I.H.101.Warren Buffett.Right Business
巴菲特对Right Business的定义是长期经济特性良好（favorable long-term economics），对伟大企业的定义是拥有可持续的“护城河”（have an enduring “moat”），然后分别解释了可持续的护城河和可持续。
一、可持续的护城河
1991年股东信里有一个划分是“needed or desired”，指向需求的两个极端更容易产生护城河，2007年版本改成了lowcost producer、world-wide brand，needed对应lowcost producer，desired对应world-wide brand，最后一句暗示除此以外的“护城河”都是虚幻的，参考：《2008-02 Warren Buffett's Letters to Berkshire Shareholders》。
A truly great business must have an enduring “moat” that protects excellent returns on invested capital. The dynamics of capitalism guarantee that competitors will repeatedly assault any business “castle” that is earning high returns. Therefore a formidable barrier such as a company’s being the lowcost producer (GEICO, Costco) or possessing a powerful world-wide brand (Coca-Cola, Gillette, American Express) is essential for sustained success. Business history is filled with “Roman Candles,” companies whose moats proved illusory and were soon crossed.
真正伟大的企业必须拥有可持续的“护城河”，以守护其出色的投入资本回报。资本主义的动力机制决定了：凡是能获得高回报的商业“城堡”，竞争者都会一再攻城。因此，像成为行业低成本生产者（GEICO、Costco）或拥有强大的全球品牌（Coca-Cola、Gillette、American Express）这样的坚固壁垒，是长期成功的关键。商业史充斥着“Roman Candles”式的公司——它们的护城河被证明是虚幻的，很快就被跨越。
（1）低成本
lowcost producer的关键词：Commodity businesses（商品化的业务），Something that people need（刚需），as a low-cost operator for a much longer time（长期、结构化的成本优势），can be killed by poor management（不能经受糟糕的管理）。
- Commodity businesses
商品化的特点是缺少差异化，比如，Wells Fargo（银行）、GEICO（保险）、Costco（零售），这些企业有成本优势但也很难垄断整个市场（政府不允许，消费者也不允许）。
- Something that people need
在商品化的业务中如果产品不是刚需的，打造可持续的护城河是难以想象的工作。
- as a low-cost operator for a much longer time
长期、结构化的成本优势，这是护城河的关键变量。
- can be killed by poor management
不能经受糟糕的管理。
商品化的业务充满了竞争，因为成本低就能加入竞争，乔布斯说：“Make something wonderful, Put Something Back.”，相比于“Make something wonderful”，“Make something cheaper”显然更容易做到。
（2）品牌
world-wide brand的关键词：desired、share of mind、pricing power、“少变化、少杠杆、长期高ROE”。
- desired
不是必需品，必需品很难达到渴望的程度。
- share of mind
share of mind是巴菲特的说法，他认为心智份额约等于市场份额，什么样的产品能在客户的心智中长期保持？巴菲特经常举的例子是see's candy、Coca-Cola，这些品牌在用户心智中留下的都是正面、美好的感觉。而乔布斯认为品牌是跟价值观绑定的，参考：《1997-09-23 Steve Jobs.Introduced the “Think Different”.》。To me, marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world. It’s a very noisy world, and we’re not gonna get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is. And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us.对我来说，marketing 讲的是价值观。这是一个非常复杂的世界，这个世界非常嘈杂，我们没有机会让人们记住我们太多。没有哪家公司能做到，因此，我们必须清楚我们希望他们了解我们的哪些信息。没有比他讲的更好的解释：“这是一个非常复杂的世界，这个世界非常嘈杂”，正面、美好再加上简单优雅的价值观是占据用户心智的最有效方法。我在这里想举两个例子，一个是76岁的大爷，参考：《76岁大爷哭了：最美校花，是我初恋，这辈子值了！》。我们学校最漂亮，家里最有钱的女孩一下子就抱住了我，快吻我，快吻我。。。这跟巴菲特描述see's candy的场景是一样的，如果一盒巧克力在中间起了点作用，那么巧克力可以跟随这种美好的记忆停留非常长的时间。另一个相反的例子的医药行业，如果仔细思考，医药在两条护城河的路线中是找不到位置的，医药肯定不是低成本取胜的商品化业务，需要投入大量的研发；另一方面医药也很难建立强大的品牌，医药给人的印象通常是和痛苦挂钩的，而痛苦在人的心智中停留的时间非常短，最长不超过18个月。
- pricing power
- 少变化、少杠杆、长期高ROE
好生意自然展现好的生存状态，这一段描述出现在1987年的股东信。
（3）低成本 or 品牌
WARREN BUFFETT:
There is no staff. I make all the investment decisions and I do all my own analysis. And basically it was an evaluation both of Dun and Bradstreet and Moody’s but of the economics of their business. And I never met with anybody. Dun and Bradstreet had a very good business and Moody’s had an even better business. And basically the single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power. You’ve got the power to raise prices without losing business to a competitor, and you’ve got a very good business. And if you have to have a prayer session before raising the price by a tenth of a cent (laughs), then you got a terrible business. And I’ve been in both and I know the difference.
Warren Buffett：
没有什么团队。我做所有投资决策，也做所有分析。基本上，我评估的是 Dun and Bradstreet 与 Moody’s 的业务经济性（economics of their business）。而且我从未与任何人见面。Dun and Bradstreet 的生意非常好，而 Moody’s 的生意更好。说到底，评估一家企业时最重要的单一决策因素，就是定价权（pricing power）。如果你能提价而不把生意拱手让给竞争对手，那你就拥有一家非常好的企业。反过来，如果你每次把价格提高十分之一美分之前还得先开个祷告会（笑），那你拥有的就是一家糟糕的企业。我两种生意都做过，所以我知道其中区别。
二、可持续
巴菲特列了两个排除的指标：处于快速且持续变革的行业，以及成败系于“名帅”的企业。
（1）处于快速且持续变革的行业
若护城河必须不断重建，最终就等同于没有护城河，除此以外，快速且持续的变化还有一连串的问题，包括眼睛盯着快速变富本身就是风险；快速变化在企业经营中会造成天然的紧张，人在紧张状态下更容易做出不理性的决策，等等。
（2）成败系于“名帅”的企业
内在价值是企业未来现金流的折现，“名帅”也许能暂时获得超额且增长的收益，但这对其未来并无太多说明。“名帅”属于极端的假设条件，极端假设条件下才成立的事情更像是赌博。
1、《1776 Adam Smith.The wealth of nations》
The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.
劳动生产力的最大改进，以及在任何地方对劳动进行指挥或加以运用时所依赖的技能、熟练与判断中的大部分，似乎都源自分工的作用。
What do you look for in a core stock?
在核心股票上你看重什么？
They are all low-cost producers; they are all either world leaders in their fields or can fully measure up to another of my yardsticks, the Japanese competition. They all now have promising new products, and they all have managements of above-average capabilities by a wide margin.
它们都是低成本生产者；要么是各自领域的全球领导者，要么能够完全符合我另一个衡量标准——经得起与日本竞争对手的比拼。它们现在都有很有前景的新产品，并且管理层的能力远高于平均水平。
跟巴菲特的想法一模一样，或者巴菲特就是从Phil Fisher得到的启发。
3、《1988-02-29 Warren Buffett's Letters to Berkshire Shareholders》
There’s not a lot new to report about these businesses—and that’s good, not bad. Severe change and exceptional returns usually don’t mix. Most investors, of course, behave as if just the opposite were true. That is, they usually confer the highest price-earnings ratios on exotic-sounding businesses that hold out the promise of feverish change. That prospect lets investors fantasize about future profitability rather than face today’s business realities. For such investor-dreamers, any blind date is preferable to one with the girl next door, no matter how desirable she may be.
关于这些业务，并没有太多新东西可报告——这不是坏事，反而是好事。剧烈变化与卓越回报通常很难兼容。当然，大多数投资者的行为却好像恰恰相反：他们往往给那些听起来“异域”“新奇”的企业以最高的市盈率，因为这些企业承诺会发生令人发热的变化。这样的前景让投资者可以沉浸在对未来盈利的幻想中，而不必直面当下的商业现实。对这类“做梦的投资者”而言，任何一次盲约都胜过与隔壁那个女孩约会——不管她其实多么可取。
Experience, however, indicates that the best business returns are usually achieved by companies that are doing something quite similar today to what they were doing five or ten years ago. That is no argument for managerial complacency. Businesses always have opportunities to improve service, product lines, manufacturing techniques, and the like, and obviously these opportunities should be seized. But a business that constantly encounters major change also encounters many chances for major error. Furthermore, economic terrain that is forever shifting violently is ground on which it is difficult to build a fortress-like business franchise. Such a franchise is usually the key to sustained high returns.
但经验表明，最好的商业回报往往来自这样的公司：它们今天做的事，与五年或十年前做的事非常相似。这并不是在为管理层的自满开脱。企业总是有机会改进服务、产品线、制造技术等等，这些机会显然应当抓住。但一家企业如果持续遭遇重大变化，也就持续遭遇大量重大犯错的机会。更进一步说，在一个永远剧烈震荡、地形不断变化的经济环境里，很难建立起堡垒般的商业特许经营权（franchise）。而这种特许经营权，通常正是维持长期高回报的关键。
The Fortune study I mentioned earlier supports our view. Only 25 of the 1,000 companies met two tests of economic excellence—an average return on equity of over 20% in the ten years, 1977 through 1986, and no year worse than 15%. These business superstars were also stock market superstars: During the decade, 24 of the 25 outperformed the S&P 500.
我前面提到的 Fortune 研究支持了我们的观点。在1000家公司中，只有25家通过了两个“经济卓越”的测试：在1977到1986这十年间，平均权益回报率超过20%，并且任何一年都不低于15%。这些商业超级明星，在股市上也同样是超级明星：在那十年里，25家中的24家跑赢了标普500指数。
The Fortune champs may surprise you in two respects. First, most use very little leverage compared to their interest-paying capacity. Really good businesses usually don’t need to borrow. Second, except for one company that is “high-tech” and several others that manufacture ethical drugs, the companies are in businesses that, on balance, seem rather mundane. Most sell non-sexy products or services in much the same manner as they did ten years ago (though in larger quantities now, or at higher prices, or both). The record of these 25 companies confirms that making the most of an already strong business franchise, or concentrating on a single winning business theme, is what usually produces exceptional economics.
Fortune 的冠军公司可能会在两个方面让你感到意外。第一，它们相对于自身支付利息的能力，使用的杠杆普遍很低。真正优秀的企业通常不需要借钱。第二，除了一家“高科技”公司和几家生产处方药的公司之外，这些公司的业务整体看起来相当“朴素”。大多数公司卖的都是“不性感”的产品或服务，而且销售方式与十年前大体相同（只是如今卖得更多、价格更高，或两者兼有）。这25家公司的记录证明：把一个本来就很强的商业特许经营权发挥到极致，或专注于一个单一的制胜商业主题，通常才是产生卓越经济回报的路径。
少变化、少杠杆、长期高ROE。
Berkshire’s experience has been similar. Our managers have produced extraordinary results by doing rather ordinary things—but doing them exceptionally well. Our managers protect their franchises, they control costs, they search for new products and markets that build on their existing strengths and they don’t get diverted. They work exceptionally hard at the details of their businesses, and it shows.
Berkshire 的经验也相似。我们的经理人通过做相当普通的事，取得了非凡的结果——但他们把普通事做到了极致。我们的经理人保护自己的特许经营权，他们控制成本，他们寻找能够建立在既有优势之上的新产品与新市场，而且他们不被分心。他们在业务细节上付出了异常艰苦的努力，而成果清清楚楚地写在业绩里。
4、《1992-02-28 Warren Buffett's Letters to Berkshire Shareholders》
A Change in Media Economics and Some Valuation Math
媒体经济学的变化，以及一点估值算术
In last year’s report, I stated my opinion that the decline in the profitability of media companies reflected secular as well as cyclical factors. The events of 1991 have fortified that case: The economic strength of once-mighty media enterprises continues to erode as retailing patterns change and advertising and entertainment choices proliferate. In the business world, unfortunately, the rear-view mirror is always clearer than the windshield: A few years back no one linked to the media business—neither lenders, owners nor financial analysts—saw the economic deterioration that was in store for the industry. (But give me a few years and I’ll probably convince myself that I did.)
在去年的报告中，我表达了一个看法：媒体公司的盈利能力下滑，既有周期性因素，也有结构性（长期趋势）因素。1991年的事件进一步加强了这一判断：随着零售模式改变、广告和娱乐选择大幅增加，昔日强大的媒体企业的经济实力仍在持续侵蚀。在商业世界里，不幸的是，后视镜永远比挡风玻璃更清晰：几年前，凡是与媒体行业有关的人——无论是放贷人、所有者还是金融分析师——都没有看见行业即将发生的经济恶化。（不过再给我几年时间，我大概也会说服自己：我当时看见了。）
The fact is that newspaper, television, and magazine properties have begun to resemble businesses more than franchises in their economic behavior. Let’s take a quick look at the characteristics separating these two classes of enterprise, keeping in mind, however, that many operations fall in some middle ground and can best be described as weak franchises or strong businesses.
事实是，报纸、电视和杂志这些资产，在经济行为上已经开始更像“生意”（business），而不是“特许经营”（franchise）。我们快速看看这两类企业的区分特征。当然也要记住：很多业务处在中间地带，最贴切的描述往往是“弱特许经营”或“强生意”。
An economic franchise arises from a product or service that: (1) is needed or desired; (2) is thought by its customers to have no close substitute and; (3) is not subject to price regulation. The existence of all three conditions will be demonstrated by a company’s ability to regularly price its product or service aggressively and thereby to earn high rates of return on capital. Moreover, franchises can tolerate mis-management. Inept managers may diminish a franchise’s profitability, but they cannot inflict mortal damage.
所谓“经济意义上的特许经营”，来源于一种产品或服务，它：（1）被需要或被渴望；（2）在客户心中没有接近的替代品；（3）不受价格管制。这三项条件是否齐备，会通过一家公司能否经常性地对其产品或服务进行强势定价、并因此赚取高资本回报率而得到验证。更进一步，特许经营能够容忍管理不善：无能的经理人可能会降低特许经营的盈利能力，但无法造成致命伤害。
“特许经营”（franchise）首先位于需求的两个极端：needed or desired，这和2007年股东信里定义的护城河有一些对应的地方：
1、needed
对应lowcost producer的必需品（Something that people need），长期、结构性的成本优势是可以作为护河城的。
2、desired
对应world-wide brand的心智份额（share of mind），(1) desired+(2) is thought by its customers to have no close substitute and+(3) is not subject to price regulation，三者是强关联的关系。
3、“特许经营”的强度测试
能容忍管理不善，2007年写在可持续（enduring）的定义中，排除两个特征：（1）处于快速且持续变革的行业；（2）成败系于“名帅”的企业。
（1）1991年，能容忍管理不善，差经理会降利润但不致命。
（2）1987年，“少变化、少杠杆、长期高ROE”，经济地形剧烈变化的地方，很难建立“堡垒式的 business franchise”。
合在一起就是2007年所定义的可持续（enduring）。
In contrast, “a business” earns exceptional profits only if it is the low-cost operator or if supply of its product or service is tight. Tightness in supply usually does not last long. With superior management, a company may maintain its status as a low-cost operator for a much longer time, but even then unceasingly faces the possibility of competitive attack. And a business, unlike a franchise, can be killed by poor management.
