After reading “Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits” by Philip Fisher, I decided to go take a look at Texas Instruments, a company he discovered very early and had already done wonderfully on at the time of writing. 40 years later, in 1999, myself and all my classmates had $TXN calculators on every desk and they’re a behemoth in their industry.

Currently they’ve increased dividends 16 consecutive years. The 3 & 5 year DGR is 16% and 19%. PEG is 0.62. EV/EBITDA is 14.76. YoY revenue growth above 20%, and 3 year earnings & income growth still double digit at 12% and 14% Gross profit margins around 68%, net margins at 43%. Return on equity around 67%, return on assets 27%, return on total capital 31%. Looks like a wonderful company all around. I used to do much deeper analysis that matched my research style. I realized over the years that I suffered from analysis paralysis. And while I was learning all kinds of worthless intricacies of all these businesses, I wasn’t doing shit from an investing perspective. The deeper I dug, the more reasons I found not to invest in every single company. So I tend to keep it a little simpler now. Metrics that are important to successful businesses are important across-the-board. Some businesses have intricacies that change that a little, but I stick to my lane and avoid instances where certain variables may make it trickier to analyze successful business operations.

$TXN looked like a wonderful addition to the dividend growth portion of my portfolio. I love wonderful companies at fair value. Just shows me to continue approaching everything with an open mind. Sometimes you can get a hot stock tip from 1957🤣