CategoryGeneral thoughts

Saw this recommendation on google. With google crossing 450$, I think analyst are tripping over each other in raising their price targets.

Gives me a feeling of deja-vu – remember year 2000, right after the internet bubble burst – when the conventional thought was that companies like e-bay, CISCO could not go down, because these companies had solid business models, were dominant in their industries and had a fantastic future ahead of them.

The recommendation also notes the following

Stahlman said he reached his estimate for $2,000 a share using a multiple of enterprise value, which adds market capitalization, preferred equity and debt and subtracts cash.
That’s based on the 6.2 multiple commanded by Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker and the company most often equated with Google as a competitor and model, he said.

Wow !! how can google be equated with microsoft ?? Don’t get me wrong …google is a great company and I love google product (I cant think of a day when I have not used the search engine). But google is not a monopoly by any stretch of imagination (which microsoft was for quite some time for OS and office products). Going forward the competition is only going to increase and I cannot think of goggle controlling the internet the way microsoft had a lock on the desktop.

The analyst predicts a sale of 100 billion some time in the future (does’nt say when) and the price of 2000 gives google a Mcap of 0.5 trillon dollars (500 billion !!!). Assuming google is doing extremely well even then, and has a Net profit margin of 20 % (current is 25 %), which I think is not very likely (but still lets assume for the sake of it). The PE at that time would still be around 25.

How many 100 billion dollar companies can grow at above average rates ?
How many 100 billion dollar companies have a net profit margin of 20 % or higher in a global market and can sustain it ?
How many 100 billion dollar companies have growths high enough to justify a PE of 25 ?

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.” – Albert Einstein

update : 01/20/2006

read views on google from bill miller. According to him the value of google could twice of the current price. At the same time following comments from him are worth noting

He said Google’s (Research) market-implied growth rate is about 28 percent. Consensus numbers for the company point to a 5-year growth rate of 33 percent to 35 percent, which then slows over the next 12 years to that of the overall economy, he said.
“The theoretical value of Google is still substantially higher than the market price. So the theoretically justified market cap under those assumptions is in the $240 billion range,” Miller said earlier this week.

Miller, who takes a long view on stocks and has low portfolio turnover, said there are still many unknowns about Google. Many companies start with great promise and then something goes awry and they disappear, he said.

Another topic at the bull session was whether Google’s users were “locked in” to its model, the way customers of Microsoft’s Windows operating system are, said John Miller, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University.
“Suppose you do have the best search engine. The big question is how sticky are the users,” he said.
In theory, customers could easily use a search engine other than Google, but Bill Miller said the fact that Google’s market share is stable suggests that a “psychological lock-in” driven by brand loyalty is keeping them coming back. (emphasis mine)

Good article (free registration required) on mckinsey quarterly on how to evaluate performance, when the invested capital is low in a business (like IT services, FMCG, consulting services etc)

http://mckinseyquarterly.com/article_abstract.aspx?ar=1678&L2=5&L3=5

Some excerpts

A more useful way to measure performance is to divide annual economic profit by revenue.2 Grounded in the same logic as conventional ROIC and growth measures,3 this metric gives executives a clearer picture of absolute and relative value creation among companies, irrespective of a particular company’s or business unit’s absolute level of invested capital, which can distort more traditional metrics if it is very low or negative. As a result, executives are better able to evaluate the relative financial performance of businesses with different capital-investment strategies and to make sound judgments about where and how to spend investment dollars.

In application, this approach will vary from business to business, depending on what is defined as volume and margin. In a people business, such as accounting, the margin would likely best be broken down into the number of accountants multiplied by the economic profit per accountant. In a software business, however, it would be better calculated as the number of copies of software sold times the economic profit per copy of software; in this case, deriving the margin from the number of employees wouldn’t make sense. But in all cases, this approach can provide a more nuanced understanding of performance across businesses or companies with divergent levels of capital intensity.

Equally important, economic profit divided by revenue avoids the pitfalls of ROICs that are extremely high or meaningless as a result of very low or negative invested capital. Economic profit, in contrast, is positive for companies with negative invested capital and positive posttax operating margins, so it creates a meaningful measure. It is also less sensitive to changes in invested capital. If the services business mentioned previously doubled its capital to $20 million, its ROIC would be halved. But its economic profit would change only slightly and economic profit divided by revenue hardly at all (to 6.8 percent, from 6.9 percent), thus more accurately reflecting how small an effect this shift in capital would have on the value of the business.4

my thoughts : The above metric is not sufficient to evaluate. I would still consider a low capital intensive business superior compared to a capital intensive one , even if the above ratio is low , as a low capital intensive business could have higher free cash flow (provided both have similar competitive advantages ) and hence could be worth more.
The above metric is good to look at, but i would not base my decision on it (or any other single metric)

I have always wondered why analysts give price targets, when it is extremely difficult to predict the price level of a security, which is dependent on a host of factors with a few of these factors related to the psychology of the market at a future date.

