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HODLFTW

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- HODLFTWHODLFTW
  ·2023-02-26
  TLDR
  Buffett’s Annual Letter: Berkshire Will Always Hold a Boatload of Cash and U.S. Treasury Bills
  Warren Buffett is still betting on America.Stocks and bonds slumped in 2022 after central banks rais
  Buffett’s Annual Letter: Berkshire Will Always Hold a Boatload of Cash and U.S. Treasury Bills
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- HODLFTWHODLFTW
  ·2021-09-22
  Another "invite you to tent, glare into my crystal ball and see your 10x return future"?...
  1 Growth Stock That Could Produce 10X Returns
  The future looks bright for this e-commerce company.
  1 Growth Stock That Could Produce 10X Returns
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- HODLFTWHODLFTW
  ·2021-06-30
  TLDR
  Facebook: Simply Unstoppable
  The #StopHateforProfit Campaign, antitrust allegations, Apple IDFA issue, and a host of other historical issues have not stopped the social media giant and will not stop it.Despite an impressive rally delivering 65% since the start of CY20 and 26% YTD, Facebook remains undervalued relative to its peers and the FAANG stocks with the best forward estimates.The strong moat originating from their sheer user base, and sizeable TAMs in E-commerce, VR/AR, digital assets , cumulatively make for a compel
  Facebook: Simply Unstoppable
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- HODLFTWHODLFTW
  ·2021-06-11
  TLDR...
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stock market headlines, business news, financials and earnings ","home_visible":1,"media_name":"Tiger Newspress","id":"1079075236","head_image":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8274c5b9d4c2852bfb1c4d6ce16c68ba"},"pubTimestamp":1677334099,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1117520516?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2023-02-25 22:08","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Buffett’s Annual Letter: Berkshire Will Always Hold a Boatload of Cash and U.S. Treasury Bills","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1117520516","media":"Tiger Newspress","summary":"Warren Buffett is still betting on America.Stocks and bonds slumped in 2022 after central banks rais","content":"<html><head></head><body><p>Warren Buffett is still betting on America.</p><p>Stocks and bonds slumped in 2022 after central banks raised interest rates at a rapid pace to try to rein in inflation. But Mr. Buffett retained his sense of optimism in his annual letter to investors Saturday, saying he attributes much of his success over the years to the resilience of the U.S. economy.</p><p>“I have been investing for 80 years—more than one-third of our country’s lifetime. Despite our citizens’ penchant—almost enthusiasm—for self-criticism and self-doubt, I have yet to see a time when it made sense to make a long-term bet against America,” Mr. Buffett said in the letter.</p><p>Mr. Buffett, widely regarded as one of the world’s top investors, has been publishing the letters for more than half a century. Over that time, he hasn’t just reflected on the past year for his company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., but also shared his thoughts on everything from esoteric accounting rules to his aversion to excessive risk-taking.</p><p>Saturday’s letter offered readers a glimpse into how Mr. Buffett, 92, viewed what wound up being a shaky stretch for markets.</p><p>The volatility offered Berkshire an opportunity to jump in and buy stocks. While Berkshire largely bought back its own shares in 2021, it focused more in 2022 on investing in other companies—opening up new positions in media company Paramount Global and building-materials manufacturer Louisiana-Pacific Corp., among other businesses, and swiftly becoming Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s single biggest shareholder.</p><p>As of the end of 2022, Berkshire was the largest shareholder of eight companies—American Express Co., Bank of America Corp., Chevron Corp., Coca-Cola Co., HP Inc., Moody’s Corp., Occidental and Paramount Global.</p><p>“America would have done fine without Berkshire. The reverse is not true,” Mr. Buffett said.</p><p>Berkshire also released its results for 2022 on Saturday.</p><p>The Omaha, Neb., company, which owns businesses including insurer Geico, railroad BNSF Railway and chocolate maker See’s Candies, posted a loss of $22.82 billion for the year, stung by $67.9 billion in investment and derivative contract losses. In 2021, Berkshire posted a profit of $90.8 billion.</p><p>Total revenue rose 9.4% to $302.1 billion.</p><p>Berkshire’s operating earnings, which exclude some investment results, rose to a record $30.8 billion.</p><p>Mr. Buffett, Berkshire’s chief executive, has long held that operating earnings are a better reflection of how Berkshire is doing, since accounting rules require the company to include unrealized gains and losses from its massive investment portfolio in its net income. Volatile markets can make Berkshire’s net income change substantially from quarter to quarter, regardless of how its underlying businesses are doing.</p><p>“Capital gains, to be sure, have been hugely important to Berkshire over past decades, and we expect them to be meaningfully positive in future decades,” Mr. Buffett said in his letter. “But their quarter-by-quarter gyrations, regularly and mindlessly headlined by media, totally misinform investors,” he said, adding that he and his right-hand man Charlie Munger urged shareholders to focus instead on Berkshire’s operating earnings, which rose to a record for the full year in 2022.</p><h2>Read the full letter here:</h2><p>To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.:</p><p>Charlie Munger, my long-time partner, and I have the job of managing the savings of a great number of individuals. We are grateful for their enduring trust, a relationship that often spans much of their adult lifetime. It is those dedicated savers that are forefront in my mind as I write this letter.</p><p>A common belief is that people choose to save when young, expecting thereby to maintain their living standards after retirement. Any assets that remain at death, this theory says, will usually be left to their families or, possibly, to friends and philanthropy.</p><p>Our experience has differed. We believe Berkshire’s individual holders largely to be of the once-a-saver, always-a-saver variety. Though these people live well, they eventually dispense most of their funds to philanthropic organizations. These, in turn, redistribute the funds by expenditures intended to improve the lives of a great many people who are unrelated to the original benefactor. Sometimes, the results have been spectacular.</p><p>The disposition of money unmasks humans. Charlie and I watch with pleasure the vast flow of Berkshire-generated funds to public needs and, alongside, the infrequency with which our shareholders opt for look-at-me assets and dynasty-building.</p><p>Who wouldn’t enjoy working for shareholders like ours?</p><h2>What We Do</h2><p>Charlie and I allocate your savings at Berkshire between two related forms of ownership. First, we invest in businesses that we control, usually buying 100% of each. Berkshire directs capital allocation at these subsidiaries and selects the CEOs who make day-by-day operating decisions. When large enterprises are being managed, both trust and rules are essential. Berkshire emphasizes the former to an unusual – some would say extreme – degree. Disappointments are inevitable. We are understanding about business mistakes; our tolerance for personal misconduct is zero.</p><p>In our second category of ownership, we buy publicly-traded stocks through which we passively own pieces of businesses. Holding these investments, we have no say in management.</p><p>Our goal in both forms of ownership is to make meaningful investments in businesses with both long-lasting favorable economic characteristics and trustworthy managers. Please note particularly that we own publicly-traded stocks based on our expectations about their long-term business performance, not because we view them as vehicles for adroit purchases and sales. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers.</p><p>Over the years, I have made many mistakes. Consequently, our extensive collection of businesses currently consists of a few enterprises that have truly extraordinary economics, many that enjoy very good economic characteristics, and a large group that are marginal. Along the way, other businesses in which I have invested have died, their products unwanted by the public. Capitalism has two sides: The system creates an ever-growing pile of losers while concurrently delivering a gusher of improved goods and services. Schumpeter called this phenomenon “creative destruction.”</p><p>One advantage of our publicly-traded segment is that – episodically – it becomes easy to buy pieces of wonderful businesses at wonderful prices. It’s crucial to understand that stocks often trade at truly foolish prices, both high and low. “Efficient” markets exist only in textbooks. In truth, marketable stocks and bonds are baffling, their behavior usually understandable only in retrospect.</p><p>Controlled businesses are a different breed. They sometimes command ridiculously higher prices than justified but are almost never available at bargain valuations. Unless under duress, the owner of a controlled business gives no thought to selling at a panic-type valuation.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>At this point, a report card from me is appropriate: In 58 years of Berkshire management, most of my capital-allocation decisions have been no better than so-so. In some cases, also, bad moves by me have been rescued by very large doses of luck. (Remember our escapes from near-disasters at USAir and Salomon? I certainly do.)</p><p>Our satisfactory results have been the product of about a dozen truly good decisions – that would be about one every five years – and a sometimes-forgotten advantage that favors long-term investors such as Berkshire. Let’s take a peek behind the curtain.</p><h2>The Secret Sauce</h2><p>In August 1994 – yes, 1994 – Berkshire completed its seven-year purchase of the 400 million shares of Coca-Cola we now own. The total cost was $1.3 billion – then a very meaningful sum at Berkshire.</p><p>The cash dividend we received from Coke in 1994 was $75 million. By 2022, the dividend had increased to $704 million. Growth occurred every year, just as certain as birthdays. All Charlie and I were required to do was cash Coke’s quarterly dividend checks. We expect that those checks are highly likely to grow.</p><p>American Express is much the same story. Berkshire’s purchases of Amex were essentially completed in 1995 and, coincidentally, also cost $1.3 billion. Annual dividends received from this investment have grown from $41 million to $302 million. Those checks, too, seem highly likely to increase.</p><p>These dividend gains, though pleasing, are far from spectacular. But they bring with them important gains in stock prices. At yearend, our Coke investment was valued at $25 billion while Amex was recorded at $22 billion. Each holding now accounts for roughly 5% of Berkshire’s net worth, akin to its weighting long ago.</p><p>Assume, for a moment, I had made a similarly-sized investment mistake in the 1990s, one that flat-lined and simply retained its $1.3 billion value in 2022. (An example would be a high-grade 30-year bond.) That disappointing investment would now represent an insignificant 0.3% of Berkshire’s net worth and would be delivering to us an unchanged $80 million or so of annual income.</p><p>The lesson for investors: The weeds wither away in significance as the flowers bloom. Over time, it takes just a few winners to work wonders. And, yes, it helps to start early and live into your 90s as well.</p><h2>The Past Year in Brief</h2><p>Berkshire had a good year in 2022. The company’s operating earnings – our term for income calculated using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (“GAAP”), exclusive of capital gains or losses from equity holdings – set a record at $30.8 billion. Charlie and I focus on this operational figure and urge you to do so as well. The GAAP figure, absent our adjustment, fluctuates wildly and capriciously at every reporting date. Note its acrobatic behavior in 2022, which is in no way unusual:</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/69e74650656620f9fa3f1e55c15a90e5\" tg-width=\"797\" tg-height=\"207\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/></p><p>The GAAP earnings are 100% misleading when viewed quarterly or even annually. Capital gains, to be sure, have been hugely important to Berkshire over past decades, and we expect them to be meaningfully positive in future decades. But their quarter-by-quarter gyrations, regularly and mindlessly headlined by media, totally misinform investors.</p><p>A second positive development for Berkshire last year was our purchase of Alleghany Corporation, a property-casualty insurer captained by Joe Brandon. I’ve worked with Joe in the past, and he understands both Berkshire  and insurance. Alleghany delivers special value to us because Berkshire’s unmatched financial strength allows its insurance subsidiaries to follow valuable and enduring investment strategies unavailable to virtually all competitors.</p><p>Aided by Alleghany, our insurance float increased during 2022 from $147 billion to $164 billion. With disciplined underwriting, these funds have a decent chance of being cost-free over time. Since purchasing our first property-casualty insurer in 1967, Berkshire’s float has increased 8,000-fold through acquisitions, operations and innovations. Though not recognized in our financial statements, this float has been an extraordinary asset for Berkshire. New shareholders can get an understanding of its value by reading our annually updated explanation of float on page A-2.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>A very minor gain in per-share intrinsic value took place in 2022 through Berkshire share repurchases as well as similar moves at Apple and American Express, both significant investees of ours. At Berkshire, we directly increased your interest in our unique collection of businesses by repurchasing 1.2% of the company’s outstanding shares. At Apple and Amex, repurchases increased Berkshire’s ownership a bit without any cost to us.</p><p>The math isn’t complicated: When the share count goes down, your interest in our many businesses goes up. Every small bit helps if repurchases are made at value-accretive prices. Just as surely, when a company overpays for repurchases, the continuing shareholders lose. At such times, gains flow only to the selling shareholders and to the friendly, but expensive, investment banker who recommended the foolish purchases.</p><p>Gains from value-accretive repurchases, it should be emphasized, benefit all owners – in every respect. Imagine, if you will, three fully-informed shareholders of a local auto dealership, one of whom manages the business. Imagine, further, that one of the passive owners wishes to sell his interest back to the company at a price attractive to the two continuing shareholders. When completed, has this transaction harmed anyone? Is the manager somehow favored over the continuing passive owners? Has the public been hurt?</p><p>When you are told that all repurchases are harmful to shareholders or to the country, or particularly beneficial to CEOs, you are listening to either an economic illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue (characters that are not mutually exclusive).</p><p>Almost endless details of Berkshire’s 2022 operations are laid out on pages K-33 – K-66. Charlie and I, along with many Berkshire shareholders, enjoy poring over the many facts and figures laid out in that section. These pages are not, however, required reading. There are many Berkshire centimillionaires and, yes, billionaires who have never studied our financial figures. They simply know that Charlie and I – along with our families and close friends – continue to have very significant investments in Berkshire, and they trust us to treat their money as we do our own.</p><p>And that is a promise we can make.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>Finally, an important warning: Even the operating earnings figure that we favor can easily be manipulated by managers who wish to do so. Such tampering is often thought of as sophisticated by CEOs, directors and their advisors. Reporters and analysts embrace its existence as well. Beating “expectations” is heralded as a managerial triumph.</p><p>That activity is disgusting. It requires no talent to manipulate numbers: Only a deep desire to deceive is required. “Bold imaginative accounting,” as a CEO once described his deception to me, has become one of the shames of capitalism.</p><h2>58 Years – and a Few Figures</h2><p>In 1965, Berkshire was a one-trick pony, the owner of a venerable – but doomed – New England textile operation. With that business on a death march, Berkshire needed an immediate fresh start. Looking back, I was slow to recognize the severity of its problems.</p><p>And then came a stroke of good luck: National Indemnity became available in 1967, and we shifted our resources toward insurance and other non-textile operations.</p><p>Thus began our journey to 2023, a bumpy road involving a combination of continuous savings by our owners (that is, by their retaining earnings), the power of compounding, our avoidance of major mistakes and – most important of all – the American Tailwind. America would have done fine without Berkshire. The reverse is not true.</p><p>Berkshire now enjoys major ownership in an unmatched collection of huge and diversified businesses. Let’s first look at the 5,000 or so publicly-held companies that trade daily on NASDAQ, the NYSE and related venues. Within this group is housed the members of the S&amp;P 500 Index, an elite collection of large and well-known American companies.</p><p>In aggregate, the 500 earned $1.8 trillion in 2021. I don’t yet have the final results for 2022. Using, therefore, the 2021 figures, only 128 of the 500 (including Berkshire itself) earned $3 billion or more. Indeed, 23 lost money.</p><p>At yearend 2022, Berkshire was the largest owner of eight of these giants: American Express, Bank of America, Chevron, Coca-Cola, HP Inc., Moody’s, Occidental Petroleum and Paramount Global.