Preparing Private Equity AGM Decks: Best Practices for the AI Era

For private equity firms, the annual general meeting (AGM) is the one day a year when the spotlight belongs entirely to them. GPs lay out their strategic vision, walk investors through key holdings and fund updates, and put their investment teams face-to-face with current and prospective LPs. While AGMs have evolved into full-scale events, often with curated dinners, entertainment, and networking, LPs ultimately come for the numbers. At the center of every AGM is the deck behind the keynote presentation. Below, we break down the themes, slides and metrics GPs need to include, alongside how firms can leverage AI on top of their trusted Chronograph datasets to streamline the process.

What Are the Must-Have Slides in a Private Equity AGM Presentation? 

While every presentation is unique, they often include several core slides throughout:

Fund Performance

Fund performance is often the most anticipated part of an AGM. Investors want the core metrics, including IRR, TVPI, DPI, and NAV, along with how each has trended over time.

Fund Composition 

Fund composition by sector, geography, and other dimensions is another important view for investors. With geopolitical uncertainty, tariffs, and AI-driven software disruption weighing on portfolios in recent years, LPs want to understand GPs’ exposure to relevant headwinds. 

NAV Bridge 

More than ever, LPs want to understand the “why” behind performance. Including a NAV bridge slide shows how fund value moved over a reporting period or since inception, separating true value creation from cash flows. This includes a view of beginning to ending NAV through contributions, distributions, realized and unrealized gains, fees, expenses, and carry accruals, ideally tied to the portfolio company drivers behind the largest moves. 

Portfolio Company Case Study Slides

Portfolio company case studies are among the most compelling slides for LPs. GPs typically highlight a handful of standout companies over a few slides, showing the underlying performance drivers, how the investment thesis is translating into results, and how the investment team makes decisions and creates value. Done well, these slides showcase the fund’s operating and investment edge, reinforcing its strength in underwriting, monitoring, and driving outcomes at the portfolio level. Key elements to include:

• Qualitative overview: Lead with the company description, investment thesis, and notable updates such as add-on acquisitions.
• Financial performance: Revenue, EBITDA, or ARR growth over time, plus the forecast where available.
• Operating KPIs: Company-specific metrics or P&L line items that support the value creation story, such as APAC revenue to show geographic expansion or reduced downtime to show productivity gains.
• Valuation: Current valuation alongside entry valuation to show progression.

DPI and Expected Exits

After several years of muted exits, top of mind for LPs is whether their GPs are returning cash, and many now weigh DPI more heavily than IRR and other performance metrics. Therefore, exits deserve a dedicated slide, covering realized exits with gross proceeds and net distributions, related metrics such as DPI and MOIC, DPI progression over time, and the pipeline of upcoming liquidity events.

Fund Risks & Scenario Planning

From Covid to the Straight of Hormuz, recent years have tested fund resilience LPs want to know how GPs assess risk, how the portfolio would hold up in a downturn, and how exposures are being managed. Key elements to include on this slide:

• Top risks: Higher financing costs, upcoming maturities, sector concentration, and execution risk over longer hold periods.
• Scenario analysis: The NAV impact of, for example, a 15% contraction in SaaS exit multiples or at-risk companies missing budgeted EBITDA by 10%.
• Mitigation: How the GP is responding, whether through operational support, debt restructuring, or other levers.

Thematic Slides 

Every fund has its own investment criteria, approach to driving returns, and story to tell LPs, so many AGM decks include thematic slides tailored to the fund. A fund focused on ESG or sustainable investing might show portfolio-wide data on carbon emissions, net new jobs, workplace safety, and board diversity. For an established firm, the theme might instead be its track record across market cycles, a timely point for LPs weighing re-up decisions.

The Forward Outlook and Pipeline for the Fund

While most of the deck looks back, the deal pipeline slide shows LPs where the fund is headed. For funds still deploying, LPs want to see that the GP is putting capital to work at a steady pace and staying disciplined to the thesis, especially in a market where competition for quality assets keeps entry multiples high. Key elements to include:

• Remaining dry powder: Uncalled capital and expected deployment pace over the remainder of the investment period.
• Active pipeline: Deals under review or in exclusivity, with sector, expected check size, and stage of diligence.
• Add-on opportunities: Bolt-on acquisitions planned for existing portfolio companies and how they support each company’s value creation plan.
• Thesis alignment: How the pipeline fits the fund’s strategy, along with the themes or sectors the GP sees as most attractive going forward.

