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@thethinkinginvestor
The Thinking Investor
$18.9M follower assets
Long-term collector of high quality businesses | I build and manage my concentrated portfolio to get 15% CAGR with minimal risk. Posts are about timeless principles, ways to improve thinking, and company analysis.
72 following780 followers
Making 1,000% on a stock in 10 years is no small feat.

And yet, Dede Eyesan identified 446 of them in his 2012-2022 study.

Here are 4 surprising lessons you can instantly use to find your next 10-bagger

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Between 2012-2022 the study showed that 82% of companies that went 10x were profitable in 2012.

You can look at this in two different ways:

  1. You can still profit greatly by buying unprofitable businesses
  2. You just stick with what you know works best

I personally like option 2.

As I've discussed before I want businesses in that I have a high degree of certainty.

Part of this certainty comes when I know the business has solved the profitability puzzle.

If that puzzle is fuzzy, it's an instant pass.

I'm not smart enough to forecast when an unprofitable business will turn positive.

So I stick with what I think is easier to understand.

Now that we understand how profitability plays into value, let's attack a different angle, multiple expansion.

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"50% of the outperformers had an EV/Revenue <1x and 49% had an EV/EBIT <10x in 2012."

This means that half of these companies were dirt cheap at the beginning of the study.

Then through a mixture of earnings growth and multiple expansion, they outperformed.

This is an important fact for all to remember next time you're thinking of pulling the trigger on some high-revenue multiple businesses.

I personally have never evaluated a business by revenue multiples.

If the business is expensive, how would we get a 10-bagger?

Growth!

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"31% of the 446 companies compounded their earnings by 27% over the 10 yrs. All their 1000% may have come from earning growth alone."

This is insane to me.

A business growing at 27% for 10 years can have a constant valuation and still get you a 1,000% return!

I wonder how many MBAs factored in 10 years of 27% returns into their DCA models?

Probably "0"

High earnings growth for 10 years may enable you to pay a high price and still make great returns.

But what size of business are we looking for in order to get a 1,000% upside?

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As you might have guessed, smaller companies occupy a massive majority of the 10x club.

Businesses with a 2012 market cap of under $300 million made up 86.6%of these quick 10-baggers.

Nano caps, which are stocks under $50 million in the market cap made up 63%.

So if you are going for large multi-baggers you should mostly skip the large caps (>$10 billion market caps) that made up .07% of the subset group.

When businesses grow, growth generally becomes harder.
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I don't think going for 1,000% returns should be a goal. It can be an outcome that you accept, but not something sought after. Will lead to unwise decisions
+ 2 comments
Looking For An Intriguing High Quality Small Cap, check out SDI.L
SDI.L
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Looking for an interesting small cap to research?
$SDI.L if the following interest you:

• Incredible organic growth rates
• Minimal analyst coverage
• Super high quality
• Tiny market cap
• Illiquid

Here's some key info to get you started

--

What They Do

SDI Group is a serial acquirer that specializes in two niche industries: digital imaging and sensors/control.

Both segments have massive TAMs and are of high quality.

--
[

M&A

Since 2014 they've averaged 1-4 acquisitions per year.

They look for:

• 4-6x EBIT
• Autonomy
• Provide capital for organic growth levers
• Focus on medium to long-term strategies

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Organic Growth

Organic growth has been in the high teens/low 20's for the past 5 years.

The business has rising returns on invested capital (currently over 20%).

They also have moved away from diluting shareholders to fund acquisitions.

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Capital Allocation

The business has rising returns on invested capital (currently over 20%).

They also have moved away from diluting shareholders to fund acquisitions.

--

For a much more in-depth look at this business check out my Substack (This article is paywalled with a free preview):

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6 Reasons Warren Buffett Bought Apple In 2016
Warren Buffet's Apple investment has made Berkshire shareholders $90 billion since 2016.

Learn the 6 reasons behind his decision and how you can apply them to find your next winning investment.

Brand

"Apple has an extraordinary consumer franchise. It's probably the best consumer franchise in the world." - Warren Buffett

Buffett learned about the strength of a brand See's Candy and Coca-Cola.

Free Cash Flow Generative

Warren loves businesses that are gushing cash.

Apple fit the bill to a T.

Between 2010-2018 Apple compounded free cash flow at 18.5%

Intelligent Share Repurchases

"I think buybacks are great when you're buying at a price that's well below intrinsic value."

He saw that Apple was buying back a meaningful amount of shares at good prices.

He knew that this would continue and increase the value of his shares.

Great Management

Buffett knew that Tim Cook was

• A wonderful manager
• Highly talented
• Full of integrity

He could see all this was creating shareholder value, as returns on capital were consistently very high.

He also could see that these high levels were sustainable.