</p><p>In addition to those eight investees, Berkshire owns 100% of BNSF and 92% of BH Energy, each with earnings that exceed the $3 billion mark noted above ($5.9 billion at BNSF and</p><p>$4.3 billion at BHE). Were these companies publicly-owned, they would replace two present members of the 500. All told, our ten controlled and non-controlled behemoths leave Berkshire more broadly aligned with the country’s economic future than is the case at any other U.S. company. (This calculation leaves aside “fiduciary” operations such as pension funds and investment companies.) In addition, Berkshire’s insurance operation, though conducted through many individually-managed subsidiaries, has a value comparable to BNSF or BHE.</p><p>As for the future, Berkshire will always hold a boatload of cash and U.S. Treasury bills along with a wide array of businesses. We will also avoid behavior that could result in any uncomfortable cash needs at inconvenient times, including financial panics and unprecedented insurance losses. Our CEO will always be the Chief Risk Officer – a task it is irresponsible to delegate. Additionally, our future CEOs will have a significant part of their net worth in Berkshire shares, bought with their own money. And yes, our shareholders will continue to save and prosper by retaining earnings.</p><p>At Berkshire, there will be no finish line.</p><h2>Some Surprising Facts About Federal Taxes</h2><p>During the decade ending in 2021, the United States Treasury received about $32.3 trillion in taxes while it spent $43.9 trillion.</p><p>Though economists, politicians and many of the public have opinions about the consequences of that huge imbalance, Charlie and I plead ignorance and firmly believe that near-term economic and market forecasts are worse than useless. Our job is to manage Berkshire’s operations and finances in a manner that will achieve an acceptable result over time and that will preserve the company’s unmatched staying power when financial panics or severe worldwide recessions occur. Berkshire also offers some modest protection from runaway inflation, but this attribute is far from perfect. Huge and entrenched fiscal deficits have consequences.</p><p>The $32 trillion of revenue was garnered by the Treasury through individual income taxes (48%), social security and related receipts (3412%), corporate income tax payments (812%) and a wide variety of lesser levies. Berkshire’s contribution via the corporate income tax was $32 billion during the decade, almost exactly a tenth of 1% of all money that the Treasury collected.</p><p>And that means – brace yourself – had there been roughly 1,000 taxpayers in the U.S. matching Berkshire’s payments, no other businesses nor any of the country’s 131 million households would have needed to pay any taxes to the federal government. Not a dime.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>Millions, billions, trillions – we all know the words, but the sums involved are almost impossible to comprehend. Let’s put physical dimensions to the numbers:</p><p>- If you convert $1 million into newly-printed $100 bills, you will have a stack that reaches your chest.</p><p>- Perform the same exercise with $1 billion – this is getting exciting! – and the stack reaches about 34 of a mile into the sky.</p><p>- Finally, imagine piling up $32 billion, the total of Berkshire’s 2012-21 federal income tax payments. Now the stack grows to more than 21 miles in height, about three times the level at which commercial airplanes usually cruise.</p><p>When it comes to federal taxes, individuals who own Berkshire can unequivocally state “I gave at the office.”</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>At Berkshire we hope and expect to pay much more in taxes during the next decade. We owe the country no less: America’s dynamism has made a huge contribution to whatever success Berkshire has achieved – a contribution Berkshire will always need. We count on the American Tailwind and, though it has been becalmed from time to time, its propelling force has always returned.</p><p>I have been investing for 80 years – more than one-third of our country’s lifetime. Despite our citizens’ penchant – almost enthusiasm – for self-criticism and self-doubt, I have yet to see a time when it made sense to make a long-term bet against America. And I doubt very much that any reader of this letter will have a different experience in the future.</p><h2>Nothing Beats Having a Great Partner</h2><p>Charlie and I think pretty much alike. But what it takes me a page to explain, he sums up in a sentence. His version, moreover, is always more clearly reasoned and also more artfully – some might add bluntly – stated.</p><p>Here are a few of his thoughts, many lifted from a very recent podcast:</p><p>- The world is full of foolish gamblers, and they will not do as well as the patient investor.</p><p>- If you don’t see the world the way it is, it’s like judging something through a distorted lens.</p><p>- All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there. And a related thought: Early on, write your desired obituary – and then behave accordingly.</p><p>- If you don’t care whether you are rational or not, you won’t work on it. Then you will stay irrational and get lousy results.</p><p>- Patience can be learned. Having a long attention span and the ability to concentrate on one thing for a long time is a huge advantage.</p><p>- You can learn a lot from dead people. Read of the deceased you admire and detest.</p><p>- Don’t bail away in a sinking boat if you can swim to one that is seaworthy.</p><p>- A great company keeps working after you are not; a mediocre company won’t do that.</p><p>- Warren and I don’t focus on the froth of the market. We seek out good long-term investments and stubbornly hold them for a long time.</p><p>- Ben Graham said, “Day to day, the stock market is a voting machine; in the long term it’s a weighing machine.” If you keep making something more valuable, then some wise person is going to notice it and start buying.</p><p>- There is no such thing as a 100% sure thing when investing. Thus, the use of leverage is dangerous. A string of wonderful numbers times zero will always equal zero. Don’t count on getting rich twice.</p><p>- You don’t, however, need to own a lot of things in order to get rich.</p><p>- You have to keep learning if you want to become a great investor. When the world changes, you must change.</p><p>- Warren and I hated railroad stocks for decades, but the world changed and finally the country had four huge railroads of vital importance to the American economy. We were slow to recognize the change, but better late than never.</p><p>- Finally, I will add two short sentences by Charlie that have been his decision-clinchers for decades: “Warren, think more about it. You’re smart and I’m right.”</p><p>And so it goes. I never have a phone call with Charlie without learning something. And, while he makes me think, he also makes me laugh.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>I will add to Charlie’s list a rule of my own:   Find   a   very   smart   high-grade partner – preferably slightly older than you – and then listen very carefully to what he says.</p><h2>A Family Gathering in Omaha</h2><p>Charlie and I are shameless. Last year, at our first shareholder get-together in three years, we greeted you with our usual commercial hustle.</p><p>From the opening bell, we went straight for your wallet. In short order, our See’s kiosk sold you eleven tons of nourishing peanut brittle and chocolates. In our P.T. Barnum pitch, we promised you longevity. After all, what else but candy from See’s could account for Charlie and me making it to 99 and 92?</p><p>I know you can’t wait to hear the specifics of last year’s hustle.</p><p>On Friday, the doors were open from noon until 5 p.m., and our candy counters rang up 2,690 individual sales. On Saturday, See’s registered an additional 3,931 transactions between 7 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., despite the fact that 612 of the 912 operating hours occurred while our movie and the question-and-answer session were limiting commercial traffic.</p><p>Do the math: See’s rang up about 10 sales per minute during its prime operating time (racking up $400,309 of volume during the two days), with all the goods purchased at a single location selling products that haven’t been materially altered in 101 years. What worked for See’s in the days of Henry Ford’s model T works now.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>Charlie, I, and the entire Berkshire bunch look forward to seeing you in Omaha on May 5-6. We will have a good time and so will you.</p><p>February 25, 2023 Warren E. Buffett </p><p>Chairman of the Board</p></body></html>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Buffett’s Annual Letter: Berkshire Will Always Hold a Boatload of Cash and U.S. Treasury Bills</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nBuffett’s Annual Letter: Berkshire Will Always Hold a Boatload of Cash and U.S. Treasury Bills\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n<a class=\"head\" href=\"https://laohu8.com/wemedia/1079075236\">\n\n\n<div class=\"h-thumb\" style=\"background-image:url(https://static.tigerbbs.com/8274c5b9d4c2852bfb1c4d6ce16c68ba);background-size:cover;\"></div>\n\n<div class=\"h-content\">\n<p class=\"h-name\">Tiger Newspress </p>\n<p class=\"h-time\">2023-02-25 22:08</p>\n</div>\n\n</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<html><head></head><body><p>Warren Buffett is still betting on America.</p><p>Stocks and bonds slumped in 2022 after central banks raised interest rates at a rapid pace to try to rein in inflation. But Mr. Buffett retained his sense of optimism in his annual letter to investors Saturday, saying he attributes much of his success over the years to the resilience of the U.S. economy.</p><p>“I have been investing for 80 years—more than one-third of our country’s lifetime. Despite our citizens’ penchant—almost enthusiasm—for self-criticism and self-doubt, I have yet to see a time when it made sense to make a long-term bet against America,” Mr. Buffett said in the letter.</p><p>Mr. Buffett, widely regarded as one of the world’s top investors, has been publishing the letters for more than half a century. Over that time, he hasn’t just reflected on the past year for his company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., but also shared his thoughts on everything from esoteric accounting rules to his aversion to excessive risk-taking.</p><p>Saturday’s letter offered readers a glimpse into how Mr. Buffett, 92, viewed what wound up being a shaky stretch for markets.</p><p>The volatility offered Berkshire an opportunity to jump in and buy stocks. While Berkshire largely bought back its own shares in 2021, it focused more in 2022 on investing in other companies—opening up new positions in media company Paramount Global and building-materials manufacturer Louisiana-Pacific Corp., among other businesses, and swiftly becoming Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s single biggest shareholder.</p><p>As of the end of 2022, Berkshire was the largest shareholder of eight companies—American Express Co., Bank of America Corp., Chevron Corp., Coca-Cola Co., HP Inc., Moody’s Corp., Occidental and Paramount Global.</p><p>“America would have done fine without Berkshire. The reverse is not true,” Mr. Buffett said.</p><p>Berkshire also released its results for 2022 on Saturday.</p><p>The Omaha, Neb., company, which owns businesses including insurer Geico, railroad BNSF Railway and chocolate maker See’s Candies, posted a loss of $22.82 billion for the year, stung by $67.9 billion in investment and derivative contract losses. In 2021, Berkshire posted a profit of $90.8 billion.</p><p>Total revenue rose 9.4% to $302.1 billion.</p><p>Berkshire’s operating earnings, which exclude some investment results, rose to a record $30.8 billion.</p><p>Mr. Buffett, Berkshire’s chief executive, has long held that operating earnings are a better reflection of how Berkshire is doing, since accounting rules require the company to include unrealized gains and losses from its massive investment portfolio in its net income. Volatile markets can make Berkshire’s net income change substantially from quarter to quarter, regardless of how its underlying businesses are doing.</p><p>“Capital gains, to be sure, have been hugely important to Berkshire over past decades, and we expect them to be meaningfully positive in future decades,” Mr. Buffett said in his letter. “But their quarter-by-quarter gyrations, regularly and mindlessly headlined by media, totally misinform investors,” he said, adding that he and his right-hand man Charlie Munger urged shareholders to focus instead on Berkshire’s operating earnings, which rose to a record for the full year in 2022.</p><h2>Read the full letter here:</h2><p>To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.:</p><p>Charlie Munger, my long-time partner, and I have the job of managing the savings of a great number of individuals. We are grateful for their enduring trust, a relationship that often spans much of their adult lifetime. It is those dedicated savers that are forefront in my mind as I write this letter.</p><p>A common belief is that people choose to save when young, expecting thereby to maintain their living standards after retirement. Any assets that remain at death, this theory says, will usually be left to their families or, possibly, to friends and philanthropy.</p><p>Our experience has differed. We believe Berkshire’s individual holders largely to be of the once-a-saver, always-a-saver variety. Though these people live well, they eventually dispense most of their funds to philanthropic organizations. These, in turn, redistribute the funds by expenditures intended to improve the lives of a great many people who are unrelated to the original benefactor. Sometimes, the results have been spectacular.</p><p>The disposition of money unmasks humans. Charlie and I watch with pleasure the vast flow of Berkshire-generated funds to public needs and, alongside, the infrequency with which our shareholders opt for look-at-me assets and dynasty-building.</p><p>Who wouldn’t enjoy working for shareholders like ours?</p><h2>What We Do</h2><p>Charlie and I allocate your savings at Berkshire between two related forms of ownership. First, we invest in businesses that we control, usually buying 100% of each. Berkshire directs capital allocation at these subsidiaries and selects the CEOs who make day-by-day operating decisions. When large enterprises are being managed, both trust and rules are essential. Berkshire emphasizes the former to an unusual – some would say extreme – degree. Disappointments are inevitable. We are understanding about business mistakes; our tolerance for personal misconduct is zero.</p><p>In our second category of ownership, we buy publicly-traded stocks through which we passively own pieces of businesses. Holding these investments, we have no say in management.</p><p>Our goal in both forms of ownership is to make meaningful investments in businesses with both long-lasting favorable economic characteristics and trustworthy managers. Please note particularly that we own publicly-traded stocks based on our expectations about their long-term business performance, not because we view them as vehicles for adroit purchases and sales. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers.</p><p>Over the years, I have made many mistakes. Consequently, our extensive collection of businesses currently consists of a few enterprises that have truly extraordinary economics, many that enjoy very good economic characteristics, and a large group that are marginal. Along the way, other businesses in which I have invested have died, their products unwanted by the public. Capitalism has two sides: The system creates an ever-growing pile of losers while concurrently delivering a gusher of improved goods and services. Schumpeter called this phenomenon “creative destruction.”</p><p>One advantage of our publicly-traded segment is that – episodically – it becomes easy to buy pieces of wonderful businesses at wonderful prices. It’s crucial to understand that stocks often trade at truly foolish prices, both high and low. “Efficient” markets exist only in textbooks. In truth, marketable stocks and bonds are baffling, their behavior usually understandable only in retrospect.</p><p>Controlled businesses are a different breed. They sometimes command ridiculously higher prices than justified but are almost never available at bargain valuations. Unless under duress, the owner of a controlled business gives no thought to selling at a panic-type valuation.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>At this point, a report card from me is appropriate: In 58 years of Berkshire management, most of my capital-allocation decisions have been no better than so-so. In some cases, also, bad moves by me have been rescued by very large doses of luck. (Remember our escapes from near-disasters at USAir and Salomon? I certainly do.)</p><p>Our satisfactory results have been the product of about a dozen truly good decisions – that would be about one every five years – and a sometimes-forgotten advantage that favors long-term investors such as Berkshire. Let’s take a peek behind the curtain.</p><h2>The Secret Sauce</h2><p>In August 1994 – yes, 1994 – Berkshire completed its seven-year purchase of the 400 million shares of Coca-Cola we now own. The total cost was $1.3 billion – then a very meaningful sum at Berkshire.</p><p>The cash dividend we received from Coke in 1994 was $75 million. By 2022, the dividend had increased to $704 million. Growth occurred every year, just as certain as birthdays. All Charlie and I were required to do was cash Coke’s quarterly dividend checks. We expect that those checks are highly likely to grow.</p><p>American Express is much the same story. Berkshire’s purchases of Amex were essentially completed in 1995 and, coincidentally, also cost $1.3 billion. Annual dividends received from this investment have grown from $41 million to $302 million. Those checks, too, seem highly likely to increase.</p><p>These dividend gains, though pleasing, are far from spectacular. But they bring with them important gains in stock prices. At yearend, our Coke investment was valued at $25 billion while Amex was recorded at $22 billion. Each holding now accounts for roughly 5% of Berkshire’s net worth, akin to its weighting long ago.</p><p>Assume, for a moment, I had made a similarly-sized investment mistake in the 1990s, one that flat-lined and simply retained its $1.3 billion value in 2022. (An example would be a high-grade 30-year bond.) That disappointing investment would now represent an insignificant 0.3% of Berkshire’s net worth and would be delivering to us an unchanged $80 million or so of annual income.