I.H.27.Warren Buffett.Airlines

航空公司是个缺少差异化、商品化特征比较明显的业务。

1、《2001-04-28 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

11. Airlines must keep costs in line with competitors

航空公司必须保持成本与竞争对手一致

WARREN BUFFETT: Area 1, please.

沃伦·巴菲特：请转到第一区域。

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Good morning. I’m Martin Wiegand from Chevy Chase, Maryland.

观众：早上好。我是来自马里兰州雪维·切斯的马丁·威根。

WARREN BUFFETT: Good to have you here, Martin. (Laughs)

沃伦·巴菲特：很高兴你在这里，马丁。（笑）

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. Thank you for the wonderful shareholder weekend, and thank you for the leadership and education you give your shareholders and the general public.

观众：谢谢您。感谢您为股东周末活动所做的一切，也感谢您为股东和公众提供的领导力与教育。

My question. Large airlines are in the news negotiating labor contracts. They claim they can’t pass along rising labor costs to their customers.

我的问题是，大型航空公司正在新闻中谈判劳工合同。他们声称无法将不断上涨的劳动力成本转嫁给客户。

In the annual report, you say Executive Jet is growing fast and doing great. Executive Jet seems to be able to pass along its rising labor cost to its customers.

在年报中，您提到执行航空（Executive Jet）增长迅速，表现出色。 Executive Jet似乎能够将不断上涨的劳动力成本转嫁给客户。

Is this because Executive Jet has a rational compensation plan that keeps employee salaries in line with billable services? If not, why does Executive Jet do well while the airlines experience troubles?

这是因为 Executive Jet有一个合理的薪酬计划，使员工工资与可收费服务保持一致吗？如果不是，为什么 Executive Jet表现良好，而航空公司却面临困境？

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, the big problem with the airlines is not so much what their aggregate payments will be. The real problem is when you’re in the airline business and your wage rates are out of line with your competitors.

沃伦·巴菲特：好吧，航空公司面临的主要问题并不完全在于他们的总体支付金额。真正的问题是，当你处于航空业务中时，薪资水平与竞争对手不一致。

When you get right down to it, the figure to look at with an airline — among a lot of other things — but you start with the cost per available seat mile. And then you work that through based on the capacity utilization to get to the revenue per — or the cost per — occupied seat mile.

说到底，你需要关注的一个数字是航空公司——除了很多其他因素外——首先是每座可用座位英里成本。然后根据座位利用率计算，得出每座占用座位英里的收入或成本。

And the — you could have labor costs or any other costs. You certainly have fuel costs up dramatically for the airlines from a couple of years ago.

此外，你可能会有劳动力成本或其他成本。航空公司的燃油成本肯定大幅上升，比几年前高得多。

As long as you’re more efficient than your competitor, and your costs are not higher than your competitor, people will continue to fly.

只要你比竞争对手更高效，而且成本不高于竞争对手，人们就会继续选择飞行。

It’s when you get your costs out of line with your competitor, which was the situation that — where Charlie and I were directors of USAir a few years back — and our costs per seat mile were far higher than competitors.

问题出在当你的成本与竞争对手不一致时，这正是几年前查理和我作为USAir董事时的情况——我们的每座座位英里成本远高于竞争对手。

And that was fine where we didn’t have competitors on some — many of the short routes in the East. But as the Southwest Airlines would move into our territory — and they had costs, we’ll say, of — and this is from memory — but they might have had costs below eight cents a seat mile. And our cost might have been 12 cents a seat mile.

当时在我们的一些短途航线（特别是在东部）没有竞争对手的情况下，这并不成问题。但当西南航空开始进入我们的领地时——我们可以说他们的成本——根据记忆——可能低于每座座位英里8美分。而我们的成本可能是每座座位英里12美分。

You know, that is a — you’re going to get killed, eventually. They may not get to this route this year, but they’ll get there next year or the year after.

你知道，这就是——你最终会被淘汰。他们今年可能不会进入这条航线，但明年或后年他们一定会进入。

So if you’re running a big airline at Delta or United or whatever, if your costs are on parity or less — labor costs — than your other major competitors, that is much more important to you than the absolute level.

所以，如果你经营着像达美航空、联合航空这样的航空公司，如果你的成本与其他主要竞争对手持平或更低——劳动力成本——这对你来说比绝对水平更为重要。

And the NetJets service is not really designed to be competitive with United Airlines or an American or something of that sort. It has a different group of competitors.

