PRIVATE EQUITY · PORTFOLIO VALUE CREATION

Build earnings through better pricing. Build the capability to sustain them.

Pricing strategy and commercial capability improvement for private equity investors and portfolio-company leadership teams.

Understand the opportunity before committing to the plan. Translate it into better product, customer and deal decisions. Equip the business to execute—and demonstrate what has changed.

Discuss a portfolio pricing opportunity →Explore client work →

STRATEGY MEETS EXECUTION

Does the value-creation plan change how the business actually prices?

An earnings target does not tell a sales team how to price a complex quote. A revised price list does not resolve inherited customer discounts. A dashboard does not establish who owns the next decision.

Pricing Insight connects commercial ambition with the operating capability required to deliver it: pricing architecture, customer terms, negotiation, decision rights and management routines.

01 · DIAGNOSE

Quantify the opportunity

Identify margin leakage, test assumptions and assess commercial risk. Separate evidence-backed findings from hypotheses requiring further investigation.

02 · IMPLEMENT

Change the decisions

Translate the analysis into product prices, customer terms, quoting guidance and practical commercial actions. Test changes before broader rollout.

03 · EMBED

Build repeatable capability

Clarify ownership, develop skills and establish management routines that support better decisions after the project.

ACROSS THE INVESTMENT LIFECYCLE

A focused workstream. A clear commercial purpose.

Before investment

Pricing due diligence examines the assumptions underpinning the deal: historic price realisation, discount behaviour, product and customer margins, contract mechanisms and execution capability.

Output: a view of pricing opportunities, risks, assumptions and data limitations.

During ownership

Build a prioritised pricing roadmap. Agree the baseline, select pilots, assign accountable owners and support implementation through pricing guidance and sales enablement.

Output: sequenced actions with milestones—not a promise that every benefit will arrive within 100 days.

Preparing for exit

Make the pricing performance story easier to examine. Document price realisation, customer and volume outcomes, governance and the capability supporting ongoing execution.

Output: clearer evidence of what changed and how the business manages it.

HOW THE WORK CONNECTS

From investment hypothesis to everyday commercial decisions.

Diagnose

Transaction evidence, commercial interviews and capability assessment.

Design

Pricing logic, customer segmentation and decision rules.

Test and implement

Pilots, sales enablement and monitored rollout.

Embed and measure

Ownership, skills, governance and benefit tracking.

The scope follows the evidence. A targeted customer-pricing issue and a business-wide capability gap require different interventions.

Explore our methodology →

EXPERIENCE YOU CAN EXAMINE

Review the work behind the proposition.

Explore our published client case studies to understand the commercial starting point, the intervention and the reported outcome. Discuss which examples are most relevant to your portfolio company's business model and complexity.

Review client case studies →

Our case-study library includes businesses with different ownership structures. A featured client should not be assumed to have been private-equity-owned.

Relevant complexity

Examine product ranges, customer structures, channels and pricing decisions—not simply the size of a reported result.

Implementation substance

Ask what changed in the business, who adopted it and how performance was monitored.

Clear measurement

Distinguish identified opportunity, annualised benefit and realised improvement. Keep gross profit, EBIT and EBITDA separate.

Meet Pricing Insight and founder Ron Wood →

PRACTICAL QUESTIONS

Resolve the uncertainties before committing.

Do we need a full transformation programme?

No. Start with the decision or performance issue. Agree the scope after reviewing the evidence, complexity and implementation capacity.

What if the data is incomplete?

Assess suitability before finalising the analytical scope. Make assumptions and limitations explicit, and separate findings from hypotheses requiring further testing.

Does better pricing mean increasing every price?

No blanket increase is assumed. Identify where prices, terms or execution need to change, and where competitiveness must be protected.

How will benefits be measured?

Agree the baseline and metric definitions with finance. Consider volume, mix, customer response and implementation costs. Track adoption separately from financial outcomes.

START WITH A SPECIFIC BUSINESS QUESTION

Where could better pricing strengthen your investment case?

Discuss a prospective investment, a portfolio-company margin challenge or the capability needed to support your value-creation plan.

