Price Competition

1.  Highly competitive industry (commodity products)

• Industries in which price is the most significant consideration in customers' purchase decisions tend to be highly competitive.
• A slight increase in price may cause customers to switch to substitute products if they are widely available.

2.  Franchise industry (franchise products)

• Price is not as important if companies in an industry are able to effectively differentiate their products in terms of quality and performance.  
• Customers may not focus on price as much if product reliability is more important to them.

DCF analysis is the most popular valuation methodology today. Growth (or lack of it) is an integral to a valuation exercise.

Discounted Cash Flow analysis to determine Intrinsic Value

The value of a business, a share of stock, or any other productive asset is the present value of its future cash flows.

Discounted cash flow (DCF) analysis (intrinsic value principle of John Burr Williams) is the most popular valuation methodology today.

Its popularity, however, hides the important reality that value is easier to define than to measure (easier said than done).

The tools Graham (margin of safety principle) and Fisher (business franchise principle) developed remain crucial in this exercise.



Value stocks versus Growth stocks:  this distinction has limited difference.

One hazard of undue reliance on DCF analysis is a temptation to classify stocks as either value stocks or growth stocks.  It is a distinction with limited difference.

Value a business (or any productive asset) requires estimating its probable future performance and discounting the results to present value.

The probable future performance includes whatever growth (or shrinkage) is assumed.

So growth (or lack of it) is integral to a valuation exercise.

Investing is the deliberate determination that one pays a price lower than the value being obtained.

Only speculators pay a price hoping that through growth the value rises above it.



Conventional Value Investing = low P/E, low P/BV and high DY companies

Value investing is conventionally defined as buying companies bearing low ratios of price-to-earnings, price-to-book value, or high dividend yields.

But these metrics do not by themselves make a company a value investment.  It is not that simple.

Nor does the absence of such metrics prevent an investment from bearing a sufficient margin of safety and qualitative virtues to justify its inclusion in a value investor's portfolio.




Growth doesn't equate directly with value either.

Growing earnings can mean growing value.

But growing earnings can also mean growing expenses, and sometimes expenses growing faster than revenues.

Growth adds value only when the payoff from growth (revenue) is greater than the cost of growth (expenses).

A company reinvesting a dollar of earnings to grow by 99 cents is not helping its shareholders and is not a value stock, though it may be a growth stock.




Read also:

Value Vs Growth

http://klse.i3investor.com/blogs/kcchongnz/45456.jsp

What drives the return of your stock investment, Growth or Value?

http://klse.i3investor.com/blogs/kcchongnz/81690.jsp

“In our opinion, the two approaches (value and growth) are joined at the hip: Growth is always a component in the calculation of value, constituting a variable whose importance can range from negligible to enormous and whose impact can be negative as well as positive…In addition, we think the very term “value investing” is redundant. What is “investing” if it is not the act of seeking value at least sufficient to justify the amount paid?”      Warren Buffett Letters to investor, 1992.

Unbreachable Moats - Sustainable competitive advantage

Warren Buffett - What is Franchise Value?

Warren Buffet - The World's Best Product

Warren Buffett - What is Franchise Value?

For the latest Warren Buffett, go to http://WarrenBuffettNews.com - 

There is much less difference between buying a whole company and buying shares of a company. One difference is that you can change the managers much easier. But if you have to change the managers, then it probably isn't a business that you want to be in anyway. Another advantage to owning 100% is that you can decide how to allocate the excess capital. You can't do that if you only own 5%. At Berkshire, the game is to try to figure out where to put capital. 

Most managers like to grow. They prefer to grow intelligently, but if they can't do that they will try other methods. In the banking industry, they measure themselves by size of their balance sheets, not by profits. Banks don't necessarily have economies of scale beyond a certain point. It is much better to have a large competitive advantage in a smaller market. There isn't much advantage to shareholders for the banks that they own to expand. 

Gillette makes about 2/3 of its money outside of the United States. Companies that can do well in international markets are great. Depending on the different countries they are in, there are many factors that can be better or worse because of tax rates or public opinion. A good business can be found anywhere, but it is easier in the United States if you understand the economy and the business landscape a bit better. 

Franchise value is what a brand has if a customer will leave a store if they don't carry the brand. They would rather walk across the street and pay a nickle more than to buy another brand. That is franchise value, and it is very valuable. It is wholly in the customer's mind. If you've got the right product in that way, you may be paying for taste or something else. The second thing to think about is how durable that franchise value is.

What Warren Buffett says about Non-Commodity (Franchise) Companies

NON-COMMODITY COMPANIES

Warren Buffett prefers to invest in non-commodity companies - companies whose products or services are unique or special in some way.

Here customers either need the product, or there is no real competitor, or the reputation of the product is such that people will keep buying it. Suppliers and distributors have no choice but to stock the product or people will go elsewhere.

