Companies with pricing power

Pricing power is defined as the ability of a company to increase its prices without affecting the demand for its products or services. Companies with pricing power are thus able to modulate their pricing policy and sell at higher prices, without their sales volumes suffering, and even without their customers necessarily noticing. This pricing power is intrinsically linked to the elasticity of price to demand. If a company has no pricing power, a policy of increasing its prices would lead to a decrease in demand for its products. On the contrary, a company with pricing power can impose its price on customers because it knows that demand will remain strong. Warren Buffett once said that "pricing power is more important than good management". According to the Oracle of Omaha, "if you have the ability to raise your prices without losing customers to a competitor, you have a great business. On the contrary, if you need a prayer session before you raise your prices by a few cents, then you have a lousy business. These words convey a truth: pricing power is the best indicator for identifying a great business that can thrive over the long term because it has a sustainable competitive advantage. A company that wants to have this ability must bring to its market a unique value proposition, the result of a cross-analysis of its competitive field and its portfolio of resources (financial, human, technical, legal, etc.). This pricing power can have several origins, but it is often linked to the notion of moat to signal a company's sustainable competitive advantage. A firm's sustainable competitive advantage can take many forms: the low number of competitors or substitutes in the market, a firm's unmatched know-how, a strategic patent, a desirable and globally recognized brand, high barriers to entry and exit, or a unique or monopolistic positioning are all sustainable competitive advantages that provide pricing power. By studying these qualitative factors as well as the operational history of a company's profitability and growth, we have identified for you dozens of companies with pricing power. In an equity portfolio, these companies can contribute to the generation of resilient potential returns over time.