相对地，“生意”（business）只有在两种情况下才会获得超额利润：要么它是最低成本运营者，要么它所提供的产品或服务处在供给偏紧的状态。供给偏紧通常不会持续太久。即使在更优秀的管理下，一家公司也许能更长时间保持其最低成本地位，但即便如此，它仍会持续面临竞争对手的攻击风险。而且，“生意”不同于特许经营：糟糕的管理是可能把它“做死”的。
“生意”（business）对应2007年的lowcost producer：
1、if it is the low-cost operator or if supply of its product or service is tight
（1）前者可以成为有效的护城河，这个观点没有改变过，但问题是长期、结构性的低成本是不是足够坚固的护城河？lowcost producer对应的必需品因为缺少差异化会持续面临竞争对手的攻击。
（2）后者更差一些，没有长期结构性的成本优势会进入另一种状态的生存模式：成为周期性的行业。
2、unceasingly faces the possibility of competitive attack
持续面临竞争是“生意”（business）的通病，和“特许经营”（franchise）的区别就在这里，这里可以看出企业得以生存的几种方式：
（1）定价权型护城河
desired-》world-wide brand，不是必需品，在客户心中没有接近的替代品，不受价格管制，占据心智份额（share of mind），有最为坚固的护城河。
（2）成本优势型护城河
必需品，持续面临竞争对手的攻击但有长期、结构性的成本优势，GEICO、Costco、BNSF都是很好的例子。
（3）供给约束/周期型
盈利会随经济周期在这个水平上下波动。“上下浮动”（bob-around）模式是大多数“生意”的宿命——它们的收入流只有在所有者愿意投入更多资本（通常以留存收益的形式）时才会增长。
Until recently, media properties possessed the three characteristics of a franchise and consequently could both price aggressively and be managed loosely. Now, however, consumers looking for information and entertainment (their primary interest being the latter) enjoy greatly broadened choices as to where to find them. Unfortunately, demand can’t expand in response to this new supply: 500 million American eyeballs and a 24-hour day are all that’s available. The result is that competition has intensified, markets have fragmented, and the media industry has lost some—though far from all—of its franchise strength.
直到不久以前，媒体资产具备特许经营的三项特征，因此既能强势定价，也能“松松垮垮”地管理。然而现在，寻找信息与娱乐的消费者（他们主要关心的是后者）在获取渠道上拥有大幅扩展的选择。遗憾的是，需求并不会因为供给增加而同步扩张：美国人的眼球总量就那么多——大约5亿双——一天也只有24小时可用。结果就是竞争加剧、市场被切碎，媒体行业失去了一部分——尽管远未失去全部——特许经营的力量。
现在的Google，“松松垮垮”地管理也经理的非常好。
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The industry’s weakened franchise has an impact on its value that goes far beyond the immediate effect on earnings. For an understanding of this phenomenon, let’s look at some much over-simplified, but relevant, math.
行业“特许经营”力量的削弱，对其价值的影响远远超过对当期盈利的直接冲击。要理解这种现象，我们来看一些大幅度过度简化但与问题相关的算术。
A few years ago the conventional wisdom held that a newspaper, television or magazine property would forever increase its earnings at 6% or so annually and would do so without the employment of additional capital, for the reason that depreciation charges would roughly match capital expenditures and working capital requirements would be minor. Therefore, reported earnings (before amortization of intangibles) were also freely-distributable earnings, which meant that ownership of a media property could be construed as akin to owning a perpetual annuity set to grow at 6% a year. Say, next, that a discount rate of 10% was used to determine the present value of that earnings stream. One could then calculate that it was appropriate to pay a whopping $25 million for a property with current after-tax earnings of $1 million. (This after-tax multiplier of 25 translates to a multiplier on pre-tax earnings of about 16.)
几年前的主流看法认为：一家报纸、电视或杂志资产会永远以大约每年6%的速度增长盈利，而且不需要额外投入资本。理由是折旧费用大体会与资本开支相当，而营运资金需求很小。因此，报表上的盈利（扣除无形资产摊销之前）也几乎等同于可自由分配的盈利。换句话说，拥有一家媒体资产，几乎可以被视为拥有一份“永续年金”，并且这份年金每年还会以6%的速度增长。接着，假设用10%的贴现率来计算这条盈利流的现值，那么你就会得出：对一家当前税后盈利为100万美元的媒体资产，支付高达2,500万美元是合理的。（税后25倍的乘数，大致相当于税前约16倍的乘数。）
25倍PE=4%+6%（增长）=10%。
Now change the assumption and posit that the $1 million represents “normal earning power” and that earnings will bob around this figure cyclically. A “bob-around” pattern is indeed the lot of most businesses, whose income stream grows only if their owners are willing to commit more capital (usually in the form of retained earnings). Under our revised assumption, $1 million of earnings, discounted by the same 10%, translates to a $10 million valuation. Thus a seemingly modest shift in assumptions reduces the property’s valuation to 10 times after-tax earnings (or about 6 1/2 times pre-tax earnings).
现在我们换一个假设：把这100万美元视为“正常盈利能力”，并且认为盈利会随经济周期在这个水平上下波动。“上下浮动”（bob-around）模式确实是大多数“生意”的宿命——它们的收入流只有在所有者愿意投入更多资本（通常以留存收益的形式）时才会增长。在这个修正后的假设下，同样的100万美元盈利，用同样10%的贴现率折现，对应的估值就是1,000万美元。于是，一个看似并不大的假设变化，就把该资产的估值降到了税后盈利10倍（或税前大约6.5倍）。
Dollars are dollars whether they are derived from the operation of media properties or of steel mills. What in the past caused buyers to value a dollar of earnings from media far higher than a dollar from steel was that the earnings of a media property were expected to constantly grow (without the business requiring much additional capital), whereas steel earnings clearly fell in the bob-around category. Now, however, expectations for media have moved toward the bob-around model. And, as our simplified example illustrates, valuations must change dramatically when expectations are revised.
无论这1美元来自媒体资产还是来自钢铁厂的经营，都是1美元。过去买家之所以愿意为“媒体的1美元盈利”付出远高于“钢铁的1美元盈利”的价格，是因为媒体资产的盈利被预期会持续增长（而且不需要太多额外资本），而钢铁的盈利显然属于“上下浮动”那一类。如今，市场对媒体的预期却已经向“上下浮动”模型靠拢。正如我们这个简化例子所示，一旦预期被修正，估值就必须发生剧烈变化。
从特许经营滑落、落入普通生意=失去有意义的增长，因为收入流只有在所有者愿意投入更多资本（通常以留存收益的形式）时才会增长。
We have a significant investment in media—both through our direct ownership of Buffalo News and our shareholdings in The Washington Post Company and Capital Cities/ABC—and the intrinsic value of this investment has declined materially because of the secular transformation that the industry is experiencing. (Cyclical factors have also hurt our current look-through earnings, but these factors do not reduce intrinsic value.) However, as our Business Principles on page 2-3 note, one of the rules by which we run Berkshire is that we do not sell businesses—or investee holdings that we have classified as permanent—simply because we see ways to use the money more advantageously elsewhere. (We did sell certain other media holdings sometime back, but these were relatively small.)
我们在媒体行业有相当大的投资——既包括直接拥有 Buffalo News，也包括持有 The Washington Post Company 与 Capital Cities/ABC 的股份——而由于该行业正在经历的结构性转型，这部分投资的内在价值已经显著下降。（周期性因素也损害了我们当期的“穿透式”盈利，但这些因素并不会降低内在价值。）不过，正如第2-3页我们的《经营原则》所写，Berkshire 的一条经营规则是：我们不会仅仅因为看到了在其他地方更有利的用钱方式，就出售我们拥有的企业——或我们已归类为“永久持有”的被投资公司股权。（我们确实在较早时期卖出过一些其他媒体持股，但那些规模相对较小。）
从一开始就为这样的结果留出空间，这是必然会出现的结果，有两个理由：
（1）从容面对好过于匆匆忙忙，在内部造成紧张氛围会损害企业文化；
（2）“Water the flowers and skip over the weeds.”，任何时候都应该抓住关键问题，注意力留给鲜花而不是野草。
The intrinsic value losses that we have suffered have been moderated because the Buffalo News, under Stan Lipsey’s leadership, has done far better than most newspapers and because both Cap Cities and Washington Post are exceptionally well-managed. In particular, these companies stayed on the sidelines during the late 1980’s period in which purchasers of media properties regularly paid irrational prices. Also, the debt of both Cap Cities and Washington Post is small and roughly offset by cash that they hold. As a result, the shrinkage in the value of their assets has not been accentuated by the effects of leverage. Among publicly-owned media companies, our two investees are about the only ones essentially free of debt. Most of the other companies, through a combination of the aggressive acquisition policies they pursued and shrinking earnings, find themselves with debt equal to five or more times their current net income.
我们遭受的内在价值损失之所以被部分抵消，是因为 Buffalo News 在 Stan Lipsey 的领导下表现远好于多数报纸公司，而且 Cap Cities 与 Washington Post 的管理也异常出色。尤其值得一提的是：在上世纪80年代末那段时期，媒体资产的买家经常支付非理性的高价，而这两家公司当时选择了按兵不动。此外，Cap Cities 与 Washington Post 的负债都很少，而且它们持有的现金大体可以抵消这些负债。因此，它们资产价值的收缩并没有被杠杆效应进一步放大。在上市媒体公司中，我们这两家被投资公司几乎是仅有的基本无债公司。其他大多数公司则因为激进收购政策与盈利下滑的双重作用，债务已膨胀到相当于其当前净利润的五倍甚至更高。
杠杆只是加速器，如果相信自己肯定会赢，应该享受过程而不是想着加速。
The strong balance sheets and strong managements of Cap Cities and Washington Post leave us more comfortable with these investments than we would be with holdings in any other media companies. Moreover, most media properties continue to have far better economic characteristics than those possessed by the average American business. But gone are the days of bullet-proof franchises and cornucopian economics.
Cap Cities 与 Washington Post 强健的资产负债表和强大的管理层，使我们持有它们比持有任何其他媒体公司都更安心。此外，大多数媒体资产依然拥有远好于美国平均企业的经济特性。但那种“子弹打不穿的特许经营”与“聚宝盆般的经济学”的时代已经一去不复返了。
4、《1996-05-06 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
3. “A lot of mediocrity” among CEOs
许多 CEO 身上存在“相当多的平庸”
WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 3?
WARREN BUFFETT：第 3 区？
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good afternoon. My name is John Weaver. I’m a shareholder from Bellingham, Washington. You have discussed what a wonderful business is. One of the criterias in your acquisition, page 23 of your annual report, is management. Could you discuss how you decide what good management is and how you decide whether you have a good manager?
AUDIENCE MEMBER：下午好。我叫 John Weaver，是来自华盛顿州 Bellingham 的股东。你谈过什么样的生意是“伟大的生意”。在你们并购标准中（年报第 23 页）有一条是“管理层”。你能否谈谈你如何判断什么是“好的管理层”，以及如何判断你是否拥有一位“好经理人”？
WARREN BUFFETT: The really great business is one that doesn’t require good management. I mean, that is a terrific business. And the poor business is one that can only succeed, or even survive, with great management. And — But we look for people that know their businesses, love their businesses, love their shareholders, want to treat them as partners. And we still look to the underlying business, though. We — If we have somebody that we think is extraordinary, but they’re locked into one of those terrible businesses, because we’ve been in some terrible businesses, and you know, the best thing you can do, probably, is get out of it and get into something else. But there’s an enormous difference, frankly — there’s an enormous difference in the talent of American business managers. The CEOs of the Fortune 500 are not selected like 500 members of the American Olympic track and field team. And it is not the same process. And you do not have the uniformity of top quality that you get with the American Olympic team in any sport. You do not get that in top management in American business.
WARREN BUFFETT：真正伟大的生意，是那种不需要“杰出管理”也能运转的生意。我的意思是，那才是了不起的生意。相反，糟糕的生意只有在“卓越管理”之下才能成功，甚至只是勉强存活。——但我们寻找的人，必须了解自己的业务、热爱自己的业务、热爱自己的股东，并愿意把股东当作合伙人来对待。同时，我们仍然要看业务本身的质地。我们——如果遇到我们认为非常出色的人，但他被困在一门糟糕的生意里——我们自己也待过一些糟糕行业——那么你知道，最好的做法大概是退出那门生意，转到别的更好的生意中去。不过，坦率说，美国企业管理者之间的能力差异巨大——差异非常大。《Fortune 500》公司的 CEO 并不是像从美国奥运田径队中挑选 500 名选手那样被选出的，过程完全不同。你在奥运代表队任何项目中看到的那种顶级水准的一致性，在美国企业高管层中并不存在。顶层管理者的素质并没有那样整齐划一的顶尖水准。
好的厨师用普通食材做出非常好的美食，烂厨师用非常好的食材也做的很一般，人才=食材=耗材，从耗材的成本考察整个商业机器的效率。
You get some very able people, some terrific people, like a Bill Gates, that we just mentioned. But you get a lot of mediocrity, too. And the test — I think, in some cases, that it’s fairly identifiable, who has done an extraordinary job. And we like people that have batted .350 or .360, in terms of predicting that they’re going to bat over .300 in the future. And some guy says, you know, “I batted .127 last year. But I’ve got a new bat or a new batting coach,” you know, some management consultant has come in and told them how to do it, supposedly. We’re very suspicious of that. So we don’t like banjo hitters who suddenly proclaim that they can become power hitters. And then we try to figure out what their attitude is toward shareholders. And that isn’t uniform, either, throughout corporate America. It’s far from uniform. We still want them to be in a good business, though. I would emphasize that. We feel that — I mean, I gave the illustration of Tom Murphy in the annual report.
你会遇到一些非常能干、极其出色的人——比如我们刚提到的 Bill Gates——但你同样会遇到大量的“平庸之辈”。而考验标准——我认为在某些情况下，谁做得格外出色是相当容易识别的。我们喜欢那些“打击率 .350 或 .360”的人，因为这能让我们预期他们未来能持续保持 .300 以上的水平。而如果有人说：“我去年打击率只有 .127，但我换了新球棒/新击球教练”，你懂的——某位管理顾问据称教会了他们该怎么干——我们对此非常怀疑。所以我们不喜欢那些“banjo hitters”（轻打/软弱打者）突然宣称自己能变成“power hitters”（长打型强打者）。接着我们会去判断他们对股东的态度。而在整个美国企业界，这一点也并不一致，差得远着呢。不过我仍要强调：我们还是希望他们所处的是一门好生意。我在年报里举了 Tom Murphy 的例子。
耗材是好是坏要打出具体的分数。
I mean, no one had either the ability — no one could top his ability or integrity, in terms of the way he ran Cap Cities for decades. I mean, and you could see it in 50 different ways. I mean, he was thinking about the shareholders. And he not only thought about them, he knew what to do to forward their interests, and — In terms of building the business, he only built it when it made sense, not when it did something for his ego or to make it larger alone. He did it when it was in his shareholders’ interests. And they’re not all Tom Murphys. But when you find them, and they’re in a decent business, you want to bet very heavily and not make the same mistake I made by selling out once or twice, too. (Laughter)
我的意思是，在他数十年经营 Cap Cities 的方式上，无论是能力还是操守，都没人能胜过他。你可以从五十种不同的迹象上看出这一点。他时刻想着股东——不仅只是想着，而且知道如何真正推进股东的利益。就扩张业务而言，他只在“有意义”的时候才去做，而不是为了满足自我或仅仅为了做大而做。他是在符合股东利益时才做。并不是所有人都是 Tom Murphy。但当你找到这种人，而且他们所处还是一门像样的生意时，你就应该重注下注，而不要重蹈我曾经一两次“卖飞”的错误。（笑声）
5、《1997-05-05 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
51. “It’s not share of market. It’s share of mind that counts”
“决定胜负的不是市场份额，而是心智份额”
WARREN BUFFETT: Zone 1 again.