而NetJets的服务实际上并不是为了与联合航空或美国航空等公司竞争。它有一组不同的竞争对手。

And I think we have a absolutely terrific pilot force there. And we want them to be happy. But there’s a lot of other ways. I mean, you want to pay them fairly. But with our pilots for example, it’s extremely important to them, in many cases, to be able to live where they want to and to work the kind of shifts that we can offer. So we attract them in many other ways than bidding against United Airlines or American Airlines.

我认为我们那里的飞行员队伍非常棒。我们希望他们开心。但我们有很多其他方式来吸引他们。我的意思是，我们要公平地支付他们。但以我们的飞行员为例，在许多情况下，他们非常重视能够在自己喜欢的地方居住，并且能做我们能提供的班次。所以我们吸引他们的方式与与联合航空或美国航空竞标不同。

Big thing in — you just can’t take labor costs that are materially higher than your competitor in a business that has commodity-like characteristics such as airline seats. You just can’t do it over time.

在这种业务中——你不能让劳动力成本比竞争对手高出很多，尤其是在像航空座位这种商品化特征明显的行业中。你不能长期这样做。

很多低端的商业模式有这个特点。

And you can get away with it for a while. But sooner or later, the nature of a capitalist society is that the guy with the lower cost comes in and kills you.

你可能能勉强维持一段时间，但迟早，资本主义社会的本质是，成本更低的竞争者会进入并击败你。

Charlie?

查理？

CHARLIE MUNGER: The airline unions are really tough. And it’s interesting to see a group of people that are paid as well as airline pilots with such a brutally tough union structure. That really makes it hard in a commodity-style business.

查理·芒格：航空工会真的很强硬。看到一群像航空飞行员这样薪水高却有如此严酷工会结构的人，真的很有意思。这让像商品化业务的航空行业变得更加困难。

And no individual airline can take a long shutdown without having considerable effects on habit patterns and future prospects. It’s just a very tough business by its nature.

而且没有任何一家航空公司能够在长时间停运的情况下不对消费习惯和未来前景产生重大影响。航空业务本身就是一个非常艰难的行业。

Passenger rail travel, even in a previous era, was a pretty tough way to make a buck. And nothing is all that different with the airline travel.

即使在以前的时代，乘客铁路旅行也是一种非常艰难的赚钱方式。航空旅行和铁路旅行并没有太大区别。

We hope that our services are preferred by customers more than one airline seat is preferred compared to another.

我们希望我们的服务比其他航空公司的座位更能得到客户的青睐。

WARREN BUFFETT: Yes, fractional ownership is not a commodity business. I mean, the people care enormously about service and the assurance of safety. And I don’t think that, you know, I don’t think if you were buying a parachute you’d want to take the — necessarily take the low bid, and —

沃伦·巴菲特：是的，分时所有权不是商品化业务。我的意思是，人们非常重视服务和安全保障。我不认为，如果你买降落伞，你会选择——一定选择最低报价的降落伞——

CHARLIE MUNGER: Yeah. (Laughter)

查理·芒格：对。（笑）

WARREN BUFFETT: Now with the big commercial airlines with millions and millions of passengers, people, I think probably correctly assume, that there’s quite a similarity in both service and safety.

沃伦·巴菲特：现在，像大商业航空公司这样有数百万乘客的公司，我认为人们可能正确地认为，无论是服务还是安全，都会有相当大的相似性。

But if you’re in a business that cannot take a long strike, you’re basically playing a game of chicken, you know, with your labor unions. Because they’re going to lose their jobs, too, if you close down. So you’re playing a game of chicken periodically.

但如果你处于一个无法承受长时间罢工的行业，你基本上是在和工会玩“对抗游戏”。因为如果你停业，他们也会失去工作。所以你会时不时地和工会进行对抗。

And it has a lot — there’s a lot of game theory that gets involved.

而且，这涉及到很多博弈论的因素。

To some extent, you know, the weaker you are, the better your bargaining position is. Because if you’re extremely weak, even a very short strike will put you out of business. And the people who are on the other side of the negotiating table understand that. Whereas, if you have a fair amount of strength, they can push you harder.

