The Intelligent Investor_ The Definitive Book on Value Investing - Benjamin Graham [186]
COMMENT AND CONCLUSIONS: The first thing to remark is that the market success of Flavors was based entirely on the development of its central business, and involved none of the corporate wheeling and dealing, acquisition programs, top-heavy capitalization structures, and other familiar Wall Street practices of recent years. The company has stuck to its extremely profitable knitting, and that is virtually its whole story. The record of Harvester raises an entirely different set of questions, but these too have nothing to do with “high finance.” Why have so many great companies become relatively unprofitable even during many years of general prosperity? What is the advantage of doing more than $2½ billion of business if the enterprise cannot earn enough to justify the shareholders’ investment? It is not for us to prescribe the solution of this problem. But we insist that not only management but the rank and file of shareholders should be conscious that the problem exists and that it calls for the best brains and the best efforts possible to deal with it.* From the standpoint of common-stock selection, neither issue would have met our standards of sound, reasonably attractive, and moderately priced investment. Flavors was a typical brilliantly successful but lavishly valued company; Harvester’s showing was too mediocre to make it really attractive even at its discount price. (Undoubtedly there were better values available in the reasonably priced class.)
SEQUEL TO 1971: The low price of Harvester at the end of 1969 protected it from a large further decline in the bad break of 1970. It lost only 10% more. Flavors proved more vulnerable and declined to 45, a loss of 30%. In the subsequent recovery both advanced, well above their 1969 close, but Harvester soon fell back to the 25 level.
Pair 6: McGraw Edison (Public Utility and Equipment; Housewares) McGraw-Hill, Inc. (Books, Films, Instruction Systems; Magazine and Newspaper Publishers; Information Services)
This pair with so similar names—which at times we shall call Edison and Hill—are two large and successful enterprises in vastly different fields. We have chosen December 31, 1968, as the date of our comparison, developed in Table 18-6. The issues were selling at about the same price, but because of Hill’s larger capitalization it was valued at about twice the total figure of the other. This difference should appear somewhat surprising, since Edison had about 50% higher sales and one-quarter larger net earnings. As a result, we find that the key ratio—the multiplier of earnings—was more than twice as great for Hill as for Edison. This phenomenon seems explicable chiefly by the persistence of a strong enthusiasm and partiality exhibited by the market toward shares of book-publishing companies, several of which had been introduced to public trading in the later 1960s.*
Actually, by the end of 1968 it was evident that this enthusiasm had been overdone. The Hill shares had sold at 56 in 1967, more than 40 times the just-reported record earnings for 1966. But a small decline had appeared in 1967 and a further decline in 1968. Thus the current high multiplier of 35 was being applied to a company that had already shown two years of receding profits. Nonetheless the stock was still valued at more than eight times its tangible asset backing, indicating a good-will component of not far from a billion dollars! Thus the price seemed to illustrate—in Dr. Johnson’s famous phrase—“The triumph of hope over experience.”
TABLE 18-6. Pair 6.
By contrast, McGraw Edison seemed quoted at a reasonable price in relation to the (high) general market level and to the company’s overall performance and financial position.
SEQUEL TO EARLY 1971: The decline of McGraw-Hill’s earnings continued through 1969 and 1970,