This rather blunt phrase is one of my most reliable rules of thumb when analyzing investment themes, since most headline-grabbing trends that are dubbed secular, disruptive or even paradigm shifts turn out to be cyclical in nature .
But revenue growth hasn’t been the main driver of profit margins. It’s the cost side that has driven that. Companies have also benefited from more free labour. In our do-it-on-your-phone society, they’ve been able to offload more tasks onto willing customers without any corresponding price reduction. The one factor that’s not talked about enough is consolidation. After three decades of frenetic merger activity, all industries have fewer players and many have moved into the oligopoly category .
It’s telling that research on trends in corporate communications reveals that the number of times the words “competitor” and “competition” are being used has plummeted. The business world is more civil than it used to be.
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