When costs are reduced, margins and profits increase.
Interpretation of Financial Statements - preliminary filters.
1. Looking for sustainable competitive advantage:
When looking for sustainable moat, you wanna see consistency - in earnings, in having low debt, in having growing earnings, low spending in capital expenditures, etc.
When costs are reduced, margins and profits increase.
Let's take a look at Apple:
i) You want to see earnings grow at a steady pace. Take a look at the net income below.
As a thumb rule, Warren Buffett wants to see a gross margin of around 40% or above.
Although not quite 40%, it's around that range with respect to Apple.
Samsung's gross margins are around similar range, highest being 45.7% in 2018, and Huawei had a gross margin of 38.6%.
Gross margin = (revenue - cost of goods sold) / revenue
Net margin = net income / revenue.
You want to see the company having higher net margin compared to their competitors.
Typically, net margin above 20% is a very strong one, indicating that we are dealing with a smoothly run business.
Look at the figure - "Retained Earnings".
Using retained earnings, you can find out if a company is reinvesting its income or not. A steady growth in this number means the business is profitable, and that it's identifying good investing opportunities.
To measure how efficiently a company is using these retained earnings, Return on Equity (ROE) is used.
Apple looks quite strong in this aspect. It's partly an effect of distributing a lot of their earnings to shareholders. It also signifies the sustainable competitive moat.
4) Exceptional businesses seldom require a lot of debt to expand (except maybe banks/NBFCs). Instead, they can just use the strong cashflow from the business.
This is where you see the actual in's and out's of money.
Look at "Capital Expenditures" on the cashflow statement.
This is the money being spent on properties, plant, and equipment.
Exceptions: One time payment to grow the business in some capex activity.
3 instances when you could consider selling the stock.
i) You need money for a better investments. This is more so applicable in a bear market, for you to switch from something great to something exceptional.
This may not always apply to all markets, all stocks. But with anything above 40PE, tread carefully and cautiously.
- Competitive advantage and scale
- Consistently high net income, return on equity
- Requires very little debt
- Retained earnings has steady growth
- Capital expenditures should be < 25%
- Sell a company if prices are crazy, or a better opportunity comes up.
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More from Shravan Venkataraman 🎡
In today's round up, I have some amazing threads, resources, and plenty of solid advice for business, finance, career from twitter.
Here's the roundup of 17 of the best and the most useful threads, tweets, and resources I found last week. 🧵
1/ How to find spreadsheets on any topic in the
2/ A thread by @wes_kao on making your customers hungry and excited to buy from
3/ Life brings you a lot of afflictions. But if you look around, there's a lot of beauty around you. Most often, drowning in the afflictions, we can't recognise or appreciate the beauty.
@wdmorrisjr wrote a damn good thread on finding beauty around us.
4/ This one is for all the job goers and job seekers.
@SahilBloom who recently hit 500k followers and has several accomplishments to his belt (career wise) wrote this thread on standing out in a hiring
Here's the roundup of 17 of the best and the most useful threads, tweets, and resources I found last week. 🧵
1/ How to find spreadsheets on any topic in the
How to find spreadsheets on any topic in the world:
— Blake Emal (@heyblake) February 13, 2022
1. Go to Google
2. Search site:docs(dot)Google(dot)com/spreadsheets \u201cYOUR TOPIC\u201d
3. Search, scroll, succeed pic.twitter.com/VJsYQKyi0J
2/ A thread by @wes_kao on making your customers hungry and excited to buy from
How to get customers excited, hungry to buy, and ready to say yes:
— Wes Kao \U0001f3db (@wes_kao) February 13, 2022
3/ Life brings you a lot of afflictions. But if you look around, there's a lot of beauty around you. Most often, drowning in the afflictions, we can't recognise or appreciate the beauty.
@wdmorrisjr wrote a damn good thread on finding beauty around us.
You\u2019re not looking for more success, stuff, or sex.
— David Morris (@wdmorrisjr) February 13, 2022
You\u2019re searching for beauty.
Here\u2019s how to find it: \U0001f9f5
4/ This one is for all the job goers and job seekers.
@SahilBloom who recently hit 500k followers and has several accomplishments to his belt (career wise) wrote this thread on standing out in a hiring
10 ways to stand out in a hiring process (that don\u2019t involve your resume):
— Sahil Bloom (@SahilBloom) February 13, 2022
** MEGA THREAD ON Cryptocurrencies/Blockchain**
I wanted to know the best resources to learn about cryptocurrencies and blockchain for someone with zero knowledge. I asked Twitter, and Twitter answered.
This thread is a compilation of the best resources I was recommended. 👇👇
Let's start with ** BOOKS **
The first thing you should do before you pick up any book:
Learn about Bitcoin & Ethereum by reading the respective whitepapers.
- [Bitcoin white paper](https://t.co/cErOaFn6QL) by Satoshi Nakamoto
- [Ethereum White paper] (https://t.co/0g5kYCGJGq) by Vitalik Buterin
Even if you are not tech savvy, you can get a good grasp about how blockchain functions from these papers.
