Analyzing the competitive landscape of an industry is essential to understand the business🧵
Using Porter's Five Forces, we will analyze Costco's competitive position $COST 📊
Let's dive in 🧵👇
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Porter's five forces were constructed by Micheal Porter in 1979.
Porter is a professor at Harvard BS and is a legend in strategy and business competition.
We will use his framework to understand the competitive dynamics surrounding Costco and its position in the market.
•Threat of new entrants
Costco operates in a highly competitive retail industry, but its business model presents significant barriers to entry.
Its membership-based model, bulk purchasing power, and distribution network make it challenging for new entrants to replicate.
•Bargaining power of suppliers
Costco has a unique advantage.
With its large-scale operations and purchasing volumes, Costco can negotiate favorable deals with suppliers.
This allows them to offer competitive prices to customers while maintaining healthy profit margins.
The concept of sharing its scale economics benefits with its customers is called "scale economics shared", a concept popularized by Nick Sleep
This business model is extremely resilient because it is very hard to compete with, and low prices will never go out of style
•Bargaining power of buyers
Costco's customers are primarily B2C and small businesses.
While buyers have some power due to the availability, Costco's low prices, wide product selection, and exclusive membership benefits create strong customer loyalty.
•Threat of substitute products or services
Costco faces competition from both traditional B&M retailers and online platforms.
However, Costco's value proposition of bulk purchases, and discounted prices mitigate the threat of substitutes to a large extent.
•Intensity of competitive rivalry within the industry
Costco competes with major retailers like Walmart, Target, and Amazon.
Costco has managed to differentiate itself from its competitors. This is reflected in their continued success over decades:
• Conclusion: Costco has a strong competitive position compared to its peers.
The barriers to entry, strong supplier relationships, loyal customer base, limited threat of substitutes, and differentiated positioning help sustain Costco's competitive advantage.
Costco's ability to drive down costs through economies of scale enables them to offer competitive pricing, attracting and retaining customers.
This creates a virtuous cycle, as more members join, Costco's purchasing power increases, leading to better deals with suppliers.
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I write about my journey as an investor focusing on quality businesses
Buffett is the most successful stock investor of our time
Here are 7 lessons that will make you a better investor:
Buffett has 3 main inspirations for his style:
1. Benjamin Graham
Graham taught Buffett to buy stocks at attractive prices
He promoted a rigid process for investing with strict criteria for valuation and quality
He used the metaphor of "Mr Market" to drive his points.
2. Phil Fisher
Fisher taught Buffett to focus his portfolio and think long-term
Fisher understood the value of doing deep research and so-called "scuttlebutt investing" where the investors talk to all kinds of people related to the business that is under analysis.
Nick Sleep is known for having a 3-stock portfolio 🏆🧵
He achieved a cumulative return of 921% vs. the MSCI world index of 116,9% over 13 years.
This is how he did it 🧵
= THREAD =
•Long-term mindset
Preventing the interruption of compounding remains one of the best methods for long-term returns.
Sleep focused on the business' destination, and ignored short-term noise
His mere focus was to pick great long-term winners
•Focus on the destination
Sleep focused on the company's destination.
To help him do this, he used 3 questions:
- Where will X be in 10-20 years?
- What must management do now to reach that destination?
- What circumstance could prevent X from reaching its destination?
Munger is said to have the best 30-second mind in the world
His deep knowledge on psychological biases and mental models gave him a competitive advantage.
Here are 6 lessons that will make you a more effective thinker:
What is a psychological bias?
Also known as a “cognitive bias” it can be defined as a pattern of deviation from rational judgment.
In other words, why do we (human beings) sometimes act and think like morons.
Most investors have been caught in one of these scenarios:
I) A stock keeps increasing, all your friends are making money, and you want to get in too! (FOMO)
II) A stock keeps falling in price, the pain gets worse every day, and you sell at the point of maximum pain (only to realize it was the bottom). (Appeal to fear)
III) You think you know more about a certain stock or industry than you do, you agree with all articles and reports that confirm your thesis, and neglect those that oppose your thesis (Confirmation bias).