WARREN BUFFETT：再次请1号区。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mike Assail (PH) from New York City. Could you explain a little more about what you call the “mind of the consumer” and the “nature of the product” and explain how you actually apply these concepts to find the companies with the growing demand and the best investment potential? And thank you for being two of the greatest professors I’ve ever had.
观众：来自 New York City 的 Mike Assail（音）。能否进一步解释你所说的“消费者心智”和“产品的本质”，并说明你们如何把这些概念真正应用到选股中，去寻找需求在增长、投资潜力最好的公司？另外，谢谢你们两位——这是我遇到过的最出色的两位“教授”。
WARREN BUFFETT: Thanks. (Applause) You know, what you really — when you get into consumer products, you’re really interested in finding out — or thinking about — what is in the mind of how many people throughout the world about a product now, and what is likely to be in their mind five or ten or 20 years from now? Now, virtually every person on the globe — maybe, well, let’s get it down to 75 percent of the people on the globe — have some notion in their mind about Coca-Cola. They have — the word “Coca-Cola” means something to them. You know, RC Cola doesn’t mean anything to virtually anyone in the world, you know, it does to the guy who owns RC, you know, and the bottler. But everybody has something in their mind about Coca-Cola. And overwhelmingly, it’s favorable. It’s associated with pleasant experiences. Now, part of that is by design. I mean, it is where you are happy. It is at Disneyland, at Disney World. And it’s at ballparks.
WARREN BUFFETT：谢谢。（掌声）你知道，当你研究消费品时，真正要做的——或者说要思考的——是：当下全世界有多少人对某个产品在“心里”形成了什么印象？而在5年、10年、20年后，他们“心里”又大概率会是什么印象？如今，几乎全球每一个人——好吧，我们保守点，说全球75%的人——心里都对 Coca-Cola 有某种概念。对他们而言，“Coca-Cola”这个词是有含义的。相反，RC Cola 对世界上几乎所有人都没有意义——当然，对 RC 的所有者、对装瓶商是有意义的。但几乎所有人“心里”对 Coca-Cola 都有点什么——而且绝大多数是正面的。它和愉快的体验相连，这其中有一部分是精心设计的，也就是说，它总是出现在你开心的场景里：在 Disneyland、在 Disney World、在球场。
真正有效的护城河，不是 P&L 表上的某一行，而是用户脑子里的那点“偏见”：一旦形成正确的“心智绑定”，价格、竞争者动作、渠道威胁都只能在外圈打转。
And it’s every place that you’re likely to have a smile on your face, including the Berkshire Hathaway meeting I might add. (Laughter) And that position in the mind is pretty firmly established. And it’s established in close to 200 countries around the world with people. A year from now, it will be established in more minds. And it will have a slightly, slightly, slightly different overall position. In ten years from now, the position can move just a little bit more. It’s share of mind. It’s not share of market. It’s share of mind that counts. Disney, same way. Disney means something to billions of people. And if you’re a parent of a couple young children and you got 50 videos in front of you that you can buy, you’re not going to sit down and preview an hour and a half of each video before deciding what one to stick in front of your kids. You know, you have got something in your mind about Disney. And you don’t have it about the ABC Video Company. Or you don’t even have it about other — you don’t have it about 20th Century.
它出现在一切能让你面带微笑的地方——顺带一提，也包括 Berkshire Hathaway 的股东会。（笑）这种“心智中的位置”已经相当牢固；它在全球接近200个国家的人群心中建立起来。再过一年，会有更多人的心里形成这种位置；整体印象会一丁点、一丁点地变化；十年后，又会再小幅推进。这就是“心智份额”。关键不是市场份额，而是心智份额。Disney 也是同样的道理。对数十亿人而言，Disney 这个名字“有意义”。如果你是家里有两三个小孩的父母，面前摆着50张可买的录像带，你不会先把每一盘都预览一个半小时再决定给孩子看哪一盘。你“心里”对 Disney 已经有定见了；但对 ABC Video Company 没有这种定见；对其他公司——比如 20th Century——你也没有这种定见。
You know, you don’t have it about Paramount. So that name, to billions of people, including lots of people outside this country, it has a meaning. And that meaning overwhelmingly is favorable. It’s reinforced by the other activities of the company. And just think of what somebody would pay if they could actually buy that share of mind, you know, of billions of people around the world. You can’t do it. You can’t do it by a billion dollar advertising budget or a $3 billion advertising budget or hiring 20,000 super salesmen. So you’ve got that. Now, the question is what does that stand for five or ten or 20 years from now? You know they’ll be more people. You know they’ll be more people that have heard of Disney. And you know that there will always be parents that are interested in having something for their kids to do. And you know that kids will love the same sort of things. And, you know, that — (Munger accidentally knocks over his microphone) — what’s? (Laughter) He emphasizes the key points when we get to those.
你看，对 Paramount 你同样没有这种定见。可这个名字（Disney）对数十亿人——包括美国以外的很多人——是“有含义”的，而且这种含义压倒性地正面；公司其它活动又在不断强化这种含义。想一想：如果有人真能把这种“覆盖全球数十亿人的心智份额”买下来，他会愿意出多少钱？这是买不到的。即使用10亿美元、30亿美元的广告预算，或者雇2万名超级销售，也买不到。因此，你已经拥有的是“心智资产”。接下来该问的是：5年、10年、20年后，它还能代表什么？你知道人口会更多；你知道会有更多人听说 Disney；你也知道永远都会有父母在意“给孩子点什么可做的事情”；你知道孩子们喜欢的东西大体相似。然后，你看——（Munger 不小心碰倒了话筒）——怎么了？（笑）每当我们说到关键点，他就会来个强调。
(Laughter) But that is what you’re trying to think about with a consumption product. That’s what Charlie and I were thinking about when we bought See’s Candy. I mean, here we were. It’s 1972. You know, we know a fair amount about candy. I know more than when I sat down this morning. (Laughs) I mean, I had about 20 pieces already. (Laughter) But, you know, what — whose, you know — does their face light up on Valentine’s Day, you know, when you hand them a box of candy and say, you know, it’s some nondescript thing and say, “Here, honey, I took the low bid,” you know, or something of the sort, and — (Laughter) No. I mean, you want something — you know, you’ve got tens of millions of people — or at least many millions of people — that remember that the first time they handed that box of candy, it wasn’t that much thereafter that they got kids for the first time or something. So it’s — the memories are good.
（笑）但这正是你在做消费品时要思考的事。我们买下 See’s Candy 时，Charlie 和我想的就是这些。也就是说，当时是 1972 年。你知道，我们对糖果了解不少。今天早上坐下来之前我知道得还没这么多（笑）。我是说，我刚才已经吃了大概 20 颗了（笑）。但是，你想想——在 Valentine’s Day，你把一盒糖递给对方，同时说这是一件来路不明的东西，或者来一句“亲爱的，我选了最低价”（笑）——对方的表情会亮起来吗？不会。我的意思是，你想要的是——有上千万，至少几百万人还记得：第一次把那盒糖送给心上人，没过多久他们就迎来了人生第一次有了孩子，或类似的美好时刻。所以——这些记忆是美好的。
The association’s good. Total process. It isn’t just the candy. It’s the person who takes care of you at Christmastime when they’ve been on their feet for eight hours, and people have been yelling at them because they’ve been in line with 50 people in line, and that person still smiles at them. The delivery process. It’s the shop in which they get all kinds of things, the treat we give them. It’s all part of the marketing personality. But that position in the mind is what counts with a consumer product. And that means you have a good product — a very good product — it means you may need tons of infrastructure, because you’ve got to have that — I had a case of Cherry Coke awaiting me at the top of the Great Wall when I got there in China. Now that — you’ve got to have something there so that the product is there when people want it. And that happened — in World War II, General Eisenhower, you know, said to Mr. Woodruff that he wanted a Coca-Cola within arm’s length of every American serviceman in the world.
这种联想是好的。是一个“全流程”。它不只是糖果本身。是 Christmas 时那个照顾你的店员——他们已经站了八个小时，顾客在有 50 人的长队里大喊大叫，可他们仍然对顾客微笑。还包括配送流程。包括门店里人们能买到各种东西、以及我们给他们的小礼遇。这一切共同构成了品牌的“营销人格”。但在消费品领域，真正关键的是“心智中的位置”。这意味着你得有一个好产品——一个非常好的产品——也意味着你可能需要庞大的基础设施，因为你必须做到这一点——我在 China 登上 Great Wall 的长城顶时，就有一箱 Cherry Coke 正在等我。要做到这一点——你必须确保在消费者想要时，产品就在那里。类似的事在 World War II 期间也发生过：General Eisenhower 对 Mr. Woodruff 说，他希望让全世界每一位美国军人“伸手可及”就能喝到一瓶 Coca-Cola。
And they built a lot of bottling plants to take care of that. That sort of positioning can be incredible. It seems to work especially well for American products. I mean, people want certain types of American products worldwide, you know, our music, our moves, our soft drinks, our fast food. You can’t imagine, at least I can’t, a French firm or a German firm or a Japanese firm having that — selling 47 or 48 percent of the world’s soft drinks. I mean, it just doesn’t happen that way. It’s part of something you could broadly call an American culture. And the world hungers for it. And Kodak, for example, probably does not have quite the same — and George Fisher’s doing a great job with the company. This goes back before that. But Kodak probably does not have the same place in people’s mind worldwide quite as it had 20 years ago. I mean, people didn’t think of Fuji in those days, we’ll say, as being in quite the same place. And, then, Fuji took the Olympics, as I remember, in Los Angeles.
他们为此建了许多装瓶厂。这种“占位”能力是惊人的。它似乎对美国产品格外有效。我的意思是，全世界的人都想要某些美国产品：我们的音乐、电影、软饮、快餐。你很难想象，至少我无法想象，一家法国、德国或日本公司能做到那样——卖出全球 47% 或 48% 的软饮。这种事并不是那样发生的。这是你可以笼统称为美国文化的一部分，而全世界对此“饥渴”。再比如 Kodak，也许如今在全球消费者心中的地位，已经不完全等同于 20 年前了——且先不说 George Fisher 把公司带得很好，那些变化发生在他之前。换句话说，人们在当年并不把 Fuji 视为与 Kodak 地位相当的品牌。随后，Fuji（据我记得）在 Los Angeles 的 Olympics 上拿下了赞助。
心智的本质是文化，正确的文化才能建立正确的心智。
And they just — they put them — they pushed their way to more of a parity with a Kodak. And you don’t want to ever let them do that. And that’s why you can see a Coca-Cola or a Disney and companies like that doing things that you think, well, this doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. You know, if they didn’t spend this $10 million, wouldn’t they still sell as much Coca-Cola? But, you know, that — I quoted from that 1896 report of Coca-Cola and the promotion they were doing back then to spread the word. You never know which dollar’s doing it. But you do know that everybody in the world, virtually, has heard of your product. Overwhelmingly, they’ve got a favorable impression on them and the next generation’s going to get it. So that’s what you’re doing with consumer products. With See’s Candy, you know, we are no better — we want — no better than the last person who’s been served their candy or the last product they’ve been served.
他们就这样——一步步地——把自己推到了更接近 Kodak 的位置。而你绝不应该让他们做到这一点。这也就是为什么你会看到像 Coca-Cola、Disney 这样的公司，去做一些你会觉得“好像不太合算”的事。你知道的，如果他们不花这 1000 万美元，难道就卖不出同样多的 Coca-Cola 吗？但是你看——我引用过 1896 年 Coca-Cola 的那份报告，当时他们就在做推广来“扩散名声”。你永远不知道究竟是哪一美元起了作用。但你确定的是，几乎全世界每个人都听说过你的产品；他们对它的印象在压倒性的多数情况下是正面的，而且下一代也会继承这种印象。这就是做消费品的要义。对于See’s糖果来说，我们的声誉仅仅取决于最后一个购买糖果的顾客，或是最后一次提供的产品质量。
But as long as we do the job on that, people can’t catch us. You know, we can charge a little more for it because people are not interested in taking the low bid. And they’re not interested in saving a penny a bottle on colas. Remember we’ve talked about in these meetings, private labels, in the past. And private label has stalled out in the soft drink business. They want the real thing. And 900 and some odd million eight-ounce servings will be served today of Coca-Cola product around the world. Nine-hundred million, you know. And it’ll go up next year, the year after. And I don’t know how you displace companies like that. I mean, if you gave me a hundred billion dollars — and I encourage if any of you are thinking about that to step forward — (laughter) — if you gave — and you told me to displace the CocaCola Company as the leader in the world in soft drinks, you know, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea of how to do it. And those are the kind of businesses we like. Charlie?
但只要我们把这件事做好，别人就追不上我们。你知道，我们可以多收一点价，因为人们并不想要“最低报价”。他们也不在乎每瓶可乐能不能便宜一分钱。还记得我们在过去的股东会上谈过的“自有品牌”吗？在软饮行业，“自有品牌”的发展已经停滞了。消费者要的是真正的那一款。而今天，全世界会消费 9 亿多份 8 盎司的 Coca-Cola 产品。9 亿多，你懂的。明年、后年还会继续增长。我不知道你要怎么把这样的公司从龙头位置上拉下来。我的意思是，就算你给我 1000 亿美元——如果你们当中有人在考虑，不妨现在就站出来（笑）——如果你给了我这笔钱，并让我把 Coca-Cola 从全球软饮领导者的位置上“挤下来”，老实说，我一点头绪都没有。而我们喜欢的，正是这种类型的生意。Charlie？
渠道方（Walmart、Costco）随时可以推自己的“自有品牌”，并在一堆产品中横跳（横向选择，做不好就做下一个），这种方式理论上搞不过专注于一个产品的品牌。
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. I think the See’s Candy example has an interesting teaching lesson for all of us. Warren said we were — it’s the first time we really stepped up for brand quality. And it was a very hard jump for us. We’d been used to buying dollar bills for fifty cents. And the interesting thing was that if they had demanded an extra $100,000 for the See’s Candy company, we wouldn’t have bought it. And that was after Warren had been trained under the greatest professor of his era, and had worked 90 hours a week.
