(Focused Compounding)

The other day, someone I talk stocks with on Skype asked how I normally go about starting my initial research into a stock. What documents do I gather?

Here’s what I said:

“Basically, I start by finding the longest series of financial data I can (GuruFocus, Morningstar, whatever) and then look at that along with reading the newest 10-K and the oldest 10-K in detail. So, 10-year+ financial data summary, 20 year old 10-K (or whatever), this year's 10-K, and then the investor presentation if they have one, and the going public/spin-off documents if that's online. Also, I read the latest proxy statement and the latest 10-Q as needed for info on management, share ownership, the balance sheet etc.”

I also check the very long-term performance of the stock. So, I will chart the stock – at someplace like Google Finance – against the market over a period of 20, 30, or 40 years.

So, here’s a full list of my usual sources:

1.       Check long-term stock performance (what is the compound annual return in the stock over 20, 30, or 40 years?)

2.       Find the longest series of historical financial data possible (search for a Value Line sheet, a GuruFocus page, or go to Morningstar or QuickFS.net to see the long-term financial results)

3.       Read, highlight, and take notes on the latest 10-K (so 2016)

4.       Read, highlight, and take notes on the oldest 10-K (On EDGAR, this is usually around the year 1995)

5.       Read, highlight, and take notes on the company’s own investor presentation

6.       Read, highlight, and take notes on the IPO or spin-off documents (On EDGAR, this will be something like an S-1 or 424B1)

7.       Read, highlight, and take notes on the latest proxy statement (On EDGAR, this will be something like a DEF14A)

8.       Read, highlight, and take notes on the latest 10-Q.

Why Check the Long-Term Stock Performance?

This is something a lot of value investors wouldn’t think of. But, I find it very useful. Any time you are looking at a stock’s performance your choice of start date and end date are important. The good news is that your start date will be fairly arbitrary if you just look as far back as possible. So, if the stock has 27 years of history as a public company – and you look back 27 years – you probably aren’t picking a price near an unusual low point in the stock’s history. In fact, you’re probably picking the IPO price, which will rarely have seemed a “value” price at the time. The other good news is that – as a value investor – you’re probably attracted to stocks that seem cheap now. They trade at low or at least reasonable multiples of earnings, EBITDA, sales, tangible book value, etc. This means that any stock you are looking at as a possible purchase is unlikely to be benefiting right now from a particularly good choice of an end point.

Here’s an example.

If we go to Google Finance, we can see that Fossil (FOSL) has a stock price performance from 1994 through 2017 (so about 23 years) that’s a bit better than the S&P 500. You can use the data in Google Finance and combine that with a compound annual growth calculator to find the stock’s annual return was about 9% a year over the last 23 years. Does that mean Fossil created value over 23 years? Did it compound its intrinsic value faster than the average stock? That would be hard to tell if Fossil had started the period trading at a low price and now traded at a high price. However, the stock now trades at an EV/Sales ratio of 0.3. Historically, it traded around 1.5 times sales. It’s rare for a company in this kind of business to trade much below sales. So, if Fossil survives its current crisis and investors eventually warm to the stock’s future prospects – you’d expect the share price to jump at least 3 to 5 times. The stock’s $12 now. But, you’d expect it to be in the $35 to $60 range the moment investors felt sales had stopped plunging. That sounds like a big prediction to the upside – but this stock once traded at $120 a share. So, that’s still only a slight recovery of what Fossil’s market value had been.

Now, if Fossil stock was at a price 3-5 times higher than it is now, the 23 year return wouldn’t be 9% a year it’d be in the 14% a year to 17% a year range over more than 20 years. That’s a lot of value creation. In fact, if the end point had been the start of 2015 (when Fossil’s current problems hadn’t yet devastated its sales and earnings) instead of the middle of 2017, Fossil would have returned about 22% a year over more than 20 years.

So, the exact start point and end point you pick matters a lot when judging a stock’s past long-term compounding power. But, if you are looking at something that appears to be a value stock now and yet it still had returns of about 10% a year in its share price over 20, 30, 40 years or more – you’re fine. This is a business that didn’t destroy value over time. It compounded its intrinsic value as well or better than the stock market. If the stock’s future is as good as its past – and you’re buying it at a below average price – you’ll do well.

Those are two big ifs.

But, this check of the stock price performance compared with the more usual approach of looking at return on equity, return on capital, etc. over the past few decades will give you a good idea of what kind of quality business you’re dealing with. The stock performance check is especially important with conglomerates, cyclical companies, companies that issue and/or buyback a lot of stock, serial acquirers, and other corporations that are involved in a lot of financial engineering at the corporate level.

I strongly suggest checking the long-term stock performance when you’re looking at companies like: Baker Hughes (BHI) which is cyclical, Omnicom (OMC) which buys back its own stock, Textron (TXT) which is a conglomerate, and UniFirst (UNF) which acquires companies in the uniform industry.

Although it is easy to find the return on equity for these companies in any one year – it can be difficult to know what the return on investment of their various acquisitions, stock buybacks, etc. has been over a full cycle without using the long-term stock price performance as a guide.

It’s still not a perfect guide.

Remember, depending on exactly when in the last 2-3 years you checked Fossil’s stock price, you’d see long-term compound annual returns of anywhere from 9% to 22% in the stock. The important point is that you wouldn’t get a long-term compound annual return figure much below the S&P 500. So, you’d be able to assume Fossil had – historically – been an average or even an above average business. What you’re looking for here is any discrepancies where a company that seems to have an above average return on capital manages to always barely keep pace with – or even lag – the S&P 500 over the decades.

Why Use the Longest Series of Financial Data Possible?

The simplest reason here is that most investors don’t do this – so you should. There are figures that might be useful – like knowing what a company is expected to report in EPS next year, that have their usefulness diminished by the fact everyone else buying and selling the stock knows this figure. There are other numbers that might also be useful – which other investors aren’t looking at. You want to focus on figures that matter but are ignored by most people.

Let’s stick with the Fossil example. Knowing that Fossil’s pre-tax earnings dropped 22% in 1995, 18% in 2001, and 23% in 2005 might be useful when looking at the stock in 2015 because earnings had never declined from 2006-2014. So, at the end of 2014, a lot of investors might have only been looking at Fossil’s results from 2006-2014 (since that gives you the 5-10 years of history that many investors feel they needn’t look past). Investors may have also been looking at analyst estimates and the company’s guidance for the year ahead. I have nothing against you looking at near-term future projections. But, you should know, that probably 99% of investors are looking at projections for next year’s earnings while maybe 1% of investors are looking at historical data from further than 10 years in the past. That means the old historical data is more likely to give you an unorthodox insight into a company. And that’s what you need to be right when others are wrong.

Why Read the Most Recent 10-K?

As a serious value investor you know you’re supposed to do this. Everyone tells you you’re supposed to do this. You read the most recent 10-K to learn about the company as it exists today. I’m not going to waste words pushing this particular practice. If you aren’t reading 10-Ks, you should try it. They’re the most useful documents out there.

Why Read the Oldest 10-K?

Again, part of the reason for doing this is the same reason a lefty can have an advantage playing baseball. In absolute terms, it makes no difference if you’re left handed or right handed. Left handedness doesn’t make you a better baseball player. But, if 90% of the world is naturally right handed – being left handed makes you different. It makes you the opposite of what your opponent (the pitcher or the batter) normally faces. If trying to bat left handed makes you a worse hitter – there’s a point where you shouldn’t invest the effort in learning to do it. Likewise, if it’s a complete waste of your time to read the oldest 10-K, you shouldn’t read it. But, I don’t think it’s a waste of your time. And I know almost no one else does it. So, here’s something you can do that’s both useful and different.

Reading the oldest and newest 10-Ks one right after the other is a shortcut to understanding how the business developed and how the industry developed. You could work on studying the company’s entire history. But, that’s a huge investment of time for a stock you’re not sure you’re interested in yet. By reading the oldest annual report and the newest annual report, you get the quickest overview possible of the truly long-term history of the company. I think it’s sometimes useful. And I know it’s very rare for other investors to do this. So, if you’ve never read the oldest 10-K you can find on a company, try adding this to your regular routine.

Why Read the Company’s Own Investor Presentation?

This one is a bit more of a mixed bag.

There are aspects to reading this report that probably aren’t good for your understanding of the stock. One, everything in the presentation is well known by people buying and selling the stock. Two, this pitch is being made directly by the company’s management and aimed directly at people like you (potential investors).

So, it can be dangerously biased.

Those are the negatives. And they’re big negatives.

The positives are that, frankly, the investor presentation can give you the most background on a company and an industry in the shortest amount of time. If, for example, you have no idea how the frozen potato industry in the U.S. works, reading the Lamb Weston (LW) investor presentation is the quickest way to get an overview of the industry, the company’s rivals, and the company’s customers.

This is especially true for obscure industries – like frozen potatoes – where nobody writes books about the industry, none of the companies in the industry have ever had much cultural impact, and the companies just aren’t that well known by the public.

For example, you really need to read an investor presentation by Grainger (GWW), Fastenal (FAST), or MSC Industrial (MSM) to start your research into the MRO industry – because most people don’t know what the MRO industry is or how it works. It’s an invisible part of the economy.

If you don’t have much time to spend researching a stock before deciding whether or not to cross it off your list – I’d say skim at least 10 years of financial data (at someplace like GuruFocus) and read the investor presentation (on the company’s own website). That’ll take you a matter of minutes, not hours. And it’ll give you the background you need to look for the names of competitors, suppliers, and customers and to know what to look for in the 10-K. So, the investor presentation is often the best place to start your research into a company.

Why Read the IPO or Spin-Off Document?

This is often a very detailed report. It will have a lot of information on the industry. It is probably the single longest document on this list. Take your time. If you can work your way through a 10-K, you can work your way through an S-1, etc. Finding this document on EDGAR can sometimes be inconvenient because the company will often file a bare bones version initially and then keep amending it. Sometimes companies keep their original going public roadshow presentation on their website many years after actually going public. The same is true for spin-offs. For example, I own BWX Technologies (BWXT). Even though it is now 2017, that company keeps a 60 or so page presentation on its website that dates back to the 2015 analyst day which discussed the spin-off. Like a lot of IPO / spin-off presentations, that one takes a longer term view of the company. So, it has some discussion of how Babcock’s nuclear business evolved from the early 1990s through 2015. That’s the kind of historical information that is rarely discussed in quarterly earnings results. You’ll only find it in company presentations. Historical discussions that take a longer term view are especially common when a company goes public or is spun-off. So, an IPO or spin-off document is kind of the opposite of a quarterly earnings call transcript.

Why Read the Proxy Statement?

This will be the DEF14A on EDGAR. I read this just for background information on management, to understand how much control big shareholders have over the company, and to see how management is compensated.

So, I’m looking for: 1) Who the managers are 2) Who the owners are and 3) How the owners choose to compensate the managers. Incentives are part of what I’m looking for here.

For example, Grainger (GWW) has a passage in the latest DEF14A that reads:

“The 2016 Company Management Incentive Program (MIP) payout was calculated at 75% of target for all eligible employees as the Company fell short of the 2016 sales growth goal of 5.5% and the ROIC goal of 26.6%.”

So, we see that Grainger incentivizes management to hit two targets: 1) A sales growth goal and 2) A return on capital goal. The sales growth goal is modest. In a normal year, nominal GDP growth in the U.S. might be in the 4% to 6% range. So, a 5.5% sales growth target is close to a GDP type growth rate. And then the return on capital goal is aggressive. A 26.6% return on capital before taxes translates into about a 17% unleveraged return on equity. A business like Grainger can use some leverage. So, this return on capital target – if achieved – would tend to deliver a 20% or better after-tax return on equity for Grainger shareholders. There are more details about how incentive compensation is paid (in what form and when) as well as if it’s capped at some level. But, what I’ve discussed above is one of the most important parts of the proxy statement. Look for the metrics management is judged on for compensation purposes. And also look at what the specific target levels are for those metrics.