在某种程度上，你知道，你越弱，你的谈判位置就越好。因为如果你非常弱，即使是一次非常短的罢工也会让你破产。而且谈判桌另一方的人会明白这一点。相反，如果你有一定的实力，他们就能更强硬地施压。

But it is of — it is no fun being in a business where you cannot take a strike. We faced that one time back in the early ’80s when there were — we were in kind of a death struggle in Buffalo with The Courier-Express.

但是，处于一个无法承受罢工的行业并不有趣。我们曾在80年代初面临过这样的困境，当时我们在布法罗与《快递报》（The Courier-Express）进行着一场生死斗争。

And when I bought The Buffalo News — actually Charlie did. He was stranded there during a snowstorm, and he got bored. So, he called me and said, “What should I do?” I said, “Well, you might as well buy the paper.” (Laughter)

当我购买《布法罗新闻》时——实际上是查理买的。他在暴风雪中被困在那里，感到无聊。所以，他打电话给我说：“我该怎么办？”我说：“那你不如就买下这家报纸吧。”（笑）

And so we were in this struggle. And — but when we bought the Buffalo News, we had two questions of the management, and one of them I can’t tell you.

于是我们就陷入了这场斗争。但是，当我们购买《布法罗新闻》时，我们向管理层提出了两个问题，其中一个我不能告诉你。

But the second one was, we wanted to meet with the key union leaders, and we wanted to tell them, “Lookit, if you ever strike us for any length of — significant length of time — we’re out of business.

第二个问题是，我们想与关键的工会领导人会面，并告诉他们：“看，如果你们在任何重要时间段对我们罢工——我们就破产。”

“You know, you can make our investment valueless. So we really want to look you in the eye and see what kind of people you are before we write this check.” And we felt quite good about the people, and they were good people.

“你知道，你们可以让我们的投资变得一文不值。所以在我们写下这张支票之前，我们真的想看着你们的眼睛，看看你们到底是什么样的人。”我们对这些人感到非常满意，他们确实是好人。

And we had one situation in 1981, or thereabouts, where a very, very small union, I think, less than 2 percent of our employees, struck over an issue that the other 10 or 11 unions really didn’t agree with them that much on.

我们在1981年或大约那个时候遇到过一次情况，一个非常小的工会，我认为不到2%的员工，因为一个问题罢工，而其他10或11个工会对此并没有太多的意见。

But they struck, and the other unions observed the picket line, which you would expect them to do in a strongly pro-union town, such as Buffalo.

但他们罢工了，其他工会也站在了罢工线旁，这在像布法罗这样的强烈支持工会的城市是可以预料的。

And I think, as I remember, they struck on a Monday. And I remember leaders of some of the other unions actually with tears in their eyes over this, because they could see it was going to put us out of business.

我记得他们是在周一罢工的。我记得一些其他工会的领导人眼中含着泪水，因为他们看到这会让我们破产。

And frankly, I just took the position then, I said, “Lookit, if you come back in a day, I know we’re competitive. If you come back in a year, I know we will not be competitive.

坦率地说，我当时采取了这样的立场，我说：“看，如果你们一天后回来，我知道我们仍然有竞争力。如果你们一年后回来，我知道我们将不再具有竞争力。”

“And if you’re smart enough to figure out where exactly the point is that you can push us to and still come back and we have a business and you have jobs, I said, you’re smarter than I am. So, you know, go home and figure it out.”

“如果你们足够聪明，能够找出那个点，在哪个点你们可以对我们施压，并且最终我们还能有业务，你们还能有工作，我说，你们比我聪明。所以，你们回去想想吧。”

And they came back in on Thursday, and we became very competitive again. But they could’ve — I mean, it was out of my hands. I couldn’t make them work, and if they decided they were going to stay out long enough, we were not going to have a newspaper.

他们在周四回来了，我们再次变得非常有竞争力。但他们本可以——我是说，那已经不在我的控制之下。我无法让他们工作，如果他们决定长期罢工，我们就没有报纸了。

And that’s the kind of situation, occasionally, you find yourself in. And I would say the airline industry is a good example of people — where people find themselves in that position periodically.

这就是你偶尔会遇到的情况。我认为航空行业是一个很好的例子，说明人们会定期陷入这种境地。

Charlie, anything you want —

查理，您有什么想法吗——

CHARLIE MUNGER: Well. The shareholders may be interested to know, vis-à-vis competitive advantages in our NetJets program, that the day that other charter plane crashed in Aspen, NetJets refused to fly into Aspen at all. People remember that kind of thing.

