The Wilsons Advisory Global Equity Opportunities List harnesses research from our partner Craigs to highlight attractive investment ideas across global equity markets with a distinct focus on high quality, growth-oriented companies.
Long-term investment horizon
Buying shares in outstanding businesses and owning them for the long-term.
Quality focus
High quality businesses are those with a track record of generating returns on invested capital (ROIC) above their cost of capital over time. The focus of this strategy is on world-class franchises with high ROICs, strong management teams and durable competitive advantages underpinned by network effects (e.g. Mastercard), scale advantages (e.g. Walmart), switching costs (e.g. Microsoft), brand equity (e.g. L’Oréal) and intellectual property (e.g. Nvidia). In combination, these characteristics underpin strong and resilient cash flows through economic cycles.
Growth bias
The focus is on identifying companies that are likely to deliver above-market earnings growth over time. Over the long-term, earnings growth is the primary determinant of shareholder returns in our view. Therefore, the strategy is comfortable paying a (reasonable) premium for businesses with exceptional long-term growth potential noting the market often undervalues the long-term compounding ability of genuine secular growth opportunities in the short-run.
Structural growth thematics
The strategy is exposed to a number of ‘megatrends’ that are expected to materially change the way society operates and should underpin significant long-term earnings growth over time for the companies leveraged to them, including:
The 3Q24 US earnings season has been relatively mixed, but nevertheless paints a constructive picture of US corporate earnings which continues to rebound from weakness in 2022-23. In aggregate, S&P 500 earnings grew by 5.8% year-on-year (YoY), which was the fifth straight quarter of positive growth, albeit growth sequentially slowed from Q2 (10.9% growth). Furthermore, 75% of companies beat EPS expectations, in line with the 10 year average, but the average EPS surprise of 4.5% was below the 10 year average of 6.8%.
Earnings growth is expected to accelerate
Fourth quarter earnings are expected to grow at the highest rate in three years (since 4Q21) at 12%, which is expected to be led by Financials (38.9%) (albeit cycling easing comps due to one-off impacts in the pcp), Communication Services (20.7%) and IT (13.9%). This growth is expected to continue into next year, with earnings growth of ~15% currently forecast, a strong sequential improvement from 9.4% in 2024. While valuations are relatively full, we remain constructive on the US market due to the upcoming acceleration of earnings growth. There continues to be attractive bottom-up opportunities, with high-quality companies with strong earnings growth outlooks that are trading at reasonable, and in some cases cheap, valuations.
Communication Services earnings growth and revisions paces the market
Communication Services has been the highlight in terms of earnings growth and analyst revisions, driven by Alphabet and Meta. Alphabet’s Q3 earnings grew +34% to $26.3 billion, well above expectations of $22.9 billion. The market reacted positively to its impressive beat in the crucial Google Cloud segment (+35% growth), as its full stack of AI products begin to operate at scale. Meta also grew earnings strongly, albeit the market was disappointed by the miss in user growth and a flagged increase in capex which will be targeted towards expanding its AI infrastructure.
The rest of the Magnificent 7 delivered varied results
The other Magnificent 7 results were mixed. The market was disappointed with Microsoft’s revenue outlook due to a supplier delay in delivering data centre infrastructure, although its cloud segment Azure continued to grow strongly (+34% growth), while sentiment about Apple’s earnings beat was dragged down by its miss in its Services segment.
NVIDIA beat revenue expectations by ~6%, with management giving more clarity about Blackwell’s (their new AI chip) gross margin, which isn’t expected to fall as much as some feared during the ramp up period.
More positively, Tesla’s shares jumped after significantly beating EPS expectations while sentiment towards the stock has improved following Trump's election victory, as Elon Musk is a key confidante and backer of the President-elect.
Amazon also rallied after beating earnings, with a sequential recovery in its cloud segment, AWS, from +12% a year ago to +19%. However, this is still significantly slower than Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, partly reflecting AWS' larger scale as the global market leader.
Payments giants posted strong earnings results
Strong results from the global payments giants was one of the highlights from reporting season, which has demonstrated that the industry still has a growth runway that the market may be underestimating.
Visa’s (not held) 4Q24 revenue increased by +12% vs the pcp, beating expectations, while management guided towards high single digit (HSD) to low double digit (LDD) revenue growth in FY25.
Meanwhile, Mastercard (held) beat expectations from the top to bottom line and posted volume growth of +12%, above Visa’s volume growth of +8%. The strong result was driven by strong international trends, cross-border volume growth and Value-Added Services (VAS) growth.