Finally, you also want to look at the ownership structure of the company. For example, the Under Armour (UA) proxy statement – this is the DEF14A – tells you that the CEO, Kevin Plank, is also the company’s founder. It tells you he has a 15% economic interest in the company and a 65% voting interest. It also tells you he’s 44 years old. Founders often make it to a retirement age of 65 or beyond. So, you this tells you that – since he has voting control of the company – Under Armour’s founder might lead the company for another 20 years or more. Minority shareholders have no say in the company, because the CEO has more than 50% of all votes. Also, we know the CEO owns about 15% of the company and UA has a market cap of around $8 billion. So, he has maybe $1.2 billion or so of his net worth in the company’s stock. His total compensation was usually in the $2 million to $4 million range over each of the last 3 years (that kind of information can be found in this same proxy). So, the performance of Under Armour stock is something like 300 times more important to Plank than his own pay. So, the proxy statement has told us: 1) This is a controlled company – your votes don’t matter 2) The company may have another 20 years to go in its founder led era and 3) The CEO’s overriding incentive is getting the best possible growth in the stock price over time.

A lot of people skip the proxy statement. But, the points I just made about Under Armour are huge. You could have another 20 years of the company being run by a founder who is something like 99% compensated as a permanent owner.

And that founder has voting control – so your votes don’t matter. Under Armour has 3 classes of stock. You can buy two of those classes. The two classes you can buy have identical economic rights but one comes with voting power and one comes with no votes. The shares with the “UAA” ticker cost $19.10 and have one vote each. The shares with the “UA” ticker cost $17.86 and have zero votes each. The proxy tells us your vote can’t matter in either case. So, you should buy “UA” shares not “UAA” shares and save yourself more than 6% of the purchase price. See, reading that proxy just made you 6% smarter. That’s why you should always read the proxy statement. You want to know: who the owners are, who the managers are, how everyone is compensated, and which class of stock is the better buy.

Why Read the 10-Q?

The more you know about accounting, the more you’ll get out of the 10-Q. The 10-Q is useful because it has the exact number of shares outstanding on the front of it (and, of course, this figure will be more recent than the 10-K in 3 out of 4 quarters of the year). You will want to study the balance sheet. And you’ll want to read the footnotes to the financial statements. A lot of the value in the 10-K and 10-Q comes from reading about how the company accounts for everything in the financial statements. What is amortization made up of? How quickly are they depreciating various assets? How long have they had certain assets – like land – on the books? Do they lease or own all their property? If you’re more of a Ben Graham type investor than Phil Fisher type investor – you’ll get more out of the 10-Q. Honestly, a long-term growth investor isn’t going to find anything in the last quarter to change his mind about a company. As far as sales and earnings go, it’s not necessary to check in more than once a year with the stocks you own. I’ll look at a 10-Q or even read an earnings call transcript or two if there’s been a big drop in the stock and I want to understand if the reaction from investors is appropriate given some change in the company. For example, Under Armour’s stock dropped a lot after an earnings report. The company’s sales growth has decelerated from more than 20% a year to closer to 10% a year (which is about what management is now guiding for in fiscal 2017). Recently, sales actually dropped about 1% in the U.S. So, you can read the 10-Q for Under Armour along with checking the 10-Qs of competitors like Nike (NKE) and key customers like Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS) to try to understand exactly why sales and earnings disappointed investors, what the problem is, and whether or not it’s temporary. Other than that kind of analysis of a very recent event – the 10-Q is most useful for giving you an up to date balance sheet.

So, those are the first 8 things I look at when researching a stock. They aren’t necessarily the most important 8 things to look at. But, they are easy enough to find and important enough to give you a good foundation for understanding the business even if you never read anything else.

(Focused Compounding)

(Focused Compounding)

Note: You have to be a member of the Focused Compounding community to take me up on this offer.

New Feature: Request for Research

Focused Compounding is adding a “Request for Research” feature to the site. Any member of the Focused Compounding community can now send Geoff a stock idea they’d like him to look at. Geoff will pick one stock from this idea pile each week. He will research the stock and do a full write. Geoff’s analysis will be viewable by the whole Focused Compounding community.

The stock you want to get Geoff’s thoughts on can be any size and traded anywhere in the world. There are no restrictions.

So, please send your best current stock idea to:

gannononinvesting@gmail.com

With the subject line:

“Focused Compounding: Request for Research”

Geoff will respond to all emails, even if time doesn’t permit him to do a full write-up of your idea.

(Focused Compounding)

(Focused Compounding)

1. Study a series of related stocks.
2. Give each stock your absolute undivided attention – focus like you’ve never focused before (it’s fine if you can only do this for like 45 minutes at a time).
3. Put your thoughts into writing.
4. Bounce those ideas off another person.

(Focused Compounding)

(Email)

(Focused Compounding)

Many of you may remember Quan Hoang. He wrote some blog posts here. And he co-wrote a monthly stock newsletter called The Avid Hog (later renamed Singular Diligence) with me from 2013 to 2016. During those years, Quan was my investing partner. There wasn’t a single stock idea either of us considered without discussing it with the other person. Quan stopped writing about investing to pursue an MBA in the U.S. (he’s from Vietnam). And he’s now focused on studying artificial intelligence – specifically deep learning. Quan is the clearest thinker on investing I know. Here are his “reflections” on writing a newsletter with me for 3 years:

Reflections on the Newsletter

Like I said, he’s the clearest thinker on investing I know. So, it’s a good idea to read what he writes.

(Email)

(Focused Compounding)

The stock picked for the latest Singular Diligence issue was Swatch. Each issue of Singular Diligence includes articles on: 1) Overview, 2) Durability, 3) Moat, 4) Quality, 5) Capital Allocation, 6) Value, 7) Growth, 8) Misjudgment, and 9) Conclusion.

Here is one of those 9 articles – the moat article – from this month’s issue on Swatch.

Moat

Swatch, Richemont, and Rolex Will Always Dominate Swiss Watchmaking

Swatch’s moat varies depending on the price category. Swatch’s moat is widest for brands that retail between $800 and $10,000. The moat is narrower for watches that cost more than $10,000 or less than $800. This is because there are several distinct sources of moat in the watchmaking business. The greatest combination of moats happens in the watches in the middle price categories. These watches are expensive enough that the “Swiss Made” label and the brand name are important. However, they are inexpensive enough that manufacturing still involves mass production in some sense for some of the parts. This is not true of very expensive watches. Some watchmakers who focus on watches over $10,000 can make very, very few watches each year. So there are few production advantages in this category. The watches are also so expensive that a boutique mono brand store can be opened in just a few high end retail stores in cities around the world. So distribution power is not as important. Swatch has more production advantages than any other Swiss watchmaker. Rolex also has strong production capabilities as will be explained in a moment. Some other companies – like Richemont – have some production capabilities. They are much more than mere assemblers. But they are not as self-sufficient as they might appear. Swatch is vertically integrated. It does not need any outside company to exist for it to be able to produce its brands.

Let’s start with production. There are no production advantages in low-end mechanical movements that are not “Swiss Made”. A Japanese or Chinese company or a manufacturer of licensed brands that does not care if the watch carries a “Swiss Made” label can easily get a supply of foreign (non-Swiss) mechanical movements. The governments of both China and India encouraged the production of mechanical movements in the hopes of stimulating a domestic watchmaking industry. So, if a watchmaker does not care about the “Swiss Made” label they can buy movements from a Japanese company like Seiko or Citizen or from a movement maker in China or India. As a result, there is no production advantage – no moat for Swatch – in watch categories that do not rely on the “Swiss Made” label. For watches that do rely on the “Swiss Made” label, Swatch has a big production moat. To earn the “Swiss Made” label a watch must meet several requirements. One of these requirements is that the movement must be made in Switzerland. There are very few Swiss movement makers. It is difficult to get information on mechanical movement market share in Switzerland. But a 2011 analyst report provides a good guess. That report estimated that the market is about 5.5 million mechanical movements. Swatch’s ETA makes about 55% of those movements. Sellita has an 18% share. Sellita uses a lot of expired ETA patents. It also uses parts it gets from ETA in about half of its movements. So, ETA’s indirect share of the market – based on everything it provides critical supplies for – might be closer to 65% than 50% of the market. Rolex has a 16% share. However, Rolex uses its movement manufacturing for internal supply purposes. Rolex is supplying its own watches. It is not selling to outside companies. Soprod has 4% of the market. Everyone else combined would have something like 5% to 10% at most. So, ETA supplies about half to two-thirds of all movements in the sense that watches using these movements include parts from ETA. Rolex is actually vertically integrated and separate from the rest of the industry in this particular aspect of watchmaking. So, the 55% estimate of ETA’s role in mechanical movement making is actually an understatement in two respects. One, Sellita uses ETA as a supplier. Two, Rolex supplies itself – not external customers. If you take half of Sellita’s supply out and all of Rolex’s – you are left with Swatch being the key supplier of movements.

And movements are actually easier to make than assortments. The technical requirements of movement making is minimal. Technical knowledge is not the barrier to entry. Most watchmakers don’t make their own movements because it is too much overhead to absorb. It’s a volume based business. So, the cost of having the capability to produce good movements is similar regardless of how many movements you are making. There is an initial investment requirement for even a small manufacturer. The more volume a company does, the lower its per unit cost for movements will be. So, it would cost a small watchmaker more per unit to make its own movements and there would be no quality improvement. Mass production is helpful in movement making because it reduces cost without reducing quality. If a company like ETA is willing to sell you mechanical movements – it is in the interest of everyone except those companies of the size of Swatch, Richemont, and Rolex to buy the movements. You can make your finished watch for less. And you couldn’t build a better movement yourself.

The technical bottleneck is in assortments. Swatch has another subsidiary called Nivarox that makes assortments. Nivarox’s share of assortments is greater than ETA’s share of movements. And unlike movements, the barrier to entry here is not just an initial investment in property, plant, and equipment. Even other movement makers like Jaeger-LeCoultre and Patek Philippe get assortments from Swatch. Rolex is one of the very, very few companies that makes assortments like the hairspring. Assortments are regulating elements like the balance wheel, hairspring, escapement, and pallets. A watch’s accuracy depends on these regulating elements. For example, the hairspring is what causes the balance wheel to oscillate. The constant rhythm of the oscillation is what ensures the accuracy of the watch. Swatch makes assortments which it sells to others.  Rolex makes assortments. And then some small manufacturers make only tens of thousands of assortments a year.

Swatch’s use of its market power was restrained through much of the 2000s by Swiss regulators. In 2011, Swatch was finally allowed to reduce deliveries of finished movements to 85% of its 2010 levels and bring that number to as low as 0% in 2019. So, Swatch will be allowed to completely cut its competitors off from their supply of ETA movements by 2019 if it wants to. Swatch was also allowed to cut its supply of assortments by 5%. This change will be tough on Sellita. The difficulty in obtaining assortments will probably be more of a problem than the difficult of obtaining movements. Movements just require some sort of alliance that provides for sufficient scale in production to spread the costs for the customers of that manufacturer to a level that would be lower than if each company went it alone. Assortments actually require technical knowledge. The problem is more than one of cost. It can mean that the supply is not of sufficient quality. Overall, the future is likely to be grimmer for Swiss watchmakers other than Swatch, Richemont, and Rolex once Swatch is allowed to cut its supply of movements and assortments as low as it wants to.

The three biggest players in Swiss watches are: Swatch (34% market share), Richemont (29%), and Rolex (22%). All other companies have just a 15% share. Swatch has strong production capabilities. Rolex is capable of supplying itself better than any other company besides Swatch with everything it needs. So both of those companies have certain vertical integration strength. Brand strength is also important. But distribution is about more than just having strong brands. These three companies – Swatch, Richemont, and Rolex – have the greatest distribution power of any watchmakers.