CHARLIE MUNGER：是的。我认为 See’s Candy 这个例子，对我们所有人都有一个很有意思的启示。Warren 说过，那是我们第一次真正为了“品牌质量”而“抬价出手”。对我们来说，这一步跨得很艰难。我们过去习惯于“花 50 美分去买 1 美元”。有意思的是，如果当时他们再多要 10 万美元，我们可能就不会买 See’s Candy 了——而那可是 Warren 在当时那个时代最伟大的教授门下学成，并且每周工作 90 小时之后的决定。
WARREN BUFFETT: And eaten a lot of chocolates, too. (Laughs)
WARREN BUFFETT：而且还吃了很多巧克力。（笑）
CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. Absorbing everything in the world. I mean, we just didn’t have minds well enough trained to make an easy decision right. And by accident, they didn’t ask the extra $100,000 for it. And we did buy it. And as it succeeded, we kept learning. I think that shows that the name of the game is continuing to learn. And even if you’re very well-trained and have some natural aptitude, you still need to keep learning. And that brings along the delicate problem people sometimes talk about: two aging executives. (Laughter) I don’t know what the hell that means as an adjective because I don’t know anybody that is going in the other direction. (Laughter and applause) But you people who hold shares are betting, for a while at least, until younger successors come along, you’re betting to some extent on what we’ll now tactfully continue to call “aging executives” continuing to learn.
CHARLIE MUNGER：对。尽可能吸收世上一切有用的东西。我的意思是，我们当时的大脑训练得还不够好，没法轻松地把正确决定做出来。碰巧的是，他们并没有再多要那额外的 10 万美元，于是我们就买下了它。随着它成功，我们也不断学习。我认为这说明“游戏的本质就是持续学习”。即便你受过良好训练、还有点天赋，也仍需要持续学习。而这就引出了人们偶尔会谈到的微妙问题：两位“日渐年长的高管”。（笑）我也不知道把“年长”当作形容词到底是什么意思，因为我不认识有人在朝相反方向走的。（笑与掌声）不过，各位持股人现在押注的——至少在更年轻的接班人到来之前——在某种程度上，正是我们这些“日渐年长的高管”会继续学习。
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. Well, if we hadn’t have bought See’s, with some subsequent developments after that because that made us aware of other things, we wouldn’t have bought Coca-Cola in 1988. I mean, you can give See’s a significant part of the credit for the, I guess, $11 billion-plus profit we’ve got in Coca-Cola at the present time. And you say, “Well, how could you be so dumb as not to be able to recognize a Coca-Cola?” Well, I don’t know, but —
WARREN BUFFETT：是的。嗯，如果我们当初没有买 See’s，后来也就不会由此开了眼界、注意到别的东西，那么我们在 1988 年就不会去买 Coca-Cola。换句话说，如今我们在 Coca-Cola 上获得的——我想——超 110 亿美元的利润，See’s 理应记上一大功。你可能会说：“你怎么会蠢到连 Coca-Cola 这样的生意都没认出来？”嗯，我也不知道，但——
转移注意力的方向非常困难，Attention Is All You Need。
CHARLIE MUNGER: You were only drinking about 20 cans a day.
CHARLIE MUNGER：你那时一天也就喝大约 20 听而已。
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. Right. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been exposed to it, or — (Laughter) It’s amazing. But it just made us start thinking more. I mean, we saw how decisions we made in relation to See’s played out in a marketplace and that sort of thing. And we saw what worked and didn’t work. And it made us appreciate a lot what did work and shy away from things that didn’t work. But it led — it definitely led to a Coca-Cola. And we’ve had the good luck to buy some businesses themselves in their entirety that taught us a lot. You know, we bought — and it’s worked in the other direction. I mean, we were in the windmill business, one time. I was. Charlie stayed out of the windmill business. But I was in the windmill business and pumps and — third-level department — or second-level — department stores. And I just found out how tough it was and how it didn’t — you could apply all kinds of energy to them. And it didn’t do any good.
WARREN BUFFETT：对，没错。并不是我没接触过它，或者——（笑）这很有意思。但这件事促使我们开始思考更多东西。我的意思是，我们看到了与 See’s 相关的那些决策在市场中的后续表现之类的事；我们看清了哪些有效、哪些无效；这让我们更懂得珍惜有效的东西，并远离无效的东西。而这些——确实把我们引向了 Coca-Cola。我们也有好运，曾整买下一些企业本身，从中学到了很多。你知道，我们也有反面的经历。比如，我们有一段时间做过风车生意。我做过；Charlie 则没有。可我做过风车、做过水泵，还有——三流的百货店——或者说二流的百货店。结果我发现这些生意有多难做，你对它们投入再多精力也没用；根本不起作用。
It made a great deal of sense to figure out what pond to jump in. And what pond you jumped in was probably more important than how well you could swim. Charlie?
明白“该跳进哪一个池塘”这件事意义重大。你跳进哪个池塘，很可能比你“游得多好”还要重要。Charlie？
CHARLIE MUNGER: I don’t think it’s necessary that people be as ignorant as we were, as long as we were. (Laughter) I think American education could be better, but not in the hands of any of the people who are now teaching. (Laughter)
CHARLIE MUNGER：我不认为人们有必要像我们那样“久长地无知”。（笑）我觉得美国的教育可以更好，但前提是别交到当下这些教书人的手里。（笑）
WARREN BUFFETT: Is there any group we’ve forgotten to offend? I mean — (Laughter)
WARREN BUFFETT：我们是不是还有哪个群体没得罪到？我是说——（笑）
6、《1997-09-23 Steve Jobs.Introduced the “Think Different”.》
Speech to Apple Employees
对苹果员工的讲话
“We believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.”
“我们相信，有激情的人可以让世界变得更好。”
Steve introduced the “Think Different” advertising campaign to a small group of Apple employees on September 23, 1997. The ad would go on to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial.
史蒂夫于 1997 年 9 月 23 日向一小群苹果员工介绍了“Think Different”的广告活动。该广告后来获得了艾美奖杰出商业广告奖。
Howdy. Good morning. We were up till three o’clock last night finishing this advertising, and I want to show it to you in a minute—see what you think of it.
你好。早上好。我们昨晚熬夜到三点才完成这个广告，我想一会儿给你们看一下——看看你们觉得怎么样。
I’ve been back about eight to ten weeks, and we’ve been working really hard. What we’re trying to do is not something really highfalutin. We’re trying to get back to the basics. We’re trying to get back to the basics of great products, great marketing, and great distribution. I think that Apple has pockets of greatness but in some ways has drifted away from doing the basics really well.
我回来了大约八到十周，我们一直在努力工作。我们想做的并不是一些高大上的事情，我们想回归基础。我们正在努力回归那些基本要素：优秀的产品、优秀的营销和优秀的分销。我认为苹果有一些优秀的地方，但在某些方面已经偏离了做好基础的方向。
聪明人的思维方式都是一样的，参考：《2025-11-26 Ilya Sutskever.We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research》。
You kind of ask yourself, is something fundamental or not fundamental? How things should be.
你会不断地问自己：什么东西是“基本的”、是“底层”的，什么不是？事物“应该是怎样的”？
We started with the product line. We looked at the product road map, going out for a few years, and we said, “A lot of this doesn’t make sense, and it’s way too much stuff, and there’s not enough focus.” We actually got rid of 70 percent of the stuff on the product road map. I couldn’t even figure out the damn product line after a few weeks. I kept saying, “What is this model? How does this fit?”
我们从产品线入手，审视了未来几年的产品路线图，然后发现，“这里面有很多东西不合理，而且太多了，缺乏重点。”实际上，我们砍掉了路线图上70%的内容。在几周之后，我甚至都弄不清楚产品线了。我不断问自己，“这个型号是什么？它在整个产品线中有什么作用？”
I started talking to customers, and they couldn’t figure it out either.
我开始和客户交谈，他们也搞不清楚。
You’re going to see the product line get much simpler, and you’re going to see the product line get much better. There’s some new stuff coming out that’s incredibly nice. In addition, we’ve been able to focus a lot more on the 30 percent of the gems and add some new stuff in that is going to take us in some whole new directions. So we are incredibly excited about the products. I think we’re really thinking differently about the kinds of products we have to build. The engineering team is incredibly excited. I mean, I came out of the meeting with people that had just gotten their projects canceled, and they were three feet off the ground with excitement ’cause they finally understood where in the heck we were going, and they were really excited about the strategy.
你会看到产品线变得简单得多，同时也会看到产品线变得更好。有一些新产品即将推出，非常出色。此外，我们能够更多地关注那 30%的宝石，并添加一些新内容，这将带我们走向全新的方向。因此，我们对这些产品感到无比兴奋。我认为我们真的在重新思考我们需要构建的产品种类。工程团队也非常兴奋。我是说，我刚从一个会议出来，会议上有些人刚刚被取消了项目，但他们兴奋得像离地三尺，因为他们终于明白我们到底要去哪里，他们对这个战略感到非常兴奋。
In the same way we, I think, have not been as … we have not kept up with innovations in our distribution. I’ll give you an example. I’m sure it was talked about this morning, but we’ve got anywhere from two to three months of inventory in our manufacturing supplier pipeline, and about an equal amount in our distribution channel pipeline. We’re having to make guesses four or five, six months in advance, about what the customer wants.
我认为我们在分销方面没有跟上创新。我给你举个例子。我相信今天早上已经讨论过这个问题，但我们在制造供应商的供应链中有两到三个月的库存，在我们的分销渠道中也差不多。我们不得不提前四、五、六个月猜测客户的需求。
We’re not smart enough to do that. I don’t think Einstein’s smart enough to do that. So what we’re going to do is get really simple and start taking inventory out of those pipelines so we can let the customer tell us what they want, and we can respond to it super fast. You’re going to see us be doing a lot of things like that. Today is just the first of many things we’re going to be doing with you.
我们没有那么聪明，我认为即使是爱因斯坦也做不到。所以我们要做的就是简化流程，从那些渠道中清理库存，这样我们就可以让客户告诉我们他们想要什么，并能够快速回应。你会看到我们在这方面做很多类似的事情。今天只是我们将要和你们一起做的众多事情中的第一步。
We’re going to be not only, I think, catching up to where the best of the best are in distribution, but we’re going to actually be innovating and be breaking some new ground, I think, in the coming several months. I’m pretty excited about that as well, in the distribution manufacturing side of things.
我们不仅会赶上分销领域的佼佼者，我认为我们还会在接下来的几个月里进行创新，开辟一些新领域。我对此感到非常兴奋，尤其是在分销制造方面。
That gets us to the marketing side of things.
这让我们进入了市场营销的方面。
To me, marketing is about values. This is a very complicated world. It’s a very noisy world, and we’re not gonna get a chance to get people to remember much about us. No company is.
对我来说，marketing 讲的是价值观。这是一个非常复杂的世界。这个世界非常嘈杂，我们没有机会让人们记住我们太多。没有哪家公司能做到。
1年前划的重点是下一句，Attention Is All You Need，最好是高度压缩、简单优雅又到处适用的价值观。
And so we have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us. Now, Apple, fortunately, is one of the half-a-dozen best brands in the whole world—right up there with Nike, Disney, Coke, Sony. It is one of the greats of the greats, not just in this country but all around the globe.
因此，我们必须清楚我们希望他们了解我们的哪些信息。幸运的是，苹果是全球六大最佳品牌之一——与耐克、迪士尼、可口可乐、索尼齐名。它是伟大品牌中的伟大品牌，不仅在这个国家，在全球范围内都是如此。
贝佐斯在一个备忘录中列了一个相似的表，事实上对自己有怀疑不等于能想明白，已经在错误的路径上走了很远，最好的方式不是成为乔布斯，参考：《2011 Amazon.The Everything Store-Amazon.Love》。
Some big companies develop ardent fan bases, are widely loved by their customers, and are even perceived as cool,’ he wrote. For different reasons, in different ways and to different degrees, companies like Apple, Nike, Disney, Google, Whole Foods, Costco and even UPS strike me as examples of large companies that are well- liked by their customers.”
“有些大公司拥有狂热粉丝群体，深受顾客喜爱，甚至被认为很酷，”他写道，“基于不同的原因、以不同的方式、在不同程度上，像苹果、耐克、迪士尼、谷歌、Whole Foods、好市多，甚至UPS，都是客户普遍喜欢的大型企业。”
On the other end of spectrum, he added, companies like Walmart, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, and ExxonMobil tended to be feared.
在光谱的另一端，他补充道，沃尔玛、微软、高盛和埃克森美孚这类公司往往令人畏惧。
But even a great brand needs investment and caring if it’s going to retain its relevance and vitality. And the Apple brand has clearly suffered from neglect in this area in the last few years. And we need to bring it back. The way to do that is not to talk about speeds and feeds. It’s not to talk about MIPS and megahertz. It’s not to talk about why we are better than Windows. The dairy industry tried for twenty years to convince you that milk was good for you. It’s a lie, but they tried anyway. And the sales were going like this [hand mimics a line running down and to the right]. And then they tried “Got Milk?” and the sales started going like this [hand goes up and to the right]. “Got Milk?” doesn’t even talk about the product! As a matter of fact, the focus is on the absence of the product.
即使是一个伟大的品牌，如果想保持其相关性和活力，也需要投资和关注。而在过去几年里，苹果品牌显然在这方面被忽视了。我们需要将它重新带回正轨。要做到这一点，不是通过谈论速度和性能参数，不是通过讨论MIPS和兆赫兹，也不是通过说我们为什么比Windows更好。乳制品行业用了二十年的时间试图说服你牛奶对你有好处。这是个谎言，但他们还是努力了。然而，销售额却在持续下滑【手势模拟出一条向右下方倾斜的线】。然后他们推出了“Got Milk?”的广告，销售额开始上升【手势模拟出一条向右上方倾斜的线】。“Got Milk?”广告甚至没有谈论产品！事实上，广告的重点在于产品的缺失。
雷军，以及一帮跟相似的都喜欢做的事，喜欢这么做是因为没有更好的想法，换一种说法，没有正确价值观的指引，公司所强调的这些偏离正确方向的说辞等同于错误激励，总有一天把路走偏了，参考：《I.H.183.Warren Buffett.Wrong Incentives》。
But the best example of all, and one of the greatest jobs of marketing that the universe has ever seen, is Nike. Remember: Nike sells a commodity! They sell shoes! And yet when you think of Nike, you feel something different than a shoe company. In their ads, as you know, they don’t ever talk about the products. They don’t ever tell you about their air soles, and why they are better than Reebok’s air soles. What does Nike do in their advertising? They honor great athletes, and they honor great athletics. That’s who they are. That’s what they are about.
但所有例子中最好的一个，也是宇宙中最伟大的营销工作之一，就是耐克。记住：耐克销售的是商品！他们卖鞋子！然而，当你想到耐克时，你感受到的却与鞋公司不同。在他们的广告中，正如你所知道的，他们从不谈论产品。他们从不告诉你他们的气垫鞋底，以及为什么它们比锐步的气垫鞋底更好。耐克在广告中做什么？他们尊敬伟大的运动员，尊敬伟大的体育精神。这就是他们。这就是他们所代表的。
Apple spends a fortune on advertising. You’d never know it. You’d never know it.
苹果在广告上花费了巨额资金。你永远不会知道。你永远不会知道。
So when I got here, Apple had just fired their agency, and there was a competition with twenty-three agencies, and, you know, four years from now, we would pick one. We blew that up, and we hired Chiat/Day, the ad agency I was fortunate enough to work with several years ago. We created some award-winning work, including the commercial voted the best ad ever made, “1984,” by advertising professionals.
