For a public compounder with a diverse portfolio, investors can't analyze each small deal. Therefore, stock performance isn't tied to individual acquisition multiples but to the long-term track record of growing earnings per share (EPS). This incentivizes a relentless focus on profitability over exit-driven strategies.

Challenging the 'founder-led is best' mantra, Domino's has successfully compounded shareholder value for nearly 30 years after its founder sold his stake. This demonstrates that a strong business model and capital allocation strategy can be more important than a founder's continued presence for long-term success.

Instead of traditional corporate loans, Domino's finances itself by pledging its royalty streams and IP as collateral for asset-backed notes. This "whole business securitization" model allows it to secure lower interest rates, providing a cost of capital advantage to fund its share buybacks.

NVR is a quintessential "share cannibal." Its business model generates massive free cash flow by not tying up capital in land. This cash is systematically used for aggressive buybacks, reducing the share count by 80% over 30 years and compounding EPS growth.

Despite paying fees to delivery aggregators, Domino's EBITDA margins have climbed. This is primarily due to a strategic shift away from lower-margin corporate-owned stores toward the higher-margin franchise royalty model, alongside benefits from supply chain scale and operating leverage.

Since the 1990s, U.S. companies have returned more capital through stock buybacks than dividends. An investor focused solely on dividend yield is missing the larger part of the shareholder return story and cannot accurately assess a company's total capital allocation strategy.

Domino's has negative $4 billion in shareholder equity. This isn't from unprofitability but from systematically returning more cash to shareholders via debt-funded buybacks than it retains. This financial structure makes traditional metrics like Return on Equity (ROE) useless for analysis.

During a market crash, Henry Singleton stopped acquiring companies and did the opposite: he used cash to buy back 90% of Teledyne's stock. While Wall Street saw this as failure, it was a rational trade—repurchasing his own company's earnings at a low multiple—which caused earnings per share to explode.

Companies termed "share cannibals" aggressively repurchase their own shares, especially when undervalued. This capital allocation strategy is often superior to dividends because it transfers value from sellers to long-term shareholders and acts as a high-return, low-risk investment in the company's own business.