Unlisted Asset Management: How Post-Acquisition Cash Flow Models Drive Better Decisions

🚀 After the Deal Closes, Great Cash Flow Wins in Unlisted Asset Management

Closing an acquisition is not the finish line-it’s the moment unlisted asset management really starts. For funds holding complex unlisted assets and unlisted infrastructure, the question investors ask is simple: “Did the cash show up the way we expected?” The only reliable way to answer is with live, structured post-acquisition cash flow models that connect operational reality to the original deal thesis.

This guide is for investment teams, operators and any financial adviser responsible for turning a signed SPA into measurable value. It focuses on building post-acquisition models that track budget vs actuals, surface customer concentration risk, and translate every lever-pricing, capex, terms, headcount-into hard cash outcomes.

Right now, most post-deal models live in scattered spreadsheets that break when assumptions change. That’s dangerous when you’re managing high customer concentration or capital-intensive unlisted infrastructure. By shifting to repeatable, standardised cash flow models, you create a single source of truth for value creation, governance and exit readiness.

We’ll show how to build that engine, and how to plug it into practical playbooks such as your 90-day post-acquisition cash plan. When you’re done, you’ll have a clear blueprint for understanding unlisted assets in cash terms-fast enough to act before risk becomes loss and opportunity slips away.

📌 Post-acquisition Cash Flow Models for Unlisted Assets

• Post-acquisition, your biggest blind spot isn’t valuation-it’s day‑to‑day cash performance on unlisted assets.
• Moving from static spreadsheets to structured models turns unlisted asset management into a repeatable value creation process, not a once-a-year exercise.
• Start by locking in a 90‑day cash plan that ties operational levers to bank balance movement.
• Build budget vs actuals in cash, not just P&L, so you can see where the money actually moved-and why it diverged.
• Use your model to quantify working capital and capex plays on unlisted infrastructure, not just “growth stories”.
• Systematically measure customer concentration and customer concentration risk, then model scenarios before losing a major account.
• Integrate headcount, payroll and vendor decisions so hiring plans and terms changes roll straight into cash.
• What this means for you: a disciplined post-acquisition playbook that proves value creation in cash, quarter after quarter-and makes exit evidence much stronger.

🧭 Turning Deal Models Into Living Unlisted Asset Management Systems

Before signing, you invest enormous effort in the deal model: DCFs, scenarios, sensitivities. After closing, that discipline often disappears. Each portfolio company rebuilds its own spreadsheet, definitions drift, and no one can clearly explain why the cash profile of your unlisted assets no longer matches the acquisition case. That gap between pre-deal theory and post-deal reality is where value quietly erodes.

Effective unlisted asset management closes that gap by treating the post-acquisition cash flow model as a living system. Instead of one‑off analyses, you operate a standard structure that connects revenue, capex, working capital, headcount and financing to monthly-and even weekly-cash outcomes. You move from “we hope this asset performs” to “we can see, driver by driver, why it is or isn’t delivering.”

This matters even more in unlisted infrastructure, where long asset lives, heavy capex and regulated revenue structures mean small modelling errors compound over years. Without a clear view of budget vs actuals in cash, teams default to P&L narratives that hide real timing and quantum of cash flows. Operators then get blamed for under‑performance they can’t see coming.

There’s also concentration to manage. Many unlisted assets have high customer concentration, long‑dated contracts, or key counterparties whose behaviour can swing value dramatically. Without explicit modelling of customer concentration and customer concentration risk, it’s easy to underestimate the impact of a renegotiation, churn event or counterparty default.

This guide shows how to build a modern post-acquisition modelling approach that makes understanding unlisted assets far more rigorous-and much faster. You’ll see how to frame the problem, define the data you need, structure the model, run targeted plays like working capital improvements and capex optimisation, and prepare evidence that stands up to boards, lenders and buyers. The goal is simple: turn every new acquisition into a transparent, cash-backed story you can manage, improve and ultimately exit on your terms.

