저자: 워런버핏 · 외국인
요약 보기
결론: 아메리칸 익스프레스는 버크셔의 역대 최고 주식 매수 중 하나이며 장기적으로 가치가 커질 가능성이 높다는 견해. 주요 주장: 브랜드의 '마음 점유율(share of mind)'이 시장 점유율을 이끈다는 관점. 1964년 버크셔가 지분 약 5%를 매입한 것이 이 믿음의 근거였다. 근거 사례: 여행자수표 시장에서 AmEx는 1% 수수료를 받으면서도 경쟁사(시티코프, BofA, 바클레이즈, 토머스 쿡)보다 높은 가격에 수십 년간 약 3분의 2 점유율을 유지했다. 신용카드 시절에도 다이너스 클럽을 따라잡고 더 높은 수수료로 점유율을 빼앗았다. 현재 근거 수치: 연간 약 3,000억 달러 규모의 카드 결제, 평균 할인수수료 약 2.73%, 경쟁 카드(비자·마스터) 대비 약 1%p 높은 수수료, 즉 연간 약 30억 달러 추가 수익. 블랙카드(연회비 1,000달러)로 고급 고객층을 공략. 리스크/조건: 평판 훼손은 가능하나 AOL, 코카콜라 사례처럼 역경을 버티는 힘이 있다는 판단. 과거 가맹점 반발 등 문제가 있었으나 회복. 버핏은 '불가피하다'는 표현은 쓰지 않음. 보유 현황: 버크셔가 아메리칸 익스프레스 지분 약 11%를 보유. 1분기 카드 회원 수와 결제액이 크게 증가했다고 언급. 지분 가치는 시간이 갈수록 커질 것으로 전망. 출연자(사회자) 발언은 제외.
다듬은 글
uh American Express an interesting case study because it does have a we always think in terms of share of mind versus share a market because of share of mind is their Market will follow people virtually probably 75 percent of the people in the world have something in their mind about Coca-Cola and overwhelmingly it's favorable everybody in California has something in their mind about See's candy and overwhelmingly it's favorable the job is to have it in a few more California mines or World mines in the case of Coke over the years and have it even be a little more favorable as the years go by if we have that everything else follows and and and consumer product organizations understand that American Express was had a very special position in people's mind about financial Integrity over the years and and ubiquity of acceptance uh when the banks closed in the early 30s American Express Travelers checks actually substituted to some extent for for Bank activity during that period the worldwide acceptance of this name meant that when American Express sold Travelers checks uh for for many years their two primary competitors were what are now City Corp First National City and the Bank of America and despite the fact that American Express charged you one percent when you bought your Travelers checks and you had two other Premier organizations City Corp imagine and and B of A and actually Barclays had one and and Thomas Cook had one and American Express still had two-thirds of the market after 60 or 70 years two-thirds of the worldwide Market while charging more for the product than these other very well-known competitors charge anytime you can charge more for a product and maintain or increase market share against well entrenched well-known competitors you have something very special in people's minds same thing came about when the one that when the when the credit card came around originally American Express wanted the credit card because they thought they were going to get killed on Travelers checks and they thought it was going to be a substitute and therefore they had to go into it was a defensive move it came about because a fellow named Ralph Schneider and Al Bloomingdale and a couple people came up with the Diners Club idea and the Diners Club idea was sweeping well initially New York and then it was the country in the mid 50s and American Express got very worried because I thought you know people are gonna use these cards nobody ever heard of these at that point or anything of the sort but people are going to use these cards instead of Travelers checks so they backed into The Travelers check business I mean it backed into the credit card business immediately despite the jump the Diners Club had on the on this business because Diners Club had the restaurant signed up already and they already had the high high rollers carrying around their car and nobody had an American Express card but American Express went in and they started charging more than Diners Club for the card and they kept taking market share away well that that is a great position to be in people's minds where where they are willing to when faced with a choice they're willing to go with the newer product at a higher price and leave behind the entrenched product and it just showed the power of American Express American Express had a special cachet it identified you as something special when you pull out your American Express card as opposed to your Diners Club card and as opposed to the carte blanche card which was the third main competitor at the time Visa still does not exist and you could see this dominance Prevail that told you what was in people's minds it's why I bought into the stock in 1964 we bought five percent of the company for a huge investment at the time for us that we only I was only managing 20 million dollars at the time but you could see that this this share of mind is consumer franchise had not been lost uh in the considerable period of time American Express got into other businesses they got into Fireman's Fund insurance was a very big acquisition and to some extent they let the Visas of the world and all of those get established they still had this preeminent cachet position but it was eroding but I would say that Harvey Gollum along with a lot of other people the management have done an extremely good job of reaffirming intensifying the cachet there will be probably 300 billion dollars worth of charge of something in that area uh put on American Express this year the 300 billion that's those are the big numbers even in today's world the average discount fee is about 2.73 percent if you look at the average discount fee on on Visa mastercharge you know it's going to be a probably a full percentage Point beneath that so you've got a percentage point on 300 billion dollars which is three billion dollars of Revenue that your competitor doesn't get you can you can do a lot of things for your clientele and they've segmented the card as you know they've even recently gone to this black card uh and which sells for a thousand dollars and uh uh it it's got a very special cachet I would say that I don't know I wouldn't use the word inevitable but I would say that nourished properly that the American Express name has had it has huge value and is very very likely to get stronger and stronger as the years go by but I don't I think that what they went through showed that it could take quite a beating and come back but I don't want to I don't think you'd want to test it that way indefinitely incidentally that's one of the things we look for in businesses is how you know if you see a business take a lot of adversity and still do well that tells you something about the underlying strength of the business the classic case on that was I to me is AOL four or five years ago you know I'm no expert on this but I had I got the impression there for a period of time when they were having a lot of problems that a very significant percentage of aol's customers were mad at them but the number of customers went up every month and that's a terrific business I mean if you have a business where your customers are mad at you and you're growing you know that that has met a certain test in my mind of utility uh and you might argue that American Express had that to some degree it wasn't that bad and but we had a lot of merchant unrest and all of that so occasionally you will find that an interesting test uh of the strength of a business uh um Coca-Cola had some problems you know in Europe but it comes back stronger than ever uh they certainly had problems with new Coke and and and they came back stronger than ever so you do see that underlying strength and that that's very impressive as a way of evaluating the depth and and and and and impenetrability of the of the moat that we talked about earlier Charlie well I think it would be easier to screw up American Express than a wood Coke or Gillette but it's a an immensely strong business and uh it's wonderful to have it and we own about 11 of American Express so when there are 300 billion of charges we're getting 33 billion of those for the account of Berkshire and it's growing at a pretty good clip the first quarter it grew very substantially and both card holders and and charges and uh my guess is that our 11 percent becomes more more valuable over time it's hard to think of anything that would destroy it
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