2024 marked an interesting but challenging year in PE. According to Pitchbook, U.S. firms closed 46 first-time funds, raising $9.2 billion—a significant drop from $21.5 billion across 121 funds in 2023. PE also encountered sustained headwinds on entry with the cost of leverage up to 10% in 2024 vs. 5% in 2022. 

As PE combats a few tough years, green shoots are starting to emerge. PE exits in 2024 were at $902 billion compared to $754 billion in 2023, according to Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. This is still well below pandemic-era highs but leaves renewed optimism for 2025. 

This stalled deal activity has made clear that while private equity (PE) firms have mastered the art of financial engineering, operational efficiencies, and strategic acquisitions, today’s PE environment requires an expanded toolkit of revenue and growth engineering to unlock value. One that specifically focuses on unlocking the true potential of a well-defined and executed CMO or Growth Officer agenda post-deal.   

What stands out in Prophet’s experience working with a network of trusted PE partners and their portfolio companies is the power of value unlock potential beyond the deal. Specifically, bringing in a growth-oriented playbook alongside an operational and financial engineering one that focuses on four targeted actions with seismic potential to accelerate time to value. 

Crafting a Compelling and Coherent Story of Value: Rethink Your Company’s Identity to act as a Greater Value Multiplier 

Alongside operational and financial levers, the impact of a strong story of value and brand positioning can have on strengthening enterprise valuation cannot be understated. We’ve seen investor valuation models shift towards more forward-leaning expectations and storytelling. A strong story of value is an essential foundation in supporting the brand and can help reduce customer churn, enable premium pricing and attract top talent.  

The story of value has two parts: the corporate story, which is investor-focused and catalyzes leadership and business value, and the brand story, which is customer-facing and drives awareness and customer consideration and retention. 

These all work together as important signals to a much broader set of stakeholders, ultimately enhancing exit appeal to strategic buyers or IPO markets. A well-structured brand system should go beyond a creative exercise to crystallize business ambition and serve as the essential wrapper that catalyzes a new growth thesis. The creative strength of the work is also not trivial; new strategies can fall flat or get lost in old design systems and messages. 

It is essential to nail the blend of both stories to create a symbiotic relationship that enhances overall enterprise value. 

Driving a Customer-Led and Commercially Minded Go-To-Market Reconfiguration: Fix the Leaky Funnels and Unlock New Sources of Revenue 

Companies may risk struggling with stagnant growth, inefficient go-to-market strategies and underperforming sales motions post-acquisition. Partially changing leadership through the transition of ownership can risk decelerating progress in the short term. Post-investment, the primary goal is to avoid harming existing businesses and commercial momentum while reorganizing and integrating new technologies and products. 

However, changing leadership creates new opportunities to get closer to customers and the marketplace, uncover new insights and revisit outdated go-to-market processes by re-engineering the experience from first principles. This allows the organization to realign its brand, marketing and sales tactics in a way that can improve conversion, expand share of wallet and shorten sales cycles. 

The real unlock is creating a new or improved system that successfully drives leads and follows them through an improved sales channel, enhancing both demand generation and the sales process. These types of transactions can also serve as welcoming opportunities to deliberately engage with customers more broadly. Specifically, conversations that expand the frame of reference of the new entity and open opportunities to deepen relationships or cross sell more effectively. Finding new processes for this that can scale in broader roll-ups can accelerate the time to exit for portfolio companies.  

Using Culture as a Catalyst to Power Change: Get People to See, Believe and Live the Change 

When PE firms acquire a company, there’s often a disconnect between leadership priorities, business strategy, organizational culture and the financial growth plan. Change is expected and constant during these transitions but is often not well communicated or orchestrated. New leaders are brought in to drive the change but need to lean heavily on legacy teams, especially in the beginning.  

The HR function is often undervalued, but culture is critical at deal time. Building a unified culture accelerates integration and leverages an energized organization to achieve objectives. Post-deal, the focus shifts to attracting and retaining the right talent for the company’s vision. Highlighting both the initial integration and ongoing talent strategy is essential. A well thought out story of value and brand from empowered CMO and/or Growth Officers should be deliberately activated internally to shift employee culture to drive impact externally.   