Distribution is less important at the highest and lowest ends. Cheap watches can be sold around the world online and in department stores. One reason Swatch is weak in the U.S. is probably because of the power of department store chains and online outlets for affordable luxury watches. A company like Movado is simply better at selling to Americans than Swatch is because it is not focused on a different model in the rest of the world. So the $800 to $10,000 categories are where Swatch’s moat is greatest. This is where brand, distribution, and production capabilities are all important. Watches in this price range need a lot of points of sale. Tissot has 13,500 points of sale. Longines has 4,000. Omega has 1,800. Big groups like Swatch, Richemont, and Rolex have power over distributors and retailers. LVMH has trouble getting distribution equal to these companies because it does not have as big a watch business. These companies usually ask retailers to carry multiple brands from the same group. Having several strong watch brands at different price levels can be an advantage. These companies can also offer after-sales services. Quartz watches are easy to repair (you just replace the battery). Mechanical watches using ETA movements can also be easier and cheaper to maintain. The less common the parts in a watch are the more expensive it can be to maintain. Longines has over 1,000 service centers. Omega has 450. Very high end watches have very few service centers. Patek Philippe has 57. Bregeut has 45. And Richard Mille – a super expensive brand – has just 3 service centers. Swatch’s moat in true luxury watches is not as great. Each brand has a moat around it. But the distribution moat is narrow. And there is no production moat. The $800 to $10,000 category is the widest moat part of the business. In this category, Swatch has a wide moat in production, brand, and distribution. It has strong brands. It can mass produce the parts – movements and assortments – needed in these brands. And it has the distribution clout of a Richemont or Rolex. For these reasons, it is likely that the fattest Swiss watch companies – Swatch, Richemont, and Rolex – will get fatter over time in the $800 to $10,000 price category. It is less clear what will happen in the under $800 category. In the over $10,000 category, old brands with a strong heritage should continue to do well. But it is possible for new brands to pop up and get distribution as Richard Mille proves. Hublot is another example of a successful entrant into very high end watches. This category does not require either mass distribution or mass production. The hardest category to enter and succeed in is $800 to $10,000. This is where Swatch excels. And it should now be able to use the market power from its production monopolies or near monopolies in movements and assortments to squeeze competitors. So, this is a wide moat business. And the moat could get wider if regulators allow it.

Talk to Geoff about Swatch’s Moat

Check out Singular Diligence

Life Time Fitness (LTM) now trades at $71.86. The company’s board unanimously agreed to be taken private at $72.10 a share in cash. The merger is expected to close on June 10th. It is now May 19th. So, I’m going to call this one effectively over as a public company.

Quan and I did an issue on Life Time Fitness for Singular Diligence (back when it was called The Avid Hog) in November 2013. The stock price was then $48.51 a share. We appraised it at $79.69 per share.

With the stock trading right below the going private price – the value’s been fully sucked out of this idea.

So, we might as will give the issue away now.

Enjoy.

Singular Diligence: Life Time Fitness Issue - November, 2013 (PDF)
 

Babcock & Wilcox (BWC) has set the dates for its spin-off. Those who own the stock on June 18th will get their spin-off shares on June 30th:

"As a result of the spin-off, Company stockholders can expect to receive as a dividend one share of New B&W common stock for every two shares of the Company’s common stock held as of 5:00 p.m. EST on June 18, 2015, the record date. The distribution of New B&W shares is expected to occur on June 30, 2015 and is expected to be tax-free. "

Shareholders will then own two separately traded stocks. The stock with the “BWXT” ticker will be the government business. The stock with the “BW” ticker will be the power plant business.

The press release gives an accurate description of what “BWXT” will be:

“BWXT is the sole manufacturer of naval nuclear reactors for submarines and aircraft carriers; provides nuclear fuel to the U.S. government; provides technical, management and site services to aid governments in the operation of complex facilities and environmental remediation activities; and supplies precision manufactured components and services for the commercial nuclear power industry.”

It gives a poor description of what “BW” will be:

“New B&W will continue to be a leader in clean energy and environmental technologies for the power and industrial sectors. New B&W also will provide one of the most comprehensive platforms of aftermarket services to a large global installed base of power generation facilities.”

BW is really the boiler business. They build boilers and related equipment for power plants. Some of those plants are clean energy plants – but a great many are actually coal power plants.

Babcock & Wilcox was a Singular Diligence stock pick. I own the stock personally. Quan does not. I plan to keep both my “BWXT” shares and “BW” shares indefinitely.

I’ll let you know if that changes.

Read the Babcock & Wilcox (BWC) Press Release

Check out Singular Diligence

Talk to Geoff about Babcock & Wilcox (BWC)

Someone who reads the blog sent me an email asking how Quan and I judge qualitative factors like a company’s durability.

For most stocks, you can easily imagine a future condition that would obsolete the entire business model.

I’ve decided to make this post nothing but a series of examples.

John Wiley

Open access journal articles.

There is a whole Wikipedia page about this one. The idea here is that someone else will pay the cost of publishing journals in place of the subscriber.

Weight Watchers

Apps.

Dieters will use free apps like MyFitnessPal to count calories instead of going to meetings or using websites like Weight Watchers.

HomeServe

Illegal marketing.

Without aggressive marketing aimed at old people – would this product even exist? You can read about the FCA (a U.K. regulator) fine imposed on HomeServe and the reasons for it here.

Ark Restaurants

Leases expire.

Ark may not renew its leases because the casino or other landlord would want to charge a lot more rent now that the location and the restaurant is a proven success. So, Ark as a corporation has a finite lifespan except insofar as management reallocates capital to new sites.

Village Supermarket

Online groceries.

Traditional supermarkets have 3 durability risks people raise: 1) Online groceries 2) Wal-Mart 3) Organic and fresh competitors: The Fresh Market, Whole Foods, etc.

America’s Car-Mart

Securitization.

America’s Car-Mart sells used cars so it can collect interest on high risk auto loans. The difficult parts of the business are underwriting and collecting loans. If this could be centralized – as it is in lower risk subprime auto loans – then the loans would become commodities.

PetSmart

Online dog food.

The two concerns here are that places like Wal-Mart can sell more dog food and websites like Petflow can sell more dog food.

Atlantic Tele-Network

Guyana can take away their monopoly.

Greggs

British shoppers will stop frequenting high streets. Or, they will eat healthier food instead.

Progressive

Self-driving cars will eliminate accidents and therefore the need for auto-insurance.

Babcock & Wilcox

U.S. utilities will shift away from coal power plants – which use boilers – toward natural gas, wind, and solar power plants which don’t use boilers.

The U.S. Navy could stop using: nuclear powered aircraft carriers, nuclear powered ballistic missile submarines, and nuclear powered attack submarines.  

Swatch

People will wear products like the Apple Watch instead.

Movado

Same.

Fossil

Same. Plus, Michael Kors may be a fad.

Western Union

Online competitors like Xoom can replace agent location based money transfers.

Hunter Douglas

Big box retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s can sell blinds in their stores. Blinds can be sold online. As a result, people will stop going to the independent dealers that Hunter Douglas gets all its sales through.

Strattec

Smart keys and push to start ignitions can eliminate the need for locks and keys used in car doors and the steering column.

Q-Logic

The cloud will eliminate the need for storage area networks.

Talk to Geoff about Durability

Check Out Singular Diligence

My last post listed examples of threats to a company’s durability. This post will be about how we assess those threats. You can always imagine a threat. Is it a realistic threat? How do you judge that?

There are some industries where durability is pretty much perfect. The business doesn’t change much. Barriers to entry are high. The future development of substitutes is unlikely. Location advantages are big.

A good example is lime. Lime is reactive and has a short shelf life. You don’t store it speculatively. You don’t import it and export it. Customers need to get their lime from a deposit being worked somewhere within a few hundred miles of them. Over the last 100 or so years, the real price of lime hasn’t changed that much (real price volatility compared to other commodities is quite low). The price right now is perfectly in line with the real average price per ton since 1900. Lime consumption in the U.S. was no higher last year than it was in 1998. The industry is more consolidated and perhaps less competitive than it was in 1998. I don’t think capacity is being fully utilized now. And I do think inflation will always be passed on to customers (as it was over the last 100 years). So, if Quan and I were to research a company like United States Lime & Minerals (USLM), we could probably start by assuming that last year’s EBIT would – in real terms – represent that company’s durable earning power. That could be our starting point for a buy and hold analysis.   

That’s usually not the case. Even when we find a company that has a long history of being the leader in its field – say Strattec in car locks and keys, H&R Block in assisted tax preparation, etc. – there is a risk of change. In these two cases, we know there will be change in the product. For example, more people will prepare and file their taxes online in the future than they do now. And more drivers will enter and start their cars with the use of electronics instead of physical locks and keys. What we don’t know is how that will affect the companies.

Take H&R Block. The company competes in assisted tax preparation. In the 1990s and 2000s, many people switched to using software and then online products to prepare their taxes. But who were these people?

Most were people who had always prepared their taxes themselves. I use TurboTax and know a lot of people who use TurboTax as well. But, I actually don’t know anyone who used H&R Block even once in their lifetime and now uses TurboTax. Everyone I know who uses TurboTax used to – decades ago – prepare their taxes themselves using a pen and paper and a calculator. They didn’t use a CPA. And they didn’t use H&R Block.

Now, this is anecdotal. But, if I hadn’t asked the question “who are these people” I might have assumed that if tens of millions of people are switching to online tax preparation they are coming from companies that include H&R Block. Maybe they are. But, maybe they are a different segment of the market. If you ask that question: “Who are these people?” you can then start an investigation into how customers are segmented.

But, this still presents two problems. One, even if the migration to TurboTax and its competitors was all from do-it-yourself tax filers – that doesn’t mean that is the only group that will switch.

The other problem is that I just mentioned I use TurboTax – I don’t use assisted tax preparation. Most people I know don’t either. This means I will have a poor understanding of H&R Block’s core customer. I will make the mistake of assuming that the tax preparation market is made up of customers like me and people I know – when that’s probably half the market or less.

So, I won’t understand why some people get assistance preparing their taxes. And I won’t understand why these people don’t just switch to something like TurboTax.

This is a very common problem. We run into it all the time.

I’ll give you an example of a stock Quan and I wanted to pick for Singular Diligence – but the price got away from us before we could. It’s a U.K. company called “Greggs”. I live in the U.S. Quan lives in Vietnam. The last time I was in the U.K. was more than 15 years ago. The fast food industry in the U.K. has changed since then. So, we started from a position of real difficulty in understanding the customer. Quan and I are foreigners as far as the analysis of Greggs is concerned. And we’re not even there on the ground to do scuttlebutt. So, this was a tough stock to analyze. Now, we benefited from being in contact – via email – with more than one person in the U.K. So, we could have people visit multiple Greggs locations in the U.K. and report back to us. This was helpful.

But, there was another problem. A cultural one. The folks who write about stocks in the U.K. are not – it turns out – the folks who go to Greggs. The people in the U.K. who write about stocks and who work in that industry skew heavily toward being higher income and London based. London is part of the U.K. But, most of the U.K. isn’t London. And quite a lot of Greggs isn’t London.

So, there is a serious danger here. It’s particularly serious because Quan and I don’t live in the U.K. So, if analysts at an investment bank or a New York Times reporter or someone like that says something about America’s Car-Mart I can say to Quan: “That’s irrelevant. People in New York City know no more about Arkansas than you do. And none of these people know anything about not being able to buy a 9-year old used car without credit and not having a credit card to charge it to.”

I know that we need to get in touch with people who know more about the places where America’s Car-Mart operates and the people who buy cars there. I know not to trust a New York based source’s opinion about an Arkansas based business. And I know not to trust a source with a six-figure income about the need for sub-prime borrowing.  

That’s obvious to me when dealing with America’s Car-Mart because I live in the U.S. It’s a lot less obvious when dealing with a stock like Greggs.

This is the number one most important part of scuttlebutt: talking to the customer. To understand durability, we need to understand customer behavior.

Now, sometimes the customer lies or can’t articulate how exactly they make their choices. But, even then – I think they usually give away a lot. For example, when looking at why Weight Watchers members quit – a lot of customers will cite cost.

However, most customers will admit there are other reasons besides saving money. And they will often berate themselves in a way that makes it clear there is a gap between their words and their actions. Cutting out a monthly expense is a good excuse. But, really they want to quit because it is hard or they have already reached their weight goal or something like that. So, in the case of Weight Watchers some customers say they quit to save money – but we don’t believe them. Even though we don’t believe them, we still need to hear from them. Because we can still gain information both about why they claim to be quitting and why we think they are actually quitting from their own words.

For some businesses, Quan and I are able to get a very good explanation of customer behavior. For example, I think we have a pretty perfect 3 part model for how Americans choose which supermarket to go to:

1. Convenience

2. Selection

3. Price

We’re pretty confident that you can explain the vast majority of customer defections in the supermarket industry in terms of a store’s failure of either convenience, selection, or price relative to another local option. In the case of U.S. supermarket shoppers, we can also say that “local” usually means about a 3 mile radius. This last claim has been tested in an academic paper. It is used by a major U.S. supermarket in its 10-K to explain the range in which they think competition occurs. And it is supported anecdotally.

These 4 assumptions were very important for us in deciding whether or not Village Supermarket was a durable business. Village Supermarket operates – mostly quite large – Shop-Rite supermarkets in Northern New Jersey, parts of Southern New Jersey, and now a couple stores in Maryland. New Jersey and Maryland are very densely populated places. New Jersey doesn’t grow much. Barriers to entry in the local markets where Village competes seem to be very high.