The typical research report ( at least the free ones which I typically read) usually starts off with a very brief background of the industry. It would then discuss the latest results with a brief analysis of the last 2-3 years. The next 2-3 years income statement and balance sheet is projected. The report would typically end with a price target with simplistic analysis which is typically based on the projected EPS and a PE no.

The more rigorous analyst would give his logic for the PE assumed(often  based on the past PE of the company ). Most don’t bother to do even that.

PE as a measure is fairly flawed measure as it does not consider the ROE of the firm, its competitive advantage, impact of industry dynamics etc. At the same time the number used in backward looking (based on past PE, earning etc).I would assume a more rigorous mode of valuation would be based on DCF, with various scenarios being considered and valuation range being arrived at (with degree of confidence for this range).

But then the analyst is giving the consumer (the investor) what he wants – A precise price target (which would be hopefully achieved in the future) , a certainty,  where none exists.

It’s not that all analyst reports are of a poor quality. Some do discuss the industry in depth and attempt to do a more thorough valuation exercise. But most are superficial and not worth reading. I have found the original source of the information – The annual reports, far more useful than the analyst reports and have never made a serious commitment of capital based on an analyst report.

Do we have any good source of analyst reports in India? If you are aware please email me.,

For those interested in the discussion on brands and how strong, and powerful brands add value to a business, there is an article in fortune which discusses the top ten brands across the globe.

How to Build a Breakaway BrandHow ten companies, making products from drills to waffles, took good brands and made them much, much better.By Al Ehrbar
What do Gerber, Google, and Eggo have in common? They’re all selling familiarity, trust, and quality—those intangible traits summed up by the word “brand.” Right now that word is more important than ever before, because competitors are more instantly reactive and consumers more sophisticated than ever before. The Model T Ford was in production for 18 long years with little change; Sony’s Cyber-shot digital cameras go out of production while the packaging is still crisp. And once upon a time shoppers pretty much believed the hype; these days Internet-powered bargain hunters are armed with accurate pricing and product information—and brutal in their search for value.
In this cutthroat marketplace, which brands have been most successful? To find out, FORTUNE turned to Landor Associates, a brand and design consultant in San Francisco. Landor mined a huge database of brand perceptions called the BrandAsset Valuator, or BAV, to identify ten products that scored the largest increases in brand strength from 2001 to 2004. (Landor is part of WPP Group’s Young & Rubicam division, which owns the BAV.) Landor’s partner, the New York consultancy BrandEconomics, then calculated the pop in economic value each of these breakaway brands gave their parent companies.
Here’s how it works. First, Landor and BrandEconomics asked consumers—9,000 of them—what they thought of 2,500 U.S. brands. Then they looked at brand strength. This is a combination of two properties: differentiation and relevance. Differentiation is the degree to which a brand stands out. Relevance is the degree to which consumers believe a brand meets their needs. That all sounds rather obvious, but what’s surprising is that the two factors don’t necessarily go together. Rolls-Royce has stellar differentiation but hardly any relevance, since few people can pay $300,000 for four wheels. Kleenex is highly relevant but undifferentiated: Most tissues feel alike. The brands that do best are those that deliver on both counts.
In addition, the BAV measures a brand’s stature, which can also be broken down into two components—esteem and knowledge. Esteem is how well regarded the brand is, while knowledge refers to whether the consumer understands it. And once again, those two qualities don’t operate in lockstep. A high-esteem, low-knowledge profile may be a sign of a brand on the rise—the consumer’s curiosity is piqued. A high-knowledge, low-esteem profile, on the other hand, is the consumer’s way of dissing a brand: We know it, and it’s nothing special (think Dodge or Coor’s Lite).
Weakening brands tend to depend more on coupons and discounts; muscular ones can command a premium. How much does that matter? A lot. The intangible value of a company is its market value minus its tangible capital (i.e., property, plant, equipment, and net working capital). A BrandEconomics analysis found that companies with strong, well-regarded brands had an intangible value of 250% of annual sales; companies with listless brands had one of only 70%.
In important ways, though, the value of a brand is incalculable. A rising brand secures more customer loyalty, higher margins, greater pricing flexibility, and new opportunities for growth. And brands on the way up, BrandEconomics research shows, ride through economic downturns with less trauma. “The combination of faster growth with less risk,” says Hayes Roth, vice president for global marketing at Landor, “is business nirvana.” Here’s a look at ten brands that are pretty close to paradise right now.