Where’s your playbook? 

Prophet understands the essential role of revenue engineering for PE value creation—and more importantly, how to define and accelerate the right company efforts to gain a competitive edge in an increasingly complex valuation market. We routinely see PE firms with great playbooks and partners for rapid due diligence going into a deal that outlines strategic routes and assessments of where to play post-deal along with the risks associated with the moves.  

However, post-acquisition can be the ideal time to bring in a growth-led “think and build” partner capable of accelerating the CMO or Growth Officer agenda to move quickly to execute how-to-win strategies that unpack new customer insights, depict a more coherent story of value, develop a refreshed identity, reimagine new customer experiences and power a renewed sense of culture. 

2024 came in like a lion, with optimism and a return-to-growth mandate across sectors despite interest rate uncertainty and global unrest. After a challenging 2022 and 2023, consumers and companies resumed spending. Markets bounced back. In fact, in our 2024 summary, “Year of Resilience,” companies researched saw a 85% year-over-year net income increase across all the companies and sectors analyzed.

With new policies and a more favorable M&A environment, companies saw promise for 2025. And so did we as we analyzed year-end earnings reports of more than 50 of the world’s largest, fastest-growing and most relevant companies.

Our goal was straightforward: understand how leaders experienced the highs and lows of 2024 and uncover implications for 2025. As we listened and researched, most companies still see growth opportunities but CEOs and CFOs understand the need to remain vigilant—cautiously monitoring hypercomplex economic challenges in real time.

With that in mind, first, we’ll look back at the 2024 cross-company and industry drivers of growth as well as a few of the issues that kept leaders up at night. Then, we’ll look at what that might mean for 2025.

A Relentless Drive to Unlock Uncommon Growth 

Last year, companies around the globe made confident and at times uncommon growth moves. Some invested in new customers. Netflix, for example, gained 19 million paying users by cracking down on subscription sharing and Airbnb invested $250 million to expand its core app usage. Others explored new territories. AB InBev poured millions of dollars into nonalcoholic brewing technology and Uber and Waymo expanded their autonomous ride-hailing offerings to more cities. In sustainable growth, Hyundai launched its “HTWO” brand to represent its world-leading hydrogen fuel cell system. The commitment to innovation reflects a broader mindset, well expressed by Ford CEO Jim Farley: “Our relentless focus on executing the Ford+ plan has delivered strong results, positioning us well for continued growth in 2025 and beyond.”

Transitioning to M&A, although it was a more muted landscape in 2024, we saw several strategic deals that signaled uncommon growth opportunities, including Exxon Mobil’s acquisition of Pioneer, Capital One’s pending acquisition of Discover that aims to redefine its role in the financial ecosystem and Verizon’s acquisition of Frontier Fiber, the largest pure-play fiber internet provider in the U.S.

As we move through 2025, leaders appear to be swinging big in innovation, market expansion and M&A as many expect their competitors will be quieter due to market uncertainty. Relative to M&A, exciting times are ahead with an estimated global deal value reaching $3.5 trillion. According to Morgan Stanley CFO Sharon Yeshaya, “This will not just be a blip on the radar, as M&A pipelines remain healthy and diversified.”

A Pivot to Leveraging AI as a Commercial Building Block 

From “talking about AI” to “scaling AI” to “AI as a commercial driver of success,” the evolution of artificial intelligence since the early 2020s is striking. Beyond boosting efficiency, AI is being harnessed as a business engine. Tech giants, as expected, are broadcasting the generative AI enhancement of their product lines, providing relevant and tangible benefits—Apple Intelligence, Meta Glasses, Amazon’s Alexa+ and Tesla FSD cars, to name just a few. Google CEO Sundar Pichai stayed true to this trend, stating, “Scaling Gemini on the consumer side will be our biggest focus next year.”

