No. of Recommendations: 18
Definitely, that's what Buffett teaches us, but as a private investor you wouldn't want to hold coke from 98/99 to now for a compound 2.26% return (excluding dividends) $40 - $70 over 25 years.
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If you talk about 20/20 vision looking back, I have much better choices. It's not helpful to just cherry pick 1 stock afterwards and not considering the losing investments in the portfolio as well.
It's certainly true that it's not fair to say that a stock pick was a poor one because with hindsight some other stock XXX has done so much better. Amazon, Tesla, whatever.
However in this case I think it's pretty fair to conclude that it really has been a poor decision to have been invested in Coke (the business, not just the stock) for the last 25 years, period. That's because even a randomly selected stock would probably have done better. Not better in market price, and not because Coke was very richly valued at the start, but simply in greater growth in value per share. A share of the average middle-of-the-pack biggish US company rose in value a lot more than a share of Coke did...Coke's underlying business has stagnated. (real total net income the same in 2015 and 2023, neither year unusually good nor unusually bad). Real EPS rose solely because of shrinking share count, aided in large part from doubling debt, a trend which may have a natural end.
Buybacks are nice, but...
Remember that earnings can be used for increasing future earnings per share, or can be used as owner earnings, but a given dollar can't be both. It's either a firm with very low but slowly growing owner earnings, or a firm with somewhat higher but completely flat owner earnings.
A rational expectation of the real total return pre-tax for Coke shares in the next 10 years starting from here might be in the vicinity of (say) 4%/year, or $1.1bn/year. That's arrived at as (generous) 2.5% trend real EPS growth, 2.5% dividend, minus 1%/year for multiple compression. Conversely, if the shares were all sold today, the net after tax proceeds would be about $22.1bn. So, to do better, any alternative investment would have to offer inflation + 5.0%/year on the after-tax pile (and big enough to soak up $22bn, and as steadfast as future Coke). That doesn't seem an impossible hurdle...surely such opportunities arise from time to time?
Suggesting things to head office is a waste of time, but personally I'd rather we put half of the $22.1bn after-tax proceeds into buying 29% of Hershey. Coke is at $69.01 with peakish EPS around $2.50 having risen around 2.5%/year (nominal) in the last 10 years, Hershey at $187.53 with peakish EPS around $10 having risen around 9.5%/year (nominal) in the last 10 years. Check back in 7-10 years : )
Jim
