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Visa Stock: Scalability And Buffett Value Line

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This analysis examines the most two important aspects of profit Sustainability: return on capital employed (“ROCE”) and marginal return on capital employed (“MROCE”). To me, ROCE and MROCE are the most two important metrics for analyzing a business. They reveal the two most fundamental aspects of the same central issue of profit Sustainability. ROCE tells us how profitable the business has been or is SO FAR. And MROCE sheds insights into which direction the profitability is likely to go.\nThe results show that V not only earns a consistently high ROCE in the past but is still perfectly scalable at its current stage, indicating sustainable profit ahead. It is truly impressive for a business at such a staggering scale to maintain perfect scalability. Lastly, this article also discusses its valuation, especially valuation adjusted for ROCE and valuation compared to the other stocks that are exemplary scalable stocks (such as the FAAMG stocks and Buffett style stocks).\nThe moat and the network effects\nV’s moat is in its scale and scalability, best demonstrated in the following two charts. The first chart shows the number of credit, debit, and prepaid cards in circulation worldwide from 2017 to 2019, with forecasts for 2023 and 2025. In 2019, there were 22.8 billion credit, debit, and prepaid cards in circulation worldwide. This figure is set to reach 29.31 billion by 2023, a 28% increase from the 2019 level. This figure will further increase to surpass 30 billion by 2025, a 34% increase from the 2019 level. In other words, the total cards in circulation will increase by more than 1/3 by 2025. The trend of digital transactions is unstoppable.\nThe second chart shows that V, as the leading player in this space, will benefit the most from this secular trend. V is the world’s largest retail electronic payments network providing processing services and payment product platforms. This includes credit, debit, prepaid, and commercial payments, which are offered under the Visa, Visa Electron, Interlink, and PLUS brands. Visa/PLUS is one of the largest global ATM networks. V facilitates digital payments across more than 200 countries and territories. It has 3.6 billion cards in circulation, about 16% of the total number of cards in circulation globally. It processes a mindboggling amount of transactions – 206 billion payment transactions and a total transaction volume of $12.5 trillion in 2020 – an undisputed dominance of the payment network.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/e261998de072e355b6f039912d0f1453\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"379\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Statista\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/036bc8c94696fcfd8ed3403b699534c6\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"318\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Visa USA.\nFurthermore, it is unlikely that such dominance would change in the future (barring any major regulation or antitrust legislation change) due to the so-called \"network effects\". The network effects refer to the fact that the value of certain products or services increases as more people use them. In other words, certain networks become increasingly more valuable as they become bigger. Not every network enjoys this magic feature, and as a matter of fact, most networks suffer a diminishing marginal rate of return – i.e., the additional return decreases as the network becomes bigger – as to be elaborated later. A chain restaurant network is an example. As the network becomes larger, the nodes begin to compete against each other for customers and the return diminishes.\nBut certain networks, like the services V provides, enjoy this magic trait – the network becomes more profitable as it becomes bigger. There is nothing new about the concept. It was true of railways, telephones, and fax machines. All these examples share these common traits: A) the larger the network becomes, the more valuable it becomes (one segment of a railway linking city A and B is far more valuable when this segment also links to other railways linking other cities); and B) the larger the network becomes, the higher the switching cost (if everyone uses a fax machine and you do not want to use one, good luck to you).\nAgain, there is nothing new about the concept. But the internet age dramatically amplified the potency of the network effects. Once a lead is established – for whatever the reason – the network effects would just kick in, take over, and compound itself.\nIt is a self-sustaining positive feedback loop: more users in this network will lead to more convenience, better efficiency, lower cost, which will make the network even better and more valuable for its users and clients, which will, in turn, attract more new users and clients to join and make it harder for existing users to leave, which again will lead back to more users and an even larger network. And such feedback will be reflected in a very high level of return on capital employed (“ROCE”) as to be seen later.