Once mainly the domain of project finance, infrastructure as an institutional asset class is finally starting to catch up with its real estate and private equity brethren. As the asset class continues to evolve, infrastructure strategies have developed from core to value-add, with “super-core” and opportunistic strategies recently emerging. Infrastructure has historically been positioned as a fixed-income alternative; however, leading value-added strategies have returned in excess of 15 percent since the global financial crisis, with multiples on invested capital about or approaching three times (gross) on some recent notable funds. As such, the common perception of infrastructure as a fixed-income proxy has evolved significantly in recent years.

In this article, we assess private-infrastructure-fund performance using funds in the Cambridge Associates Infrastructure Index to evaluate the evolving opportunity set within the sector today. While core infrastructure strategie