查理·芒格：好吧。股东们可能会对我们的NetJets项目中的竞争优势感兴趣，那就是，当另一架包机在阿斯彭坠毁的那天，NetJets完全拒绝飞往阿斯彭。人们会记得这种事情。

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah.

沃伦·巴菲特：是的。

2、《2020-05-02 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

23. Buffett: Buying airline stocks was a mistake

巴菲特：购买航空公司股票是个错误

WARREN BUFFETT: And then I’ve added another figure, which I wouldn’t normally present to you. But I want to be sure that if I’m talking to you about investments and stocks — more than I usually have — I want you to know what Berkshire is actually doing now.

沃伦·巴菲特：然后我添加了另一个数字，我通常不会向你们展示。但我想确保，如果我和你们谈论投资和股票——比我通常谈得更多——我希望你们知道伯克希尔现在实际上在做什么。

You’ll see in the month of April that we net sold 6 billion or so of securities. And that’s basically — that isn’t because we thought the stock market was going to go down or anything of the sort, or because some — somebody changes their target price, or they change this year’s earnings forecast.

你会看到在四月份我们净售出了大约 60 亿的证券。这基本上不是因为我们认为股市会下跌或类似的原因，也不是因为某个人改变了他们的目标价格，或者他们改变了今年的盈利预测。

I just decided that I’d made a mistake in evaluating — it was an understandable mistake. It was a probability-weighted decision when we bought that we were getting an attractive amount for our money when investing across the airlines business.

我刚刚决定我在评估时犯了一个错误——这是一个可以理解的错误。当我们购买时，这是一个概率加权的决定，我们认为在航空业投资时得到了一个有吸引力的回报。

So, we bought roughly 10 percent of the four largest airlines. And we probably — this doesn’t — is not a hundred percent of what we did in April — but we probably paid 7 or 8 billion — somewhere between 7 and 8 billion — to own 10 percent of the four large companies in the airline business.

所以，我们大约购买了四大航空公司 10%的股份。我们可能——这并不是我们四月份所做的全部——但我们可能支付了 70 亿到 80 亿之间的金额，来拥有这四家大型航空公司的 10%股份。

And we felt for that, we were getting a billion dollars, roughly, of earnings. Now, it wasn’t — we weren’t getting a billion dollars of dividends. But we felt our share of the underlying earnings was a billion dollars and we felt that that number was more likely to go up than down over a period of time, that it would be cyclical, obviously.

我们认为，由此我们大约获得了十亿美元的收益。当然，这并不是说我们收到了十亿美元的股息，但我们认为我们所占的潜在收益份额是十亿美元，而且我们觉得这个数字在一段时间内更有可能上升而不是下降，尽管它显然会有周期性波动。

12%的收益率。

But — but it was — it was as if we’d bought the whole company, but we bought it through the New York Stock Exchange and we can only effectively buy 10 percent, roughly, of the four. And we didn’t — we treat it mentally exactly as if we were buying a business.

但是——但是这就像我们买下了整个公司，但我们是通过纽约证券交易所购买的，我们只能有效地购买大约四分之一的 10%。而且我们——我们在心理上完全把它当作是在购买一项业务。

And — and it turned out I was wrong about that business because of something that was not in any way the fault of four excellent CEOs.

而且——结果我对那件事的看法是错误的，因为这完全不是四位优秀首席执行官的错。

I mean, believe me, no joy being a CEO of a airline, but the companies we bought are well managed. They did a lot of things right. It’s a very, very, very difficult business because you’re dealing with millions of people every day and if something goes wrong, for 1 percent of them, they are very unhappy.

相信我，担任航空公司CEO并不是什么愉快的事，但我们投资的这些公司管理得很好，他们做了很多正确的事情。这是一个非常非常非常艰难的行业，因为你每天要处理数百万的客户，如果其中1%的人遇到了问题，他们会非常不满。

So, I don’t envy anybody the job of being CEO of an airline, but I particularly don’t enjoy him — being in a period like this where essentially nobody in — people have been told, basically, not to fly.

