Executive Summary: Private equity-sponsored portfolio companies have been attractive equipment finance customers: sophisticated management, growth capital availability, and institutional backing that implied credit support. That calculus is shifting. Extended hold periods have pushed many portfolio companies far beyond planned exit timelines. Debt structures sized for five-year exits strain under seven and eight-year holds. Sponsor patience is exhausted, dry powder is committed elsewhere, and incremental support is uncertain. Equipment financiers who underwrote PE-backed deals assuming continued sponsor support should reassess exposure as vintage stress materializes.

The Extended Hold Reality