SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc. SSNC

The business

SS&C sells the plumbing that asset managers, hedge funds, private-market firms, wealth platforms, insurers, and health plans run their operations on. Some of it is licensed software and some of it is SS&C running the process for the client on its own staff, and the second kind is the engine: software-enabled services generated $5,211.1M of $6,272.2M of FY2025 revenue, or 83.1%, with maintenance and term licenses at $912.5M and the rest split between professional services and perpetual licenses. Concretely, that means SS&C computes a fund's net asset value, keeps its shareholder register, produces its investor statements, files its regulatory reports, and in the healthcare arm adjudicates claims. The company employs 28,800 people to do it and has been assembled by acquisition since 1986, spending $1,056.0M on deals in FY2025 and $647.1M in FY2024.

What the financials do not show is why clients stay. A fund administrator is the accountable system of record: the auditor reconciles to it, the regulator inspects it, and the investor's capital account is defined by it. Switching means re-platforming the books of a live fund while the fund keeps operating, which is why mandates move in years rather than quarters and why the installed base compounds by accretion. The change in the last two quarters is not in the business but in the price: management raised FY2026 guidance to $6.66B to $6.82B of revenue and $6.74 to $7.06 of adjusted earnings per share, while the shares fell to roughly 10x the midpoint of that guide, near a three-year low on that measure.