TIVP064: KELLY PARTNERS GROUP: THE CONSTELLATION SOFTWARE OF ACCOUNTING?

W/ DANIEL MAHNCKE & SHAWN O’MALLEY

TIVP064: KELLY PARTNERS GROUP: THE CONSTELLATION SOFTWARE OF ACCOUNTING? W/ DANIEL MAHNCKE & SHAWN O’MALLEY

22 March 2026

Daniel Mahncke and Shawn O’Malley take a deep dive into Kelly Partners — a fast-growing Australian chartered accounting network with over 25,000 SME clients and founder Brett Kelly’s relentless ambition to build Australia’s first global accounting firm. Since its ASX listing in 2017, Kelly Partners has expanded from two offices in Sydney to 42 operating businesses across 5 countries, compounding revenue at 30% per year since inception.

Some people believe Kelly Partners will succeed and become a dominant force in the highly fragmented global accounting market — one of the most defensive and recurring businesses imaginable, with annuity-style revenues and industry-leading margins. However, the stock has been volatile, and questions remain about whether the roll-up model can truly scale internationally and whether the holding company structure fairly rewards outside shareholders.

Join Daniel Mahncke and Shawn O’Malley as they assess whether Kelly Partners has a sustainable moat, an attractive valuation, and whether Kelly Partners therefore deserves a spot in The Intrinsic Value Portfolio.

Information about the TIVP Mini Conference at the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder meeting:

On Friday, May 1st, Shawn and Daniel will host The Intrinsic Value Conference in Omaha during the Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meeting. They will give a special stock pitch presentation followed by a Q&A session, and a private dinner for members of The Intrinsic Value Community.

In addition to the VIP Spots for members, a limited number of free spots will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. The conference is at the Hotel Indigo in downtown Omaha at 1 pm local time.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

  • Who the CEO and founder, Brett Kelly, is
  • About the mission of Kelly Partners
  • How the business model works
  • How big the TAM is
  • What acquisition criteria Kelly Partners has
  • Whether AI is a threat or an opportunity
  • What the bull and bear cases look like
  • How the financials work
  • Whether Shawn and Daniel add Kelly Partners to the portfolio
  • And much, much more!

Disclosure: This episode and the resources on this page are for informational and educational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. For full disclosures, see link.

TRANSCRIPT

Disclaimer: The transcript that follows has been generated using artificial intelligence. We strive to be as accurate as possible, but minor errors and slightly off timestamps may be present due to platform differences.

[00:00:00] Daniel Mahncke: In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been looking at companies that could be the next 10, 20, or even 50 bagger. Kelly Partners is a company that’s early in its journey, and for the first time in years, attractively valued.

[00:00:11] Shawn O’Malley: It’s another serial acquirer, a business model that has been highly successful in the last few decades, but many of its most prominent representatives are in huge drawdowns right now, including Kelly Partners.

[00:00:24] Daniel Mahncke: The good news is that it’s focused on tax businesses, so no software involved. The bad news is that the market doesn’t care. AI can also come for tax advisors. However, I think Kelly Partners has a unique value proposition.

[00:00:41] Intro: You are listening to The Intrinsic Value Podcast by The Investors Podcast Network. Since 2014 with over 180 million downloads, we’ve learned directly from the world to best investors. Now we are applying those lessons to analyze businesses and investment opportunities every week, helping you uncover intrinsic value. And now here are your hosts, Shawn O’Malley and Daniel Mahncke.

[00:01:13] Shawn O’Malley: By now you might say that we have a new favorite category of stock to look at, and today we’ll be looking at Kelly Partners Group, another programmatic acquirer that is in the very early innings and thus promises to have a long runway of high return compounding in front of it, hopefully. And so we have looked at programmatic acquirers in a few different sectors.

[00:01:32] Shawn O’Malley: Now, we covered TransDigm in the aerospace industry and Constellation Software and Chapter’s Group, which are both in the vertical market software space. And so Kelly Partners does follow a similar playbook. However, it is more focused on acquiring accounting and tax businesses specifically. That’s their niche.

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