List of Duopolies

[Philip Morris IV]

Well its interesting what happened....

The big tobacco companies started to threaten them with vertical integration which injected some heavy fear into management  When Im dealing with a duopoly and the supply demand situation is in your favour I expect you to raise prices.  AOI refused to raise pricing as per their conference call because  it may lead to the large tobacco companies further taking away business with more vertical integration  (why the large companies want to be in this low margin business is beyond me?  But that seems to be their fear)  Couple that with high debts and unstable political situations in some of the areas they operate and this has been a disaster  SO much for the power of duopolies.

 

My thoughts exactly, on the surface that threat is laughable.  Big Tobacco enjoys superior, capital-light/high-ROC economics -- why ruin that by entering this business. Besides, they spend more on buybacks every quarter than these two firms combined.

 

Do you see potential, provided they can get interest expenses/debt under control?  AOI looks like it is priced to die.

[deadspace]

Well its interesting what happened....

The big tobacco companies started to threaten them with vertical integration which injected some heavy fear into management  When Im dealing with a duopoly and the supply demand situation is in your favour I expect you to raise prices.  AOI refused to raise pricing as per their conference call because  it may lead to the large tobacco companies further taking away business with more vertical integration  (why the large companies want to be in this low margin business is beyond me?  But that seems to be their fear)  Couple that with high debts and unstable political situations in some of the areas they operate and this has been a disaster  SO much for the power of duopolies.

 

My thoughts exactly, on the surface that threat is laughable.  Big Tobacco enjoys superior, capital-light/high-ROC economics -- why ruin that by entering this business. Besides, they spend more on buybacks every quarter than these two firms combined.

 

Do you see potential, provided they can get interest expenses/debt under control?  AOI looks like it is priced to die.

 

I don't see how things improve here.  Have not looked at them in a year or so but they started to bloat their receivables account and offered vague explanations for the increase receivables and I decided I had had enough  That was at $3.25 or so.  Unless management can come in and call Big Tobacco on their empty threats I don't see this improving.  Mind you with their debt they can't be pushing anyone around let alone their best customers    I suspect this could head to bankruptcy or some sort of debt for equity dilution

 

I think Seth Klarmen still holds the shares  Good luck to him

[rkbabang]

DirecTV  & Dish Network

 

Satellite radio used to be a duopoly between Sirius and XM.

 

And of course no one has mentioned iOS and Android.

 

[rukawa]

Microsoft and Apple in the pc space

Oracle and Microsoft in the relational database space

 

[ZenaidaMacroura]

GE & UTX (narrow-body jet engines)

GE & Rolls Royce (wide-body jet engines)

Sonova & William Demant

Intel & AMD

NVIDIA & ATI/AMD

Rolls royce holdings is selling off something fierce.

[keerthiprasad]

KAR and CPRT

[Uccmal]

Bell and Rogers

Sleep Country (mattresses) and everyone else - unfortunately its privately held

Canadian banks - not a duopoly but nearly a monopoly.

Tim Hortons and everyone else

 

 

[Guest Schwab711]

How bout some monopolies:

- Any orphan drug makers (need to check for future competitors that will destroy the status)

- FICO (credit scores has 96%+ market share and no one wants to change it. Huge pricing power)

- ELDO (just the delivery portion in Denver, CO area)

- WDFC

- LUX

- GOOG

- FB

- INTC

- iPad, iTunes

- SIRI

- WM (most landfills are local monopolies)

- PX/AIR/APD (depending on the gas)

- MSFT (enterprise software/OS)

- MON (US Corn; GMO seeds)

- PEP (snacks)

- BUD (domestic beer)

- EBAY

- CSCO (Domestically)

- JGW

- CME/CBOE/OTCM

- Roche (Genetech for certain applications)

- WWE

- CPB

- MO

- AWK (Most water/utility companies have a localized one)

 

 

Some of these have been mentioned as duopolies but INTC/AMD is more monopoly than duopoly in my opinion since AMD exists purely to prevent anti-trust issues. Being a monopoly is also no guarantee for large profits (or profits at all) as is the case with WWE at times. Finding a company with a large market share AND pricing power is where the excellent long-term holdings are. I am no expert at this but it is not purely subjective in finding companies whose monopoly is due to demand as opposed to lowest-cost producer. The former is able to raise prices on demand and the latter is a price taker of the market and victim of the changes in consumer demand.