Warren Buffett said many times that the companies he likes are:
1. Simple businesses that he understands
2. that have predictable and proven earnings and
3. with economic moat
4. those can be bought at a reasonable price.
GuruFocus conducted a back test study of Warren Buffett's strategy of "buying good companies at fair prices" for the years from 1998-2008.
STEC, Predictability Rank Calculation
In our database there are 2403 stocks that have been traded from Jan. 2, 1998 to Aug. 31, 2008. We have the complete 10-year financial data and trading prices of these companies for this period. We rank the predictability of these companies based on the consistency of their revenue per share and EBITDA (earning before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) per share over the past ten fiscal years, and study the correlation between the stock performances and the predictability of the business.
Our study may be subject to these biases and assumptions:
Dividend yields are not counted for investment returns
Effects of price changes due to spin-offs may not be fully adjusted
Study is subjected to survivorship bias due to de-listing, bankruptcy, LBO, M&A, etc.
The correlation between business predictability and investment returns of a company is showed below.
Correlation Between Business Predictability and Investment Returns
Predictables
Non-Predictable
All stocks
Total Number of stocks
570
1833
2403
Total Lost Money
61
830
891
Total Lost More Than 50%
18
412
430
Total Lost More Than 90%
4
86
90
Average Gain
260.6%
100.0%
138.1%
Median Gain
150.0%
13.0%
39.0%
Maximum Gain
2852.0%
11483.0%
11483.0%
Maximum Loss
-100.0%
-100.0%
-100.0%
Annualized Average Gain
12.7%
6.7%
8.4%
Annualized Median Gain
8.9%
1.1%
3.1%
For the 570 predictable companies, we have seen strong correlation between the predictability of businesses and the stock performances over the past 10 years, regardless of the valuation of business at 1998. Accordingly, we have ranked the business predictability from 5-star to 1-star, as shown in this table.
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STEC, Inc., was incorporated in 1990 in the state of California. It provides enterprise-class Flash solid-state drives that are designed to increase the performance of enterprise-storage systems and servers that companies use to retain and access their critical data. Its products are designed for storage systems and servers that run applications requiring a high level of input/output operations per second ('IOPS') performance, capacity, reliability and low latency. The Company designs and develops its SSD controllers, enhance them with proprietary firmware and combine them with third-party Flash memory to form high-performance SSDs which provide a level of IOPS performance not currently possible with traditional hard disk drives ('HDDs'). The Company sells its SSDs to global storage and server original equipment manufacturers ('OEMs') which integrate them into storage systems and servers used by enterprises in a variety of industries including financial services, government, transportation, defense and aerospace, and transaction processing. It also manufactures small form factor Flash SSDs, cards and modules, as well as custom high density dynamic random access memory ('DRAM') modules for networking, communications and industrial applications. The Company markets its products to OEMs, leveraging its comprehensive design capabilities to offer custom storage solutions to address their specific needs. A major area of its Flash-based product investment has been applied to SSD technology. It also offers both monolithic DRAM modules and DRAM modules based on its proprietary stacking technology. The Company also offers both monolithic DRAM modules and DRAM modules based on its proprietary stacking technology. The Company's ZeusIOPS SSDs are high performance enterprise-class data storage solutions. Its MACH-class SSDs are small form factor, high throughput storage solutions for mission-critical systems in a variety of industries. The Company's Industrial Grade Advanced Technology Attachment ('ATA') PC Cards are viable alternatives to HDDs due to their high reliability and low cost per useable megabyte. CompactFlash products provide full PC Card ATA functionality but are only one-fourth the size of a standard PC Card. Its flash module products include USB and Serial ATA interfaces and are targeted toward embedded systems where device footprint and low power are critical design parameters. The Company's Secure Digital ('SD') Flash Memory Cards are small, removable and non-volatile flash memory with a high performance interface. Its USB flash drive built upon an industrial-grade flash controller technology has capacity of 1GB to 8GB, its USB Flash Drive couples convenience and portability with performance and reliability. The Company offers DRAM products, including dual in-line memory modules ('DIMMs'), small-outline DIMMs, mini-registered DIMMs, very low profile registered DIMMs ('VLP RDIMMs') and Fully-Buffered DIMMs ('FB-DIMMs'). Its pat
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