저자: WarrenBuffett · 외국인
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버핏과 멍거는 주가 방향에 대한 애널리스트·여론 예측은 의미 없다고 주장하며, 사업의 본질과 경제적 실체를 스스로 평가해야 한다고 강조한다. 버크셔는 경영승계 구조가 탄탄하고 자본배분 여지가 있다고 말한다. 회계 처리는 출발점일 뿐이며 경영진이 회계에 집착하기보다 명확히 설명하는 것이 긍정적이라고 본다. 기네스(Guinness)에 대해서는 스카치 위스키 세계 소비의 물량 성장은 기대하기 어렵다고 평가한다.
다듬은 글
It it really doesn't make any difference. I mean, what what we don't pay any attention to what what people say about Coca-Cola stock or Gillette stock or any of those things. I mean, on any given day, two million shares of Coca-Cola may trade. That's a lot of people selling, a lot of people buying it.
If you talk to one person, you'd hear one thing and talk to another. It really you really should not make decisions in securities based on what other people think. If you're if you're doing that, uh you should you should think about doing something else because it it a public opinion poll will just it will not get you rich in Wall Street.
Uh uh so you really want to stick with businesses that you feel you can somehow evaluate evaluate yourself. And uh I don't think I mean Charlie and I we don't read anything about what business is going the economy is going to do or the market's going to do or what anybody anytime I see some article says you know these analysts say this or that about some business it just it doesn't mean anything to us uh you cannot you cannot get uh rich with a weather vein.
Birkshshire Hathaway has been a good investment up to now. God forbid something happens to Mr. Warren Buffett. Well, I'm glad you didn't say Charlie Munger. I mean, now there Bergkshire will Bergkshire will do uh will do just fine. We've got a we've got a wonderful group of businesses. I've told you the two things I do in life.
Um and uh uh in terms of the the managers we have, you'd have to come in and really want to mess it up. Uh uh I would think and we don't have anybody like that in terms of uh uh succession plans at at Bergkshire. And then there's the question of allocation of capital and uh uh you could do worse than just adding it to some of the positions that that we already had.
the ownership is if I if I die tonight, the ownership structure does not does not change. So you you've got uh you've got the same large block of stock that has every interest in in having uh good successor management uh as I would have. I mean there's no there's no there would be no greater interest.
And uh it is not it's not a complicated business. I mean, you ought to worry more about if you own Microsoft about Bill Gates, I think, or something of the sort, but this this place is uh, you know, we've got a group down here that are that are running these. You didn't see me out at Porsche, I'm selling any jewelry the other day.
I mean, that's that's that's somebody else's job. So, I It is not It's not very complicated. Incidentally, I I I think I'm in pretty good health. I mean, this stuff will do wonders for you if you'll just try it. But, Charlie, do you want to add anything? as the uh yeah I think the prospects of Bergkshire would be diminished obviously diminished if Warren were to drop off tomorrow morning but it would still be one hell of a company and I think it would still do quite well.
I uh I used to do legal work when I was young for Charlie Skurus. I heard him once say, "My business, which was movie theaters like this one, was off 25% last year, and last year was off 25% from the year before, and that was off 25% from the year before." And then he pounded the table, and he'd say, "But it's still one hell of a business." It's not a formula we want to test.
It's no, it is one hell of a business that we've got here. I mean it uh and uh if if you saw what happened at Bergkshire headquarters, you would not worry as much. It there's very little going on there that uh contributes to things. We're right now at our peak of activity. This is it. Zone four. We uh we regard it as a negative when we find a management that's preoccupied with accounting considerations, but we find it so frequent that we can't we can't afford to use it as a as a total exclusionary factor.
It it really surprises me how many managements uh focus on accounting and and the uh the time they spend on it. the it it's really unproductive. It uh if you find a management that doesn't care about the accounting but does explain to you in clear terms what's going on, I think you should regard that as a plus in owning a security.
We think our shareholders are smart enough, particularly if we make it clear to them uh the accounting consequences. We think they're smart enough to look through to the economic reality of of of of uh of what Bergkshire's businesses are all about. uh and I think that I think some managements sell short their own ownership group by by doing various kinds of financial acrobatics in order to have the charges come in a certain way rather than as you point out often they might be better off buying for cash rather than their own stock as currency but they may prefer to use their own stock because they avoid goodwill charges.
We've written a few things on Goodwill in the past in past annual reports that might get to that subject. We don't care what accounting. We we sort of rewrite the accounting for any business that we're we're looking at because in our in our heads, we want to have in effect a standardized way of looking at at businesses.
And if one company goes through pooling transactions and another goes through purchase transactions, we're going to recast them in our own mind so that there's comparability. Charlie Yeah, the the published accounting results are in accordance with standard convention and they're a place to start economic analysis.
Uh the figures are frequently quite silly on a functional basis. I'm not criticizing accounting conventions except for some. Yeah. But uh I think it's just a place to start thinking about economic reality. By their nature, they can't tie perfectly. They can't even tie very well to economic reality. How do you perceive Guinness long-term economics growthwise?
The the Fitz, is that would you repeat that, Fitz? Was it what what firm growthwise? Guinness. Guinness. Oh, Guinness. I'm I'm not as much of an expert on Guinness's products as Charlie is. We prove that. You didn't hear me. He said he said I prove that. I made the decision to buy Guinness and Guinness is it's down somewhat from actually the the price in pounds is about the same, but the the pound is at about a$146 or seven against an average of$180 something.
So, we've had a significant exchange loss on that. But uh the uh Guinness is despite the name the you know the main product of course is scotch and uh that's where most of the money is made. Oh, they make good money in in in in brewing. Uh but uh distilling is the uh uh the main business and you know the usage of scotch particularly uh in this country uh uh the trends have not been strong at all but that was true when we bought it too.
There's some countries around the world where it's where it's grown and there's there's certain countries where it's a a huge prestige item. I mean, in certain parts of the Far East that the the more you pay for scotch, the uh the better you think people uh think of you. Uh which I'm don't understand completely, but I hope it continues.
Uh but but the scotch worldwide scotch consumption uh has not uh has not been anything to write home about. Uh Guinness makes a lot of money uh in the business. Uh, but I would not I don't see anything in the in published history that would lead you to believe that the the growth prospects in terms of physical volume are high for Scots.
The uh uh Guinness itself, the bear actually is shown pretty good growth rates in in some countries actually from a very tiny base in the US as well. But uh they will have to do well in uh in distilling or I mean that that that will govern the outcome of Guinness. I think Guinness is wellrun uh and uh it's a it's a very important company in that business.
But I wouldn't count on a lot of physical growth. Charlie, what uh any consumer insights? No. Zone three.
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