저자: 워런버핏 · 외국인
요약 보기
버핏은 2002~2003년 페트로차이나 투자를 연차보고서만 읽고 결정했다고 설명한다. 핵심 논리: 기업 가치를 약 1,000억 달러로 추정했는데 시가총액은 약 350억 달러였다. 가치 추정치 정밀도(970억 vs 1,030억)는 중요하지 않았고, 가격이 가치보다 크게 싸면 세부 분석은 시간 낭비라고 봤다. 투자 기준: 재무적으로 '뚱뚱한(financially fat)' 기업, 즉 가치와 가격 격차가 큰 기업을 찾는다. 정밀한 소수점 계산이 필요한 투자는 좋지 않다고 봤다. 실사(due diligence) 관점: 경영진 면담, 증권사 리포트, 외부 의견을 구하지 않았다. 버크셔는 미국에서 실사 비용이 가장 적은 편이라고 주장했고, 한 투자운용사가 회계법인에 연간 2억 달러 이상을 쓴다는 예를 들며 비판했다. 실사의 핵심은 중요한 몇 가지 리스크를 보는 것이지 사소한 세부사항이 아니라고 했다. 인수 사례: 마스(Mars)의 리글리 인수 건을 예로 들며, 버크셔는 확실성(즉시 자금 확보, 조건부 조항 없이 즉답)을 제공해 거래 우위를 가진다고 설명했다. 리스크: 실사 생략에 따른 투자 실수 가능성은 언급했으나 구체적 전망은 없었다.
다듬은 글
uh Mr Buffett I was reading recently uh in Fortune magazine that when you invested 500 million dollars in petrol China back in 2001 or 2002 uh all you did was read the annual report um now I was thinking that most professional investors with the kind of resources that you have would have like to have done a lot more research and talk to management maybe Regulators etc etc uh the question I have is how what is it that you look for when you're reading an annual report like that how is it that you were able to vote like that make an investment purely on the back of reading that report yeah well it was in 2002 and 2003 and the report came out in the spring and I read it and that's the only thing I ever did I never contacted any management I never got a brokerage report I never asked for anybody's opinion but what I did do was I came to the conclusion that the company and it's not hard to understand crude oil production and refining and marketing and the chemical operation they have I mean you can do the same thing with Exxon or BP or any of them that I do that with all I look at them and I came to conclusions worth 100 billion and then I checked the price and it was selling for 35 billion roughly uh what's the sense of talking to management I mean basically if you talk to the management almost every company they'll say they think their Stock's a wonderful buy and they'll give you all the the good stuff and skip over things that it just doesn't make any difference now if I thought the company was worth 40 billion and been selling for 35 billion you know then at that point you have to start trying to refine your analysis more but there's no reason to refine your analysis I mean I didn't need to know whether it was worth 97 billion or 103 billion if I was buying it at 35 billion so any further refining analysis would be a waste of time on what I should be doing is buying the stock so we really like things that you don't have to carry out the three decimal places you know if you have to carry it out to three decimal places it's not a good idea and and and you know it was something like Petro China it's like it's somebody walked in the door here and they weighed somewhere between 300 and 350 pounds I might not know how much they weigh but I would know they were fat you know and they that's all I'm looking for is something that's financially fat and whether Petra trying to weigh 95 billion dollars or 105 billion didn't make much difference it was selling for 35.
billion if it's been selling for 90 it would have made it ever so if you can't make a decision on something like that we're trying off the figures forget about going further and that's basically what we did it's a straightforward report just like reading another like just like reading Chevrons or Conoco Phillips or anything like that just as informative we're going to learn more you know by going out and deciding whether you thought they've got one huge field in China whether the life of it was 13 years or 14 years or something of the sort they should hit you between the eyes Charlie yeah I would argue that we have lower due diligence expenses than anybody else in America and that we have had less trouble because we had less expense I know of an investment operation in America that pays over 200 billion dollars a year to it's a million to 200 million yes 200 million pardon me uh to every year to its accountants a lot to help them with due diligence and I think our operation is safer because we think like Engineers we want these margins of reliability and and they're trying to do something really difficult which is to have find great judgments in very complex areas and and rely on other people to do it who are getting paid fees it's a very dicey process to do that I think it's much safer to do our way do you think the Auditors know more about making an acquisition you do you know you ought to take up auditing and let them run the business as far as we're concerned and we we are not I mean when when we get a call on something like the Mars Wrigley situation if we don't know enough about Mars and Wrigley by this point so that we have to go out I still like to go out in Carson sample all the bars so we have a 15 I mean I feel I owe that to the Berkshire shareholders but but I'm not going to look at their labor contracts or their leases or anything like that it it if if the value of of Wrigley depends on a specifically someplace or a specific commitment to this or that you know or a given environmental problem forget it you know the there are these overriding considerations that are enormously important and then there's a whole lot of trivia that doesn't mean anything that we have never made a we've made plenty of big investment I've made plenty of big investment mistakes I've never made one in my view that would have been avoided by conventional due diligence and we would have spent a lot of money and we would have wasted a lot of time and in some cases we would have missed deals simply because we wouldn't have committed fast enough we have a we have a we have a significant advantage and it gets bigger as we get bigger because in in terms of big deals people rely more and more often on process in that when people want to get a deal done they want to know what's going to be done uh they they will come to us I mean the Mars people wanted to deal in terms of this financing aspect of the Wrigley situation they only wanted to deal with Berkshire and and because they knew we didn't have any lawyers involved admit to this group we didn't even have any directors involved we we just you know we got a call it made sense and we said yes and when we say yes we don't say yes with a material adverse change Clause we don't say yes if financing is available we just say yes so I can tell people when we make a deal that we're going to have six and a half billion available it's going to be available you know whether there's a nuclear bomb goes off in New York City or whether there's a flu epidemic or whether Ben Bernanke runs off to South America with Paris Hilton that you know the the check is going to clear and if if you're making a deal um you know the guy that wants the six and a half billion that Assurance is worth something and and you really can't get anyplace else you say well I'll do it but I've got to have my my I have a due diligence team check this out and do all of that so it's a real advantage to us and I don't think there's any disadvantage to us
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