当我来到这里时，苹果刚刚解雇了他们的广告代理机构，并与二十三家代理机构展开竞争，你知道，可能要四年后我们才会选出一个代理。我们打破了这种局面，重新聘用了Chiat/Day广告公司，这家广告公司是我几年前有幸合作过的。我们一起创造了一些屡获殊荣的作品，包括被广告业界人士评为史上最佳广告的“1984”商业广告。
We started working about eight weeks ago. The question we asked was, “Our customers want to know: Who is Apple, and what is it that we stand for? Where do we fit in this world?”
我们大约八周前开始工作。我们问的问题是：“我们的客户想知道：苹果是谁，我们代表什么？我们在这个世界中处于什么位置？”
And what we’re about isn’t making boxes for people to get their jobs done, although we do that well. We do that better than almost anybody, in some cases.
我们所追求的并不仅仅是制造让人们完成工作的盒子，尽管我们做得很好。在某些情况下，我们做得比几乎任何人都要好。
But Apple is about something more than that. Apple, at the core—its core value—is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. That’s what we believe.
但苹果的意义不仅仅如此。苹果的核心——其核心价值——是我们相信有激情的人可以让世界变得更好。这就是我们的信念。
Make something wonderful，Put Something Back。
And we’ve had the opportunity to work with people like that. We’ve had the opportunity to work with people like you, with software developers, with customers, who have done it—in some big and some small ways.
我们有机会与这样的人合作。我们有机会与像您这样的软件开发人员、客户合作，他们在某些大大小小的方面都做到了。
And we believe that in this world, people can change it for the better. And that those people that are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones that actually do.
我们相信，在这个世界上，人们可以使其变得更好。而那些疯狂到认为自己能够改变世界的人，正是那些真正做到的人。
And so, what we’re going to do, in our first brand-marketing campaign in several years, is to get back to that core value. A lot of things have changed. The market is a totally different place than it was a decade ago. And Apple’s totally different, and Apple’s place in it is totally different. And believe me: the products, and the distribution strategy, and manufacturing are totally different—and we understand that. But values and core values: those things shouldn’t change. The things that Apple believed in at its core are the same things that Apple really stands for today. And so we wanted to find a way to communicate this. And what we have is something that I am very moved by. It honors those people who have changed the world. Some of them are living. Some of them are not. But the ones that aren’t, as you’ll see, you know that if they ever used a computer, it would have been a Mac.
因此，我们在几年内第一次品牌营销活动中要做的，就是回归那个核心价值。很多事情都发生了变化。市场与十年前完全不同。苹果也完全不同，苹果在其中的位置也完全不同。相信我：产品、分销策略和制造都是完全不同的——我们对此有清晰的认识。但价值观和核心价值观：这些东西不应该改变。苹果在其核心信仰的东西，正是今天苹果真正代表的东西。因此，我们想找到一种方式来传达这一点。而我们所拥有的，是让我非常感动的东西。它向那些改变世界的人致敬。其中一些人还在世，一些人则不在。但那些不在的人，正如你将看到的，你知道如果他们曾经使用过电脑，那一定是 Mac。
And the theme of the campaign is “Think Different.” It’s honoring the people who think different and who move this world forward. It is what we are about. It touches the soul of this company.
这次活动的主题是“Think Different.”。它在向那些与众不同、推动世界前进的人致敬。这就是我们的宗旨。这触动了公司的灵魂。
So I’m going to go ahead and roll it, and I hope that you feel the same way about it that I do.
所以我将继续进行，希望你们对它的感觉和我一样。
[Steve runs the video.] 史蒂夫播放视频。
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
“致那些疯狂的人。那些不合群的人。那些叛逆者。那些麻烦制造者。那些圆形的钉子在方形的孔里。那些以不同方式看待事物的人。他们不喜欢规则。并且对现状毫无尊重。你可以引用他们，反对他们，赞美或诋毁他们。唯一不能做的就是忽视他们。因为他们改变了事物。他们推动了人类的进步。虽然有些人可能把他们视为疯狂的人，但我们看到的是天才。因为那些疯狂到认为自己可以改变世界的人，正是那些真正做到的人。”
7、《1998-05-04 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
79. Difficult to get capital out of a sub-par business
从低于平均水平的业务里把资本“解救出来”很难
CHARLIE MUNGER: And your other question, you said, why is it that these investors accept below-average results? Well, in the nature of things, approximately half the investors are going to get below-average results. They didn’t exactly accept it in advance. It’s just the way it turned out.
CHARLIE MUNGER：你另一个问题是，为什么这些投资者会接受低于平均的结果？从事物本性看，大约一半的投资者最终会拿到低于平均的结果。他们并不是事先“接受”了，只是事实发展成了那样。
WARREN BUFFETT: And the money tends to be fairly captive, once it’s in a company. I mean, it takes a lot — if you have a business that gets subnormal returns over time, there’s a big threshold in terms of either a takeover, or a proxy fight, or something like that to unleash the capital. So, money that’s tied up in an unprofitable business, or a sub-profitable business, is likely to stay tied up for a good period of time. Eventually something will probably correct it. But capitalism does not operate so efficiently as to move capital around promptly when it’s misallocated. We are in a better position to do that when Berkshire owns a company. And obviously, we’re in no position to do it — because it involves something we don’t want to do — if we own it through some other enterprise. We just sell to somebody else who takes another — who takes our chair — at the table, in effect.
WARREN BUFFETT：而且一旦资金进入一家公司，往往就“被圈住”了。也就是说，如果一门生意长期回报低于正常水平，要想通过并购、代理权之争等方式把资本“解放”出来，往往需要跨过很高的门槛。困在亏损或低效业务里的资金，通常会被困相当长时间。最终或许会出现纠偏，但资本主义并不高效到“错配一出现，资本立刻就能搬家”。当 Berkshire 全资拥有一家企业时，我们会更有条件去做这件事。而如果只是通过持股的方式拥有它——这往往意味着要做我们不想做的事——我们当然就做不到了；我们只会把股份卖给愿意接手我们“桌上座位”的人。
会出现大量需要应付的事，越来越多。
8、《1998-05-04 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we discount at the long rate just to have a standard of measurement across all businesses. But we would take the company that is spending the money as it comes in, and they don’t get credit for gross cash flow, they get credit for whatever net cash is left every year.
沃伦·巴菲特： 我们以长期利率作为折现率，只是为了对所有企业采用一个统一的衡量标准。但对于那些随着收入进来就花掉资金的公司，我们不会依据总现金流给出价值，而是依据每年剩余的净现金流。
But of course, if they’re spending the money wisely, even though you have to discount it for more years, the growth in cash development should offset that or they weren’t investing it wisely.
当然，如果他们将资金用在明智的投资上，即使需要折现更多的年份，现金增长所带来的收益应该能弥补这种支出，否则说明他们的投资并不明智。
The best business is one that gives you more and more money every year without putting up anything to get it, or very little. And we’ve got some businesses like that.
最好的生意是每年给你越来越多的钱，而你几乎不需要投入额外的资金来实现这些收益。我们有一些这样的公司。
The second-best business is a business that also gives you more and more money. It takes more money, but the rate at which you invest — reinvest — the money to get that growth is a very satisfactory rate.
第二好的生意是同样每年给你更多的钱，但需要投入更多资金。然而，这些资金再投资所获得的增长率是非常令人满意的。
The worst business of all is the one that grows a lot, and where you’re forced — forced, in effect — forced to grow to stay in the game at all, and where you’re reinvesting the capital at a very low rate of return. And sometimes people are in those businesses without knowing about it.
最糟糕的生意是那种增长很快，但实际上你被迫投入资金来维持竞争力，而这些资金的再投资回报率却非常低。有时，人们进入这样的业务而毫不知情。
But in terms of discounting, in terms of calculating intrinsic value, you look at the cash that is expected to be generated and you discount back at — in our case, we use the long-term Treasury rate. That doesn’t mean that you pay the amount that that present value calculation leads to, but it means that you use that as a common yardstick, that Treasury rate.
至于折现和计算内在价值，我们会根据预计产生的现金流并使用长期国债利率进行折现。这并不意味着你就要支付折现计算得出的现值金额，而是将国债利率作为一个统一的衡量标准。
And that means that if somebody is reinvesting all their cash flow the next five years, they’d better have some very big figures coming in down the road. Because at some day, a financial asset has to give you back cash to justify you laying out cash for it now.
这也意味着，如果某家公司未来五年将所有现金流再投资，那么之后必须要有巨大的现金流回报才行。因为任何金融资产最终必须返还现金，才能证明你现在的现金投入是合理的。
Investing is the art, essentially, of laying out cash now to get a whole lot more cash later on, and something at some point better deliver cash.
投资本质上是现在支付现金以期未来获得更多现金的艺术，而任何资产在某个时刻必须回报现金。
Ben Graham in his class, we used to talk about what he called the Frozen Corporation. And the Frozen Corporation was a company whose charter prohibited it from ever paying anything to its owners, or ever being liquidated, or ever being sold and —
本·格雷厄姆在他的课堂上曾谈到他所称的“冻结的公司”。这种公司章程规定禁止向所有者支付任何款项，也不允许清算或出售。
CHARLIE MUNGER: Sort of like a Hollywood producer. (Laughter)
查理·芒格： 有点像好莱坞的制片人。（笑声）
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. And the question was, what was such an enterprise worth? Well, that’s sort of a theoretical question, but it forces you to think about the realities of what business is all about. And business is all about putting out money today to get back more money later on.
沃伦·巴菲特： 是的。问题是这样的企业值多少钱？这虽然是个理论问题，但它迫使你思考商业的本质。而商业的本质是今天投入资金，未来获得更多回报。
Charlie?
查理？
CHARLIE MUNGER: I do think there is an interesting problem that you raise, because I think there is a class of businesses where the eventual cash back part of the equation tends to be an illusion. I think there are businesses where you just keep pouring it in and pouring it in, and then all of a sudden it doesn’t work, and no cash comes back.
查理·芒格： 我确实认为你提到的这个问题很有趣，因为我觉得有一类企业，最终的现金回报往往是种幻觉。这些企业需要你持续投入，直到某一天突然无法运作，再也没有现金回来了。
And what makes our life interesting is trying to avoid those and get in the alternative kind that drowns you in cash. (Laughter)
让我们的生活变得有趣的地方在于，我们努力避免这些企业，选择另一种“用现金淹没你”的企业。（笑声）
WARREN BUFFETT: The one figure we regard as utter nonsense is the so-called EBITDA. I mean, the idea of looking at a figure before the cash requirements and merely staying in the same place — and there usually are — any business with significant fixed assets almost always has with it a concomitant requirement that major cash be reinvested in order simply to stay in the same place competitively and in terms of unit sales — to look at some figure that is before — that is stated before those cash requirements, is absolute folly and it’s been misused by lots of people to sell lots of merchandise in recent years.
沃伦·巴菲特： 我们认为完全荒谬的一个指标就是所谓的 EBITDA（税息折旧及摊销前利润）。它忽视了现金需求，而实际上任何拥有大量固定资产的企业，几乎都需要大量现金再投资，仅仅是为了保持竞争力和销量不下滑。而看 EBITDA 这种未扣除这些现金需求的指标，是绝对愚蠢的，但近年来很多人用它来误导并卖掉大量商品。
CHARLIE MUNGER: It’s not to the credit of the investment banking fraternity that it has learned to speak in terms of EBITDA. I mean, the idea of using a measure that you know is nonsense, and then piling additional reasoning on that false assumption, it’s not creditable intellectual performance. And then once everybody is talking in terms of nonsense, why, it gets to be standard. (Laughter)
查理·芒格： 投资银行行业将 EBITDA 奉为准则并不光彩。明知道这是个荒谬的指标，还以此为基础进行额外推理，这是不值得称道的智力表现。一旦所有人都开始用荒谬的逻辑说话，这种荒谬就变成了标准。（笑声）
这个说法很好，在错误的假设中越走越远，更有意思的是对复杂有心理上的偏好。
CHARLIE MUNGER: I’ve heard Warren say since very early in his life that the difference between a good business and a bad business is usually the good business just throws up one easy decision after another, whereas the bad business gives you a horrible choice where the decision is hard to make and, is this really going to work? And is it worth the money?
查理·芒格：从很早的时候起，我就听沃伦说过，好的生意和坏的生意之间的区别通常在于，好的生意会不断抛出一个又一个简单的决策，而坏的生意则会让你面临一个又一个糟糕的选择，让人难以决断：“这真的会有效吗？值得投入这笔钱吗？”
If you want a system for determining which is a good business and which is a bad business, just see which one is throwing the management bloopers time after time after time.
如果你想要一个评估什么是好生意，什么是坏生意的系统，那就看看哪种生意不断地让管理层轻松做出明智决策。
Easy decisions. It’s not very hard for us to decide to open a new See’s store in a new shopping center in California that’s obviously going to succeed. It’s a blooper.
简单的决策。比如，我们决定在加州一个显然会成功的新购物中心开一家See’s店，这并不难。这就是轻松的选择。
On the other hand, there are plenty of businesses where the decisions that come across your desk are just awful. And those businesses, by and large, don’t work very well.
另一方面，有许多生意的决策非常糟糕。而这些生意整体表现通常不太好。
WARREN BUFFETT: I’ve been on the board of Coke now for 10 years, and we’ve had project after project come up, and there’s always an ROI. But it doesn’t really make much difference to me, because in the end almost any decision you make that solidifies and extends the dominance of Coke around the world in an industry that’s growing by a significant percentage, and which has great inherent underlying profitability, the decisions are going to be right and you’ve got people there that will execute them well.
沃伦·巴菲特：我已经在可口可乐董事会待了10年，期间我们审议了一个又一个项目，每个项目都有投资回报率（ROI）的计算。但这对我来说并不重要，因为最终，只要你做出的决策能巩固和扩大可口可乐在全球的主导地位，而这个行业的增长率又非常可观，且具有巨大的内在盈利能力，那么这些决策大概率是正确的，而且公司有优秀的人去很好地执行它们。
CHARLIE MUNGER: You’re saying you get blooper after blooper.
查理·芒格：你的意思是，你们一个又一个地做出简单的明智决策。
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. And then Charlie and I sat on USAir, and the decisions would come along, and it would be a question of, you know, do you buy the Eastern Shuttle, or whatever it may be?
沃伦·巴菲特：是的。而查理和我在USAir的董事会时，做出的决策就完全不同了，比如“你是否要买下东部航线”，或者其他类似问题。
And you’re running out of money. And yet to play the game and to keep the traffic flow with connecting passengers, I mean, you just have to continually make these decisions — whether you spend a hundred million dollars more on some airport.
而且你的资金快用完了。但为了参与竞争并维持转机乘客的流量，你必须不断做出这些决策——比如是否再在某个机场投入一亿美元。
And they’re agony because, again, you don’t have any real choice, but you also don’t have any real conviction that it’s going to translate — those choices are going to — or lack of choices — are going to translate themselves into real money later on.
这些决策很痛苦，因为你其实没有真正的选择，而且你也没有真正的信心认为这些选择——或者说缺乏选择——最终会带来实际的收益。
So one game is just forcing you to push more money in to the table with no idea of what kind of a hand you hold, and the other one you get a chance to push more money in, knowing that you’ve got a winning hand all the way.