🛠️ Step-by-Step Implementation

🧩 Header 1: Define Your Post-acquisition Cash Baseline

Start with a brutally honest view of where you are today. Pull historical cash data for the last 12-24 months and rebuild it into a consistent structure for the asset: operating cash, working capital movements, capex, financing, and non‑recurring flows. This is where you replace the “deal story” with a clean baseline for unlisted asset management. Tie your categories back to the acquisition model so you can line up expectations with reality over time.

Critically, segment cash by key dimensions that matter for unlisted assets: business units, major customers, projects, or contracts. That’s how you’ll later quantify customer concentration and the impact of losing or renegotiating specific counterparties. Align this baseline with your immediate 90‑day plan and the exit logic you ultimately want to support. Once you have a clear starting point, you can decide which levers to model and manage first.

🧩 Header 2: Clarify Inputs, Assumptions and Ownership Across the Asset

Next, get crystal clear on what information your model needs and who owns each piece. For unlisted infrastructure and operational unlisted assets, that usually includes revenue schedules, pricing, volumes, payment terms, capex plans, debt schedules, and detailed working capital drivers. Define which team provides each input, how often it updates, and what assumptions are negotiable versus fixed.

Document the logic that links these inputs to cash: how invoices translate to receipts, how supplier terms impact payments, how capex milestones trigger drawdowns and releases.  This is where you align operators, finance teams and your financial adviser around one shared view of “how cash works” for the asset. Capture explicit rules for budget vs actuals in cash so everyone understands how variances will be measured. When inputs, owners and rules are clear, your model becomes a governance tool-not just a spreadsheet.

🧩 Header 3: Build the Core Cash Flow Model Logic for Unlisted Assets

With inputs defined, you can assemble the core model. Start from a standard template that separates operating performance, working capital, capex and financing. For post-acquisition unlisted asset management, design the structure so each lever can be flexed independently: price, volume, terms, capex timing, headcount, and funding costs. Keep formulas transparent and driver‑based, not hard‑coded.

Model the full path from revenue to receipts, using realistic collections curves rather than simple “+30 days” shortcuts. Build explicit schedules for inventory, payables and other working capital components so you can experiment with improvements. For unlisted infrastructure, tie capex to project milestones, retention mechanisms and commissioning dates. Finally, integrate debt service, covenants and any vendor finance, so your model reflects the capital structure you actually closed. The result is a single, coherent cash engine you can apply across multiple unlisted assets, not a bespoke one‑off.

🧩 Header 4: Execute the Process-run Focused Value Creation Plays

Once the model is live, use it to run targeted value creation plays rather than generic “improve performance” mandates.

Start with working capital: simulate changes to terms, collections discipline and inventory policies to see their impact on liquidity.

Then move to vendor strategies: model the effect of renegotiating terms across key suppliers and understanding when vendor finance is cheaper than bank deb.

Bring people decisions into the picture. Use the model to translate headcount plans, salary mixes and hiring phasing into payroll cash forecasts and runway. For assets with high customer concentration, run scenarios that test what happens if a major customer churns, downgrades or delays payment. The goal is to embed the model into weekly and monthly operating rhythms so every initiative-pricing, cost, capex, structure-shows up clearly in the cash trajectory.

🧩 Header 5: Validate, Review, and Stress-test Outputs With Stakeholders

A post-acquisition model only works if stakeholders trust it. Schedule regular review cycles where operators, finance, and your financial adviser walk through budget vs actuals in cash and compare them to the acquisition case. Validate key assumptions: Are collections patterns holding? Are supplier terms being honoured? Is capex actually landing on the dates you modelled?

Run downside and stress tests on customer concentration risk: late payments, non‑renewals, or volume shocks from your largest accounts. For each scenario, quantify the cash impact and time to react. Capture findings and adjustments so the model gets sharper over time. As you iterate, your team shifts from debating numbers to discussing actions-because everyone can see, in one place, how the asset is performing and what each lever really does to cash.

