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The 7 Metrics Every PE Portfolio Should Track in Real Time

Lee McCabe

12 Oct 2025 — 1 min read

1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
If you’re not measuring CAC in real time, you’re flying blind. Rising CAC is one of the earliest signs of marketing inefficiency or changing market dynamics.

2. Lifetime Value (LTV)
A portfolio company’s unit economics don’t work without a healthy LTV. Real-time tracking allows quick pivots on pricing, product, or retention before margins suffer.

3. Cash Conversion Cycle
Time-to-cash is often the most under-optimized metric in the portfolio. Improving cash conversion can create enterprise value faster than almost any other lever.

4. Revenue by Channel
In a fragmented media environment, knowing where revenue is actually coming from by channel, campaign, or cohort is critical to reallocating dollars with precision.

5. Churn Rate
Real-time churn monitoring (especially for subscription or recurring revenue businesses) ensures you can intervene before a retention issue becomes a valuation problem.

6. Sales Pipeline Velocity
Speed of movement through the funnel can indicate health or friction in GTM strategy. Slow velocity = trapped growth = missed quarter.

7. EBITDA Margin (Real-Time Adjusted)
Not just monthly P&L. Adjusted real-time margin, reflecting run-rate costs and one-offs, gives the clearest picture of sustainable performance.

Private equity value creation isn’t just about finding the right playbook, it’s about instrumenting the dashboard so you know when and how to pull the levers. These seven metrics turn your portfolio from reactive to proactive.

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