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Topicus.com Review – First Six Months

Since Topicus.com has been spun off as a publicly traded entity on the TSX Venture exchange, it’s continued to become more well known in the investing communities. We were one of the very first articles talking about Topicus earlier in the year. But like the billionaire founder of the parent company, Constellation Software, Topicus.com is also cloaked in mystery. The language barriers as an English speaker doesn’t help but there’s very little coverage (both professionally and journalistically) on the company.

What we do know is that on Topicus’ first quarterly call, we finally got to hear Daan Dijkhuizen talk for the first time (as CEO) and understand what his thoughts are about the company’s ambitions. But that seemed to be the last of them. Just like the parent company who did away with quarterly conference calls back in early 2018, Topicus seems (so far) to follow suit.

In the announcement for the latest quarterly release, there was no mention of a conference call. Perhaps that’s because there are really no “active” analysts attached to the company. Not sure if that’ll change in the future, but certainly makes sense if there are no analysts that they need to answer to.

To be clear, while it was shocking that Constellation did away with quarterly calls, looking back it was a trailblazing moment. It made sense on a lot of levels: Constellation doesn’t require too much outside funding as it is self-funded at this point and two, their annual shareholder conference was always very generous in giving an intimate and in-depth look into the inner workings of the parent company and the operating units via a 4 to 5 hour meeting. And if you really think about it, the first 20 minutes of any quarterly conference call are all prepared remarks that are typically variations of the press release already sent!

I hope Topicus adopt this going forward; focusing on a generous Annual General Meeting that is more for shareholders than it is for analysts.

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