저자: 워런버핏 · 외국인
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버핏과 멍거는 자신들의 역량 범위(circle of competence) 밖인 고성장 기술주, 특히 소프트웨어와 인터넷 기업에는 투자하지 않겠다는 입장을 재확인한다. 코카콜라처럼 장기 경쟁우위가 명확한 기업을 선호한다는 원칙을 강조한다. 마이크로소프트에 대해서는 흠잡을 곳이 없다고 인정하지만, 그 사업 환경을 코카콜라만큼 예측 가능하게 보지 않는다고 설명한다. 높은 수익이 가능할 수 있으나 확실성이 낮은 투자보다 확실한 수익을 택하는 것이 버크셔의 방식이라고 밝힌다. 1993년 당시 기술주는 제약주와 같은 수준의 저평가 가격에 살 수 없었다는 점도 언급한다. 미국 상장사 중 연이익 2억 달러 기업이 약 400개라는 통계를 들어, 그 중 다수가 기대를 충족하지 못한다고 경고한다. 코카콜라와 질레트는 기대에 못 미친 실적으로 주가가 30~50% 하락했지만, 버크셔가 추가 매수할 만큼 싸지는 않았다고 설명하며, 장기 보유 방침을 유지한다. 인터넷 초기 투자 펀드 참여 질문에는 역량 범위 밖이라며 참여하지 않겠다고 답한다.
다듬은 글
I know you like to buy into success stories but you don't like to buy high tech and it seems to me say in the case of Microsoft that 10 years from now they'll be doing software development just like 10 years from now Coke will be selling sugared water and what I'm wondering is why why you feel that way when it seems certain companies high-tech companies are predictable and it also seems that in the early 90s you were you mentioned you were going to buy a pharmaceutical company which also seems like high-tech to me so that's my question yeah well we I think we said that with the pharmaceutical companies we wouldn't have known how to pick out which one we would have thought the industry as a group would do well from those levels of 1993 you cannot buy high-tech companies at anything like at levels that are commensured with the levels that the pharmaceutical companies were selling at in 93.
you know I would uh and getting to the first part of your question I think it's much easier to predict the relative strength that that coke will enjoy in a soft drink world than uh the strength uh the amount of strength that Microsoft will possess in the software world that's not to knock Microsoft at all if I had to bet on anybody I'd certainly bet on Microsoft bed heavily if I had to bet but I don't have to bet and I don't see that world as clearly as I see the saw Frank world now somebody that has a lot of familiarity with soft software may very well see it that way and they're entitled them if it if it's true they have Superior knowledge and they act on it they're entitled to make money from that Superior knowledge uh there's nothing there's nothing wrong with that uh I know I don't have that kind of knowledge and I simply think and I I do think that it's that if you have a general knowledge of business over decades that you would regard the industry they're in as less predictable than the soft drink industry now it may also be that even though it's less predictable that there's a whole lot more money to be made so that if you're right that the payoff is much larger but we are perfectly willing to trade away a big payoff for a certain payoff and that's that's the way we're put together it does not knock the ability of other people to to make those decisions I mean I asked first time I met Bill Gates in 1991 I I said if you're going to go away on a desert island for 10 years you had to put your stock in two companies in in the high-tech business which would they be and he named two very good stocks and if I bought both of them we'd have made a lot more money than we made even buying Coca-Cola but he also would have said at the same time that if he went away rather buy Coca-Cola because he would have felt sure about that happening it's uh you know different people understand different businesses and the important thing is to know which ones you do understand and when you're operating with them within what I call your circle of competence and the software business is not within my circle of competence and I don't think it's within Charlie Charlie well I certainly agree with that I think they're interesting questions too about how far the whole field can go uh take jet airplane travel below the speed of sound it's been pretty static in terms of the technology for a long long time you know the big Boeing airliner is much the same as it was 20 or 30 years ago and uh and I think it's a lot of these businesses are quite dependent on the technology continuing to gallop and do more and more for people take Pharmaceuticals if it never invented any more for pharmaceuticals it would be a terrible business uh I don't know what happens once you get unlimited bandwidth into the house and way more options and at a Beyond a certain point it strikes me that there might be a surfeit of anybody's interest in the field I don't know where that point is whether it's 20 years out or 30 years out but it it would affect me a little the Dilly bar is more certain to be here in 10 years than any any software application that we know but that's maybe because we understand Dilly Bars and not yeah software uh in the whole United States which is you know is by far the most prosperous company in the country in the world the whole United States there are probably around 400 companies 400 total companies that are earning 200 million dollars a year after tax of those 400 you can name them I mean you can start you know if you say Bank you can say Citi group and Chase and Wells Fargo and you name them 10 or 15 of them and if you name consumer good you can say Procter and Gamble and Coca-Cola and Gillette and you can name a whole bunch of them you can almost of those 400 you can probably name 350.