1) *The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains: An Introduction to Cryptocurrencies and the Technology that Powers Them* by Antony Lewis
This book covers topics such as the history of Bitcoin, the Bitcoin blockchain, and Bitcoin buying, selling, and mining.
It also answers how payments are made and how transactions are kept secure.
Other cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency pricing are examined, answering how one puts a value on cryptocurrencies and digital tokens.
I wanted to know the best resources to learn about cryptocurrencies and blockchain for someone with zero knowledge. I asked Twitter, and Twitter answered.
This thread is a compilation of the best resources I was recommended. 👇👇
Let's start with ** BOOKS **
The first thing you should do before you pick up any book:
Learn about Bitcoin & Ethereum by reading the respective whitepapers.
- [Bitcoin white paper](https://t.co/cErOaFn6QL) by Satoshi Nakamoto
- [Ethereum White paper] (https://t.co/0g5kYCGJGq) by Vitalik Buterin
Even if you are not tech savvy, you can get a good grasp about how blockchain functions from these papers.
1) *The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains: An Introduction to Cryptocurrencies and the Technology that Powers Them* by Antony Lewis
This book covers topics such as the history of Bitcoin, the Bitcoin blockchain, and Bitcoin buying, selling, and mining.
It also answers how payments are made and how transactions are kept secure.
Other cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency pricing are examined, answering how one puts a value on cryptocurrencies and digital tokens.
More from Economy
1/OK, let's take a little break from Coup Twitter, and think about an economic issue:
How can we build up the wealth of the middle class?
2/The typical American has surprisingly little wealth compared to the typical resident of many other developed countries.
This is a fact that is not widely known or appreciated.
3/Now, some people argue that stuff like Social Security or social insurance programs should be included in wealth. But I chose to focus on private wealth because I think having assets you can sell whenever you want is important to
4/For many decades after World War 2, middle-class wealth in America was on a smooth upward trajectory.
Then the housing crash came, and all that changed. Suddenly the rich were still doing well but everyone else was seeing the end of their American Dream.
5/Why the divergence?
Because the American middle class has its wealth in houses -- specifically, in the houses they live in.
It's the rich who own stocks.
How can we build up the wealth of the middle class?
2/The typical American has surprisingly little wealth compared to the typical resident of many other developed countries.
This is a fact that is not widely known or appreciated.
3/Now, some people argue that stuff like Social Security or social insurance programs should be included in wealth. But I chose to focus on private wealth because I think having assets you can sell whenever you want is important to
Yes, these numbers don't include things like Social Security, just privately held wealth. They're not an attempt to capitalize every possible future income stream.
— Noahtogolpe \U0001f407 (@Noahpinion) January 10, 2021
4/For many decades after World War 2, middle-class wealth in America was on a smooth upward trajectory.
Then the housing crash came, and all that changed. Suddenly the rich were still doing well but everyone else was seeing the end of their American Dream.
5/Why the divergence?
Because the American middle class has its wealth in houses -- specifically, in the houses they live in.
It's the rich who own stocks.
True that all the people cherishing the support of IMF or WTO for farm reforms need to cool it down a bit, because that is a model we do not want to emulate to the t in India here.
But here are some issues that deserve to be better discussed by all:
1. People who say we are emulating the Western model of agriculture are way off with this assumption. The process of primitive accumulation, the alienation of their people from their land and the way these 'first-world' countries have pushed their people into Industrial sector +
+ was a merciless phase.
But the same assumption won't work for India, because we have always had a large workforce in agriculture, agri subsidies have always run high, protection has been the hallmark of agriculture and rural representation in the parliament has always been+
+ high. Still, it is our utter failure from the beginning that we have not been able to incentivize the movement of our people to other lucrative sectors.
2. This brings us to the another point of providing MSP on all the commodities and the demand side of the issue that we+
+ conveniently ignore. Here's the thing, Food prices in India have about 65-70% weight in calculating the Consumer Price Index and 25-30% of wholesale price index. These indices affect the general price level in the economy i.e. the inflation. If MSP is offered on all the+
But here are some issues that deserve to be better discussed by all:
WTO backed by Western countries have always wanted to dismantle support systems for farmers in developing countries including India while pumping in federal payments to its farmers. Trump gave 46 billion dollars in 2020 alone to US farmers. pic.twitter.com/0V34ZQQq4J
— Ranveer Singh (@ranveersiiingh) February 4, 2021
1. People who say we are emulating the Western model of agriculture are way off with this assumption. The process of primitive accumulation, the alienation of their people from their land and the way these 'first-world' countries have pushed their people into Industrial sector +
+ was a merciless phase.
But the same assumption won't work for India, because we have always had a large workforce in agriculture, agri subsidies have always run high, protection has been the hallmark of agriculture and rural representation in the parliament has always been+
+ high. Still, it is our utter failure from the beginning that we have not been able to incentivize the movement of our people to other lucrative sectors.
2. This brings us to the another point of providing MSP on all the commodities and the demand side of the issue that we+
+ conveniently ignore. Here's the thing, Food prices in India have about 65-70% weight in calculating the Consumer Price Index and 25-30% of wholesale price index. These indices affect the general price level in the economy i.e. the inflation. If MSP is offered on all the+