I’ll use an anecdote to illustrate. I grew up in a town that is within a Village store’s “circle of convenience”. I lived in that town for about 25 years. For most of those 25 years, you had 3 supermarkets to choose from. For part of those 25 years, you had 4 supermarkets to choose from. All the locations that were supermarkets when my parents moved to that town are still supermarkets today. Some are operated by different companies – but only because they bought the parent company. One location was added. The addition in capacity was much smaller than the increase in local population. The one new store was in a completely newly built shopping center that had previously been undeveloped land (which is quite rare in that part of the country). The existing stores in town invested in expanding square footage, parking, etc. to the extent this was possible.

So, this is an oligopoly where you don’t close the existing sites and you rarely add new capacity. You reinvest in the existing sites as much as possible. But, the number of suitable locations for a brand new supermarket of the ideal size is low. Village leases stores for 20-40 years. It owns some others. So, it’s not like suitable sites for a 60,000 square foot supermarket come up every day in Village’s region.

This information allowed us to ask questions about competition from Wal-Mart, online, etc. We could dismiss Wal-Mart right away. It’s harder to build a Wal-Mart than a traditional supermarket in Northern New Jersey. This market is tougher than the ones Wal-Mart normally competes in. And we knew that Wal-Mart draws from a much tighter “circle of convenience” for its grocery shopping than for its other product categories. Wal-Mart draws from exactly the same circle of convenience as traditional supermarkets. If a Wal-Mart opens 10 miles from a supermarket, it has no impact on the profitability of that supermarket. Remember, 10 miles is a 20 minute drive. You don’t actually average speeds better than 30 miles per hour in your local area. So, Wal-Mart is one threat to durability we did not take seriously.

The next is online groceries. Shop-Rites have competed with Peapod for like a decade now. If you compare the online groceries to in-store groceries in terms of convenience, price, and selection – online has no advantages. You need a scheduled time for delivery. So, it’s no more convenient. You need to tip. Given the size of the average grocery order and the tip people give, you are adding 10% or so to the price of your shopping trip. And, to date, online grocery selection has been narrower than in-store even for companies that use their stores as the distribution point for online.

Finally, there is The Fresh Market. This is a real threat to Village’s durability. The Fresh Market has the best business model for entry into the New Jersey grocery market. Its stores are smaller. The up-front capital costs are lower. The payback period is quicker. And it can siphon off high gross profit sales even if a customer uses The Fresh Market for perishables and Village for non-perishables. Margins are good in perishables. So, The Fresh Market is a big threat. The barrier to entry is lower for The Fresh Market than it is for Wal-Mart, Village, etc. You can put a Fresh Market where you would be unable to put a Village or a Wal-Mart. Generally speaking, a Fresh Market can be as small as half the size of a Village store while a Village store could be half the size of a Wal-Mart.

The Fresh Market has no advantages in price. And it has narrow selection in non-perishables. But, it can be quite convenient and have strong selection for the perishables shopping for a household. A lot of grocery shoppers make more than one trip a week of unequal size. It’s a real danger that a household will split its shopping between a traditional supermarket like Village and a perishables focused format like The Fresh Market.

So, we highlighted The Fresh Market as the biggest risk to Village in our Singular Diligence issue on the stock. And that’s really from thinking about customer behavior and barriers to entry. We disagreed with the arguments in favor of online groceries and Wal-Mart because those options don’t perform especially well in terms of convenience, selection, and price. And because it’s hard to put a Wal-Mart close enough to one of Village’s Shop-Rites to make a difference.

It’s also worth mentioning that opening a Wal-Mart in a local market wouldn’t necessarily have the long-term impact you might expect. If there are 3 supermarkets and you add a Wal-Mart, it’s entirely possible that the now 4th place store will eventually close. In most cases, Village wouldn’t be the operator of the marginal store. We just didn’t feel that the ratio of households to supermarkets in a local area was likely to change except if you added a Fresh Market. That was very likely to increase competition permanently in the town. Because we could easily see how The Fresh Market could enter a town and yet no one else would exit that town. And that would leave the incumbents worse off.

You can also see here that one reason why it’s easier for us to analyze Wal-Mart and online groceries is because they aren’t asymmetric with Village. Village can sell online groceries too. Wal-Mart doesn’t have an easier time adding a location in Village’s markets than Village itself does. And we know Village has a hard time adding locations.

Situations like Greggs and Weight Watchers are different. The competition people were suggesting would be a problem for those companies was positioned quite differently. With Greggs, we would get comments that people wouldn’t want cheap and unhealthy good. They would be willing to pay up for food that is healthier, fresher, etc. And I’m sure some people will. There was just a danger that we were hearing more from that segment of the total customer pool than from the segment that appreciated cheap and filling food.

So, we make a special effort to talk not only with customers of the industry – but some core customers of the company itself.

Western Union is another case where there was tough. Most information out there about Western Union – in the media, on blogs, among analysts, etc. – is written by people who are really, really far from Western Union’s core customers. They don’t have any use for the service. They don’t know people who do have a use for the service. And so they can have a lot of misconceptions.

Now, this one was easier for us because Quan lives in Vietnam and spent several years in the United States. A lot of people from Vietnam take up residence in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world and send money back to Vietnam. So, Quan knew lots of people who use Western Union and competing services.

We were able to talk to these customers. And they were able to explain their behavior. Sometimes, we wouldn’t have correctly imagined customer decision making without talking to them. For example, we would have underestimated the importance of the receiver in deciding which service to use. We knew this was important. But, until we spoke to customers – I don’t think we realized that for most senders they go with the service that the person receiving the money asks them to use. So, if you are sending money back to your mom – you use Western Union because she says there is a location she likes right around the corner. Also, until talking to customers – I underestimated the importance of convenience like the exact hours of the location and whether they will deliver the money to your door and things like that.

I think talking to customers is always the most important part of assessing durability. I also think it’s the most important part of scuttlebutt. People ask all the time if we talk to management. The answer is that we do when we can – but we’ve never found it that useful. I might be overstating that. But, right now, I can’t think of a single time where something a CFO – for example – said was more useful to us than information we got from somewhere else. We’ve quoted CFOs in Singular Diligence a couple times before – but really only because it was a nice, clean, concise quote to use. I can’t think of a time when they gave us information we found particularly useful.

That is not true of customers and the people at the company we’re researching who deal directly with those customers. We got really good information from store managers at America’s Car-Mart. We got good information from customers of Breeze-Eastern and their competitor UTC in helicopter rescue hoists. We get good information from dealers. Actually, independent dealers are probably the best source of information because they deal directly with both the company we’re interested in and with the end users and yet they aren’t employees of the company. Tandy was a very interesting case because Tandy’s biggest customers and biggest competitors are the same people. So, when they told you they bought something from Tandy they were also really telling you why Tandy could sell that particular thing economically and they couldn’t.

Until Majestic Wine made its change in direction by firing its CEO and acquiring an online wine seller – we were definitely going to write about that stock. And that’s another U.K. company. So, despite the difficulties of researching a foreign stock, it’s something we’re still willing to do. I should say researching a company with customers in another country. Because it’s not like we have any difficulty analyzing Ekornes – a Norwegian company – when it comes to sales in the U.S. And Western Union is a U.S. company. But, the receive side is almost always not in the U.S. So, at least half of every transaction is decided by a customer in another country. And the person making decisions in this country was often born in another country – so, Western Union can also be considered a case of difficulty understanding “foreign” customer behavior.

Now, I am going to contradict everything I’ve been saying up to this point. So far, I’ve said the most important part of judging durability for us has been talking to customers. I said we like to get information from the two sides of a deal. If we can find the person inside the company who makes the actual sale – we’d be happy to talk to them. And if we can find the person on the buyer’s side who sits across the table from them – that’s our best source of information on durability.

But, there are two cases that prove we sometimes ignore this source of information. One, is Q-Logic. We got information from folks who operate storage area networks. The information was very good as far as proving Q-Logic’s durability. But, there was a problem. The information was good in explaining why companies who are direct customers of Q-Logic and companies that are the end users would want to stick with their existing solution. The information was not so good in explaining the durability of storage area networks themselves. See, the people we were talking to made their living off storage area networks. They obviously believed they were indispensable. We’ve yet to have a source tell us “This thing I spend every day working on is a total buggy whip. It’ll be gone in 10 years and my job along with it.” No one’s ever said that to us. They might think other parts of their company are doing dumb things. They might think their competitors will soon be extinct. They might even think their suppliers will soon be extinct. But, they never think their own job will ever be in jeopardy. So, that’s a problem. And I just wasn’t sure that we were getting good information on the wider durability issues at Q-Logic. However, the information we did get suggested a lot of “stickiness” in terms of people in IT being reluctant to change their behaviors.

So, that’s an example of where the scuttlebutt on durability was all excellent and yet I wasn’t so sure.

Now, let’s take a look at an example where we had zero scuttlebutt supporting the durability of the business – and yet I was completely sold on the idea the company would last.

We’re talking about Babcock & Wilcox. I’m going to simplify here. I’m breaking down the company into 2 parts instead of the 6 or so it really had. And I’m pretending the only power plants it served burned coal – when really some burned other stuff. So, when we analyzed this business it had two key parts. It made boilers and related equipment for coal power plants in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. And it made nuclear (fusion) components for use onboard U.S. Navy ships.

The U.S. Navy only uses nuclear power on 3 types of ships: 1) Aircraft carriers 2) Ballistic missile submarines 3) Attack submarines. So, you have to be sure of the durability of aircraft carriers and submarines. You also have to be sure they’ll be nuclear powered. There are huge advantages to using nuclear power on ships you want roaming the globe without the need to refuel. So, let’s put that aside as a given. We’re still left with the a military and political question: “Will the U.S. Navy keep wanting aircraft carriers, ballistic missile subs, and attack subs?” And how can I possibly know they will? I don’t know more about global military strategy than the average person reading this blog post. I don’t know more about the politics of the U.S. Navy’s budget. So, how can I be sure these programs are durable?

And this is where we have to admit it’s all speculative. I read what the programs are and what they are used for. I thought they had some of the greatest strategic importance of any defense programs I could think of. And I asked: “Would you cut these programs or some other programs instead?” And my feeling was that if the U.S. Navy had these 3 programs and little else – it’d still have a lot of weight in the world.

I also thought that the Navy doesn’t have much incentive to reduce its budget. It has less than a for profit buyer.

Can we say Babcock & Wilcox is perfectly durable – either in regard to boilers or nuclear power on ships?

No. But, I think we can compare it to all the other stocks we might buy and compared to almost all of our other choices say it’s more durable. The preferences of the U.S. Navy should change less over the next 30 years than the preferences of most customers in most industries.

But there’s an example of pure speculation. I have absolutely no scuttlebutt to go on when it comes to Babcock & Wilcox. I only have the same reports on coal power plants, the U.S. Navy’s plans, etc. that everyone else can read. We did that issue with no information gained through our own interviews.

Assessing durability is ultimately speculative. I was not sure enough about Q-Logic’s durability even though I had customer testimony in support of that product’s durability. And I was sure enough about Babcock’s durability even though I had no customer testimony in support of that product’s durability.

I still think getting testimony from customers and dealers is important. I think the two people on either side of the actual buyer-seller negotiation are who you want to talk to judge durability. But, I also think that assessing durability is maybe 50% testimony and 50% pure speculation.

In some cases, it’s 100% pure speculation. I speculated on Babcock’s durability with no quotes in support of it being durable. I just assumed based on what I – and everyone – knows about the buyer and the projects that they were durable.

Sometimes I’m not willing to make that speculation. Quan recently pointed me to a good short post on Strattec over at Value Investors Club. I don’t know if Strattec is durable or not. But, I don’t think I can speculate on its durability without customer testimony in support of that durability. So, I’m willing to speculate based only on widely available sources that Babcock is durable. But, I’m not willing to speculate that Strattec is durable.

What’s the lesson from that?

I don’t know. I don’t think Warren Buffett does much scuttlebutt anymore. But, I don’t think he’d be able to do as little scuttlebutt now unless he had done a lot decades ago. Still, he sometimes does. For example, he mentioned that before buying IBM stock he talked to the IT departments at some of Berkshire’s subsidiaries to see how sticky their relationship with IBM was. Quan did the same thing with Q-Logic. But, I wasn’t sure of Q-Logic’s durability.

