巴菲特谈估值:计算内在价值唯一可以依靠的是现金流
发布时间:2021-5-21 15:16阅读:346
问1:如何看待价值?
Q1: How do you think about value?
答1:价值公式是由公元前600年一个叫做伊索的人传承下来的:一鸟在手等于二鸟在林。投资就是在当前向树丛中放出一只鸟,期望将来能够从那里收回两只或两只以上的鸟。这里面的关键问题仅仅包括:1)研究你看上的树丛;2)确定你将来可以捕到多少鸟及捕到这些鸟所需要的时间。如果存款利率是20%的话,赶紧捕鸟(言外之意,可以存银行了)。要是存款利率只有1%呢,那就等个十年吧。要仔细考虑资产可以带来的收益。一定要专注资产而不是beta值,我个人并不在意股价的波动,所以对我来说,股票价格不重要,也许它的意义仅在于为你提供可以以便宜的价格买入股票的机会。我不会在意纽约证券交易所关上5年门。与各类事件相比,我更关心生意。我在意产品的定价权以及公司能否获得更多的市场份额。我还在意人们是否消费更多的可乐。
A1:The formula for value was handed down from 600 BC by a guy named Aesop. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Investing is about laying out a bird now to get two or more out of the bush. The keys are to only look at the bushes you like and identify how long it will take to get them out. When interest rates are 20%, you need to get it out right now. When rates are 1%, you have 10 years. Think about what the asset will produce. Look at the asset, not the beta. I don’t really care about volatility. Stock price is not that important to me, it just gives you the opportunity to buy at a great price. I don’t care if they close the NYSE for 5 years. I care more about the business than I do about events. I care about if there’s price flexibility and whether the company can gain more market share. I care about people drinking more Coke.
20年前,我从联邦储蓄保险公司(FDIC)手里以600美元/公顷的价格买了一个农场。时至今日,我对经营农场还一窍不通,但是我的儿子是把好手。我曾经问过他买玉米(种子)、耕地、收割的成本是多少,每公顷产量是多少,以及粮食的价格如何。但是,二十年间我从来不知道那个农场的市面价格是多少。
I bought a farm from the FDIC 20 years ago for $600 per acre. Now I don’t know anything about farming but my son does. I asked him, how much it cost to buy corn, plow the field, harvest, how much an acre will yield, what price to expect. I haven’t gotten a quote on that farm in 20 years.
要是我开商学院的话,我只教授两门课。第一门毫无疑问就是投资课程,讲讲如何给企业估值。第二门就是讲一下该如何看待股票市场以及如何应对股票价格波动。股票市场很有意思。你自己可能没有任何要买卖的意思,却有一大群傻瓜在不停地提供不同的价格,这就使你(在交易中)占据了非常大的优势。我希望市场能像一个时而狂躁时而抑郁的醉汉。
If I were running a business school I would only have 2 courses. The first would obviously be an investing class about how to value a business. The second would be how to think about the stock market and how to deal with the volatility. The stock market is funny. You have no compulsion to act and a bunch of silly people setting prices all the time, it is great odds. I want the market to be like a manic depressive drunk.
问2:怎么计算内在价值?
Q2: How do you calculate intrinsic value?
答2:内在价值是特别重要但又极具弹性的概念。我们尽量去买那些我们能够大概率预见未来的公司。如果你拥有一条输气管线,出错的概率就要小很多。也许竞争者的介入会迫使你降低对输气管线的估价,但是如果你已经考虑了(竞争者介入会导致资产价格降低)这个因素,你得出的内在价值就不会因为竞争者的介入而降低。最近,我们在考察一条输气管线,我们考虑了以其它方式向该管线供气区域输气可能会对该管线内在价值的影响。对于另外一条输气管线——该管线的成本非常低,我们的看法就不一样了(因为它不会面临来自另一条竞争管线的威胁)。如果你要合理地计算内在价值,你必须考虑一些因素,如估价不断降低等因素。
A2:Intrinsic value is terribly important but very fuzzy. We try to work with businesses where we have fairly high probability of knowing what the future will hold. If you own a gas pipeline, not much is going to go wrong. Maybe a competitor enters forcing you to cut prices, but intrinsic value hasn't gone down if you already factored this in. We looked at a pipeline recently that we think will come under pressure from other ways of delivering gas [to the area the pipeline serves]. We look at this differently from another pipeline that has the lowest costs [and does not face threats from alternative pipelines]. If you calculate intrinsic value properly, you factor in things like declining prices.
