Terry Smith on the Airline Industry

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결론: 항공산업은 장기적으로 투자 가치가 없는 구조적으로 나쁜 산업이며, 가치투자는 좋은 기업을 사서 오래 보유하는 것이 핵심이다. 항공산업 수익성 분석: 1994~2014년 20년간 IATA 자료 기준 항공사들의 투하자본수익률(ROCE)은 평균 약 3.5%였고, 자본비용은 약 8.5%였다. 손실 규모: 이 기간 항공업계 평균 투하자본은 약 5,000억 달러였고, 자본비용과 수익률 차이로 연 평균 약 -5%의 수익률, 즉 투자자 전체로 연간 약 5% 손실이 발생했다고 주장한다. 항공사 파산 현상: 항공사들은 파산해도 자산과 부채를 정리한 뒤 곧바로 재기해 운항을 계속하며, 최근 한 달에도 유럽 항공사 8곳이 파산했다고 언급한다. 이는 기존 주주에게는 치명적이지만 산업 자체는 사라지지 않는다는 뜻이다. 항공주 투자 실패 이유: 자산 회복(수요 반등, 업계 통합, 인수, 경영진 교체, 유가 하락)을 기다리는 동안 자본 가치는 계속 잠식된다. 타이밍을 맞추는 것도 사실상 불가능하다고 본다. 대조 사례 - 유니레버: 10년 동안 투하자본수익률이 약 20%로 자본비용(약 8~9%)을 크게 웃돌았고, 기업 가치가 매년 꾸준히 성장했다. 2008년 매수 후 2009년 실적이 나빠도 기업 성장이 결국 손실을 만회해 준다고 설명한다. 결론적 교훈: 나쁜 산업과 기업은 계속 나쁘고, 좋은 기업은 계속 좋다는 것이 그의 핵심 견해이며, 투자 대상 선정은 ROCE와 자본비용 비교에 기반해야 한다. 출연자 전망: 항공주 전망은 '장기적으로 매력 없음'이며, 특정 가격 목표나 단기 방향 예측은 없다.

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01. by this this is an industry sector the airline industry it's a truly awful sector from an investment standpoint um this is 20 years so there's 1994 to 2014. i didn't choose them because they suit me it's pretty typical of the airline industry i didn't come up with the numbers on this chart they came from uh the airline industry uh trade association iata and as you can see on this chart there's their cost of capital this thing i mentioned earlier you can see this red squiggly line it's a guess i think if you average that line it comes out about eight and a half percent frankly it doesn't matter in terms of judging whether these are good or bad businesses so their cost of funds if you like is eight and a half percent a bit like them borrowing from this bank at eight and a half percent these are their actual returns on capital these nice grey bars here and there's the scale over there you can see it goes up and down a bit it never once gets to the cost of capital this is a machine for losing money basically if you average those bars it comes to about three and a half percent this so eight and a half percent cost three and a half percent return so they make on average negative five percent returns per annum um and if you read the report this is based on you would see that the airline industry during this period had an average uh capital employed in the world of about 500 billion us dollars so they lost five percent of 500 billion dollars for their investors collectively per annum it's amazing um and it's a really bad industry now i know when i speak to any audience there'll be some of you in the audience who will think maybe even say in the question session well you can't be right because if you were right airlines would cease to exist not while you keep sending them money to recapitalize them they won't they go bust they're still flying around you can go down to the airport and you can go and fly on an american airlines flight or a canadian flight or a swiss flight all of these airlines went bust and were immediately recapitalized shorn of their liabilities they weren't out of the air for even a nanosecond basically i always say competing in the airline industry must be like the financial equivalent of one of those horror movies like night of the killer zombies because even if you run your airline pretty well your competition keeps going bust and then reappearing again without any liabilities it must be terrifying um you know i think in the last month eight airlines have gone bust in europe last month market is more better than i do it's a really terrible industry now if you have fund managers who are investing in airlines on your behalf and trust me you will have a lot of people who are investing in airlines you say mr smith said airlines are a really terrible sector why you invested in them there are a couple of things that are likely to be said one would be they won't have a clue what we're talking about they won't have read warren buffett's 1979 annual report they don't know about a return on capital employed it's never entered their head but even if they have got some some grasp of this they'll say ah you see i'm pretty smart they'll say i buy it when the returns are down there and i sell it when they're up there and then i buy it back down when they come down here and then i select when it goes up there and there's only one problem with that i've never got two problems with it one is i've never actually met anyone who could do that because you know you don't know when the returns fall down there whether that's the bottom you know you don't know whether they get up there whether that's the top there's no announcement so you know you're invariably end up getting your timing a bit wrong the other thing is this think back to this return on capital employed versus cost of funds you buy your airline stock and you say well it's pretty depressed down here at the moment there's a recession going on and i think it's all going to bounce back and i think there'll be some airline consolidation i think some will be taken over and so on or there'll be a change of management or the oil price is going to drop or all of the above will happen and aren't going to make money right whilst you're sitting waiting for these events to occur this thing is steadily eroding in value it's the it's the investment equivalent of trying to carry around a melting ice cube in your hand in terms of trying to realize your gains right this is what a good company looks like um and you can see i mean i've been using these guys for many years that's why 2014 is the final year i don't need to change my examples an awful lot in life i find bad sectors and companies are bad good ones are good doesn't change an awful lot frankly this is unilever a fast-moving consumer goods company which i'm sure you've heard of this is a decade it's a very typical decade there's its cost of capital you might wonder why the cost of capital is down here on this chart where it's up there on the other chart the answer is you've got to have it down there in order to get these bars on the scale right this is a company that makes as you can see about a 20 return on capital basically and its cost of capital if you average that line is about the same as the airline industry allegedly about eight or nine percent basically this makes money and it grows in value steadily year by year by year now you can get unilever wrong we all get things wrong i get things wrong if you buy unilever when its returns are there in 2008 and it has a really bad 2009 because of the global economy you probably don't feel too clever about your particular timing of your purchase but how the company grows in value will dig you out whereas in the airline the how the company shrinks in value will bury you