</p><p>The lesson for investors: The weeds wither away in significance as the flowers bloom. Over time, it takes just a few winners to work wonders. And, yes, it helps to start early and live into your 90s as well.</p><h2>The Past Year in Brief</h2><p>Berkshire had a good year in 2022. The company’s operating earnings – our term for income calculated using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (“GAAP”), exclusive of capital gains or losses from equity holdings – set a record at $30.8 billion. Charlie and I focus on this operational figure and urge you to do so as well. The GAAP figure, absent our adjustment, fluctuates wildly and capriciously at every reporting date. Note its acrobatic behavior in 2022, which is in no way unusual:</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/69e74650656620f9fa3f1e55c15a90e5\" tg-width=\"797\" tg-height=\"207\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/></p><p>The GAAP earnings are 100% misleading when viewed quarterly or even annually. Capital gains, to be sure, have been hugely important to Berkshire over past decades, and we expect them to be meaningfully positive in future decades. But their quarter-by-quarter gyrations, regularly and mindlessly headlined by media, totally misinform investors.</p><p>A second positive development for Berkshire last year was our purchase of Alleghany Corporation, a property-casualty insurer captained by Joe Brandon. I’ve worked with Joe in the past, and he understands both Berkshire  and insurance. Alleghany delivers special value to us because Berkshire’s unmatched financial strength allows its insurance subsidiaries to follow valuable and enduring investment strategies unavailable to virtually all competitors.</p><p>Aided by Alleghany, our insurance float increased during 2022 from $147 billion to $164 billion. With disciplined underwriting, these funds have a decent chance of being cost-free over time. Since purchasing our first property-casualty insurer in 1967, Berkshire’s float has increased 8,000-fold through acquisitions, operations and innovations. Though not recognized in our financial statements, this float has been an extraordinary asset for Berkshire. New shareholders can get an understanding of its value by reading our annually updated explanation of float on page A-2.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>A very minor gain in per-share intrinsic value took place in 2022 through Berkshire share repurchases as well as similar moves at Apple and American Express, both significant investees of ours. At Berkshire, we directly increased your interest in our unique collection of businesses by repurchasing 1.2% of the company’s outstanding shares. At Apple and Amex, repurchases increased Berkshire’s ownership a bit without any cost to us.</p><p>The math isn’t complicated: When the share count goes down, your interest in our many businesses goes up. Every small bit helps if repurchases are made at value-accretive prices. Just as surely, when a company overpays for repurchases, the continuing shareholders lose. At such times, gains flow only to the selling shareholders and to the friendly, but expensive, investment banker who recommended the foolish purchases.</p><p>Gains from value-accretive repurchases, it should be emphasized, benefit all owners – in every respect. Imagine, if you will, three fully-informed shareholders of a local auto dealership, one of whom manages the business. Imagine, further, that one of the passive owners wishes to sell his interest back to the company at a price attractive to the two continuing shareholders. When completed, has this transaction harmed anyone? Is the manager somehow favored over the continuing passive owners? Has the public been hurt?</p><p>When you are told that all repurchases are harmful to shareholders or to the country, or particularly beneficial to CEOs, you are listening to either an economic illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue (characters that are not mutually exclusive).</p><p>Almost endless details of Berkshire’s 2022 operations are laid out on pages K-33 – K-66. Charlie and I, along with many Berkshire shareholders, enjoy poring over the many facts and figures laid out in that section. These pages are not, however, required reading. There are many Berkshire centimillionaires and, yes, billionaires who have never studied our financial figures. They simply know that Charlie and I – along with our families and close friends – continue to have very significant investments in Berkshire, and they trust us to treat their money as we do our own.</p><p>And that is a promise we can make.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>Finally, an important warning: Even the operating earnings figure that we favor can easily be manipulated by managers who wish to do so. Such tampering is often thought of as sophisticated by CEOs, directors and their advisors. Reporters and analysts embrace its existence as well. Beating “expectations” is heralded as a managerial triumph.</p><p>That activity is disgusting. It requires no talent to manipulate numbers: Only a deep desire to deceive is required. “Bold imaginative accounting,” as a CEO once described his deception to me, has become one of the shames of capitalism.</p><h2>58 Years – and a Few Figures</h2><p>In 1965, Berkshire was a one-trick pony, the owner of a venerable – but doomed – New England textile operation. With that business on a death march, Berkshire needed an immediate fresh start. Looking back, I was slow to recognize the severity of its problems.</p><p>And then came a stroke of good luck: National Indemnity became available in 1967, and we shifted our resources toward insurance and other non-textile operations.</p><p>Thus began our journey to 2023, a bumpy road involving a combination of continuous savings by our owners (that is, by their retaining earnings), the power of compounding, our avoidance of major mistakes and – most important of all – the American Tailwind. America would have done fine without Berkshire. The reverse is not true.</p><p>Berkshire now enjoys major ownership in an unmatched collection of huge and diversified businesses. Let’s first look at the 5,000 or so publicly-held companies that trade daily on NASDAQ, the NYSE and related venues. Within this group is housed the members of the S&amp;P 500 Index, an elite collection of large and well-known American companies.</p><p>In aggregate, the 500 earned $1.8 trillion in 2021. I don’t yet have the final results for 2022. Using, therefore, the 2021 figures, only 128 of the 500 (including Berkshire itself) earned $3 billion or more. Indeed, 23 lost money.</p><p>At yearend 2022, Berkshire was the largest owner of eight of these giants: American Express, Bank of America, Chevron, Coca-Cola, HP Inc., Moody’s, Occidental Petroleum and Paramount Global.</p><p>In addition to those eight investees, Berkshire owns 100% of BNSF and 92% of BH Energy, each with earnings that exceed the $3 billion mark noted above ($5.9 billion at BNSF and</p><p>$4.3 billion at BHE). Were these companies publicly-owned, they would replace two present members of the 500. All told, our ten controlled and non-controlled behemoths leave Berkshire more broadly aligned with the country’s economic future than is the case at any other U.S. company. (This calculation leaves aside “fiduciary” operations such as pension funds and investment companies.) In addition, Berkshire’s insurance operation, though conducted through many individually-managed subsidiaries, has a value comparable to BNSF or BHE.</p><p>As for the future, Berkshire will always hold a boatload of cash and U.S. Treasury bills along with a wide array of businesses. We will also avoid behavior that could result in any uncomfortable cash needs at inconvenient times, including financial panics and unprecedented insurance losses. Our CEO will always be the Chief Risk Officer – a task it is irresponsible to delegate. Additionally, our future CEOs will have a significant part of their net worth in Berkshire shares, bought with their own money. And yes, our shareholders will continue to save and prosper by retaining earnings.</p><p>At Berkshire, there will be no finish line.</p><h2>Some Surprising Facts About Federal Taxes</h2><p>During the decade ending in 2021, the United States Treasury received about $32.3 trillion in taxes while it spent $43.9 trillion.</p><p>Though economists, politicians and many of the public have opinions about the consequences of that huge imbalance, Charlie and I plead ignorance and firmly believe that near-term economic and market forecasts are worse than useless. Our job is to manage Berkshire’s operations and finances in a manner that will achieve an acceptable result over time and that will preserve the company’s unmatched staying power when financial panics or severe worldwide recessions occur. Berkshire also offers some modest protection from runaway inflation, but this attribute is far from perfect. Huge and entrenched fiscal deficits have consequences.</p><p>The $32 trillion of revenue was garnered by the Treasury through individual income taxes (48%), social security and related receipts (3412%), corporate income tax payments (812%) and a wide variety of lesser levies. Berkshire’s contribution via the corporate income tax was $32 billion during the decade, almost exactly a tenth of 1% of all money that the Treasury collected.</p><p>And that means – brace yourself – had there been roughly 1,000 taxpayers in the U.S. matching Berkshire’s payments, no other businesses nor any of the country’s 131 million households would have needed to pay any taxes to the federal government. Not a dime.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>Millions, billions, trillions – we all know the words, but the sums involved are almost impossible to comprehend. Let’s put physical dimensions to the numbers:</p><p>- If you convert $1 million into newly-printed $100 bills, you will have a stack that reaches your chest.</p><p>- Perform the same exercise with $1 billion – this is getting exciting! – and the stack reaches about 34 of a mile into the sky.</p><p>- Finally, imagine piling up $32 billion, the total of Berkshire’s 2012-21 federal income tax payments. Now the stack grows to more than 21 miles in height, about three times the level at which commercial airplanes usually cruise.</p><p>When it comes to federal taxes, individuals who own Berkshire can unequivocally state “I gave at the office.”</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>At Berkshire we hope and expect to pay much more in taxes during the next decade. We owe the country no less: America’s dynamism has made a huge contribution to whatever success Berkshire has achieved – a contribution Berkshire will always need. We count on the American Tailwind and, though it has been becalmed from time to time, its propelling force has always returned.</p><p>I have been investing for 80 years – more than one-third of our country’s lifetime. Despite our citizens’ penchant – almost enthusiasm – for self-criticism and self-doubt, I have yet to see a time when it made sense to make a long-term bet against America. And I doubt very much that any reader of this letter will have a different experience in the future.</p><h2>Nothing Beats Having a Great Partner</h2><p>Charlie and I think pretty much alike. But what it takes me a page to explain, he sums up in a sentence. His version, moreover, is always more clearly reasoned and also more artfully – some might add bluntly – stated.</p><p>Here are a few of his thoughts, many lifted from a very recent podcast:</p><p>- The world is full of foolish gamblers, and they will not do as well as the patient investor.</p><p>- If you don’t see the world the way it is, it’s like judging something through a distorted lens.</p><p>- All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there. And a related thought: Early on, write your desired obituary – and then behave accordingly.</p><p>- If you don’t care whether you are rational or not, you won’t work on it. Then you will stay irrational and get lousy results.</p><p>- Patience can be learned. Having a long attention span and the ability to concentrate on one thing for a long time is a huge advantage.</p><p>- You can learn a lot from dead people. Read of the deceased you admire and detest.</p><p>- Don’t bail away in a sinking boat if you can swim to one that is seaworthy.</p><p>- A great company keeps working after you are not; a mediocre company won’t do that.</p><p>- Warren and I don’t focus on the froth of the market. We seek out good long-term investments and stubbornly hold them for a long time.</p><p>- Ben Graham said, “Day to day, the stock market is a voting machine; in the long term it’s a weighing machine.” If you keep making something more valuable, then some wise person is going to notice it and start buying.</p><p>- There is no such thing as a 100% sure thing when investing. Thus, the use of leverage is dangerous. A string of wonderful numbers times zero will always equal zero. Don’t count on getting rich twice.</p><p>- You don’t, however, need to own a lot of things in order to get rich.</p><p>- You have to keep learning if you want to become a great investor. When the world changes, you must change.</p><p>- Warren and I hated railroad stocks for decades, but the world changed and finally the country had four huge railroads of vital importance to the American economy. We were slow to recognize the change, but better late than never.</p><p>- Finally, I will add two short sentences by Charlie that have been his decision-clinchers for decades: “Warren, think more about it. You’re smart and I’m right.”</p><p>And so it goes. I never have a phone call with Charlie without learning something. And, while he makes me think, he also makes me laugh.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>I will add to Charlie’s list a rule of my own:   Find   a   very   smart   high-grade partner – preferably slightly older than you – and then listen very carefully to what he says.</p><h2>A Family Gathering in Omaha</h2><p>Charlie and I are shameless. Last year, at our first shareholder get-together in three years, we greeted you with our usual commercial hustle.</p><p>From the opening bell, we went straight for your wallet. In short order, our See’s kiosk sold you eleven tons of nourishing peanut brittle and chocolates. In our P.T. Barnum pitch, we promised you longevity. After all, what else but candy from See’s could account for Charlie and me making it to 99 and 92?</p><p>I know you can’t wait to hear the specifics of last year’s hustle.</p><p>On Friday, the doors were open from noon until 5 p.m., and our candy counters rang up 2,690 individual sales. On Saturday, See’s registered an additional 3,931 transactions between 7 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., despite the fact that 612 of the 912 operating hours occurred while our movie and the question-and-answer session were limiting commercial traffic.</p><p>Do the math: See’s rang up about 10 sales per minute during its prime operating time (racking up $400,309 of volume during the two days), with all the goods purchased at a single location selling products that haven’t been materially altered in 101 years. What worked for See’s in the days of Henry Ford’s model T works now.</p><p>* * * * * * * * * * * *</p><p>Charlie, I, and the entire Berkshire bunch look forward to seeing you in Omaha on May 5-6. We will have a good time and so will you.</p><p>February 25, 2023 Warren E. Buffett </p><p>Chairman of the Board</p></body></html>\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1117520516","content_text":"Warren Buffett is still betting on America.Stocks and bonds slumped in 2022 after central banks raised interest rates at a rapid pace to try to rein in inflation. But Mr. Buffett retained his sense of optimism in his annual letter to investors Saturday, saying he attributes much of his success over the years to the resilience of the U.S. economy.“I have been investing for 80 years—more than one-third of our country’s lifetime. Despite our citizens’ penchant—almost enthusiasm—for self-criticism and self-doubt, I have yet to see a time when it made sense to make a long-term bet against America,” Mr. Buffett said in the letter.Mr. Buffett, widely regarded as one of the world’s top investors, has been publishing the letters for more than half a century. Over that time, he hasn’t just reflected on the past year for his company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., but also shared his thoughts on everything from esoteric accounting rules to his aversion to excessive risk-taking.Saturday’s letter offered readers a glimpse into how Mr. Buffett, 92, viewed what wound up being a shaky stretch for markets.The volatility offered Berkshire an opportunity to jump in and buy stocks. While Berkshire largely bought back its own shares in 2021, it focused more in 2022 on investing in other companies—opening up new positions in media company Paramount Global and building-materials manufacturer Louisiana-Pacific Corp., among other businesses, and swiftly becoming Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s single biggest shareholder.As of the end of 2022, Berkshire was the largest shareholder of eight companies—American Express Co., Bank of America Corp., Chevron Corp., Coca-Cola Co., HP Inc., Moody’s Corp., Occidental and Paramount Global.“America would have done fine without Berkshire. The reverse is not true,” Mr. Buffett said.Berkshire also released its results for 2022 on Saturday.The Omaha, Neb., company, which owns businesses including insurer Geico, railroad BNSF Railway and chocolate maker See’s Candies, posted a loss of $22.82 billion for the year, stung by $67.9 billion in investment and derivative contract losses. In 2021, Berkshire posted a profit of $90.8 billion.Total revenue rose 9.4% to $302.1 billion.Berkshire’s operating earnings, which exclude some investment results, rose to a record $30.8 billion.Mr. Buffett, Berkshire’s chief executive, has long held that operating earnings are a better reflection of how Berkshire is doing, since accounting rules require the company to include unrealized gains and losses from its massive investment portfolio in its net income. Volatile markets can make Berkshire’s net income change substantially from quarter to quarter, regardless of how its underlying businesses are doing.