저자: WarrenBuffett · 외국인
요약 보기
인플레이션 환경에서는 유형자본이익률이 높고 가격결정력이 있으며 추가 설비투자가 적은 소비재 사업(예: See's Candies)이 최선이라고 주장. 철도·발전 같은 설비집약 사업은 자본 증가 부담과 채권형 수익 구조 때문에 상대적으로 불리하다고 봄. 로열티형 사업이 가장 이상적이라 언급. 캘리포니아 고속철 건설비 급증 사례로 인프라 비용 인플레 위험 강조.
다듬은 글
Do you still believe that a business with a high return on tangible capital , like See's or Coke, is the best asset in an inflationary environment? Do you now believe that a non-fungible real asset with pricing power, such as a railroad or hydroelectric power plant, is better? Yes. The first group is better.
Simply, I mean, if you have a great consumer product, or a product that requires very little capital to grow and increase in dollar volume, what will happen with inflation, even without increasing the number of units, and it doesn't require a lot of capital to do that. This is a great asset during inflation.
I mean, the best test of this is your own earning capacity. That is, if you are an outstanding doctor, lawyer, or, say, a teacher, then with inflation your services will cost more and more in dollar terms, and you do not need to make additional investments in yourself. People think about it, you know, in terms of very durable real estate or something like that, or a farm, or anything where you don't need additional capital to finance inflationary growth.
The worst kind of business is one with a lot of accounts receivable , inventory, and all that. And in dollar terms, if volume stays the same and the price level doubles, they need twice as much money to do the same amount of business, and that can be a very bad asset. We are usually not enthusiastic about businesses that require large capital investments, like utilities or railroads.
On the other hand, we believe that, especially with railroads, where you don't have a guaranteed low rate of return, you should be entitled to earn returns on assets that are becoming increasingly valuable to the economy, whether through inflationary factors or simply through natural growth factors , or, as in the case of the United States, I think, through both.
But the ideal business —See's Candy—was worth $25 million when we bought it. And he was selling 16 million pounds of candy at a little over…well, the retail price was $1.90, and we had some volume discounts. So, we were doing about $30 million worth of business . We are currently doing over $300 million in business .
It took $9 million in tangible assets to run it when it was making, uh, 30, and it takes about $40 million in tangible assets at 300 something. So, we only had to put $30 million back into a business that would bring us...Well, it probably brought us a billion and a half before taxes over that period.
And if the price of candy doubles, we have no accounts receivable to speak of. Our inventory turns over quickly. We don't store it or anything like that. We prepare seasonally. And the fixed assets are not large. So it's a much better business to own than utilities if you have high inflation. Charlie.
Yes, and what's interesting about this is that we did n't always know this. And And because And sometimes we forget about it . This is also true. But it shows how continuous learning is absolutely necessary to achieve any significant results in the world. Yeah, and it really shows, you know, I've said in the past that I'm a better businessman because I'm an investor, and I'm a better investor because I'm a businessman.
There's nothing better than feeling the need, especially in the 1970s, when inflation was gaining momentum in the early 80s, you saw these absolutely necessary capital investments on a very large scale that didn't really yield anything, uh, commensurate with the return. I wrote an article for Fortune called “How Inflation Cheats the Stock Investor” back in 1977.
You really want the perfect asset, you know? it's a royalty on someone else's sales during inflation where you just get a royalty check every month and it's based on their sales volume and. You created, you came up with some product first, licensed it to them, and you no longer have any capital investment.
You have no accounts receivable, no inventory, no fixed assets. This type of business is a real hedge against inflation, provided the product remains viable. Uh, so even though we're going into some very capital-intensive industries, part of that reflects the fact that we can't deploy the amount of capital that we have , uh, in a bunch of companies like See's Candies.
We just can't, we can't find them. We would like to find them, but we cannot find them in such large numbers. So we are not as good at managing capital when we have to invest many billions a year as we could if we invested a few million a year. There are no questions here. That's true in investments, that's true in the operating business , where there's a real shortage, uh, in size, and, uh, we just expect that problem to grow.
That's another conversation. Well, those businesses that perform best are those that require minimal capital investment to ensure inflationary growth and have strong positions that allow them to raise prices along with inflation. You know, we have a confectionery business , for example, and the value of the dollar has fallen, probably at least 85%, I would say, since we acquired it.
By 80-85%, and this candy business sells 75% more pounds of candy than when we bought it, but has 10 times the revenue and doesn't need a lot of additional capital. So, such a business—any business that has enough pricing freedom to compensate for inflation and does not require a corresponding or huge investment to support—will be successful.
Companies like our utilities that actually get bond-like returns but require, you know, if you're going to build a power plant, it costs twice as much per kilowatt-hour of capacity, and you only get a fixed income, and bond yields go up, maybe dramatically, to get high inflation, will not do well in a period of inflation simply because they have certain aspects of the bond-like investment, and bonds generally don't do well in times of inflation.
Charlie? Well, but like our insurance operations, our capital-intensive rail business is certainly one of the best railways in the world, and our utilities operations are certainly one of the best in the world. So it's not bad at all —to be world- class in your core businesses. Our railroad...the government has been talking about building a high-speed rail system in California.
I think they're talking about 800 miles of track. And their estimated cost was about 43 billion. And the estimated cost of construction of such facilities increases dramatically much more often than it decreases even by a small amount. And of course, we paid 43 billion, including assumed debt, for a rail system that has 22,000 miles of main track, over 6,000 locomotives, and 13,000 bridges.
If you ever want to buy a bridge, the cost of replacing that asset during inflation is already enormous. And it will grow dramatically, and the world, our country, will always need rail transport. So it's a great asset to own. I'll stop there. OK. Again the first sphere.
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