The Short Notes
Bharat Shah breaks down compounding machines. He points out the characteristics that drive companies to compound over long periods of time and the characteristics investors need to profit from them.
“Good investing is all about getting more in return for what you have already paid.”
Successful investing requires getting the valuation right, buying at a discounted price to that value, re-evaluation the valuation over time, and patience to realize that value.
The game of investing is about navigating the ups and downs with patience, discipline, and knowledge of the basic principles to make sure the ride is as mistake- free as possible.
“Fundamentally, investing is simple, but not easy. Simple, because it is not di!cult to understand the essential principles of investing… The di!cult part is getting the right psychological traits, a disciplined behavioral make-up, a quiet sense of innate confidence (but not arrogance and rigidity), a sense of serenity in face of adverse market situation, and an independent, curious mind. This is more likely to stand in good stead rather than only an ability to accurately predict every single quarter’s earnings for the next 20 quarters.”
Compounding Machines:
Size of Opportunity:
The size of the future opportunity determines whether a business can grow at a high rate and over a long time i.e. growth rate and duration.
A sustainable growth rate is a product of the size of the opportunity and competence of management.
If the future opportunity is less than originally expected the market quickly rerates prices lower.
Quality of Business:
Ability to create value, capital e!cient, and hold competitors at bay via pricing power, low- cost operator, or other moats.
Quality businesses are best able to turn large opportunities into long-term growth and value creation.
Quality businesses tend to attract quality management.
“Returns in an investment are a function of an earnings growth, quality and predictability of the earnings, quality of management and price- value gap (margin of safety).”
The returns on a decent business, given a long enough runway, will track the growth of earnings.
Compounding Multiplier (CM) = CAGR of returns/CAGR of profits
CM = 1 is normal.
CM > 1 is
exceptional,
typically have a
high ROCE or ROE, sustainable/consistent profit growth,capital e!cient, and/or were initially undervalued. Companies with a CM between 1 and 2 performed best.
CM < 1 is an inferior business, low ROCE or ROE, poor capital allocation, and/or typically were initially overvalued.
Exception: most capital-intensive or asset-heavy businesses do not follow the rules.
During the growth phase of the market cycle, the focus should be on growth at a reasonable price to optimize returns.
Quality earnings growth can make up for valuation mistakes and overpaying.
The best quality growth companies have an internal growth engine that avoids raising capital/diluting shareholders to maintain growth. Be wary of companies that require persistent capital raises/dilution to maintain growth. It’s a sign of poor management or poor business.
“Businesses entailing significant capex and businesses with significant capital dilution are Siamese twins… And typically, both these issues are an anti-thesis to earning good returns and provide a perfect recipe for mediocre returns if not losses.”
Markets reward organic growth more so than growth through acquisitions. Organic growth tends to be more durable and cost-effocient. Acquisitions, generally, require overpaying for assets, negatively impacting returns.
Banks/Finance Companies
Represent a proxy for growth of the economy.
Tend to be a lead indicator of growth, precede GDP growth
Growth of the sector tends to be a multiple of GDP
Carry significant leverage
Its raw material is money. Dilution is part of the business. E!cient timing of the dilution at a good price is key.
ROE is a cause and outcome of earnings growth.
Look for high ROE, high growth or modest ROE, high growth
“In general, ROE will provide an upper limit for sustainable profit growth without dilution… Banks which enjoy a superior ROE would be able to a”ord a superior earnings growth without dilution, which is the most potent combination for the highest value creation.”
Moats: Intellectual
property
Legal monopoly
Valuable brand
Exclusive technology
Favorable costumer goodwill
Low-cost advantage
Test for Quality Business:
Capital Intensity: does it require a high amount of capital — either in fixed assets or working capital? Ideally, the answer is no to both. If only one, then higher working capital is better than higher fixed assets has a better chance of creating value.
Capital E!ciency: does it generate a superior return? The answer must be yes.
“Value creation can occur only if there are economic profits. Profits are economic profits (and not just accounting profits), only if they are left after charging all real costs of being or staying in business.”
Rising profits with declining capital e!ciency can negate value creation.
“Consistency, durability, predictability, and superiority of ROCE is the acid test on which the possibility or otherwise, of economic value creation (or investment returns) is tested. Concept of ROCE operates at two fundamental levels: absolute i.e. the level below which long-term value creation is not possible. An Absolute minima for ROCE is the cost of capital and relative, i.e. how far is the ROCE superior to cost of capital or how much is EVA. Absolute ROCE is the critical level below which permanent loss of capital may arise. Relative ROCE magnitude, along with growth, paves the way for inferring magnitude or level of investment returns.”
Growth and Quality of Growth:
High ROCE, high earnings growth: the best combination for value creation.
High ROCE, moderate to poor earnings growth: recipe for capital preservation and modest value creation.
High ROCE, negative earnings growth: value destruction.
Low ROCE, high earnings growth: may not destroy value or lead to high value creation.
ROCE < cost of capital: value destructive.
High-Quality Business Characteristics:
High ROCE, high earnings growth over long period of time
Favorable entry price
Large and growing size of opportunity
Greater clarity of earnings growth
Higher predictability of earnings
Superior management
Outstanding capital e!ciency
No capital dilution over long periods
Preservation of capital is a key objective in order to avoid permanent losses and grow a portfolio over time.
High-quality businesses experiencing a temporary setback are often priced in the market as having a permanent setback. A buying opportunity.
Buying bad businesses at a great price requires being right twice — buying and selling — since bad businesses are not good long-term investments.
Tests of Quality Management:
Capital Allocation: how good is management at allocating surplus capital? Intelligent capital allocation shows the discipline and character of management.
