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Pure play

 

Refers to dealing with a specific category of product rather than a mix of products. It is generally used in marketing to indicate that a company is specializing in one area. For example, "xyz is betting on a pure play in desktop PCs" means that xyz sells nothing but desktop PCs.

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Investment Dictionary: Pure Play
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A company devoted to one line of business, or a company whose stock price is highly correlated with the fortunes of a specific investing theme or strategy.

Investopedia Says:
For example, a startup R&D company developing a new technology would be considered pure play because its success depends upon a single product.

Coca-Cola would also be considered a pure play in the beverage business. Whereas Pepsi wouldn't be pure play, because it has activities in the food business.

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Stock market jargon for a company that is virtually all devoted to one line of business. An investor who wants to invest in that line of business looks for such a pure play. For instance, Sears Roebuck may be considered a pure play in the retail business after spinning off its real estate and financial services businesses in the mid-1900s. Weyerhauser is a pure play in the forest products business. The opposite of a pure play is a widely diversified company, such as a Conglomerate.

Wikipedia: Pure play
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In e-business terms, a pure play is an organization that originated and does business purely through the internet; they have no physical store (brick and mortar) where customers can shop. Examples of large pure play companies include Amazon.com and Netflix.com. With a much lower barrier to entry, the Internet affords smaller companies the ability to compete with much larger brands due to typically lower overhead and marketing costs. Though multi-channel marketing is a hot buzzword, there is still plenty of growth opportunity for pure play merchants.

In financial management, a pure play is a company whose shares are publicly traded and that either has, or is very close to having, a single business focus.[1] Coca-Cola is an example of a pure play in this context because it retails only beverages. On the other hand, PepsiCo is not a pure play because it also owns the Frito-Lay snack foods brand.[2]

The pure play approach or pure play method is a method for estimating the cost of capital for a proposed new project or product line. It involves examining other companies which are pure plays in the proposed line of business and inferring a cost of capital based on their capital structures (eg Debt-to-Equity ratio) and betas.[3]

References

  1. ^ Robert A. McLean (2003). "Special Topics on Capital Budegeting". Financial Management in Health Care Organizations. Thomson Delmar Learning. p. 221. ISBN 0766835472. 
  2. ^ SEC: PepsiCo, Inc. 2006 Form 10-K
  3. ^ Eugene Foster Brigham and Louis C. Gapenski (1985). Financial Management: Theory and Practice. Dryden Press. p. 486. ISBN 0030980666. 

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Financial & Investment Dictionary. Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms. Copyright © 2006 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
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