An operating partner at a private equity firm extending a portfolio company's value creation plan should first reset each initiative's target to what it has delivered, and give each AI project its own line in the plan with a target, a cost, an owner and a date.
Alvarez & Marsal is a professional services firm that sells performance improvement work to private equity firms and has a group working on generative AI products and solutions for them. It published its fifth annual Value Creation survey on May 19, 2026. On its behalf, the research firm Statista Q interviewed 200 private equity fund investors and C-level executives from portfolio companies in ten European countries by telephone in early February 2026. While 61 percent of those respondents were optimistic about the 2026 exit outlook, half are extending value creation plans and refinancing portfolio company debt as they wait for conditions to improve. Of respondents, 65 percent said they have achieved less than half of the value targeted in plans developed over the past two years.
A separate A&M survey, released May 28, 2026 with no survey dates in its release, asked 100 private equity investors, operating partners and PE-backed executives across North America, and 41% report realizing below 75% of planned value creation over the last 12 months. The two releases report different measures, so their figures do not compare.
On AI, the European survey found nearly two thirds of respondents (63%) now use AI as part of their value creation activity, up from 41% in 2025, and 60 percent named high cost and uncertain return on investment as the main obstacle to effective AI deployment. Neither release says whether AI work is written into the plans themselves, and neither full report was read; the layout below is Nine-67's method.
The reset works through the original plan one initiative at a time. Each line keeps its original target, adds what the initiative has delivered as run-rate EBITDA (the yearly effect at the current monthly level in the management accounts), and then sets a new target and date for what remains. An AI project sits on its own line under the initiative it serves, carrying its expected EBITDA effect as a range, its running cost in software, implementation and staff time, one owner at the portfolio company, and the month its effect should first appear in the accounts. Folded into an older initiative's number, its cost and its result would both be hidden.
In month one the portfolio company's CFO fills in the delivered figure for every initiative. During month two, the CEO and each owner set the new targets and dates, while the CFO prices every AI line with the person who owns it. At the month three board meeting the operating partner presents the reset plan, and the extension runs to the latest date in it. A firm extending plans at several companies can reset each one on the same columns.
The reset stops at the plan's initiatives, leaving the investment thesis and the exit route with the deal team. An AI line without a price stays outside the plan's total until the CFO adds one.
The European release also reports A&M's analysis of 240 private equity exits in Western Europe from 2013 to 2025, focused on companies with revenue above 100 million euros. In a subset of 68 of those deals with full data across the hold, EBITDA margin improvement accounted for 51% of EBITDA growth in portfolio companies exited in 2025, up from 21.5% of those exited before 2023, though the release gives no count for either group.