Cash-to-card revolution continues to be driven by innovation
Mastercard, alongside Visa, are at the forefront of the digital payments revolution (having ~90% of payments processing market share), which is being fuelled by the push towards a cashless society. While global cash usage has fallen 24% from 2019 levels, the runway for this transition is still very large, with $26 trillion in cash payments made last year. The transition from cash to card based payments will continue to be a meaningful tailwind for Mastercard and Visa over the next decade.
Another major trend in the past decade has been the proliferation of digital wallets, including Apple Pay and Google Pay, which offers consumers the ability to store their cards digitally on their phone. This has given customers convenience and a superior customer experience, which has facilitated the rapid growth in digital payments and now accounts for 50% of e-commerce spend and 30% of point of sale (POS) spend. Despite this large share, it is still the fastest growing payment method.
New flows are expanding the payments processing industry's TAM
While Mastercard and Visa’s core businesses focus on consumer-to-business (C2B) electronic payments, they have both bolstered their growth prospects by investing in new flows. New flows include person-to-person (P2P), B2B, B2C, consumer-to-government (C2G) and G2C. Disbursements & remittances, commercial POS, B2B accounts payable and consumer bill pay accounted for 13% of Mastercard’s net revenue, combined, showing its increasing importance in its product mix. With growth in new flows difficult to forecast, the market is potentially underestimating its contribution to the company’s ability to maintain LDD revenue growth into the medium-term.
The incumbents will continue to defend their share
The incumbents have a huge advantage from its complex global payments network, with billions of consumers, millions of merchants and thousands of banks, with regulations in each country. Trust has already been established with the network, particularly when it comes to efficiency and safety, being able to authorise transactions within seconds, ensuring the right amount of funds go into the right accounts, while protecting consumers and merchants from frauds. While some government’s have been setting up their own payments networks, a part from being a timely and complex process, they face the difficulty of convincing consumers to switch, given the benefits they already enjoy.
The incumbents benefit from a network effect, in which the large card network attracts more merchants, increasing volumes, bringing more issuers. Furthermore, switching costs for card issuers are large, which risk disruption and churn from transitioning millions of cards, creating a new rewards program, etc.
While both companies share similar characteristics, Mastercard’s positioning in the market in terms of strategy, product and geography mix, and scale, results in the company having a superior set up for generating strong and consistent earnings growth and shareholder returns in our view.
Mastercard’s business model allows it to defend its leading services-led position
Compared to Visa, Mastercard is more services-led and has greater innovation which is driven by higher reinvestment, giving it a more targeted value proposition. Furthermore, given that Visa’s higher margin profile is seen as one of its strengths, any ramp up in reinvestment that would crimp margins would be viewed negatively by the market, so the company is very restricted in its ability to match Mastercard’s innovation and services stemming from reinvestment.
Mastercard's higher reinvestment has allowed it to successfully pivot towards value-added services (VAS) to a greater degree than Visa has. VAS includes data analytics, managed services issuer and merchant loyalty, and processing and gateway. By focusing on VAS as an additional revenue stream, Mastercard has been able to progressively increase its 'take-rate' (as measured by revenue divided by gross dollar volume [GDV]). In the last decade, with VAS’ share of Mastercard’s net revenue nearly doubling from 13% to 24%, this has boosted its take rate from 0.29% to 0.36%, a significant uplift. Due to VAS’ underpenetration, this segment will continue to grow in the high teens (compared to payments growth of HSD), supporting overall growth. Mastercard’s advantage in innovation and VAS has contributed to its share of global payments volumes increasing among the top five vendors, with Mastercard winning a number of major customers from Visa including Varo Bank, Webster Bank and Citizens Bank.
Mastercard has greater exposure to less penetrated, higher growth markets
While large, developed nations such as the US and UK are heavily using cards, many developing countries (and some developed countries ex US and UK) still use a high level of cash. Mastercard has a much higher exposure to international payments in markets such as Latin America, APAC and Europe, as opposed to Visa which is heavily weighted towards North America (53% of payment volumes, compared to 31% of Mastercard’s) resulting in a larger cash-to-card conversion runway.
As an additional structural tailwind, these markets (that Mastercard have higher exposure to) also have higher personal consumption expenditure (PCE) growth, which is another factor that drives Mastercard’s GDV and consequently, revenue. Developing countries are developing more rapidly from a lower base, resulting in higher PCE growth, the primary indicator of spending.
