We define a GPM Grade company as one with a management team focused on long-term sustainable growth and products or services for which demand can be created and broadened, with the size and scale to compete and win worldwide. GPM invests in high-quality U.S.-based leaders with histories of innovation and superior sales and earnings growth.
This year on our blog, we focused on many of our core portfolio holdings. Most recently, we looked at Salesforce (CRM), a $260B market cap cloud leader that has grown free cash flow (FCF) at a 32% annualized rate over the last 15 years.
We provided insight to large, well-known companies, like Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL), and Apple (AAPL), all of which have market caps of $2+ trillion and generated a combined $202 billion of FCF in the last twelve months (according to Zacks Research).
In addition, we highlighted some lesser-known businesses, like AutoZone (AZO), Heico (HEI), and Kansas City Southern (KSU). KSU, for example, has a unique US-Mexico rail network that Canadian Pacific found to be highly valuable, acquiring KSU for $31 billion earlier this year.
Finally, we covered several new GPM portfolio investments made in 2021, including CoStar Group (CSGP), Texas Roadhouse (TXRH), Adobe (ADBE), and Costco (COST), all of which we believe to have unique growth opportunities ahead.
Thank you for reading our posts this year. We look forward to sharing more insights with you in 2022!