The Economics of Selling on the Internet
findthemoat Internet retailing has been a fascinating long-term case study in technology disruption where, two decades in, initial bullish expectations regarding the end-state unit economics of the industry have yet to…
The Xero Story (a 2023 update)
In early 2016, I published a piece on Xero where I posited that it was emerging as an exceptional capital compounding machine despite large headline losses. I suggested that its…
Playing with bricks and mortar
The secular shift of retail dollars from bricks-and-mortar to online and the ensuing carnage has been really the only story in bricks-and-mortar retailing over the past two decades. It’s a…
Trading your own equity
By definition, value oriented investment processes seek to derive a fundamental valuation of a company independent of its market valuation – end game being to identify a mismatch between the…
Financial Ratios as a System Input
Companies are essentially dynamic systems comprising of numerous moving components subject to a myriad of internal (e.g. management) and external (e.g. competition) forces. Financial statements in turn provide periodic snapshots…
Domino’s valuation arbitrage machine
In How to think about Domino’s Pizza, we explored the notion of Domino’s (ASX:DMP) astonishing share price performance being attributable to it being a seller of small businesses (i.e. franchises)…
Dissecting Afterpay
Often we come across growth investment opportunities where (1) current valuation does not make sense under any traditional valuation frameworks, yet; (2) the company is clearly gaining traction in the…
How to think about Domino’s Pizza
Over the past 12 months I have received numerous emails from readers asking for my thoughts on Domino’s Pizza (DMP) – not surprising given the huge earnings multiple it trades…
Signals from Management Incentives
Economic incentives govern how participants behave and interact in a free market economic system. In context of company analysis, spending some time understanding incentives is one of the most rewarding…
MYOB versus Xero
Technology inflection points present incumbents with choices and insurgents with opportunities. In the world of SME accounting today, software is undeniably shifting from the desktop to the cloud. The primary…