Beyond the tech sector, other market leaders are also pushing AI-driven innovation. Chevron is utilizing its novel FaultAssist program to forecast disaster prevention. Pfizer is propelling AI-powered drug discovery and optimization of its back-end processes, enabling faster medication deployment. Lyft is using AI for driver support and troubleshooting, estimating a total of 28,000 hours saved in support time.

Amid the widespread and ongoing AI acceleration to date, leaders are anxious to push their AI agendas forward in 2025 while recognizing the need to clarify what their businesses truly need—both operationally and commercially. For instance, Delta CEO Ed Bastian is taking a more deliberate approach, ensuring alignment between core operations and the brand’s overall promise: “[Our] focus on AI is to learn, and to listen, and to make certain that we’re ready before we jump in with both feet.”

An Obsession with Being Market Back and Customer-Centered 

Consumers are focusing on simplicity and speed. Fueled by what Accenture calls the “impatience economy,” they are siding with brands that are quick to market and bespoke in their offerings. From the fastest shipping to fast fashion, brands like Amazon and Zara are first in line. Fortive CEO James Lico shared, “The reason for [their] five-year track record of success is a commitment to their Fortive Business System … [which] helps identify unmet customer needs, develop new products and get them to market faster.”

But speed has its costs such as sustainability. A key focus of last year’s report, sustainability appears to have become more of a nice-to-have than a differentiator for 2025. Instead, consumers are prioritizing other areas and companies are following suit. For one, getting healthier, as personal health brands like Hims & Hers and Novo Nordisk are expanding with GLP-1 weight loss medications. Second, consumers continue to seek out unique experiences. Brands like Travel + Leisure and Mastercard are already benefiting from increased interest in tourism and more cross-border payments (up 24% year over year for the credit card company) and Marriott is growing its room count, adding 123,000 rooms in 2024.

Moving forward into 2025, we expect to see more innovation in the name of speed—from production to shipping to service models—as well as an effort to leverage customer data and feedback to further tailor offerings to meet unmet needs. Across offerings we also see an opportunity for more industries to get in on the health and overall self-betterment craze. As we touched on with AB InBev’s shift to nonalcoholic, we believe there’s room to succeed outside the obvious health-centric sectors.

A Desire to get the Employee Value Exchange Right 

Today, companies’ policies around remote work continue to evolve. Firms with competitive hiring practices like JPMorgan are more comfortable taking a firm stance on return-to-office mandates while tech giants Apple and Microsoft have remained committed to hybrid policies. And in places where the industry is split, unhappy employees are speaking out. For example, when AT&T adopted a strict return-to-office policy, it sparked employee backlash on social media allowing Verizon to capitalize by recruiting AT&T employees with hybrid and remote offers.

The ongoing discourse around DEI in the workplace has further complicated the employer-employee value exchange, as has the perceived role AI will play in the workplace, tied to job displacement and uncertainties about adapting and pushback against AI adoption.

As highlighted in our research, these debates only intensify tension in the job market as talent shortages persist across industries. As the population ages, CEOs are expecting labor market shifts, with a large population of skilled laborers beginning to retire, leaving a void of qualified talent. In health care, CVS is making strides to address pharmacist shortages. In the aviation industry, American Airlines and United both paused hiring due to the high cost of training and aircraft shortages, in part due to Boeing’s departing engineers. On the positive side, Delta celebrated its profit-sharing day, distributing $1.4 billion to its employees promoting corporate culture.

A quarter into 2025, it’s clear that companies need to take a fresh look at their employee value proposition, their employee experience and what it will take to recruit and retain top talent.

A Strong Belief that Resiliency and Agility are now Operational Cornerstones 

On a macro level, the global economy’s resilience has continued to be put to the test: interest rate debates, high inflation and geopolitical conditions created uncertainty, yet unemployment remained low and consumer spending persisted.

2024 proved to be a period of optimistic resilience. Eastman Chemical was hit by weak end-market demand, fluctuation in raw material prices and regulatory pressure. Yet, through innovation and the adoption of advanced technologies, it found ways to reach its earnings goals. Lockheed Martin faced supply chain disruptions and high material costs but expanded its engineering manufacturing facilities to meet rising demand. On the other hand, Exxon Mobil and Boeing felt the squeeze of fluctuating demand and material prices, leading to dips in net income—a reminder that even industry titans must continuously adapt.

