Dans le dernier conference call, Mark Leonard fait part de son admiration pour Tyler Technologies (TYL:NYSE), une société américaine qui semble avoir un modèle d'affaire semblable à Constellation.
Je n'ai pas vraiment étudié ce titre mais je remarque qu'il est passé de 25$ à 170$ dans les cinq dernières années. J'imagine qu'ils font bien les choses eux aussi !
J'ai bien hâte de voir les résultats du 4e trimestre ce vendredi. Le journaliste David Milstead du Globe n'a pas été tendre jeudi dernier dans son article sur CSU en soulignant la croissance organique nulle (ventes comparatives des entreprises existantes) et se référant à un récent rapport de Veritas Investment intitulé "Fading Star Power". L'analyse y mentionne que les marges sont négatives en ce qui concerne les dernières acquisitions que sont Datamine, Market Leader et Springer-Miller. Cependant, un petit manque de professionnalisme du Globe qui a passé sous silence l'acquisition réalisée par CSU seulement 2 jours avant l'article (devait déjà être rédigé...), soit l'Allemande SIV qui oeuvre dans les activités de la gestion de l'eau et de l'énergie (300 clients). Ils ont cependant eu des revenues de 34M d'Euro en 2014 soit seulement 4.5% de plus qu'en 2013. Il était quand même à 8M en 2007. J'ai le sentiment que Leonard est discipliné à ne pas payer trop cher et crois au potentiel d'augmenter les marges à long terme de ses acquisitions. On verra. Comme d'autres comme snowball ont souligné, the name of the game sont les Free Cash Flow et ça devrait être plus de 300M encore cette année. Il y a de belles choses à faire avec de telles liquidités.
Très bonne année et condamné à l'excellence....comme dirais Martin Matte. L'investissement dans les acquisitions a doublé par rapport à l'an passé, mais pas du même ordre que l'année d'avant (TSS). Les analystes rêvent de voir des acquisitions à plus forte marge de rentabilité, mais CSU ne veut pas y mettre le prix. Alors on observe une croissance organique inexistante en attendant de pouvoir améliorer celle des compagnies acquises. Leonard a partagé un peu la stratégie après l'acquisition qui est d'encadrer les gestionnaires et d'essayer avec eux les meilleures pratiques de l'industrie. Ils doivent commencer à avoir de l'expérience dans ce domaine Il a également mentionné le cynisme qui a commencé à s'installer au niveau de certains analystes qui assument que parce que la nouvelle compagnie acquise à des faibles marges (même négative), cela va continuer. Leonard les invite à suivre le fond de roulement et être patient. Bref, les petites acquisitions vont continuer d'alimenter la croissance en attendant que le travail de l'interne se fasse. Dans le Q3, CSU avait mentionné l'intérêt pour une grosse transaction, mais pas à n'importe quel prix. Discipline my friend. Vous ne connaissez pas quelqu’un dans son sous-sol prêt à vendre son logiciel ?
Vous ne connaissez pas quelqu’un dans son sous-sol prêt à vendre son logiciel ?
@Kicking_Tires Quelques-unes en effet. C'est pas les critères d'être une société de logiciels intégrés verticalement avec un minimum de 1 million de profits (avant intérêts et impôts) qui seront les plus difficiles à respecter !
Le plus difficile pour CSU semble plutôt de maintenir la croissance en achetant un éléphant ayant un rendement sur le capital élevé.
Ce texte aurait été encore plus intéressant avec un estimé détaillé de la valeur de CSU basé sur la méthode d'évaluation de l'auteur. Cette méthode d'évaluation n'est pas mentionné en détail. Sinon la dernière partie du texte ne reflète probablement pas la profondeur de la recherche qui a mené à cette conclusion :
"...je ne suis pas à l’aise avec des business qui croissent fortement de manière quasi-exclusive par acquisitions. Le risque de surpayer et d’exécution sont toujours là et il est plus difficile de se faire une idée précise sur la qualité sous-jacente du business du fait des nombreux changements de périmètres.