所以，一个是你被迫投入更多资金，但对自己手上的牌完全没底；而另一个则是你有机会投入更多资金，同时知道自己从头到尾都握着一副好牌。
Charlie? Why’d we buy USAir? (Laughter)
查理？我们为什么会买USAir？（笑声）
Could’ve bought more Coke.
我们本可以买更多可口可乐的股票。
98. How Phil Fisher’s “scuttlebutt” method changed Buffett’s life
菲尔·费雪的“边界调查法”如何改变了巴菲特的人生
WARREN BUFFETT: Area 5?
沃伦·巴菲特：请第5区提问？
AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name is Travis Heath (PH). I’m from Dallas, Texas.
观众提问：我叫特拉维斯·希思（音），来自德克萨斯州达拉斯。
And my question regards what Phil Fisher referred to as “scuttlebutt.” When you’ve identified a business that you consider to warrant further investigation — more intense investigation — how much time do you spend commonly, both in terms of total hours and in terms of the span in weeks or months that you perform that investigation over?
我的问题是关于菲尔·费雪提到的“边界调查法”。当您确定一家值得进一步深入调查的企业时，通常您会花多少时间进行这项调查？总时长是多少？调查通常会持续几周或几个月？
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, the answer to that question is that now I spend practically none because I’ve done it in the past. And the one advantage of allocating capital is that an awful lot of what you do is cumulative in nature, so that you do get continuing benefits out of things that you’d done earlier.
沃伦·巴菲特：嗯，这个问题的答案是，我现在几乎不花时间了，因为过去我已经做过这些调查了。而资本配置的一大优势在于，很多事情的性质是累积性的，因此你会从之前做过的事情中持续受益。
So by now, I’m probably fairly familiar with most of the businesses that might qualify for investment at Berkshire.
因此，到现在为止，我可能已经相当熟悉那些可能符合伯克希尔投资标准的业务了。
But when I started out, and for a long time I used to do a lot of what Phil Fisher described — I followed his scuttlebutt method. And I don’t think you can do too much of it.
但在我刚起步的时候，以及很长一段时间里，我做了很多菲尔·费雪描述的事情——我遵循了他的“边界调查法”。而且我认为这方面的调查永远不会做得过多。
Now, the general premise of why you’re interested in something should be 80 percent of it or thereabouts. I mean, you don’t want to be chasing down every idea that way, so you should have a strong presumption.
不过，你感兴趣的某件事情的总体前提应该占到80%左右。我的意思是，你不想用这种方法追踪每一个想法，所以你需要有一个强有力的假设前提。
You should be like a basketball coach who runs into a seven-footer on the street. I mean, you’re interested to start with; now you have to find out if you can keep him in school, if he’s coordinated, and all that sort of thing. That’s the scuttlebutt aspect of it.
你应该像一个篮球教练在街上遇到一个七英尺高的球员一样。我的意思是，你一开始就应该感兴趣；然后你需要了解他是否能留在学校，是否协调，诸如此类的事情。这就是“边界调查法”的一个方面。
But I believe that as you’re acquiring knowledge about industries in general, companies specifically, that there really isn’t anything like first doing some reading about them, and then getting out and talking to competitors, and customers, and suppliers, and ex-employees, and current employees, and whatever it may be.
但我相信，在你获取行业一般知识和具体公司信息时，确实没有什么比先阅读资料，然后与竞争对手、客户、供应商、前雇员、现雇员以及其他相关人士交流更有效的方法了。
And you will learn a lot. But it should be the last 20 percent or 10 percent. I mean, you don’t want to get too impressed by that, because you really want to start with a business where you think the economics are good, where they look like seven-footers, and then you want to go out with a scuttlebutt approach to possibly reject your original hypothesis.
你会从中学到很多。但这应该是最后的20%或10%的工作。我的意思是，你不想对这些印象过深，因为你确实应该从一家你认为经济状况良好的企业开始，就像那些七英尺高的球员一样，然后用“边界调查法”来验证或否定你的原始假设。
And if you talk to a bunch of people on an industry and you ask them what competitor they fear the most, and why they fear them, and all of that sort of thing. You know, who would they use the silver bullet of Andy Grove’s on and so on, you’re going to learn a lot about it.
如果你和一群业内人士交谈，问他们最害怕的竞争对手是谁，为什么害怕，以及相关的事情，比如他们会用“安迪·格罗夫的银弹”瞄准谁，你会从中学到很多东西。
You’ll probably know more about the industry than most of the people in it when you get through, because you’ll bring an independent perspective to it, and you’ll be listening to everything everyone says rather than coming in with these preconceived notions and just sort of listening to your own truths after a while.
等你完成调查时，你可能比业内大多数人对行业的了解更多，因为你带来了一个独立的视角，并且会倾听每个人的看法，而不是抱着预设立场，仅仅听从自己一开始的成见。
I advise it. I don’t really do it much anymore. I do it a little bit, and I talked in the annual report about how when we made the decision on keeping the American Express when we exchanged our Percs for common stock in 1994, I was using the scuttlebutt approach when I talked to Frank Olson.
我建议大家使用这种方法。我现在几乎不怎么用了，只是偶尔用一下。我在年度报告中提到过，当我们1994年决定将我们的优先股换成美国运通的普通股时，我就是通过与弗兰克·奥尔森的对话使用了“边界调查法”。
I couldn’t have talked to a better guy than Frank Olson. Frank Olson, running Hertz Corporation, lots of experience at United Airlines, and a consumer marketing guy by nature. I mean, he understands business.
没有人比弗兰克·奥尔森更适合交谈了。他经营着赫兹公司，有丰富的United Airlines经验，本质上是一个消费品营销专家。他真的很懂生意。
And when I asked him how strong the American Express card was and what were the strengths and the weaknesses of it, and who was coming along after it, and so on, I mean, he could give me an answer in five minutes that would be better than I could accomplish in hours and hours and hours or weeks of roaming around and doing other things.
当我问他美国运通卡有多强，它的优势和劣势是什么，以及未来可能有哪些竞争对手时，他能在五分钟内给我一个比我花数小时甚至数周时间调查得到的答案更好、更全面的答案。
So you can learn from people. And Frank was a user of it. I mean, Frank was paying X percent to American Express for his Hertz cars. And Frank doesn’t like to pay out money, so why was he paying that? And if he was paying more than he was paying on Master Charge or Visa, why was he paying more? And then what could he do about it?
你可以从人那里学到很多东西。弗兰克自己就是美国运通的用户。他为赫兹的租车业务向美国运通支付了X%的费用。而弗兰克并不喜欢支付额外的费用，那么他为什么愿意支付这笔钱？如果这比他支付给万事达或Visa的费用更高，他为什么还愿意支付？他还能做些什么？
I mean, you just keep asking questions.
我的意思是，你需要不断地问问题。
And I guess Davy [Lorimer Davidson] explained that in that video we had ahead of time. I’m very grateful to him for doing that, because that was a real effort for him.
我想洛瑞默·戴维森在我们之前的视频中解释过这一点。我非常感激他这么做，因为这对他来说确实是一次重要的付出。
But that was really what I was doing back in 1951 when I visited him down in Washington, because I was trying to figure out why people would insure with GEICO rather than with the companies that they were already insuring with, and how permanent that advantage was.
但实际上，这正是我1951年去华盛顿拜访他时所做的事情。当时我试图弄清楚，人们为什么会选择和GEICO投保，而不是继续使用他们已经在使用的保险公司，这种优势能持续多久。
You know, what other things could you do with that advantage? And you know, there were just a lot of questions I wanted to ask him, and he was terrific in giving me the answer. It, you know, changed my life in a major way. So I have nobody to thank but Davy on that.
这种优势还能带来什么？我有很多问题想问他，而他给了我非常出色的答案。这在很大程度上改变了我的人生。所以，这方面我只能感谢戴维。
But that’s the scuttlebutt method and I do advise it.
但这就是“边界调查法”，而且我确实建议大家使用它。
Charlie?
查理？
CHARLIE MUNGER: Nothing to add.
查理·芒格：无可补充。
114. Due diligence is useless and misses the point
尽职调查无用且抓错重点
WARREN BUFFETT: Area 9, please.
沃伦·巴菲特： 第九区，请提问。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good afternoon. My name is Fred Strasheim (PH) and I’m from here in Omaha.
观众： 下午好。我是弗雷德·斯特拉斯海姆（音），来自这里的奥马哈。
I have a question about your acquisition methodology. And I was intrigued to read in your annual report about your acquisition of Star Furniture.
我想问您关于收购方法的问题。我在您的年报中读到您收购Star Furniture的过程，感到很有趣。
And as I understand the process you followed, Mr. Buffett, you met with Mr. — or you — I’m sorry, you reviewed financials for a brief period, liked what you saw, then you met with Mr. Melvyn Wolff for two hours and struck a deal. And you wrote you had no need to check leases, work out employment contracts, et cetera.
据我所知，巴菲特先生，您的过程是这样的：您花了一小段时间审阅财务数据，觉得不错，然后与梅尔文·沃尔夫先生会面两个小时并达成协议。您写道，您认为不需要检查租约、制定雇佣合同等事宜。
WARREN BUFFETT: Right.
沃伦·巴菲特： 没错。
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think that most companies, when they do acquisitions, would feel the need to do a significant amount of legal due diligence, to do things like check the leases, check into things like undisclosed environmental liability, or perhaps threatened litigation.
观众： 我认为大多数公司在进行收购时，会觉得需要做大量的法律尽职调查，比如检查租约、调查未披露的环境责任或可能的法律诉讼等事项。
And I guess my question is, have you ever been burned by your approach?
所以我的问题是，您的这种方法是否让您吃过亏？
WARREN BUFFETT: We’ve been burned by the — we’ve been burned only in the sense that we’ve made mistakes on judging the future economics of the business, which would’ve had nothing to do with due diligence.
沃伦·巴菲特： 我们吃过亏，但仅限于在判断企业未来经济状况时犯了错误，而这与尽职调查无关。
We regard what people normally refer to “due diligence” as, as really sort of boilerplate in most cases.
我们认为，人们通常所说的“尽职调查”，在大多数情况下实际上只是例行公事。
It’s a process that big companies go through. And they feel they have to go through it. And they’re ignoring — oftentimes, in our view — they’re ignoring what really counts, which is evaluating the people they’re getting in with, and evaluating the economics of the business. That’s 99 percent of the deal.
这是大公司会走的一个流程。他们觉得必须这么做。但他们忽视了——在我们看来经常忽视了——真正重要的东西，那就是评估与他们合作的人，以及评估企业的经济状况。这占交易的99%。
You know, you may run into an environmental liability problem, you know, one time in a hundred, or you may, you know, you may find a bad lease.
你可能会遇到环境责任问题，这种情况大概百次中有一次，或者你可能会发现一个糟糕的租约。
I asked Melvin about, you know, “Do you have any bad leases?” I mean, that’s the easiest way to do it. And I could read them all and try and look for every clause or something, but it isn’t going to — you know, that is not the problem.
我问梅尔文，“你有没有什么糟糕的租约？”这是最简单的方法。我可以全部读一遍，试图寻找每一条条款或问题，但这不会——你知道，这不是问题的关键。
We’ve made bad — lots of bad deals. We made a bad deal when we bought Hochschild Kohn, for example, the department store operation, back in 1966. But it had — fine people — but we were wrong on the economics of the business.
我们确实做过糟糕的交易，很多糟糕的交易。例如，在1966年，我们收购百货商店Hochschild Kohn时就是一次糟糕的交易。当时有很好的人在经营，但我们对业务的经济状况判断错误。
But the leases didn’t make any difference. You know, that sort of thing just was not important. And I can’t recall any time that what other people refer to as due diligence would’ve avoided a bad deal for us.
但租约并没有什么影响。这种事情根本不重要。我想不起有任何时候，其他人所说的尽职调查能帮我们避免一笔糟糕的交易。
CHARLIE MUNGER: I can’t either.
查理·芒格： 我也想不起有过这样的情况。
WARREN BUFFETT: No. That’s 30-some years. And I —
沃伦·巴菲特： 没有。这是三十多年来的经验。并且——
The key thing — you just don’t want to do — I go — I’m on various public company boards — I’ve been on 19 public company boards — and you know, their idea of the due diligence is to send the lawyers out and have a bunch of investment bankers come in and make presentations and all that.
关键是——你不想做的事情就是——我在不同的上市公司董事会中任职——我曾在19个上市公司董事会任职——你知道，他们所谓的尽职调查就是派律师去，然后让一群投资银行家进来做演示之类的事情。
And I regard that as terribly diversionary, because the board sits there, you know, entranced by all of that, and everybody reporting how wonderful this thing is and how they checked out patents and all that sort of thing. And nobody is focusing really on where the business is going to be in five or 10 years.
我认为这完全是分散注意力，因为董事会坐在那里，被这些东西迷住了，每个人都在汇报这件事多么好，他们检查了专利等等。而没有人真正关注这个业务五年或十年后会怎样。
You know, business judgment about economics — and people to some extent — but the business economics — that is 99 percent of deal making. And the rest, people may do it for their protection. I think too often they do it as a crutch just to go through with the deal that they want to go through with anyway, and of course all the professionals know that. So believe me, they come back with the diligence, whether due or not. And — (Laughter)
你知道，对经济状况的商业判断——以及某种程度上的对人的判断——但关键是业务的经济状况——这是交易中99%的关键。剩下的，人们可能出于自我保护而做这些事。我认为他们太常把尽职调查当成一种借口，只是为了推进他们本来就想推进的交易。当然，所有专业人士都知道这一点。所以相信我，无论尽职调查是否必要，他们都会把结果带回来。（笑）
还在于有一个正确的思维框架，对人的判断以及对生意的判断。
We are not big fans of that. I don’t know how many deals we’ve made over the years, but I cannot think of anything that traditional due diligence has had a thing to do with.
我们不是这种方式的忠实拥护者。我不知道这些年来我们做了多少笔交易，但我想不出有哪笔交易与传统的尽职调查有关。
CHARLIE MUNGER: No, we’ve had surprises on the favorable side a couple of times —
查理·芒格： 不过，有几次我们在积极方面得到了意外惊喜——
WARREN BUFFETT: That is true. That is true.
沃伦·巴菲特： 确实如此，确实如此。
The kind of people that we’ve generally dealt with have usually told us the bad things first and good things after we made the deal.
我们通常打交道的人，往往会先告诉我们坏消息，而好消息是在交易完成后才告诉我们的。
We made a deal with a fellow over in Rockford in 1969, Eugene Abegg, Illinois National Bank and Trust Company. I made that deal in a couple of hours and, I mean, there just wasn’t any way that Gene was going to be hiding anything bad.
1969年，我们在罗克福德和尤金·阿贝格（Eugene Abegg）达成了一笔交易，他是伊利诺伊国家银行和信托公司的负责人。我在几个小时内就完成了这笔交易，我的意思是，吉恩不可能隐瞒任何坏消息。
For the next ten years when I went over there, every time I’d go to lunch he’d point out some building in town that we owned that wasn’t on the books, or some foundation we had that had money in it he hadn’t told me about.
