Private equity investment trust Apax Global Alpha (APAX ) bucked the Friday sell-off, shooting up 11.7%, or 21p, to 194p.

The sharp narrowing in the wide 28% discount the stock stood on last night came after Apax X, one of the in-house funds it holds, sold a controlling stake in MyCase, a US case management software provider for law firms, to Affinipay, a digital payments business in Texas.

The transaction values APAX’s stake at €22.5m (£19m), a 48% uplift on the previous valuation and represents a quick turn on an investment made two years ago.

Numis Securities said the deal was another example of the conservative valuations of holdings in private equity trusts and the strong demand for their high-quality assets.

On Wednesday HgCapital (HGT ), still trading on a 16% discount to net asset value (NAV), was boosted by a refinancing of its largest holding, Access, a business management solutions provider whose value rose 31%.

On the same day Oakley Capital Investments (OCI ) sold a majority stake in German cloud hosting platform Contago to KKR on a 105% premium to its carrying value in the fund. It stood on a 33% discount to NAV last night. 

‘We remain positive on the outlook for listed private equity, given current discounts may be reflecting excessive pessimism about the outlook,’ said Numis analysts Ewan Lovett-Turner and Priyesh Parmar.

APAX, an £879m Guernsey investment company, had, before today’s jump, fallen 19% this year. Over five years it has generated a total shareholder return of 65%, although the underlying investment return has been much better at 98%. The difference reflects the low rating on the shares and their wide gap to NAV.