Smaller scale results in more earnings upside
Due to its smaller scale, Mastercard has a greater ability to compound its revenue growth in the LDDs in the medium-term, which we believe the market is underestimating.
This growth will be driven by:
Meanwhile, Mastercard also has meaningful scope to lift its margins further while maintaining its reinvestment edge over Visa. With operating margins at ~58%, compared to Visa at ~68%, we expect Mastercard's margins to expand meaningfully over the next decade as it continues to grow its transaction volumes by increasing its share of global payments (driving operating leverage), while continuing to expand its VAS offering to lift its take-rate.
In summary, Mastercard is well placed to keep delivering attractive top-line growth, which combined with margin expansion, will underpin mid-teens earnings growth over the medium-term.
An attractive entry price
Trading on a forward P/E of 32x, which is slightly below its 5-year average, Mastercard offers an attractive entry price considering its ability to grow revenue in LDDs and compound earnings in the mid-teens, as well as its strong and defendable market position in a duopoly.
While LVMH is a high quality business as the leading luxury goods company in the world, it currently faces multiple headwinds, including a weakened Chinese consumer the unwind of unsustainable, pandemic-era luxury goods spending. This was evident in its weak Q3 update, with organic sales growth missing expectations (-3% vs +1% expected), with a big miss in its main segment, Fashion & Leather Goods (-5% vs +1% expected.) Chinese consumption sharply deteriorated, shifting from mid-single digits (MSD) growth in Q2 to MSD decline in Q3, as well as broad based weakness outside of China.
As a result, we are exiting our position in LVMH, for now. However, the luxury industry is still attractive in the long-term, with LVMH being our favoured business, so we will be looking for a turnaround in industry conditions and business momentum, including resuming taking market share (with its current focus on reinvestment to consolidate share growth).
Company Name | Reporting Grade | Result summary | 12 month forward EPS revisions | |
last 30 days |
last 90 days |
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Wilsons Global Equity Opportunities List - result summaries | ||||
Apple | Beat/Upgrade | Apple posted a solid result, with sales of $94.9 billion slightly beating expectations. iPhone revenue slightly beat expectations, but there was a slight miss in Services revenue. Pleasingly, Apple's gross margin of 46.2% beat expectations of 46%. |
0.1% | 10.3% |
Disney | Beat/Upgrade | Disney's results were largely in line, but its multi-year guidance was better than expected. Management expects high single digits EPS growth in FY25 and double-digit growth in FY26 and FY27, driven by improving DTC profits and better trends in Experiences. |
9.8% | 9.6% |
Amazon | Beat/Upgrade | Amazon's net sales of $158.9 billion (+11%) beat management guidance and consensus expectations. AWS growth of +19% was in line with consensus. Q4 revenue growth guidance of +7-11% and operating margins of 8.8-10.6% was roughly in line with what the street was expecting. |
-0.1% | 8.5% |
Alphabet | Beat/Upgrade | Alphabet beat expectations, with its Google Cloud segment performing particularly well (+35% to $11.4b vs $10.9b expected), which was attributed to its full stack of AI products now operating at scale. |
-0.1% | 4.9% |
Nvidia | Beat/Upgrade | NVIDIA's revenue of $35.08 billion was 5.8% above street forecasts. Management guidance of $37.5 billion in revenue and gross margin of 73.5% in Q4 was in line with expectations and allows for more upside. Pleasingly, management addressed that Blackwell's gross margin won't dip below 70% while it ramps up. |
3.7% | 4.0% |
Intuitive Surgical | Beat/Upgrade | Intuitive Surgical delivered a strong result. Procedure volumes growth of +18% vs +15.9% expected, system placements of 379 vs 326 expected, including 110 of da Vinci 5 (dV5) vs 75 expected, and operating margins of 37% vs 35.1% expected, despite margin headwinds from the dV5 launch. |
