市值飙升1.8万倍：巴菲特掌控伯克希尔的这50年是如何做到的？

    大多数公司一年仅发布一份年报。然而，前几天，伯克希尔哈撒韦公司实际上发布了两份“年报”，它们共用一张金色封面，标志着巴菲特执掌伯克希尔哈撒韦50周年。

    第一份报告是伯克希尔哈撒韦的2014年年报。现年84岁的首席执行官巴菲特表示，2014年公司的表现不错，但算不上完美（我们后面将讲到这一问题）。

    第二份“报告”则盘点了巴菲特执掌伯克希尔的半个世纪。在一个专门的章节——致股东信里，巴菲特勾画了伯克希尔的“过去、现在和未来”，这个章节简直可以命名为“我犯过的错误”（当然实际名称并非如此）。此前从未参与过“致股东信”撰写的伯克希尔副董事长查理•芒格，也对老搭档这50年来的表现进行了理性的评估，称伯克希尔的成功，要部分归功于巴菲特的“建设性特质”。 芒格列出的其中一条特质是“巴菲特决定将自己的（投资）活动限定在少数几个种类，并50年如一日的高度专注这几个种类，这一点难能可贵。”

    伯克希尔年报不声不响的进行了一处改动，公众因此注意到另一件难能可贵的事情。过去，年报业绩表中仅包含伯克希尔的每股账面价值以及标普500指数，如今，巴菲特新增了一项——伯克希尔的历史股价。

    紧挨着巴菲特致股东信的那一页上，列出了50年来伯克希尔股价的涨跌幅，后面还附有两句总结。在巴菲特执掌伯克希尔的半个世纪里，该公司股价复合年增长率为21.6％，市值总涨幅为1,826,163%。

    需要说明的是，笔者多年来一直是伯克希尔的股东，而且目前仍持有该公司股票。此外，我与巴菲特是近50年的老朋友，并无偿为其年度致股东信担任编辑。

    关于上述高得惊人的总涨幅：虽然该统计数值一直准备呈现在业绩表中，但巴菲特致股东信的初稿中并未提到该数值，因为谈这个似乎有吹牛之嫌。不过，不提它的话，之前一个段落就显得不知所云。最终，巴菲特决定为了逻辑流畅，将50年总涨幅的数值加进了致股东信。

    至于说为何等到现在，才将伯克希尔的历史股价加入公司年报，则另有内情，这牵涉到伯克希尔公司的历史与现状。历史上，名为巴菲特合伙公司的对冲基金在1965年掌握伯克希尔的控制权后，巴菲特试图找到一个业绩衡量标准，他决定，每年公开将伯克希尔每股账面价值的涨跌与含分红的标普500指数走势进行对比。

    早些年，上述比较合乎情理，因为当时伯克希尔公司主要从事两项业务：一是保险，二是将保险资金用于投资普通股。所投资的股票每季度按市值计算价值，所以其价值即其贡献的账面价值。因此，将账面价值与标普500指数作比较很有道理。此外，还有一个重要的事实，那就是此时的账面价值，非常接近巴菲特所说的伯克希尔的“内在价值”，即与财报好坏无关的公司真实估值。

    随后，在上世纪70年代初，伯克希尔慢慢显著改变了自身经营策略。没错，该公司仍然进行大手笔投资，但也开始全资收购企业。布法罗新闻和Blue Chip Stamps是伯克希尔早期收购的两家企业，这只是伯克希尔打响的第一枪：自那以来，该公司从未停止收购企业，也没有压制自身大手笔收购的野心。

    那么，在连续数十年大举收购后，伯克希尔的业务版图如何？巴菲特明确表示：“如今的伯克希尔，是一个庞大的企业集团，并时刻伺机进一步扩张。”

    在《财富》美国500强榜单上，伯克希尔位列第四，年营收约1950亿美元。其中大部分收入并非投资回报，而是来自其收购的70多家企业，其中的重量级选手包括伯灵顿北方圣达菲铁路、原名中美能源的伯克希尔能源、汽车保险公司GEICO以及伯克希尔掌握半数股份的番茄酱厂商亨氏。

    大举收购企业的转变，不仅令伯克希尔的规模迅速膨胀，也提出了一个大问题（该问题此前在公司年报中从未提及，但在公司年会上偶尔会被提出），即该公司应该用什么作为业绩衡量标准。根据一般公认会计原则（GAAP），被收购公司的成本永远不会调高，这就意味着，该公司内在价值在被收购后提升，不会推高账面价值。因此，伯克希尔的账面价值增长缓慢，而且无法准确反映该公司的高速发展。因此，与标普500指数作对比就变得毫无意义。

    那巴菲特为何不向股东说明情况，并停止与标普500指数作对比？

    原因之一是，30多年前，巴菲特在1982年的致股东信中，嘲笑有些商界人士在业绩不理想时，就更改此前设定的目标。巴菲特称，这种做法，无异于“先将经营绩效之箭射入白布，然后小心翼翼的围绕射入的箭来画靶心。”

    在年报中对业绩表做变动，给人的印象是在衡量标准方面做出了妥协。因此，与标普500指数的对比仍然被保留了下来。就此标准而言，伯克希尔近来似乎未能达到原定目标。过去五年来，除2011年以外，标普的表现都击败了伯克希尔。2014年，标普500指数上涨了13.7％，而伯克希尔账面价值仅上涨了8.3％。尽管如此，从整整50年的表现来看，伯克希尔遥遥领先：其每股账面价值上涨了751,113%，而标普上涨了11,196%。

    当然，两者都大大低于伯克希尔市值1,826,163%的涨幅。

    Most companies put out one annual report. Berkshire Hathaway in effect posted two today, which when printed will have just one gold-colored cover, signifying a Golden Anniversary.