\nUnfortunately, like all good things eventually run to an end, so do the benefits of the above network effects. At some point, gravity always catches up, and return begins to diminish. In the railway example, if enough railways have already been built to link all cities with high population density, building the next segment would suffer a diminished return now. In the fax machine example, if every office already has one, adding a second one to each office would also suffer a diminished return.\nTherefore, as investors, we do not only need to examine the ROCE, but also equally importantly, to examine the marginal return. Because the marginal return tells us if the business is still in a scalable stage, or if the business has already passed the tipping point of scalability and begins to see a diminishing return. In another word, MROCE let us see if the gravity of diminishing return has caught up yet or not.\nAnd the remainder of this article will examine both aspects next.\nReturn on capital employed (“ROCE”)\nROCE stands for the return on capital employed. Note that ROCE is different from the return on equity (and more fundamental and important in my view). ROCE considers the return of capital ACTUALLY employed, and therefore provides insight into how effectively the business uses its capital to earn a profit. Readers interested in the details of the ROCE analysis can find them in my&nbsp;earlier article. Here I will just summarize the results in the chart below. In these results, I considered the following items capital actually employed A) Working capital (including payables, receivables, inventory), B) Gross Property, Plant, and Equipment, C) Research and development expenses are capitalized, and D) the intangible book value, mainly consisting of intellectual property and patents for such a business.\nAs seen, it was able to maintain an astronomical level of ROCE over the past decade: on average ~103%. To put things in perspective, the next chart compares V’s ROCE against the FAAMG stocks – a group of businesses that exploits the network effects to the extreme. As can be seen, V earns a very competitive ROCE among them – only second to Apple (AAPL). Every $1 of earning reinvested will fuel more than $1 of additional future earnings growth on average.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/877e3bb73de3e6c4fbab1a0133f74464\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"380\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: author and Seeking Alpha.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9f25b4c6dc0c7ee738ac345c3888ae11\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"395\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: author and Seeking Alpha.\nIntroduction to marginal return on capital employed (“MROCE”)\nIn addition to ROCE, an equally important concept is the marginal return on capital employed (“MROCE”). To me, ROCE and MROCE are the most two important metrics for analyzing a business. They reveal the most fundamental two aspects of the same central issue of profitability. ROCE tells us how profitable the business has been or is SO FAR. And MROCE sheds insights into which direction the profitability is likely to go.\nA bit of background and introduction for readers who are new to the concept. For readers familiar with the concept already, definitely skip this section. From what I’ve learned, the legendary economist John Maynard Keynes first explicitly expressed this concept, although people before him have observed and thought about it for some time already. What the concept tries to capture is a basic law in economic activities: the law of diminishing returns. Warren Buffett likes to say that interest rate acts like gravity on all economic activities. Well, diminishing returns act like gravity on all economic activities too, if not more so, as long as human nature does not change in any fundamental way.\nThe next chart illustrates the concept. As long as shareholders are seeking profit, a public business will first invest its money at projects with the highest possible rate of return (i.e., picking the lowest hanging apples first or getting the most bang for the buck first). Therefore, the first batch of available resources is invested at a high rate of return – the highest the business can possibly identify. The second batch of money will have to be invested at a somewhat lower rate of return since the best ideas have been taken by the first batch of resources already, and so on. The last batch of money invested may earn a rate of return that is only above the cost of capital. And finally, the end result is a declining MROCE curve as shown.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/f1cd59ec1a6da411c303c2bbccaf2425\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"460\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: author\nThe ROCE we normally talk about and companies report refers to the average of this curve – averaging the return on all batches of money invested. Obviously, the average is very useful information by itself. It tells us how efficiently the business has been converting resources into profit so far – but its limitation is that it only tells us the efficiency of the resources that have already been invested SO FAR. What is of equal importance to investors is the MROCE, which tells us how much incremental profit the business WILL generate when the next batch of resources are invested.