Brings institutional-grade deal-level benchmarking into private market workflowsDelivers greater transparency into private markets performance and operating metrics  NEW YORK, May  06, 2026  (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- StepStone

MORN

StepStone Group and PitchBook Announce Partnership to Deliver Deal-Level Performance & Operating Metrics to Private Market Participants

Morningstar's PitchBook Enhances Private Market Analytics with StepStone Partnership

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    <h3>Information</h3>
    <p>Brings institutional-grade deal-level benchmarking into private market workflowsDelivers greater transparency into private markets performance and operating metrics  NEW YORK, May  06, 2026  (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- StepStone</p>
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  <section data-block="ai-summary-paragraph">
    <h3>AI Summary</h3>
    <p>Morningstar&#039;s PitchBook has partnered with StepStone Group to enhance private market analytics through deal-level benchmarking. This new offering is likely to improve transparency and decision-making for fund managers, boosting PitchBook&#039;s competitive edge in the evolving private equity landscape.</p>
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  <section data-block="ai-summary-bullets">
    <h3>Key Points</h3>
    <ul><li>Morningstar&#039;s PitchBook partners with StepStone Group for private market data.</li><li>New offerings enhance deal-level benchmarking and transparency for investors.</li><li>Partnership expected to improve analytics and performance insights in private equity.</li><li>Available by Q2 2026, enhancing existing PitchBook workflows.</li><li>Aims to meet rising demand for granular investment performance comparison.</li></ul>
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  <section data-block="companies-mentioned">
    <h3>Companies Mentioned</h3>
    <ul><li><strong>StepStone Group (STEP)</strong>: Partnership adds significant value to PitchBook&#039;s analytics offerings.</li></ul>
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  <section data-block="category">
    <h3>Corporate Developments</h3>
    <p>This news falls under &#039;Corporate Developments&#039; as it pertains to a strategic partnership enhancing service offerings. The collaboration reflects MORN&#039;s commitment to innovation in private equity data services, meeting evolving market demands.</p>
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  <section data-block="market-moving">
    <h3>Market-Moving</h3>
    <ul><li>Increased demand for private equity transparency could drive PitchBook subscriptions.</li><li>Improved analytics may enhance PitchBook&#039;s market positioning and revenue.</li><li>Partnership strengthens MORN&#039;s offerings, potentially attracting new clients.</li><li>Enhanced capabilities may lead to higher valuation multiples for MORN.</li></ul>
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  <section data-block="key-facts">
    <h3>Key Facts</h3>
    <ul><li>Partnership announced on May 6, 2026.</li><li>StepStone manages approximately $811 billion in total capital.</li><li>PitchBook serves over 100,000 clients globally.</li><li>New analytics offering will be available in Q2 2026.</li><li>The partnership integrates advanced AI and machine learning tools.</li></ul>
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  <section data-block="trading-thesis">
    <h3>Trading Thesis</h3>
    <p>Invest in MORN for long-term growth as private equity analytics demand rises.</p>
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<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="https://www.globenewswire.com/styles/gnw_nitf.css"></link><ul type="disc"><li style="margin-bottom:8pt;">Brings institutional-grade deal-level benchmarking into private market workflows</li><li style="margin-bottom:8pt;">Delivers greater transparency into private markets performance and operating metrics</li></ul>  <p>NEW YORK, May  06, 2026  (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- StepStone Group (NASDAQ:<a class="ticker" href="https://www.benzinga.com/quote/STEP">STEP</a>), a leading private market investment firm, and PitchBook, a leading private capital markets intelligence provider and Morningstar (NASDAQ:<a class="ticker" href="https://www.benzinga.com/quote/MORN">MORN</a>) company, today announced a partnership to provide access to StepStone's deal-level benchmarks through the PitchBook platform.</p>  <p>The partnership combines deal-level performance and operating metrics from StepStone's proprietary SPI platform with PitchBook's industry-leading private capital market data, research, and advanced AI and machine learning tools—delivering insights through aggregated and anonymized outputs. Together, the two organizations aim to provide fund managers, investors, and service providers with greater transparency, deeper insights, and benchmarking capabilities across private equity buyout, venture capital, growth equity, and infrastructure deals.</p>  <p>&#34;Private markets investors are demanding greater transparency and more sophisticated analytics to navigate an increasingly complex landscape,&#34; said Tyler Johnson, Partner and Chief Technology Officer at StepStone Group. &#34;By partnering with PitchBook, we are delivering a solution that empowers investors to compare deal performance and operating metrics more granularly, analyze track records, and unlock new insights to enhance their decision-making processes."</p>  <p><strong>Key Benefits of the Partnership:</strong></p>  <ul type="disc"><li style="margin-bottom:8pt;"><strong>Enhanced Deal-Level Analytics:</strong> Users gain access to a flexible analytics interface to report performance, exposure, deployment, operating metrics, and value creation analysis for private market deals. The tool leverages the combined deal and company classification databases of StepStone and PitchBook, enabling filtering and reporting capabilities across strategy, industry, geography, size, time period, and more. All outputs generated by the tool are aggregated and anonymized to respect fund manager and deal confidentiality.</li><li style="margin-bottom:8pt;"><strong>Improved Investor Relations &amp; Investment Strategy:</strong> Fund managers can leverage more granular benchmarks to better articulate and quantify strengths and differentiators, improving transparency for fundraising and reporting and informing go-forward investment strategy.