Stance reflects how each name is framed in this post, not a price rating. The five "favorite ones" are Positive (argued as quality businesses; no valuation or purchase). The nine names cited in the prose as top of a sort (revenue growth, EPS growth, ROIC) are Neutral — screen output, not picks. The further names that appear only inside the result-table screenshots (Kaspi.kz, IHG, Booking, Pro Medicus, VeriSign, FICO, Apple and ~25 others) are transcribed in transcript.txt but get no rows here. Rightmove (London) uses the .L row id. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MA | Mastercard | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Favourite #1 — "A highly profitable digital tollbooth on global spending with unbeatable network effects." "Mastercard is in a duopoly with Visa… Their network effects make them very hard to disrupt… it costs them almost nothing to process an extra payment. This means new revenue turns straight into pure profit." Metrics: revenue 5-yr CAGR +16.1%, diluted EPS +20.4%, gross margin 100.0%, ROIC 41.7%; the results sheet adds FCF margin 49.3%, ROCE 61.7%, net margin 45.4%. Chart: transaction volume $5.2trn (2017) → $11.2trn LTM, an 8.8% CAGR. No valuation — two weeks after it was Best Buy #1. | read ↗ |
| RMS.PA | Hermès International | QT · SA · STK | Positive | Favourite #2 — "An ultra-luxury brand with strict production limits that create massive pricing power." "Their bags are made by hand. Production is strictly limited. They never have to put items on sale. That keeps their profits high and stable in almost any economy." Metrics: revenue +14.7%, EPS +15.2%, gross margin 71.1%, ROIC 43.7% (ROCE 34.5%, FCF margin 28.1%, $180.3bn market cap on the sheet). Chart: gross margin 68.5-72.3% every year since 2017; net margin up from 22.1% to a 32.2% peak (2023), 28.1% LTM. The portfolio's LVMH was flagged in the 3 September "Our Portfolio Needs Surgery" issue (not archived here) as a possible switch "to Hermes"; no switch is mentioned here. | read ↗ |
| MSCI | MSCI Inc. | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Favourite #3 — "An essential market index provider that legally locks in trillions of investment dollars." "Changing a fund's benchmark index is a huge, costly legal headache. This gives MSCI a lot of pricing power and it locks in clients for life." Metrics: revenue +12.6%, EPS +16.9%, gross margin 82.3%, ROIC 26.3%. Chart: AUM in ETFs linked to MSCI equity indexes $744bn (2017) → $2.82trn LTM, a 15.9% CAGR, with the one down year in 2022. No valuation. | read ↗ |
| FAST | Fastenal Company | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Favourite #4 — "A slow, reliable compounder that embeds its supply machines right inside the customer's factory." "They put vending machines stocked with their products right inside their customers' factories. That makes Fastenal incredibly convenient, and difficult to replace. The result is a slow, boring, highly profitable compounder." Metrics: revenue +9.0%, EPS +9.3%, gross margin 45.6%, ROIC 30.3%. Chart: revenue $4.39bn (2017) → $8.75bn LTM (8.0% CAGR), diluted EPS $0.50 → $1.18 (10.0%), with a flat 2024. The archive's first mention of the name; no valuation. | read ↗ |
| ASML | ASML Holding | QT · SA · STK · FA | Positive | Favourite #5 — "A global monopoly building the complex machines required to make advanced computer chips." "They're a monopoly as they're the only company on earth that knows how to build the most advanced version of these machines… As the demand for advanced chips grows, so will ASML's sales." Metrics: revenue +16.3%, EPS +19.1%, gross margin 51.7%, ROIC 24.7%. Chart: revenue 8,962.7m (2017) → 35,327.5m LTM, a 16.5% CAGR, with a near-flat 2024 (28,262.9m vs 27,558.5m). A monopoly on a cyclical, capex-driven end market — a tension the post does not address. No valuation. | read ↗ |
| NVDA | NVIDIA Corporation | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Top of the revenue-growth sort: "Nvidia: +69.1%." The only name in the top nine of all three sorts — 5-yr diluted EPS CAGR 95.1%, 3-yr ROIC 128.4%, ROCE 104.6%, FCF margin 45.4%, on a $5.52trn market cap. Listed only; no commentary. | read ↗ |
| DLO | DLocal Limited | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | #2 on revenue growth: "DLocal: +52.4%." Also 3-yr ROIC 84.3% (sixth on that sort), EPS CAGR 30.1%, gross margin 43.6%, $4.6bn market cap. An emerging-markets payments processor — a name the new developed-countries-only portfolio rule would exclude. Listed only; first mention in this archive. | read ↗ |
| ANET | Arista Networks | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Cited third on revenue growth: "Arista Networks: +32.0%" — though it is eighth on the post's own sort (Kaspi, PDD, Lantheus, Harmony and Halozyme sit between). EPS CAGR 40.7%, ROIC 51.5%, FCF margin 44.9%, net margin 35.2%. Listed only. | read ↗ |
| APP | AppLovin Corporation | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Cited first on EPS growth: "AppLovin: +98.3%" — second on the sort behind IHG (235.0%). FCF margin 58.8% (the highest among the named names), ROIC 75.4%, ROCE 65.1%, $104.9bn market cap. Listed only; first mention in this archive. | read ↗ |
| PDD | PDD Holdings Inc. | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | "PDD Holdings: +95.1%" on EPS growth, and in the top nine of all three sorts (revenue 39.3%, ROIC 76.6%). The contradiction in the post: China is excluded because it is "way outside our circle of competence," yet the Pinduoduo/Temu parent — Nasdaq-listed, Irish-domiciled, Chinese-operated — passes the country filter and is named. Listed only; first mention in this archive. | read ↗ |
