AON

Aon is exactly the kind of capital-light, wide-moat professional-services franchise that deserves a place in a long-term portfolio: revenue has climbed every year from $12.2B (FY2021) to $17.2B (FY2025), FY2025 grew 9.4% total (6% organic per MD&A, the rest from the NFP acquisition), operating margin expanded to 25.3% from 24.4%, and returns on capital are exceptional at a 39.5% ROE. Both segments are healthy — Risk Capital +7% to $11.3B and Human Capital +13% to $5.9B with margin lifting to 23.9%. Operating cash flow of $3.48B (+14.7%) and $3.2B free cash flow fund a rising dividend ($629M, +11.9%) and buybacks that have shrunk the share count. This is a durable compounder, not a broken story.

The critical nuance is that the headline 39.2% net-income / 36.3% EPS growth is not organic earnings power — MD&A states it was driven by a $1.2B gain from disposing the NFP Wealth business (visible in the $1,211M 'Other income' line). Strip that out and management's own adjusted diluted EPS rose just 9% to $17.07. So the 'earnings exploded' optics overstate the trajectory; the honest underlying growth rate is high-single-digit. At $357.46 the stock trades at 21x GAAP EPS and effectively the same on adjusted EPS, and 4.5x sales — a full but not egregious multiple for a business of this quality and stability. You are paying a fair price for a fair-growth compounder, which is the textbook definition of a hold rather than a bargain.