🧩 Header 6: Deploy, Communicate and Refine Over the Asset’s Lifecycle

Finally, embed the model into governance and reporting. Use it as the backbone for monthly performance reviews, board packs, lender updates and eventually exit materials.

Publish a clear rhythm: when budget vs actuals are reviewed, when scenarios are refreshed, when the 90‑day plan rolls forward. Align definitions so metrics like liquidity headroom, capex coverage and customer concentration are calculated consistently across all unlisted assets in the portfolio.

As you execute plays-working capital resets, vendor term negotiations, headcount changes – feed each decision back into the model. Over time, you’ll build a repeatable unlisted asset management framework that spans deals, sectors and geographies.

The model becomes an institutional asset: a living record of how value was created, protected and ultimately realised for each holding. That’s the foundation for a strong, defensible story at exit.

📌 Practical Use Cases

💼 Header 1: 90-day Post-acquisition Cash Plan

Immediately post-close, investors want to know: “What happens to cash in the next 90 days?” A focused 13‑week plan turns your unlisted assets from abstract investments into day‑to‑day cash engines. Use the model to forecast receipts, payments, debt service and covenants week by week. Tie each major assumption to specific operational actions: collections sprints, supplier negotiations, capex approvals or hiring pauses.

This 90‑day view is also where you test whether the deal thesis holds in real operating conditions. Variances between plan and reality become early signals of opportunity or risk. Embedding this plan into your unlisted asset management cadence creates discipline for management teams and clarity for IC and LPs. For a deeper dive into structuring a 90‑day plan, see the dedicated post-acquisition cash playbook.

💼 Header 2: Budget vs Actuals in Cash for Unlisted Assets

Traditional budget vs actuals reports often stop at P&L, masking what really happened to cash. For unlisted assets, that’s not good enough. Using your model, rebuild variance analysis on a pure cash basis: operating cash, working capital movements, capex and financing. Instead of vague commentary (“revenue missed by 3%”), you see concrete drivers: delayed receipts from a top customer, early inventory purchases, capex slippage, or higher‑than‑planned payroll.

This structure is especially valuable in unlisted infrastructure, where timing differences between revenue recognition, billing and cash receipts can be large. By drilling into variances, you improve understanding unlisted assets and keep management focused on the levers that really move liquidity. Over a few cycles, you’ll build a robust history of how each asset behaves in practice-critical evidence when you’re preparing the exit case and answering buyer questions.

💼 Header 3: Working Capital Improvements for Unlisted Infrastructure

Working capital is often the fastest, least dilutive source of cash in unlisted asset management-especially for unlisted infrastructure with complex billing, milestone payments and retainers.

Use your model to map the full order‑to‑cash and procure‑to‑pay cycles: invoice timing, terms, dispute rates, inventory turns, and approval workflows.

Then run scenarios: What happens if you cut DSO by five days? If you stagger large supplier payments? If you shift inventory policies on slow‑moving lines?

By quantifying each lever in cash terms, you can prioritise actions with the highest impact and lowest execution risk. This also prepares you for focused initiatives like vendor terms resets and headcount changes. When boards see clear working capital opportunities backed by a structured forecast, it’s much easier to secure support and track results over time.

💼 Header 4: Capex Program to Cash-draws, Releases, and Payback

Capex is where many unlisted assets quietly lose value. Budgets are approved, spend drifts, and no one can see clearly how cash is actually moving over the life of the project. In unlisted infrastructure, this is especially acute.

Use your model to build capex schedules that mirror reality: deposits, staged draws, retentions, and commissioning triggers. Link these to project milestones and expected revenue uplift so you can see both outflows and payback windows.

Once structured, you can stress-test delays, scope changes or vendor disputes without rebuilding the entire model. You can also show lenders and future buyers a clear, auditable story of how capex translated into cash performance-not just book value. When combined with budget vs actuals in cash, this gives a much stronger basis for evaluating whether growth capex is truly delivering its promised returns.

