Few stocks garner as strong opinions as Apple does. That naturally comes with the territory of being both an incredible long-term performer and also incredibly large (its market-cap is around $2.8T at time of writing). I’m sure that the stock’s very healthy dose of valuation multiple expansion in recent years has also played its part ..read more

Large-scale stock buyback programs in the oil patch often draw a mixed response from investors. This is for the very simple reason that buybacks inevitably occur when cash flow is plentiful before being promptly abandoned when it dries up during downturns. A more interesting policy (at least to me) would be to store up mountains ..read more

I like to think that somewhere out there there’s an investor who purchased Exxon Mobil (XOM) stock for exactly $30.11 in March 2020. According to Yahoo Finance, that price represents the lowest intraday low in what must have been the worst year for oil stocks since heck knows when. Such was the carnage in Exxon ..read more

A reader of this site recently asked what Warren Buffett and Bill Gates might see in Kraft Heinz (KHC). It’s a good question given the stock’s struggles: Kraft shares have dropped from above $90 per share in 2017 to $38.40 currently with only around $11.15 per share in cumulative dividend cash to cushion the blow ..read more

Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) has significantly underperformed mega-cap consumer defensive stocks since it closed on the SABMiller acquisition in late 2016. Back then, the BUD ADSs that trade in New York changed hands for around $130 per share. Currently, they change hands for $61.85 per share, while shareholders only collected around $12 per share in dividend ..read more

My view for a long time has been that ultra-high quality defensive stocks should be afforded extra leeway during periods of business-level stagnation. Procter & Gamble (PG) provides a good case study for this. Among the many thousands of publicly listed firms there are relatively few that match the business of selling brands like Tide ..read more

Well, it has certainly been an interesting week for the banking industry. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank has sent bank stocks into a tailspin. The regionals and smaller niche lenders have fared the worst, but even the big money center banks like Bank of America (BAC) have been caught up in it. For bank ..read more

At $263.45 at time of writing, McDonald’s (MCD) stock is within 6% of its record high reached in Q4 CY2022. While the macro environment has deteriorated for restaurant operators, McDonald’s stock has proven resistant on (1) a business model that largely shields it from restaurant-level economics, and (2) a relatively flat P/E ratio that has ..read more

I know “Coke v PepsiCo” articles seem to be cropping up left, right and center at the moment, but having recently covered the latter it only seems right to follow up with a piece on Atlanta-based Coca-Cola. For my part I see these two as being complimentary: Coke for the beverages and PepsiCo for the […] The post Coca-Cola: Showing Its Quality With Strong 2022 Results; Shares Look Ballpark Fair Value appeared first on The Compound Investor ..read more

It is a good time to be a PepsiCo (PEP) shareholder. I admit to being unsure how shares of the New York-based giant would fare heading into the environment of last year, with its business generally relatively well-positioned to deal with inflationary conditions but the stock’s valuation perhaps a little bit less so. So far […] The post PepsiCo: Knocking It Out The Park appeared first on The Compound Investor ..read more