“Capital gains, to be sure, have been hugely important to Berkshire over past decades, and we expect them to be meaningfully positive in future decades,” Mr. Buffett said in his letter. “But their quarter-by-quarter gyrations, regularly and mindlessly headlined by media, totally misinform investors,” he said, adding that he and his right-hand man Charlie Munger urged shareholders to focus instead on Berkshire’s operating earnings, which rose to a record for the full year in 2022.Read the full letter here:To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.:Charlie Munger, my long-time partner, and I have the job of managing the savings of a great number of individuals. We are grateful for their enduring trust, a relationship that often spans much of their adult lifetime. It is those dedicated savers that are forefront in my mind as I write this letter.A common belief is that people choose to save when young, expecting thereby to maintain their living standards after retirement. Any assets that remain at death, this theory says, will usually be left to their families or, possibly, to friends and philanthropy.Our experience has differed. We believe Berkshire’s individual holders largely to be of the once-a-saver, always-a-saver variety. Though these people live well, they eventually dispense most of their funds to philanthropic organizations. These, in turn, redistribute the funds by expenditures intended to improve the lives of a great many people who are unrelated to the original benefactor. Sometimes, the results have been spectacular.The disposition of money unmasks humans. Charlie and I watch with pleasure the vast flow of Berkshire-generated funds to public needs and, alongside, the infrequency with which our shareholders opt for look-at-me assets and dynasty-building.Who wouldn’t enjoy working for shareholders like ours?What We DoCharlie and I allocate your savings at Berkshire between two related forms of ownership. First, we invest in businesses that we control, usually buying 100% of each. Berkshire directs capital allocation at these subsidiaries and selects the CEOs who make day-by-day operating decisions. When large enterprises are being managed, both trust and rules are essential. Berkshire emphasizes the former to an unusual – some would say extreme – degree. Disappointments are inevitable. We are understanding about business mistakes; our tolerance for personal misconduct is zero.In our second category of ownership, we buy publicly-traded stocks through which we passively own pieces of businesses. Holding these investments, we have no say in management.Our goal in both forms of ownership is to make meaningful investments in businesses with both long-lasting favorable economic characteristics and trustworthy managers. Please note particularly that we own publicly-traded stocks based on our expectations about their long-term business performance, not because we view them as vehicles for adroit purchases and sales. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers.Over the years, I have made many mistakes. Consequently, our extensive collection of businesses currently consists of a few enterprises that have truly extraordinary economics, many that enjoy very good economic characteristics, and a large group that are marginal. Along the way, other businesses in which I have invested have died, their products unwanted by the public. Capitalism has two sides: The system creates an ever-growing pile of losers while concurrently delivering a gusher of improved goods and services. Schumpeter called this phenomenon “creative destruction.”One advantage of our publicly-traded segment is that – episodically – it becomes easy to buy pieces of wonderful businesses at wonderful prices. It’s crucial to understand that stocks often trade at truly foolish prices, both high and low. “Efficient” markets exist only in textbooks. In truth, marketable stocks and bonds are baffling, their behavior usually understandable only in retrospect.Controlled businesses are a different breed. They sometimes command ridiculously higher prices than justified but are almost never available at bargain valuations. Unless under duress, the owner of a controlled business gives no thought to selling at a panic-type valuation.* * * * * * * * * * * *At this point, a report card from me is appropriate: In 58 years of Berkshire management, most of my capital-allocation decisions have been no better than so-so. In some cases, also, bad moves by me have been rescued by very large doses of luck. (Remember our escapes from near-disasters at USAir and Salomon? I certainly do.)Our satisfactory results have been the product of about a dozen truly good decisions – that would be about one every five years – and a sometimes-forgotten advantage that favors long-term investors such as Berkshire. Let’s take a peek behind the curtain.The Secret SauceIn August 1994 – yes, 1994 – Berkshire completed its seven-year purchase of the 400 million shares of Coca-Cola we now own. The total cost was $1.3 billion – then a very meaningful sum at Berkshire.The cash dividend we received from Coke in 1994 was $75 million. By 2022, the dividend had increased to $704 million. Growth occurred every year, just as certain as birthdays. All Charlie and I were required to do was cash Coke’s quarterly dividend checks. We expect that those checks are highly likely to grow.American Express is much the same story. Berkshire’s purchases of Amex were essentially completed in 1995 and, coincidentally, also cost $1.3 billion. Annual dividends received from this investment have grown from $41 million to $302 million. Those checks, too, seem highly likely to increase.These dividend gains, though pleasing, are far from spectacular. But they bring with them important gains in stock prices. At yearend, our Coke investment was valued at $25 billion while Amex was recorded at $22 billion. Each holding now accounts for roughly 5% of Berkshire’s net worth, akin to its weighting long ago.Assume, for a moment, I had made a similarly-sized investment mistake in the 1990s, one that flat-lined and simply retained its $1.3 billion value in 2022. (An example would be a high-grade 30-year bond.) That disappointing investment would now represent an insignificant 0.3% of Berkshire’s net worth and would be delivering to us an unchanged $80 million or so of annual income.The lesson for investors: The weeds wither away in significance as the flowers bloom. Over time, it takes just a few winners to work wonders. And, yes, it helps to start early and live into your 90s as well.The Past Year in BriefBerkshire had a good year in 2022. The company’s operating earnings – our term for income calculated using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (“GAAP”), exclusive of capital gains or losses from equity holdings – set a record at $30.8 billion. Charlie and I focus on this operational figure and urge you to do so as well. The GAAP figure, absent our adjustment, fluctuates wildly and capriciously at every reporting date. Note its acrobatic behavior in 2022, which is in no way unusual:The GAAP earnings are 100% misleading when viewed quarterly or even annually. Capital gains, to be sure, have been hugely important to Berkshire over past decades, and we expect them to be meaningfully positive in future decades. But their quarter-by-quarter gyrations, regularly and mindlessly headlined by media, totally misinform investors.A second positive development for Berkshire last year was our purchase of Alleghany Corporation, a property-casualty insurer captained by Joe Brandon. I’ve worked with Joe in the past, and he understands both Berkshire  and insurance. Alleghany delivers special value to us because Berkshire’s unmatched financial strength allows its insurance subsidiaries to follow valuable and enduring investment strategies unavailable to virtually all competitors.Aided by Alleghany, our insurance float increased during 2022 from $147 billion to $164 billion. With disciplined underwriting, these funds have a decent chance of being cost-free over time. Since purchasing our first property-casualty insurer in 1967, Berkshire’s float has increased 8,000-fold through acquisitions, operations and innovations. Though not recognized in our financial statements, this float has been an extraordinary asset for Berkshire. New shareholders can get an understanding of its value by reading our annually updated explanation of float on page A-2.* * * * * * * * * * * *A very minor gain in per-share intrinsic value took place in 2022 through Berkshire share repurchases as well as similar moves at Apple and American Express, both significant investees of ours. At Berkshire, we directly increased your interest in our unique collection of businesses by repurchasing 1.2% of the company’s outstanding shares. At Apple and Amex, repurchases increased Berkshire’s ownership a bit without any cost to us.The math isn’t complicated: When the share count goes down, your interest in our many businesses goes up. Every small bit helps if repurchases are made at value-accretive prices. Just as surely, when a company overpays for repurchases, the continuing shareholders lose. At such times, gains flow only to the selling shareholders and to the friendly, but expensive, investment banker who recommended the foolish purchases.Gains from value-accretive repurchases, it should be emphasized, benefit all owners – in every respect. Imagine, if you will, three fully-informed shareholders of a local auto dealership, one of whom manages the business. Imagine, further, that one of the passive owners wishes to sell his interest back to the company at a price attractive to the two continuing shareholders. When completed, has this transaction harmed anyone? Is the manager somehow favored over the continuing passive owners? Has the public been hurt?When you are told that all repurchases are harmful to shareholders or to the country, or particularly beneficial to CEOs, you are listening to either an economic illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue (characters that are not mutually exclusive).Almost endless details of Berkshire’s 2022 operations are laid out on pages K-33 – K-66. Charlie and I, along with many Berkshire shareholders, enjoy poring over the many facts and figures laid out in that section. These pages are not, however, required reading. There are many Berkshire centimillionaires and, yes, billionaires who have never studied our financial figures. They simply know that Charlie and I – along with our families and close friends – continue to have very significant investments in Berkshire, and they trust us to treat their money as we do our own.And that is a promise we can make.* * * * * * * * * * * *Finally, an important warning: Even the operating earnings figure that we favor can easily be manipulated by managers who wish to do so. Such tampering is often thought of as sophisticated by CEOs, directors and their advisors. Reporters and analysts embrace its existence as well. Beating “expectations” is heralded as a managerial triumph.That activity is disgusting. It requires no talent to manipulate numbers: Only a deep desire to deceive is required. “Bold imaginative accounting,” as a CEO once described his deception to me, has become one of the shames of capitalism.58 Years – and a Few FiguresIn 1965, Berkshire was a one-trick pony, the owner of a venerable – but doomed – New England textile operation. With that business on a death march, Berkshire needed an immediate fresh start. Looking back, I was slow to recognize the severity of its problems.And then came a stroke of good luck: National Indemnity became available in 1967, and we shifted our resources toward insurance and other non-textile operations.Thus began our journey to 2023, a bumpy road involving a combination of continuous savings by our owners (that is, by their retaining earnings), the power of compounding, our avoidance of major mistakes and – most important of all – the American Tailwind. America would have done fine without Berkshire. The reverse is not true.Berkshire now enjoys major ownership in an unmatched collection of huge and diversified businesses. Let’s first look at the 5,000 or so publicly-held companies that trade daily on NASDAQ, the NYSE and related venues. Within this group is housed the members of the S&P 500 Index, an elite collection of large and well-known American companies.In aggregate, the 500 earned $1.8 trillion in 2021. I don’t yet have the final results for 2022. Using, therefore, the 2021 figures, only 128 of the 500 (including Berkshire itself) earned $3 billion or more. Indeed, 23 lost money.At yearend 2022, Berkshire was the largest owner of eight of these giants: American Express, Bank of America, Chevron, Coca-Cola, HP Inc., Moody’s, Occidental Petroleum and Paramount Global.In addition to those eight investees, Berkshire owns 100% of BNSF and 92% of BH Energy, each with earnings that exceed the $3 billion mark noted above ($5.9 billion at BNSF and$4.3 billion at BHE). Were these companies publicly-owned, they would replace two present members of the 500. All told, our ten controlled and non-controlled behemoths leave Berkshire more broadly aligned with the country’s economic future than is the case at any other U.S. company. (This calculation leaves aside “fiduciary” operations such as pension funds and investment companies.) In addition, Berkshire’s insurance operation, though conducted through many individually-managed subsidiaries, has a value comparable to BNSF or BHE.As for the future, Berkshire will always hold a boatload of cash and U.S. Treasury bills along with a wide array of businesses. We will also avoid behavior that could result in any uncomfortable cash needs at inconvenient times, including financial panics and unprecedented insurance losses. Our CEO will always be the Chief Risk Officer – a task it is irresponsible to delegate. Additionally, our future CEOs will have a significant part of their net worth in Berkshire shares, bought with their own money. And yes, our shareholders will continue to save and prosper by retaining earnings.At Berkshire, there will be no finish line.Some Surprising Facts About Federal TaxesDuring the decade ending in 2021, the United States Treasury received about $32.3 trillion in taxes while it spent $43.9 trillion.Though economists, politicians and many of the public have opinions about the consequences of that huge imbalance, Charlie and I plead ignorance and firmly believe that near-term economic and market forecasts are worse than useless. Our job is to manage Berkshire’s operations and finances in a manner that will achieve an acceptable result over time and that will preserve the company’s unmatched staying power when financial panics or severe worldwide recessions occur. Berkshire also offers some modest protection from runaway inflation, but this attribute is far from perfect. Huge and entrenched fiscal deficits have consequences.The $32 trillion of revenue was garnered by the Treasury through individual income taxes (48%), social security and related receipts (3412%), corporate income tax payments (812%) and a wide variety of lesser levies. Berkshire’s contribution via the corporate income tax was $32 billion during the decade, almost exactly a tenth of 1% of all money that the Treasury collected.And that means – brace yourself – had there been roughly 1,000 taxpayers in the U.S. matching Berkshire’s payments, no other businesses nor any of the country’s 131 million households would have needed to pay any taxes to the federal government. Not a dime.* * * * * * * * * * * *Millions, billions, trillions – we all know the words, but the sums involved are almost impossible to comprehend. Let’s put physical dimensions to the numbers:- If you convert $1 million into newly-printed $100 bills, you will have a stack that reaches your chest.- Perform the same exercise with $1 billion – this is getting exciting! – and the stack reaches about 34 of a mile into the sky.- Finally, imagine piling up $32 billion, the total of Berkshire’s 2012-21 federal income tax payments. Now the stack grows to more than 21 miles in height, about three times the level at which commercial airplanes usually cruise.When it comes to federal taxes, individuals who own Berkshire can unequivocally state “I gave at the office.”* * * * * * * * * * * *At Berkshire we hope and expect to pay much more in taxes during the next decade. We owe the country no less: America’s dynamism has made a huge contribution to whatever success Berkshire has achieved – a contribution Berkshire will always need. We count on the American Tailwind and, though it has been becalmed from time to time, its propelling force has always returned.I have been investing for 80 years – more than one-third of our country’s lifetime. Despite our citizens’ penchant – almost enthusiasm – for self-criticism and self-doubt, I have yet to see a time when it made sense to make a long-term bet against America. And I doubt very much that any reader of this letter will have a different experience in the future.Nothing Beats Having a Great PartnerCharlie and I think pretty much alike. But what it takes me a page to explain, he sums up in a sentence. His version, moreover, is always more clearly reasoned and also more artfully – some might add bluntly – stated.Here are a few of his thoughts, many lifted from a very recent podcast:- The world is full of foolish gamblers, and they will not do as well as the patient investor.- If you don’t see the world the way it is, it’s like judging something through a distorted lens.- All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there. And a related thought: Early on, write your desired obituary – and then behave accordingly.- If you don’t care whether you are rational or not, you won’t work on it. Then you will stay irrational and get lousy results.- Patience can be learned. Having a long attention span and the ability to concentrate on one thing for a long time is a huge advantage.- You can learn a lot from dead people. Read of the deceased you admire and detest.- Don’t bail away in a sinking boat if you can swim to one that is seaworthy.- A great company keeps working after you are not; a mediocre company won’t do that.- Warren and I don’t focus on the froth of the market. We seek out good long-term investments and stubbornly hold them for a long time.- Ben Graham said, “Day to day, the stock market is a voting machine; in the long term it’s a weighing machine.” If you keep making something more valuable, then some wise person is going to notice it and start buying.- There is no such thing as a 100% sure thing when investing. Thus, the use of leverage is dangerous. A string of wonderful numbers times zero will always equal zero. Don’t count on getting rich twice.