An Attractive Services Segment

Buffett knew that iPhone users didn't leave the Apple ecosystem once they entered.

Apple could leverage this by offering an increasing amount of paid services to its loyal customer base.

This was a segment that still carried a long runway.

A Fair Price

Buffett tries his best never to overpay for a business.

In Apple's case, he paid ~16-18 times earnings.

Not cheap, but given the quality of the business, he had high certainty, he'd be able to generate a solid return.

Want to stay ahead of the game and discover hidden gems in the stock market?

Join my Substack for an in-depth analysis of:

• Under-followed stocks
• The power of long-term thinking
• Detailed analysis of wonderful businesses.

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In 1972 Thomas Phelps wrote "100 To 1 In The Stock Market" where he wrote:

"Dividends are an expensive luxury for investors seeking maximum growth."

If you are looking for stocks that can 100x here is what you MUST understand about dividends and retained earnings.

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Critical assumptions we are making:

  1. Returns on Invested Capital (ROIC) remain above 34.1%

  1. The business had a place to allocate this money at these high ROIC rates

  1. Dividend payout ratio of 65%

Here are the numbers it generated IRL.

Very impressive book value and earnings growth.

In 1956 Tampax traded between 11-13.5x earnings

By 1970 this business was trading at a high of 50x earnings

This means you could have compounded your investment at 27.7% CAGR for the entire holding period!

Incredible results.

But...

What if the business could have reduced dividends in half and increased its retained earnings?

We assume they could keep their returns on invested capital at the same rates, their dividend ratio is cut in half, and the money then goes into retained earnings. In that case, you see a monster increase in book value and earnings per share in 1970.

The crazy part is, even when you reduce the payout ratio in scenario B, because earnings rise so much quicker, you end up with higher dividends than in scenario A.

Here are the different results for EPS and Book Value Per Share Growth for each scenario.

Stark difference.

If the business decided to reduce its payout ratio in half and divert that money to retained earnings it would have had an EPS in 1970 of $19.56.

If we apply the same 50x multiple the market was willing to pay at the time, you would get $1,009.27. This gives you a 37.6% CAGR. Simply cutting the dividend would've provided 2.8x value!

When you are looking at a business's capital allocation skills, have a look at the opportunity cost of paying a dividend.

It may be costing you more than you think!
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Haven't crunched the numbers, but eyeballing it leads me to believe the assumptions made on ROIC/ROIIC are a fair bit off. Was there a big acquisition in 1964?

While the point being made makes sense in theory, in practice it doesn't hold up as well. Companies, generally, aren't paying dividends because they are silly. They begin to pay them and increase them as they mature and the reinvestment opportunities that reach their threshold become limited. While they very well could have retained more earnings to reinvest, it is almost impossible to think that the same ROIC would have been generated. This is especially so when factoring in a decade and a half of compounding.
+ 3 comments
Aritzia Quarterly Highlights
Aritzia $ATZ.TO $ATZAF just released their quarterly and as usual, they smashed.

One blemish: Inventory levels are up 188%.

But I spoke to my wife who is an avid shopper as well as a friend who has worked there for many years.

Here is why I don't think it's much of an issue.

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My wife checks online regularly for specific product lines and colours.

She says that they are literally always sold out of some of the items she wants.

This means Aritzia is getting rid of its inventory that is in demand.

Small sample size, I know, but still relevant.

--

My friend who has worked there says that the business was constantly out of inventory during COVID.

So she thinks they might be trying to make sure this doesn't happen.

She also says "We always sell out and have special orders on items that are coming back at a later date."

The Christmas season, which was not reported on in this quarter is not included.

This one quarter usually ends up being about 1/3 of year sales.

So part of the increased inventory could have been in preparation for a big holiday season.

--

The business continues to grow, so higher inventory levels are probably to be expected.

Look at $LULU inventory levels. They've doubled in the past 3 years.

Lululemon has 24.5% Revenue CAGR over the last 3 years vs. 28.3% for Aritzia over the same time period.
So as long as:

• Revenue continues growing at a high rate
• Inventory levels grow steadily

I think this will be a non-issue in the long term.
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Thanks for sharing. I'm not familiar with Aritzia. Did you happen to read/listen to the conference call and did any analysts ask about the inventory levels?
+ 2 comments
My Favourite Investing Podcasts
The best podcasts to learn about value investing:

• Invested - Phil Town & Danielle Town
• Chai With Pabrai - Mohnish Pabrai
• The Memo - Howard Marks
• Richer Wiser Happier - William Green
• Investing By The Books - Redeye AB
• Focused Compounding - Andrew Kuhn & Geoff Gannon

Ignore everything else.