当我们买入一桩生意时,我们尽量估算该生意未来可以产生的现金流,并将其与买入价格进行比较。我们必须对自己的预测有相当的信心,并由此得出一个合理的买入价格。长期以来,我们收获的惊喜比预计的要多得多。
When we buy business, we try to look out and estimate the cash it will generate and compare it to the purchase price. We have to feel pretty good about our projections and then have a purchase price that makes sense. Over time, we've had more pleasant surprises than we would have expected.
我还没有见过哪家投行在它们的研究报告中预测一家企业的未来收益会不断降低,但实际情况是很多企业的收益会不如上一年度。我们在Dexter鞋业也犯了同类错误——去年该公司的税前利润是4000万美元,我认为这个成绩可以得以维持,但我大错特错了。在未来5年中,财富500的公司中,会有20%公司的利润会出现大幅度下降,当然我不知道具体是哪些公司。如果你无法对此形成合理的预测,那么就不要纠结这一点了。
I've never seen an investment banker's book in which future earnings are projected to go down. But many businesses' earnings go down. We made this mistake with Dexter shoes -- it was earning $40 million pretax and I projected this would continue, and I couldn't have been more wrong. 20% of Fortune 500 companies will be earning significant less in five years, but I don't know which 20%. If you can't come up with reasonable estimates for that, then you move on.
问3:在确定内在价值过程中,你认为哪些工具是最重要的?在使用这些工具时,遵循什么规则和标准?
Q3: What do you believe to be the most important tools in determining intrinsic value? What rules or standards do you apply when using these tools?
答3:对于任一项生意,如果我们能够计算出其未来一百年内的现金流,然后以一个合适的利率折现回现在,那么就可以得到一个代表内在价值的数字。这就像一个一百年后到期的债券,在债券的下面会有很多的息票。生意也存在「息票」,唯一的问题那些「息票」并不是像债券那样打印在其下面,而是需要依靠投资者去估算未来的生意会附带一个什么样的「息票」。对于高科技类的生意,或具有类似属性的生意,会附带一个什么样的「息票」,我们基本没有概念。对于我们了解得比较深入的生意,我们试图将其息票「打印」出来。如果你想要计算内在价值,唯一可以依靠的就是现金流。你要将现金投入到任意一项投资中,你的目的都是期望你投入的生意在此后能够为你带来更多的现金流入,而不是期望把它卖给别人获利。后者仅仅是谁战胜谁的游戏。如果你是一个投资者,你的注意力集中在资产的表现上;如果你是一个投机者,你的注意力集中在价格会如何变化——这不是我们擅长的游戏。我们认为,如果我们对生意的认识是正确的,我们就能够挣到钱;如果我们对生意的认识是错误的,我们就无法获利。
A3:If we could see in looking at any business what its future cash flows would be for the next 100 years, and discount that back at an appropriate interest rate, that would give us a number for intrinsic value. It would be like looking at a bond that had a bunch of coupons on it that was due in a hundred years ... Businesses have coupons too, the only problem is that they're not printed on the instrument and it's up to the investor to try to estimate what those coupons are going to be over time. In high-tech businesses, or something like that, we don't have the faintest idea what the coupons are going to be. In the businesses where we think we can understand them reasonably well, we are trying to print the coupons out. If you attempt to assess intrinsic value, it all relates to cash flow. The only reason to put cash into any kind of investment now is that you expect to take cash out--not by selling it to somebody else, that's just a game of who beats who--but by the asset itself ... If you're an investor, you're looking on what the asset is going to do, if you're a speculator, you're commonly focusing on what the price of the object is going to do, and that's not our game. We feel that if we're right about the business, we're going to make a lot of money, and if we're wrong about the business, we don't have any hopes of making money.
