No. of Recommendations: 4
It's easy: I got it mixed up with another thread and was talking about Hershey.
Both discussed here recently, chocolate makers, both names two syllable trochees that rhyme...you can see the problem : )
I can see other sources of confusion, too: Both with highish valuations (although not as high as they have sometimes been), and for both of them, stagnant revenues, little opportunity for expansion, highish margins already and with moats that don't seem (in my view) particularly strong.
I suspected that you had mispoke because it is hard to understand how Nestle could be characterized as not doing well outside the US; they have always done better in Europe than in America. But I guess this illustrates that both are somewhat geographically confined.
I have to consider whether my own distaste for the products of both companies is not biasing my estimation of their investment prospects, always a danger. But if you have a choice between buying, say, Hershey's at 21 peak earnings on stagnant revenues, vs say Carmax at 25 times depressed earnings on steadily increasing revenues, seems like an easy call for KMX. I guess I just don't put enough faith in the idea that Hershey's (or Nestle's) multiples will necessarily revert to their historically higher levels.