\nFor investors, a dream business to invest in would be a business that enjoys a flat MROCE curve as shown by the solid blue line. This would be a business that is perfectly scalable. A business that earns a consistent and stable profit for every batch of resources invested. However, such a business is really only a dream business. I mentioned earlier that diminishing returns act like gravity on all economic activities - because they really do. There has been no business (at least not so far in human history) that can keep growing while at the same time maintaining a constant return on capital. At some point, gravity always catches up and the return begins to decline (as shown by the dashed blue line).\nV’s MROCE\nSo for investors, the next best deal is to invest in a business that A) has a high and stable ROCE, and B) that is still in the scalable stage (the gravity of diminishing return has not caught up yet). And as shown in the next chart, V seems to be such a business at such a stage.\nThis chart shows the MROCE and ROCE for V over recent years. The ROCE data are the same as those shown in the previous section. The MROCE data are estimated by the following steps. First, the capital employed was calculated for each year. Second, the earnings were calculated each year. Third, then the incremental of capital employed year over year was calculated. Similarly, the incremental earnings year over year were also calculated. And finally, the ratio between the incremental earnings and incremental capital employed was calculated to approximate the MROCE. During years when there were large fluctuations in either the incremental earnings or the capital employed, a multi-year running average was taken to smooth the fluctuations.\nBefore we began to interpret the results, let me first clarify the difficulties of analyzing marginal return on capital and the limitations of the approach I used here. Firstly, it is just mathematically much harder to estimate the rate of change (e.g., which is what MROCE is essentially is) than the average change (which is what ROCE is essentially is). Estimating the latter involves dividing two large numbers and the uncertainties are small. Estimating the former requires dividing two small numbers and the uncertainties in the financial data can be magnified. Secondly, some capital investments in a business can take multiple years (more than 3 years) to bear fruit (or to fail). Therefore, isolating and tracking the marginal return produced by investments made in a given year is inherently difficult. Although most of the projects should begin to show results (either good or bad) in 3 years and this approach should be able to capture the dominating trend of marginal return.\nWith the above understanding, let’s look at the results closely. First, note that the extraordinarily high MROCE during the early part of the decade again provides a strong illustration of the network effects and the secular trend that support the business at a fundamental level. The business model is just too good.\nThe results in the chart also show that at this stage, V has been actually able to maintain an MROCE that actually is higher than the average ROCE in recent years. As seen, the ROCE has been on average 103% in recent years, and the MROCE has been on average 157%. It was significantly lower than the 350+% level in the earlier part of the decade – gravity always tries to catch up. But it is still higher than the ROCE by a good margin. And the gap is more than 50%, too large to be caused by the uncertainties in the financial data and rounding off errors. So this result suggests that V has not entered a stage of diminishing return yet - gravity has not caught up yet. And if the current MROCE continues, V’s ROCE will maintain its current high level or even further expand.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/4cea9c214b6d0dd15d8f9c5c1392272e\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"398\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: author and Seeking Alpha data.\nValuation\nAfter the above discussion of its profitability sustainability, let’s look at the valuation. At its current price levels, V’s PE is about 44x and FW PE is about 39.6x. The valuation is both high in absolute terms and also high in relative terms. For example, when compared to the FAAMG pack, V’s current valuation is only lower than Amazon (AMZN) in terms of the PE multiple and higher than all the others.\nIt is not that meaningful to discuss valuation in isolation and without adjusting for the quality of the business. The next chart therefore also compares V valuation adjusted for its ROCE with its peers. If you are familiar with Buffett’s holdings, you would recognize that the stocks in this chart represent some of the large BRK holdings.