저자: 워런버핏 · 외국인
요약 보기
철도는 연료 효율과 대량 장거리 운송에서 트럭 대비 우위가 있어 장기적으로 유망하다고 주장. 철도 업계는 정치적 갈등이 있으나 구조적 경쟁력이 높고, 미국 전체 도시간 화물의 약 42%를 담당하며 이 비중이 줄지 않을 것이라 봄. 구글·애플은 훌륭한 기업이라 10년 뒤 가치가 더 높아질 수 있으나 본인은 매수할 확신은 없고 공매도도 하지 않겠다는 입장. IBM은 상대적으로 이해하기 쉽다고 언급. 중국 기업의 성장 가능성도 언급했으나 구체적 자산 예측은 없음.
다듬은 글
Fortunately, I think in the railroad industry, you know, we've got economics on our side and uh economics usually went out. I mean, if you we we can move a ton of product 500 miles on one gallon of diesel and that may be three times or so as efficient as as uh trucking. And that may be why the railroads currently move say 42% of all intercity traffic.
I don't think our percentage is going to go down. The railroad industry as a whole, no matter what the politics may be, it's just too compelling to move heavy traffic long distances over steel rail and in terms of congestion, in terms of of emissions, all kinds of reasons. So, uh, we've got a wonderful product and there will always be struggles in the political arena between competitors and railroads and customers and railroads.
It's just it's the nature of the game and there'll be some of that in utilities, too. Uh, but overall, I like our our position in that they they do have to be involved in politics. I mean the the the railroads, all four of the big railroads are going to be involved in the political process because people who have got who would like to change some of the rules either as customers or competitors are going to be in politics too and and things will get decided uh in state capitals and and more important in Washington uh of importance.
So they they will they will they'll have lobbyists and they'll play a political game and and and their opponents will uh I like our position. I I the it would be very dumb for the country to do anything that discourage the railroad industry from spending the kind of capital that will need to be spent to take care of the transportation needs of this country in the future.
that uh you if you think about the money that will have to be spent on highways and and you know the costs involved in there and the uh the congestion problems, the emissions problems and everything I uh the country has a strong interest in in in in the railroad industry having every incentive to invest and the railroad industry pays its own way.
you know, it uh uh we'll spend $3.9 billion dollars this year. Uh and a lot of it will go to improve our presence system an awful lot and some will go toward expansion of of of of a type and uh uh the country will be better off on that and the the federal government will not write a check for it. John.
Yeah, it's in the nature of things that there are waves of good breaks and bad breaks. Burlington Northern was enormously helped when you could double the container carriage by making the tunnels a little uh higher and the bridges a little stronger. And they were enormously helped when they found all this oil in North Dakota and there weren't any pipelines.
And they will get some bad breaks too occasionally where somebody will take away a little freight. But averaged out, it's a terrific business with terrific management. I don't think our main problems are political at all. No, the railroad industry, for one thing, we're headed by a prominent Democrat.
the railroad industry was um that may not be a help Charlie right after World War II. Now there was a lot of passenger traffic then but the railroad industry I think had as many as a million700,000 employees in the United States and here we are today there's less than 200,000. I mean that railroads have become so much more efficient.
Uh it's just by a huge factor and uh uh it's a fundamentally very good way to move heavy stuff a long distance. I mean you just it's hard to conceive of anything. You know, it's nice maybe to have barge traffic, but but you only got a few few few rivers that are going to lend themselves to real volume along that line.
And and uh so, you know, you have air pipeline, you know, vehicles, planes, trains, trains are pretty darn good. Given that you're now in IBM, are there any other entrenched leaders in technology that are, to use one of your terms, inevitable in the same way that KO and Gillette were? For example, is Google inevitable?
Is it reminiscent of the advertising agencies you owned in the 1970s, i.e. a tollbridge on all digital spending that's highly likely to keep growing over time? What are the one or two things about Google, for example, that you think are real risks? And what about Apple? Well, those are extraordinary companies obviously uh and both they're both huge companies.
They make lots of money. They earn fantastic returns on capital. They look very tough to dislodge where they have their strengths. Uh, I, you know, I I would not be at all surprised to see them be worth a lot more money 10 years from now, but I wouldn't want to to buy either one of them. I I I do not have I do not get to the level of conviction that would cause me to buy them, but uh I sure as hell wouldn't short them either, Charlie.
Oh, I think we can fairly say that that other people will always understand those two companies better than we do. We have the reverse of an edge and we're not looking for that. Now, he's going to say, "Isn't the same thing true in IBM?" Well, I don't think it is. I think IBM is easier to understand.
Yeah. The chances of being way wrong in IBM are probably less, at least for us, than being way wrong with Google or Apple. But that doesn't mean that those the latter two companies aren't going to do say far better than IBM. I mean, uh, but we wouldn't have we wouldn't have predicted what would happen with Apple 10 years ago.
And uh it's very hard for me to predict, you know, what will happen with the next 10 years. There's certainly, you know, they've come up with these brilliant products. There's other people trying to come up with brilliant products. And I just don't know how to evaluate the the people that are out there working either in big companies or in garages that are trying to think of something that will change the world the way they have changed it in recent years.
And what do we know about computer science? There's no reply. How long do you think will take China to appear a giant company like Coca-Cola? And in which industry you think it will be? Thank you. How long will take China to do what? I didn't quite get that one. Connection to Coca-Cola. How long will take China to do what?
Oh. Uh, just how long do you think it will take China to appear a great company like Coca-Cola? And in which industry you think? Well, kind China already has some great companies. Uh, it's hard to think of a great branded goods company, but China has some very great companies already. Yeah, Hulu was I can't I can't pronounce them, but they've got some very great companies.
Yeah, so far it has not been Chinese fast food companies that have been exported to the United States as opposed to, you know, we we've got over 500 Dairy Queens now in in in China. Uh we tend to export certain uh products well, some consumer products, entertainment products, that sort of thing. I but China's got some huge companies and and uh uh they may they may eclipse in market value. You know, some of the ones such as Coca-Cola that we're talking about
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