在接下来的十年里，每次我去那里吃午餐时，他都会指出城里一些我们拥有但未记录在账上的建筑，或者告诉我一些我们有资金但他之前没提过的基金会。
And he even gave me some bills, one of which I carry in my pocket, that he had still sitting around that were issued by the bank that were our own money which he never told me about. We could cut them out like paper dolls. I mean, Gene was not a guy to show all his cards. (Laughter)
他甚至给了我一些钞票，其中一张我现在还放在口袋里，那是银行发行的我们自己的钱，但他从未告诉过我。我们甚至可以像剪纸一样把它们剪出来。我的意思是，吉恩并不是那种会把所有底牌都亮出来的人。（笑）
And those are the kind of people we’ve generally dealt with, and I would certainly say that Melvyn and [his sister] Shirley [Toomin] fit that description in spades.
这些人正是我们通常打交道的对象，我可以肯定地说，梅尔文和[他的妹妹]雪莉[图明]完全符合这个描述。
9、《2007-05-05 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
WARREN BUFFETT: I figured it out in 20 years, though. I’ll have to say that for myself. (Laughs)
沃伦·巴菲特：不过，我在 20 年内想明白了。我得为自己说这一点。（笑）
Twenty years, and I finally figured out I was in the wrong business.
二十年后，我终于明白我选错了行业。
But there are businesses — if you gave me first draft pick of all the CEOs in America and said it’s your job to run Ford Motor now or, you know, pick a company that’s in a terribly tough business, you know, I wouldn’t do it.
但是有些企业——如果你让我从所有美国的首席执行官中挑选第一顺位，并说现在你的工作是经营福特汽车公司，或者选择一家处于极其艰难行业的公司，我不会去做。
I mean, that it’s just too tough. They may get it solved, you know, if they get cooperation from unions and a whole bunch of things, but it will not be solely in the control of the CEO who has that job.
我的意思是，这实在是太难了。你知道，如果他们得到工会和一大堆事情的合作，他们可能会解决这个问题，但这不会仅仅由担任该职位的首席执行官控制。
He is dependent on too many good things happening outside to say that he alone can get the job, even if he’s the best in the world.
他过于依赖外界的好事来临，无法仅凭自己就能好这份工作，即使他是世界上最优秀的。
乔布斯回到苹果后再不想做To B的业务，他认为To C才是他真正想做的。
Businesses – The Great, the Good and the Gruesome
企业类型——极佳、良好与糟糕
Let’s take a look at what kind of businesses turn us on. And while we’re at it, let’s also discuss what we wish to avoid.
让我们看看什么样的企业会让我们眼前一亮。同时，也谈谈我们希望回避的公司类型。
Charlie and I look for companies that have a) a business we understand; b) favorable long-term economics; c) able and trustworthy management; and d) a sensible price tag. We like to buy the whole business or, if management is our partner, at least 80%. When control-type purchases of quality aren’t available, though, we are also happy to simply buy small portions of great businesses by way of stockmarket purchases. It’s better to have a part interest in the Hope Diamond than to own all of a rhinestone.
我和 Charlie 寻找具备以下特征的公司：a）我们看得懂的业务；b）长期经济特性良好；c）有能力且值得信赖的管理层；d）合理的价格标签。我们偏好买下整个公司，或者在管理层愿作我们伙伴时，至少持有 80%。当无法获得此类优质控股型收购时，我们也乐于通过二级市场购买伟大企业的一小部分股权。拥有一部分 Hope Diamond 要胜过把整块人造水晶握在手里。
A truly great business must have an enduring “moat” that protects excellent returns on invested capital. The dynamics of capitalism guarantee that competitors will repeatedly assault any business “castle” that is earning high returns. Therefore a formidable barrier such as a company’s being the lowcost producer (GEICO, Costco) or possessing a powerful world-wide brand (Coca-Cola, Gillette, American Express) is essential for sustained success. Business history is filled with “Roman Candles,” companies whose moats proved illusory and were soon crossed.
真正伟大的企业必须拥有可持续的“护城河”，以守护其出色的投入资本回报。资本主义的动力机制决定了：凡是能获得高回报的商业“城堡”，竞争者都会一再攻城。因此，像成为行业低成本生产者（GEICO、Costco）或拥有强大的全球品牌（Coca-Cola、Gillette、American Express）这样的坚固壁垒，是长期成功的关键。商业史充斥着“Roman Candles”式的公司——它们的护城河被证明是虚幻的，很快就被跨越。
Our criterion of “enduring” causes us to rule out companies in industries prone to rapid and continuous change. Though capitalism’s “creative destruction” is highly beneficial for society, it precludes investment certainty. A moat that must be continuously rebuilt will eventually be no moat at all.
我们强调“可持续”，这使我们排除那些处于快速且持续变革行业的公司。尽管资本主义的“创造性破坏”对社会大有裨益，但它排除了投资的确定性。若护城河必须不断重建，最终就等同于没有护城河。
Additionally, this criterion eliminates the business whose success depends on having a great manager. Of course, a terrific CEO is a huge asset for any enterprise, and at Berkshire we have an abundance of these managers. Their abilities have created billions of dollars of value that would never have materialized if typical CEOs had been running their businesses.
此外，这一标准也排除了那些成败系于“名帅”的企业。诚然，卓越的 CEO 对任何企业都是巨大的资产，Berkshire 也不乏此类经理人。他们的能力创造了数十亿美元的价值——若换作普通 CEO 掌舵，这些价值很可能根本不会出现。
But if a business requires a superstar to produce great results, the business itself cannot be deemed great. A medical partnership led by your area’s premier brain surgeon may enjoy outsized and growing earnings, but that tells little about its future. The partnership’s moat will go when the surgeon goes. You can count, though, on the moat of the Mayo Clinic to endure, even though you can’t name its CEO.
但是，如果一家企业要依赖“超级明星”才能取得卓越业绩，那么这家企业本身就称不上伟大。由本地顶尖脑外科医生领衔的医疗合伙机构，也许能获得超额且增长的收益，但这对其未来并无太多说明。一旦这位医生离开，合伙机构的护城河也随之消失。相反，你可以相信 Mayo Clinic 的护城河会持续存在，尽管你未必叫得出它的 CEO 名字。
Long-term competitive advantage in a stable industry is what we seek in a business. If that comes with rapid organic growth, great. But even without organic growth, such a business is rewarding. We will simply take the lush earnings of the business and use them to buy similar businesses elsewhere. There’s no rule that you have to invest money where you’ve earned it. Indeed, it’s often a mistake to do so: Truly great businesses, earning huge returns on tangible assets, can’t for any extended period reinvest a large portion of their earnings internally at high rates of return.
我们在企业中寻找的是：处于稳定行业中的长期竞争优势。如果还能伴随快速的内生增长，那当然更好。即便没有内生增长，这类企业同样值得拥有。我们会把企业丰厚的利润拿去在别处购买类似的企业。并没有“钱必须投回赚到它的地方”的规则。事实上，这样做往往是错误的：真正伟大的企业，凭借有形资产获得高额回报，但从长期看，它们无法把大部分盈利在内部以高回报率持续再投资。
Let’s look at the prototype of a dream business, our own See’s Candy. The boxed-chocolates industry in which it operates is unexciting: Per-capita consumption in the U.S. is extremely low and doesn’t grow. Many once-important brands have disappeared, and only three companies have earned more than token profits over the last forty years. Indeed, I believe that See’s, though it obtains the bulk of its revenues from only a few states, accounts for nearly half of the entire industry’s earnings.
以我们的 See’s Candy 这家“梦想企业”的原型为例。它所在的盒装巧克力行业并不吸引人：美国的人均消费极低且没有增长。许多曾经重要的品牌已消失，而在过去 40 年里，只有三家公司获得了超过象征性的利润。事实上，我相信 See’s 虽然主要收入只来自少数几个州，却贡献了整个行业近一半的利润。
At See’s, annual sales were 16 million pounds of candy when Blue Chip Stamps purchased the company in 1972. (Charlie and I controlled Blue Chip at the time and later merged it into Berkshire.) Last year See’s sold 31 million pounds, a growth rate of only 2% annually. Yet its durable competitive advantage, built by the See’s family over a 50-year period, and strengthened subsequently by Chuck Huggins and Brad Kinstler, has produced extraordinary results for Berkshire.
1972 年 Blue Chip Stamps 收购 See’s 时，其年度糖果销量为 1,600 万磅。（当时我和 Charlie 控制着 Blue Chip，后来将其并入 Berkshire。）去年 See’s 的销量为 3,100 万磅，年均增速仅 2%。然而，See’s 家族 50 年来打造的持久竞争优势，随后又由 Chuck Huggins 和 Brad Kinstler 进一步加强，为 Berkshire 带来了非凡的回报。
We bought See’s for $25 million when its sales were $30 million and pre-tax earnings were less than $5 million. The capital then required to conduct the business was $8 million. (Modest seasonal debt was also needed for a few months each year.) Consequently, the company was earning 60% pre-tax on invested capital. Two factors helped to minimize the funds required for operations. First, the product was sold for cash, and that eliminated accounts receivable. Second, the production and distribution cycle was short, which minimized inventories.
我们以 2,500 万美元买下 See’s 时，其销售额为 3,000 万美元，税前利润不到 500 万美元。当时经营业务所需资本为 800 万美元。（每年有几个月还需要少量季节性负债。）由此，公司在投入资本上的税前回报达 60%。两点因素帮助将经营所需资金降至最低：第一，产品现金销售，从而消除了应收账款；第二，生产与配送周期短，从而将存货压到最低。
Last year See’s sales were $383 million, and pre-tax profits were $82 million. The capital now required to run the business is $40 million. This means we have had to reinvest only $32 million since 1972 to handle the modest physical growth – and somewhat immodest financial growth – of the business. In the meantime pre-tax earnings have totaled $1.35 billion. All of that, except for the $32 million, has been sent to Berkshire (or, in the early years, to Blue Chip). After paying corporate taxes on the profits, we have used the rest to buy other attractive businesses. Just as Adam and Eve kick-started an activity that led to six billion humans, See’s has given birth to multiple new streams of cash for us. (The biblical command to “be fruitful and multiply” is one we take seriously at Berkshire.)
去年 See’s 的销售额为 3.83 亿美元，税前利润为 8,200 万美元。如今运营该业务所需资本为 4,000 万美元。这意味着自 1972 年以来，我们仅需再投资 3,200 万美元，便能支撑业务有限的物理扩张——以及相当“不有限”的财务扩张。同时期累计税前利润已达 13.5 亿美元。除这 3,200 万美元外，全部利润都上缴给了 Berkshire（早年则交给 Blue Chip）。在缴纳公司所得税后，我们用剩余资金去收购其他有吸引力的企业。正如 Adam and Eve 开启了最终导致 60 亿人口的活动一样，See’s 为我们“繁衍”出了多条新的现金流。（“要生养众多”这一圣经训令，在 Berkshire 我们是认真的。）
There aren’t many See’s in Corporate America. Typically, companies that increase their earnings from $5 million to $82 million require, say, $400 million or so of capital investment to finance their growth. That’s because growing businesses have both working capital needs that increase in proportion to sales growth and significant requirements for fixed asset investments.
在美国企业界，像 See’s 这样的公司并不多见。通常，将盈利从 500 万美元提升到 8,200 万美元的公司，往往需要大约 4 亿美元的资本性投入来支撑增长。原因在于，成长中的企业既有随销售增长按比例上升的营运资金需求，也有大量固定资产投入需求。
A company that needs large increases in capital to engender its growth may well prove to be a satisfactory investment. There is, to follow through on our example, nothing shabby about earning $82 million pre-tax on $400 million of net tangible assets. But that equation for the owner is vastly different from the See’s situation. It’s far better to have an ever-increasing stream of earnings with virtually no major capital requirements. Ask Microsoft or Google.
一家企业若需要大量增资来驱动增长，最终也完全可能成为一项令人满意的投资。延续上面的例子，用 4 亿美元净有形资产赚到 8,200 万美元税前利润，并不寒碜。但对所有者而言，这与 See’s 的等式有天壤之别。更理想的是几乎不需要重大资本开支，却能源源不断扩大盈利的企业——去问问 Microsoft 或 Google 就知道了。
One example of good, but far from sensational, business economics is our own FlightSafety. This company delivers benefits to its customers that are the equal of those delivered by any business that I know of. It also possesses a durable competitive advantage: Going to any other flight-training provider than the best is like taking the low bid on a surgical procedure.
一个“良好但称不上惊艳”的商业经济学范例是我们的 FlightSafety。这家公司为客户创造的价值不亚于我所知的任何企业。它也具备持久的竞争优势：在飞行训练中选择非最优供应商，就像外科手术只图最低报价。
Nevertheless, this business requires a significant reinvestment of earnings if it is to grow. When we purchased FlightSafety in 1996, its pre-tax operating earnings were $111 million, and its net investment in fixed assets was $570 million. Since our purchase, depreciation charges have totaled $923 million. But capital expenditures have totaled $1.635 billion, most of that for simulators to match the new airplane models that are constantly being introduced. (A simulator can cost us more than $12 million, and we have 273 of them.) Our fixed assets, after depreciation, now amount to $1.079 billion. Pre-tax operating earnings in 2007 were $270 million, a gain of $159 million since 1996. That gain gave us a good, but far from See’s-like, return on our incremental investment of $509 million.
尽管如此，这项业务若要增长，就需要对盈利进行大量再投资。我们在 1996 年收购 FlightSafety 时，其税前经营利润为 1.11 亿美元，固定资产净投资为 5.7 亿美元。自收购以来，累计折旧为 9.23 亿美元；但资本开支合计达到 16.35 亿美元，其中大部分用于采购与不断推出的新机型相匹配的模拟机。（一台模拟机成本可超过 1,200 万美元，我们共拥有 273 台。）目前我们的固定资产（扣除折旧后）为 10.79 亿美元。2007 年税前经营利润为 2.7 亿美元，较 1996 年增加 1.59 亿美元。就这 5.09 亿美元的增量投资而言，回报“不错”，但远非 See’s 式的卓越。
Consequently, if measured only by economic returns, FlightSafety is an excellent but not extraordinary business. Its put-up-more-to-earn-more experience is that faced by most corporations. For example, our large investment in regulated utilities falls squarely in this category. We will earn considerably more money in this business ten years from now, but we will invest many billions to make it.
因此，若仅以经济回报衡量，FlightSafety 是一家“优秀但不非凡”的企业。它“多投才能多赚”的体验，正是大多数公司所面对的现实。比如，我们对受监管公用事业的大额投资就完全属于这一类。十年后我们将在这项业务上赚到更多的钱，但为此需要投入数十亿美元。
Now let’s move to the gruesome. The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers. Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.
现在说说“糟糕至极”的类型。最糟糕的企业是那种增长很快、需要大量资本来支撑增长，但最终几乎赚不到钱的公司。想想航空业。从 Wright Brothers 的年代起，行业内一直难以形成持久的竞争优势。事实上，如果当年 Kitty Hawk 现场有一位有远见的资本家，朝 Orville 开一枪，倒可能是对其后继者的大恩大德。
The airline industry’s demand for capital ever since that first flight has been insatiable. Investors have poured money into a bottomless pit, attracted by growth when they should have been repelled by it. And I, to my shame, participated in this foolishness when I had Berkshire buy U.S. Air preferred stock in 1989. As the ink was drying on our check, the company went into a tailspin, and before long our preferred dividend was no longer being paid. But we then got very lucky. In one of the recurrent, but always misguided, bursts of optimism for airlines, we were actually able to sell our shares in 1998 for a hefty gain. In the decade following our sale, the company went bankrupt. Twice.
