relationship, there’s some trust and you are cognizant of their timing … and you kind of line up the stars, you find yourself in the optimal position to get the desired outcome.

All of that is a set of skills that are very useful in this particular market because it is more ad hoc. We have a few companies that are doing well that perhaps in a normal market we’d run a process, but they’re big equity checks so it’s not necessarily worth going out there to see who’s going to make a play in a market like this. We’re talking to the same people who are the likely buyers, just differently. We’re maybe intermediaries or soft speaking, maybe we’re having meetings here and there and a deal will come out. It’s much more relationship oriented. We’re also working on very complex, highly engineered … transactions, the kind of deal this market calls for. More structure, more deliberate and a lot less cookie-cutter.

On valuations aligning with buyer and seller expectations.

Samson: I think there’s fatigue definitely in the market in terms of sellers, and I do think you will see some markets re-rate marginally. Having said that, the backdrop of the economy, private equity transactions have typically been done at some discount to where the public comms trade. It’s not exuberant and it’s backstopped by a valuation ecosystem that’s typically higher in the public markets.

There’s also a lot of capital out there, and I’m mixing not only sponsor-raised capital, which is a huge amount, but also strategics are flush with cash or have strong balance sheets. If you put that backdrop together, you’ll see things change from a value perspective.

You’ve got all this capital that has been raised and there’s been a lot of growth in the capital side of the equation and an addressable market that hasn’t changed that much. So there’s some structural support I think to valuation. But fundamentally, I think people are still hoping to grow into an equation of earnings times multiple that gives them a return that’s acceptable. The bar is probably lower for what that is, and maybe there’s some good bargains to be had, there always is, but I don’t think you will see a big drop in multiples. It’s just a matter of the ingredients being there for people to pull the trigger.

On future opportunities.

Samson: We buy most of our companies from large corporates and we have the tools. We have 90 operators on our bench, playbooks that enable us to affect transformation. And so there’s no shortage of transformation targets. The beauty of investing with an operational mindset is the outcome of the operational program and the transformation is almost entirely under your control.

There’ll be a real differentiation. People who fundamentally create value, who actually are putting a lot of money alongside their fund and our investors who have built a toolkit (will have a greater impact.

What’s the outlook for 2026?

Samson: One thing we’ve noticed about this administration is that they are pretty clear about what they’re really trying to do. Their stated goals are lowering rates and trying to reengage the middle class into the economy. Easier said than done, but at least I think the steps that will be taken for that to be the case. You might see the continuation of a stimulating environment. That may turn out to be inflationary, and rates may perk up down the road as a result.

It’s possible that we see an environment where most of the key ingredients of a healthier M&A market are present. Companies are experiencing a little bit of pent-up demand, a little bit of growth. Capital expenditure spending will be big, I think in 2026. Things could always go sideways, but I think in the short term we could see a little bit of a boom.