The ten oldest names on the two-part Lindy list, in the post's own order (#10 down to #1 by founding date). All Positive: each carries an argued durability case. Deere also appeared as the worked example in Part I. As in Part I, no valuation or price is given for any name — treat these as a candidate universe, not a buy list. Research legend: QT Qualtrim · SA Seeking Alpha · STK Stock Analysis. Written post with no timestamps — the At link opens the article.
| Ticker | Name | Research | View | What he said | At |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KO | Coca-Cola | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #10. Founded 1886, IPO 1919. The asset-light structure is the point: "They sell concentrates and syrups to restaurants and independent bottling companies" — the capital-intensive bottling sits with third parties. Lindy case: "People will always want sweet drinks… Its global distribution network is nearly impossible to copy." Compounded at more than 10% a year since 1990, nearly 4,000% in total. The founding detail is left in: John Pemberton's syrup "originally contained small amounts of cocaine (!) and was marketed as a pain reliever." | read ↗ |
| LLY | Eli Lilly | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #9. Founded 1876, IPO 1952 — and the best return on the list at more than 17,000% since 1990. "They're a major producer of insulin and now GLP-1 drugs." Lindy case: "People will always get sick… Lilly has decades of experience developing new medicines. Strong patents protect its best products." Note the contrast with 23 July, where Lilly was scored 8.2/10 on quality and then explicitly passed on valuation — its price assumed 18.9% growth. Here it is included on durability alone with no price attached, so the two verdicts do not conflict. | read ↗ |
| BF.B | Brown-Forman | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #8. Founded 1870, IPO 1929 — and the weakest compounder on the list. "They own brands like Jack Daniels, Old Forester, and Chambord… Strong brands give the company pricing power." Lindy case: "People have been drinking alcohol for centuries." Around 1,800% since 1990, compounding at 8.5% a year — below the S&P's long-run rate over the same period. Founded when George Garvin Brown started selling bottled whiskey in Louisville, the first to sell it sealed in glass. | read ↗ |
| SHW | Sherwin-Williams | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #7. Founded 1866, IPO 1964 — the best compound rate on the list at 15.5% a year since 1990. The distribution argument is the whole case: "They also own the vast majority of Sherwin-Williams stores throughout the U.S… Its large store network makes contractors choose Sherwin-Williams because there's always a store nearby for supplies." Owning the shops rather than selling through others is the structural difference against every other paint maker. Already on TJ Terwilliger's twenty-year list, where the 5,400-store network was the same argument. | read ↗ |
| UNP | Union Pacific | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #6. Founded 1862, IPO 1897 — the purest irreplaceable-asset case in the series. "The economy depends on moving heavy goods. Rail is one of the cheapest ways to transport freight. Union Pacific's rail network would be almost impossible to build today." Chartered under the Pacific Railway Act to build the eastern half of the first transcontinental railroad — a right-of-way granted by an act of Congress that no amount of capital could reassemble. More than 9,000% since 1990. | read ↗ |
| AXP | American Express | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #5. Founded 1850, IPO 1977 — and the list's second reinvention story. "They control the entire transaction from the merchant to the consumer" — the closed-loop structure that distinguishes it from the Visa/Mastercard model argued elsewhere in this archive. Lindy case is a network effect: "More cardholders attract more merchants, and vice versa… it becomes even stronger as it grows." More than 7,000% since 1990. It began as an express-delivery freight company in Buffalo before moving into finance — like 3M, it survived by abandoning its original business. | read ↗ |
| PFE | Pfizer | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #4. Founded 1849, IPO 1942. "Its large portfolio keeps cash flowing even as patents expire" — the portfolio-of-patents argument rather than a single-drug one, which is the correct way to think about pharmaceutical durability. 9.8% a year since 1990, the second-weakest rate on the list and a long way behind Lilly's 17,000% total, despite the two businesses being described in almost identical terms. That gap is the strongest evidence in the series that survival and compounding are different things. | read ↗ |