I had posted my thoughts on the difference between a brand and franchise. Initially my understanding was that they are the same and a strong brand equates to a good franchise (franchise can be defined as a business which earns more than its cost of capital and has a sustainable competitive advantage).

However I have seen cases where the two are not the same ( ex : titan, Mercedes etc, general motor brands etc).

I put out a question asking for comments and got replies from bruce (see below) and from george who has put his thoughts on his website Fat Pitch Financials.

I am listing a few criteria which came to my mind after I got the comments from bruce and george

So here goes
A strong brand would equate to profitable franchise if price is not the key differentiator or is not key factor in the purchase decision. I can think of the following cases

• Low value purchase v/s high value purchase (borrowed from george’s post on his website). I cannot think of anyone putting as much effort in buying a cola v/s buying a car. As a result a strong brand can charge more for a product
• A complex purchase decision requiring substantial information to asess the true price of a product. For ex: high end electronic products – A bose system ?
• Emotional association with the product – Disney products / Barbie dolls – try giving a child a regular lower price but equally good doll and you will understand what I mean
• Social proof / Association tendency – High prestige product which confer a social status on the owner . Ex : tiffany’s

Ofcourse the above are not sufficient for a strong brand to be a profitable franchise. Cost structures and other factors would also be important for the business to be a profitable franchise.

Now why go through all this in trying to distinguish between a franchise and good business (with or without a brand). If I remember correctly, warren buffett in his annual report has written about newspapers as very strong franchise with a kind of a toll bridge business model. Later with internet and other media, he commented that newspapers were still good businesses, but not bullet proof franchise. In the same section he also did a rough valuation exercise of a good franchise v/s good business and showed how strong franchises are worth more than good businesses.


Please share your thoughts on the above topic.

Comments :
Bruce said…
Here’s my abstract opinion (there are a LOT of ways of looking at this one question). A brand/franchise/whatever is something which signals a contract with the customer. It’s a popular solution to the prisoner’s dilemma problem that plagues all economic transactions to some extent. Game theory deals with this subject very well.A vendor spends a great deal of time and money developing an easily recognizable public image that is protected by law (from having other vendors use the same image). That image slowly becomes a reputation, but it also signals a commitment from the vendor not to cheat the customer quickly and then run away. The average consumer must keep track of a very large and growing number of brands and franchises. They don’t want to have to do the enormous work to validate a vendor every time they want to make an economic purchase. A brand/franchise allows them to make quick decisions, often in unknown places. So in a sense, a brand/franchise becomes a contract between the buyer and the vendor. The cost in establishing the brand (and also the value in not destroying it) is a fuzzy guarantee placed into the public by the vendor.When you have a comodity product or service, that brand becomes less important. Someone stands by the side of the road with a rock that you want to buy. They have no brand, but all you want is a rock which is easily verified during the purchase. Anyone spending lots of money to establish a brand is at a cost disadvantage to someone who just gathers rocks and stands at the side of the road. For that reason, comodity markets are won by whoever has the lowest cost. If the market demands 10,000 rocks, then you essentially line up the vendors from lowest cost to highest cost. You start with the lowest cost and work your way up until you buy 10,000 rocks (well, it’s more complicated than that due to the supply/demand curve). The market price essentially becomes the highest cost rock among the 10,000.So call it a brand or franchise or whatever, it’s really a sort of contract. It’s very important that the law upholds the property rights of the brand or everything breaks down. In fact, it’s always important for property rights to be upheld for economic activity to be efficient and effective. India has come a long way over the years and I suspect it will become a very major economic superpower so long as it continues on the path of free markets and property rights.
7:02 PM
Bruce said…
What makes a strong brand? Well, one view is covered very well in The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. But a better answer is to look at your own behavior and where you rely on brand. Buffett made some comments about Coca Cola that make a lot of sense. One type of very good brand is small, repeat purchases that are almost habit.When you look at what a brand is all about (a contract), then you can ask yourself when is that contract valuable from the vendor’s perspective. One good thing is lots of confusion and doubt in the minds of customers. Another is a long delay before the customer finds out whether what they bought was good quality vs poor quality.
9:47 AM
George said…
This is a very interesting topic. I posted my comments about it over at my blog, Fat Pitch Financials. It would be nice to put together a set of criteria by which to gage how likely a brand will lead to a franchise.
8:04 PM

I have put this question to myself and have come up with two main reasons

1. My blog is more like an online dairy. I try to put my thoughts on a regular basis. I try to read what I have posted in the past and try to see what I was thinking then and how has my thinking changed. Typically if something works out, I tend to think that it was my foresight (given time I will be become the new warren buffett !!) and luck had nothing to do with it. My blog ensures that when I look at my posts, I would be able to ‘recall’ what I was thinking and see if I can improve/ change it. At the same time if something does not work out, my earlier posts may prevent me from attributing my failure to bad luck.
2. The second reason is to learn from others. Bruce, value architects and a few other visitors have commented or written personally to me in the past. It is good to have a different opinion or to get some inputs from others as it makes me rethink my assumptions or helps me in resolving some of my doubts.

