저자: WarrenBuffett/CharlieMunger-발언중확인되는출연자기준,제목·설명란정보없음 · 외국인
요약 보기
버크셔가 앨라배마 최대 벽돌 사업을 현금으로 인수. 주택 경기는 연말쯤 상승 전환 가능성이 있다고 보나 확신은 없고, 단기 실적은 부진할 것이라 언급. 경기순환 사업은 장기(20년) 관점에서 저가 매수해 참여하는 전략. 대형 인수는 현재 어렵지만 소규모 후보 2건을 검토 중. 주식 발행은 최대한 회피.
다듬은 글
Those are good businesses. And as I mentioned in the annual report, we we bought a the largest brick operation in Alabama. And I think Alabama uses more brick per capita than any state in the union, but that doesn't mean much currently because nobody's using any brick to speak of. But we bought it. We wrote a check for cash.
And we like improving our position. Mitech has bought operations. Shaw is spending a couple hundred million dollars this year partly because of a change in the nature of the carpet uh business. Uh uh this country over time will build houses at a rate that overall in total commensurate with household growth and I think we're going to see plenty of household growth uh in future decades and I think that our companies are well positioned to make significant money when we get to a normalized level of of home building.
I said in the annual report, I thought it would we would be seeing the upswing by year end. I've seen nothing since I wrote the annual report that makes it look like I'm certain to be correct or anything that there's been no movement that I've seen so far in that in the in the two months since I wrote the report.
I would think it would start occurring by then, but if it doesn't, you know, it may be a year later. Uh uh I don't think anybody knows the answer on that. If I had to bet one way or the other, though, I think it will be turning up by year end. It really isn't that important to us. When I made the decision to buy the brick company in Alabama, it was not because I thought brick was going to turn in two months or six months or a year.
I thought that over time being a very important brick manufacturer and distributor in Alabama adjacent to our strong operation in Texas uh would be a uh a good investment at the price that we paid and and uh I feel good about the decision but I won't feel good about our brick results in the next six months.
I can be sure of that. Charlie. Well, one advantage of buying these very cyclical businesses is a lot of people don't like them. And what difference does it make to us if the earnings average say 300 million a year if it comes in in a very lumpy fashion? In the big scheme of things, what do we care if it's lumpy?
As long as it's a good business and we have an advantage on that stuff. Nobody else was bidding for a brick plant in Alabama with no customers this week. [clears throat] We'll be there if you need brick in Alabama. The uh you know Seas Candy, a wonderful business, loses money roughly eight months of the year.
You know, now it just so happens we know the seasonal pattern. So we don't worry in July that somehow Christmas won't come. You know, we got a couple thousand years on our side. So the but that's you know that's easy to see if you just looked at one month of of seed earnings or looked at one quarter.
You think what what are these guys doing in this business? Now obviously cyclical businesses you know are not going to be the behave exactly the same as seasonal businesses but why look at it any differently I mean if you take the next 20 years you know there will be you know three or four terrible years for residential housing and there'll be a lot of them that are are pretty good and there'll be a few that are terrific and I don't know the order in which they're going to appear but I know if I can buy the assets cheap enough to participate in those 20 years that we'll do okay over that time.
So that's why we're in the brick business. I believe you commented recently on an elephant that you thought was too big. What is your acquisition appetite? What size is too big? Has the phone been ringing lately? And what, if anything, can we as shareholders do to help? I got through college answering fewer questions than that, but the uh but anything you can do to help, I appreciate.
Glenn. Um the you know it's hard to name a precise figure. Uh this one you know was way too big except unless we used a lot of stock which like I say we wouldn't do. Uh uh our appetite is always there. We are not going to borrow a lot of money. uh we're not going to issue shares except perhaps in some minor amount to make a deal that couldn't get get made otherwise.
Uh but and we obviously we'll never sell a business to buy some other business. So, you know, our our b our cash balances will tend to build monthto month unless we do something and we can and will sell some portfolio securities. Um, but doing lubberol requires close to9 billion dollars of cash and obviously we could we could do another one of that.
In fact, we're looking at a couple, but they're no more than a gleam in the eye, but they would take sums roughly similar to Lubresol and you know, we would be comfortable uh doing those and they would add significant significantly to Bergkshire's earning parts. They're worth doing. Uh but we couldn't we can't do an we can't do a really a really big elephant now.
and and we won't, you know, we won't stretch. We never we we've never uh we've never really taken any any risks uh because we don't need to and we will not trade something that that we have and need for something that we don't have and don't need even if we kind of like to have it. Charlie, well, I I certainly agree with all that.
We are very reluctant to issue shares and in that we're different from most places. I have a friend that sold out to a socialist country and they issued shares in a controlled corporation and the socialist executive said, "Isn't this wonderful? We're getting this business for nothing." Well, some people really have that.
And of course there are some companies and we talked about the wave that took place in the late60s but periodically and certainly it happened during the internet period where companies just couldn't issue shares fast enough because they were basically were trading confetti for real assets and and that is a that is a business model that has been applied successfully for some periods of time by certain companies in the past.
It usually ends in some kind of a fiasco, but well, I shouldn't say it usually does, but it it runs out of gas at some point. Uh, but you know, essentially we've we've never been in that game. Uh, we hate issuing shares. Uh, and the idea of selling our when we issue shares, we're we're divesting ourselves of a portion of every wonderful business we have from Geico to Iscar to you name it.
And we don't like doing that. We like owning those businesses. We'd like to own more of them. We we uh you know, we we have a deal, for example, on Marman where we bought some more of it this this year and we will buy the rest of it in a few more years. And we feel good about that. We pay a a fair price for it, but we get a business we know, a management we like, and and that's really what we'd like to continue doing at Berg. In fact, we will continue doing
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