0.0% | 3.6% |
Tencent | Beat/Upgrade | Tencent’s revenue growth of +8% was in line with expectations while adjusted net profit (+33%) materially beat expectations. Games (+12%) was in line, Online Ads (+17%) slightly beat, Fin-tech and Business Services (+2%) slightly missed and gross profit (53.1%) was in line. |
2.3% | 3.4% |
Walmart | Beat/Upgrade | Walmart's comp of +5.3% was stronger than expected, with general merchandise the key positive. Walmart upgraded its full year EPS guidance. Furthermore, its eCommerce segment is nearing profitability. |
1.5% | 1.5% |
Mastercard | Beat | Mastercard posted a strong result, beating expectations from the top to bottom line. The company experienced solid volume growth of +12%, well above its competitor Visa (+8%). This was driven by strong international trends, cross-border volume growth and value-added services & solutions growth. |
0.0% | 1.3% |
Roche | Beat/Upgrade | Roche's sales growth of +9% beat expectations of +7%, driven by Pharma. Management reiterated 2024 guidance (mid-single digit sales growth and high-single digit EPS growth) and commented that 2025 consensus figures were reasonable. |
0.5% | 0.8% |
Adobe | Yet to report | 0.0% | 0.7% | |
Home Depot | Beat | Home Depot's revenue comp of -1.2% was better than expected, the lowest decline in two years. The company upgraded its full year guidance to reflect a relatively strong Q3 result. The company is performing well in a challenging market backdrop. |
0.0% | 0.1% |
Thermo Fisher | In line/Mixed | Thermo Fisher’s organic revenue growth improved sequentially to 0% (from -1%), showing a gradual recovery in the muted life science industry. Speciality diagnostics growth offset weakness in Life Science Solutions. |
0.0% | -0.2% |
Microsoft | In line/Mixed | Microsoft posted a mixed result, missing revenue expectations but beating bottom line expectations. However, its guidance disappointed, due to Microsoft absorbing OpenAI losses (large equity stake) and Azure’s growth being held back by data centre capacity. |
0.1% | -0.4% |
Salesforce | Beat | Salesforce’s revenue increased +8% vs the pcp, which was ahead of expectations. Management guided for +7-9% revenue growth in Q4. The market reacted positively to colour provided about its AI-powered chatbots Agentforce, which is seen as transformational. |
-0.8% | -0.7% |
Johnson & Johnson | Beat | J&J delivered a solid revenue beat, with strong Pharma outperformance offsetting a modest miss by MedTech. Improving product mix drove an operating margin beat of 74 bps. It was noted that SKU rationalisation impacts will likely alleviate in 2025 in MedTech. |
0.0% | -0.8% |
Schneider Electric | Beat | Schneider Electric posted a solid result with high single digit organic growth, despite a downturn in key end markets. A cyclical recovery and structural growth from data centre and grid end markets should drive mid-teens organic growth in the medium-term. |
-0.5% | -2.5% |
Eli Lilly | Miss | Eli Lilly missed expectations due to wholesaler destocking, rather than weak fundamental demand. With increasing penetration of Mounjaro outside of the US, label expansion for OSA and D2C activation, LLY is well placed to bounce back. |
-0.1% | -2.8% |
L'Oréal | Miss/Downgrade | L'Oréal’s like-for-like (LFL) sales of +3.4% missed expectations of +6% and is a slowdown from +5.3% achieved in the prior quarter. Management indicated that LFL will be similar next quarter. The industry is cycling elevated post-Covid recovery and inflation-driven growth. |
-0.3% | -3.8% |
LVMH* | Miss/Downgrade | LVMH organic growth of -3% fell short of street expectations of +1%. This was driven by the largest division, Fashion and Leather Goods (-5% vs +1% expected), due to weak demand from China. |
-0.8% | -8.6% |
*LVMH has been removed from the Global Equity Opportunities List. Source: Visible Alpha, Wilsons Advisory.