Some of this may just be bias. Nuclear power is very old and really in a way abandoned tech. Most people have given up on it. Babcock gave up on civilian nuclear in the U.S. after Three Mile Island. If the tech hadn’t been abandoned that way – I don’t think I’d be as interested in Babcock. In both nuclear reactors and boilers, what they do is really engineering rather than technology. But, some people might say IBM is as much a client based professional service firm as it is a tech company. I don’t understand IBM well enough to say one way or the other. My fear is that a lot of people are interested in the ecosystems that IBM and Q-Logic and companies like that compete in. No one is really interested in doing what Babcock does unless they’ve been doing it forever. Nuclear and steam aren’t very sexy.

That’s an explanation Quan and I often fall back on. This industry is safe because no one ever seems to enter it and no one ever seems to want to enter it. It’s really just an appeal to history. If the history of the industry has been that competition is limited – then the future of the industry will be that competition is limited.

Is that a valid way of thinking?

Using history instead of just spitballing possible things that could put the company out of business makes sense. Spitballing doomsday scenarios may seem prudent. But, it’s really just an exercise in paranoia. Companies that don’t change a lot in industries that don’t change a lot are probably safer bets than companies that do change a lot in industries that do change a lot. I’m not sure how prescient you can be unless your prescience consists entirely of just saying “The future will look a lot like the past.” I definitely believe in that kind of prescience. Quan and I always try to come up with a reason or two for why the future won’t look like the past. But, that’s really speculative.

So, there are three approaches you can use to judge durability. One, you could gather testimony about customer behavior. Two, you can go by the history of the industry. Three, you can use a purely theoretical – that is, purely speculative – approach by trying to work out the adoption of future technologies and trends and how that can shift the economics of the industry. I did that for you with Village Supermarket. That discussion was mostly just speculation. It was like something out of a microeconomics textbook. I think that approach has an inherent appeal to most people reading this. It feels like it should be right. And it feels like the kind of work you should be doing. I obviously think it has a place – or I wouldn’t have analyzed Village that way.

But, I don’t think that you should give more weight to theory than you do to scuttlebutt and history. Industry history is a record of the economic interactions that really – not just theoretically – happened. And scuttlebutt can provide an insight into customer behavior which is really what product economics is all about. If you talk to customers, they will tell you about their willingness to pay. And they will especially tell you how “sticky” they are and why they stick with their current choice instead of going and searching for an alternative.

So my advice for how to judge durability is: talk to customers, study as much of the industry’s history going as far back as you can, and try to sketch out the economics of entering the market.

The biggest caveat is not to have too much faith in your calculations on industry economics. You can probably determine who has relatively high costs, who uses relatively high amounts of assets, etc. But don’t put too much faith in the quantities involved. The relationships between players are what matters – the numbers are less important.

Talk to Geoff about How to Judge a Business’s Durability

Check Out Singular Diligence

We talk about stock picking on this blog. That means we usually talk about specific stocks. The “market of stocks” not the “stock market”. Today, I’m going to talk about the stock market.

It’s too expensive.

You shouldn’t buy it.

If you have an account where you automatically reinvest your dividends – stop. If you are putting money each month into an index fund, or a stock mutual fund, or a bond mutual fund – stop. Those assets are overpriced. Any basket of stocks or bonds is overpriced. If you are saving money regularly – that newly saved money should now be going into cash instead of stocks or bonds.

The simplest rule in investing is that you never buy an obviously overpriced asset. Stocks generally and bonds generally are obviously overpriced right now. So, you need to stop buying them in a general way.

To put a number on this expensiveness, I think the Shiller P/E ratio is about 27 now. It was about 27 when I wrote my December 2006 post arguing stocks were too expensive. You can read that post later down in this one. Or you can click here to see - via the Wayback Machine - what that post actually looked like on the original site in 2006.

I am writing this post because of 3 separate items I noticed recently.

I came across one while reading an earnings call transcript for Frost (CFR). This is a usually conservatively run bank in Texas. It has a lot more deposits than loans. Deposits have kept growing. So, the company needs to put the money somewhere. And where they’ve put it is “Securities”. Frost now holds more money in securities than loans. These securities are high quality. They aren’t going to default. But they are overpriced. To get a yield near 4% on their securities portfolio – the company had to go pretty far out in terms of the maturities it would buy. In normal economic times – let’s say with a Fed Funds rate of 3% to 4% – these bonds would cost less than what Frost paid for them. At some point, there will be a 3% to 4% Fed Funds rate. I have no idea when that will be. You can look at predictions from the FOMC’s own members and see they thought it would be 3 years down the road or so. Now, if that’s true – you obviously aren’t gaining much by making less than 4% a year for less than 3 years if you will be able to make 4% a year on idle cash at the end of that period. Of course, some events may happen that prevent any increases in the Fed Funds rate for that entire 3 year period. In the 1930s in the U.S. and in the 1990s and 2000s in Japan, investors could have easily overestimated the likelihood that rates would rise within the next 3-5 years to a “normal” level. If something like that happens and you keep all your money at the Fed instead of in long-term municipal bonds and such – you’d have missed out to the point where you now still have $1 when you could have more like $1.12.

You can afford to miss out on those kind of returns. I actually think Frost can too. But, this isn't a post about Frost.

The other two examples don’t involve an actual investor. They are about the “cost of capital”. The car lock maker Strattec uses an Economic Value Added (EVA) approach. They are funding the company with equity right now instead of debt. So, their cost of capital is the cost of their equity capital. They use 10% as the cost of equity capital. Equity investors aren’t going to get 10% a year from this moment forward. Returns will be closer to 5% a year. So, Strattec is really overcharging itself for capital when it presents EVA in the annual report.

And then the last example is a Morningstar analysis I read. The analyst adjusted the value of the company up a little based on lowering the cost of capital for the company – which also uses only equity capital – from 10% a year to 9% a year. This is a concession to the reality that investors are bidding up stocks. But, the cost of equity capital is not 9%. The S&P 500 is not priced to return anywhere near 9% a year. If companies want to issue dilutive stock or borrow long-term – none of that will actually cost them 9% a year.

I understand why Frost, Strattec, and Morningstar don’t spend a lot of time saying today’s stock and bond prices are much higher than stock and bond prices have been through most of history. But not harping on that can make people forget how abnormal today's stock and bond prices are.

I think there is a big danger of complacency here. Investors seem to be pretending today’s prices are comparable enough to past prices that it’s not worth focusing on. At many points in the past, you could make close to 10% a year in stocks. Today, you can’t. And at many points in the past, it was safe to buy bonds at the market price and not expect a very large drop in their market price. Today, it’s not.

Both the likelihood of 10% returns in stocks and the unlikelihood of large paper losses in bonds was due to their prices. They were lower. As a group, stocks and bonds are the same assets they always were. Increases in the price of those groups simultaneously lowers long-term future returns and increases the risk of short-term negative returns.

A little bit later in this post I’m going to give you the entirety of something I wrote back on December 29th, 2006. That was about 8 and a half years ago. If you had stayed completely in the Dow from that moment till now rather than staying completely in cash from that moment till now the difference would be like 5% a year. Of course, you shouldn't have stayed in cash for 8 years. You should have stayed in cash till prices were "normal" again in late 2008-2010. Listening to Shiller or Grantham or this blog or any value investor would've told you prices were okay again once the crash happened.

I thought stocks were too expensive in December of 2006. The Fed Funds rate went to 0% and stayed there. Stocks are – by the Shiller P/E and other such normalized measures – a lot more expensive than they’ve ever been except for years like 2007, 1999, and 1929. So, all of those factors have helped stock returns from the end of 2006 to midway through 2015. And yet returns were no better than the about 5% or 6% a year I warned was likely back in 2006. They were not the often hoped for 9% or 10% a year that people cite as the “cost of equity” and the return investors in stocks expect long-term.

When you might earn 10% a year in the stock market – the cost of not participating is high. When the best you can hope for is 5% or 6% a year – as the period from high stock prices in 2006 back up to high stock prices again in 2015 shows – you aren’t missing much by sitting out till you get an acceptable price.

I am not saying you shouldn’t pick stocks. If you find a business you like at a price of less than 10 times normal EBIT – you can buy that business. That’s a good price in all environments.

So, you can pick absolute bargain stocks. That means a business you like at less than 10 times EBIT. The danger is settling for relative bargains. If the market trades for 15 or 20 times normal pre-tax earnings - then I can pay 13 times for this business and it's a steal. That's dangerous thinking. What you're really saying is that you can never hold cash. The best you can do is to buy something a bit cheaper than the very high price everything else happens to be priced at right now.

Obviously, you should stop contributing more cash to stock funds, bond funds, etc. Stop reinvesting your dividends. Build up cash till you find a bargain for all times – not just for these very expensive times.

I’m not going to spend the rest of this post arguing about today’s stock market level. It’s clearly too high. And future returns will be much worse than past returns. But, I’ve found it is hardest to argue about the present. It is easier to use an illustration from the past which can serve as an analog for today.

So, I am re-posting my December 29th, 2006 piece “In Defense of Extraordinary Claims”. In that post, I argued that:

“Normalized P/E ratios can fall in several ways. However, there are only two ways that seem reasonable given current conditions. Stock prices can either fall over the short-term or they can grow slowly (at less than 5-6% a year) over the long-term.”

And:

“Stocks are not inherently attractive; they have often been attractive, because they have often been cheap. The great returns of the 20th century occurred under special circumstances – namely, low normalized P/E ratios. Today's normalized P/E ratios are much, much higher. In other words, the special circumstances that allowed for great returns in equities during the 20th century no longer exist.

So, don't use historical returns as a frame of reference when thinking about future returns – and do lower your expectations!”

Just about 8 and a half years later, I want to reiterate those same two points. They are as true now as they were at the end of 2006. We are in the same place. Stocks are too expensive again. They can either drop a lot in the short-term. Or they can rise at less than 5% or 6% a year for the long-term. So, when you ask “Should I hold cash?” instead of adding to my mutual funds, reinvesting my dividends, etc. you should think of 3 possible outcomes: 1) I buy stocks and the market crashes in the short-term 2) I buy stocks and they return less than 5% to 6% for the long-term 3) I hold cash instead of buying stocks.

Because those are the only 3 reasonable outcomes. I’m not suggesting you time the market by selling stocks you already own. Nor am I suggesting you stop buying stocks that are good purchases in any market. I don’t think knowing that stocks are too expensive means you have to sell what you already own. Nor do I think it means you have to give up on buying businesses you like at less than 10 times EBIT. That’s always a good decision.

But, knowing stocks are too expensive right now should lead to you cutting off all additional contributions to your mutual funds and index funds till prices return to their normal historical range.

What is that range?

That’s the question I tried to answer in my 2006 post. Here is that post – completely unedited – and just as relevant in 2015 as it was in 2006.

I have one added note. In what you're about to read you'll see I used my own measure of the "normalized P/E ratio" for the Dow rather than the Shiller P/E for the S&P 500. It doesn't matter which you use. I'd just go with the Shiller P/E myself - and I'm the one who made up the measure you're about to see. Both normalized P/E ratios will usually tell you about the same thing at about the same time.

Shiller uses an inflation adjusted 10-year average. I use a 15-year average with a 6% nominal annual escalator in EPS.

For those who care about this stuff: My method was to apply a 6% growth rate to each of the last 15 years of earnings. So, to predict "normal" earnings in 2015 you simply project actual EPS for every individual year from 2000 through 2014 forward at a rate of 6% a year. You assume the average of all these "past projections" is more normal than what is actually reported as for 2015.

(“In Defense of Extraordinary Claims” – Originally Posted: December 29th, 2006)

About two weeks ago in a post entitled "We Have Some Bearish Bloggers Out There", Bill Rempel wrote, "Personally, I’m in the 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof' camp." I'd like to think I am too, because Bill is right – extraordinary claims do require extraordinary proof.

So, before making any extraordinary claims about future long-term market returns (i.e., predicting future returns that differ substantially from historical returns), I'd like to spend this post laying out the case for why current circumstances are extraordinary. After all, extraordinary times call for extraordinary claims.

Essentially, this is a post about why the present is unlike the past and what that means for the future.

In a previous post, I wrote:

Stocks are not inherently attractive; they have often been attractive, because they have often been cheap.

Unless they internalize this fact, investors risk assuming that historical returns that existed under special circumstances can continue to serve as a useful frame of reference, even when these special circumstances no longer exist.