所以，我并不羡慕任何人担任航空公司的首席执行官，但我特别不喜欢他——在这样一个基本上没有人——人们基本上被告知不要飞行的时期。

I’ve been told not to fly for a while. I’m looking forward to flying. I may not fly commercial, but that’s another question.

我被告知暂时不要飞行。我期待着飞行。我可能不会乘坐商业航班，但那是另一个问题。

But the — but the airline business — and I may be wrong, and I hope I’m wrong — but I think it changed in a very major way. And it’s obviously changed in the fact that there are four companies — are each going to borrow perhaps an average of at least 10 or 12 billion each.

但是——但是航空公司业务——我可能错了，我希望我错了——但我认为它发生了非常重大的变化。显然，它的变化在于有四家公司——每家公司可能平均借款至少 10 亿或 12 亿。

Well, you have to pay that back out of earnings over some period of time. I mean, you’re 10 or $12 billion worse off if that happens, and of course, in some cases are having to sell stock or sell the right to buy a stock at these prices. And that takes away from the upside on —

好吧，你必须在一段时间内用收益来偿还这笔钱。我的意思是，如果发生这种情况，你的损失将达到 100 亿或 120 亿美元，当然，在某些情况下，还不得不以这些价格出售股票或出售购买股票的权利。这会削弱潜在的收益——

And I don’t know, whether it’s two or three years from now, that as many people will fly as many passenger miles as they did last year. They may and they may not. But the future is much less clear to me about how the business will turn out through absolutely no fault of the airlines themselves.

我不知道，未来两年或三年内，会有多少人飞行，乘客里程是否会像去年一样多。他们可能会，也可能不会。但对我来说，未来关于航空公司业务的发展变得更加不明确，这完全不是航空公司的错。

It’s something that was a low-probability event. It happened and it happened to hurt particularly — you know, whether it’s the travel business, the hotel business, cruise business, theme park business — but the airline business in particular and of course, the airline business has the problem that if the business comes back 70 percent or 80 percent, the aircraft don’t disappear. So, you’ve got — you’ve got too many planes.

这是一件低概率事件。它发生了，并且特别令人痛苦——无论是旅游业、酒店业、邮轮业、主题公园业——但航空业尤其如此，当然，航空业面临的问题是，如果业务恢复到 70%或 80%，飞机并不会消失。因此，你有——你有太多的飞机。

事后看这些判断很准确。

But it didn’t look that way when the orders were placed a few months ago and when the arrangements were made.

但几个月前下订单和安排时并不是这样的。

But the world changed for airlines. And I wish them well, but it’s one of the businesses we have — we have businesses we own directly that are going to be hurt significantly.

但航空公司面临的世界发生了变化。我祝他们好运，但这是我们拥有的业务之一——我们直接拥有的业务将受到重大影响。

The virus will cost Berkshire money. It doesn’t cost money because our stock, and various other businesses, moves around. I mean, if XYZ, which is — say it’s one of our holdings, and we own it as a business, and we like the business — if the stock goes down 20 or 30 or 40 percent, we don’t feel we’re poor in that situation.

病毒将使伯克希尔损失金钱。这并不是因为我们的股票和其他各种业务波动。我是说，如果 XYZ——假设它是我们的一个投资，我们将其视为一项业务，并且我们喜欢这项业务——如果股票下跌 20%、30%或 40%，我们并不会觉得在这种情况下我们很穷。

We felt we were poor, in terms of what had actually happened to those airline businesses, just as if we owned a hundred percent of them.

我们感觉自己处于不利地位，就像我们拥有这些航空公司100%的股份一样，因为那些航空公司业务的实际情况并不理想。

So that explains those sales, which are relatively minor. But I want to make sure that nobody thinks that that involves a market prediction.

这就解释了那些相对较小的出售。但我想确保没有人认为这涉及市场预测。

And that pretty well wraps it up for Berkshire.

这基本上就结束了关于伯克希尔的内容。

I.H.27.Warren Buffett.Airlines

I.H.27.Warren Buffett.Airlines

1、《2001-04-28 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

2、《2020-05-02 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting》

Article Comments Update

热门标签

Related Articles

1956-05-01 Warren Buffett.Certificate of Limited Partnership

1994-03-01 Warren Buffett's Letters to Berkshire Shareholders

Warren Buffett Quotes

1967-07-12 Warren Buffett's Letters to Limited Partners

1967-11-01 Warren Buffett's Letters to Limited Partners