The Inevitables

In his 1996 letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett explained his strategy of investing in “inevitables”:

Companies such as Coca-Cola and Gillette might well be labeled “The Inevitables.”  Forecasters may differ a bit in their predictions of exactly how much soft drink or shaving-equipment business these companies will be doing in ten or twenty years…however, no sensible observer – not even these companies’ most vigorous competitors, assuming they are assessing the matter honestly – questions that Coke and Gillette will dominate their fields worldwide for an investment lifetime.

I happen to have a Standard & Poor’s Stock Market Encyclopedia published in 1967. So, I figured I could check just how persistent the profitability of these “inevitables” is.

Here are the operating margins of 5 such inevitables.