Later in this post, I will discuss the possibility of a "paradigm shift" (i.e., a change in basic assumptions within the theory of investment) that began in 1995. The only other period in the 20th century which saw similar upheaval in investment thinking was the 1920s.

Common Stocks as Long Term Investments

That theoretical crisis (and the higher valuations that followed it) has often been partly attributed to a thin volume published in 1924 by Edgar Lawrence Smith. The book was called "Common Stocks as Long Term Investments" and it was based on a study of 56 years of market data (1866 – 1922).

Smith found that stocks had consistently outperformed bonds over the long run. Neither the data in support of this conclusion nor the logical explanation for this outperformance (public companies retain earnings and these retained earnings lead to compound growth) was wrong.

However, a few years after Smith's book was published, the special circumstances of the past disappeared as stocks (which had historically had higher yields than bonds) saw their prices surge and their yields plunge. Soon, stocks had lower yields than bonds – part of the reason for their past outperformance (the initial yield advantage) was gone and the margin of safety which a diversified group of stocks had offered over bonds narrowed considerably.

Simply put, circumstances changed. John Maynard Keynes saw this possibility when he reviewed Smith's book in 1925:

"It is dangerous…to apply to the future inductive arguments based on past experience, unless one can distinguish the broad reasons why past experience was what it was."

That has been the objective of this little study from the outset. In this post, I will focus on how the circumstances of the present differ from the circumstances of the past.

I will also endeavor to demonstrate that historical returns were the result of special circumstances, which (logically) need not apply now or in the future. The historical data suggests these circumstances may yet return – and for the sake of net buyers of stocks, I hope the data is right and one day (soon) historical returns can once again serve as a useful frame of reference for the future.

Today, however, historical returns have about as much utility to the investor as the success rate of a procedure performed exclusively on 25 year-old men has for the surgeon who is preparing to operate on a 92 year-old woman.

There is nothing wrong with the data itself. But, there is something wrong with the assumption that data collected from one special case has predictive power when applied to another special case.

Cheap Stocks and Great Returns

Historical returns in equities have been great. However, it's worth noting that throughout the period we're referring to, stocks have often been cheap. How cheap?

Once again, here's a graph of the Dow's 15-year normalized P/E ratio for each year from 1935-2006:

From 1935-2006, the Dow's normalized P/E ratio ranged from 6.88 – 30.84. The Dow's average (mean) normalized P/E ratio for these years was 14.18. The median was 13.91.

Those figures include the 1995-2006 period, which I will discuss in greater detail later. For now, let's start by taking a look at the period from 1935-1994.

Until 1995, the Dow's normalized P/E ratio had ranged from 6.88 – 17.40. The average (mean) normalized P/E ratio from 1935-1994 was 12.31. The median normalized P/E ratio was 12.41. In other words, the Dow's average 15-year normalized earnings yield was just over 8%.

I would estimate that in a little under 45% of all years, the Dow was priced such that long-term investors were effectively paying little or nothing for future earnings growth. Most market authorities would disagree with me on this point, because they would require an equity-risk premium.

Equity-Risk Premium – An Aside

This isn't the place to have a long argument about the concept of an equity-risk premium. For now, I will simply say that you can not arrive at the conclusion that there is an equity-risk premium via deductive (a priori) reasoning. If you were locked in a room alone, you would never come up with the idea of an equity-risk premium. It is only in seeing the effect that you would seek out a cause.

You can only come to the conclusion that an equity-risk premium should exist by first knowing that it has existed. You have to work backwards from the effect to the cause. That's troubling, because history consists of a series of special circumstances. It is non-repeatable.

So, the existence of a measurable aversion to stocks over some historical period does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that such an aversion is the result of a general principle (i.e., an inherent equity-risk premium). In fact, such a conclusion could merely be a contrived attempt to explain away an observable effect that has existed under certain circumstances – but needn't always exist.

The equity-risk premium isn't a general theory. It's really little more than the acknowledgement that during the historical period being studied, market participants made choices that reflect an aversion to stocks compared to the choices an optimal return seeking automaton would have made.

It's an interesting observation – but, it's not a theory.

How Common Are Cheap Markets?

Returning to the question of how often the stock market has been cheap, I would estimate that during the period from 1935-2006, the Dow was priced to offer double-digit returns somewhere between 75% and 85% of the time.

Here, I don't mean that the Dow did provide double-digit returns 75% to 85% of the time; nor, do I mean that past performance suggested it should provide such returns. Rather, I simply mean that valuing the Dow as an asset to be held until Judgment Day, would lead a clear-headed observer to conclude that double-digit returns were likely in about 75% to 85% of the years being considered.

I know this 75% to 85% number is a bit hard to swallow. So, if you don't believe me, consider what Warren Buffett wrote on the same topic in his 2002 annual letter to shareholders:

"Despite three years of falling prices, which have significantly improved the attractiveness of common stocks, we still find very few that even mildly interest us. That dismal fact is testimony to the insanity of valuations reached during The Great Bubble. Unfortunately, the hangover may prove to be proportional to the binge."

"The aversion to equities that Charlie and I exhibit today is far from congenital. We love owning common stocks – if they can be purchased at attractive prices. In my 61 years of investing, 50 or so years have offered that kind of opportunity. There will be years like that again. Unless, however, we see a very high probability of at least 10% pre-tax returns…we will sit on the sidelines."

Buffett's "50 or so years" of his 61 would translate into just under 82% of the time. He wrote that letter in early 2003. The four years since haven't offered the kind of opportunity he looks for, while the seven years included in the study from before Buffett started investing did offer that kind of opportunity.

So, according to my math, that would work out to be a roughly 80% estimate from Buffett over the full 1935-2006 period. That estimate falls within the 75% - 85% range I cited based on the data.

I think this 75%-85% range is the best estimate you'll find for how often the market has been so cheap as to offer double-digit returns when valued as an asset with a holding period of forever.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid a lot of investors don't realize (or haven't internalized) just how often the stock market has been really cheap. During the 1935-2006 period, stocks were priced as clear bargains in about 8 out of every 10 years. Buffett supports this conclusion with his assertion that stocks could be "purchased at attractive prices" about 80% of the time (50 out of 61 years).

If investors don't start with an understanding of the fact that stocks have been so cheap so often, they won't be able to put the historical data in its proper context. If you have a population that consists of 80% x and 20% y, is it reasonable to assume that data based on the entire population is a good reference point for your subject, if you know your subject is a y rather than an x?

In terms of valuation, 2006 (and thus 2007) is undoubtedly a minority year. Unfortunately, data based on a full population sometimes has little or no relevance when applied to a member of a minority group.

For instance, Turkey's population is 80% Turkish and 20% Kurdish. My guess is that data based solely on the full population of the country (which would consist of 80% ethnic Turks) would tell you very little about any particular Kurd. Now, if you broke the data you had collected down into a Turkish group and a Kurdish group and used the Kurdish group to predict something about an individual Kurd – then, you might be on to something.

A More Detailed Look

From 1935-2006, the Dow's normalized P/E ratio ranged from 6.88 to 30.84. The Dow's average (mean) normalized P/E ratio for these years was 14.18. The median was 13.91. In half of all years, the Dow's normalized P/E ratio fell between 10.53 and 16.43.

Here's a breakdown of how common various normalized P/E ratios were from 1935-2006.

Normalized P/E of 5-10: 18 of 72 years or 25.00% of the time

Normalized P/E of 10-15: 28 of 72 years or 38.89% of the time

Normalized P/E of 15-20: 17 of 72 years or 23.61% of the time

Normalized P/E of 20-25: 5 of 72 years or 6.94% of the time

Normalized P/E of 25-30: 3 of 72 years or 4.17% of the time

Normalized P/E of 30-35: 1 of 72 years or 1.39% of the time

Fifteen Years Later…

For the years with a normalized P/E ratio between 5 and 10, compound point growth in the Dow over the subsequent fifteen years ranged from 4.01% to 15.69%. The average (mean) growth rate was 10.17%. The median growth rate was 10.03%.

For the years with a normalized P/E ratio between 10 and 15, compound point growth in the Dow over the subsequent fifteen years ranged from 0.92% to 12.28%. The average (mean) growth rate was 7.01%. The median growth rate was 8.17%.

For the years with a normalized P/E ratio between 15 and 20, compound point growth in the Dow over the subsequent fifteen years ranged from (0.14%) to 8.93%. The average (mean) growth rate was 2.19%. The median growth rate was 1.76%.

I'd love to show you the same data for the three highest normalized P/E groups. But, I can't.

There is no fifteen year point growth data for years with a normalized P/E over 20, because the Dow didn't record a year with a normalized P/E ratio above 20 until 1996. In fact, until 1995, the highest normalized P/E ratio on record was 17.40 – that high-water mark was reached in 1965. With the benefit of hindsight we now know 1965 was not an ideal year to buy stocks for the long-run.

Rising Multiples?

Today's normalized P/E ratio is extremely high. So what? Hasn't the normalized P/E ratio been rising over time, as investors have come to realize a diversified group of stocks held for the long-run is actually a low-risk, high-reward bet?

I'll let you judge for yourself. I won't even connect the dots for fear of biasing you.

Here's a chart showing the Dow's 15-year normalized P/E ratio for each year from 1935-1994:

Do you see a trend towards higher normalized P/E ratios over time?

I cut the graph off at 1995 for a reason. That's the year everything changed. You'll remember I said the Dow's highest normalized P/E ratio had been 17.40 reached in 1965.

Although I didn't include the data necessary to compute 15-year normalized P/E ratios for years before 1935, I do have enough data to know that the three "peak" normalized P/E ratio years during the 20th century were 1929, 1965, and 1999.

By "peak" years, I simply mean the three highest years that aren't part of a chain of continuously higher normalized P/E years – unless they're the highest year in that chain. Without this qualifier, the highest normalized P/E list would be monopolized by the years from 1995 – 2006. Each year in that group had a higher normalized P/E ratio than every year prior to 1995.

In other words, since 1995, the Dow's normalized P/E ratio hasn't just been above the mean, it's been above the entire normalized P/E ratio range from 1935-1994. You can see that clearly in this graph, which shows the Dow's normalized P/E ratio for each year from 1935 – 2006:

This graph is essentially just a continuation of the earlier graph. In fact, if you cover the points from 1995 – 2006, you can see the familiar outline of that graph with its long undulations and its frothy crest at 17.40. That bound was reached in 1965. In 1995, the Dow broke out of this upper bound and hasn't returned since.

Terra Incognita

In this graph, it certainly does look like there's a trend toward higher normalized P/E ratios. However, that trend only emerged over the last decade – not the last century.

In other words, the Dow's normalized P/E ratio hasn't been rising over time. It simply surged in the 1990s. That surge may be justified. However, it's certainly a departure from the historical data. As a result, there's no reason to believe historical returns from 1935-1994 have any utility whatsoever in predicting market returns in the new era that has emerged since 1995.

All the historical return data from before 1995 was based on lower normalized P/E ratios. Once again, I don't mean the pre-1995 period had lower average normalized P/E ratios – I mean that no year from before 1995 had a normalized P/E ratio equal to or greater than any year from 1995 through today. Simply put, since 1995, market valuations have been in completely uncharted territory.

The only years with normalized valuations comparable to today's occurred during the 1995-2006 period. So, referring to historical return data requires a choice between using data from recent years or using data from dissimilar years.

Paradigm Shift?

Is it possible that the surge in normalized P/E ratios beginning in 1995 was simply the culmination of a crisis within the investment discipline? Maybe normalized P/E ratios have reached "a permanently high plateau" now that a new paradigm has taken hold.

I won't dismiss this argument entirely. There is some logic to it. After all, stocks have been an unbelievable bargain for most of the 20th century. Why should that continue to be the case? Eventually, won't enough investors wise up to this fact and cause the so-called "equity-risk premium" to disappear.

If the normalized P/E ratio remains extremely high, there will be no need for stock prices to fall. Of course, these higher valuations must necessarily cause future returns to fall short of historical returns. But, there's no logical reason why normalized P/E ratios must revert to the mean – future returns can be adjusted down, allowing current prices to remain high.

That's true. In fact, the Dow could theoretically trade around a normalized P/E ratio as high as 40-50 without making stocks so unattractive as to completely eliminate them as a possible long-term investment (all of this assumes the equity-risk premium can disappear).

At around 50 times normalized earnings, the math gets terribly unforgiving. As a result, it's hard to imagine any likely circumstances under which a market trading at close to 50 times normalized earnings could be a viable investment option – though it's theoretically possible if long-term interest rates are very, very close to zero.