if five years from now instead of 400 being on that list they'll probably be 450 on the list Maybe 475. a lot of those will be companies that are earning between 150 and 200 million dollars now so they'll probably be 20 some number like 20 that call it come from nowhere now if you look at the number of companies that are selling today at a price which implies 200 million or more of earnings right today you will find dozens and dozens in the high tech Arena and you know a very large percentage of those companies are not going to fulfill people's expectations I can't tell you which ones you know biotech Tech was all the rage uh some years back how many of those companies are making a couple hundred million dollars a year it just doesn't happen uh it's not that easy to make lots of money in a business in a capitalistic Society the people that are looking at what you're doing every day and trying to figure out a way to do it better and and to you know under price you or bring out a better product or whatever it may be and and a few companies make it but here in the United States after all of these decades and decades and Decades of Wonderful Economic Development we've got about 400 companies that have hit the level that would be required of a company that would have a market cap of three billion dollars and some companies are getting three billion dollars of market cap the day they come out virtually and so there's some you want to think about the math of all this zone eight hello my name is Larry Whitman from Minot North Dakota you've already hinted about Coke and gillette's current valuations and also about their great prospects for the future but in the past year both stocks have been down 30 to 50 percent from their highs how much farther would they have had to fall before your criteria of margin of safety been satisfied and allowed you to purchase more shares and two has the Disney cap cities merger gone as well as you would have hoped and has the future prospects of Disney changed in your opinion first question that's a good question on on on Copeland July because obviously we think about the businesses in that we're the most familiar with and where we're committed uh that neither one of those businesses got to the price that left us happy putting new money in but we're quite happy very happy owning those businesses and we'll be happy owning them for a very long time to come but they it's some evidence of where the market has been and is that that even when they ran into some uh tougher business conditions than they anticipated that their stocks did not get down to the prices that caused us to get excited about them Charlie you want to comment that or the second part no but I do want to remind people that the Dilly bar is a Dairy Queen product and they are good I can tell you that I wouldn't want the shareholders to believe that the commercial standards of this operation are are faltering the generally speaking trying to dance in and out of the companies you really love on a long-term basis has not been a good idea for most investors and uh we're quite content Ascent with to sit with our best Holdings people have tried to do that with Berkshire uh over the years and I've I've had some friends that thought I was getting a little ahead of itself from time to time and they thought they'd sell them buy it back cheaper it's pretty tough to do you have to make two decisions right you know you have to buy you have to sell it right first and then you have to buy it right later on and usually have to pay some tax in between them it to get into a wonderful business best thing to do is usually is to stick with it Coke and Gillette both experienced disappointments to their management below what they anticipated a year a year and a half ago or whenever it was and Below what we anticipated but that will happen over time it happens with some of our wholly owned businesses from time to time sometimes they do better than we anticipate too but it's not the nature that everything things that everything goes in a nice straight smooth line upward you mentioned cap cities parts of cap cities have done extraordinarily well for example but in the network business if you go back 30 years and look at what network has been on top you find that no one stays on top or on the bottom and indefinitely there it's a competitive world as I mentioned earlier and and sometimes your competitors correct moves your own incorrect moves or the world environment all of those things can interrupt trend lines I see nothing that's happened in the last year in terms of the long-term trend line of the blade and razor business which is the one I referred to as inevitable Gillette I mean there are in other businesses that are not in the same category as the blade and raise your business cope fortunately has virtually its entire business in in soft drinks and so uh it it comprises almost 100 percent of the hole there but I see nothing that uh would change long-term future of either the blade or blade and razor business or Coke's position in this in the soft drink business good afternoon Mr Buffett and good afternoon Mr Munger my name is monish pabri and I am from the Chicago area my name is monish pabri and I'm from the Chicago area uh be made at the pace at which you answer my letters Point by point I have a question for you related to circle of competence uh I have a notion that both Mr Munger and yourself understand the Kleiner Perkins model of early stage Venture Capital investing and currently they're focus in the Internet space extremely well my notion is that I think it is well within your circle of competence to understand what they do just like you understand what your managers that sees candy or executive Jets do so the question is that with the internet I think we're seeing a change that has not been seen in the last 500 years as humans we haven't seen something that is as dramatic and as profound that's going to come upon us if let's say a John door at Kleiner Perkins approached you and said that they were starting let's say a billion dollar uh early stage or later stage internet investment fund that Kleiner would manage would you consider that would you consider participating in that investment to be within your circle of competence if it were offered at terms that looked attractive I I agree with the first part of what you said I mean I'm not sure that it'll necessarily will be the most important thing in the last 500 years in the in the commercial world but it could well be and if it isn't it's right up the most important thing in the last 500 years in the in the commercial world but it could well be and if it isn't it's right up here development but uh and I would say that Charlie and I both understand the process of of early investment slash promotion uh probably as as well as anyone we haven't participated in it there's certain things we don't even like about it but we do understand it right Charlie and I would say that no we we would not have an interest in investing in in the fund uh uh we do not necessarily regard the internet there's no question if if you're in the early stages of promotion and you particularly if you've got a reputation as a successful in that but in this case it wouldn't make much difference because the whole field has gone wild you will make a lot of money selling to the next stage in the next stage and the next stage but in terms of picking out businesses that are going to do wonderfully as businesses out of stocks for a while but as businesses I I don't think it's necessarily so easy uh in in the internet world and I I would say that if you were to uh ask some very top names in the field to name the next five companies out of the shoot in the next 10 companies out of the shoot and predict that one of them will earn say the 200 million dollars I used as a threshold six or seven years from now I'm not so sure they they if they gave you a list that they would name a single one that doesn't mean they might not make a lot of money by being early investors in them because they sell out to the next group and so on but in the end they have to succeed as businesses and a few will succeed as businesses the internet will have a huge impact on the world but I'm not so sure that that makes it an easy investment decision Charlie well at least it's not an easy investment decision for us and that's what we're looking for yeah we will never turn our money over to somebody else uh you know if we're going to lose your money as Berkshire shareholders we're going to lose it ourselves and we're going to come back and look in the eye and tell you how we lost it uh we are not going to say this game is too tough
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