저자: CharlieMunger/WarrenBuffett · 외국인
요약 보기
버크셔의 복리 머신 지향성을 강조하며 규모가 커지면 수익률이 둔화되지만 문화는 강하다고 말함. 사모펀드식 레버리지 경쟁은 주주 이익에 맞지 않는다고 비판. 아메리칸익스프레스는 프리미엄 카드 고객층과 높은 갱신율로 경쟁 우위가 크며, 지분 가치와 이익이 계속 성장할 것으로 봄. 기술 변화에 대한 별도 의견은 없다고 언급.
다듬은 글
Our problem is not not a lack of boots on the ground. Our problem is the people on the ground are paying prices that we don't want to pay. Yeah, that's our problem. And that problem is not going to be cured by boots. We can spend a hundred billion dollars in the next year. That is not a problem. No.
Pending it intelligently is a huge problem. and and uh our competitors are buying with somebody else's money and they get part of the upside and take down none of the downside and they'll hard to compete with people like that. Yeah. They'll leverage it up. They'll make a lot of money if it fails and they'll make even more money if it succeeds.
And uh that's not our that's not our equation. No. Uh and that has that isn't always that way, but it's it's certainly that way now. It's probably uh it's not in the shareholders's interest that we get to be like everybody else. In studying the most significant value creators of all time, it is very evident that the major compounding effect happened later at the later stages of the careers or in Vanderbilt's case even beyond his own career.
So your recent investments have suggested to me that you were designing Berkshire to being a steady compounding machine that should continue to create value for a very long time. Would you both please elaborate on this compounding machine and the machine's ability to continue to adapt to keep this value creation durable?
Uh and then is this legacy one of your sort of primary motivations when you wake up every day? I would say it's the it is the primary motivation. But it's been that for a very very very long time. No matter what was going right in my life, if things were going badly for sure, I I would not feel good, you know, I don't need to be spending my time working on something that makes me feel bad about the results, you know, when we get through.
So, and it's it's it's something that's doable. I mean the culture is stronger now than it was 10 years ago and it was stronger then than 10 years previously. It moves slowly but it goes in the right direction and when we get chances to deploy the capital we we've always tried to make any entity whether it was the partnership originally or the orcher now or blue chip stamps when we owned it or or even diversified retain we we wanted them all to be compounding in effect be compounding machines.
That's why people gave us capital. That's why we put our own capital in. And if we failed that, we feel we really felt like we'd failed. It didn't make any difference how much money we made from fees or anything like that. We we we knew what our yard stick was. And so that that will continue. I think Bergkshire is better situated than it's ever been except for the fact that size is a drag on performance.
And I I probably wrote that 40 years ago. I wrote it actually when I closed the partnership to new money when we had like $40 million in it. I just said that that really the new that additional capital would drag down returns from a $40 million base. So you can imagine how I feel with $368 billion base of capital in Bergshire now.
But this culture is special. It can work. It won't be the highest compounder by a long shot against many other businesses. I think it won't be it'll be one of the safest ways to make decent money over time, but uh that will depend on the people that follow us. Charlie. Well, we came a long way from very small beginnings and the fact that it slows down a little when it becomes monstrous is not my idea of a huge tragedy.
I and I think we will continue to do very well in the future. We had nothing like the energy operation, you know, 20 years ago and it's a powerhouse. We had nothing like Kevin's operation in home building 30 years ago and it will soon be the biggest. Well, even now it's better than anybody else in the country if you count both types of housing, isn't it?
Houses, I think so. And we have a lot going for us and I'm satisfied. I think it's going to continue reasonably and it would ruin our life if we did it terribly. So that that's what we wake up thinking about in the morning. But uh I wouldn't I wouldn't want to be in a business where I was going to let down other people.
And I think you'd be crazy to do something like that even if you weren't rich in 88. So uh it but we are motivated to have something that that is regarded as as something different than others and and and we're actually in a world where so much money is institutionalized. you know, uh I I like the idea of having somebody that's actually owned by individuals in in very significant part who basically trust us and and uh you know don't worry about what the next quarter's earnings are going to be.
I think that I think it's different than much of capitalism and I think it's a something that Charlie and I feel good about. Do you think that AMX's share of mind is enough to win the credit cards race? How do you see AMX's competitive position now compared to the past and who is the most threatening competitor now compared to the past?
Yeah, everybody's a competitor and including now Apple that has just instituted a a uh card I guess in conjunction with Goldman Sachs. Everybody there there will always be in my view many many competitors in the business. Banks can't afford to leave the field. It's a growing field. they build up receivables on it.
But I I wouldn't think of a I wouldn't think of the credit card business uh as one as a one model business any more than I would think of the car business as essentially being one model. I mean Ferrari is going to make a lot of money, but they're going to have just a portion of the market. Well, MX MX is growing around the world with individuals is growing around the world with small businesses.
Uh you just saw the contract they made with Delta which is probably the ideal partner that runs uh what for eight or nine whatever it may be nine or 10 years actually. Uh it's you know the buildings go up per capita. They go up they the coverage spreads. Uh and they're going to have loads of competition.
Uh and they always will. Uh but they had uh you know that something u JP Morgan you know took on the platinum card and the was a competitor and the platinum card had uh highest renewal rates that they had and they increased the price I think from $450 to $550 during a competitive battle and retention improved and new business improved and 68enter.
So the new business was was millennials. I mean it it is a it is not an identical product with anything else. And and as a premium card, it has a clientele which is large. It may only be it may be X it may be X% of the market, maybe 3/4 of X percent or whatever it may be. It isn't it isn't for the person that likes to have five cards and look every day at which one provides the most rewards that day or in what gas stations or something of the sort, but it's got a very large constituency that has a a renewal rate, a usage rate that's the envy of everybody else in the industry.
So I uh I like our American Express position uh very well. Charlie Charlie express I think we own the world as long as the technology stays the same we it's an interesting thing this year I have no opinion about technology this year the technology is not is not the whole thing I mean you know that that fortunately I uh Uh if you look at credit card usage, there are a lot of different things motivating different people to use different various types of payment systems and there's a lot of them that are growing.
There's some of them that are marginal and and American Express is an extraordinary operation. And I think this year our share of the earnings well by next year our share of the earnings of America's Express will be equal to the cost of our position. We'll be earning 100% on what that position uh cost us and I think it will grow.
But uh and I think the number of shares will go down and our interest will go up without us without us uh laying out a dime. So it's it's a as you say we own the world if it doesn't change. Well, even if it changes something, the world has changed a lot. American Express was formed in 1850. No, I'm talking about WeChat.
Well, you can talk about you can talk about all kinds of competitors, but yeah, but the American Express actually was an express company formed in 1850, like I say, by Wells and Fargo of all people. And uh uh you know, for a while they carried these big trunks around of valuables and and then the railroads came along and that wasn't going to work very well anymore.
So, they went to the traveler's checks and and it's a very interesting thing. In 19 50 when I was living at 116th in Broadway, they were down at 65 Broadway and they were the most important name in travel that were synonymous with the integrity of their travelers checks and the whole company in a record year for travel earned $3 million.
$3 million. What what a bond trader earns now in my lifetime. That's what they've done with and they their hand going in was the traveler's check which is more or less disappeared but the in the travelers the American Express uh the power of that brand intelligently used going into the credit card business where they entered much later than the Diner Club later than Cart Blanch but they came to dominate the luxury end of the the credit card business. It's it's a fantastic story and and uh I'm glad we own 18% of it.
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