This is super helpful. Thank you for sharing. Would love to hear your thoughts on Value investing with the legends.
+ 3 comments
Why Retail Investors Should Focus More Time On Self-Improvement Rather Than Stock Picking
Most investors focus too much time trying to find a great business and not enough time building the ability to hold it.

It's easy to read an article about how good Google is. It's not easy to think about all the mistakes you are making that are holding you back from rapid improvement. Since humans are slaves to their emotions it's easy to allow them to guide us, even when we don't need them to!
When you fail to learn to control emotions, you end up:

  • Selling too early

  • Focusing on the short term

  • Selling when the price decreases

You will never achieve great wealth using this strategy

-------------------------------------------------------

You'll end up being the person who sold Amazon for a 20% profit when you could've made 100x profits.

Everyone will make mistakes of omission in investing. Not everyone learns from these mistakes.

Great investors have high levels of conviction and emotional awareness. Buffett held Berkshire for 3 separate drops of 50% or more. He did this because:
  • He understood what he owned

  • He's a master at controlling emotion

  • His levels of self-reliance are off the charts

Look, I'm not telling you to stop studying new business models and adding more to your circle of competence. But all that analytical work will be completely wasted if you aren't constantly trying to make it easy to hold onto your ideas through thick and thin.

If you don't have conviction, patience, and equanimity, spend some time learning how to develop those qualities.

Approach investing through a lens of continuous self-improvement.

When you emphasize self-improvement in investing through the lens of emotional control you unlock all sorts of benefits. You'll make way more money because you'll make fewer mistakes. You'll worry less about stock price volatility.

You'll find the market is a place where you can challenge yourself and are incentivized for winning that challenge.

So true. We've always maintained the investment journey is a voyage of personal development.
Learning the mechanics of investing is easy. That information is freely available.
Learning to regulate your behaviour, manage your emotions and practice clarity of thinking is where the real mastery is found.
Your emotional intelligence quotient (EQ) is much more important than your intelligence quotient (IQ).
+ 3 comments
Buffett's framework for his initial AMEX Investment
Warren Buffett tripled his money in 2 years on his first American Express investment.

Here's his 5-step framework:

  1. Have the business on your radar & understand it thoroughly
  2. Wait for an event to happen that crashes the stock price (Salad Oil Scandal)
  3. Stock dropped 50%
  4. Buffett did his DD and spoke to businesses and consumers to find out if they were still using AMEX after the scandal. Nothing changed
  5. He bought tonnes of it. Tripled the investment in 2 years.

Great synopsis, and I love studying history. We can learn a lot from the past and studying Buffett's investments offers a ton of great insights. Thanks for sharing 🙂
+ 3 comments
Reached 1000 Subs On TTI Substack
Just reached 1000 subscribers for The Thinking Investor Substack!

Thank you so much to all my subscribers.

Looking forward to creating even better content, analysis, and discussion in 2023 and beyond!

If you're interested in:

• Deep dives into underfollowed high-quality businesses
• In-depth guides for improving your stock analysis
• Frameworks specifically for retail investors

Please consider subscribing to Substack


My Investment Philosophy
Today, I want to share my investing framework with you.

I always enjoy reading other retail investors’ philosophies to:

  • Pick up new ideas

  • Reorganize my thoughts

  • Observe differences between myself and others.

If your goal is to generate wealth through the art of investing, you should think about your own investing philosophy regularly. It will help you stick with your process and keep your attention on the end game: financial freedom.

So, if you’re in search of establishing your own investing philosophy or looking to make improvements, I think you’ll achieve both by reading on!

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Business Attributes

I haven’t found anything simpler than Chuck Akre’s 3 legged stool:

  1. Extraordinary business

  1. Talented management

  1. Great reinvestment opportunities and histories

I haven’t always looked for extraordinary businesses.

My thinking has evolved on this. When I first invested over 6 years ago I was speculating. In 2020, when I found value investing I was beginning to find the type of investments that resonated with me. I’ve dabbled in:

  • Sum-of-the-parts

  • Cigar butts

  • Low price-to-book value

  • Low price-to-earnings ratios

  • Turnarounds

I had moderate success in some of these simply because I bought them when they were really cheap in 2020.

The more I learned in 2021-2022, the more I started gravitating to the multi-bagger type business. This was because I like the idea of turning $1 into $100. I have no problem waiting for a long time to allow my investments to play out, so I may as well find businesses that can compound my money for many years.

At this point, I’m looking for an underlying business that has characteristics such as revenue growth rates, net income growth rates, free cash flow growth rates, returns on capital, and little to no debt. I look for companies that can compound revenue, net income, and FCF at ~15% over long time periods. I also want a high probability that high returns on equity (~20%) can be sustained in 10-20 years’ time. Lastly, I prefer companies with little need for outside capital to operate or grow.

The size of these businesses can vary.

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Check out the rest of my investing philosophy here:


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