</li><li style="margin-bottom:8pt;"><strong>Clearer Insight into Performance Drivers:</strong> Analyzing performance at the deal-level (vs fund-level) allows for more granular, apples-to-apples comparisons, enabling investors to better understand the underlying drivers of performance and distinguish alpha from beta sources of returns for their fund managers and overall portfolio.</li><li style="margin-bottom:8pt;"><strong>Rigorous Deal Underwriting &amp; Analysis: </strong>Access to detailed performance, valuation, and capital structure data supports more rigorous deal underwriting, enabling better informed investment decisions.</li></ul>  <p>As the pulse of the private capital markets, PitchBook has continuously expanded its data coverage, analytical depth, and workflow capabilities across asset classes, regions, and fund strategies. By leveraging data from SPI by StepStone, investors can easily isolate underlying deal performance, evaluate value creation drivers, and analyze market trends across strategies, geographies, and vintages directly within their existing PitchBook workflow.</p>  <p>"As private markets mature, fund managers need benchmarking that goes deeper than high-level fund comparisons and is accessible within their existing workflows," said Joanna McGinley, EVP of Strategic Partnerships and Initiatives. "Our partnership with StepStone brings institutional-grade, deal- and operating-level benchmarking into their PitchBook workflow, giving fund managers a more integrated way to evaluate performance, support fundraising, and navigate an increasingly complex private capital markets environment."</p>  <p>The offering is expected to be available in the second quarter of 2026 and will be offered to fund managers and service providers through the PitchBook platform as a standalone solution and to investors through SPI by StepStone. To learn more about the partnership, click <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=0ernw0s6dUBNJkkq15DUFiJtFJvjcm-dV5-MQROHc9bY7an1LUdYCWY1TuYiSiwId2chKcJSBwVlTIx1q3h1xD2xy9QepNHhTrpqxdw4MDTqOaH9UXRieT7654RJOvizqtwuiSJ5YadGZJZGOmFJUcSQYoLKtAt2vi18Jf26L2rDC0B4eg-ZCLuD0552ITATX-ANVSAMFxJp9fzfiRWPNrPCWkjK7h027S9bYlgGW_k_uRd55_SULu3t15CxIKbI1IBdknXkuueHxbNobg1emg==" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>  <p align="justify"><strong>About StepStone Group</strong></p>  <p>StepStone Group Inc. (NASDAQ:<a class="ticker" href="https://www.benzinga.com/quote/STEP">STEP</a>) is a global private markets investment firm focused on providing customized investment solutions and advisory and data services to its clients. As of December 31, 2025, StepStone was responsible for approximately $811 billion of total capital, including $220 billion of assets under management. StepStone's clients include some of the world's largest public and private defined benefit and defined contribution pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and insurance companies, as well as prominent endowments, foundations, family offices and private wealth clients, which include high-net-worth and mass affluent individuals. StepStone partners with its clients to develop and build private markets portfolios designed to meet their specific objectives across the private equity, infrastructure, private debt and real estate asset classes.</p>  <p align="justify">For more information, visit <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=Bxs-aDslMw30GaZ17GemXCHblNAn8V7uyKPg4uTUnQ3ICUK14hkXqQrww9QQ4J2vG7uAAXP_vASyYqbOvQM_-chCXZ9Ufec3MX8auZKDvJc=" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">StepStone Group</a>.</p>  <p align="justify"><strong>StepStone Group Contacts</strong></p>  <p align="justify"><strong>Shareholder Relations:</strong></p>  <p align="justify">Seth Weiss</p>  <p align="justify">shareholders@stepstonegroup.com</p>  <p align="justify">+1 (212) 351-6106</p>  <p align="justify"><strong>Media</strong></p>  <p align="justify">Maggie Duffy / Harper Clark</p>  <p align="justify">Edelman</p>  <p align="justify">StepStone@edifi-dje.com</p>  <p align="justify"><strong>About PitchBook, a Morningstar company </strong></p>  <p>As the pulse of private capital markets, PitchBook delivers trusted, real-time data, research, and technology to help investors, dealmakers, and innovators make decisions with confidence. Its products provide comprehensive information on companies, investors, funds, deals, and people, along with tools that help professionals analyze market activity and make informed decisions. Founded in 2007, PitchBook today serves more than 100,000 clients worldwide and is recognized as the leading source of private capital market intelligence. PitchBook has grown to over 3,000 employees across offices in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, London, Singapore, Mumbai, and other global locations. Since 2016, PitchBook is a subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc. For more information, visit <a href="http://www.pitchbook.com" title="www.pitchbook.com">www.pitchbook.com</a>.</p> <img alt="" class="__GNW8366DE3E__IMG" src="https://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/ti?nf=OTcxNDAzMCM3NTg0NDg4IzIxOTQ1NDI="></img> <br></br><img alt="" src="https://ml.globenewswire.com/media/Y2QxOTRlYjYtNDg2Yy00ZjM2LWFmNzctZjhjYTcwNDM3MWNiLTEyMDYwOTUtMjAyNi0wNS0wNi1lbg==/tiny/StepStone-Group-Inc.png" referrerpolicy="no-referrer-when-downgrade"></img><p><a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/eaaa85d7-3cef-4079-8b40-91ec6878e34e"><img src="https://ml.globenewswire.com/media/eaaa85d7-3cef-4079-8b40-91ec6878e34e/small/step-updated-logo-color-png.png" border="0" width="150" height="24" alt="Primary Logo"></img></a></p>

Morningstar's PitchBook has partnered with StepStone Group to enhance private market analytics through deal-level benchmarking. This new offering is likely to improve transparency and decision-making for fund managers, boosting PitchBook's competitive edge in the evolving private equity landscape.

StepStone Group and PitchBook Announce Partnership to Deliver Deal-Level Performance & Operating Metrics to Private Market Participants

AI Summary

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Trading Thesis

Market-Moving

Key Facts

Companies Mentioned

Corporate Developments

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