Company Name | PE 12 mth fwd | EPS CAGR % (FY1-FY3) | Investment Summary |
Information Technology | |||
Adobe | 26.4 | 13% | Dominant digital media and marketing software business with a comprehensive suite of industry leading software products, a strong network effect and high switching costs. |
Apple | 32.4 | 12% | World leader in the design and manufacture of high quality mobile devices and PCs. Apple benefits from its scale, significant brand equity and high switching costs, and has a proven track record of innovating and growing its ecosystem. |
Mastercard | 32.4 | 14% | Dominant #2 player (after Visa) in the global card payments industry which is a functioning duopoly. Significant competitive advantages include its vast network effect, its large scale, strong brand, innovative tech and the significant regulatory barriers to entry. |
Microsoft | 31.9 | 17% | Leading maker of enterprise and consumer software. Enjoys a wide moat from its high switching costs and the widespread use and close integration between the products in its network. Growth will be driven by the cloud business as Azure scales up rapidly. |
NVIDIA | 32.3 | 36% | World leader in the design and manufacturing of semiconductors used for graphics and other computationally-intensive workloads. Continued growth will be driven by the increased need for computing power to support rapid technological advancement. |
Salesforce | 31.4 | 13% | Salesforce is a pioneer in SaaS and a global leader in customer relationship management (CRM) technology. The business continues to gain share as it builds out its suite of integrated products and platforms, while the industry is growing at ~20% p.a. as the world becomes more digital. |
Healthcare | |||
Eli Lilly | 35.5 | 51% | Global pharma leader with a market leading position in GLP-1 weight loss and diabetes drugs. The increasing penetration of GLP-1 drugs globally will drive significant earnings growth for LLY over the medium and long-term. |
Intuitive Surgical | 68.5 | 16% | World leader in the manufacture of robot assisted surgery systems, with an entrenched market position and an extensive IP portfolio. Future earnings will be driven by overall organic growth in surgical procedures and rising penetration of robotic surgery. |
Johnson & Johnson | 14.1 | 6% | A dominant global healthcare player with a range of products across consumer healthcare, medical devices, and diagnostics & pharmaceuticals. The largest division is pharmaceuticals, which has a number of products in the pipeline to drive medium-term growth. |
Roche | 12.3 | 8% | Roche is a global pharmaceutical leader that produces prescription drugs in the areas of oncology, immunology and infectious diseases. The company’s R&D focus positions it to transform its extensive knowledge of disease biology into new treatments, providing significant growth potential if upcoming pipeline candidates are successful. |
Thermo Fisher Scientific | 22.8 | 10% | #1 life sciences company in the world by some margin, with a relatively balanced exposure to the pharmaceutical, diagnostics, industrial, and academic end-markets. The company has benefited from the strong ongoing tailwinds driving increase pharmaceutical and biotech R&D spending. |
Communication Services | |||
Alphabet | 19.5 | 13% | Google has a very wide moat, giving rise to its place as the overwhelmingly dominant leader in search engines. The business is still in the middle stages of the structural transition to digital advertising globally. Long-term growth will also be driven by its cloud (Google Cloud) and hardware businesses. |
Disney | 20.5 | 13% | Global integrated entertainment business with a great portfolio of businesses centred on its streaming operations (i.e. Disney +, Hulu, ESPN+), as well as its cable networks and its strong mix of film studios. Key moats include its brand, scale and extensive IP. |
Tencent | 15 | 11% | Chinese internet giant with an ever-expanding ecosystem that provides key services in social networking, gaming, media and entertainment, payments and cloud computing. Tencent benefits from its network effects, customer lock in, and significant IP. |
Consumer Discretionary | |||
Home Depot | 27.2 | 7% | The world's largest home improvement retailer. Over the medium-term, strong earnings growth should be underpinned by continued market share gains and US interest rate cuts. |
Amazon.com | 36.7 | 21% | Amazon is the world's dominant player in both e-commerce and cloud infrastructure services (via AWS), which should continue to deliver significant long-term structural growth opportunities for the business - particularly in cloud. |
Consumer Staples | |||
L'Oreal | 26.1 | 9% | L’Oréal is the world's preeminent beauty player, with exposure to a range of categories (skin care, makeup, hair and perfume) and channels (mass, prestige, salon and pharmacy) and a proven track record of growing both organically and via acquisitions. |
Walmart | 34.6 | 11% | Walmart is the largest retailer in the world with a focus on price leadership and convenience. After years of investments into its physical/digital assets, the business is positioned to win an ever-larger share of US consumer spending, with higher sales leveraged across the company’s asset base likely to benefit margins over time. |
Industrials | |||
Schneider Electric | 26 | 14% | World leading electrical equipment company with exposure to significant structural growth tailwinds from the Decarbonisation and Artificial Intelligence thematics. |
LVMH has been removed from the Global Equity Opportunities List. Source: Refinitiv, Wilsons Advisory.
Greg is an Equity Strategist in the Investment Strategy team at Wilsons Advisory. He is the lead portfolio manager of the Wilsons Advisory Australian Equity Focus Portfolio and is responsible for the ongoing management of the Global Equity Opportunities List.
About Wilsons Advisory: Wilsons Advisory is a financial advisory firm focused on delivering strategic and investment advice for people with ambition – whether they be a private investor, corporate, fund manager or global institution. Its client-first, whole of firm approach allows Wilsons Advisory to partner with clients for the long-term and provide the wide range of financial and advisory services they may require throughout their financial future. Wilsons Advisory is staff-owned and has offices across Australia.
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