\nI am not sure what the picture will look like as we add more data points on this chart (I do plan to organize my notes on other BRK major holdings and add more data points onto this plot). But with the few data points I have now, I cannot help drawing/seeing the green line - what I call a Buffett value line. It is a line linking AbbVie Inc (ABBV) and AAPL - a good business at a good price and a high-quality business at a high price. So from a value investor point of view, it only makes sense to make investments along this line or below it. Because investment along this line or below represents a trade-off between quality and price that is equivalent or better than ABBV or AAPL. It makes no sense to invest above this line, as anything above this line represents an inferior trade-off between quality and price - we'd be better off just investing in ABBV and AAPL.\nAs you can see, V is currently way above the green line, showing a valuation that is only expensive by itself, but also when adjusted for its ROCE – even if it is superb ROCE.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/6e9fbfdb9a53f0dac2386fcfaf067800\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"427\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: author and Seeking Alpha data.\nCatalysts and risks\nThe long-term catalyst is the trend of digital transactions as mentioned at the beginning of the article. In my view, this trend is unstoppable. The expansive deployment of e-commerce platforms will further accelerate this transition.\nThe most significant catalyst and also a risk at the same time in the near term is the direction and the pace of the economic recovery. If economic activities and especially travel activities resume to their normal level, V will benefit significantly, as commented by the CFO:\n<blockquote>\n \"We have seen immediate impacts since popular travel destinations opened their borders. Greece opened borders in April, and inbound card-present spend rose nearly 30 points by the end of June relative to 2019 levels. France opened on June 9, and inbound card-present volumes rose nearly 20 points by the end of June relative to 2019 ... Since April, card-present cross-border spend in Mexico from the U.S. rose nearly 50 points to over 170% of 2019 levels.\"\n</blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n Vasant Prabhu, Visa CFO (Q3 FY21 earnings call)\n</blockquote>\nIn terms of risks, I see a valuation risk here as aforementioned. In terms of business fundamentals, I really do not see any risks in the near- or even long-term. The economic recovery from the pandemic mentioned above is not really a fundamental risk in my view. Even if it develops in the wrong direction and/or at a pace slower than expected, it is at most a temporary hiccup for V. The business model is too robust and too scalable. In the really long term, we can only speculate. The disruption from Fintechs and Crypto currency must be a potential risk in the long term. I suggest readers interested in these discussions to read the analysis published by&nbsp;Natalie Koo.\nConclusion and final thought\nThis article analyzes Visa Inc (V), with a focus on its profit sustainability and scalability. This analysis examines the most two important aspects of profit Sustainability: return on capital employed (“ROCE”) and marginal return on capital employed (“MROCE”). To me, ROCE and MROCE are the most two important metrics for analyzing a business. They reveal the two most fundamental aspects of the same central issue of profit Sustainability. ROCE tells us how profitable the business has been or is SO FAR. And MROCE sheds insights into which direction the profitability is likely to go.\nThe results show that:\n<ul>\n <li>V not only earns a consistently high ROCE in the past but is still perfectly scalable at its current stage, indicating sustainable profit ahead.</li>\n <li>The ROCE has been on average about 103% and compares very favorably against overachievers which are exemplary scalable stocks.</li>\n <li>And the MROCE has been on average 157% in recent years. So this result suggests that V has not reached the stage of diminishing return yet - gravity has not caught up yet. It is truly impressive for a business at such a staggering scale (which processes $15 trillion of transaction volume last year) to still maintain perfect scalability.</li>\n <li>Lastly, this article also discusses its valuation, especially valuation adjusted for ROCE compared to other stocks that enjoy superb scalability using what I call the Buffett value line. V is currently way above the value line, showing its valuation to be only expensive by itself, but also when adjusted for its ROCE – even if it is superb ROCE.</li>\n</ul>\nAs such, my final verdict is that it is still a perfectly scalable business, but it is more than perfectly priced. Investment at this point will take some time, patience, and commitment for the growth to catch up with the valuation. It is only for long-term committed investors (with at least 5+ years of time horizon) who could hold to it and sit out any potential near-term valuation volatilities.","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Visa Stock: Scalability And Buffett Value Line</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nVisa Stock: Scalability And Buffett Value Line\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-10-11 23:10 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4459179-visa-stock-scalability-and-buffett-value-line>Seeking Alpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nThis article analyzes Visa from the perspective of its profit sustainability and scalability.