Subject: Re: FKA: HSY
looking at Nestle too? Swiss listing. Looking in value territory sub 100. Nestle tastes better than Hershey IMO (scuttlebutt)

That's a low bar!

OK, so you don't have to eat the stuff, is it at least a good investment?

At about 100 CHF, it's down a bit from it's high of 130 but still significantly higher than the 70-80 range it stayed in from 2014 to 2019, so at about 100 CHF, it's now trading at 28 times ttm earnings, or 22 times forward earnings. Is there some reason to explain the high price, other than just that it's been an expensive stock for a long time?

I'm having trouble seeing it. The have almost exactly the same revenue and net income now as they had 10 years ago, and I can't see any reason that that would grow. In fact, with $54b in debt and $1.6b in interest expense, payments on the debt will increasingly cut into their $10b or so in net income, as they turn over their debt at much higher rates.

They pay out a dividend of 3%, and they have bought back about 1.5% of shares on average every year for the past 10 years, so let's call it a 4.5% dividend. I can get the same rate on a 10 treasury bond, without worrying about capital loss on a stock that is still trading at pretty high multiples.

DTB