TOL - 31st Mar, 2026
EQT Capital are backing fundamentals to find tomorrow's real winners
It's the most interesting time to be alive as an investor says EQT Capital's Bert Janssens, but you have to get it right.
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This interview was filmed on Monday 9 March 2026.
Bert Janssens, EQT Co-Head of Private Capital EU & NA, believes we're living in unprecedented times.
"This is probably the most interesting time to be alive. The opportunity for value creation with AI is enormous, but you've got to get it right."
While investors of all stripes are grappling with the impacts of AI and technological change, for private equity funds the challenge is even more pronounced.
How do you find and evaluate the companies that will succeed 5-10 years from now when it's increasingly difficult to know what the world will look like a mere six months in the future?
EQT Capital's Bert Janssens talks to Livewire's Tom Stelzer
For EQT Capital and Janssens, it's about embracing the opportunity AI provides and using that to your advantage.
"You've got to lean into it and really drive the transformation yourself - we are seeing fantastic opportunities by leveraging this technology."
The EQT Private Capital strategy focuses on four core sectors: healthcare, tech, services and industrial tech, driven by a desire to find the companies and trends forcing genuine, long-term societal change.
"We look for fundamental growth. We don't like to swim against the stream of demand."
Finding real long-term potential
One of the key challenges facing private equity firms is finding those companies that will still be relevant years into the future.
EQT's platform looks to cover the end-to-end lifecycle of investments. That means a venture capital fund, early stage strategies, mid-market and a large cap buyout fund.
"The core of the job is to try to figure out what business is actually going to thrive in the next 10 to 20 years," says Janssens.
It's a task made all the more difficult by disruptive technologies like AI, where entire business models have been cast into doubt effectively overnight. But Janssens says even something as transformative as AI shouldn't distract from the approach.
"If you take a step back, that's always been the question about investing. The key to investing is really getting this right more times than you get it wrong."
"It's really about going back to the base fundamentals - what is the moat of the business and what is demand going to do in that specific sector?"
The EQT team spend a lot of time mapping out the trajectories of its companies, but even fundamentals and historical precedent can't tell you everything about how valuations will shape out in future.
"The reality is that in some sectors - for example, software - today it is very hard to know what valuations will be like when you exit the business," says Janssens.
"You can look at historical trends, but if you look pre-COVID, obviously the base rate was close to zero. Then you had COVID, which was a massive disruption for tech valuations. And now we're in the AI environment.
"So how do you see through all of this? You can try to get your best estimate of what you think reasonable valuation is. And here you do have to go back to fundamentals, cashflow multiples and so on, but even then you can get it wrong."
Ultimately, there is one core metric that can help investors like EQT protect against valuation risk - growth.
"If you have a business that is growing at 20% and you get the valuation multiple wrong by 20%, worst case, you can hold it for one year longer and get to the same kind of money multiple outcome. If your business is growing at 3%, you're never going to make money on that investment. And so that is really where we spend most of our time on, is figuring out, 'can we grow this business?'"
Harnessing change
Janssens says there has been a fundamental shift in how private equity now assess the opportunities on offer.
"Innovation has gotten a lot more important. And technology is now everywhere."
He points to the example of healthcare, one of EQT's four core sectors, which has seen fundamental change not only within the industry itself, but also on the qualities that companies need to succeed.
"We are the largest global investor in private markets in healthcare," says Janssens. "What we've seen in the last few decades, it was all about volume and scaling and making things accessible to the broader population. That has really shifted now."
"Now it's all about trying to be a solution for the healthcare system. It's not only about volume, but it's also helping society, basically helping the government reduce the cost of healthcare.
The second thing is really driving innovation. If you don't have innovation now in your companies, you're not going to be able to sell the company."
In the past, Janssens says the focus was on metrics like margins, volume, scaling and driving cost out. Now it's about innovation. He cites the example of a skincare brand EQT bought from Nestlé.
"What we did with the business, we replaced the management team, we revisited the entire portfolio of products, and we started driving innovation in the portfolio and really investing heavily in R&D, developing products, but also on the marketing side," said Janssens. "Completely retooling the business."
"There was a clear story about the next decade of revenues coming through that innovation. That's a good example of what has been changing. That investment 10 years ago would have been about cost cutting and just pushing volumes."
Managing exits
Janssens says the current IPO environment does present challenges, and has become a common query from investors.
But EQT have spent considerable time and effort in improving that part of the business to be "best in class", according to Janssens.
"You need to be able to drive alpha in everything that you do, including exits."
The private deal environment is more positive, but the fundamental approach remains the same, even if there's the added complexity of managing the motivations of deal partners.
"I've never had a deal partner come to me and say, 'I want to exit my business,' says Janssens. "When they have a good investment, they want to keep riding the investment because it makes them the hero, it's relevant for their careers, and so they're never going to sell. When it's a bad investment, they always tell me that next year it's going to be better, so they don't want to sell."
The solution for EQT is taking direct control of the situation and driving the alpha, which has helped them drive strong DPI (distributions to paid-in capital) cash returns to investors.
"Our senior leadership team, including myself, get involved in every exit," says Janssens. "It's a very pragmatic approach."
Two key themes
As co-head of EQT's EU and NA private capital strategy, Janssens is seeing firsthand how some of the world's largest economies are handling today's rapid macro and geopolitical change.
He's noticed two key trends that are shaping the global economic landscape.
The first is resilience, where national and regional economies are looking to become more self-sufficient, marking the end of decades of globalisation.
The second is energy, also part of the trend of de-globalisation seen in both the western and developing worlds. "The reliance on energy from other parts of the world is becoming a real issue and has been an issue in the last couple of years," says Janssens.
Like all investors, the challenge facing EQT Capital is adapting to an ever-changing world, and that informs how the team approach its decisions.
"How are we dealing with technology? What is our role to play in the world in this new technology landscape?"
Focused on creating lasting value
EQT is an investment organisation committed to creating value by finding good companies and helping them become the most promising builders of tomorrow. To learn more, visit the EQT website.
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Tom is a Senior Investment Writer and Presenter at Livewire Markets, having worked as a writer and editor for 10 years, specialising in investing and personal finance.
He has previously worked at Finder, FourFourTwo and Man Of Many covering everything from film to football.
He has a Masters in Media Production and a Bachelor's in Journalism.
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Tom is a Senior Investment Writer and Presenter at Livewire Markets, having worked as a writer and editor for 10 years, specialising in investing and personal finance. He has previously worked at Finder, FourFourTwo and Man Of Many covering...
Expertise
Tom is a Senior Investment Writer and Presenter at Livewire Markets, having worked as a writer and editor for 10 years, specialising in investing and personal finance. He has previously worked at Finder, FourFourTwo and Man Of Many covering...
Expertise
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