Are moats sustainable anymore? Are they just glorified differentiators that are transient? Can they help you identify a long term winner?
Since Warren Buffet talked about moats for corporates, everyone in the investing world latched on to this buzzword to sell investments. Moats are the ditches around castles in olden days to protect them in case of wars and in a corporate context, they are the big advantage a corporate has over its competitors in the market place to keep winning customers at high margins.
Over the last 10 years, companies highlighted business models, scalability, Product design & pipelines, R&D, Intellectual property, Customer orientation, superior cost structures, sovereign support, technology etc as their 'moats' that help them maintain unfair growth and profitability.
Things seem to have changed. Some of them:
- Geopolitical concerns mean R&D needs to be localized and is no longer as 'hidden' as before.
- Talent is lot more globally mobile , thanks to remote work and tech
- Governments no longer allow businesses to collect/monopolize data
- Algorithms can no longer be opaque, thanks to ethical/political concerns
- Underlying business components are now available to anyone , be it funding, technology on cloud, open sourced programs and models, skills, work places and even supply chains
- Business boom/bust cycles are much shorter making accumulation of anything a double edged sword
- Thanks to explosion of financial markets and technology, everything is funded ,sometimes on opposite sides.
- Hence,replicating a successful idea now is much faster, easier and cheaper.
What now is the 'Moat' that is defensible , at least in the medium term ?
Is there anything that qualifies to be a 'Moat' any more?
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