\nThis analysis examines the most two important aspects of profit sustainability: return on capital...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4459179-visa-stock-scalability-and-buffett-value-line\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"V":"Visa"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4459179-visa-stock-scalability-and-buffett-value-line","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1174273121","content_text":"Summary\n\nThis article analyzes Visa from the perspective of its profit sustainability and scalability.\nThis analysis examines the most two important aspects of profit sustainability: return on capital employed (“ROCE”) and the marginal efficiency of capital.\nThe results show that V not only earns a consistently high ROCE in the past but is still perfectly scalable at its current stage, indicating sustainable profit ahead.\nLastly, this article also discusses its valuation, especially valuation adjusted for ROCE compared to other stocks that enjoy superb scalability using what I call the Buffett value line.\n\nJustin Sullivan/Getty Images News\nInvestment thesis\nThis article analyzes Visa Inc (V), with a focus on its profit sustainability and scalability. This analysis examines the most two important aspects of profit Sustainability: return on capital employed (“ROCE”) and marginal return on capital employed (“MROCE”). To me, ROCE and MROCE are the most two important metrics for analyzing a business. They reveal the two most fundamental aspects of the same central issue of profit Sustainability. ROCE tells us how profitable the business has been or is SO FAR. And MROCE sheds insights into which direction the profitability is likely to go.\nThe results show that V not only earns a consistently high ROCE in the past but is still perfectly scalable at its current stage, indicating sustainable profit ahead. It is truly impressive for a business at such a staggering scale to maintain perfect scalability. Lastly, this article also discusses its valuation, especially valuation adjusted for ROCE and valuation compared to the other stocks that are exemplary scalable stocks (such as the FAAMG stocks and Buffett style stocks).\nThe moat and the network effects\nV’s moat is in its scale and scalability, best demonstrated in the following two charts. The first chart shows the number of credit, debit, and prepaid cards in circulation worldwide from 2017 to 2019, with forecasts for 2023 and 2025. In 2019, there were 22.8 billion credit, debit, and prepaid cards in circulation worldwide. This figure is set to reach 29.31 billion by 2023, a 28% increase from the 2019 level. This figure will further increase to surpass 30 billion by 2025, a 34% increase from the 2019 level. In other words, the total cards in circulation will increase by more than 1/3 by 2025. The trend of digital transactions is unstoppable.\nThe second chart shows that V, as the leading player in this space, will benefit the most from this secular trend. V is the world’s largest retail electronic payments network providing processing services and payment product platforms. This includes credit, debit, prepaid, and commercial payments, which are offered under the Visa, Visa Electron, Interlink, and PLUS brands. Visa/PLUS is one of the largest global ATM networks. V facilitates digital payments across more than 200 countries and territories. It has 3.6 billion cards in circulation, about 16% of the total number of cards in circulation globally. It processes a mindboggling amount of transactions – 206 billion payment transactions and a total transaction volume of $12.5 trillion in 2020 – an undisputed dominance of the payment network.\nSource: Statista\nSource: Visa USA.\nFurthermore, it is unlikely that such dominance would change in the future (barring any major regulation or antitrust legislation change) due to the so-called \"network effects\". The network effects refer to the fact that the value of certain products or services increases as more people use them. In other words, certain networks become increasingly more valuable as they become bigger. Not every network enjoys this magic feature, and as a matter of fact, most networks suffer a diminishing marginal rate of return – i.e., the additional return decreases as the network becomes bigger – as to be elaborated later. A chain restaurant network is an example. As the network becomes larger, the nodes begin to compete against each other for customers and the return diminishes.\nBut certain networks, like the services V provides, enjoy this magic trait – the network becomes more profitable as it becomes bigger. There is nothing new about the concept. It was true of railways, telephones, and fax machines. All these examples share these common traits: A) the larger the network becomes, the more valuable it becomes (one segment of a railway linking city A and B is far more valuable when this segment also links to other railways linking other cities); and B) the larger the network becomes, the higher the switching cost (if everyone uses a fax machine and you do not want to use one, good luck to you).