On barriers to entry

There are various ways in which a company or sector can achieve competitive dominance. They usually make for good investments.

- Simon Brown

I was hosting a webcast presented by Keith McLachlan of Integral Asset Management on an introduction to fundamentals and he reminded me of something I have written about before – barriers to entry for competitors. But he added some extra thoughts that are well worth repeating here.

Firstly, those traditional barriers to entry are often legal. This is when a license is required which the state doesn’t hand out all that often. Casinos are examples. We could have dozens of them in any city, but to make them profitable and hence attractive for operators, the state limits the number of casinos and new competition in the same geography is unlikely.