An initial conversation can clarify the commercial question, the evidence available and whether a focused review or broader programme is appropriate.

Discuss a portfolio pricing opportunity →

Pricing strategy for private equity

Price is the largest EBITDA lever available to an owner during the hold period, and in most mid-market portfolio companies it is the least managed. We size it in due diligence, capture the first gains in the first 100 days and set the controls that hold them through to exit.

Why portfolio companies leave price unmanaged

Price rarely has an owner. It sits between finance, which sets the cost base and target margin, and sales, which negotiates the final number. Four patterns recur in the businesses we review.

Cost-plus pricing

Prices built up from cost and a standard mark-up, so two products with the same cost carry the same price even when one is worth far more to the buyer.

Every salesperson a pricing manager

In one PE-owned packaging business, 20 sales representatives were each setting their own prices, with no commercial reason recorded for the differences.

Discounts with no conditions

Rebates and discounts granted to win or hold an account and never reviewed. Many outlive the volume commitment that justified them.

No line of sight to margin

Management cannot report margin by customer and SKU without a manual exercise, and commission is paid on revenue, so a discounted sale counts the same as a full-price one.

How we work across the investment cycle

Due diligence · 2–3 weeks

Size it

Data-room analysis of price dispersion, discounts and rebates below list, and margin by customer and SKU, inside the exclusivity window. The output is a sized EBITDA range and the risks to it.

First 100 days · about 12 weeks

Capture it

The pricing diagnostic, quick wins on the customers and lines where discounts and rebates cost most, and decision rights for price, with an EBITDA bridge the board can track month by month.

9PE Pricing Diagnostic

Hold period · 6–18 months

Build it

Price architecture, Project Blackbird price optimisation at SKU and customer level, sales capability and incentive design, so management runs price without outside help.

Project Blackbird

Pre-exit · 12–24 months out

Prove it

An evidence pack on price realisation, governance and customer retention, so the margin gain stands up when a buyer tests the trailing numbers.

Pricing Capability & Governance

Questions we answer for private equity owners

What can pricing due diligence tell us inside the exclusivity window?

How much pricing upside is in the business and how much margin is at risk. The work runs from the data room in two to three weeks: price dispersion, discounts and rebates below list, margin by customer and SKU, and management interviews. The result is a sized EBITDA range for the value-creation plan, with the evidence gaps named.

How much is a price gain worth at exit?

A worked example: in a business with a 10% EBIT margin, a 1% lift in realised price with no volume loss adds about 10% to EBIT, and the same dollars add to EBITDA. At an assumed 8x EBITDA exit multiple, each A$1m of annualised EBITDA adds about A$8m of enterprise value. The no-volume-loss assumption is the one to test, product by product and customer by customer.

How much of the gain arrives in the first year?

It depends on the lever. Fee and surcharge changes move fastest, list price changes next, and contract prices only at renewal. The diagnostic states the annualised gain and the share expected within the first 12 months separately.

Who should we engage to lift pricing at a building products portfolio company?

A specialist with building materials results. Our published building materials work includes Laminex, Stramit, InfraBuild, Fletcher Insulation and Tradelink, and we work directly with portfolio company management while the owner receives the same reporting.

How can an operating partner test pricing maturity in one meeting?

Six questions:

Who sets price, and who can change it?
What share of revenue is sold below list, and on what conditions?
How far does price vary for the same SKU across similar customers?
When were list prices last reviewed against input costs?
Are sales incentives paid on revenue, gross margin or contribution?
Can management report margin by customer and SKU within a week?

Do you work with vendors as well as buyers?

Yes. Vendors use the same analysis before a sale process to put evidence behind the pricing case and to capture the quickest gains before buyers arrive.

Why a pricing specialist rather than a global firm

Benchmarks from 160+ engagements

A portfolio company's price dispersion, discount levels and margin structure are tested against comparable businesses, not against theory.

Senior people throughout

Ron Wood leads every engagement with a senior associate. The work is not sold by a partner and handed to a junior team.

Fixed fees

The fee is agreed before the work starts, and the risk of overrun sits with us.

Capability stays in the business

The commercial team completes Pricing University training as part of the engagement, so the method stays after we leave.