Il semble prudent de considérer que l’avenir de Constellation ne sera pas aussi brillant que son passé. L’entreprise est qui plus est devenue à la mode et tout ce que j’ai pu lire ou entendre à son sujet est élogieux. Ceci ne présage guère d’un prix attractif.
A ce prix (C$530), on achète clairement un ticket sur le jockey et sa capacité à conserver le même rythme que les années passées. Je ne suis pas à l’aise avec cette hypothèse."
Avec cette autre confirmation aujourd'hui du bon travail du CEO... j'espère que vous serez présent à l'AGA et serez d'accord pour doubler son salaire et ses "compensations totales". Oui doubler, rien de moins.
Constellation Software’s Jonas Division Completes Acquisition of Multi-Systems Toronto, Ontario, April 18, 2015 – Constellation Software Inc. (“Constellation”) (TSX: CSU) today announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Gary Jonas Computing Ltd. and certain of its affiliates (“Jonas”) acquired the assets of Multi-Systems, Inc. (“MSI”), a leading software provider to the hospitality industry. “MSI, with its strong presence in the hotel market, is a valuable addition to the Jonas group of companies,” said Barry Symons, CEO of Jonas. “Adding MSI to our growing hospitality business unit further strengthens our place in this significant market. We are very excited to welcome MSI’s dedicated customers and employees to our organization.”
There’s one last lesson from JKHY that I’d like to share. It relates to you as shareholders. There was a ten year period during which JKHY’s shares both underperformed the S&P 500 (2000 until 2010) and didn’t make any money for shareholders. The underperformance vs the S&P 500 was minor … approximately 1%. JKHY’s revenues per share and ANI per share had compound average annual growth rates of 14% and 21%, respectively during that decade. Why did stock results and operating results diverge so widely for such a long period? It had to do with shareholder expectations and market exuberance. The general mania which gripped the market in 2000, and the more specific enthusiasm for JKHY’s stock which then traded at well over 60 times ANI, left shareholders incredibly vulnerable. When the market “corrected” the JKHY stock had no margin of safety.
When really good companies start trading at 5 and 6 times revenues, it’s time to start worrying. I hope our shareholders are never in that position.
"To date there are over 100 CSI employee/shareholder millionaires. Ten years from now, my hope is that there will be five times as many". M. Leonard - Lettre aux actionnaires 2016.
Pour ce faire, Leonard encourage ses unités d'affaires à redéployer le capital pour des acquisitions:
- Fin mai: Vela achète Tecplot
- 1 Juin: TSS achète Vicrea
- 3 Juin: Trapeze présente une offre d'achat possible des actions de Bond (UK) qu'elle ne possède pas.
Je trouve l'achat de Tecplot particulièrement intéressant car c'est une incursion dans l'industrie pétrolière et militaire. Voici les commentaires du président de Tecplot:
Their management team identified aerospace & defense and oil & gas as two industries in which they wanted to expand their solutions portfolio. These happen to be industries in which Tecplot is very strong.
Tecplot oeuvre dans le domaine des logiciels de visualisation et d'analyse CFD. Le CFD permet de visualiser des données, tel que l'écoulement de l'air, de l'eau, des électrons, etc. Des chercheurs allemands utilisent actuellement ce logiciel afin de visualiser l'écoulement de l'air autour d'hélices de turbine afin d'optimiser cette dernière. Le président de Tecplot est emballé par l'accès au capital que va leur procurer Constellation:
we will now buy technology we wish to integrate into Tecplot 360 EX instead of building it from scratch, meaning we can bring it to market much quicker and generate additional revenue sooner. Prior to the acquisition, this would not have been possible because of the up-front investment such a technology purchase would require.
Maintenant que CSI s'intéresse au secteur de l'énergie, est-ce possible que Computer Modelling Group puisse devenir une cible d'acquisition ? Ce beau fleuron Canadien des logiciels a des revenues de 81M Can., une capitalisation de 792M alors que CSI a des revenues US de 2 milliards et une capitalisation de 11.2 milliards. La dernière grosse transaction (TSS) était de 350M Can. On jase....
