Identify good companies with corporate culture, how to do in overheated market?

Note: My opinions are expressed in italics font in this article.

Origin of this article

During the Chinese Lunar New Year, I received a letter from the “Chairman”, a long-time friend of our blog and my investment books. In the letter, the “Chairman” mainly wanted to discuss two issues that he had been thinking about: (1). How to identify a good company based on its corporate culture, (2). The best approach for investors when the stock market is overheated.

I took some time to read the letter from the “Chairman” carefully and tried to communicate my personal views with him. I have benefited a lot from reading the questions raised by the “Chairman” in this letter and his own views. With his consent, I have posted the content of our conversation on this blog. I think many of the thoughts and ideas therein are worth learning from, and I hope to provide some direction for everyone’s thinking.

Letter content

This is a thank you letter. I would like to tell you that Brother Yin Yang’s two financial books and his selfless sharing of articles on his blog have changed my investment approach in recent years and helped me achieve performance that exceeds the market. This long-term investment style is very suitable for me. Thank you very much.

Thanks to your reminder, I have become accustomed to actively selecting stocks with a focus on key factors such as “business model and corporate culture”. In recent years, I have even tried to delve into the overall economy (I will ask about this later) in order to see the general direction.

I am very happy to receive a letter from an old friend and would like to wish the chairman a happy new year. If you have no objection, I would like to take some time to format this letter and post it on my blog.

Corporate Culture

Excellent company and culture

I have two questions here:
Q1. In order to discover ten-fold stocks, the business models of many excellent companies are easy to grasp from the good articles you shared, but is there an optimal or better model for excellent corporate culture that can be seen “early”?

This question stems from my discovery that company management (especially the CEO) is closely tied to corporate culture (e.g., Satya Nadella of Microsoft; Hock Tan of Broadcom); if so, should we start with CEO capital allocation (note: ) capabilities to infer the best direction for the company to shape its corporate culture?

This is a big question. In fact, your question is about the troubles of venture capital (VC) industry. It is difficult to find a formula or an unchanging law.

However, there is one thing I can mention first – when venture capitalists (VCs) invest and examine startups, the company’s products are not the first priority, and even whether or not a company has core technology is not the primary indicator they consider. Venture capitalists look at whether a startup has what it takes to be successful, that is, the ability to survive. Only companies that survive can grow; operating models, scale, and profit margins are not within their consideration.

I would like to point out that venture capitalists deal with unlisted startups, the primary market of their market. The stock market is a secondary market, and the starting points of investors in the two are somewhat different. Investors in the secondary market do not have the patience to let listed companies continue to lose money. This is the biggest difference.

I understand what you mean, and I agree with your insightful observation: “It is difficult (but not impossible, which is also the difficulty of investing)” to directly judge whether a company is worthy of long-term investment “in advance” based on its “corporate culture” ? Will it continue to grow? And whether the performance of an enterprise can be directly equated with “corporate culture”.

My personal opinion is: at least in my more than 30 years of experience, we usually only know about the existence of a company after it has been recognized, such as attracting market attention, soaring stock prices, and extensive media coverage.

Let me give you an example. There is a famous book called “Built to Last“. I agree that it is a good book. The content is very reasonable. The author’s theory and practice are highly recognized. But have you ever thought about this: “Built to Last“, also another example is that Peter Drucker, who is regarded as the first person in corporate management in the 20th century, has written a series of very influential works, which are also highly praised by major companies. The same is true of Deming, who made great contributions to the standardized operations of large enterprises in the 20th century.

The common feature of Harvard Business Review (HBR) or the three so-called masters I mentioned above is that they all talk about “what has already happened” and “what is widely known”, and almost all of them are large companies, especially What’s more, the companies they mentioned “have all passed their peak of development”, and many of them have now been acquired, bankrupted, delisted, or closed down – what I want to say is that well-known or famous It does not mean that the “future” will definitely bring benefits to investors.

But the question is, am I denying them or discouraging investors from reading these books? Don’t investors need to understand these established companies? No, that’s not what I meant. These companies will influence later companies (this is how human civilization evolves, isn’t it?). Companies will also try to imitate successful cases – because successful models are valuable and the best way to avoid unnecessary mistakes. Fastest and most efficient way.

If the company you are tracking “seems” to be similar to a well-known listed company’s coporate culture that can bring huge benefits to investors, you should at least give it an extra point in your mind, they actually think so far ahead, which shows that they are “very confident in the future of their company” and have the ability and energy to think in this regard – these are the characteristics of excellent companies.

Image that if you are busy on solving immediate problems every day, it will be impossible to think about long-term planning. If it becomes a problem for the company to continue to survive, or if it doesn’t know whether it has a future, it will be difficult to be associated with excellent companies.

