저자: WarrenBuffett외CharlieMunger발언추정 · 외국인
요약 보기
자사주 매입은 주가가 내재가치보다 낮을 때 최선의 자본 활용이며, 배당은 한번 정하면 쉽게 바꾸지 않는 것이 원칙이다. 거래·조언 비용을 감안하면 미국 주주의 순배당은 사실상 거의 0에 가깝다는 Munger의 주장이 소개됨. 버크셔는 약 300억달러 현금이 있으며, 활용처가 없으면 주주에게 환원할 수 있고 주가가 저평가되면 자사주 매입을 고려한다고 함. 예측이 아닌 일반 원칙과 과거 사례 중심.
다듬은 글
I would appreciate hearing your comments on public companies using their cash for dividends versus share buybacks. Well, the equation is pretty simple, but the practice doesn't necessarily follow the logic. Obviously, if you tell your shareholders the truth about what's going on, so as not to manipulate the stock down or something like that, when the stock can be bought well below its business value, that's probably the best use of cash .
This is something the Washington Post did on a huge scale back in the 1970s . Teledyne may have bought back 90% or so of their shares. And that was the reason why a very significant percentage of companies bought back shares in the past, because they actually thought they were selling for less than they were worth.
Uh, like I said, it can be abused by doing different things to bury your shares in one way or another , but this was unusual. Uh, stock buybacks were relatively unpopular in those days. They've become quite popular now, and I, and to the extent that I've been among many of them, and was able to understand what I thought was the underlying rationale, if not the stated rationale, you know, I think it's often done for people who are hoping that it's going to keep their share price from going down , and they're often done at prices that don't really make sense to the regular shareholders .
Um, if we wanted to return a bunch of money to shareholders, we would, if our stock was undervalued, we would, uh, we would go to shareholders and say that we think it's cheap, and we think that money can be put to better use by you than by us, and so we would have to buy it back at what we think is a discount to intrinsic value; and the people who stay will be better off than those who leave, will leave at a slightly better price than they would have left otherwise.
With dividends, you get into an expectation situation, and for most companies that pay cash dividends, it doesn't make sense to change the size of the dividend from year to year, although private companies often do. And we do this ourselves with our subsidiaries. Some subsidiaries may pay us a lot of money one year and not so much the next.
But in public companies, people buy shares to receive dividends, and they hope for regularity, and whether there is a signaling aspect to it, etc. So I would say that once you establish a dividend policy with a public company, you should think carefully before changing that policy in any significant way.
But I think the best use of cash, if you don't have a good use for it in the business, if the stock is undervalued, is to buy it back, and if it's overvalued, you don't have the right to buy one share, but, uh, a lot of companies do that. Charlie? Yes, dividends are a very interesting topic. When you factor in unnecessary stock trading, the cost of investment advice, and the cost of many trading expense mistakes, I don't think it's too extreme to say that the total amount paid out in dividends now roughly equals the amount wasted on all that trading and investment advice.
Thus, the net dividends received by shareholders are approximately zero. This is a very peculiar way of running a republic, and very few of you comment on it . Yes, I actually did that in an article a while back in Fortune . I calculated the frictional costs for American shareholders like stock changes, uh, for all American businesses in general, these frictional costs are probably not much different from the total amount that American corporations pay out.
So, I, uh , but going down to the individual corporation level, a company that expects to regularly earn more than it can profitably use in its business should pay dividends. Take our subsidiary, such as See's Candy. We would like to expand See's Candy to double or triple its current size, but it's not working.
We tried many different ways. So, it must pay out its profits. If this were a public company, and it once was, you know, you could argue that anything approaching 100% payout wouldn't make sense; but most managements, concerned about declining profits in the future, would prefer to set a lower level and, and, and, and, and, therefore, ensure the regularity of dividends, uh, by choosing a conservative level.
Uh, you know, we at Berkshire obviously think about this when we have about $30 billion. If we can't find a way to use it over time, you know, it's a mistake to keep it in a corporate form, but we have this expectation, and I think it's a reasonable expectation, that we can put it into practice. If we ever came to a different conclusion, if our shares were significantly undervalued, we would likely view them from a distribution perspective through repurchase, especially where dividends and capital gains are currently neutral for individuals.
Um, and, um, if our stock weren't undervalued, and we thought so, we'd probably do something about paying dividends. However, this will not happen soon. Number two.
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