In the mid-1970s, an investor with tremendous business experience, Warren Buffett, became the business “coach” and confidant of the Washington Post‘s Katharine Graham. Graham became chairman and CEO of the newspaper company unexpectedly when her husband committed suicide. She leaned heavily on Buffett’s business judgment – especially when it came to the question of how to manage the business fund. Buffett addressed that critical question in a private letter to Graham.
Fortunately… I was sent a copy of that letter late last month. Here’s what Buffett told one of his closest friends about how to manage her company’s pension account…
The directors and officers of the company consider themselves to be quite capable of making business decisions, including decisions regarding the long-term attractiveness of specific business operations purchased at specific prices. We have made decisions to purchase several television businesses, a newspaper business, etc. And in other relationships, we have made such judgments covering a much wider spectrum of business operations.
Negotiated prices for such purchases of entire businesses often are dramatically higher than stock market valuations attributable to well-managed similar operations. Longer term, rewards to owners in both cases will flow from such investments proportional to the economic results of the business. By buying small pieces of businesses through the stock market rather than entire businesses through negotiation, several disadvantages occur: a) the right to manage, or select managers, is forfeited; b) the right to determine dividend policy or direct the areas of internal reinvestment is absent; c) ability to borrow long-term against the business assets (versus against the stock position) is greatly reduced; and d) the opportunity to sell the businesses on a full-value, private-owner basis is forfeited.
[These disadvantages are offset by] the periodic tendency of stock markets to experience excesses, which cause businesses – when changing hands in small pieces through stock transactions – to sell at prices significantly above privately determined negotiated values. At such times, holdings may be liquidated at better prices than if the whole business were owned – and, due to the impersonal nature of securities markets, no moral stigma need be attached to dealing with such unwitting buyers.
Stock market prices may bounce wildly and irrationally, but if decisions regarding internal rates of return of the business are reasonably correct – and a small portion of the business is bought at a fraction of its private-owner value – a good return for the fund should be assured over the time span against which pension fund results should be measured.
[Success] in large part, is a matter of attitude, whereby the results of the business become the standard against which measurements are made rather than quarterly stock prices. It embodies a long time span for judgment confirmation, just as does an investment by a corporation in a major new division, plant, or product. It treats stock ownership as business ownership with corresponding adjustment in mental set. And it demands an excess of value of price paid, not merely a favorable short-term earnings or stock market outlook. General stock market considerations simply don’t enter into the purchase decisions.
Finally, [success] rests on a belief, which both seems logical and which has been borne out historically in securities markets, that intrinsic value is the eventual prime determinant of stock prices. In the words of my former boss: ‘In the short run the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.'”
…..read more HERE
