저자: WarrenBuffett · 외국인
요약 보기
버핏은 주식을 영원히 보유하는 것을 선호하지만, 경쟁우위가 약해졌다고 판단하면 매도한다고 설명. 과거 워싱턴포스트·코카콜라·질레트·아메리칸익스프레스 등은 장기 보유. 맥도날드·디즈니 매도는 실수였다고 인정하며 10억 달러 넘는 기회손실 언급. 맥도날드는 매장 다수를 직접 소유·임대해 부동산 기반 수익이 크고, 던킨 계열 Dairy Queen은 로열티(약 4%) 중심의 자산경량 모델이라는 차이를 설명. 두 회사 모두 가맹점 성공에 의존.
다듬은 글
Warren Buffett's favorite holding period for a stock is "forever." But you sold McDonald's and Disney after holding them only a short time. How do you decide when to hold forever and when to sell? And do you and Mr. Munger wear Fruit of the Loom? Charlie, I think I'd better answer that question myself.
I can answer unequivocally: I wear Fruit of the Loom. I'm not sure whether Charlie wears underwear, though. Are you? I haven't bought new underwear in a while, so I'm not dressed properly. He's waiting for a discount. Don't listen to his jokes. Well, that's a very good question about selling. We don't have a natural inclination to sell.
We have held Washington Post shares since 1973. I have never sold Berkshire shares, having bought my first in 1962. We have held Coke shares since 1988, Gillette since 1989, and American Express since 1991. In fact, we already had American Express stock in the 1960s, as we did Disney. These are companies we know very well.
We usually sell when we need money for something else, but over the last 10 to 15 years that hasn't been a problem. Forty years ago I sold everything just because I found something better. I hated selling what I had, but I also didn't want to borrow money. So I was reluctant to sell something I thought was extremely cheap in order to buy something even cheaper. Back then I had more ideas than money. Now I have more money than ideas, and that's a different situation.
Now we sell when we overestimate the economic performance of a business. I don't want to name names, but take a stock we sold. At the time of purchase we probably had some idea of the company's long-term competitive advantage, and we could change our minds. That doesn't mean the company is facing a disaster. We believe McDonald's has a great future, and we believe Disney has a great future, along with others. But perhaps we don't think their competitive advantage is as strong as we first thought. That may mean we were wrong in the initial decision, or that we're wrong now, and their strengths are the same as before. For one reason or another, though, we believe those strengths have been exhausted to some extent.
A classic example is the newspaper business. If Charlie and I had looked at it in 1970, we would have decided it was probably the most unshakable franchise of all. We still think it's good business, but we don't think the newspaper franchise in 2002 is the same as it was in 1970. We don't think a network television franchise in 2002 is the same as in 1965. These beliefs change gradually, and who knows whether they're accurate, but that's usually the reason we sell now.
If we were in an extremely cheap market, we could sell what we thought was cheap to buy something even cheaper after buying a bunch of stocks, but that's not the case now.
Charlie? Nothing to add. I said it was a mistake to sell, and it really was. I'm reporting it for the sake of frankness. I didn't think it was some notable short position or even a successful sale, but I didn't think it should have been sold. It shouldn't have been among the eight or ten companies—the few businesses in the world we want to own. I would say this particular decision cost us over a billion dollars.
Charlie, do you want me to poke you in the nose with this? You're already doing it. You're doing pretty well on your own. By the way, this is good practice at Berkshire: we poke our noses into our own mistakes, and we don't even need others' help.
McDonald's probably owns about a third of its restaurants worldwide. I can't give an exact percentage, but of its roughly 23,000 locations, they own and operate many thousands, and of the rest they own a very high percentage and lease them to franchisees. So they have very large investments in physical properties around the world that generate good returns.
Dairy Queen has more than 6,000 locations, of which about 30 are operated by the company itself, and even those are partly joint ventures or partnerships. So investment in fixed assets differs significantly between the two. For Dairy Queen, the fixed-asset investment is made by the franchisee or lessor, so for the company as franchisor it's not significant. The capital involved in Dairy Queen is relatively small compared to McDonald's. McDonald's also earns a lot of profit from owning these locations, while Dairy Queen in most cases gets 4% of franchisee sales as royalties. At McDonald's, it's more than that percentage, plus rent and so on.
These are two very different economic models, and both ultimately depend on the success of the franchisee. The franchisee must have a successful business so that over time it becomes successful for the parent company too. Both companies deal with this.
Charlie? I have nothing to add. 4% isn't much when you consider that you're providing franchisees with a nationally recognized brand, quality control, and a range of useful business tools. If you look at the whole industry, 4% is the lower end of the range, but part of what attracted us was that Dairy Queen's franchise fees are low. A successful franchisee can sell his business for significantly more than he invested in tangible assets. We want that, because it means he has a successful business, and therefore over time we will too. You want the franchise operator to make money, and you want him to create a capital asset worth more than he put into it. That's the goal.
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