Appendix and Disclosures

The appendix and disclosures may be the least flashy part of the deck, but LPs review them closely before or after the meeting. Though rarely presented live, the appendix shows how the main deck’s conclusions and calculations were derived, giving LPs and their consultants the transparency they need for diligence and internal reporting. Key elements to include:

• Schedule of investments: A full portfolio table with each company’s entry date, invested capital, realized and unrealized value, gross MOIC and IRR, and ownership stake.
• Fund terms and capital account summary: Committed, called, and uncalled capital, management fee and carry structure, and fund expenses, so LPs can reconcile against their capital account statements.
• Valuation methodology: How unrealized investments are marked (comparable company multiples, DCF, or recent transactions), plus the valuation policy and any third-party review.

The slides discussed here are some of the core slides that an AGM deck should include. However, as discussed each firm has a unique mandate, investment thesis, and operating lens, and there will be unique slides included that reflect this dynamic. Further, decks will include slides covering the agenda and the team.

What Challenges Do Private Equity Firms Face Preparing AGM Decks?

As shown here, AGM presentations cover a significant amount of detail about the fund, from headline performance metrics and composition to portfolio company performance, ESG updates, detailed appendices and more. As a result, compiling this information internally, verifying its accuracy, and populating the deck is often a time-consuming, manual process. 

Some of the top challenges firms face as they gather information and build their decks include:

• Key inputs live across siloed systems. AGM decks draw on a wide range of fund information, often scattered across the firm’s tech stack, spreadsheets, and shared drives. Fund performance may sit in the accounting system, deal pipeline data in the CRM, and portfolio company metrics and valuations in the portfolio monitoring system. In the case of spreadsheet housed information, it becomes very challenging to identify “finalized” and “approved” metrics. 

• Manual collaboration and communication. Decentralized inputs mean manual coordination across front-and back-office teams to compile final figures, gather context, and add review steps for accuracy. For example, investor relations typically owns the deck but doesn’t sit closest to the investments, valuations, or performance calculations, often chasing deal and finance teams for inputs. 

• Inconsistent metric definitions and valuation drivers. Adding complexity, most portfolio companies have their own reporting formats and value drivers, which makes it harder to pull the metrics that “best represent the business.” For example, many companies report multiple versions of EBITDA, and the EBITDA used in a valuation may differ from what’s reported once the investment team’s adjustments are applied. Without that context in one place, IR teams can struggle to identify the right metric for the deck.

• Data re-keying poses integrity risks. Copying and pasting metrics at scale invites human error, a serious risk in a deck LPs will rely on for their own reporting.
  

How Can Private Equity Firms Automate and Streamline AGM Deck Preparation?

As private equity firms look to streamline AGM deck production, a platform like Chronograph provides a trusted repository for comprehensive portfolio data, so firms can automate deck refreshes, eliminate bottlenecks across stakeholders, and reduce the risk of manual error. Here’s how Chronograph enables automated AGM decks:

• A single source of truth for portfolio data. Chronograph gives GPs a central home for portfolio company financials, budget vs. actuals, KPIs, fund performance, valuations, and non-financial data, such as ESG metrics. Further, source document auditability, approval workflows, clear taxonomies, and full metric version histories give firms confidence in every number.

• Self-service data without bottlenecks. With trusted data housed centrally and available to query or integrate downstream, teams can pull data independently. Clear taxonomies and metric labels let IR pull Chronograph data into the AGM deck without worrying about using the wrong figure.

• Seamless AI integrations. As more private equity firms bring AI into their workflows, Chronograph’s MCP lets them pull validated portfolio data directly into tools like Claude or ChatGPT. For example, firms can upload their branded AGM deck and use the Chronograph MCP to refresh it with up-to-date figures on a recurring basis.

• Automated refreshes save significant time. Instead of rebuilding the deck each cycle, teams can redirect hours toward higher-value work like refining the fund narrative and preparing for LP questions.

Check out our AI Prompt Book and AI Skills Book for Private Capital to see how investors leverage Chronograph to automate AGM decks, bespoke LP reporting, and more.