[芒格:在优选投资组合的过程中,我认为机会成本的概念非常有用。如果你有一个好的、适用资金规模比较大的、优于其它98%的投资机会,那你就应该放弃其它98%......这样一来,你就可以形成一个非常紧凑的投资组合。我们的做法非常简单,但是却并不广为别人接受,我不知道为什么会这样。即使是在知名大学或者高级研究机构也是如此。这里就有一个非常有趣的问题:如果我们是对的,那么,为什么那么多人都错了?]
[CM: I would argue that one filter that's useful in investing is the idea of opportunity costs. If you have one idea that's available in large quantity that's better than 98% of the other opportunities, then you can just screen out the other 98% ... With this attitude you get a concentrated portfolio, which we don't mind. That practice of ours which is so simple is not widely copied, I don't know why. Even at great universities and intellectual institutions. It's an interesting question: If we're right, why are so many other places so wrong.]
对于这个问题,可能有以下几个答案!我们首先要问自己的是,如果看中一家公司,我们是愿意买入那家公司,还是愿意将买入那家公司的钱买入更多可口可乐股份或者更多吉列股份……,我们希望买入像可乐或吉列那样前景比较确定的公司,否则我们就会认为增持可口可乐才是明智之举。在买入一项生意之前,如果每个经营者都问一问该项买卖是否比买入我们的公司或可口可乐的股票更好的话,那么,收购活动将会少很多。我们尽量考察自己的行为是否更接近我们能力范围内可以达到完美。
There are several possible answers to that question! The first question we ask ourselves is, would we rather own this business than more Coca-Cola, than more Gillette .... We will want companies where the certainty gets close to that, or we would figure we'd be better off buying more Coke. If every management, before they bought a business, said is this better than buying in our own stock or even buying Coca-Cola stock, there'd be a lot less deals done. We try to measure against what we regard as close to perfection as we can get.
问4:能否给大家聊聊你那几只所谓的"必须持有股"的内在价值?
Q4: Could you comment on the matter of intrinsic value as it applies to some of the Inevitables?
答4:好的,但我不愿给它们一个具体的价格。这些企业都是非常棒的,并由杰出的经理们经营着,并且目前的股价高于过去大多数时间的股价。无论是从现在的角度看,还是从未来几年的角度看,现在的价格都物有所值。吉列从来不回购股票……,而可乐经常回购。
A4:Well, we won't stick a price on it. They are absolutely wonderful businesses run by sensational people, and they are selling at prices that are higher than they've sold at most of the time. But they may well be worth it, either in present terms, or they may be a couple of years ahead of themselves. Gillette doesn't repurchase their shares ... Coke consistently repurchases their shares.
一般情况下,我比较喜欢那些经营着好生意且爱回购自己股票的公司。但多数回购自己股票的公司所存在的问题在于它们本身的生意非常一般,它们回购股票的目的不是为了增进股东在好生意中所占的权益。
We generally like the policy of companies that have really wonderful businesses repurchasing their shares. The problem with most companies repurchasing their shares is that they are frequently so-so businesses and they are repurchasing shares for purposes other than intensifying the interest of shareholders in a wonderful business.
在我们所生活的世界里,明智地使用资金并不容易,但是可口可乐在运用资金方面非常聪明,特别是在世界范围内完善装瓶业务网络这一点上。了解到这一点,你就会觉得多买些像可口可乐这样的公司(会感觉很棒)。
It's hard to do things intelligently with money in this world and Coke has been very intelligent about using their capital, particularly to fortify and develop their bottler network around the world, but there's only so far you can go with that, and to enhance the ownership of shareholders in a company like Coca-Cola [is great].