\nAgain, there is nothing new about the concept. But the internet age dramatically amplified the potency of the network effects. Once a lead is established – for whatever the reason – the network effects would just kick in, take over, and compound itself.\nIt is a self-sustaining positive feedback loop: more users in this network will lead to more convenience, better efficiency, lower cost, which will make the network even better and more valuable for its users and clients, which will, in turn, attract more new users and clients to join and make it harder for existing users to leave, which again will lead back to more users and an even larger network. And such feedback will be reflected in a very high level of return on capital employed (“ROCE”) as to be seen later.\nUnfortunately, like all good things eventually run to an end, so do the benefits of the above network effects. At some point, gravity always catches up, and return begins to diminish. In the railway example, if enough railways have already been built to link all cities with high population density, building the next segment would suffer a diminished return now. In the fax machine example, if every office already has one, adding a second one to each office would also suffer a diminished return.\nTherefore, as investors, we do not only need to examine the ROCE, but also equally importantly, to examine the marginal return. Because the marginal return tells us if the business is still in a scalable stage, or if the business has already passed the tipping point of scalability and begins to see a diminishing return. In another word, MROCE let us see if the gravity of diminishing return has caught up yet or not.\nAnd the remainder of this article will examine both aspects next.\nReturn on capital employed (“ROCE”)\nROCE stands for the return on capital employed. Note that ROCE is different from the return on equity (and more fundamental and important in my view). ROCE considers the return of capital ACTUALLY employed, and therefore provides insight into how effectively the business uses its capital to earn a profit. Readers interested in the details of the ROCE analysis can find them in my earlier article. Here I will just summarize the results in the chart below. In these results, I considered the following items capital actually employed A) Working capital (including payables, receivables, inventory), B) Gross Property, Plant, and Equipment, C) Research and development expenses are capitalized, and D) the intangible book value, mainly consisting of intellectual property and patents for such a business.\nAs seen, it was able to maintain an astronomical level of ROCE over the past decade: on average ~103%. To put things in perspective, the next chart compares V’s ROCE against the FAAMG stocks – a group of businesses that exploits the network effects to the extreme. As can be seen, V earns a very competitive ROCE among them – only second to Apple (AAPL). Every $1 of earning reinvested will fuel more than $1 of additional future earnings growth on average.\nSource: author and Seeking Alpha.\nSource: author and Seeking Alpha.\nIntroduction to marginal return on capital employed (“MROCE”)\nIn addition to ROCE, an equally important concept is the marginal return on capital employed (“MROCE”). To me, ROCE and MROCE are the most two important metrics for analyzing a business. They reveal the most fundamental two aspects of the same central issue of profitability. ROCE tells us how profitable the business has been or is SO FAR. And MROCE sheds insights into which direction the profitability is likely to go.\nA bit of background and introduction for readers who are new to the concept. For readers familiar with the concept already, definitely skip this section. From what I’ve learned, the legendary economist John Maynard Keynes first explicitly expressed this concept, although people before him have observed and thought about it for some time already. What the concept tries to capture is a basic law in economic activities: the law of diminishing returns. Warren Buffett likes to say that interest rate acts like gravity on all economic activities. Well, diminishing returns act like gravity on all economic activities too, if not more so, as long as human nature does not change in any fundamental way.\nThe next chart illustrates the concept. As long as shareholders are seeking profit, a public business will first invest its money at projects with the highest possible rate of return (i.e., picking the lowest hanging apples first or getting the most bang for the buck first). Therefore, the first batch of available resources is invested at a high rate of return – the highest the business can possibly identify. The second batch of money will have to be invested at a somewhat lower rate of return since the best ideas have been taken by the first batch of resources already, and so on. The last batch of money invested may earn a rate of return that is only above the cost of capital. And finally, the end result is a declining MROCE curve as shown.