Generally, but not always, either the product will be a brand name (eg Coke, Gillette), the company will be a brand name (H & R Block) or the company will be in a monopoly situation or monopolistic cartel.

WHAT WARREN BUFFETT SAYS ABOUT NON-COMMODITY COMPANIES

Warren Buffett illustrated this difference in 1982:

‘[There is the] constant struggle of every vendor to establish special qualities of product or services. This works with candy bars (customers buy by brand name, not by asking for a "two-ounce candy bar") but doesn't work with sugar (how often do you hear, "I’ll have a cup of coffee with cream and C & H sugar, please").’

Warren Buffett - What is Franchise Value?

Buffett (1991): Invest in the company possessing characteristics of a 'franchise'.

In Warren Buffett's 1991 letter to shareholders, he threw some light on his concept of 'look-through' earnings and how one should build a long-term portfolio based on it. This week, let us see what further investment insight the master has up his sleeves in the remainder of the letter from the same year.

In the 1991 letter, while discussing his investments in the media sector, the master delivers yet another gem of an advice that can go a long way towards helping conduct a very good qualitative analyses of companies. Based on his enormous experience in analysing companies, the master classifies firms broadly into two main types, 

• a business and 
• a franchise 

and believes that many operations fall in some middle ground and can best be described as weak franchises or strong businesses. This is what he has to say on the characteristics of each of them:

"An economic franchise arises from a product or service that: 

• (1) is needed or desired, 
• (2) is thought by its customers to have no close substitute, and 
• (3) is not subject to price regulation. 

The existence of all three conditions will be demonstrated by a company's ability to regularly price its product or service aggressively and thereby to earn high rates of return on capital.

• Moreover, franchises can tolerate mismanagement. 
• Inept managers may diminish a franchise's profitability, but they cannot inflict mortal damage.

In contrast, "a business" earns exceptional profits only 

• if it is the low-cost operator or 
• if supply of its product or service is tight. Tightness in supply usually does not last long. 
• With superior management, a company may maintain its status as a low-cost operator for a much longer time, but even then unceasingly faces the possibility of competitive attack. 
• And a business, unlike a franchise, can be killed by poor management."

We believe equity investors can do themselves a world of good by taking the above advice to heart and using them in their analysis. If one were to visualise the financials of a company possessing characteristics of a 'franchise', the company that emerges is the one with a 

• consistent long-term growth in revenues (the master says that a 'franchise' should have a product or a service that is needed or desired with no close substitutes) and 
• high and stable margins, arising from the pricing power that the master mentioned, 
• thus leading to a similar rise in earnings as the topline.

On the other hand, a 'business' would be 

• an operation with erratic growth in earnings owing to frequent demand-supply imbalances or 
• a company with a continuous decline after a period of strong growth owing to the competition playing catching up.

Thus, if an investor approaches the analysis of a firm armed with these tools or with the characteristics firmly ingrained into their brains, then we believe he should be able to weed out a lot of bad companies by simply glancing through their financials of the past few years and save considerable time in the process. Further, as the master has said that since a bad management cannot permanently dent the profitability of a franchise, turbulent times in such firms could be used as an opportunity for entering at attractive levels. It should, however, be borne in mind that the master is also of the opinion that most companies lie between the two definitions and hence, one needs to exercise utmost caution before committing a substantial sum towards a so-called 'franchise'.

http://www.equitymaster.com/detail.asp?date=11/22/2007&story=3

Franchise Value

FRANCHISE VALUE

Franchise businesses are those boasting
· barriers to entry and
· other competitive advantages
that make it too costly for new entrants to join.

1. Strong brands can help, so long as competitors cannot match them.
Examples include at least for some period of time those products bearing names synonymous with the goods, such as Coke, Kleenex, Hoover (in its days), Harley-Davidson (to some extent), and others.

2. Techniques producing franchise value include
· patents,
· exclusive licenses,
· know-how, and
· secret formulae.
· Generally high fixed-costs of entry also help.

3. Common elements of franchise businesses include
· high costs to consumers of switching away from the target’s own product in favor of products sold by competitors,
· high costs to consumers of seeking out such alternatives, and
· habits commanding consumer loyalty.

4. Foes of the franchise power are constraints competitors can evade. Examples are
· a unionized labor force,
· burden-some distribution arrangements, or
· limitations on an entity’s adaptability in the face of change.


Also read:

1. Income Statement Value: The Earnings Payoff
2. Adjustments in Current Earnings figure
3. Avoid Pro Forma financial figures
4. Avoid Extrapolated Future Earnings Growth figures
5. Estimating Growth in Value Investing
6. Franchise Value
7. GROWTH'S VALUE
8. GROWTH'S VALUE (illustrations)