News & Insights - First National Capital Corporation

New Research Finds the Private Equity Exit Window Did Not Open — but the Portfolio Aged Anyway, and Deferred Operational Capital Is Why Some Assets Will Not Clear When It Does

First National Capital Corporation mid-year analysis finds distributions have held below 15 percent of net asset value for a record fourth consecutive year, and argues sponsors treating the extended hold as an operating mandate — not a waiting room — will exit first and at better multiples First National Capital Corporation, one of the largest independent providers of capital equipment and project financing in North America, today released Waiting Is

The Covenant You Accepted in 2021 Gets Negotiated by Your Buyer in 2029

Structural concessions are made when the exit feels theoretical. At a seven-year hold, it stops being theoretical rather sooner than anyone planned. Financing decisions at portfolio companies are made under a particular kind of time distortion. The transaction in front of you is immediate and concrete. The exit is a slide in a fund model. So when a lender offers a rate concession in exchange for cross-collateralization across entities, or

The Asset You Are Waiting to Sell Is Getting Harder to Sell

Extending a hold assumes the value is static. In equipment-intensive businesses, it never was. The logic of waiting out a bad exit market is straightforward enough. Multiples are compressed, buyers are cautious, the bid-ask spread is too wide, and taking a process to market now means accepting a price that does not reflect what the business is worth. Better to hold, let conditions improve, and sell into a stronger market.

Every Automation Project You Deferred Funded an Add-On. That Was a Choice.

When operational capital and acquisition capital draw on the same facility, the allocation meeting has already been decided before anyone walks in. Ask an operating partner whether they have systematically underinvested in their portfolio companies’ equipment base and you will get an immediate and sincere no. Ask them to name the last three capital allocation decisions at a platform company and you will usually get three add-on acquisitions. Both answers

New Research Finds Business Aircraft Buyers Who Waited for a Softer Market Got a Tighter One — and Were Out-Processed, Not Outbid

IRVINE, Calif. — August 19, 2026 — First National Capital Corporation, one of the largest independent providers of capital equipment and project financing in North America, today released Nothing Good Stays Listed, a mid-year research report examining how the business aviation market rewarded buyers who could execute through the first half of 2026 — and repriced the aircraft out from under buyers who paused. The report revisits the firm’s February

High Hours Are Not the Risk. Bad Records Are.

Most underwriting reads utilization as wear and charter as diluted control. Both readings are backwards, and they are excluding good aircraft from good buyers. There is a reflex in aircraft lending that has calcified into something close to doctrine: hours are bad. The more an airframe has flown, the more cautious the file becomes. Charter placement compounds the caution, because now the aircraft is flying more and someone other than

The Residual Is Not a Question About Your Credit

Two identical aircraft, two identical borrowers, wildly different payments. The variable is the lessor — and almost nobody asks about it. An owner evaluating an operating lease against a loan will typically approach it as a question about themselves. What is my tax position? How long do I intend to hold? What does my balance sheet look like? Do I want the depreciation? All reasonable questions. None of them explains

98 Days on Market Means the Good Aircraft Never Reached the Market

Rising time-to-sale reads like a cooling market. It is describing the opposite, and the distinction determines whether you are a bidder or a spectator. Average time on market for preowned business aircraft reached 98 days on a trailing-twelve-month basis this spring, up more than 11 percent year over year. Read in isolation, that is a straightforward signal: aircraft are taking longer to sell, which means demand is softening and buyers

The Most Rigorous Price Forecast in Energy Had a Three-Week Shelf Life, New Research Says Operators Should Stop Building Capital Plans That Require One

IRVINE, Calif. — August 12, 2026 — First National Capital Corporation, a leading independent provider of capital equipment and project financing, today released The Three-Week Window, a midyear research report examining how U.S. oil and gas operators deployed capital during a first half in which crude prices moved more than $45 in four months. The report opens with the Energy Information Administration’s July Short-Term Energy Outlook, published on July 7,

Gas Does Not Care About Hormuz

While crude traversed a $45 range twice, the natural gas story barely moved. That is not a coincidence — and it is the closest thing to a planning assumption available in energy right now. Everything about energy in 2026 has been narrated through the Persian Gulf. Crude above $110 in March. Mid-$60s in early July. Back near $90 by month end. A memorandum of understanding signed and abandoned inside five

Your Borrowing Base Is Engineered to Fail You at the Exact Wrong Moment

Redetermination against a price deck is not a flaw in reserve-based lending. It is the design. The problem is what operators are funding with it. Every upstream operator understands how a borrowing base works. Reserves are engineered, a price deck is applied, advance rates are set, and availability is established. Twice a year, usually, the whole exercise is repeated and the number moves. What gets discussed less often is the

The Most Rigorous Forecast in Energy Had a Three-Week Shelf Life

If the EIA cannot hold a price call for a month, no operator should be running a capital plan that requires one to be right. On July 7, the Energy Information Administration published its Short-Term Energy Outlook. The forecast had been completed six days earlier, on July 1. It cut the 2026 Brent projection to $82 per barrel from $95 — a 14 percent reduction in a single month —

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