Fund Manager Comments on Payments, Consumer Staples, Restaurant Brands & BT

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A version of this was also published on my Twitter account.

Introduction: Below are some fund manager comments on their portfolio companies that we find of interest, from two “quality”-oriented managers (Troy and Pershing Square) and one “value” investor (Oldfield). Companies mentioned include Visa/Mastercard, Unilever, Restaurant Brands and BT.

Payments: Not Zero-Sum, Incumbents Adapting Well

Managers at the Troy Global Equity Fund commented on Payments stocks’ poor performance in October. Their fund hold at least 5 different Payments stocks, with 4 of them (PayPal, Visa, American Express and Mastercard) in their top ten and accounting for 18.3% of their portfolio alone. (The fifth stock is Fiserv.)

The Troy team believed the Payments sector was hit by a combination of negative news, including “purported disruption” from Fintech, anti-trust, mixed Q3 results, weak guidance and rumoured M&A. They believed investors were thinking too much of the sector as a zero-sum game, when in reality t…