Company’s Capital allocation

If it is not the ability to allocate capital, are there any key indicators to observe in corporate culture? After all, corporate leadership styles vary so much that it is difficult to ensure that a company’s core competitiveness will not turn into core rigidity.
Note: Capital allocation (how to spend money wisely) is slightly different from the 5 capital operation methods in Andy’s book. I personally prioritize the categorize capital allocation below:

• (1) Increase R&D expenses (It is meaningful to create technological leadership and then expand the factory)
• (2) Purchase additional equipment to increase production capacity (Surplus reinvestment rate, but be cautious in expanding production capacity, customers abandon orders)
• (3) Mergers and Acquisitions (Those with the ability to increase prices and resist inflation are the best; be careful of management who only care about expansion and accounting methods instead of focusing on profit. Corporate culture is often incompatible. I personally admire Mr. Tan Hock’s M&A ability for this point.)
• (4) Stock repurchase (no double taxation benefits, easy to profit from the price difference of corporate senior management shares, and suspected of buying to protect the company when the economy is good and the stock price is high)
• (5) Dividend payment (with the disadvantages of double taxation and the concern that the company’s business prospects are mature and no longer have high growth)

Chairman, your view is similar to Philip Fisher’s investment philosophy; Philip Fisher’s investment approach throughout his life focused on exactly what you mentioned (1) and (2).

(3) (4) (5) Generally speaking, these three things are things that only mature and stable listed companies can do, or are only qualified to do. I agree with your opinion; because this is the fact that growth-oriented Every company that is in the process of going public or has just gone public is in urgent need of money and is unable to carry out capital operations (mergers and acquisitions can be carried out in many ways, not necessarily with cash, so growing companies will also carry out mergers and acquisitions).

I once wrote a blog post (please click on the link “Schmidt’s removed speech deserves investors to read. What did it talk about?“), in which post, I quoted former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the primary goal of a startup is to “survive,” which is why venture capital places great emphasis on revenue and growth. Schmidt even said that when your company succeeds, survives, and reaches a certain scale, you can then worry about factors such as copyright infringement or plagiarism. To some extent, I generally agree with his view: those who cannot survive have no right to speak.

This is also the reason why I once published an article in my blog: explaining why most companies in the world that invent a certain technology cannot make money.

Chairman’s corporate culture screening method

The corporate culture screening items proposed by “chairman”:

• (1) Dare to be the last in the world (slow down and identify the direction and opportunities, and then take action when the slope is long and the snow is thick). It is better to have a disruptive business model.
• (2) Focus on core business and continue to expand moat/ecosystem/platform
• (3) Do not fight a battle without preparation and continue to pay attention to competitive advantages
• (4) Carefully evaluate expansion and do not seek to expand or become comprehensive; but do not become rigid in your core business (remember how IBM and Intel fell from grace)
• (5) Integrity (stop losses immediately when making mistakes and do not deceive yourself or external shareholders)

When the stock market is overheated

Q2. Many blog posts point out the risks and cautions of market forecasting by experts. For example, your post of “Why would Buffett oppose to EBITDA and financial forecasts?” said that no one can predict the future, so don’t Predicting the future; but I am still curious to ask, if we can obtain knowable and important signals (even economic turning signals) from the “current” overall economic data, and weigh the annualized rate of return of long-term investment, we can still go all in without partially pocketing. Is it a way to maintain profits and safety (or even wait for a relatively low point to increase the bet)?

Chairman’s words reminded me of what Buffett did. Indeed, Buffett’s investment is roughly based on the thinking logic you talked about here: Buffett even invented the so-called Buffett indicator, which is a simple measure of whether the market is overheated (please click on the link “Powerful and persuasive Buffett indicator, whether market is overheat“). Buffett indicator》).

As I mentioned a few days ago when I was communicating with another friend Peter (please click on the link of the article “Apple repurchase, Nvidia capital operation, Tesla, AI bubble, Willow quantum chip, this blog turns off comments“). It can be seen from Buffett’s decades of investment and trading history that, in general, Buffett prefers to sell large amounts of successful investments that have already made huge profits. If you continue to be optimistic about the target, you will retain a considerable position. It can be seen that Buffett also considered whether the market was overheated and adopted a more conservative investment approach.

I ask this question purely because I discovered that someone can use the current economic data to wipe the crystal ball clearer than many masters.

I didn’t expect that it has been many years since we last met after the new book was published in Tainan. I look forward to the opportunity to learn from you in person again. Finally, I wish Andy you have a happy Chinese Lunar New Year and all the best. I sincerely thank you.

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