Constellation Software’s Total Specific Solutions Completes Acquisition of Itris Toronto, Ontario, October 3rd, 2016 – Constellation Software Inc. (“Constellation”) (TSX: CSU) today announced that its subsidiary, Total Specific Solutions (TSS) B.V. ("TSS"), acquired all shares in the capital of OLK B.V. (“Itris”), a leading software provider of property management software solutions in the Netherlands.
About Total Specific Solutions (TSS) B.V. Total Specific Solutions is the leading provider of IT business solutions and consists of independent business units that deliver products and services to their specific vertical market segment. This market expertise is based on decades of experience. In particular, TSS is active in the verticals: healthcare, local and central government, retail, financial, legal services and real estate. TSS is part of Constellation Software Inc. (CSI) listed on the Canadian Stock Exchange.
Je vais faire un peu le mouton noir! Tout n'est pas parfait dans cette compagnie (mais il y a beaucoup de choses qui sont très bien faites! )
Dans le dernier conference call :
Well, we're actually at the M&A Conference Tim and I. So we're in side room and we've got all the stats pull together and analyzed. Bernie has been doing that over the course of last week or two.
And one of things that struck is is that the larger transactions tend to be the ones that have lower IRRs. This is an entirely surprising, they tend to be more competitive. But they are also the ones that have the most disappointments in terms of the results versus what we forecast at the time when we do transactions.
And so it is an activity that only the most experienced and sophisticated investors inside of Constellation will be working on. My sense however is that we are working harder in this area than we ever have before.
It was not a good quarter in terms of the number of transactions, the close that we saw, there were roughly 10 very large vertical market software transactions closed in the quarter and we'd only seen and participated in one of those transactions. We also obviously didn't win though, you would have heard about it.
And - but in terms of activity in large transactions that are earlier stage in the sale process, I think we're pretty active and there's always going to be very low probability hit rate type of activities and they are going to consume the time of senior people that could be used elsewhere. So it's an experiment and you know, we probably going to bash way at it for a couple years and see what happens.
Hi, Mark. Of the nine of the 10 deal that didn't pan out was there sort of commonality to them, you know, price or something else here?
So I was actually surprised that how many of them were not in our database, usually when this large transactions and vast majority are like 90% in our database. So some of those I would suggest that particularly this quarter, a number of them that we missed, we missed because we weren't aware of them, weren’t in contact with them, had not expressed interest in those particular businesses.
So that's the not a good outcome, that talks to sort of our ability to get stuff into the database. That is as a rule, something I worried about a lot, but we'll poke a way at it and see if this hold in terms of our coverage at that level.
The area where we're focusing the most as I mentioned previously is making sure that we do cover on a regular basis. The companies we already have in the database and that we get the opportunity to participate when there are transactions of those private businesses for the most part.
On s'entend qu'il n'y a pas de problème majeur! J'essaie de spicer un peu le thread! Ce n'est par contre pas une bonne chose quand une acquisition te passe sous le nez et que tu n'es pas réellement au courant!
Par contre, évidemment, je pense qu'ils vont corriger le problème :
Yes, I think it’s the first time I've seen it where the percentage is been so low, due to the pretty obvious right, identifying all the large vertical market software company's in the world is not an exercise that takes a crack team of Harvard MBAs, I mean, you can do it with a couple of analysts and some Internet research in a couple weeks. So I was surprised.
Dans les bons points, toujours l'allocation de capital :
Q: On the same side, year-to-date free cash flow was up 26%, which is a fantastic result and your capital for an acquisitions and other uses of cash have lagged on a year-to-date basis. Do you think you know, at this point you need to change anything in regards to your capital allocation strategy or perhaps looking at returning some the capital to shareholders?
A: I think that's the perpetual how embarrassed are you directors going to be questioned, so if the cash piles up and gets to be a largish some, at some point will shareholders call for it to be returned to them, so they can take a crack at investing it.
And I think if you look at our marginal routes and on incremental shareholders equity, however, you calculate that, I think you'll find it's pretty handsome even with the drag of sitting on some cash. And so hopefully the shareholders will give us some leeway.
If you do it on a straight mathematical basis and you pile up cash waiting for a crash, I think you can make the case that you can wait three or four years with excess cash lying around because of the incremental returns that you'll eventually get when you deploy that capital, when the opportunities are attractive.
