Oregon warns readers not to trust its own interim IRRs

The record

The Oregon State Treasury publishes a quarterly Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund Private Equity Portfolio schedule, as of 31 March 2026, listing every partnership by vintage year alongside capital commitment, total capital contributed, total capital distributed, fair market value, total value multiple and an internal rate of return the schedule labels with its own footnote marker. Named venture partnerships in the list include Austin Ventures X, Granite Ventures II, Olympic Venture Partners III through V, Northwest Emerging Ventures, Opus Capital Venture Partners V, Focus Ventures III and GGV Discovery IV Asia. Treasury's Financial Reporting and Asset Allocation page has posted this quarterly schedule, alongside monthly value announcements, since at least 2021.

What the sources establish

The schedule itself states that funds held under three years are generally labelled 'NM,' for not meaningful, because their multiples and IRRs are not yet informative, and it marks with an asterisk any partnership interest sold on the secondary market, noting that a secondary sale's performance 'is not representative of the performance of that fund if it were held until its natural liquidation.' A single vintage year can carry several partnerships in the same strategy at once, which is how the schedule lets a reader compare, say, two funds both raised in 2019 rather than blending them into a single stage-level average the way a market-wide provider report would.

Scope and revision

Treasury attaches a direct warning to its own numbers: 'Due to a number of factors, including most importantly a lack of valuation standards in the private equity industry, differences in the pace of investments across partnerships and the understatement of returns in the early years of a partnership's life, the IRR information in this report DOES NOT accurately reflect the current or expected future returns of the partnership.' It adds that the figures 'SHOULD NOT be used to assess the investment success of a partnership or to compare returns across partnerships' and that they 'HAVE NOT been approved by the individual general partners.' That is Treasury's own characterization, and it applies equally to Oregon's venture holdings and its buyout holdings.

The decision in front of you

A founder assessing an Oregon-backed venture fund's record, or an analyst building a vintage-year comparison, can use this schedule to see which partnerships Oregon holds and when it committed, but should not treat the listed IRR as a certified verdict on any single manager, since Treasury explicitly disclaims that use. This is editorial: Oregon discloses what it can measure, with the limits it names, not a ranking of its managers.

• Has the partnership you are checking been held long enough for Treasury's own NM threshold to no longer apply?
• Is the fund flagged as sold on the secondary market, which the schedule says changes what its return can tell you?
• Are you comparing two funds from the same vintage year, or blending funds from different vintages into one average Treasury itself does not publish?

Oregon's own caveats are unusually direct for a public filing, and they are worth carrying into any comparison a reader is tempted to build from this schedule.