See's Candies

Finding a goldmine in a candy store

The story of See’s Candies is legendary in investing lore. It’s another strange example of a seemingly benign or boring product defying economic gravity; a franchise that has been able to raise prices on steady volumes for almost half a century.

A little like last week’s piece on Moody’s, I’m going to piece together the performance of an economic goldmine so durable that it remains throwing of healthily growing cash flows to this day despite very limited changes in volumes.