But it's a tough judgment call and I'm sure we'll be criticized if we end up holding cash at some point
Mark Leonard est vraiment spécial comme CEO. Il n'était absolument pas tenu de nous dire les choses que François a souligné en gras. La plupart des CEO ne l'aurait pas fait.
Réponses
Et quelles sont le ratio qui en fait un titre intéressant.
J'avais écrit mon message vers midi alors qu'il était à 460$. Il a fini la journée à 490$... Viva la volatilité...
Martin Matte. L'investissement dans les acquisitions a doublé par rapport
à l'an passé, mais pas du même ordre que l'année d'avant (TSS). Les
analystes rêvent de voir des acquisitions à plus forte marge de rentabilité,
mais CSU ne veut pas y mettre le prix. Alors on observe une croissance
organique inexistante en attendant de pouvoir améliorer celle des compagnies
acquises. Leonard a partagé un peu la stratégie après l'acquisition qui
est d'encadrer les gestionnaires et d'essayer avec eux les meilleures pratiques
de l'industrie. Ils doivent commencer à avoir de l'expérience dans ce
domaine Il a également mentionné le cynisme qui a commencé à s'installer au
niveau de certains analystes qui assument que parce que la nouvelle compagnie
acquise à des faibles marges (même négative), cela va continuer. Leonard
les invite à suivre le fond de roulement et être patient. Bref, les
petites acquisitions vont continuer d'alimenter la croissance en attendant que
le travail de l'interne se fasse. Dans le Q3, CSU avait mentionné
l'intérêt pour une grosse transaction, mais pas à n'importe quel prix.
Discipline my friend. Vous ne connaissez
pas quelqu’un dans son sous-sol prêt à vendre son logiciel ?
Ce texte aurait été encore plus intéressant avec un estimé détaillé de la valeur de CSU basé sur la méthode d'évaluation de l'auteur. Cette méthode d'évaluation n'est pas mentionné en détail. Sinon la dernière partie du texte ne reflète probablement pas la profondeur de la recherche qui a mené à cette conclusion :
"...je ne suis pas à l’aise avec des business qui croissent fortement de manière quasi-exclusive par acquisitions. Le risque de surpayer et d’exécution sont toujours là et il est plus difficile de se faire une idée précise sur la qualité sous-jacente du business du fait des nombreux changements de périmètres.
Il semble prudent de considérer que l’avenir de Constellation ne sera pas aussi brillant que son passé. L’entreprise est qui plus est devenue à la mode et tout ce que j’ai pu lire ou entendre à son sujet est élogieux. Ceci ne présage guère d’un prix attractif.
A ce prix (C$530), on achète clairement un ticket sur le jockey et sa capacité à conserver le même rythme que les années passées. Je ne suis pas à l’aise avec cette hypothèse."
Toronto, Ontario, April 18, 2015 – Constellation Software Inc. (“Constellation”) (TSX: CSU)
today announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Gary Jonas Computing Ltd. and certain of its
affiliates (“Jonas”) acquired the assets of Multi-Systems, Inc. (“MSI”), a leading software
provider to the hospitality industry.
“MSI, with its strong presence in the hotel market, is a valuable addition to the Jonas group of
companies,” said Barry Symons, CEO of Jonas. “Adding MSI to our growing hospitality
business unit further strengthens our place in this significant market. We are very excited to
welcome MSI’s dedicated customers and employees to our organization.”
http://www.csisoftware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/PL_2015.pdf
ten year period during which JKHY’s shares both underperformed the S&P 500 (2000 until 2010) and
didn’t make any money for shareholders. The underperformance vs the S&P 500 was minor …
approximately 1%. JKHY’s revenues per share and ANI per share had compound average annual growth
rates of 14% and 21%, respectively during that decade. Why did stock results and operating results
diverge so widely for such a long period? It had to do with shareholder expectations and market
exuberance. The general mania which gripped the market in 2000, and the more specific enthusiasm for
JKHY’s stock which then traded at well over 60 times ANI, left shareholders incredibly vulnerable.
When the market “corrected” the JKHY stock had no margin of safety.
our shareholders are never in that position.
