저자: CharlieMunger · 외국인
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Munger와 Buffett 대담. 현금 회수 없이 투자만 계속 요구하는 사업을 경계하고, EBITDA는 설비투자 필요를 무시한 허구적 지표라고 비판. 좋은 투자는 이해 가능한 사업을 찾고 향후 10~15년 이익력과 적정 가격을 평가하는 것. 해외 상장사 투자에도 열려 있으며 Coca-Cola, Gillette 등 글로벌 사업을 언급.
다듬은 글
So I think there is a class of businesses uh where the eventual cash back part of the equation tends to be an illusion. I think there are businesses where you just keep pouring it in and pouring it in and then all of a sudden it doesn't work and no cash comes back and what makes our life interesting is trying to avoid those and get in the alternative kind that drowns you in cash.
The one the one figure we regard as utter nonsense is the so-called Ibida. I mean the idea of looking at a figure before the cash requirements of merely staying in the same place and there usually are any business with significant fixed assets you almost always has with it a a conccominant uh requirement that major cash be be reinvested in order simply to stay in the same place competitively and and in terms of unit sales.
to look at some figure that is before uh that that is stated before those cash requirements is is absolute folly and it's been misused by lots of people who sell lots of merchandise in in recent years. It's not to the credit of the investment banking fraternity but it has learned to speak in terms of EBA.
I mean, the idea of of using a measure that you you know is nonsense and then piling additional reasoning on that false assumption, it's not creditable intellectual performance and then once everybody is talking in terms of nonsense, why it gets to be standard. Criteria for selecting a stock is really the criteria for looking at a business.
uh we are looking for a business we can understand that means they sell a product that we think we understand and we understand the nature of their competition what could go wrong with it over time and then when we find that business we try to figure out whether the economics of it means the earning power over the next five or 10 or 15 years is likely to be good and getting better or poor and getting worse.
But but we try to evaluate that future stream and then we try to decide whether we're getting in with some people that we feel comfortable being in with and then we try to decide what's an appropriate price for what we've seen up to that point. And uh as I've said last year, what we do is simple but not necessarily easy.
uh the uh what the checklist that is going through our mind is not not very complicated. Uh knowing what you don't know is important and sometimes that's not easy and knowing the future is definitely uh it's impossible in many cases in our view and and it's difficult in others and sometimes it's relatively easy and we're looking for the ones that are relatively easy and then we uh and then when you get all through you have to find it at a price that that's interesting to you and that's very difficult for us now although there have been periods in the past where it's been a total cinch.
Uh, and that's what goes through our mind. If you were thinking of buying a a service station or a dry cleaning establishment or a convenience store in Omaha to invest your life savings in and run as a business, you think about the same sort of things. You think about the competitive position and what it would look like five or 10 years from now and how you were going to run it, who was going to run it for you, and how much you had to pay.
And that's exactly what we think of as when we look at a stock because a stock is nothing other than a piece of a business. Charlie Yeah, if if finance were when finance is properly taught, uh it should be taught from cases where the the investment decision is easy and uh the one I always cite is the early history of National Cash Register Company and that was created by a fanatic who who uh bought all the patents and had the best sales.
force in the best production plants and uh he was a force in the best production plants and he was a very intell was a godsend to to retailing when it when cash registers were invented. So that was the pharmaceuticals of of a former age. If you read the an early annual report prepared by Patterson who was CEO of National Cash Register, an idiot could see that this was a talented fanatic very favorably located and that therefore the investment decision was was easy.
If I were teaching finance, I would collect a hundred cases like that and uh that's the way I would teach the students. Mr. Buffett, what is your opinion of investing in foreign company stocks? Well, we u we have a number well at least several major businesses, three or four at least, five, six as I count along uh that derive very significant percentages of their earnings from international uh from international operations.
Coca-Cola earns 80% or more uh from international operations. Gillette would earn twothirds or more from international operations. So if you look to where our look through earnings are coming from, we get a lot from international companies. They don't have to be doiciled uh outside the United States.
It's a slight advantage to us to have them doiciled in this country. For example, their dividends are treated better. uh we get better treatment on the dividends if they are domestically uh uh based rather than based someplace else just because of the way the US tax laws work. Uh but if Coca-Cola were doiciled in in Amsterdam or Gillette were doiciled in London, they had the same basic businesses, we would be attracted to them uh to the virtually the same degree we are as having them doiciled in Atlanta and Boston.
Uh we look at businesses outside this country that are doiciled outside this country. U many don't meet our size requirements but that's true here too. But there we have to look at very big companies but we have nothing against buying company buying into companies that are doiciled or even buying the entire business of a company that's uh uh doiciled outside the United States.
uh we feel slightly less familiar with uh the tax laws and the and the uh corporate cult cultures perhaps but that would not be a huge factor in a great many countries and uh uh you know we we will we will keep looking we need to look everywhere with the kind of money that that we have available for investment.
Charlie, again, we we've had a wonderful way of playing the rapid development of economies outside the United States. And uh so far we haven't seen anything that attracted us as being better. And if you can sell CocaCola, you know, do you really want to get into steel in Malaysia or something? We we we sold a substantial number of Kirby units outside of uh the United States last year and that business has grown very significantly in recent years and I think it'll it promises to grow more.
We're always looking for opportunities. Some some things travel very well and some things don't. I I mean that Gillette travels, Disney travels, McDonald's travels, Coke travels, you know, uh Seas Candy doesn't travel as well. uh it might if you spent 50 years working on it, but it it's not an easy thing to uh to travel.
Actually, candy bars themselves don't travel very well. If you look at the top selling candy bars in France or in or in England uh in Japan, you you don't find the similarity that you find in terms of the bestselling soft drinks or movies uh uh or fast food hamburgers or or or uh uh razor blades and except Snickers for some reason.
Snickers well travels very well. Don't ask me why. Yeah. Well, Charlie's had a lot of experience as he goes around the world that you don't want to eat where we eat. You may want to invest where we invest, but
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