\nSource: author\nThe ROCE we normally talk about and companies report refers to the average of this curve – averaging the return on all batches of money invested. Obviously, the average is very useful information by itself. It tells us how efficiently the business has been converting resources into profit so far – but its limitation is that it only tells us the efficiency of the resources that have already been invested SO FAR. What is of equal importance to investors is the MROCE, which tells us how much incremental profit the business WILL generate when the next batch of resources are invested.\nFor investors, a dream business to invest in would be a business that enjoys a flat MROCE curve as shown by the solid blue line. This would be a business that is perfectly scalable. A business that earns a consistent and stable profit for every batch of resources invested. However, such a business is really only a dream business. I mentioned earlier that diminishing returns act like gravity on all economic activities - because they really do. There has been no business (at least not so far in human history) that can keep growing while at the same time maintaining a constant return on capital. At some point, gravity always catches up and the return begins to decline (as shown by the dashed blue line).\nV’s MROCE\nSo for investors, the next best deal is to invest in a business that A) has a high and stable ROCE, and B) that is still in the scalable stage (the gravity of diminishing return has not caught up yet). And as shown in the next chart, V seems to be such a business at such a stage.\nThis chart shows the MROCE and ROCE for V over recent years. The ROCE data are the same as those shown in the previous section. The MROCE data are estimated by the following steps. First, the capital employed was calculated for each year. Second, the earnings were calculated each year. Third, then the incremental of capital employed year over year was calculated. Similarly, the incremental earnings year over year were also calculated. And finally, the ratio between the incremental earnings and incremental capital employed was calculated to approximate the MROCE. During years when there were large fluctuations in either the incremental earnings or the capital employed, a multi-year running average was taken to smooth the fluctuations.\nBefore we began to interpret the results, let me first clarify the difficulties of analyzing marginal return on capital and the limitations of the approach I used here. Firstly, it is just mathematically much harder to estimate the rate of change (e.g., which is what MROCE is essentially is) than the average change (which is what ROCE is essentially is). Estimating the latter involves dividing two large numbers and the uncertainties are small. Estimating the former requires dividing two small numbers and the uncertainties in the financial data can be magnified. Secondly, some capital investments in a business can take multiple years (more than 3 years) to bear fruit (or to fail). Therefore, isolating and tracking the marginal return produced by investments made in a given year is inherently difficult. Although most of the projects should begin to show results (either good or bad) in 3 years and this approach should be able to capture the dominating trend of marginal return.\nWith the above understanding, let’s look at the results closely. First, note that the extraordinarily high MROCE during the early part of the decade again provides a strong illustration of the network effects and the secular trend that support the business at a fundamental level. The business model is just too good.\nThe results in the chart also show that at this stage, V has been actually able to maintain an MROCE that actually is higher than the average ROCE in recent years. As seen, the ROCE has been on average 103% in recent years, and the MROCE has been on average 157%. It was significantly lower than the 350+% level in the earlier part of the decade – gravity always tries to catch up. But it is still higher than the ROCE by a good margin. And the gap is more than 50%, too large to be caused by the uncertainties in the financial data and rounding off errors. So this result suggests that V has not entered a stage of diminishing return yet - gravity has not caught up yet. And if the current MROCE continues, V’s ROCE will maintain its current high level or even further expand.\nSource: author and Seeking Alpha data.\nValuation\nAfter the above discussion of its profitability sustainability, let’s look at the valuation. At its current price levels, V’s PE is about 44x and FW PE is about 39.6x. The valuation is both high in absolute terms and also high in relative terms. For example, when compared to the FAAMG pack, V’s current valuation is only lower than Amazon (AMZN) in terms of the PE multiple and higher than all the others.\nIt is not that meaningful to discuss valuation in isolation and without adjusting for the quality of the business. The next chart therefore also compares V valuation adjusted for its ROCE with its peers. If you are familiar with Buffett’s holdings, you would recognize that the stocks in this chart represent some of the large BRK holdings.