I don’t think this blog is going to make me money directly (although it would not hurt), but hopefully would make me a better investor.

And what the heck ! , I am having fun putting my thoughts out and getting feedback/ suggestions/ clarifications from other. For me that is good enough.

Found this good article (below) on wallstraits.com. I have wondered several times the same point – ‘if the stock tips are so good and reliable’ then why are they being given out for free or for a fee. Put it another way, all these experts on the TV channels and websites who claim to know where the market is going ..why are they letting others onto it or selling this advice for a fee. Can these ‘experts’ not getting rich by following their own advise? Replace the work expert with  broker and this paradox is even more jarring !

It is ironic that two approaches to stock market investing that would be widely accepted in the prosperous second half of the twentieth century—Graham and Dodd’s “value” investing and T. Rowe Price’s “growth” investing—were spawned within a few years of each other during the depressed 1930s. Neither Graham and Dodd nor Price anticipated the long boom that would finally get under way in the 1940s. But the analytical approaches they developed, even though profoundly colored by the searing experience of the Great Depression, proved to be very durable, providing systematic methodologies for investing that would be successfully employed under very different conditions in the future.
At the same time Benjamin Graham and David Dodd were writing Security Analysis (1934), another student of the market, Alfred Cowles, was collecting data in an effort to answer a basic question that intrigued him. Seeking sound investment advice, Cowles had become confused by the bewildering array of investment newsletters published in the 1920s. He finally decided in 1928 to conduct a test in which he would monitor 24 of the most widely circulated publications to determine which was actually the best. The results of his efforts proved quite disappointing; none of the services correctly anticipated the 1929 crash or the subsequent bear market, and most of the advice offered proved to be quite poor.
It was then Cowles asked the question that he would spend years attempting to answer: Can anyone really consistently predict stock prices? Using his inherited wealth to fund research on the subject, Cowles assembled a great deal of data and eventually reached a tentative answer to his question. Summed up in three words, the answer was “It is doubtful.”
Cowles found that only slightly more than a third of the investment newsletters he monitored had performed well and that he could not prove definitely that the results of even the best of them were attributable to anything other than luck. He also took on the proponents of the Dow theory, exhaustively examining the predictions of William Hamilton, the Wall Street Journal editor who succeeded Charles Dow. For more than 25 years, Hamilton had been publishing market prognostications based on Dow’s ideas. Hamilton died in 1929, shortly after issuing, only days before the crash, his most famous prediction: that the bull market of the 1920s had come to an end. He received a great deal of posthumous credit for his timely market call from observers who forgot that he had made similar calls in 1927 and, twice, in 1928. Cowles did not overlook the previous faux pas; his analysis concluded that although a Hamilton portfolio would have grown by a factor of 19 during Hamilton’s years as editor of the Journal (1903-1929), an investor who simply bought into the market and held his stocks over that same period would have done twice as well.
Cowles, although not a trained academic expert, compiled an impressive array of information that would be used decades later by scholars seeking to examine the same questions that had interested him. (Much of the data used in this book to compute price-earnings ratios and dividend rates for the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries comes from Cowles’s work.) Cowles founded the Cowles Center for Economic Research in Colorado Springs; the facility was moved to the University of Chicago in 1939 and would over time support the work of many Nobel Prize-winning economists. But in the 1930s, Cowles’s insights were understandably unpopular with professional investment advisors, most of whom preferred to ignore his conclusions.
What must have been most galling was a simple point Cowles often made that was never answered effectively by the investment advice practitioners. As Cowles put it, “Market advice for a fee is a paradox. Anybody who really knew just wouldn’t share his knowledge. Why should he? In five years, he could be the richest man in the world. Why pass the word on?”
In spite of the conclusions he reached, Cowles never doubted that investors would keep buying newsletters. As he put it, “Even if I did my negative surveys every five years, or others continued them when I’m gone, it wouldn’t matter. People are still going to subscribe to these services. They want to believe that somebody really knows. A world in which nobody really knows can be frightening.”  
Sage@wallstraits.com
Credits: This article is primarily extracted from B Mark Smith’s market history book, Toward Rational Exuberance, 2001.