问5:在估算内在价值时,对于像麦当劳和沃尔格林等资本密集型企业,它们非常健康且不断增长的营运现金流被用在了开新店,这种情况你要怎么估算未来的自由现金流呢?折现率又是多少呢?
Q5: When you estimate intrinsic value in capital intensive companies like McDonald's and Walgreens where a very healthy and growing operating cash flow is largely offset by expenditures for new stores, restaurants, etc how do you estimate future free cash flow? And at what rate do you discount those cash flows?
答5:对于不同股票,我们使用相同的折现率。在某些情况下,我们在预测现金流时,可能会更保守一些。
A5:We use the same discount rate across all securities. We may be more conservative in estimating cash in some situations.
并不是因为利率为1.5%,我们就会喜欢2-3%回报率的投资。我们有一个比国家现行利率高很多的投资收益率门槛。当我们考察一桩生意时,我们考虑的是长期持有,我们不会认为利率会一直这么低。
Just because interest rates are at 1.5% doesn't mean we like an investment that yields 2-3%. We have minimum thresholds in our mind that are a whole lot higher than government rates. When we're looking at a business, we're looking at holding it forever, so we don't assume rates will always be this low.
我没有一个严格的折现率。每当谈起这个问题时,查理总是提醒我还没有准备一个运算表格,但是这样的表格已经在我的脑子里了。
We don’t formally have discount rates. Every time we start talking about this, Charlie reminds me that I’ve never prepared a spreadsheet, but I do in my mind.
我们希望买入的生意,其回报率能够高于政府债券——问题的关键是高多少?如果政府债券的收益是2%,我们不会买入回报率是4%的生意。
We just try to buy things that we’ll earn more from than a government bond – the question is, how much higher? If government bonds are at 2%, we’re not going to buy a business that will return 4%.
我不会每天给查理打电话问他:「我们的收益率门槛是多少?」我们从不使用这个概念。
I don’t call Charlie every day and ask him, 「What’s our hurdle rate?」 We’ve never used the term.
(芒格:收益率门槛只是一个没有意义的概念,但是很多人在这上面犯了很多严重错误。在考察很多投资时要分别对比每个投资的回报率,我觉得还没有一个好的选择可以代替这种考察方法。)
Munger: The concept of a hurdle rate makes nothing but sense, but a lot of people using this make terrible errors. I don’t think there’s any substitute for thinking about a whole lot of investment options and thinking about the returns from each.
(芒格:问题不在于我们没有(收益率门槛值)——我们实际上是有的——但这来自于逻辑上的对比。如果存在一项投资铁定可以带来8%的收益,那么对于7%的收益率,我们一定会马上拒绝。就像在《邮购新娘》中的情节那样,如果新娘公司给你邮来的新娘携带艾滋病毒,我就不会浪费时间去考虑。一切都是机会成本在起作用。)
The trouble isn’t that we don’t have one [a hurdle rate] – we sort of do – but it interferes with logical comparison. If I know I have something that yields 8% for sure, and something else came along at 7%, I’d reject it instantly. It’s like the mail-order-bride firm offering a bride who has AIDS – I don’t need to waste a moment considering it. Everything is a function of opportunity cost.
问6:判断风险的能力与计算内在价值的能力是否同样重要?
答6:我们将风险视为未来对生意产生负面影响的各因素。我们希望能够得到一系列决策的量化风险而不是介入存在一系列具有可见风险的生意。我们希望介入的生意能够存在护城河。同时,我们还希望介入生意的护城河能够得到不断拓宽。不断拓宽的护城河才是好生意的最重要标志。
A6:We perceive risk as items that impair future business. Wants to have mathematical risk on their side over a group of decisions. Not in the business of assuming a lot of risk in business. We look for moats around businesses. We look for castles (businesses) that have a moat surrounding it which is expanding as a primary consideration of a great business.
问7:您用的是什么估值指标?
Q7: What valuation metrics do you use?
