Constellation Software Inc.

Maybe this company can't really move the needle on the tinier moves.

It's often a bear case that's brought up when you look at companies like this, when you look at companies like, let's just say, Constellation Software, but...

Yeah, just two huge swings.

I don't really know what's going to happen with this deal.

You also want to stay South African because there are advantages to that too.

One thing that really attracted me to the Constellation Software Volaris world is their understanding that being close to your customers is extremely important.

So they keep the identity in the entrepreneurship of the businesses they buy intact.

And then they support these businesses with international best practice.

like ownership, but it

isn't.

What does that mean? What does it mean in practice? Well, it's Constellation Software's primary value proposition.

So what it means is unlike a private equity house that might dress up an organization and then resell it, which is very destabilizing for the people and the customers, we buy and hold forever, which means we give a guarantee to preserve the identity of the companies that we buy.

So it kind of allows you to then think in terms of being able to compete, you know, with the larger business.

Yeah, or at least have your own little vertical of it, right? I followed a public stock for many years called Constellation Software.

Okay.

It's pretty much a legendary stock portfolio of...

I've seen it done a little bit.

Typically, the sort of big player in this space is like Constellation Software and like their Harris and whatever.

I think I haven't seen too many of them.

Interestingly, it's not necessarily super related.

And you've covered a number of stocks this year where there has been management succession, and you already talked about Apple.

Another one is Constellation Software, which is...

Maybe you can tell us a little bit about what the business does and who ran it and what you think of the new people there.

Constellation Software is a software company, and it's an acquisitive software company, so they are a company...

In a sense, they're a holding company that owns hundreds of small software companies that operate in small niche markets like transit, healthcare, et cetera.

Constellation Software was run by its founder, Mark Leonard, until recently, as you pointed out.

He stepped down as leader of the company in 2025 due to health issues, which was really unfortunate.

When a big personality and leader like Mark Leonard steps down, it causes a lot of investors to wonder, "Can this company still maintain and sustain its level of outperformance given the huge personality that was running the company?" And with AI and the proliferation of AI tools, there was a lot of questions.