问：如何看待价值？
Q: How do you think about value?
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。
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股票的意思，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）占据了非常大的主动性。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.
迄今为止，在《聪明的投资者》第八章中，格雷厄姆关于市场先生的描述是我读过的、最有意义的内容。态度比智商更重要。拥有高智商很容易带来麻烦，比如Long-Term Capital。你真正需要的是一个和适的处世哲学和脾气秉性。
Graham’s Ch. 8, in the book Intelligent Investor, on Mr. Market is the most important thing I have ever read. Attitude is much more important than IQ. You can really get into trouble with a high IQ, i.e. Long-Term Capital. You need to have the right philosophical temperament.
Source: Q&A with 6 Business Schools
URL: http://www.thebuffett.com
Time: Feb 2009
问：怎么计算内在价值？
Q: How do you calculate intrinsic value?
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。
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.
Source: BRK Annual Meeting 2003 Tilson Notes
URL: http://www.thebuffett.com
Time: 2003
问：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？
Q: 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?
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。
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.
Source: BRK Annual Meeting 1997
URL: http://www.thebuffett.com
Time: May 1997
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问：您用的是什么估值指标？
Q: 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.
Source: BRK Annual Meeting 2002 Tilson Notes
URL: http://www.thebuffett.com
Time: 2002