与标准普尔500指数相比,一桩生意的合理PE倍数取决于该生意的净资产回报率和增量投资资本回报率。我不会只考察相对PE倍数等单一估值指标。我也不认为PE、PB、PS等指标能为你提供很多有价值的信息。大家想有一个公式,但得到这么一个公式并不容易。想要对什么进行估值,你只需计算出从现在到遥远的未来它能够产生的自由现金流,然后利用一个合适的折现率将这个现金流折算到现在就可以了。现金等于现金。你只需评估一桩生意的经济属性。
The appropriate multiple for a business compared to the S&P 500 depends on its return on equity and return on incremental invested capital. I wouldn't look at a single valuation metric like relative P/E ratio. I don't think price-to-earnings, price-to-book or price-to-sales ratios tell you very much. People want a formula, but it's not that easy. To value something, you simply have to take its free cash flows from now until kingdom come and then discount them back to the present using an appropriate discount rate. All cash is equal. You just need to evaluate a business's economic characteristics.
问8:投资决策中,如何使用账面价值?
Q8: What do you think of the use of book values in making investment decisions?
(备注:下面这两段话似乎是以别人的口吻转述的,所以语言结构是转述的,而且两段间的意思并不是非常连贯。)
在伯克希尔的投资决策中,账面价值实际上没有起到任何作用。他们对高回报率生意的追求,通常会导致其投资的公司具有较小的帐目价值。他还补充说,若管理的资金量较小,账面价值法可能会获得较好的应用效果,就像格雷厄姆所管理的公司那样,该方法在类似格雷厄姆的从业者——像巴菲特的朋友Walter Schloss——身上也有非常好的效果。格雷厄姆在《聪明的投资者》一书中所阐述的三个最重要的理念是:1)投资者对市场应该采取什么样的态度;2)安全边际;以及3)把公司看成生意而不是股票。
Book value is virtually not a consideration in investment decision-making at Berkshire. Their pursuit of high return businesses usually leads to companies with minimal book values. He added that the book value approach could work well with small sums of money, like Graham had managed, and that the approach had worked well for Graham-type practitioners like Buffett’s friend Walter Schloss. The three most important concepts conveyed by Graham in 「The Intelligent Investor」 were the investor’s attitude toward the market, the 「margin of safety」, and the practice of looking at companies as businesses, not stocks.
查理·芒格的观点是「预测股价不但不会带来什么好处,反而是有害的。通常情况下,提供预测的人往往会从实现这种预测上获得好处。他们的预测也经常可以得到「正确」的结果,但这种正确极具欺骗性。」 巴菲特补充说他们从来不在并购活动中对感兴趣的生意或股权进行预测。「首先考虑公司执行层或董事会要做的事情是否合理已经成为了一种惯例。」
Munger proffered that 「projections generally do more harm than good, and are usually prepared by persons who have some sort of an interest in the outcome of actions based on the projections. They often have a precision that’s deceptive.」 Buffett added that they’ve never looked at a projection in connection with an equity or business that they’ve acquired. 「It’s a ritual to justify doing what an executive or a board wanted to do in the first place.」
问9:如果你不接触管理层,不看年报,也不知道股价,只看财务报表,你会关注哪一项指标?
Q9: If you can’t talk with management, and can’t read the annual report, and didn’t know the price, but could only look at the financial statements, what metric would you look at?