Now, in 2025, some companies are demonstrating the importance of adaptability under the policies of the new administration to drive success. Apple plans to invest $500 billion to move a manufacturing facility from Mexico to Texas, avoiding the effects of cross-border tariffs. Amazon similarly continues to invest in data centers across the U.S.

With shifting economic policies, evolving regulatory landscapes and global market fluctuations, the true impact of these bold investments remains uncertain. As companies navigate this unpredictable environment, their ability to showcase cautious resilience will define their success in 2025 and beyond.

Acknowledgments: Bridget Mitchell, Hannah Anderson, Mary Kovacs and Samuel Pinchback.

Empowered, informed and demanding customers. Relentless tech advancement and disruption. Unmanageable data volumes. Geopolitical conflict and macroeconomic volatility. Shifting competitive vectors and intensifying regulatory oversight.  

Welcome to the new normal – about which there is nothing normal. 

But for all the change, there’s one constant for business leaders: intense pressure to deliver growth, quarter after quarter, year after year. Given today’s extraordinary challenges and complexities, however, these business leaders now recognize that yesterday’s best practices no longer apply. In other words, uncommon times require uncommon approaches to drive uncommon growth.  

So, what do we mean by uncommon growth? First and foremost, it’s high-impact growth that’s faster, smarter, more sustainable and more actionable. Breakthrough product innovations – whether from start-ups or well-established brands – are perhaps the most visible examples of uncommon growth. But these are exceedingly rare. Similarly, bold acquisitions can drive uncommon growth, but relatively few firms have the capital to pursue this option.  

In mature industries with tight margins, uncommon growth can mean outpacing the competition by a point or two. Or grabbing market share via smarter marketing, more attractive offers, better experiences or new sales channels. Or reshaping a brand or core value proposition for increased relevance to changing customer behaviors. To some extent, uncommon growth is a function of boosting returns on investments in transformation and innovation programs.   

Uncommon growth takes many forms. Consider how a leading drug store chain (CVS) transcended its successful retail heritage through a disruptive new home care business, with existing brand equity energizing its entry into an adjacent sector with a brighter growth outlook.  

A legacy entertainment brand, PENN Entertainment, shifted to an omnichannel business model to engage more customers across a fragmented media landscape. A software provider remixed its portfolio of 100+ products for delivery via a cloud-based platform for the future. There is no singular path towards uncommon growth but despite varied success, all companies need to find ways to unlock uncommon growth today and in the future.  

The Action Plan for Uncommon Growth

Unlocking uncommon growth can be as much about the “how” as the “what.” The combination of building new capabilities, securing organizational alignment and developing muscle memory can power companies to launch new products, services and experiences, devise new business models, and execute growth strategies faster and more repeatably than in the past. The priorities include: 

Increasing Organizational Velocity

Uncommon growth typically starts with speed. That means shortening the time from insights to decisions and from execution to impact. And accelerating go-to-market timelines, with faster design-build-test cycles and a quicker pace for launching MVPs and releasing updates. It’s a huge leadership challenge because most businesses today simply aren’t built to keep up with rapidly shifting market demands or seize opportunities that come and go faster than many firms can act.  

Taking the Holistic View

There are multiple levers leaders can adjust in pursuit of uncommon growth – and they should explore them all. Product and service offerings will be priorities, but product bundles and subscription models may move the needle. Refreshed customer experiences, with personalization and customization features, can drive significant value, too. New technology may be deployed to unlock new distribution channels or enhance specific touchpoints (e.g., Generative AI tools for tailoring recommendations and offers).   

Energizing the Culture to Promote Risk-Taking and Experimentation

For many organizations, that means making collaboration and co-creation (with partners and customers and across functions) the norm, rather than an exception for special projects. Similarly, innovation must be operationalized as a business-as-usual process and function (like finance and HR). These are not easy changes to enact, but they’re necessary to remove internal and cultural barriers to growth.