Diploma plc

The only thing they've really bought on their kind of big side projects is Philips and their kind of big public things.

And that's going to be important shortly because what it tells me is that this company, unlike a lot of the conglomerates we look at, the Diplomas, the Helmers and so on, has a much better record as a builder than a buyer

of things.

Anyway, valuation has always been the kind of interesting curiosity.

But we've talked a lot about serial acquirers on this show.

Companies like Halma, like Diploma, like Roper Technology, like Judges Scientific, as well as some kind of adjacent types of businesses like your Berkshire Hathaways and your 3Is and your Aving Transes.

And of those, I think Rosebank is most like the last one.

It's a buy, improve, sell business model.

Since 1900.

Yeah, it's a very marked contrast to where you started actually marks the start of the contrast.

But a lot of the serial acquirers that we look at, whether that's Helmer or Diploma or Judges or so on, and maybe the difference is kind of based on the fact that those companies tend to say they're acquiring for keeps and to hold on to the business rather than to sell it again, whereas these guys are explicitly, no, we'll sell it again.

Those companies try and make themselves attractive places for kind of nice founders to sell to and so on when they finish with their business and don't have anyone else that wants to run it and so on.

Yeah

... plus, and then we sold the company to a publicly traded company out of the United Kingdom called Diploma PLC for $465 million.

[laughs] Dude.

Yeah.