答9:巴菲特:投资就是出让你现有资金的使用权,以期在将来得到更多的现金。我们先把价格放在一边。如果你要买一个农场,你会首先考虑这个农场的单位产量——此时你就是在关注资产本身。你会问自己:我是否对经营农场有足够的经验以至于通过其当前的经营状况所提供的有用信息可以预测其将来的财物状况?我就是根据你买农场的这种思路来买股票的。这些股票必须属于我熟悉的行业,如果我能够以内在价值40%的价格买入股票,我就具备了足够的安全边际。如果你不告诉生意的性质,报表能够告诉我的信息就非常有限。我们买入过很多有价证券,我们与其中多数公司的管理层没有见过面。我们只是依靠自己对生意的一般理解到报表中寻找我们感兴趣的东西。
A9:WB: Investing is laying out money now to get more money later on. Let’s leave the market price out. If you were buying a farm, you would think about bushels per acre — you are looking to the asset itself. Ask yourself: do I understand enough about the business so that the financials will be able to tell me meaningful things that will help me to foresee the statements in the future? I have bought stocks the way you describe. They were in businesses I understood, and if I could buy at 40% of X, I’d be okay with the margin of safety. If you don’t tell me the nature of the business, financial statements won’t tell me much. We’ve bought many securities, and with most, we’ve never met management. We use our general understanding of business and look to specifics from financial statements.
芒格:有一个指标(——现金)深受欢迎,我们喜爱拥有大量现金的生意。与之相反,不喜欢拥有大量建筑设备的生意,忙碌了一年,你的利润却躺在院子里。我们会尽量避免涉足后面那类生意。我们更喜欢在年底能给我们开出支票的生意。
CM: One metric catches people. We prefer businesses that drown in cash. An example of a different business is construction equipment. You work hard all year and there is your profit sitting in the yard. We avoid businesses like that. We prefer those that can write us a check at the end of the year.
巴菲特:如果我们知道一套公寓的位置,我们就可以知道这套公寓的价值,我们也会知道拥有这套公寓的每月花费是多少。我买入过很多财务上出现困难的公司,但是有一些这类公司我是永远都不会买入,即使它们拥有世界上最优秀的管理团队,因为在一个「烂」行业里,优秀的管理团队并不能起多少作用。
WB: We could value an apartment if we knew where the apartment is, and we know the monthly checks. I have bought a lot of things off the financials. There is a lot I wouldn’t buy even if it had the best management in the world, as it doesn’t make much difference in a bad business.
问10:当你评估一桩生意时,你如何看待其成长性?
Q10: How do you think about growth rates when you value businesses?
如果一桩生意的[长期]增长率高于折现率,从数学上讲,其价值是无限的。这就是由Durand在三十年前提出的圣彼得堡悖论。(此处提供了原文链接地址,同时推荐了莫布森的文章—《由圣彼得堡悖论得出的两点认识》)有些管理层就这么认识他们的公司。假设增长没有限制是非常危险——很多麻烦来源于此。预计超常的高速增长可以长期持续导致投资者损失大量的金钱。回头看看50年前的优秀企业,有多少能够长期保持10%的增长率?那些有增长的企业,能达到15%增长率的更是凤毛麟角。我和查理都不愿意预测企业会长期高速增长。有时候我们可能是错的,这种错误也会带来损失,但是我们喜欢这种保守。
When the [long-term] growth rate is higher than the discount rate, then [mathematically] the value is infinity. This is the St. Petersburg Paradox, written about by Durand 30 years ago. [Click here for a copy of the original 1957 article. For more on this topic, I recommend Integrating the Outliers: Two Lessons from the St. Petersburg Paradox, by CSFB’s (now Legg Mason’s) Michael Mauboussin.].Some managements think this [that the value of their company is infinite]. It gets very dangerous to assume high growth rates to infinity – that’s where people get into a lot of trouble. The idea of projecting extremely high growth rates for a long period of time has cost investors an awful lot of money. Go look at top companies 50 years ago: how many have grown at 10% for a long time? And [those that have grown] 15% is very rarified. Charlie and I are rarely willing to project high growth rates. Maybe we’re wrong sometimes and that costs us, but we like to be conservative.
[芒格:如果你使用的增长率过高,导致你得到的企业价值无限大,那么你应该采用一个更为现实的增长率数据。除此之外,你还能做什么呢?]
[CM: If your growth rate is so high that you conclude the business has an infinite valuation, you have to use more realistic numbers. What else could anyone do?]
温馨提示:投资有风险,选择需谨慎。