- You don’t, however, need to own a lot of things in order to get rich.- You have to keep learning if you want to become a great investor. When the world changes, you must change.- Warren and I hated railroad stocks for decades, but the world changed and finally the country had four huge railroads of vital importance to the American economy. We were slow to recognize the change, but better late than never.- Finally, I will add two short sentences by Charlie that have been his decision-clinchers for decades: “Warren, think more about it. You’re smart and I’m right.”And so it goes. I never have a phone call with Charlie without learning something. And, while he makes me think, he also makes me laugh.* * * * * * * * * * * *I will add to Charlie’s list a rule of my own:   Find   a   very   smart   high-grade partner – preferably slightly older than you – and then listen very carefully to what he says.A Family Gathering in OmahaCharlie and I are shameless. Last year, at our first shareholder get-together in three years, we greeted you with our usual commercial hustle.From the opening bell, we went straight for your wallet. In short order, our See’s kiosk sold you eleven tons of nourishing peanut brittle and chocolates. In our P.T. Barnum pitch, we promised you longevity. After all, what else but candy from See’s could account for Charlie and me making it to 99 and 92?I know you can’t wait to hear the specifics of last year’s hustle.On Friday, the doors were open from noon until 5 p.m., and our candy counters rang up 2,690 individual sales. On Saturday, See’s registered an additional 3,931 transactions between 7 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., despite the fact that 612 of the 912 operating hours occurred while our movie and the question-and-answer session were limiting commercial traffic.Do the math: See’s rang up about 10 sales per minute during its prime operating time (racking up $400,309 of volume during the two days), with all the goods purchased at a single location selling products that haven’t been materially altered in 101 years. What worked for See’s in the days of Henry Ford’s model T works now.* * * * * * * * * * * *Charlie, I, and the entire Berkshire bunch look forward to seeing you in Omaha on May 5-6. We will have a good time and so will you.February 25, 2023 Warren E. Buffett Chairman of the Board","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":63,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":869207141,"gmtCreate":1632287917583,"gmtModify":1676530743943,"author":{"id":"3584357430867033","authorId":"3584357430867033","name":"HODLFTW","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Another \"invite you to tent, glare into my crystal ball and see your 10x return future\"?...","listText":"Another \"invite you to tent, glare into my crystal ball and see your 10x return future\"?...","text":"Another \"invite you to tent, glare into my crystal ball and see your 10x return future\"?...","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":7,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/869207141","repostId":"2169639321","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"2169639321","pubTimestamp":1632282060,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/2169639321?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-09-22 11:41","market":"us","language":"en","title":"1 Growth Stock That Could Produce 10X Returns","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2169639321","media":"Motley Fool","summary":"The future looks bright for this e-commerce company.","content":"<p><b>Global-E Online</b> (NASDAQ:GLBE) went public in mid-May at $25 per share. Since then, the stock's price has soared over 200%, as investors have bought shares of this e-commerce company hand over fist, and it's easy to see why. Online shopping is <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/AONE.U\">one</a> of the most pervasive trends of our time, and the market is far from tapped out.</p>\n<p>However, even though the share price has tripled, it's not too late to add Global-E to your own portfolio. In fact, I think this recent IPO stock could still grow tenfold over the next 10 years. Here's why.</p>\n<h2>Managing cross-border commerce is a big market opportunity</h2>\n<p>Domestic e-commerce is fairly straightforward, but cross-border sales are a different story. Merchants have to navigate the complexities of international logistics, language barriers, and various regulatory requirements. Traditionally, businesses have relied upon several service providers to solve these problems, but Global-E takes a more comprehensive&nbsp;approach.</p>\n<p>The company offers an end-to-end solution for cross-border commerce. Its platform integrates with a seller's online storefront, localizing details like the language, pricing, and shipping options on a market-by-market basis. Global-E also manages import duties and taxes, and it provides after-sale customer service and returns management.</p>\n<p>Why does this matter? International shoppers typically represent 30%&nbsp;of web traffic to global e-commerce sites, but international sales usually comprise just 5% to 10%&nbsp;of total revenue. In other words, current solutions fail to help sellers fully capitalize on that opportunity -- and it's a big opportunity. According to <b>Forrester Research</b>, cross-border e-commerce spend will reach $736 billion&nbsp;in 2023.</p>\n<h2>Global-E has a strong competitive edge</h2>\n<p>Global-E has a more holistic solution than any of its rivals, and the company's numbers back that claim. By optimizing the shopping experience for international consumers in over 200 destination markets, Global-E helps businesses accelerate cross-border conversions, often by more than&nbsp;60%.</p>\n<p>This creates a flywheel effect. By facilitating transactions and logistics across a range of geographies, Global-E collects market-specific data relating to consumer preferences. Using that data, its platform leans on artificial intelligence to surface relevant insights for merchants, helping them further boost international conversion rates.</p>\n<p>This accomplishes two things: First, Global-E makes money by taking a cut of gross merchandise value, so it wins when its merchants succeed. Second, as Global-E's AI models become more intelligent, its ability to drive cross-border sales should improve, drawing even more merchants to its platform.</p>\n<p>This virtuous cycle has already been a powerful growth driver. As of the most recent quarter, Global-E had 522 merchants on its platform, up 85% from the end of 2019. That uptick in adoption has powered an impressive top-line performance.</p>\n<table>\n <thead>\n  <tr>\n   <th><p>Metric</p></th>\n   <th><p>Q2 2020 (TTM)</p></th>\n   <th><p>Q2 2021 (TTM)</p></th>\n   <th><p>Change</p></th>\n  </tr>\n </thead>\n <tbody>\n  <tr>\n   <td width=\"156\"><p>Revenue</p></td>\n   <td width=\"156\"><p>$90.1 million</p></td>\n   <td width=\"156\"><p>$190.3 million</p></td>\n   <td width=\"156\"><p>111%</p></td>\n  </tr>\n </tbody>\n</table>\n<p>Data source: Global-E SEC filings. TTM: trailing-12-months. CAGR: compound annual growth rate.</p>\n<p>Global-E's gross profit margin has expanded dramatically over time, rising from 22% in 2018&nbsp;to 36%&nbsp;in the most recent quarter. Management attributes&nbsp;this to the growing volume of its market-specific data. And the company is well-positioned to maintain that momentum.</p>\n<p>The Global-E platform is a very sticky product. Gross retention has been over 98% since 2018, meaning less than 2% of customers cancel service each year. And net retention hit 172%&nbsp;in 2020, indicating a 72% uptick in average customer spend. In both cases, these impressive figures evidence the value that Global-E creates for its clients.</p>\n<p>Moreover, the company recently signed a partnership agreement with <b>Shopify</b>, the most popular&nbsp;e-commerce software vendor in the United States, whereby Global-E will be the exclusive provider of cross-border solutions for Shopify merchants. This could be a significant growth driver for both companies -- the Shopify platform currently supports 1.7 million merchants, each of which could easily become a Global-E customer.</p>\n<h2>The bottom line</h2>\n<p>Global-E stock trades at a pricey 59 times sales, but given the company's strong competitive position and massive market opportunity, that valuation may not look so crazy in hindsight.</p>\n<p>Consider this scenario: To produce tenfold returns, Global-E would need to achieve a market cap of $110 billion, and I think that's possible. If the company can grow sales at 40% per year through 2031, total revenue would reach $5.5 billion. Assuming the stock trades for a more reasonable 20 times sales at that point, Global-E would have a market cap of exactly $110 billion.</p>\n<p>Of course, no one knows the future, and I've speculated on several metrics over a great length of time. But it's not hard for me to imagine this scenario playing out over the next decade. That's why I think this growth stock is a smart long-term investment.</p>","source":"fool_stock","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>1 Growth Stock That Could Produce 10X Returns</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\n1 Growth Stock That Could Produce 10X Returns\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-09-22 11:41 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/21/1-growth-stock-that-could-produce-10x-returns/><strong>Motley Fool</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Global-E Online (NASDAQ:GLBE) went public in mid-May at $25 per share. Since then, the stock's price has soared over 200%, as investors have bought shares of this e-commerce company hand over fist, ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/21/1-growth-stock-that-could-produce-10x-returns/\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"GLBE":"Global-E Online Ltd."},"source_url":"https://www.fool.com/investing/2021/09/21/1-growth-stock-that-could-produce-10x-returns/","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2169639321","content_text":"Global-E Online (NASDAQ:GLBE) went public in mid-May at $25 per share. Since then, the stock's price has soared over 200%, as investors have bought shares of this e-commerce company hand over fist, and it's easy to see why. Online shopping is one of the most pervasive trends of our time, and the market is far from tapped out.\nHowever, even though the share price has tripled, it's not too late to add Global-E to your own portfolio. In fact, I think this recent IPO stock could still grow tenfold over the next 10 years. Here's why.\nManaging cross-border commerce is a big market opportunity\nDomestic e-commerce is fairly straightforward, but cross-border sales are a different story. Merchants have to navigate the complexities of international logistics, language barriers, and various regulatory requirements. Traditionally, businesses have relied upon several service providers to solve these problems, but Global-E takes a more comprehensive approach.\nThe company offers an end-to-end solution for cross-border commerce. Its platform integrates with a seller's online storefront, localizing details like the language, pricing, and shipping options on a market-by-market basis. Global-E also manages import duties and taxes, and it provides after-sale customer service and returns management.\nWhy does this matter? International shoppers typically represent 30% of web traffic to global e-commerce sites, but international sales usually comprise just 5% to 10% of total revenue. In other words, current solutions fail to help sellers fully capitalize on that opportunity -- and it's a big opportunity. According to Forrester Research, cross-border e-commerce spend will reach $736 billion in 2023.\nGlobal-E has a strong competitive edge\nGlobal-E has a more holistic solution than any of its rivals, and the company's numbers back that claim. By optimizing the shopping experience for international consumers in over 200 destination markets, Global-E helps businesses accelerate cross-border conversions, often by more than 60%.\nThis creates a flywheel effect. By facilitating transactions and logistics across a range of geographies, Global-E collects market-specific data relating to consumer preferences. Using that data, its platform leans on artificial intelligence to surface relevant insights for merchants, helping them further boost international conversion rates.\nThis accomplishes two things: First, Global-E makes money by taking a cut of gross merchandise value, so it wins when its merchants succeed. Second, as Global-E's AI models become more intelligent, its ability to drive cross-border sales should improve, drawing even more merchants to its platform.\nThis virtuous cycle has already been a powerful growth driver. As of the most recent quarter, Global-E had 522 merchants on its platform, up 85% from the end of 2019. That uptick in adoption has powered an impressive top-line performance.\n\n\n\nMetric\nQ2 2020 (TTM)\nQ2 2021 (TTM)\nChange\n\n\n\n\nRevenue\n$90.1 million\n$190.3 million\n111%\n\n\n\nData source: Global-E SEC filings. TTM: trailing-12-months. CAGR: compound annual growth rate.\nGlobal-E's gross profit margin has expanded dramatically over time, rising from 22% in 2018 to 36% in the most recent quarter. Management attributes this to the growing volume of its market-specific data. And the company is well-positioned to maintain that momentum.\nThe Global-E platform is a very sticky product. Gross retention has been over 98% since 2018, meaning less than 2% of customers cancel service each year. And net retention hit 172% in 2020, indicating a 72% uptick in average customer spend. In both cases, these impressive figures evidence the value that Global-E creates for its clients.\nMoreover, the company recently signed a partnership agreement with Shopify, the most popular e-commerce software vendor in the United States, whereby Global-E will be the exclusive provider of cross-border solutions for Shopify merchants. This could be a significant growth driver for both companies -- the Shopify platform currently supports 1.7 million merchants, each of which could easily become a Global-E customer.\nThe bottom line\nGlobal-E stock trades at a pricey 59 times sales, but given the company's strong competitive position and massive market opportunity, that valuation may not look so crazy in hindsight.\nConsider this scenario: To produce tenfold returns, Global-E would need to achieve a market cap of $110 billion, and I think that's possible. If the company can grow sales at 40% per year through 2031, total revenue would reach $5.5 billion. Assuming the stock trades for a more reasonable 20 times sales at that point, Global-E would have a market cap of exactly $110 billion.\nOf course, no one knows the future, and I've speculated on several metrics over a great length of time. But it's not hard for me to imagine this scenario playing out over the next decade. That's why I think this growth stock is a smart long-term investment.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":78,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":151036305,"gmtCreate":1625056657607,"gmtModify":1703734985994,"author":{"id":"3584357430867033","authorId":"3584357430867033","name":"HODLFTW","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0},"themes":[],"htmlText":"TLDR","listText":"TLDR","text":"TLDR","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/151036305","repostId":"1100563900","repostType":2,"repost":{"id":"1100563900","pubTimestamp":1624956396,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1100563900?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-06-29 16:46","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Facebook: Simply Unstoppable","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1100563900","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"The #StopHateforProfit Campaign, antitrust allegations, Apple IDFA issue, and a host of other historical issues have not stopped the social media giant and will not stop it.Despite an impressive rally delivering 65% since the start of CY20 and 26% YTD, Facebook remains undervalued relative to its peers and the FAANG stocks with the best forward estimates.The strong moat originating from their sheer user base, and sizeable TAMs in E-commerce, VR/AR, digital assets , cumulatively make for a compel","content":"<p><b>Summary</b></p>\n<ul>\n <li>The #StopHateforProfit Campaign, antitrust allegations, Apple IDFA issue, and a host of other historical issues have not stopped the social media giant and will not stop it.</li>\n <li>Despite an impressive rally delivering 65% since the start of CY20 and 26% YTD, Facebook remains undervalued relative to its peers and the FAANG stocks with the best forward estimates.</li>\n <li>The strong moat originating from their sheer user base, and sizeable TAMs in E-commerce, VR/AR, digital assets (DIEM), cumulatively make for a compelling growth story.</li>\n <li>Although the company is highly controversial and rightfully so, this article focuses more on the quantitative analysis and less on the morals and ethics behind this investment. That, we shall leave to you.</li>\n</ul>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3b3414073b72a391e760025594ec111f\" tg-width=\"768\" tg-height=\"528\"><span>nemke/E+ via Getty Images</span></p>\n<p><b>Investment Thesis</b></p>\n<p>Facebook (FB) has had a volatile trading period the past few years with a general uptrend, delivering shareholders nice returns whilst subjecting them to a few major dips which presented investors an opportunity for a steal. Despite the controversy and headline risks every now and then, the company has been able to battle through them and emerge ever so stronger. The company’s financials have been holding up and shows no sign of stoppage anytime soon. In a time as such, with significant uncertainty in the macro environment and inflation fears creeping up, we believe that shifting some of your assets to high cashflow generating companies is a wise strategy that will pay off. Growth and value are 2 different things, and there still exists growth companies that are undervalued and can still generate substantial cashflow, and we believe Facebook is one of them. The company also remains to be one of the more attractive blue-chip stocks compared to the others in the FAANG. We employ a 3–5-year outlook and have been bullish since USD$200/share. Let’s Begin!