Ann: Regional NSW Firm chooses Kelly Partners, page-7

"This isn't just a 'roll up' and Brett will get offended if you get the chance to talk to him and say that too haha."

Yes, I've heard Brett become quite animated on the occasions anyone dares utter the phrase "accounting practices roll-up".

And I certainly don't consider KPG to be a vanilla roll-up story myself.

Not just because Brett says it isn't; refer comments below taken from the following post (https://hotcopper.com.au/posts/59487125/single) of some months back:


"... the KPG business model is not "accounting services", despite it looking like that.

Rather - and this is a critical point which I suspect very few people appreciate - the essence of the KPG shareholder value creation is the acquisition of stuff at prices below the intrinsic value of the stuff it acquires.

That the "stuff" in this case happens to be entities that provide accounting services is somewhat incidental; the acquisition targets could just as easily have been veterinary practices, law firms, dental practices, physiotherapists, radiologists, or heck, even used car dealerships. Double heck, it could even have been vintage cars, art works or rare stamps.

But I think it is safe to assume that the reason it is none of those things is because the people running KPG recognise that they don't know too much about those things or how to properly value them.

Certainly less so than they know accounting businesses, which they also seem to be pretty good at valuing and buying at under-valued prices.... undervaluations of individual accounting firms being a structural feature of the accounting services landscape in Australia..."


But one point on which I will always fail to agree is that key man risk is negligible.

Sure, they might claim to that there is a formidable team behind the scenes and that there are succession plans in place, but with little doubt this is Brett's baby and no one else can eat, sleep and breathe the business like he does.

So, no; if the founder and CEO gets run over by a bus, the shareholder value creation equation form KPG, going forward, gets impacted. No doubt about that at all in my mind.


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