We recently completed the sale of R&S Machining, a St. Louis-based precision manufacturer serving aerospace and defense OEMs, to Threadlock Precision, a D.E. Shaw-backed platform building a scaled A&D machining network.

A year ago, the typical conversation began with a question about whether the timing was right to begin exploring a sale. Today that question has inverted: owners are now more likely to ask whether continuing to hold will cost them value they cannot recover later.

If you ask what a managed services provider is worth, you’ll get answers ranging from 3x EBITDA to 14x. Both numbers are real. Both came from actual transactions. The gap between them explains more about how PE buyers think about IT services than any single data point.

Private equity firms have more than $500 billion in dry powder earmarked for the U.S. middle market. More than 11,000 PE-backed companies are waiting to be sold. The ingredients for a deal boom are all there.

Institutional capital is not chasing defense manufacturing broadly. It is targeting exposure to specific programs with long production tails, stable funding, and high qualification barriers. The F-47 meets those criteria cleanly.