Tollbooth Stocks for a Tollbooth Portfolio

While I am a dividend growth investor, my stock selection process has everything to do with finding the tollbooth stocks or more specifically subscription business model. 

Why is that? Subscription is the easiest model to forecast for businesses and you can build a relationship with the customers more easily which greatly helps improve the products and services offered.

Many winning portfolios will have one or many of those companies as major holdings. The business analysis for those portfolios will follow stringent guidelines to select those companies.

What Is a Tollbooth Stock?

The non-digital way to look at subscriptions is done by using the tollbooth analogy. A tollbooth can also be predictable and profitable. You can increase the fees as your costs go up to maintain the same profit ratio.

The tollbooth stocks and subscription businesses generate recurring revenue with consistency and when managed properly, the businesses can either optimize their costs for a higher profit margin or they can increase the end user price.

Unlike regular businesses where they simply have to get more and more customers, subscription businesses can focus on value add and staying competitive to generate higher profits.

Look at how Netflix operates vs car manufacturers; one is counting the members paying monthly and the other is counting sales. The 2 models have very different impacts in forecasting financials.

In the fall of 2019, I heard Jim Cramer discuss on his Mad Money podcast how car companies are learning that we drive more but buy fewer vehicles. Due to the cars lasting longer, consumers don’t buy new vehicles as often.

As such, the concept of subscription for vehicles is being discussed within the car industry and, as it happens, Porsche is offering a subscription through its Porsche Passport service. The concept goes back to how much one is spending on a car annually when you consider depreciation and all. The data is all there for the car manufacturer to establish an appropriate pricing strategy.

Identifying 7 Business Segments

When you merge the tollbooth concept with the necessity of life, you end up with a really strong business model. The easiest companies to classify are the utilities. The next ones on the list are the Canadian banks and the telecom industry.

As you can see, those have some regulations in place to avoid gauging customers since they have a type of monopoly on the business. They are also referred to as oligopolies when a few businesses share a monopoly.

I have tried to look at businesses differently from the conventional models. The financial industry has classified companies a certain way within a sector and industry to compare more easily and assess trends with similar businesses.

While that is an important classification, revenue and growth forecasting is easier with the first 3 segments outlined below.

Using the segments below requires investors to understand how the business is collecting revenue. No metrics can tell you how it operates, you have to read up on it.

For example, until Disney started Disney+, it was in the consumable-discretionary segment but now with Disney+, it has entered the subscription segment.

Here are the segments I use to categorize each business.

• Subscription
• Tollbooth – Regulated
• Tollbooth – Unregulated
• Consumable – Necessities
• Consumable – Discretionary
• Durable
• Intermediate

Before we go further, I love tollbooth stocks or subscription business but not all of them provide growth and profit. You still need to do more research.

Take REITs as an example, they are tollbooth stocks but have limited growth and limited income growth. The lack of growth is why I don’t hold REITs.

Sure, you get regular rent but oftentimes, rent increases is controlled or commercial rent is negotiated. Customers also don’t just magically increase like they can for online businesses. Just a word of caution as you read on.

Subscription

To fit into the tollbooth stocks category, an important part of the business must be driven by a subscription model. It has to be a service that users or companies opt-in willingly.

Take cloud computing or software services as an example. Newspapers and magazines would fall in here as well but it’s highly competitive.

The music industry was re-invented with streaming by Spotify and Apple also has a service.

In fact, Apple is re-investing a lot of the old business models into new subscription services such as Apple Music, News+ and TV+. I also now file The Walt Disney Company in this category with Disney+. The streaming service should become their largest revenue contributor over time.

Tollbooth – Regulated

Consumers are generally required to use the service and pay a monthly fee. However, as a necessary service, fee increases are regulated and usually require approval by a governing body. This segment usually represents the utilities for your home.

Tollbooth – Unregulated

Banks are a tollbooth but they are somewhat unregulated. The account fees or any other fees are set competitively but since they have an oligopoly, they don’t tend to undercut each other much.

While telecoms are semi-regulated, I would say the complete suite of offerings puts them in the unregulated space. Oligopoly businesses, such as the railway or credit card companies, will have a business that can look like a tollbooth.

Consumable – Necessities

This segment represents medicine, toilet necessities, and cleaning products to name a few. Food also falls in this category as we need it to survive and stay healthy.

Consumable – Discretionary

This segment represents the businesses that provide products that we consume such as clothes or any other items that are consumed by consumers (not businesses).

Durable

Growth from this classification comes from economic growth in my opinion. Most consumptions are needed to require increased production which drives growth for durables products and factories generating those products.

Without growth, no new towers are needed and no new bridges. Infrastructure can reuse what exists instead of creating new roads or buses.

Intermediate

This is a catch-all for many basic materials and energy companies. It represents a company that doesn’t reach consumers directly and is instead consumed by another business before it reaches the consumer.

Building a Tollbooth Portfolio

In the end, tollbooth and subscription businesses mean repeat customers. Back to the car business, a manufacturer would love to lock in customers with their brand, instead every time they roll over new models, they risk losing customers to another brand. Subscription implies loyalty and repeat spending which is very profitable for a business.

While the sector or industry classification could match a segment, it’s not always a 100% match. I strive to invest in companies that fit the first 3 categories above.