Management has four uses for free cash: funding growth, funding acquisitions, building a cushion for tougher times (financial strength), and returning the surplus to shareholders.
Capital Distribution: does management hoard excess cash or return it to shareholders? Holding excess cash can be a sign of poor management, lower value creation, or potential for diworsification.
“When a firm has more than one business as a part of it, overall firm valuation tends to gravitate towards the lowest-rated business in terms of the valuation.” The worry is the worst business will pull capital away from the better businesses, reducing overall growth.
Potential Signs of Poor Management:
When minority owners believe they will not treated as owners.
Creative/colorful accounting practices. “When intent is not trusted, the value put on the numbers will diminish, since markets will prefer to shrink value to cover for a possible future shock, and thus, systematically undervaluing such a business and management, for a long period till, if at all, the credibility is restored.”
The value of a business is its cigar butt value (NPV of its current earnings extended over the life of the business) plus its growth value (NPV of future growth beyond cigar butt earnings).
“Price always carries a message or signal with it, at times spurious and other times, valuable one.”
Price = Value +/- Noise and Sentiment
Investment Success requires:
Understand the value of a business.
Discipline to buy an asset at a discount its value (margin of safety).
Get the highest discount possible to improve potential returns and increase the margin of safety.
Patience to sit on a good asset.
“Cash flows over time (not just period cash flows) are a more valuable guide to what is happening to the business than accounting profits.”
“A business has to generate FCF over a every reasonable period of time and material FCF over its lifetime, for it to create value. More stringently, a business has to generate operational cash flow (OCF) (after meeting requirement of incremental working capital but before capex) in virtually every single period or year (barring some exceptional one-o” period). That is a must for value creation.”
“Firms with exceptional free cash generation (FCF to PAT more than one) have the highest dividend payout and very healthy returns…”
A high margin of safety can lead to a great return with a mediocre- quality business and an exceptional return with a high-quality business.
“Between two businesses with an identical ROCE and (incidentally) an identical consistency of growth rate, the business, with a greater in-built predictability, will logically command a higher value.”
More predictable earnings, lead to more certainty, which can lead to a lower discount rate. Less predictable earnings lead to less certainty and a higher discount rate.
More consistent earnings growth rates lead to a higher valuation than less consistent earnings growth rates.
Earnings Quality Characteristics:
Predictability of earnings
Consistency of earnings growth
Superiority of ROCE
Payot ratio (management test — willing to pay out excess cash not needed to grow the business, the result is rising dividends)
Quality companies fit well with strategies that prioritize the avoidance of permanent loss of capital.
“The basic trick is not to look at valuation as the first filter; quality should invariably be the first filter… Quality within itself would include two aspects a) quality of the business and b) quality of the management.”
Quality companies are rarely available at deeply discounted prices except during market-wide crashes or when sentiment towards the stock is severely negative. A “reasonable” price is often the best option.
“Good investment is not about the cheapest or an apparently cheapest price; it is equally about opportunity size, quality, growth, and sustainability.”
Risk is not knowing what you’re doing. It’s not knowing the character of the business and its value, the character of the management, and the character of yourself.
“One of the laws of economics suggest that at high price, the demand is low and low price, demand is high. But in investing, when the price (of a stock) is high and going up, demand goes up and when price falls, demand goes down.”
Investing recklessly can produce profits in the short run. You can be wrong but look right in the short term, which leads you to learn the wrong lessons. The risk is that it emboldens you to take greater and greater risks.
“The character of the investor and his temperament have equal, if not at times more, bearing on the final returns that an investor may generate, even after benefiting from a quality investment and intelligent decision.”
Investing outcomes are determined by the quality of your decisions, the quality of your investments, and the quality of your behavior.
Investing success is often driven by what you exclude. Quality, value, growth, and opportunity size are a few exclusionary filters.
“There are only two objectives that any worthwhile investment has got to achieve —capital preservation and capital appreciation (or growth)… Capital preservation is the first and the primary goal because not losing capital is the fundamental aspect of playing the game well.”
Skills Needed to Preserve Capital:
Know the basic principles behind value creation.
Discipline to stick to those principles.
Wisdom to not play when the game o”ers no opportunities worth playing.
Behavior: “Ego is an
expensive hobby to have in the markets.”
“Human mind has evolved to believe that what has been there in the past,or is there today, will continue in the future (continuity bias). Equally, it fails to recognize an inferior outcome, past or present, becoming superior in the future or vice versa; or, inadequacy to perceive that which did not exist in the past, whether it could be there in the future.”
“Falling in love with what we own (endowment bias) and seeking selective confirmation for what we own, and filtering away that information which runs contrary to what we own (confirmation bias) are signification investment pitfalls that an investor needs to avoid.”
“Aversion to acknowledge the fact of a loss and to refuse to recognize a decision gone sour is a blind spot (loss aversion bias) which results in deeper losses or eroded gains.”
A persistent and a deep fall or a fear of such fall, even if uncorrelated to any corresponding fall in value, induces a mental trigger and pressurized the mind to act on such fears.”
“The tendency to throw away the good and nourish the rubbish, when faced with uncertain markets, prompting one to ‘encash’ gains before they disappear.”
“Mindless attempts at replicating… experiential success, without realizing that the context and circumstances are di”erent.”
“The ability to act on what one believes (assuming that what is believed in is right), in face of a hostile majority against you, is an advantage and not a threat. Independent mind and solitude are virtues in investing.”
“Whatever the allocation plan may be, discipline to the plan, through di”erent economic cycles, is vital.”
“Steadfast commitment to one’s position for long is a virtue if it has passed adequate scrutiny before the purchase.”
Even the best businesses will experience large swings between their stock’s yearly high and low price. The normal volatility of markets create opportunities for the patient investor.