</p>\n<p><b>What is Facebook</b></p>\n<p>Known to all, Facebook is a social media giant with a family of products including the likes of Facebook, Instagram,WhatsApp, Messenger, and now Oculus. The firm essentially has a stronghold in the social media industry and has an impressive DAP of2.72 BN as of Q1’21and MAP of 3.45 BN.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e3d08f4df186c4705a5300f40d6b8a5e\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"429\"><span>(Source:FB Q1’21 Presentation)</span></p>\n<p>The world has7.874 BNpeople as of the time of this writing and that would mean that 43.8% of all the people in the world use some form of product from Facebook’s portfolio in the past 30 days. On a daily basis, 34.5% of the people in the world use it. If that isn’t a sticky service, nothing really is. If we were to focus on the usage of the Facebook app solely, 23.8% of the world logs into the app daily based on DAUs.</p>\n<p>The firm was founded in 2004 and generates the majority of their revenue from advertisements. If you have watched the social dilemma on Netflix, you would realize that Facebook’s real customer isn’t everyday users. Instead, users are the product, and they are being sold to advertisers. The company has created such an engaging and sticky service that users are more than happy to be using their apps, despite knowing that their data is being sold from one company to another. As appalling as it is, they’re indifferent to it all and still find the value in using the company’s products on a daily basis – keeping in touch with distant relatives, chatting with friends, staying up to date with the latest fashion trends and news… (According to the&nbsp;Pew Research Center, more than a 1/3 of US adults say they get their news regularly from Facebook)</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/7cb9d05bb00f3038cec301c72ef56827\" tg-width=\"608\" tg-height=\"378\"><span>(Source:Pew Research Center)</span></p>\n<p>To Facebook, this is equally as good as the more users, the wider the ‘product’ base that they have to offer their customers - advertisers. Advertisers are also indifferent to how Facebook attains its data, so long as Facebook’s targeting metrics and trackers are working well, the more likely it is that they are able to generate conversions. The more conversions, the more sales for them, the more ads they continue to pay for, the more revenue Facebook generates. Win-Win-Win, their apps are the bait, and the product (users), customers (advertisers), and supplier (Facebook), all walk away winners. It’s a remarkable business model that has stood the test of time and no matter the amount of controversy around the business, founders, and its practices, it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and for one simple reason: Users likely can’t do without Facebook’s products whether they are willing to admit it or not.</p>\n<p>When we look back in the past to reflect on how the #StopHateForProfit Campaign turned out for the company, it is apparent that the impact it had on the top and bottom line were both minimal. The boycott was one that arose due to Facebook’s bad hate speech regulations and policing, and because of the laissez-faire attitude toward posts from then President, Donald Trump. More than&nbsp;1000 companies publicly committed&nbsp;to boycotting the social media giant in June/July (coinciding with end Q2 and start Q3) and many of the top 100 advertisers based on ad spend such as Nike, Adidas, Puma, Coca-Cola, all revised their budgets downwards.</p>\n<p>Despite this, Facebook&nbsp;beat on Q2 earnings&nbsp;and saw an increase of&nbsp;10.7% YOY. In its forward guidance, the company also announced that for July, they were anticipating a slowdown in YoY growth of 17% but was still due to see a 10% increase. They alsoanticipatedthe slowdown in growth to last through till October. However, the company did not attribute this slowdown to the boycott specifically but to 3 other major headwinds. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that even for Q3’20, the firm saw an impressive 21.6% rise in its top line, with the bottom line still registering a 12.2% improvement in NPM for Q2’20 YoY and a 200 bps NPM improvement in Q3.</p>\n<p>The results are clear and indicative of a few things. The boycott by the largest companies did little to Facebook’s financial story as they still managed to register growth and did not see significant pullbacks that were material. This can be tied to the fact that most of Facebook’s advertisers are SMBs. Although certain few SMBs did join the boycott, most didn’t, and the firm still had their impressive 9 million + customer base to rely on. If anything, this also suggests that despite what any SMB stands for and whether they agree with a social cause or not, it is hard for them to find alternatives that they can shift to on a similar pricing scale. Big brands can easily pivot to other advertisements such as TV and radio commercials but SMBs simply can’t because of smaller budgets. Lastly, it is now clear that the campaign affected Facebook’s reputation more so than it did its cashflow.</p>\n<p><b>Risks</b></p>\n<p>Other risks that the company may face would be future antitrust lawsuits. As it is, the company is already facing allegations of being a monopoly based on their aggressive acquisitive history having acquired more than90 other companiessince inception. They were alsofined US$5 BNby the FTC in 2019 and were required to adopt their policies and employ new protections for the users and their data that has been shared.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f694ca79d59162e95f05335ebefbca3d\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"384\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>Though representative of a historic penalty and the largest ever imposed on a company for violating user’s privacy rights, the US$5BN was a drop in the bucket for the giant that went on to generate US$70+ BN dollars for the year.</p>\n<p>The current issues that they have with Apple’s new iOS changes and the IDFA implications are also likely not going to have a substantial impact on the firm. The Identifier for Advertisers [IDFA] is a random device identifier assigned by Apple to a user's device. Advertisers use this to track data so they can deliver customized advertising on mobile. With the new iOS changes, Apple essentially programmed it such that each app that wants to use these identifiers will have to ask users to opt in for tracking when the app is first launched. If users opt out, the app can’t track certain data and Facebook will have a smaller database of points to rely upon. As consumer preferences change, so will Facebook’s targeting that relies on IDFAs get worse and less effective due to outdated data points.</p>\n<p>According to aCNBC article:</p>\n<blockquote>\n Most critically at stake for Facebook is what’s known as view-through conversions. This metric is used by ad-tech companies to measure how many users saw an ad, did not immediately click on it, but later made a purchase related to that ad.”\n</blockquote>\n<p>When the conversion is made later on, the data IDFA for that particular user is then shared by the retailer to Facebook which is then used by the company to see if it matches the IDFA of the user who saw the ad. If they pair, it indicates that the ad was useful in generating a conversion. This data performance is then relayed to advertisers so that they can tweak their ad strategies accordingly. Withas much as 96% of usersanticipated to opt out of tracking on all apps, this would mean that mobile ads on 3rdparty apps may no longer be as useful if Facebook cannot really judge its effectiveness anymore. The more ineffective the ads become, the less conversions for retailers, and the more they pivot to other advertising platforms, which will impact the revenues for the firm.</p>\n<p>However, Facebook has disclosed that this will particularly only affect one form of advertisement which relies heavily on the IDFA, known as Audience Networks. Fortunately, the audience network segment only represents less than 10% of the firm’s total revenues. With the impact estimating to cost a drop in50% of all ads deliveredand hence sales from this segment, this would atbest represent a 5% drop in their total revenues. With that said, we do not anticipate that this will be present significant impact moving forward and the firm can easily recoup the 5% loss at worse by focusing on increasing ARPUs and user engagement to save their core business.</p>\n<p>Though Facebook started by disclosing that they anticipated the impact on their revenues to be large at first, this no longer seems to be the case. If anything, history has shown us that Mark is not one to back down and if he doesn’t get his way, he damn well will find another way to minimise loss and increase revenue generation in other segments to make up for it. If you aren’t too involved in the technicalities, we think it’s safe to bet on the jockey in this case. Besides, AR / VR growth,WhatsApp monetization, Reels monetization, further user growth in less developed countries away from the legacy North America and Europe region can very well pick up the lost (US$5BN) in sales.</p>\n<p><b>Moat</b></p>\n<p>As mentioned above, the DAUs and MAUs for Facebook are very impressive with a large portion of the world using at least 1 of their products. The moat for the business relies on the wide user base that Facebook has meticulously built over the course of 17 years. With any new product that they have, the firm can easily roll it out to their database of users and expect demand to pick up in a matter of weeks, maybe even days. That is the power of the network of Facebook that really can’t be valued.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2057a83640201edd89430e754f3f8525\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"431\"><span>(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)</span></p>\n<p>Despite the controversy, endless allegations, and negative headlines one after the other, the numbers don’t lie. DAUs have been increasing every single quarter, with the fastest growth observed in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world. US &amp; Canada growth has slowed as it nears saturation levels, and this is perfectly normal and to be expected. The way we anticipate Facebook to grow their core cash cow business moving forward is clean. 1) Focus on growing ARPUs in their saturated legacy areas (US &amp; Canada and Europe) as well as 2) Increase User Growth by Geography in their growth areas (Asia-Pacific and the Rest of the World). Unsurprisingly, Facebook has been focused on doing just that.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ce3456321584d2eea288f7e410215571\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"388\"><span>(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)</span></p>\n<p>When we look to the infamous metric for judging social media companies and their performance – ARPUs, we can see that in the legacy areas, ARPUs have been increasing at a faster pace than compared to growth areas. This falls in line with point number 1 as mentioned above. The legacy areas have already reached saturation levels and user growth is unable to grow at astounding rates anymore. However, since this represent areas that are more developed and generally have higher disposable incomes on the average, focusing on increasing ARPUs and monetizing advertisers is the right strategy and a very feasible one. Though the growth areas are also seeing ARPUs grow YoY as they should, they are not at the same pace as in the US &amp; Canada and Europe. When we look to revenue generated by geography below, this confirms the thesis that revenue is growing faster than user base in those areas, and since ARPU equal to (Total Revenue from that Geography / Number of Users in that area), so long revenue is growing at a faster pace than the user base, they should increase meaningfully.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/84eaec3de9bafd595bf4ecf9ffdae16a\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"430\"><span>(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)</span></p>\n<p>When we look to the slide below, it is also apparent that user numbers are growing much faster in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world, away from the legacy areas. Across 2 years, MAUs which is the broadest business performance metric employed by Facebook, grew 22.4% and 25.4% in the growth areas while they only grew a mere 6.6% in US &amp; Canada and 10.2% in Europe.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/2d72be6c3ca7eb809567503ffc1d4ed9\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"395\"><span>(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)</span></p>\n<p>If Facebook can continue to grow their user engagement numbers in the growth areas whilst maximizing ARPUs in legacy areas, the company can easily ensure that the core advertising model will remain the cash cow of the business, funding growth for their other product developments.</p>\n<p><b>Growth Tactics</b></p>\n<p>When we look to potential growth Facebook has, the company isn’t short of any. Facebook has moved to monetizeWhatsApp, where they plan to generate fees from payments made within the app itself as well as through in-app status advertisements. The company is essentially trying to integrate the growth and TAM of the E-commerce market more seamlessly into their family of products including the likes ofWhatsApp. ThroughFacebook Pay, users can now engage in peer-to-peer payments withinWhatsApp itself at no cost. However, when businesses receive a fee from customers through the app itself, they will then have to pay a small ‘processing fee’ to Facebook and this is where it profits. This is the same method that is being employed by Shopify and all the other payment processing channels just that it is now being done locally inWhatsApp itself.WhatsApp payments has launched in Brazil, the 2nd largest market by users and the fee stands at 3.99%.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4d1d27ff399e3e6fdfbc44a3ff1fb6e6\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"557\"><span>(Source:Facebook Newsroom)</span></p>\n<p>The firm has also been trying to grow their presence in the E-commerce market and reduce the friction customers experience when clicking through ads on its platforms. Both Instagram checkout and Facebook shops are aimed at doing just that. Their shops solutions are also expanding toWhatsApp, and the marketplace as observed above. The company sees a major shift to online shopping even after the grand reopening of the economies. As part of its effort over the years, they now have 1.2M active shops across their platforms and more than 300M monthly shop visitors. Thelatest releasestates that:</p>\n<blockquote>\n Soon, we’ll give businesses in select countries the option to showcase their Shop inWhatsApp. In the US, we’ll enable them to bring Shops products into Marketplace, helping them reach the more than 1 billion people globally who visit each month.\n</blockquote>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/38d87012cd9e376a0bed27a095b01828\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"418\"><span>(Source:Facebook Newsroom)</span></p>\n<p>What’s even more fascinating is the fact that Facebook now plans to integrate new technologies such as AR Dynamic Ads to power the future of shopping. New visual discovery tools on their platforms like Instagram will help customers find new products that they resonate with faster than ever before and help them to visualize their products with AR experiences that they have been working on for a long time now.</p>\n<p>Their continued expansion in the AR/VR market along with the rollout of DIEM, their native digital currency functioning as a stablecoin that was once under the “Libra Project” also presents good growth opportunity in the near future. Facebook is also looking to introducepodcasts and live audio streamsas part of the beginning of their audio journey. In short, Facebook still has a lot of room to grow moving forward apart from looking to squeeze out more cash from their legacy advertising business model. However, as always, product development is one thing, but the financials do need to shape up as well and with Facebook it does.</p>\n<p><b>Financials</b></p>\n<p>Of the FAANG stock group, Facebook enjoys one of the highest margins. The company saw 80.55% in GM in Q1’21 and even in the past, it has enjoyed such high margins, trading between 80.5% to as high as 86.6% in FY17. The chart below also clearly indicates that the remarkable margins trickle down to the bottom line and aren’t wiped out due to operating expenses, registering a NPM of 35.7%.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1367468f26c73bde43f494b2b7fb49d6\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"467\"><span>Data by YCharts</span></p>\n<p>FB also routinely spends a large portion of their revenues on R&amp;D, reinvesting into the business YoY to further improve their products and innovate on new ones. In 2020 the R&amp;D expense represented 21.5% of total sales.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4b923685aa0489833ae8f50fcddf3601\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"384\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>A large chunk of the firms’ revenues is also retained on the balance sheet which is then used over the years to funnel money to continue their acquisitive culture. Despite this, the strong cashflow that the firm enjoys allows it to stay at the top of their industry in terms of innovation whilst ensuring that their treasure trove of cash is growing should there be a need to deploy it. When we look to liquid cash that the firm holds (Cash &amp; Equivalents, and STI), Facebook has grown it at a tremendous CAGR of 26.2%. Net Debt has also just been becoming less of a concern over the years. To date, even after the pandemic, Facebook has no debt.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/13b40cadc31458233d0ea83ce4917c33\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"384\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>Given the data above, it is evident that the firm has one of the most pristine balance sheets in the industry and in the whole stock market. The US$62 BN that they hold as cash presents itself as a massive buffer to cushion the impact of whatever comes their way, be it another acquisitive opportunity, or yet another fine. Either way, the company can weather any financial storm and near balance sheet issues aren’t a problem. Shareholders aren’t too pleased with the cash pile just sitting there and would instead rather the firm start paying a dividend or pick up the pace in share buybacks to maximize investor returns. Facebook has never paid a dividend in its entirety and although they may consider that moving forward, we anticipate that it is not a move that they will commit to. In any case, we ourselves hope that they commit to more share buybacks instead of moving to issue a dividend.