💼 Header 5: Revenue to Receipts-shortening the Post-acquisition Cash Cycle

It’s easy to celebrate revenue growth while missing a deteriorating cash profile. For unlisted assets with complex contracts, discounts or rebates, the path from revenue to bank receipts can be long and fragile. Use your model to map this path explicitly: contract terms, billing triggers, credit notes, disputes and write‑offs. For each major customer, model collection curves based on real history, not assumptions.

This is where customer concentration becomes tangible. You can see how delays from one or two large accounts create cash crunches or covenant pressure. By experimenting with billing milestones, early‑payment incentives or collections workflows, you quantify the benefit of shortening the cash cycle. Link these improvements to your 90‑day plan and working capital program so changes are tracked and reinforced. Done well, you can unlock meaningful liquidity without any change in headline revenue.

💼 Header 6: Vendor Terms Reset and Trade Finance Plays

On the payables side, vendor terms and trade finance structures quietly define your cash runway. For unlisted assets, renegotiating terms after acquisition is often an underused lever. Use your model to simulate different vendor term structures, payment calendars and early‑payment discounts. Quantify the cost of each option: impact on working capital, interest expense, and operational risk.

This is particularly powerful in capital‑intensive unlisted infrastructure, where supplier terms can effectively act as a form of non‑bank financing. You can compare vendor finance to traditional debt, and show whether improved terms are worth the relationship and pricing trade‑offs. Because you’re modelling cash, not just P&L, boards and credit committees can see clearly how these plays affect liquidity, covenants and headroom over the next 12-24 months.

💼 Header 7: Headcount & Payroll Cash-hiring Plans That Match the Bank Balance

Headcount is one of the largest and least flexible cash outflows in most unlisted assets. Post-acquisition, growth plans often involve aggressive hiring-but without explicit modelling of payroll cash, benefits and timing, you risk eroding runway. Use your model to convert FTE plans, salary bands, bonus structures and hiring dates into forward‑looking payroll cash flows.

Test scenarios: delaying certain hires, using contractors instead of full‑time staff, or phasing teams by milestone rather than calendar. Tie these tests to revenue and margin assumptions so you can see when extra headcount truly pays for itself. This is especially important where high customer concentration means a single lost contract could render your current hiring plan unsustainable. When hiring plans are grounded in cash, not headcount alone, you create far better alignment between management optimism and investor risk appetite.

💼 Header 8: Customer Concentration Risk and Scenario Planning

Many unlisted assets rely heavily on a handful of key customers. That high customer concentration can be rational-large infrastructure contracts, long‑term offtake agreements-but it also creates fragility.

Use your model to quantify customer concentration at a cash level: what percentage of receipts come from your top 5 or 10 customers, and how lumpy are those flows?

Then run structured scenarios: a 20% volume reduction from the largest customer, a delayed renewal, a credit issue, or a complete churn event. For each scenario, measure the impact on liquidity, covenants and required response time. Link mitigation strategies-diversification, pricing changes, term renegotiations-to your 90‑day plan and working capital program. When ICs and boards can see customer concentration risk in cash terms, they’re far better equipped to calibrate appetite, set limits and prioritise diversification initiatives.

💼 Header 9: Exit Readiness and Cash Evidence for Buyers

Finally, every post-acquisition cash flow model should be built with exit in mind. Buyers of unlisted assets and unlisted infrastructure increasingly expect a clear, data‑backed narrative of how cash has behaved through the hold period. Use your model to produce consistent views of operating cash, working capital, capex and financing across years-not just the last twelve months.

Show how budget vs actuals evolved, how you addressed customer concentration risk, and which plays-working capital, vendor terms, headcount, capex-created measurable cash uplift. Package this as a set of reconciled schedules that link to management accounts and audited financials. The result is a powerful exit story: not just a projected DCF, but a proven track record of cash generation under your ownership. That evidence can materially improve price, reduce diligence friction and speed up closing.

