今天是 2021 年 2 月 27 日周六，Berkshire Hathaway Inc. - “伯克希尔哈撒韦”，以下简称 BH - 公布 2020 年财报，Warren Buffett - 沃伦·巴菲特，以下简称 WB - 会发布一封年度给股东的信，当然，这封信针对的对象其实是广大投资者。
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继续强调 retained earning 的重要性，也就是长期投资的重要性。
As I’ve emphasized many times, Charlie and I view Berkshire’s holdings of marketable stocks – at yearend worth $281 billion – as a collection of businesses. We don’t control the operations of those companies, but we do share proportionately in their long-term prosperity. From an accounting standpoint, however, our portion of their earnings is not included in Berkshire’s income. Instead, only what these investees pay us in dividends is recorded on our books. Under GAAP, the huge sums that investees retain on our behalf become invisible.
What’s out of sight, however, should not be out of mind: Those unrecorded retained earnings are usually building value – lots of value – for Berkshire. Investees use the withheld funds to expand their business, make acquisitions, pay off debt and, often, to repurchase their stock (an act that increases our share of their future earnings). As we pointed out in these pages last year, retained earnings have propelled American business throughout our country’s history. What worked for Carnegie and Rockefeller has, over the years, worked its magic for millions of shareholders as well.
Of course, some of our investees will disappoint, adding little, if anything, to the value of their company by retaining earnings. But others will over-deliver, a few spectacularly. In aggregate, we expect our share of the huge pile of earnings retained by Berkshire’s non-controlled businesses (what others would label our equity portfolio) to eventually deliver us an equal or greater amount of capital gains. Over our 56-year tenure, that expectation has been met.
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购买 Precision Castparts 时对未来估计不足。PCC 的最大客户是航空业，航空业的困难直接影响到 PCC 的业务。
The final component in our GAAP figure – that ugly $11 billion write-down – is almost entirely the quantification of a mistake I made in 2016. That year, Berkshire purchased Precision Castparts (“PCC”), and I paid too much for the company.
No one misled me in any way – I was simply too optimistic about PCC’s normalized profit potential. Last year, my miscalculation was laid bare by adverse developments throughout the aerospace industry, PCC’s most important source of customers.
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I believe I was right in concluding that PCC would, over time, earn good returns on the net tangible assets deployed in its operations. I was wrong, however, in judging the average amount of future earnings and, consequently, wrong in my calculation of the proper price to pay for the business.
PCC is far from my first error of that sort. But it’s a big one.
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conglomerate，也就是很多相对较小的公司联合起来的一家大公司，用中文词汇来表示就是“集团公司”。比如，中国宝武钢铁集团有限公司，国家开发投资集团有限公司。
BH 是一家 conglomerate。最近几年 BH 的股票表现不佳，因此很多人找原因，各种各样的原因都有，有一个就是很多人认为因为 BH 是集团公司，缺乏效率。BH 之前的年度信中就维护集团公司的做法，今年继续这么做。他说 BH 与其它的集团公司不一样，BH 不会为了成为集团公司而高价囫囵吞枣买其它公司。他的这段论述可以用在哪家公司身上？大家可以列出近几年最典型的几家公司。
Berkshire is often labeled a conglomerate, a negative term applied to holding companies that own a hodge-podge of unrelated businesses. And, yes, that describes Berkshire – but only in part. To understand how and why we differ from the prototype conglomerate, let’s review a little history.
Over time, conglomerates have generally limited themselves to buying businesses in their entirety. That strategy, however, came with two major problems. One was unsolvable: Most of the truly great businesses had no interest in having anyone take them over. Consequently, deal-hungry conglomerateurs had to focus on so-so companies that lacked important and durable competitive strengths. That was not a great pond in which to fish. Beyond that, as conglomerateurs dipped into this universe of mediocre businesses, they often found themselves required to pay staggering “control” premiums to snare their quarry. Aspiring conglomerateurs knew the answer to this “overpayment” problem: They simply needed to manufacture a vastly overvalued stock of their own that could be used as a “currency” for pricey acquisitions. (“I’ll pay you $10,000 for your dog by giving you two of my $5,000 cats.”)
Often, the tools for fostering the overvaluation of a conglomerate’s stock involved promotional techniques and “imaginative” accounting maneuvers that were, at best, deceptive and that sometimes crossed the line into fraud. When these tricks were “successful,” the conglomerate pushed its own stock to, say, 3x its business value in order to offer the target 2x its value.
Investing illusions can continue for a surprisingly long time. Wall Street loves the fees that deal-making generates, and the press loves the stories that colorful promoters provide. At a point, also, the soaring price of a promoted stock can itself become the “proof” that an illusion is reality.
Eventually, of course, the party ends, and many business “emperors” are found to have no clothes. Financial history is replete with the names of famous conglomerateurs who were initially lionized as business geniuses by journalists, analysts and investment bankers, but whose creations ended up as business junkyards.