自首次飞行以来，航空业对资本的渴求从未满足过。投资者被增长所诱惑，把资金倒进了无底洞，而他们本该被这种增长吓退。羞愧的是，1989 年我让 Berkshire 购买了 U.S. Air 的优先股，亲自参与了这场愚蠢。当我们的支票墨迹未干，公司就陷入急转直下，不久连优先股股息都停发了。随后我们走了大运：在航空业周期性、但总是被误导的乐观情绪又一次来临时，我们在 1998 年竟然高位卖出了持股并获得了可观收益。在我们卖出后的十年里，这家公司破产了两次。
To sum up, think of three types of “savings accounts.” The great one pays an extraordinarily high interest rate that will rise as the years pass. The good one pays an attractive rate of interest that will be earned also on deposits that are added. Finally, the gruesome account both pays an inadequate interest rate and requires you to keep adding money at those disappointing returns.
总结一下，可以把企业想象成三类“储蓄账户”。“极佳”的账户支付异常高的利率，且会随时间推移不断上升；“良好”的账户支付颇具吸引力的利率，而且新增存款也能享受同样的回报；“糟糕”的账户不仅利率低得令人失望，还要求你不断以同样令人失望的回报继续往里加钱。
11、《2021-04-15 Jeff Bezos’s Letters to Amazon Shareholders》
Differentiation is Survival and the Universe Wants You to be Typical
差异化是生存之道，而宇宙希望你平庸如常
This is my last annual shareholder letter as the CEO of Amazon, and I have one last thing of utmost importance I feel compelled to teach. I hope all Amazonians take it to heart.
这是我作为亚马逊首席执行官撰写的最后一封年度股东信，我有一件极其重要的事情想要传授。我希望所有亚马逊人都能铭记于心。
Here is a passage from Richard Dawkins’ (extraordinary) book *The Blind Watchmaker*. It’s about a basic fact of biology.
以下这段话摘自理查德·道金斯那本非凡之作《盲眼钟表匠》，讲述的是一个基本的生物学事实。
“Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at. Left to itself – and that is what it is when it dies – the body tends to revert to a state of equilibrium with its environment. If you measure some quantity such as the temperature, the acidity, the water content or the electrical potential in a living body, you will typically find that it is markedly different from the corresponding measure in the surroundings. Our bodies, for instance, are usually hotter than our surroundings, and in cold climates they have to work hard to maintain the differential. When we die the work stops, the temperature differential starts to disappear, and we end up the same temperature as our surroundings. Not all animals work so hard to avoid coming into equilibrium with their surrounding temperature, but all animals do some comparable work. For instance, in a dry country, animals and plants work to maintain the fluid content of their cells, work against a natural tendency for water to flow from them into the dry outside world. If they fail they die. More generally, if living things didn’t work actively to prevent it, they would eventually merge into their surroundings, and cease to exist as autonomous beings. That is what happens when they die.”
“抵御死亡是一项必须努力完成的任务。若不加干预——也就是当生命终结时——身体会趋于与周围环境达到平衡的状态。如果你测量某种生命体的参数，例如体温、酸碱度、水分含量或电位，你通常会发现这些数值与环境中的对应值存在明显差异。比如我们的体温通常高于外部环境，在寒冷的气候中，我们必须努力维持这种温差。当我们死去，这种‘努力’停止，温差开始消失，最终我们的体温与环境一致。并不是所有动物都会为避免与环境温度趋于平衡而付出巨大努力，但所有动物都会在某种程度上做类似的事情。比如在干燥的地区，动物和植物要努力保持细胞中的水分含量，抵抗水分自然流向干燥外部环境的趋势；如果失败，它们就会死亡。更普遍地说，如果生物不积极行动加以抵抗，它们最终将融入周围环境，不再作为独立体存在。这正是它们死亡时所发生的事情。”
While the passage is not intended as a metaphor, it’s nevertheless a fantastic one, and very relevant to Amazon. I would argue that it’s relevant to all companies and all institutions and to each of our individual lives too. In what ways does the world pull at you in an attempt to make you normal? How much work does it take to maintain your distinctiveness? To keep alive the thing or things that make you special?
虽然那段话本意并非比喻，但它仍是一个精彩的隐喻，与亚马逊息息相关。我认为它同样适用于所有公司、所有机构，以及我们每个人的生活。世界是如何在潜移默化中试图让你变得“正常”的？你又需要付出多少努力，才能维持你与众不同的特质？才能保留住那些让你特别的东西？
I know a happily married couple who have a running joke in their relationship. Not infrequently, the husband looks at the wife with faux distress and says to her, “Can’t you just be normal?” They both smile and laugh, and of course the deep truth is that her distinctiveness is something he loves about her. But, at the same time, it’s also true that things would often be easier – take less energy – if we were a little more normal.
我认识一对幸福的夫妻，他们之间有个常开的玩笑。丈夫常常假装苦恼地看着妻子说：“你就不能正常点吗？”然后他们会一起微笑、发笑。当然，内心深处的真相是：正是她与众不同的地方让他深深地爱着她。但与此同时，不可否认的是，如果我们稍微“正常”一些，事情往往也会变得更简单、更省力。
This phenomenon happens at all scale levels. Democracies are not normal. Tyranny is the historical norm. If we stopped doing all of the continuous hard work that is needed to maintain our distinctiveness in that regard, we would quickly come into equilibrium with tyranny.
这种现象存在于所有层面。民主制度并不是常态，历史上专制才是常态。如果我们不再为维持这方面的独特性持续努力，很快我们就会与专制趋于平衡。
We all know that distinctiveness – originality – is valuable. We are all taught to “be yourself.” What I’m really asking you to do is to embrace and be realistic about how much energy it takes to maintain that distinctiveness. The world wants you to be typical – in a thousand ways, it pulls at you. Don’t let it happen.
我们都知道，与众不同、独创性是有价值的。从小我们就被教导要“做自己”。但我真正想告诉你的是，要正视并接纳：维持这种与众不同需要付出巨大的能量。世界千方百计地想让你变得平庸普通——不要让它得逞。
You have to pay a price for your distinctiveness, and it’s worth it. The fairy tale version of “be yourself” is that all the pain stops as soon as you allow your distinctiveness to shine. That version is misleading. Being yourself is worth it, but don’t expect it to be easy or free. You’ll have to put energy into it continuously.
保持独特是要付出代价的，但这是值得的。童话版本的“做自己”是：一旦你展现出与众不同，所有的痛苦都会消失。但这只是误导。做自己确实值得，但不要指望这条路轻松或没有代价。你必须不断地投入能量，才能维持它。
The world will always try to make Amazon more typical – to bring us into equilibrium with our environment. It will take continuous effort, but we can and must be better than that.
世界永远会试图让亚马逊变得更“典型”——与环境趋于平衡。这需要我们持续不断的努力，但我们可以，也必须，比这更出色。
12、《2023-05-08 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》
And now, with 330 million people, all brands in the United States have, like, 18,000 dealers or something. It’s just a business where you’ve got a lot of worldwide competitors, they’re not going to go away. And it looks like there are winners in any given time, but it doesn’t get you a permanent place. Although, as I mentioned, I would say Ferrari is in a special place.
现在，美国有 3.3 亿人，所有品牌大约有 18,000 个经销商。这只是一个有很多全球竞争对手的行业，他们不会消失。在任何给定的时间，看起来都有赢家，但这并不能让你获得一个永久的位置。尽管如此，正如我提到的，我会说法拉利处于一个特殊的位置。
巴菲特不喜欢汽车制造业，但他喜欢Ferrari。
Becky Quick: This question comes from Achie Patel and it’s about the big cap technology stocks. In the 2017 annual meeting, you said Warren, you really don’t need any money to run these companies and referred to them as ideal businesses, referring to the big tech companies – Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon. With all of those companies now announcing massive capital investment endeavors around AI ambitions, have you rethought the above comment just in terms of them being asset light and what you think of them as a result?
Becky Quick：下一个问题来自 Achie Patel，关于大型科技股。2017 年年会上，你说过，Warren，这些公司运营几乎不需要资金，并称它们是理想的生意，指的就是 Apple、Alphabet、Microsoft、Amazon 等大型科技公司。如今这些公司都宣布围绕 AI 目标进行巨额资本开支，你是否重新思考过此前关于“资产轻”的评论？你现在对它们的看法有什么变化？
Warren Buffett: Well, it’s always better to make a lot of money without putting up anything than it is to make a lot of money by putting up a lot of money.
Warren Buffett：嗯，不用投入什么资本就能赚很多钱，总是好过投入大量资本去赚很多钱。
A business that takes no capital to speak of – Coca-Cola, the finished product which has gone through bottling companies takes a lot of capital, but in terms of selling the syrup or concentrate, that doesn’t take a lot of capital. So, one is a fabulous business and one depends where it is.
有些业务几乎不需要资本——比如 Coca-Cola，终端装瓶环节确实很“吃资本”，但就卖糖浆或浓缩液这块，本身并不需要太多资本。所以，前者要看所处环节，后者则是极好的生意。
汽车制造和汽车玻璃。
Coca-Cola is popular every place, but if you’re in the bottling business, it costs real money. You have real trucks out there and all kinds of machinery and capital expenditures coming up. We’ve got businesses that take very little capital that make really high returns on capital. The ones the politicians talk about as making high returns actually aren’t making high returns usually in terms of capital.
Coca-Cola 到处都受欢迎，但如果你做的是装瓶业务，那是真金白银的投入：要有卡车、各类设备，以及不断到来的资本开支。我们也拥有一些几乎不需资本、却能取得极高资本回报的业务。那些被政客指摘为“高回报”的行业，通常并非以“资本回报率”来衡量时真的高回报。
Property casualty insurance is kind of a rare business because you need capital as a guarantee fund that you will keep your promises, but you can use it to buy other low capital-intensive businesses. You can buy Apple and have it support that business. That can be a pretty good business and it’s one of the reasons we’ve done well over time.
财产意外险是相对少见的生意，因为你需要资本作为“保证基金”来履约，但你又可以用这笔资本去配置其他低资本密集的业务。你可以买 Apple，让它反哺保险主业。这会是一门相当不错的生意，也是我们长期表现良好的原因之一。
It’ll be interesting to see how much capital intensity there is now with the Magnificent 7 compared to a few years ago. Basically, Apple has not really needed any capital over the years and it’s repurchased shares with a dramatic reduction. Whether that world is the same in the future or not is something yet to be seen.
把现在的“Magnificent 7”与几年前相比，它们的资本密集度变化如何，这将很有意思。基本上，Apple 多年来并不需要多少新增资本，却能大幅回购股票。未来是否仍如此，有待观察。
Hollywood’s answer was always to get their money from other people to put up the capital. A lot of people have gotten very rich in the country by essentially figuring out how to get others to put up the capital. That’s what people do in the money management business – they get very rich because they get an override on other people’s capital.
Hollywood 的解法一直是“用别人的钱”。在这个国家，很多人之所以致富，本质上就是学会了如何让别人出资。这正是资管行业在做的事——因为能对“别人的资本”抽成，他们就会非常富有。
Incidentally, if all of you were paying 1% for investment management fees at Berkshire last year, you would have paid $8 billion for managing, and you really wouldn’t have had to do it. Investment management is a very good game because other people put up the capital and you charge them for the capital whether they do well or not, and then you charge them a lot more if they do well. It’s a well-designed business for the people who practice it – and who can blame them? That is capitalism.
顺带说一句，若你们去年为在 Berkshire 的资产支付 1% 的投管费，你们会为“管理”多付出 80 亿美元，而其实完全没必要。资管是一门很“好”的生意：别人出资，你无论业绩好坏都能收费，业绩好了还能多收。这对从业者来说是“精心设计”的商业模式——谁能责怪他们呢？这就是资本主义。
I saw that in operation when I was working at Salomon, but I didn’t need to see it. I knew what existed anyway. The trick in life is to get somebody else’s capital and get an override on it. Charlie and I decided it wasn’t too elegant a business after a while. We were not criticizing the efficacy of it – it just didn’t appeal to us after a while. I did it for 12 years though.
我在 Salomon 工作时亲眼见过这种运作，但其实不看也知道它的存在。人生中的“诀窍”之一，就是用别人的资本、对其抽成。过了一阵，Charlie 和我觉得这门生意不太“优雅”。我们并非否定它的有效性——只是后来它不再吸引我们而已。尽管如此，我也做了12年。
The one difference that Charlie and I did from other people is we put all our own money into it. So we really did share the losses with our own capital, but we got an override on other people’s capital. People have made advances where they get the override on other people’s capital without putting up any of their own capital to speak of. That’s a very good business, but it can lead to a lot of abuse.
我们与他人的一个区别在于，我们把自己的全部资金也投了进去。所以我们确实用自有资本承担亏损，同时对他人的资本抽成。如今有人更进一步，几乎不出自有资本就能对他人资本抽成。这固然是一门“很好的生意”，但也容易滋生滥用。
Attention Is All You Need，影响心理上锚定的目标。
Warren Buffett: Capitalism in the United States has succeeded like nothing you’ve ever seen. But what it is is a combination of this magnificent cathedral which has produced an economy like nothing the world’s ever seen, and then it’s got this massive casino attached.
Warren Buffett：美国的资本主义取得了前所未有的成功。但它本质上是两部分的结合：一座宏伟的大教堂——孕育了世界从未见过的经济；以及紧挨着它的一座巨大的赌场。
In the casino, everybody’s having a good time and there’s lots of money changing hands, but the cathedral is what you’ve got to make sure gets fed too. The temptation is very high now to go over to the casino where people say we’ve got magic boxes and all kinds of things that’ll do wonderful things for you. That’s where people are happiest, where you get the most promises, where the most money is for the people that are pushing things.
在赌场里，人人玩得尽兴、资金频繁易手；但也必须确保“大教堂”同样得到供养。如今转向赌场的诱惑极大——那里的人声称有“魔法盒子”和各种能为你创造奇迹的玩意儿。那是人们最开心的地方、承诺最多的地方、也是推动者最能赚钱的地方。
The balance between the casino and the cathedral – it’s very important that the United States in the next hundred years make sure that the cathedral is not overtaken by the casino. People really like to go to casinos – it’s just so much more fun. They bring bells when you win, they bring you drinks and everything else. It’s designed to move money from one pocket to another.
赌场与大教堂之间的平衡——在未来一百年里，美国务必要确保“大教堂”不被“赌场”淹没。人们确实更愿意去赌场——因为实在更有趣。你赢了就有铃声、饮料和一切招待。它的设计目的，就是把钱从一个人的口袋转到另一个人的口袋。
In the cathedral, they’re designing things that will be producing goods and services for 300 and some million people like it’s never been done before in history. It’s an interesting system we developed, but it’s worked. It dispenses rewards in what seems like a terribly capricious manner. The idea that people get what they deserve in life – it’s hard to make that argument. But if you argue with it that any other system works better, the answer is we haven’t found one.
而在大教堂里，人们在设计能为三亿多人口提供前所未有的商品与服务的事物。这是我们创造的一套有趣体系，但它确实奏效。它分配回报的方式看似极其任性。要坚持“人生中人人都得到应得之物”的说法——很难自洽。但若要论证有别的体系更好，答案是我们还没找到。
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