📊 Templates & Reusable Cash Flow Components for Unlisted Asset Management

The strongest post-acquisition teams don’t rebuild models from scratch for every asset-they reuse a proven framework. Start by standardising templates for cash flow modelling across your unlisted assets. At minimum, your template should include modules for operating performance, working capital, capex, headcount, financing and customer concentration. Each module can then be configured for asset‑specific nuances rather than redesigned every time.

For unlisted infrastructure, build reusable capex and project cash templates that already handle deposits, staged draws, retentions and commissioning logic. Combine these with a standard working capital module tuned for your typical invoice and payment profiles. Over time, you’ll develop a library of patterns-how certain industries behave, how particular vendors or customers impact cash, how different term structures behave in practice.

Templates are not about rigidity; they’re about speed, consistency and institutional memory. When new acquisitions close, you can stand up a functioning cash flow model in days, not weeks. Operators recognise the structure, boards know how to read the outputs, and your financial adviser can plug in existing benchmarks to stress‑test assumptions quickly. Most importantly, your exit readiness workflows become far easier, because every asset tells its cash story in the same language. That’s how unlisted asset management scales from individual deal heroes to a repeatable, portfolio‑wide discipline.

⚠️ Common Pitfalls to Avoid in Post-acquisition Cash Flow Modelling

First, many teams keep models too close to the original deal structure. They preserve tabs and assumptions that no longer reflect operational reality, making it hard to run clean budget vs actuals comparisons in cash.

Second, they underestimate customer concentration risk by modelling revenue at too high a level-missing contract‑level timing, discounts and behaviours that drive actual receipts.

Third, models often blur working capital and P&L effects. Teams celebrate margin improvements while ignoring worsening DSO, early inventory purchases or deferred payables.

Fourth, headcount plans are modelled as simple FTE counts, not detailed payroll cash flows, leading to surprises when bonus cycles or benefit renewals hit.

Finally, governance is an afterthought. Without clear ownership, review cycles and documentation, model logic drifts, and stakeholders lose confidence. Avoid these pitfalls by keeping structure simple, driver‑based and tied directly to the playbooks you operate-90‑day plans, working capital programs, vendor terms resets and exit readiness preparation. When your model reflects how you actually manage the asset, it becomes a trusted decision tool, not just a reporting chore.

🔮 Advanced Concepts & Future Considerations for Unlisted Assets

Once the basics are in place, you can extend your unlisted asset management models in powerful ways.

One direction is scenario sophistication: building structured playbooks that blend multiple levers-pricing, volumes, terms, capex phasing and headcount-into coherent strategy cases, not isolated sensitivities. Another is portfolio‑level modelling, where you roll asset models into a consolidated view that standardises metrics and customer concentration analysis across holdings.

You can also layer in probabilistic thinking: instead of single‑point forecasts, simulate ranges for key drivers like utilisation, delays or churn, and translate those into cash distributions over time. For unlisted infrastructure, long‑dated capex and financing structures make this particularly valuable.

Finally, connect your models more tightly to exit workflows. Use them to generate buyer‑ready schedules, diligence packs and evidence narratives automatically. Over time, you can automate data feeds from ERPs and billing systems, so actuals flow directly into your models and variance analysis happens almost in real time. The future of unlisted assets is not just better deals-it’s a continuous, data‑driven cash view from acquisition to exit.

❓ FAQs

✅ Recap & Final Takeaways

Post-acquisition, value is created-or lost-in cash, not slides. For unlisted assets and unlisted infrastructure, that means treating the cash flow model as a living system at the core of unlisted asset management, not just a pre-deal artefact. By defining a clear baseline, standardising inputs, building reusable templates and running focused plays-working capital, revenue‑to‑receipts, vendor terms, headcount-you turn each asset into a transparent, manageable cash engine.

You’ve seen how to quantify customer concentration risk, run disciplined budget vs actuals in cash, and build the evidence buyers will expect at exit.

The next step is simple: choose one asset, implement the framework, and connect it to a 90‑day cash plan. Once stakeholders see the clarity it brings, scaling the approach across the portfolio becomes the obvious move.