\nI am not sure what the picture will look like as we add more data points on this chart (I do plan to organize my notes on other BRK major holdings and add more data points onto this plot). But with the few data points I have now, I cannot help drawing/seeing the green line - what I call a Buffett value line. It is a line linking AbbVie Inc (ABBV) and AAPL - a good business at a good price and a high-quality business at a high price. So from a value investor point of view, it only makes sense to make investments along this line or below it. Because investment along this line or below represents a trade-off between quality and price that is equivalent or better than ABBV or AAPL. It makes no sense to invest above this line, as anything above this line represents an inferior trade-off between quality and price - we'd be better off just investing in ABBV and AAPL.\nAs you can see, V is currently way above the green line, showing a valuation that is only expensive by itself, but also when adjusted for its ROCE – even if it is superb ROCE.\nSource: author and Seeking Alpha data.\nCatalysts and risks\nThe long-term catalyst is the trend of digital transactions as mentioned at the beginning of the article. In my view, this trend is unstoppable. The expansive deployment of e-commerce platforms will further accelerate this transition.\nThe most significant catalyst and also a risk at the same time in the near term is the direction and the pace of the economic recovery. If economic activities and especially travel activities resume to their normal level, V will benefit significantly, as commented by the CFO:\n\n \"We have seen immediate impacts since popular travel destinations opened their borders. Greece opened borders in April, and inbound card-present spend rose nearly 30 points by the end of June relative to 2019 levels. France opened on June 9, and inbound card-present volumes rose nearly 20 points by the end of June relative to 2019 ... Since April, card-present cross-border spend in Mexico from the U.S. rose nearly 50 points to over 170% of 2019 levels.\"\n\n\nVasant Prabhu, Visa CFO (Q3 FY21 earnings call)\n\nIn terms of risks, I see a valuation risk here as aforementioned. In terms of business fundamentals, I really do not see any risks in the near- or even long-term. The economic recovery from the pandemic mentioned above is not really a fundamental risk in my view. Even if it develops in the wrong direction and/or at a pace slower than expected, it is at most a temporary hiccup for V. The business model is too robust and too scalable. In the really long term, we can only speculate. The disruption from Fintechs and Crypto currency must be a potential risk in the long term. I suggest readers interested in these discussions to read the analysis published by Natalie Koo.\nConclusion and final thought\nThis article analyzes Visa Inc (V), with a focus on its profit sustainability and scalability. This analysis examines the most two important aspects of profit Sustainability: return on capital employed (“ROCE”) and marginal return on capital employed (“MROCE”). To me, ROCE and MROCE are the most two important metrics for analyzing a business. They reveal the two most fundamental aspects of the same central issue of profit Sustainability. ROCE tells us how profitable the business has been or is SO FAR. And MROCE sheds insights into which direction the profitability is likely to go.\nThe results show that:\n\nV not only earns a consistently high ROCE in the past but is still perfectly scalable at its current stage, indicating sustainable profit ahead.\nThe ROCE has been on average about 103% and compares very favorably against overachievers which are exemplary scalable stocks.\nAnd the MROCE has been on average 157% in recent years. So this result suggests that V has not reached the stage of diminishing return yet - gravity has not caught up yet. It is truly impressive for a business at such a staggering scale (which processes $15 trillion of transaction volume last year) to still maintain perfect scalability.\nLastly, this article also discusses its valuation, especially valuation adjusted for ROCE compared to other stocks that enjoy superb scalability using what I call the Buffett value line. V is currently way above the value line, showing its valuation to be only expensive by itself, but also when adjusted for its ROCE – even if it is superb ROCE.\n\nAs such, my final verdict is that it is still a perfectly scalable business, but it is more than perfectly priced. Investment at this point will take some time, patience, and commitment for the growth to catch up with the valuation. It is only for long-term committed investors (with at least 5+ years of time horizon) who could hold to it and sit out any potential near-term valuation volatilities.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":885,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"CN","currentLanguage":"CN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":13,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ZH_CN"},"commentList":[],"isCommentEnd":true,"isTiger":false,"isWeiXinMini":false,"url":"/m/post/826950513"}