| PG | Procter & Gamble | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #3. Founded 1837, IPO 1890. "They own brands like Tide, Pampers, Dawn, Crest, and Gillette… Its scale and distribution make it difficult to compete with." Lindy case: "People will always buy everyday household products." More than 4,000% since 1990. Formed when a candlemaker and a soapmaker — brothers-in-law — went into partnership in Cincinnati, which is why the company has always been in the business of turning fats into consumer products. | read ↗ |
| DE | Deere & Company | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #2. Founded 1837, IPO 1955 — and the second-best return on the list at over 12,000% since 1990. "The world will always need food, and growing enough requires the specialized, heavy machines that John Deere builds. Deere has broad dealer networks for parts and repairs. The brand has generations of trust." The dealer network is the moat that matters: a broken harvester in harvest week is a business-ending event, so proximity to parts and service decides the purchase. Introduced as the worked example in Part I. | read ↗ |
| CL | Colgate-Palmolive | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | #1 — the oldest company in the series, founded 1806, IPO 1930. "They own brands like Colgate, Hill's Pet, Sanex, Fabuloso, and Ajax." The Lindy case names the actual cash-flow mechanism rather than the brand: "People will always brush their teeth and wash their hands… Everyday, repeated purchases create steady, predictable cash flow." More than 5,000% since 1990. The honest footnote is in the history: William Colgate's 1806 soap-and-candle shop gives the founding date, but "the modern company comes from a 1928 merger with Palmolive (founded 1898)" — so the 220-year continuity is partly a legal artefact. | read ↗ |
Three observations. (1) Ranking by founding date rather than conviction means position #1 carries no more weight than #10 — worth remembering, because the series looks like a ranked recommendation list and is not. (2) The Lilly / Pfizer pair is the series' own control experiment: two American pharmaceutical companies founded twenty-seven years apart, described with almost identical durability arguments, and separated by roughly 17,000% versus 9.8% a year. Durability is a precondition, not a driver. (3) Colgate's 1806 founding date rests on a predecessor business, and Moody's 1909 date in Part I rests on a pre-spin-off entity — the age screen is less precise than the (!) marks suggest.
A jargon-free summary of the thesis behind each argued name. (Renders on each name's consolidated page.)
Coca-Cola does not really make fizzy drinks. It makes the concentrated syrup and sells it to independent bottlers, who buy the factories, the cans and the delivery trucks and take all the capital risk. Coca-Cola keeps the recipe, the brand and the marketing — which is where nearly all the profit is.
The durability case is that sweet drinks are not a fashion, the brand is among the most recognised objects on earth, and a distribution system that reaches roughly every shop in every country took a century to assemble. The shares have compounded at more than 10% a year since 1990, close to 4,000% in total. The origin story is left in for colour: a pharmacist's 1886 syrup that contained a little cocaine and was sold as a pain remedy.
Eli Lilly researches and manufactures medicines. It has made insulin since the 1920s and is now one of the two dominant makers of the weight-loss and diabetes drugs that have reshaped the industry.
Its return is the best on the whole Lindy list — more than 17,000% since 1990 — and the argument here is the simplest possible one: people get ill, they want treatment, patents protect the successful products for long enough to pay for the failures. But read this alongside the archive's own verdict three weeks earlier, where Lilly scored 8.2 out of 10 on business quality and was then explicitly not bought, because its share price already assumed 18.9% annual growth. There is no contradiction — this list is about how long a business will last, and that analysis was about what it costs today — but the two should be held together.
Brown-Forman distils and sells spirits, above all Jack Daniel's, along with Old Forester and Chambord. Whiskey has an unusual property as a product: the inventory improves while it sits in the warehouse, and the years it must spend there are themselves a barrier to anyone trying to enter the market quickly.
People have drunk alcohol for millennia and the brands have loyal buyers, which is the durability case. But it is also the weakest compounder on the list — around 1,800% since 1990, or 8.5% a year, below what an index fund delivered over the same period. A useful reminder that a 150-year-old brand and a good investment are not the same claim.