Toronto, Ontario, October 3rd, 2016 – Constellation Software Inc. (“Constellation”) (TSX:
CSU) today announced that its subsidiary, Total Specific Solutions (TSS) B.V. ("TSS"),
acquired all shares in the capital of OLK B.V. (“Itris”), a leading software provider of
property management software solutions in the Netherlands.
Total Specific Solutions is the leading provider of IT business solutions and consists of
independent business units that deliver products and services to their specific vertical
market segment. This market expertise is based on decades of experience. In particular,
TSS is active in the verticals: healthcare, local and central government, retail, financial,
legal services and real estate. TSS is part of Constellation Software Inc. (CSI) listed on
the Canadian Stock Exchange.
Well, we're actually at the M&A Conference Tim and I. So we're in side room and we've got all the stats pull together and analyzed. Bernie has been doing that over the course of last week or two.
And one of things that struck is is that the larger transactions tend to be the ones that have lower IRRs. This is an entirely surprising, they tend to be more competitive. But they are also the ones that have the most disappointments in terms of the results versus what we forecast at the time when we do transactions.
And so it is an activity that only the most experienced and sophisticated investors inside of Constellation will be working on. My sense however is that we are working harder in this area than we ever have before.
It was not a good quarter in terms of the number of transactions, the close that we saw, there were roughly 10 very large vertical market software transactions closed in the quarter and we'd only seen and participated in one of those transactions. We also obviously didn't win though, you would have heard about it.
And - but in terms of activity in large transactions that are earlier stage in the sale process, I think we're pretty active and there's always going to be very low probability hit rate type of activities and they are going to consume the time of senior people that could be used elsewhere. So it's an experiment and you know, we probably going to bash way at it for a couple years and see what happens.
Hi, Mark. Of the nine of the 10 deal that didn't pan out was there sort of commonality to them, you know, price or something else here?
So I was actually surprised that how many of them were not in our database, usually when this large transactions and vast majority are like 90% in our database. So some of those I would suggest that particularly this quarter, a number of them that we missed, we missed because we weren't aware of them, weren’t in contact with them, had not expressed interest in those particular businesses.
So that's the not a good outcome, that talks to sort of our ability to get stuff into the database. That is as a rule, something I worried about a lot, but we'll poke a way at it and see if this hold in terms of our coverage at that level.
The area where we're focusing the most as I mentioned previously is making sure that we do cover on a regular basis. The companies we already have in the database and that we get the opportunity to participate when there are transactions of those private businesses for the most part.
On s'entend qu'il n'y a pas de problème majeur! J'essaie de spicer un peu le thread! Ce n'est par contre pas une bonne chose quand une acquisition te passe sous le nez et que tu n'es pas réellement au courant!
Par contre, évidemment, je pense qu'ils vont corriger le problème :
Yes, I think it’s the first time I've seen it where the percentage is been so low, due to the pretty obvious right, identifying all the large vertical market software company's in the world is not an exercise that takes a crack team of Harvard MBAs, I mean, you can do it with a couple of analysts and some Internet research in a couple weeks. So I was surprised.
Dans les bons points, toujours l'allocation de capital :
Q: On the same side, year-to-date free cash flow was up 26%, which is a fantastic result and your capital for an acquisitions and other uses of cash have lagged on a year-to-date basis. Do you think you know, at this point you need to change anything in regards to your capital allocation strategy or perhaps looking at returning some the capital to shareholders?
A: I think that's the perpetual how embarrassed are you directors going to be questioned, so if the cash piles up and gets to be a largish some, at some point will shareholders call for it to be returned to them, so they can take a crack at investing it.
And I think if you look at our marginal routes and on incremental shareholders equity, however, you calculate that, I think you'll find it's pretty handsome even with the drag of sitting on some cash. And so hopefully the shareholders will give us some leeway.
If you do it on a straight mathematical basis and you pile up cash waiting for a crash, I think you can make the case that you can wait three or four years with excess cash lying around because of the incremental returns that you'll eventually get when you deploy that capital, when the opportunities are attractive.
But it's a tough judgment call and I'm sure we'll be criticized if we end up holding cash at some point