Conglomerates earned their terrible reputation.
首先很少有好公司愿意卖。第二，为了做大而做大就得买下很多很一般的公司，买下这些公司后的运营成本是巨大的，就得把股价推高，为了推高股价就得做假账。而且，华尔街投行为了赚钱，何乐而不为？财经媒体也很喜欢有吸引眼球的热点，推波助澜。最终，那些商业天才成为穿新衣的皇帝，集团公司变成了垃圾场。
哪家公司就是他描述的这个过程？General Electric Company 就是。谁是这个商业天才？统治 GE 二十年的 Jack Welch。
这种通过并购不断推高股价的公司很多，要十分当心。
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WB 多年坚持的一个观点：有钱人不必亲自管理日常运营；有钱人会发现投资点就可以了。我信奉这一点。
Charlie and I want our conglomerate to own all or part of a diverse group of businesses with good economic characteristics and good managers. Whether Berkshire controls these businesses, however, is unimportant to us.
It took me a while to wise up. But Charlie – and also my 20-year struggle with the textile operation I inherited at Berkshire – finally convinced me that owning a non-controlling portion of a wonderful business is more profitable, more enjoyable and far less work than struggling with 100% of a marginal enterprise.
For those reasons, our conglomerate will remain a collection of controlled and non-controlled businesses.
Charlie and I will simply deploy your capital into whatever we believe makes the most sense, based on a company’s durable competitive strengths, the capabilities and character of its management, and price.
If that strategy requires little or no effort on our part, so much the better. In contrast to the scoring system utilized in diving competitions, you are awarded no points in business endeavors for “degree of difficulty.”
Furthermore, as Ronald Reagan cautioned: “It’s said that hard work never killed anyone, but I say why take the chance?”
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旧话重提，财产和伤亡保险是 BH 的珠宝。因为 BH 是集团公司，非保险业务可以让保险业务将 float 采取 equity-heavy investment 的投资策略，而其它纯保险公司根本做不到这一点，只能投资债券，赚取很低的回报。
第二大或者第三大是 BNSF 铁路业务或者 Apple 公司的持股。
第四大是 BHE 能源业务。
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BH 2020 年股票回购。继续贬美国的 CEOs 常常在公司股票高的时候回购，股价跌的时候没有钱什么都做不了，而 BH 在股票跌的时候买。
还用 BH 持有的 Apple Inc 为例说明股票回购的长期效应。
BH 的确卖了点 Apple 公司的股票，但是那些股票是 separately-managed 的持股。
Last year we demonstrated our enthusiasm for Berkshire’s spread of properties by repurchasing the equivalent of 80,998 “A” shares, spending $24.7 billion in the process. That action increased your ownership in all of Berkshire’s businesses by 5.2% without requiring you to so much as touch your wallet.
Following criteria Charlie and I have long recommended, we made those purchases because we believed they would both enhance the intrinsic value per share for continuing shareholders and would leave Berkshire with more than ample funds for any opportunities or problems it might encounter.
In no way do we think that Berkshire shares should be repurchased at simply any price. I emphasize that point because American CEOs have an embarrassing record of devoting more company funds to repurchases when prices have risen than when they have tanked. Our approach is exactly the reverse.
Berkshire’s investment in Apple vividly illustrates the power of repurchases. We began buying Apple stock late in 2016 and by early July 2018, owned slightly more than one billion Apple shares (split-adjusted). Saying that, I’m referencing the investment held in Berkshire’s general account and am excluding a very small and separately-managed holding of Apple shares that was subsequently sold. When we finished our purchases in mid-2018, Berkshire’s general account owned 5.2% of Apple.
Our cost for that stake was $36 billion. Since then, we have both enjoyed regular dividends, averaging about $775 million annually, and have also – in 2020 – pocketed an additional $11 billion by selling a small portion of our position.
Despite that sale – voila! – Berkshire now owns 5.4% of Apple. That increase was costless to us, coming about because Apple has continuously repurchased its shares, thereby substantially shrinking the number it now has outstanding.
But that’s far from all of the good news. Because we also repurchased Berkshire shares during the 21⁄2 years, you now indirectly own a full 10% more of Apple’s assets and future earnings than you did in July 2018.
This agreeable dynamic continues. Berkshire has repurchased more shares since yearend and is likely to further reduce its share count in the future. Apple has publicly stated an intention to repurchase its shares as well. As these reductions occur, Berkshire shareholders will not only own a greater interest in our insurance group and in BNSF and BHE, but will also find their indirect ownership of Apple increasing as well.
The math of repurchases grinds away slowly, but can be powerful over time. The process offers a simple way for investors to own an ever-expanding portion of exceptional businesses.
And as a sultry Mae West assured us: “Too much of a good thing can be . . . wonderful.”
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