Here's the PDF so you can read more than just the abstract [1].
It's always hard to analyze anything this big, especially with something as vague as "more productive":
> First, employment shrinks more rapidly, on average, at target establishments than at controls after
private equity buyouts. The average cumulative difference in favor of controls is about 3 percent of initial employment over two years and 6 percent over five years. Second, the larger post-buyout employment losses at target establishments entirely reflect higher rates of job destruction at shrinking and exiting establishments. In fact, targets exhibit greater post-buyout creation of new jobs at expanding establishments. Adding controls for pre-buyout growth history shrinks the estimated employment responses to private equity buyouts but does not change the overall pattern. Third, earnings per worker at continuing target establishments fall by an average of 2.4 percent relative to controls over two years post buyout
So if I'm reading this right, huge layoffs followed by lots of churn with an overall decrease in salaries. But I must be missing something because the framing & wording seems to suggest that this is a positive thing. That paper also only looks at 2 years of data following acquisition. But the criticism for leveraged PE takeovers like this is that the PE firm is starting a 5-10 year project to strip mine the company for all it's worth and leaving a husk of a company that's loaded with the debt that was used to acquire it and no real assets. I'm not sure how looking at the first 2 years tells you anything.
The PE firm's switch to cheaper labor and suppliers is also reflected typically in a significant decrease in product quality which isn't analyzed here.
The main argument for leverage PE buyouts are they are performing a valuable service as they're doing a more graceful shutdown of a company vs letting the company fail on the public markets. But that's a harder argument when squarespace doesn't seem to be particularly struggling - they just IPOed during the pandemic bubble when internet stocks were crazy overvalued but they've been working their way back up.
> the PE firm is starting a 5-10 year project to strip mine the company for all it's worth and leaving a husk of a company that's loaded with the debt that was used to acquire it and no real assets
Long-term default rates for private-equity targets are low across markets [1]. Banks and leveraged-loan lenders tend to get paid back.
Also, most targets that later go public have low enough leverage to be able to immediately pay dividends [2]. You just don’t tend to hear about the specialty farm equipment maker IPO in most circles.
> that's a harder argument when squarespace doesn't seem to be particularly struggling
They’re turning hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue into hundreds of thousands of profits by spending hundreds of millions on sales and marketing.
> So if I'm reading this right, huge layoffs followed by lots of churn with an overall decrease in salaries. But I must be missing something because the framing & wording seems to suggest that this is a positive thing.
You read it right. Private Equity firms come in, and then lay off everyone they can and replace them with the cheapest folks possible, to churn down salaries and get rid of long-time staff with higher benefits costs. It's the classic playbook, and it's written here positively because if you're a soulless MBA beancounter, this is a positive thing. If you're a 50 year old engineer who is 12 years from retirement and just got a cancer diagnosis 6 months prior, it's not a good thing though.
It's always hard to analyze anything this big, especially with something as vague as "more productive":
> First, employment shrinks more rapidly, on average, at target establishments than at controls after private equity buyouts. The average cumulative difference in favor of controls is about 3 percent of initial employment over two years and 6 percent over five years. Second, the larger post-buyout employment losses at target establishments entirely reflect higher rates of job destruction at shrinking and exiting establishments. In fact, targets exhibit greater post-buyout creation of new jobs at expanding establishments. Adding controls for pre-buyout growth history shrinks the estimated employment responses to private equity buyouts but does not change the overall pattern. Third, earnings per worker at continuing target establishments fall by an average of 2.4 percent relative to controls over two years post buyout
So if I'm reading this right, huge layoffs followed by lots of churn with an overall decrease in salaries. But I must be missing something because the framing & wording seems to suggest that this is a positive thing. That paper also only looks at 2 years of data following acquisition. But the criticism for leveraged PE takeovers like this is that the PE firm is starting a 5-10 year project to strip mine the company for all it's worth and leaving a husk of a company that's loaded with the debt that was used to acquire it and no real assets. I'm not sure how looking at the first 2 years tells you anything.
The PE firm's switch to cheaper labor and suppliers is also reflected typically in a significant decrease in product quality which isn't analyzed here.
The main argument for leverage PE buyouts are they are performing a valuable service as they're doing a more graceful shutdown of a company vs letting the company fail on the public markets. But that's a harder argument when squarespace doesn't seem to be particularly struggling - they just IPOed during the pandemic bubble when internet stocks were crazy overvalued but they've been working their way back up.
[1] https://econweb.umd.edu/~haltiwan/AER_DHHJLM.pdf