    The first report is for 2014: a good year, says CEO Warren Buffett, 84, but hardly perfect (we’ll get to that).

    The second report covers Buffett’s 50 years of managing Berkshire. He lays out the company’s “past, present and future” in a special section that could have been subtitled (though it wasn’t) “Mistakes I Made.” Berkshire vice-chairman Charles Munger, who has never before written for the annual report, contributes his own cerebral appraisal of his colleague’s tenure, attributing part of Berkshire’s success to Buffett’s “constructive peculiarities.” Here’s one he lists: “Buffett’s decision to limit his activities to a few kinds and to maximize his attention to them, and to keep doing so for 50 years, was a lollapalooza.”

    Here’s another lollapalooza, brought into public view by a quiet change in the report. To the performance table that has always contained only Berkshire’s book value per share and the S&P 500 index, Buffett has added the historical record of Berkshire’s stock price.

    And there the record is, on the page facing Buffett’s shareholder letter: 50 years of percentage increases and declines in Berkshire’s stock, followed by two summations. For the half-century—for all the years of Buffett’s management—the price grew at a compound annual rate of 21.6%. The gain, overall, was 1,826,163%.

    Quick note here: I, the writer of this article, have been a Berkshire shareholder for most of those years and still am. I have also been a friend of Buffett’s for more than 45 years and am the pro bono editor of his annual letter to shareholders.

    About that remarkable overall gain: Though the statistic was always slated to be in the performance table, the first draft of Buffett’s letter did not include it because that would have seemed like, well, bragging. But the omission also left one early paragraph making no sense. In time, Buffett faced up to logic and put the 50-year percentage into the letter.

    There’s an inside story as to why Berkshire’s stock history has at this late date been inserted in the report, those reasons having to do with where the company has been and where it now is. Historically, after the hedge fund called Buffett Partnership Ltd. took control of Berkshire in 1965, Warren Buffett looked for a performance yardstick and decided that every year the company would publicly compare the rise or fall of its per-share book value to the S&P 500 index with dividends included.

    For a number of years, that comparison made sense because Berkshire’s business was predominantly two things: insurance and, with the money made available by insurance, investments in common stocks. The values of these stocks were marked to market every quarter, and so, in effect, was their dollar contribution to book value. That made book a rational comparative to the S&P index. In an important additional fact, book value was then also fairly close to what Buffett calls the “intrinsic value” of Berkshire—that is, an estimate of the company’s true worth, regardless of what its financial statements indicate it to be.

    Then, in the early 1970s, Berkshire slowly but very significantly changed its business strategy. It still made huge investments, true, but also began to purchase, in their entirety, operating companies. Among the first of these were the Buffalo News and Blue Chip Stamps, and they were just the opening shots: Berkshire has never since stopped buying companies nor suppressed its ambitions of buying big.

    So what do you have after decades of acquisitions? You have Buffett unequivocally declaring: “Berkshire is now a sprawling conglomerate, constantly trying to sprawl further.”

    Berkshire is likewise the fourth largest company on the Fortune 500, with annual revenues of about $195 billion. Most of that intake comes not from investments but from more than 70 operating companies Berkshire has bought, among them such heavyweights as railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Berkshire Energy (formerly called MidAmerican Energy), auto insurer GEICO, and half of ketchup purveyor Heinz.

    That large-scale shift to buying businesses not only rocketed Berkshire’s size, but also raised a big question (never discussed in the annual report, but occasionally raised at the company’s annual meeting) as to what its performance yardstick should be. Under GAAP accounting standards, the cost of an acquired company is never revalued upward, which means any post-acquisition rise in that company’s intrinsic value never pumps up book value. So Berkshire’s book value became in time both an anemic figure and a poor indicator of how well the company was doing. In a corollary result, the comparison with the S&P 500 grew meaningless.

    So why didn’t Buffett just explain the situation to his shareholders and do away with the comparison?

    One reason, surely, is that more than 30 years ago, in his 1982 annual letter, Buffett derided businesspeople who set targets and then, confronted with unsatisfactory results, simply change the target. What those people do, Buffett said, is “shoot the arrow of business performance into a blank canvas and then carefully draw the bullseye around the implanted arrow.”

    The new performance table in the annual report comes across as a sort of yardstick compromise. The S&P 500 results are still there—and indeed look like a set of targets that haven’t recently been hit. In all but one of the last five years (the exception was 2011), the S&P beat Berkshire’s book value. In 2014, the S&P index was up 13.7% against Berkshire’s rise in book value of 8.3%. Still, for the 50 years, Berkshire was the runaway leader: its book value-per-share was up 751,113% vs. 11,196% for the S&P.

    And both of those figures pale, of course, against Berkshire’s market value rise of 1,826,163%.