Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat’s commentary for the week of November 24, 2015

Article Excerpt

Over the past few decades, we’ve built a list of what we call “reasons for wariness”. No single one of these factors is a sure sign of a bad investment. But we watch out for them when analyzing investments, especially where we find more than one. When we spot reasons for wariness in a business model or a growth plan, we want to be sure the company understands the risk. One prominent factor on our list is growth by acquisition. A company can speed up its growth by buying other companies, rather than building on or duplicating its existing operations. But, while acquisitions speed growth, they also accumulate risk. After all, the seller of something always knows more about it than the buyer. When a company focuses on acquisitions for corporate growth, it assumes it can out-perform the current management of what it buys. It assumes it can raise the return by a wide enough margin to increase its earnings,…