| EXEL | Exelixis, Inc. | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | Cited third on EPS growth: "Exelixis: +61.2%" — sixth on the sort, behind IHG, AppLovin, Nvidia, PDD and Booking. Gross margin 96.4%, ROIC 41.7%, revenue CAGR 16.1%. A single-franchise oncology drug company (cabozantinib) — the kind of patent-cliff business a backward-looking growth screen cannot see. Listed only; first mention in this archive. | read ↗ |
| RMV.L | Rightmove plc | STK | Neutral | Top of the ROIC sort: "Rightmove: 363.5%." ROCE 346.4%, FCF margin 55.1%, net margin 54.4%, but only 11.0% revenue and 10.1% EPS CAGR; the sheet's 100.00% gross margin is a presentation artefact (no cost-of-sales line). The UK's dominant property portal. Listed only; first mention in this archive. | read ↗ |
| GAW.L | Games Workshop | QT · SA · STK | Neutral | "Games Workshop: 84.9%" on ROIC — fifth on the sort (ROCE 79.7%, FCF margin 36.0%, revenue 12.3%, EPS 10.9%). The only portfolio holding named in the post, and it is not identified as one; the 1 September letter called it the book's most expensive position at 33x NTM P/E. Listed only. | read ↗ |
| DECK | Deckers Outdoor Corporation | QT · SA · STK · FA | Neutral | "Deckers Outdoors: 76%" on ROIC — ninth on the sort (ROCE 45.2%, FCF margin 20.0%, gross margin 54.4%, EPS CAGR 22.5%, $11.5bn market cap). Rated BUY on the 23 August sheet at 14.0x forward; listed only here. | read ↗ |
Checks against the post's own images. (1) CapEx filter: entered as a maximum of 0.05 in a field the other seven criteria fill in percent, and the CapEx-to-Revenue column shows 0 for every visible survivor — either the field is unpopulated or the filter is not binding, so "low capital intensity" is not actually tested. (2) Cherry-picked leaders: revenue sort order is NVDA, DLO, KSPI 45.7%, PDD, LNTH, HRMY, HALO, ANET; EPS sort is IHG 235.0%, APP, NVDA 95.1%, PDD 95.1%, BKNG 86.4%, EXEL. (3) Screen universe: exchanges include OTC Pink and OTCBB, which admits Love Group Global ($2.77m), Rave Restaurant Group ($43m) and Record plc ($110m) beside Apple; "Deckers Outdoors" is the post's spelling. (4) Metric windows: the favourites' quoted CAGRs differ slightly from their own Fiscal.ai charts (ASML revenue 16.3% vs 16.5%; Fastenal EPS 9.3% vs 10.0%) because the charts run 2017-LTM rather than five years. (5) Chart sources: the "Source: Morgan Stanley" exhibit is BCG/Morgan Stanley data on S&P 500 top-quartile performers for 1990-2009; the capital-light exhibit ends in 2021.
Mastercard doesn't lend money or issue cards — banks do that. It runs the network that carries the payment from your card to the shop, and takes a tiny cut of every transaction. Because the pipes are already built, an extra payment costs it almost nothing, so most new revenue drops straight to profit. Shops accept it because shoppers carry it, and shoppers carry it because shops accept it, which leaves room for only one real rival, Visa.
The newsletter ranks it first of five quality names the screen found: revenue up about 16% a year for five years, profit per share up about 20%, and roughly 42 cents of operating profit on every dollar invested in the business. It gives no price or valuation this time; two weeks earlier it was the newsletter's top "Best Buy".
Hermès makes handbags, silk scarves and clothes at the very top of the luxury market. Its trick is to make fewer bags than people want, by hand, so it never discounts and never has leftover stock. That scarcity is why buyers wait, and why about 71 cents of every sales dollar is left after the cost of making the product — a figure that has barely moved in a decade.
The screen passes it on every test, and the post calls its profits "high and stable in almost any economy." There is no valuation here; the case for buying now was made in late August, when the shares had fallen about 30%.
MSCI builds stock-market indexes — lists like "MSCI World" or "MSCI Emerging Markets" that funds copy or measure themselves against — and sells the data behind them. Index funds pay it a fee based on how much money follows its lists, and that money has grown from about $0.7 trillion in 2017 to about $2.8 trillion.
The argument is that switching is painful: a fund's benchmark is written into its legal documents, so changing it is costly and slow, and customers tend to stay for good. That gives MSCI room to raise prices. The post lists strong growth and margins but gives no view on the share price.
Fastenal sells the unglamorous stuff factories and building sites burn through — screws, bolts, gloves, tools. Its twist is putting its own vending machines inside customers' buildings, so a worker grabs what they need on the spot and Fastenal restocks automatically. Once the machines are installed, a customer has little reason to call anyone else.
The post calls it "a slow, boring, highly profitable compounder": sales have roughly doubled since 2017 and profit per share has more than doubled, with about 30 cents of profit a year on each dollar invested. It is growing more slowly than the other four favourites, and the post gives no valuation.
ASML, a Dutch company, makes the enormous machines that print circuits onto chips. For the most advanced chips — the ones in phones and AI servers — it is the only supplier in the world, so every leading chipmaker has to buy from it.
The post's case is simple: more demand for advanced chips means more ASML machines sold, and sales have roughly quadrupled since 2017. What it does not discuss is that chipmakers buy these machines in waves, so orders can stall (2024 was nearly flat), and that export rules on selling to China are a political risk. No price or valuation is given.
Summary derived from the archived Compounding Quality post (text and transcribed charts and tables in transcript.txt) for personal study. Not investment advice. © Compounding Quality / Pieter Slegers for source material.