But, at lower normalized P/E ratios, such as 30 (and certainly 20) stocks could still compete with other investment opportunities. Stocks might lose most (or all) of their edge over other asset classes; but, stock prices wouldn't necessarily have to fall – they could simply offer much lower returns than they had in the past. This could continue indefinitely – in theory.

I say "in theory", because that seems a rather unlikely scenario. There is absolutely no evidence for it in the data.

Before 1995, the Dow's normalized P/E ratio had ranged from 6.88 – 17.40. The average (mean) normalized P/E ratio from 1935-1994 was 12.31. The median normalized P/E ratio was 12.41.

So, a permanent jump to normalized P/E ratios above 20 would be quite a departure from the past. Could the leap be permanent? Could these new, higher normalized P/E ratios become the new norm?

Maybe. If we really are in a new era, the old historical return data isn't relevant – it applies only to an era of low normalized P/E ratios. New, higher valuations must necessarily lead to new, lower returns. On the other hand, if we aren't in a new era, the old historical return data is relevant – and normalized P/E ratios must fall.

Adjusting to the Norm

Normalized P/E ratios can fall in several ways. However, there are only two ways that seem reasonable given current conditions. Stock prices can either fall over the short-term or they can grow slowly (at less than 5-6% a year) over the long-term.

The data from 1935-2006 doesn't provide much support to one route over the other. In the past, extraordinarily high normalized P/E ratios have been brought down to more normal levels through crashes and through stagnant markets.

The market can reach a more "normal" normalized P/E ratio by going down fast or going sideways for a very long time. During the 20th century, we saw normalized P/E ratios fall both ways.

To return to the 1935-1994 normalized P/E range, the Dow would need to trade around 10,135. That would simply bring it down to a valuation comparable to 1965.

To return to the average normalized P/E ratio for 1935-2006, the Dow would need to trade around 8,260. If the Dow were to trade at the average normalized P/E ratio for the 1935-1994 period, it would need to trade around 7,230.

Are any of these numbers likely destinations? The truth is stocks have probably been too cheap in the past and they're probably too expensive today. Regardless, the Dow has been above 1965's old normalized P/E high since 1995. So, for a little over a decade now, the market has been in uncharted territory. A normalized P/E ratio of 20-25 (today's is about 21.50) is quite compatible with decent long-term returns for stocks relative to other asset classes.

However, such high normalized P/E ratios are not compatible with the kind of long-term returns seen during much of the 20th century.

Conclusion

Stocks are not inherently attractive; they have often been attractive, because they have often been cheap. The great returns of the 20th century occurred under special circumstances – namely, low normalized P/E ratios. Today's normalized P/E ratios are much, much higher. In other words, the special circumstances that allowed for great returns in equities during the 20th century no longer exist.

So, don't use historical returns as a frame of reference when thinking about future returns – and do lower your expectations!

(End of December 29th, 2006 repost)

Over the Last 17 Years: Have My Sell Decisions Really Added Anything?

“The stocks I pick don’t benefit much from well-timed sales. There’s usually little harm in holding on to them much, much longer than I do.

So, I’ve decided to hold the stocks I own indefinitely. When I find a really, really good stock idea – which might happen once a year – I will need to sell pieces of the stocks I already own to raise cash for that purpose. I’ll do that. So, if I’m fully invested and want to put 20% of my money into a new stock – I’ll have to sell 20% of each stock I now own. But, I’m not going to eliminate my entire position in a stock anymore. Those decisions to completely exit a specific stock haven’t added value for me. So, I’m not going to try to make them anymore.

From now on, I’m going to be a collector of stocks.”

Over the Last 17 Years: Have My Sell Decisions Really Added Anything?

GuruFocus: Pick the Winners First – Worry About Price Second

“There are 3 ways an investor can compromise:

1.    He can compromise by paying a higher price than he’d like to

2.    He can compromise by buying a lesser quality business than he’d like to

3.    He can compromise by not buying anything when he’d rather own something

You could use these 3 compromises as a test of what kind of investor you are.

A growth investor – like Phil Fisher – compromises by paying a higher price than he’d like. He won’t compromise on quality. So, he has to compromise on price. A value investor – like Ben Graham – compromises by purchasing a lower quality business than he’d like. He won’t compromise on price. So, he has to comprise on quality. Finally, a focus investor – like me – compromises by not owning any stock when he’d much rather be 100% invested.”

GuruFocus: Pick the Winners First – Worry About Price Second

Read the Free Report on Village Supermarket

Check Out Focused Compounding

Kroger (KR) is down 11% today. The stock’s P/E is now about 11.

Kroger is guiding for same store sales of flat to up just 1% this year. This guidance – combined with Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods – is probably why the stock is down.

Supermarket stocks are a good area for value investors to research now.  One way to learn about the supermarket industry in the U.S. is to read the report Quan and I wrote on Village Supermarket (VLGEA) back in 2014.

That stock is now at roughly the same price – $25 a share – it was when we wrote about it.

A membership to my new site, Focused Compounding, gives you access to this report on Village Supermarket as well as 26 other stock reports just like it.

A membership to Focused Compounding costs $60 a month. If you enter the promo code “GANNON” at sign-up, you will save $10 a month forever.

Check Out Focused Compounding

Read the Full Report on Village Supermarket

Read the Free Report on Village Supermarket

Check Out Focused Compounding

Following Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods and the big drop in supermarket stocks – especially Kroger (KR) – I’ve decided to do a series of re-posts of my analysis of the U.S. supermarket industry.

Today’s re-post is a roughly 1,300 word excerpt from the Village Supermarket (VLGEA) stock report Quan and I wrote back in 2014. This section focuses on whether or not a supermarket can be a durable investment. The full 10,000+ word report on Village – along with 26 other reports of similar depth – are now available at my new site, Focused Compounding.

Some facts have changed since this report was written. For example, Amazon’s companywide sales figure is much, much higher than it was in 2013 (the last year for which we had data when we wrote this report).

And – more relevant to the grocery industry – Amazon Fresh has gone from a $300 a year add-on to Amazon Prime to a $15 a month add-on to Amazon Prime (so 40% cheaper).

Durability (From the 2014 Report on Village Supermarket)

High Volume Supermarkets are Durable Local Market Leaders

Demand for food is stable. Most grocers do not experience meaningful changes in real sales per square foot over time. Changes in real sales numbers almost always reflect changes in local market share. There will be online competition in the grocery business. However, in Village’s home market of New Jersey, direct to your door delivery of groceries has been available for 18 years. Peapod started offering online grocery shopping in 1996. The company was later bought by Royal Ahold. Royal Ahold owns Stop & Shop. Peapod has 4 locations in Somerset, Toms River, Wanaque, and Watchung. These locations offer grocery delivery in Village’s markets. They are direct competition and have been for years. Peapod does not require a $300 annual fee like Amazon Fresh. Instead, Peapod simply adds a delivery charge. Customers also tip the driver. Since the driver normally carries the bags into the customer’s home and puts them on the kitchen counter for the customer – the tip is usually a generous one.  Peapod charges $6.95 for orders over $100. The charge for orders under $100 is $9.95. The minimum order size is $60. Customers can also order online and then drive to one of the 4 Stop & Shops mentioned above (Peapod often uses the second floor of a building where the ground level is Stop & Shop’s retail store) and pick up their own order. Pick-up is free. However, a Peapod employee still collects the groceries and brings them to the customer’s car. So, a tip is still expected. Common tips are probably $5 to $10. So, the total cost of a Peapod home delivery order is probably anywhere from $12 to $20 higher than a trip to a Stop & Shop grocery store. Even a pick-up is probably $5 higher than a normal Stop & Shop visit – and the customer still has to drive to a store to make the pick-up.

Wakefern is a large co-op with similar scale to Stop & Shop nationally and more scale than Stop & Shop in New Jersey. Creating a retail website is easier now than it was in 1996. Therefore, it is no surprise that 87 of Shop-Rite’s 480 locations offer online shopping. In fact, online shopping is available from both Shop-Rite and Peapod in certain towns like Somerset.

This is important, because the average supermarket customer in the U.S. does not drive far to visit a location. Kroger uses a 2 to 2.5 mile radius to define its local market. Research on the opening of a new Wal-Mart found that supermarkets further than 3 miles from a new Wal-Mart saw no meaningful impact to their sales. This suggests that Wal-Mart Supercenter’s do not draw grocery customers from more than 3 miles away. So, a 2-3 mile radius is a reasonable definition of a supermarket’s local market. Convenience is the biggest hurdle for online grocery providers to clear. Amazon Fresh requires a $300 annual fee from its customers. Peapod requires a $60 minimum order.

The average grocery store visit results in a checkout of less than $60. At Shop-Rite, the average customer pays $52 at checkout. So, online grocery shopping tends to be more expensive and require larger orders than traditional brick and mortar supermarkets. Furthermore, online selection is usually inferior to the largest traditional supermarkets. For example, Peapod has a narrower selection of items on its website than it does at its retail stores – even though its online business is literally housed in actual supermarkets. This is a logistical problem caused by the difference between running a delivery business, an employee collected pick-up order, and a customer’s self-selected in store order.

Costs tend to be lowest and selection widest when a customer is forced to put their own items in their own cart by going through the store aisles themselves. Another problem with online ordering is the need for scheduling. Online grocery orders require the customer to be home at a specific time. The customer is usually given a window that can be as long as 2-3 hours during which they must be home to answer the door. Meanwhile, in store visits are always at the customer’s options. Traditional supermarkets are often open from roughly 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week. Customers can drop into their local store at their convenience – including on the way home from work – and pick-up an order of any size. There is no scheduled time, no delivery fee, no tip, and no minimum order size. The selection is usually as wide as the company can provide.

For example, Village’s largest new store is 77,000 square feet. It includes plenty of fresh foods and prepared foods that are not sold online. So, online competition is not new to the New Jersey grocery market. And groceries are an especially tough business for online retailers to compete in.

One problem for online retailers is that all of their offline competitors have local scale. There is no such thing as a “Mom and Pop” grocery store in the U.S. Unlike hardware stores, pet stores, and book stores – the supermarket business is very locally consolidated. It would take an online retailer a long time to have scale locally. However, it would be possible for online retailers to develop bargaining power with suppliers. This is why Shop-Rite is run as a co-op.

Online retailers will continue to enter the grocery business. It is a huge market. The opportunity for growth is enormous. For example, the U.S. grocery business is probably about $600 billion a year while Amazon’s entire companywide sales are just $75 billion. Amazon could more than double its sales with just a 13% share of the nation’s grocery business. The size of the opportunity in groceries will continue to attract online and non-traditional competitors.

Non-traditional competitors are the biggest threat to Village. In the industry, “non-traditional” refers to both deep discount and high end (especially fresh and/or organic) grocery stores. In New Jersey, the high end is the area of greatest concern. The non-traditional supermarket with the store model best suited for entering New Jersey is The Fresh Market.

Local competitors that segment the market are a risk for existing supermarkets. The one-year customer retention rate in American supermarkets is probably around 70%. About 30% of customers may switch to a local competitor each year. In a Consumer Reports survey, the top reasons giving for switching were: “lower prices” and “better selection”. Shop-Rite generally has the lowest prices and widest selection in its local market. The only exception is in towns with a Wegman’s. Wegman’s has larger stores and wider selection than even the biggest Shop-Rites. As a result, Wegman’s is usually ranked #1 in customer satisfaction.

Supermarkets tend to be durable. However, there is a constant churn of locations at most companies – closing failed stores and relocating stores to better locations – that can be costly. Since a restructuring in the early 1990s, Village has not experienced any store failures. Nor has it relocated a store for any reason other than wanting to increase its size. Over the last 17 years, Village has spent just 1.7% of sales on cap-ex. Meanwhile, Kroger spent 2.7%, Safeway spent 3.0%, and Weis Markets spent 3.2%. Village’s low cap-ex advantage is entirely due to not closing stores. Because Village – as a Shop-Rite operator – has the highest sales per store of any supermarket, it also tends to be able to renew leases. Supermarkets are the “anchor” tenant at strip malls. In the last 17 years, there was only one example – in 2003 – of Village failing to sign a new lease. Village has the most durable portfolio of supermarkets of any publicly traded company. For example, in just the last 12 years, Kroger closed 21% of its starting store base. Village owns 4 stores (with 335,000 square feet of selling space) and leases 24 stores (with 1.3 million square feet of selling space). The initial term of a lease is usually 20-30 years. Many have multiple renewal options after those first 20-30 years.   