Have been thinking of how higher petrol prices would affect indian industry. My opinion is that companies like FMCG / IT services / Telecom should not effected much , either due to their inherent pricing ability or because fuel costs are low for them and affect them only indirectly.

The above event should impact oil companies postively ( hopefully they will not go bankrupt). Commodity businesses may get impacted badly if the demand falters and the costs go up. Metals/ Cement / Steel etc could get impacted negatively.

Cant think of the impact on retail / Media and other such industries. They would have some second or third order impact ( less disposable income leading to lower demand ? ) …

I think the bigger impact could be on inflation and interest rates. I would stay away from fixed income funds for some time atleast. Also individuals with variable rate loans could be impacted. Will it impact the housing market …not really sure about it

Came across this blog from darren. He seems to have made 100000 usd via blogging in the last 1 year. Seems to be an interesting business model. Can this become a full time source of income ? i dont think so ( and darren suggests the same).

But i think blogs can be become a powerful tool for small time entreprenuers and a creative outlet for a lot of people. In addition a lot of companies can use blogs for internal and external communication (with customers ). Microsoft seems to be doing so.

We may see some companies use blogs in addition to their website to get closer to their customer (experience marketing ?)

It would interesting to see how this medium develop. But it would be safe to say a handful will achieve prominence ( the ones which will pass the tipping point ??) , whereas the rest would remain a labor of love (or pain if you are in it for the money only )

there is an interesting post i read on mark cuban’s blog on a similar topic – podcasting

A new article on india and china. interesting to read

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_34/b3948401.htm

some excerpts

Even more exhilarating is the pace of innovation, as tech hubs like Bangalore spawn companies producing their own chip designs, software, and pharmaceuticals. “I find Bangalore to be one of the most exciting places in the world,” says Dan Scheinman, Cisco Systems Inc.’s senior vice-president for corporate development. “It is Silicon Valley in 1999.” Beyond Bangalore, Indian companies are showing a flair for producing high-quality goods and services at ridiculously low prices, from $50 air flights and crystal-clear 2 cents-a-minute cell-phone service to $2,200 cars and cardiac operations by top surgeons at a fraction of U.S. costs. Some analysts see the beginnings of hypercompetitive multinationals. “Once they learn to sell at Indian prices with world quality, they can compete anywhere,” predicts University of Michigan management guru C.K. Prahalad. Adds A. T. Kearney high-tech consultant John Ciacchella: “I don’t think U.S. companies realize India is building next-generation service companies.”

Barring cataclysm, within three decades India should have vaulted over Germany as the world’s third-biggest economy. By mid-century, China should have overtaken the U.S. as No. 1. By then, China and India could account for half of global output. Indeed, the troika of China, India, and the U.S. — the only industrialized nation with significant population growth — by most projections will dwarf every other economy.

China also is hugely wasteful. Its 9.5% growth rate in 2004 is less impressive when you consider that $850 billion — half of GDP — was plowed into already-glutted sectors like crude steel, vehicles, and office buildings. Its factories burn fuel five times less efficiently than in the West, and more than 20% of bank loans are bad. Two-thirds of China’s 13,000 listed companies don’t earn back their true cost of capital, estimates Beijing National Accounting Institute President Chen Xiaoyue. “We build the roads and industrial parks, but we sacrifice a lot,” Chen says.India, by contrast, has had to develop with scarcity. It gets scant foreign investment, and has no room to waste fuel and materials like China. India also has Western legal institutions, a modern stock market, and private banks and corporations. As a result, it is far more capital-efficient. A BusinessWeek analysis of Standard & Poor’s (MHP ) Compustat data on 346 top listed companies in both nations shows Indian corporations have achieved higher returns on equity and invested capital in the past five years in industries from autos to food products. The average Indian company posted a 16.7% return on capital in 2004, vs. 12.8% in China.

The burning question is whether India can replicate China’s mass manufacturing achievement. India’s info-tech services industry, successful as it is, employs fewer than 1 million people. But 200 million Indians subsist on $1 a day or less. Export manufacturing is one of India’s best hopes of generating millions of new jobs.India has sophisticated manufacturing knowhow. Tata Steel is among the world’s most-efficient producers. The country boasts several top precision auto parts companies, such as Bharat Forge Ltd. The world’s biggest supplier of chassis parts to major auto makers, it employs 1,200 engineers at its heavily automated Pune plant. India’s forte is small-batch production of high-value goods requiring lots of engineering, such as power generators for Cummins Inc. (CMI ) and core components for General Electric Co. (GE ) CAT scanners.