Sherwin-Williams makes paint and — unusually — owns the shops that sell it. That second fact is the entire business. Professional decorators do not choose paint by brand; they choose the supplier whose store is closest, because running out mid-job means downtime and downtime is the expensive part.
Thousands of company-owned stores across the United States mean there is almost always one nearby, and a rival would have to build the whole network before it could compete for the first customer. The result is the best compound rate on the list: 15.5% a year since 1990. The same argument put it on the team's twenty-year list in July.
Union Pacific runs freight trains across the western United States — coal, grain, chemicals, containers, cars. For heavy goods travelling long distances, rail is simply the cheapest way to move a tonne, and nothing on the horizon changes that.
The moat is the most literal on the list: the track. Union Pacific's right of way was granted by an act of Congress in 1862 to build half the first transcontinental railroad, and acquiring that much continuous land across a modern country is not a matter of money — it is impossible. Shareholders have made more than 9,000% since 1990. If you want a single example of what "irreplaceable asset" means, this is it.
American Express both issues the cards and runs the network they operate on, which is different from Visa and Mastercard — they only run the network and leave the lending to banks. Owning both ends means Amex earns more per transaction, and also carries the credit risk when cardholders do not pay.
The durability argument is the classic two-sided network: more cardholders make the card more attractive to shops, more shops make it more attractive to cardholders, and the loop tightens as it grows. More than 7,000% since 1990. Its origin is worth noting — it began in 1850 as a freight-delivery company and only later became a financial one, which makes it one of three names on the Lindy list that survived by leaving the industry it was founded in.
Pfizer discovers, makes and sells prescription drugs and vaccines. Every individual product it owns will eventually lose its patent and collapse in price, so what is actually being valued is the machine that keeps producing replacements, and the breadth of the range that keeps cash coming in while any one product fades.
That is the correct way to think about a pharmaceutical company, and the post says it clearly. What the post does not dwell on is the outcome: 9.8% a year since 1990, against the near-identical description given to Eli Lilly, which returned more than 17,000% over the same stretch. Same industry, same durability, radically different results — the clearest illustration in the whole series that surviving is a precondition for compounding, not a cause of it.
Procter & Gamble makes the things people buy without thinking — Tide, Pampers, Crest, Gillette, Dawn. Each purchase is small, frequent and habitual, which makes the revenue unusually predictable, and the scale of the operation means it can outspend any newcomer on both advertising and shelf space.
The company dates from 1837, when a candlemaker and a soapmaker married sisters and went into partnership in Cincinnati — both trades depended on animal fats, which is why the combination made sense and why the company has been in consumer chemistry ever since. More than 4,000% for shareholders since 1990.
Deere builds the heavy machinery farms and construction sites depend on. In Part I it was the illustration for the whole Lindy idea; here it is ranked second, and the additional argument is the dealer network.
That network matters more than the machines. A combine that breaks down during the two-week window when a crop must be cut is a catastrophe, so farmers buy from whoever can put a part and a mechanic in the field fastest. Building that coverage across a continent takes generations, which is why the brand carries, as the post puts it, generations of trust. Shareholders have made over 12,000% since 1990 — the second-best on the list.
Colgate-Palmolive sells toothpaste, soap, cleaning products and pet food — Colgate, Ajax, Sanex, Fabuloso, Hill's. It is the oldest company in the series, tracing back to a soap-and-candle shop opened in New York in 1806.
The mechanism named here is the best short statement of why staples businesses are valued the way they are: everyday, repeated purchases create steady, predictable cash flow. Nobody stockpiles toothpaste and nobody skips brushing when the economy turns, so the revenue barely notices recessions. More than 5,000% since 1990. One caveat the post itself supplies: the modern company really dates from a 1928 merger, so the 220-year figure describes a lineage rather than a continuously operating business.
Summary derived from the archived Compounding Quality post (text in transcript.txt) for personal study. Not investment advice. © Compounding Quality / Pieter Slegers for source material.