Read the Free Report on Village Supermarket

Check Out Focused Compounding

Check out this video inspired by my “Have My Sell Decisions Really Added Anything” post:

Video

Original Post

You might try the exercise of examining your own past sell decisions.

If you do, feel free to email me about what you learned by examining your own sell decisions.

Richard Beddard has added Howdens Joinery to his Share Sleuth portfolio. I mention this because I’ve written a little about Howdens Joinery in the past. And some of you know Howdens is the stock I like best that I don’t yet own.

This raises the question:

Why haven’t I bought Howdens yet?

There are two reasons:

1.       I try to buy stocks I’m confident I’d be willing to hold for more than 5 years if necessary

2.       I try to simply hold cash till I’m confident a stock will return at least 10% a year while I hold it

I believe Howdens may – in about five years from now – have fully covered the U.K. with about as many depots as it ever will have in that country. I’m not 100% sure this is true. I’ve seen companies raise their estimates of the size of their chain’s footprint that their home country can support. So, Howdens may have more years of depot growth ahead of it beyond 2022.

But, there will eventually be a limit to how many depots Howdens can build in the U.K. So, the next question is:

Can Howdens expand to other countries?

Richard Beddard writes:

“The other risk is Howdens might fill the UK with depots within my 10-year scenario, in which case it would need to find some other way to grow. Due to its entrepreneurial culture and decade long experimentation with European stores, I think it probably will be able to adapt its business model and establish profitable stores abroad.”

I don’t doubt Howdens’s entrepreneurial culture. But, at the risk of ethnocentrism here (I am an American writing about a British company), I am not 100% certain that Howdens’s entrepreneurial culture will – at the depot level – be easily exportable to non-English speaking countries. I’ve researched a few organizations in the past – notably Tandy Leather (TLF) and Car-Mart (CRMT) – where scuttlebutt taught me the importance of delegation and incentivization of the branch managers.

I believe Howdens’s model depends heavily on good management at the depot level.

As a rule, English speaking countries tend to be among the most “flexible” when it comes to labor in the sense employers can easily fire workers with little cost. And, as a rule, continental European countries tend to be among the least flexible when it comes to labor.

In its 2015 annual report, the company said:

“Managers hire their own staff locally and develop relationships with local builders. They do their own marketing to existing and potential customers. They adjust their pricing to suit local conditions. Managers manage their own stock. They work out where to put everything they can sell – old favourites and new introductions. Every day, they balance the needs of builders, end-users, staff and everyone in their local area who has an interest in the success of their depot...Managers are in charge of their own margin, and effectively of their own business. Both managers and staff are strongly incentivised on a share of their local profit less any stock loss, which results in a common aim to improve service, and consequently profit, with virtually no stock loss.”

Howdens’s most recent annual report included this statement:

“We continue to investigate the opportunities for Howdens in Europe. At the end of 2016, we had twenty four depots outside the UK: twenty in France, two in Belgium, one in the Netherlands and one in Germany. We have been in mainland Europe for eleven years and continue to learn. We intend to thoroughly understand these markets before any decision is made to expand in them.”

The emphasis is mine. But, I think it’s reasonable to assume - from this statement and other little bits you can find in past annual reports - that the depot level economics are not as good in France as in the U.K.

Finally, the most recent annual report includes this passage:

“We give staff the opportunity to get substantial bonuses for exceptional performance. This has always been part of the Howdens business model and culture. Our people share in the profitability of their local site, as well as in the profitability of Howdens as a whole. In the words of some of our staff, the bonuses that they can achieve for exceptional performance in our peak trading period can be ‘life-changing’.”

As an American, I don’t know much about the differences between the U.K. and countries like France and Germany in regard to how low guaranteed pay can be and how big bonuses can be – nor how easy it is to fire people who don’t fit with your company’s “entrepreneurial” culture.

I’m not sure Howdens’s depot level culture can spread to other countries that easily. If I believed the model was easily repeatable in other countries – this might be my favorite stock of all (ahead of even the two I already own: BWX Technologies and Frost).

Instead, Howdens is on the bubble for me. I like the at least five year future I see in the U.K. And I can imagine the stock returning 10% a year for the next 5 years. I am less certain of the repeatability of growth beyond five years.

Does this mean I like Howdens less than Richard Beddard?

Actually, no.

His Share Sleuth portfolio has a “meaningful position” definition of about 3% to 4% of the portfolio. For my personal portfolio, a normal position would start at around 20% of the portfolio. If I was considering whether or not to put something like 3% or 4% or 5% of my portfolio into Howdens – I’d have already made the decision to buy. Because I’m considering putting 20% of my portfolio into Howdens, I still haven’t made a decision.

Read Richard Beddard's Post About Howdens Joinery

Talk to Geoff about Howdens Joinery

Here is a blogger doing what I recommended: examining one of your past sell decisions...

Blog Post: What I Learned Selling My Nintendo Stock

YouTube Video: Do I Regret Selling Those Stocks?

My Original Post: “Over the Last 17 Years: Have My Sell Decisions Really Added Anything?”

Following Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods and the big drop in supermarket stocks – especially Kroger (KR) – I’ve decided to do a series of re-posts of my analysis of the U.S. supermarket industry.

Today’s re-post is a roughly 1,300 word excerpt from the Village Supermarket (VLGEA) stock report Quan and I wrote back in 2014. This section focuses on how the moat around a supermarket is always local.

Read the Full Report on Village Supermarket (VLGEA)

In the Grocery Industry: All Moats are Local

The market for groceries is local. Kroger’s superstores – about 61,000 square feet vs. 58,000 square feet at a Village run Shop-Rite – target customers in a 2 to 2.5 mile radius. An academic study of Wal-Mart’s impact on grocery stores, found the opening of a new Wal-Mart is only noticeable in the financial results of supermarkets located within 2 miles of the new Wal-Mart. This suggests that the opening of a supermarket even as close as 3 miles from an incumbent’s circle of convenience does not count as local market entry.

In the United States, there is one supermarket for every 8,772 people. This number has been fairly stable for the last 20 years. However, store churn is significant. Each year, around 1,656 new supermarkets are opened in the United States. Another 1,323 supermarkets are closed. This is 4.4% of the total store count. That suggests a lifespan per store of just under 23 years. In reality, the risk of store closure is highest at new stores or newly acquired stores. Mature locations with stable ownership rarely close. So, the churn is partially caused by companies seeking growth. Where barriers to new store growth are highest – like in Northern New Jersey – store closings tend to be lowest. Village’s CFO, Kevin Begley, described the obstacles to Village’s growth back in 2002: “…real estate in New Jersey is so costly and difficult to develop. New Jersey is not an easy area to enter. This situation also makes it challenging for us to find new sites. It’s been very difficult for us, and for our competitors, to find viable locations where there is enough land especially in northern Jersey and where towns will approve a new retail center. With the Garwood store…we signed a contract to develop that piece of property in 1992; it just opened last September (2001). So it can be a long time frame from when you identify a potentially excellent site and when you’re able to develop it. Finding viable sites is certainly a challenge that we face, as do our competitors.”

New Jersey is 13.68 times more densely populated than the United States generally (1,205 people per square mile vs. 88). It is about 12 times more densely populated than the median state. This means New Jersey should have about 12 times more supermarkets per square mile to have the same foot traffic per store. The lack of available space makes this impossible. As a result, the number of people visiting a New Jersey supermarket is greater than the number of people visiting supermarkets in other states. The greater population density in New Jersey has several important influences on store economics.

One, it encourages the building of bigger stores. This sounds counter intuitive. If there are a lot of people in a small space and land is difficult to develop, it would be logical to enter the market with a small format store. That is true. However, incumbent stores have big advantages over new entrants. Incumbents have leases in key locations. Their stores are highly profitable. As a result, store owners in New Jersey will favor expanding each existing store to the maximum possible square footage whenever renovation is a possibility. This is what most Shop-Rite members have done. Village does not operate especially large Shop-Rites. However, 58,000 square feet is huge by national supermarket standards. Whenever Village has renovated a store, it has tried to increase square footage. Village has sometimes relocated stores to larger footprints. And Village’s most recent new stores have been huge. For example, Village recently built a 77,000 square foot replacement store in Morris Plains. This store is almost as large as the Wegman’s superstores (80,000 to 140,000 square feet) that tend to be the biggest supermarkets in New Jersey.

Two, New Jersey supermarkets turn the product on their shelves faster. This changes product economics for the store and the experience for the customer. A Shop-Rite turns its inventory phenomenally fast relative to the grocery section of a Wal-Mart. As a result, stale inventory and lack of help – the two largest complaints from grocery shoppers at Wal-Mart – are unusual in New Jersey supermarkets. More customers per square foot means higher sales velocity. It is not possible to stack more inventory per square foot. It is only possible to restock inventory faster. High inventory turnover can increase customer satisfaction by increasing the freshness of the product without requiring the store to buy different merchandise than a competitor with stale product on its shelves. More importantly for the stores, gross margins can be lower at a high traffic location and yet gross returns can be higher. In fact, this is exactly what happens at Village. Village’s gross margins are 10% lower than Kroger’s (27% vs. 30%) while gross profit divided by net tangible assets is 2.32 times higher (290% vs. 125%). A New Jersey Shop-Rite generates much higher returns on capital than any other traditional supermarket around the country. Again, this encourages reinvestment in existing stores. This further raises the barrier to local entry. A new store would need to find an open location where it could put a 60,000 square foot location to rival the breadth of selection and the low prices of the incumbent supermarkets. In most of the country, land is more widely available and the incumbent supermarkets are only around 35,000 square feet. Nationally, the average supermarket does $318,170 a week in sales. In New Jersey, the average Shop-Rite does $1 million a week. The initial investment required to enter a local grocery market in New Jersey is higher because the industry standard is higher and the costs of developing anything are higher. It is important to remember that the barrier is not simply the roughly 100% more expensive real estate in New Jersey versus the country generally. Nor is the barrier simply the lack of available space in New Jersey. The final hurdle to clear is the simple fact that supermarkets in New Jersey have evolved into much larger, lower margin beasts than the competition elsewhere.

Large stores support wide selection, low prices, fresh inventory, and high customer service. A comparison of inventory turns (Cost of Goods Sold / Average Inventory) helps illustrate this point. Village’s inventory turns are 26, The Fresh Market 21, Whole Foods 21, Fairway 20, Kroger 12, Safeway 11, and Weis Markets 9. It is easy to imagine a division between two groups: the supermarkets focused on freshness and the supermarkets focused on low cost. However, Village – a low cost generalist – has higher inventory turns than the group of “fresh” supermarkets (The Fresh Market, Whole Foods, and Fairway). Village turns its inventory twice as fast as traditional supermarkets like Kroger and Safeway. Kroger is an especially good comparison because its store size is the same as Village’s and its business strategy (big stores, wide selection, low prices, and generalist) is virtually identical. The difference between inventory turns at Village and Kroger is that almost all of Villages’ stores are in New Jersey while none of Kroger’s stores are in New Jersey. As a result of this higher inventory turnover, Village can charge customers 3 cents less per dollar of sales than Kroger and have double the return on capital (33% vs. 17%). The moat around Village is its portfolio of big, established stores in New Jersey that would take a lot of time, money, and risk to duplicate. If Kroger controlled these locations it would have at least as good returns on capital as Village. But the only way Kroger will ever control key New Jersey locations is through the acquisition of a New Jersey supermarket chain. The time, cost, and risk of introducing a new banner – the Kroger name is unknown in New Jersey – makes entry by any means other than acquisition extremely unlikely. The moat around Village is entirely local and historical. It runs big, mature stores under the well-known Shop-Rite name. Most importantly, it runs them in the best locations in America for supermarkets.

Read the Full Report on Village Supermarket (VLGEA)

Frost (CFR): 42%

BWX Technologies (BWXT): 23%

Natoco: 6%

Cash: 29%

It's very possible I will purchase a new 20% position this week (29% of my portfolio is in cash and 6% is in a stock I'd happily eliminate).

If I do buy the stock, I'll announce it on the paid site (Focused Compounding) first and then mention the stock's name here a week or two later.

Anyone who wants to guess what the stock is can email me at gannononinvesting@gmail.com

There are no prizes for a correct guess. But, it might be a fun exercise.