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3f5b82506a0385a1265c494b21462678\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"43\"><span>(Source:Q1 10-K Filing SEC)</span></p>\n<p>In their 10-K filing, the company expanded their SRP program to include an additional US$25 BN which will be added atop the US$8.6 BN remaining from a 2017 authorization. That amounts to a current authorized SRP valued at around US$33.6 BN and we anticipate that this may further increase substantially moving forward. Despite outstanding shares reducing overtime, a large part is offset by additional equity issued as part of SBC to employees. It is disappointing that the firm isn’t making more of a definitive move to put that cash pile to use but this is nonetheless not a major red flag.</p>\n<p><b>Valuations</b></p>\n<p>Being a blue-chip company with strong FCF, we would normally value the social media giant with a DCF model. Today, however, we will be looking at EV/Sales and P/E Ratios to try and justify its future valuation, looking 3 years out as always to end 2023.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0878b205b837634b7d2528f57ebe84fc\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"321\"><span>(Source:Seeking Alpha)</span></p>\n<p>Looking 3 years out to end 23, Facebook is projected to grow revenues at an average of 23.4%, with growth in the 30s for this fiscal year. That would mean that Facebook is anticipated to grow revenues to US$160.8 BN by end 2023, up 87% from what they delivered in FY20 in 3 years.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1707f8cfee45ce9ebb0e3ac961e78f48\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"338\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>Since 2018, the firm has traded at an average EV/Sales of 8.85, and last exchanged hands at a multiple of 9.76. Although the firm is trading at a multiple above its mean and higher than any of the other stocks as part of the FAANG group, Facebook does have higher estimates than all the other companies in the near future as observed below. The data does not reflect estimates for 2023.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/444e1473e814530e2332cea02637af53\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"384\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>Moreover, when we look further into the past all the way back to 2013, the company has historically traded at an average of 12.82 and even registered a high close to 22 in 2014. However, since we want to be conservative, but believe that the market has yet to really price Facebook for what it’s worth given all the headline risks in the media that have induced immediate selloffs without any fundamental reason, we will employ a multiple of 9.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/8494d3084eed106a9cb0bff0f27cfe7a\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"384\"><span>(Source: TIKR.com)</span></p>\n<p>At an EV/Sales multiple of 9, that would put Facebook at a US$1.447 TRN dollar valuation by the end of 2023 and a share price of US$539, an upside of 58%.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/55014da5e82d1a67caaeb34766b35940\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"294\"><span>(Source:Seeking Alpha)</span></p>\n<p>When we look to revenue surprise and analyst estimate beat / miss trends, Facebook has quite the historical track record of surpassing estimates, having done so 10/12 times in the past 3 years. The average upside surprise stands at 3.59%. Assuming Facebook will continue to deliver the same upside surprise moving forward, a 3.59% beat to the top line estimate of 2023 would warrant revenues of US$166.57 BN. At the same EV/Sales ratio of 9, that would render a higher valuation of US$558.77 USD. Given that Facebook is very close to crossing the US$1 TRN dollar valuation mark, we anticipate this to be a very realistic price target.</p>\n<p>Now shifting on to another valuation method by P/E multiples, the valuation also paints a similar picture.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/5d67f3c257657bc10ee6be38c16d2a1f\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"207\"><span>(Source:Seeking Alpha)</span></p>\n<p>Turning to earnings estimates, the company is also projected to do high-teens digit growth for 2022 and 2023 and a close to 30% growth in the bottom line for this fiscal year.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ffe26a8eabec7045dc5a904497737623\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"501\"><span>Data by YCharts</span></p>\n<p>Despite trading at the highest EV / Sales ratio of the FAANG stocks, Facebook is trading at the lowest TTM normalized PE Ratio amongst its peers, with the inclusion of Microsoft (FANGMA). This is likely due to the market failing to internalize and appreciate the company’s high NPM and profitability. Currently trading at a P/E ratio of 29.14, this is also below its historical means of as high as 60+ in 2016.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/247661f12f62820f6266763f49531355\" tg-width=\"635\" tg-height=\"417\"><span>Data by YCharts</span></p>\n<p>However, given that earnings have improved dramatically since and likely won’t be revisiting those levels as seen from the forward estimates, we will stick with what we believe to be a fair multiple for the stickiest company in the world, 30. At a P/E ratio of 30, that would put the end 2023 share price somewhere near levels of US$531.</p>\n<p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ce908799f1bf9091b49b94e03db7e476\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"284\"><span>(Source:Seeking Alpha)</span></p>\n<p>However, because of a surprisingly good earnings-beat track record once again, this has to be factored in moving forward. Of the last 3 years, Facebook has beat earnings 11/12 times. The average beat comes in at 15.72%. If we were to stick to a similar but more conservative beat of say 7%, that would put 2023 normalized earnings at 18.93. The exact same P/E ratio would now warrant a realistic share price of US$567.8, an upside of 66.3%.</p>\n<p>With all 4 estimates using different methods and assumptions with different levels of conservatism employed delivering a potential share price anywhere between US$531 and US$568, it would be fair to conclude that this is a realistic price target for the cashflow king 3 years out into the future. At the low end of estimates of US$531, this is still indicative of a 55% upside.</p>\n<p><b>Investor Takeaways</b></p>\n<p>To conclude, we believe Facebook has a very strong future ahead and the projected numbers for both the Topline and Bottom line are indicative of potential upside. We place significant emphasis on forward estimates as markets are future discounting mechanisms that react accordingly. The company enjoys unbelievably high margins, has a pristine balance sheet with absolutely no debt, and is anticipated to keep raking in high revenues with strong cashflow numbers.</p>\n<p>With so many growth opportunities such as the monetization ofWhatsApp, AR/VR, shops, marketplace growth, DIEM, and the continued growth in its legacy advertisement business both in terms of MAP and ARPUs, Facebook is here to stay and is nowhere near exhausting its full potential. The sizeable TAMs in each of the different business segments combined with other opportunities such as Facebook Reels which we did not cover, and the fact that it has yet to have been monetized, all point to a bright future.</p>\n<p>That being said, it is a given that the company will face many other bumps along moving forward. Facebook will continue to be subjected to what we call ‘headline risks’ whereby the stock will be overly sold off to the downside based upon nothing fundamental but one-sided exaggerated narratives. This we believe presents the best time to pick up shares and accumulate for the long run. Facebook has been perceived to have engaged in a lot of dubious unethical behaviour surrounding user data but like we said, that is separate from the investment opportunity the company presents and we will leave that to you to decide. Granted that there are many reasons surrounding the company's beat-down reputation, the return on invested capital is a different story and the main one to be focused on when considering if a company is a good investment or not.</p>\n<p>End day, when it comes to blue-chip stocks that have a firm hold in the industry, good sticky products, and solid financials, it is hard for the stock not to trend up overtime so long as estimates paint a bright picture and most importantly, the markets continue to value them in the same rational way. This has not always been the case and can be easily seen from Microsoft’s outperformance hiatus when the Dot Com bubble crashed, and the stock took 17 years to put in a new high. Still, we believe blue chip stocks are a good bet as of now and should be a part of everyone’s portfolio, and Facebook presents the best buy of the FAANG from our perspective. Till next time!</p>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Facebook: Simply Unstoppable</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nFacebook: Simply Unstoppable\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-06-29 16:46 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4437000-facebook-simply-unstoppable><strong>seekingalpha</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Summary\n\nThe #StopHateforProfit Campaign, antitrust allegations, Apple IDFA issue, and a host of other historical issues have not stopped the social media giant and will not stop it.\nDespite an ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4437000-facebook-simply-unstoppable\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4437000-facebook-simply-unstoppable","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1100563900","content_text":"Summary\n\nThe #StopHateforProfit Campaign, antitrust allegations, Apple IDFA issue, and a host of other historical issues have not stopped the social media giant and will not stop it.\nDespite an impressive rally delivering 65% since the start of CY20 and 26% YTD, Facebook remains undervalued relative to its peers and the FAANG stocks with the best forward estimates.\nThe strong moat originating from their sheer user base, and sizeable TAMs in E-commerce, VR/AR, digital assets (DIEM), cumulatively make for a compelling growth story.\nAlthough the company is highly controversial and rightfully so, this article focuses more on the quantitative analysis and less on the morals and ethics behind this investment. That, we shall leave to you.\n\nnemke/E+ via Getty Images\nInvestment Thesis\nFacebook (FB) has had a volatile trading period the past few years with a general uptrend, delivering shareholders nice returns whilst subjecting them to a few major dips which presented investors an opportunity for a steal. Despite the controversy and headline risks every now and then, the company has been able to battle through them and emerge ever so stronger. The company’s financials have been holding up and shows no sign of stoppage anytime soon. In a time as such, with significant uncertainty in the macro environment and inflation fears creeping up, we believe that shifting some of your assets to high cashflow generating companies is a wise strategy that will pay off. Growth and value are 2 different things, and there still exists growth companies that are undervalued and can still generate substantial cashflow, and we believe Facebook is one of them. The company also remains to be one of the more attractive blue-chip stocks compared to the others in the FAANG. We employ a 3–5-year outlook and have been bullish since USD$200/share. Let’s Begin!\nWhat is Facebook\nKnown to all, Facebook is a social media giant with a family of products including the likes of Facebook, Instagram,WhatsApp, Messenger, and now Oculus. The firm essentially has a stronghold in the social media industry and has an impressive DAP of2.72 BN as of Q1’21and MAP of 3.45 BN.\n(Source:FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nThe world has7.874 BNpeople as of the time of this writing and that would mean that 43.8% of all the people in the world use some form of product from Facebook’s portfolio in the past 30 days. On a daily basis, 34.5% of the people in the world use it. If that isn’t a sticky service, nothing really is. If we were to focus on the usage of the Facebook app solely, 23.8% of the world logs into the app daily based on DAUs.\nThe firm was founded in 2004 and generates the majority of their revenue from advertisements. If you have watched the social dilemma on Netflix, you would realize that Facebook’s real customer isn’t everyday users. Instead, users are the product, and they are being sold to advertisers. The company has created such an engaging and sticky service that users are more than happy to be using their apps, despite knowing that their data is being sold from one company to another. As appalling as it is, they’re indifferent to it all and still find the value in using the company’s products on a daily basis – keeping in touch with distant relatives, chatting with friends, staying up to date with the latest fashion trends and news… (According to the Pew Research Center, more than a 1/3 of US adults say they get their news regularly from Facebook)\n(Source:Pew Research Center)\nTo Facebook, this is equally as good as the more users, the wider the ‘product’ base that they have to offer their customers - advertisers. Advertisers are also indifferent to how Facebook attains its data, so long as Facebook’s targeting metrics and trackers are working well, the more likely it is that they are able to generate conversions. The more conversions, the more sales for them, the more ads they continue to pay for, the more revenue Facebook generates. Win-Win-Win, their apps are the bait, and the product (users), customers (advertisers), and supplier (Facebook), all walk away winners. It’s a remarkable business model that has stood the test of time and no matter the amount of controversy around the business, founders, and its practices, it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and for one simple reason: Users likely can’t do without Facebook’s products whether they are willing to admit it or not.\nWhen we look back in the past to reflect on how the #StopHateForProfit Campaign turned out for the company, it is apparent that the impact it had on the top and bottom line were both minimal. The boycott was one that arose due to Facebook’s bad hate speech regulations and policing, and because of the laissez-faire attitude toward posts from then President, Donald Trump. More than 1000 companies publicly committed to boycotting the social media giant in June/July (coinciding with end Q2 and start Q3) and many of the top 100 advertisers based on ad spend such as Nike, Adidas, Puma, Coca-Cola, all revised their budgets downwards.\nDespite this, Facebook beat on Q2 earnings and saw an increase of 10.7% YOY. In its forward guidance, the company also announced that for July, they were anticipating a slowdown in YoY growth of 17% but was still due to see a 10% increase. They alsoanticipatedthe slowdown in growth to last through till October. However, the company did not attribute this slowdown to the boycott specifically but to 3 other major headwinds. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that even for Q3’20, the firm saw an impressive 21.6% rise in its top line, with the bottom line still registering a 12.2% improvement in NPM for Q2’20 YoY and a 200 bps NPM improvement in Q3.\nThe results are clear and indicative of a few things. The boycott by the largest companies did little to Facebook’s financial story as they still managed to register growth and did not see significant pullbacks that were material. This can be tied to the fact that most of Facebook’s advertisers are SMBs. Although certain few SMBs did join the boycott, most didn’t, and the firm still had their impressive 9 million + customer base to rely on. If anything, this also suggests that despite what any SMB stands for and whether they agree with a social cause or not, it is hard for them to find alternatives that they can shift to on a similar pricing scale. Big brands can easily pivot to other advertisements such as TV and radio commercials but SMBs simply can’t because of smaller budgets. Lastly, it is now clear that the campaign affected Facebook’s reputation more so than it did its cashflow.\nRisks\nOther risks that the company may face would be future antitrust lawsuits. As it is, the company is already facing allegations of being a monopoly based on their aggressive acquisitive history having acquired more than90 other companiessince inception. They were alsofined US$5 BNby the FTC in 2019 and were required to adopt their policies and employ new protections for the users and their data that has been shared.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nThough representative of a historic penalty and the largest ever imposed on a company for violating user’s privacy rights, the US$5BN was a drop in the bucket for the giant that went on to generate US$70+ BN dollars for the year.\nThe current issues that they have with Apple’s new iOS changes and the IDFA implications are also likely not going to have a substantial impact on the firm. The Identifier for Advertisers [IDFA] is a random device identifier assigned by Apple to a user's device. Advertisers use this to track data so they can deliver customized advertising on mobile. With the new iOS changes, Apple essentially programmed it such that each app that wants to use these identifiers will have to ask users to opt in for tracking when the app is first launched. If users opt out, the app can’t track certain data and Facebook will have a smaller database of points to rely upon. As consumer preferences change, so will Facebook’s targeting that relies on IDFAs get worse and less effective due to outdated data points.\nAccording to aCNBC article:\n\n Most critically at stake for Facebook is what’s known as view-through conversions. This metric is used by ad-tech companies to measure how many users saw an ad, did not immediately click on it, but later made a purchase related to that ad.”\n\nWhen the conversion is made later on, the data IDFA for that particular user is then shared by the retailer to Facebook which is then used by the company to see if it matches the IDFA of the user who saw the ad. If they pair, it indicates that the ad was useful in generating a conversion. This data performance is then relayed to advertisers so that they can tweak their ad strategies accordingly. Withas much as 96% of usersanticipated to opt out of tracking on all apps, this would mean that mobile ads on 3rdparty apps may no longer be as useful if Facebook cannot really judge its effectiveness anymore. The more ineffective the ads become, the less conversions for retailers, and the more they pivot to other advertising platforms, which will impact the revenues for the firm.\nHowever, Facebook has disclosed that this will particularly only affect one form of advertisement which relies heavily on the IDFA, known as Audience Networks. Fortunately, the audience network segment only represents less than 10% of the firm’s total revenues. With the impact estimating to cost a drop in50% of all ads deliveredand hence sales from this segment, this would atbest represent a 5% drop in their total revenues. With that said, we do not anticipate that this will be present significant impact moving forward and the firm can easily recoup the 5% loss at worse by focusing on increasing ARPUs and user engagement to save their core business.\nThough Facebook started by disclosing that they anticipated the impact on their revenues to be large at first, this no longer seems to be the case. If anything, history has shown us that Mark is not one to back down and if he doesn’t get his way, he damn well will find another way to minimise loss and increase revenue generation in other segments to make up for it. If you aren’t too involved in the technicalities, we think it’s safe to bet on the jockey in this case. Besides, AR / VR growth,WhatsApp monetization, Reels monetization, further user growth in less developed countries away from the legacy North America and Europe region can very well pick up the lost (US$5BN) in sales.\nMoat\nAs mentioned above, the DAUs and MAUs for Facebook are very impressive with a large portion of the world using at least 1 of their products. The moat for the business relies on the wide user base that Facebook has meticulously built over the course of 17 years. With any new product that they have, the firm can easily roll it out to their database of users and expect demand to pick up in a matter of weeks, maybe even days. That is the power of the network of Facebook that really can’t be valued.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nDespite the controversy, endless allegations, and negative headlines one after the other, the numbers don’t lie. DAUs have been increasing every single quarter, with the fastest growth observed in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world. US & Canada growth has slowed as it nears saturation levels, and this is perfectly normal and to be expected. The way we anticipate Facebook to grow their core cash cow business moving forward is clean. 1) Focus on growing ARPUs in their saturated legacy areas (US & Canada and Europe) as well as 2) Increase User Growth by Geography in their growth areas (Asia-Pacific and the Rest of the World). Unsurprisingly, Facebook has been focused on doing just that.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nWhen we look to the infamous metric for judging social media companies and their performance – ARPUs, we can see that in the legacy areas, ARPUs have been increasing at a faster pace than compared to growth areas. This falls in line with point number 1 as mentioned above. The legacy areas have already reached saturation levels and user growth is unable to grow at astounding rates anymore. However, since this represent areas that are more developed and generally have higher disposable incomes on the average, focusing on increasing ARPUs and monetizing advertisers is the right strategy and a very feasible one. Though the growth areas are also seeing ARPUs grow YoY as they should, they are not at the same pace as in the US & Canada and Europe. When we look to revenue generated by geography below, this confirms the thesis that revenue is growing faster than user base in those areas, and since ARPU equal to (Total Revenue from that Geography / Number of Users in that area), so long revenue is growing at a faster pace than the user base, they should increase meaningfully.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nWhen we look to the slide below, it is also apparent that user numbers are growing much faster in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world, away from the legacy areas. Across 2 years, MAUs which is the broadest business performance metric employed by Facebook, grew 22.4% and 25.4% in the growth areas while they only grew a mere 6.6% in US & Canada and 10.2% in Europe.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nIf Facebook can continue to grow their user engagement numbers in the growth areas whilst maximizing ARPUs in legacy areas, the company can easily ensure that the core advertising model will remain the cash cow of the business, funding growth for their other product developments.\nGrowth Tactics\nWhen we look to potential growth Facebook has, the company isn’t short of any. Facebook has moved to monetizeWhatsApp, where they plan to generate fees from payments made within the app itself as well as through in-app status advertisements. The company is essentially trying to integrate the growth and TAM of the E-commerce market more seamlessly into their family of products including the likes ofWhatsApp. ThroughFacebook Pay, users can now engage in peer-to-peer payments withinWhatsApp itself at no cost. However, when businesses receive a fee from customers through the app itself, they will then have to pay a small ‘processing fee’ to Facebook and this is where it profits. This is the same method that is being employed by Shopify and all the other payment processing channels just that it is now being done locally inWhatsApp itself.WhatsApp payments has launched in Brazil, the 2nd largest market by users and the fee stands at 3.99%.\n(Source:Facebook Newsroom)\nThe firm has also been trying to grow their presence in the E-commerce market and reduce the friction customers experience when clicking through ads on its platforms. Both Instagram checkout and Facebook shops are aimed at doing just that. Their shops solutions are also expanding toWhatsApp, and the marketplace as observed above. The company sees a major shift to online shopping even after the grand reopening of the economies. As part of its effort over the years, they now have 1.2M active shops across their platforms and more than 300M monthly shop visitors. Thelatest releasestates that:\n\n Soon, we’ll give businesses in select countries the option to showcase their Shop inWhatsApp. In the US, we’ll enable them to bring Shops products into Marketplace, helping them reach the more than 1 billion people globally who visit each month.\n\n(Source:Facebook Newsroom)\nWhat’s even more fascinating is the fact that Facebook now plans to integrate new technologies such as AR Dynamic Ads to power the future of shopping. New visual discovery tools on their platforms like Instagram will help customers find new products that they resonate with faster than ever before and help them to visualize their products with AR experiences that they have been working on for a long time now.\nTheir continued expansion in the AR/VR market along with the rollout of DIEM, their native digital currency functioning as a stablecoin that was once under the “Libra Project” also presents good growth opportunity in the near future. Facebook is also looking to introducepodcasts and live audio streamsas part of the beginning of their audio journey. In short, Facebook still has a lot of room to grow moving forward apart from looking to squeeze out more cash from their legacy advertising business model. However, as always, product development is one thing, but the financials do need to shape up as well and with Facebook it does.\nFinancials\nOf the FAANG stock group, Facebook enjoys one of the highest margins. The company saw 80.55% in GM in Q1’21 and even in the past, it has enjoyed such high margins, trading between 80.5% to as high as 86.6% in FY17. The chart below also clearly indicates that the remarkable margins trickle down to the bottom line and aren’t wiped out due to operating expenses, registering a NPM of 35.7%.\nData by YCharts\nFB also routinely spends a large portion of their revenues on R&D, reinvesting into the business YoY to further improve their products and innovate on new ones. In 2020 the R&D expense represented 21.5% of total sales.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nA large chunk of the firms’ revenues is also retained on the balance sheet which is then used over the years to funnel money to continue their acquisitive culture. Despite this, the strong cashflow that the firm enjoys allows it to stay at the top of their industry in terms of innovation whilst ensuring that their treasure trove of cash is growing should there be a need to deploy it. When we look to liquid cash that the firm holds (Cash & Equivalents, and STI), Facebook has grown it at a tremendous CAGR of 26.2%. Net Debt has also just been becoming less of a concern over the years. To date, even after the pandemic, Facebook has no debt.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nGiven the data above, it is evident that the firm has one of the most pristine balance sheets in the industry and in the whole stock market. The US$62 BN that they hold as cash presents itself as a massive buffer to cushion the impact of whatever comes their way, be it another acquisitive opportunity, or yet another fine. Either way, the company can weather any financial storm and near balance sheet issues aren’t a problem. Shareholders aren’t too pleased with the cash pile just sitting there and would instead rather the firm start paying a dividend or pick up the pace in share buybacks to maximize investor returns. Facebook has never paid a dividend in its entirety and although they may consider that moving forward, we anticipate that it is not a move that they will commit to. In any case, we ourselves hope that they commit to more share buybacks instead of moving to issue a dividend.\n(Source:Q1 10-K Filing SEC)\nIn their 10-K filing, the company expanded their SRP program to include an additional US$25 BN which will be added atop the US$8.6 BN remaining from a 2017 authorization. That amounts to a current authorized SRP valued at around US$33.6 BN and we anticipate that this may further increase substantially moving forward. Despite outstanding shares reducing overtime, a large part is offset by additional equity issued as part of SBC to employees. It is disappointing that the firm isn’t making more of a definitive move to put that cash pile to use but this is nonetheless not a major red flag.\nValuations\nBeing a blue-chip company with strong FCF, we would normally value the social media giant with a DCF model. Today, however, we will be looking at EV/Sales and P/E Ratios to try and justify its future valuation, looking 3 years out as always to end 2023.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nLooking 3 years out to end 23, Facebook is projected to grow revenues at an average of 23.4%, with growth in the 30s for this fiscal year. That would mean that Facebook is anticipated to grow revenues to US$160.8 BN by end 2023, up 87% from what they delivered in FY20 in 3 years.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nSince 2018, the firm has traded at an average EV/Sales of 8.85, and last exchanged hands at a multiple of 9.76. Although the firm is trading at a multiple above its mean and higher than any of the other stocks as part of the FAANG group, Facebook does have higher estimates than all the other companies in the near future as observed below. The data does not reflect estimates for 2023.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nMoreover, when we look further into the past all the way back to 2013, the company has historically traded at an average of 12.82 and even registered a high close to 22 in 2014. However, since we want to be conservative, but believe that the market has yet to really price Facebook for what it’s worth given all the headline risks in the media that have induced immediate selloffs without any fundamental reason, we will employ a multiple of 9.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nAt an EV/Sales multiple of 9, that would put Facebook at a US$1.447 TRN dollar valuation by the end of 2023 and a share price of US$539, an upside of 58%.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nWhen we look to revenue surprise and analyst estimate beat / miss trends, Facebook has quite the historical track record of surpassing estimates, having done so 10/12 times in the past 3 years. The average upside surprise stands at 3.59%. Assuming Facebook will continue to deliver the same upside surprise moving forward, a 3.59% beat to the top line estimate of 2023 would warrant revenues of US$166.57 BN. At the same EV/Sales ratio of 9, that would render a higher valuation of US$558.77 USD. Given that Facebook is very close to crossing the US$1 TRN dollar valuation mark, we anticipate this to be a very realistic price target.\nNow shifting on to another valuation method by P/E multiples, the valuation also paints a similar picture.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nTurning to earnings estimates, the company is also projected to do high-teens digit growth for 2022 and 2023 and a close to 30% growth in the bottom line for this fiscal year.\nData by YCharts\nDespite trading at the highest EV / Sales ratio of the FAANG stocks, Facebook is trading at the lowest TTM normalized PE Ratio amongst its peers, with the inclusion of Microsoft (FANGMA). This is likely due to the market failing to internalize and appreciate the company’s high NPM and profitability. Currently trading at a P/E ratio of 29.14, this is also below its historical means of as high as 60+ in 2016.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, given that earnings have improved dramatically since and likely won’t be revisiting those levels as seen from the forward estimates, we will stick with what we believe to be a fair multiple for the stickiest company in the world, 30. At a P/E ratio of 30, that would put the end 2023 share price somewhere near levels of US$531.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nHowever, because of a surprisingly good earnings-beat track record once again, this has to be factored in moving forward. Of the last 3 years, Facebook has beat earnings 11/12 times. The average beat comes in at 15.72%. If we were to stick to a similar but more conservative beat of say 7%, that would put 2023 normalized earnings at 18.93. The exact same P/E ratio would now warrant a realistic share price of US$567.8, an upside of 66.3%.\nWith all 4 estimates using different methods and assumptions with different levels of conservatism employed delivering a potential share price anywhere between US$531 and US$568, it would be fair to conclude that this is a realistic price target for the cashflow king 3 years out into the future. At the low end of estimates of US$531, this is still indicative of a 55% upside.\nInvestor Takeaways\nTo conclude, we believe Facebook has a very strong future ahead and the projected numbers for both the Topline and Bottom line are indicative of potential upside. We place significant emphasis on forward estimates as markets are future discounting mechanisms that react accordingly. The company enjoys unbelievably high margins, has a pristine balance sheet with absolutely no debt, and is anticipated to keep raking in high revenues with strong cashflow numbers.\nWith so many growth opportunities such as the monetization ofWhatsApp, AR/VR, shops, marketplace growth, DIEM, and the continued growth in its legacy advertisement business both in terms of MAP and ARPUs, Facebook is here to stay and is nowhere near exhausting its full potential. The sizeable TAMs in each of the different business segments combined with other opportunities such as Facebook Reels which we did not cover, and the fact that it has yet to have been monetized, all point to a bright future.\nThat being said, it is a given that the company will face many other bumps along moving forward. Facebook will continue to be subjected to what we call ‘headline risks’ whereby the stock will be overly sold off to the downside based upon nothing fundamental but one-sided exaggerated narratives. This we believe presents the best time to pick up shares and accumulate for the long run. Facebook has been perceived to have engaged in a lot of dubious unethical behaviour surrounding user data but like we said, that is separate from the investment opportunity the company presents and we will leave that to you to decide. Granted that there are many reasons surrounding the company's beat-down reputation, the return on invested capital is a different story and the main one to be focused on when considering if a company is a good investment or not.\nEnd day, when it comes to blue-chip stocks that have a firm hold in the industry, good sticky products, and solid financials, it is hard for the stock not to trend up overtime so long as estimates paint a bright picture and most importantly, the markets continue to value them in the same rational way. This has not always been the case and can be easily seen from Microsoft’s outperformance hiatus when the Dot Com bubble crashed, and the stock took 17 years to put in a new high. Still, we believe blue chip stocks are a good bet as of now and should be a part of everyone’s portfolio, and Facebook presents the best buy of the FAANG from our perspective. Till next time!","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":89,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":181807528,"gmtCreate":1623382578564,"gmtModify":1704202155912,"author":{"id":"3584357430867033","authorId":"3584357430867033","name":"HODLFTW","avatar":"https://static.laohu8.com/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":3,"crmLevelSwitch":0},"themes":[],"htmlText":"TLDR...&nbsp;","listText":"TLDR...&nbsp;","text":"TLDR...","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":1,"commentSize":312,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/181807528","repostId":"1127823989","repostType":2,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":473,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"defaultTab":"posts","isTTM":true}