巴菲特致股东的信（2007年）②评判标准

Yardsticks

评判标准

Berkshire has two major areas of value. The first is our investments: stocks, bonds and cash equivalents. At yearend these totaled $141 billion (not counting those in our finance or utility operations, which we assign to our second bucket of value).

伯克希尔的价值主要源于两个方面。一个是我们的投资：股票、债券及现金等价物。在年底这些投资的价值为 1410 亿美元(在计算时，我们排除了财务和公用事业部门所持有的部位，将其归入第二部分价值中)。

Insurance float – money we temporarily hold in our insurance operations that does not belong to us – funds $59 billion of our investments. This float is “free” as long as insurance underwriting breaks even, meaning that the premiums we receive equal the losses and expenses we incur. Of course, insurance underwriting is volatile, swinging erratically between profits and losses. Over our entire history, however, we’ve been profitable, and I expect we will average breakeven results or better in the future. If we do that, our investments can be viewed as an unencumbered source of value for Berkshire shareholders.

保险浮存金，就是在保险业务中我们暂时持有的但不属于我们的资金，为我们的投资提供了 590 亿美元零成本资金(590/1410=41.8%)。只要保险业的承保损益平衡，浮存金就可以看作是"免费"获得的，这意味着，我们获得的保费，要与我们可能承担的损失和产生的费用相当。当然，保险承保是不确定的，总在收益和损失之间波动不定。然而在我们的承保历史中，我们总体是获利的，所以我期望在未来，我们将继续保持不亏损的状况，甚至做得更好。如果我们做到了，股东们将看到我们的投资，将成为伯克希尔公司股东们，无成本的价值来源。

Berkshire’s second component of value is earnings that come from sources other than investments and insurance. These earnings are delivered by our 66 non-insurance companies, itemized on page 76. In our early years, we focused on the investment side. During the past two decades, however, we have put ever more emphasis on the development of earnings from non-insurance businesses.

伯克希尔价值的第二个组成部分是，来自投资和保险以外的收益。这些收益由我们的 66 家非保险公司提供。早年，我们专注于投资方面。然而，在过去的 20 年里，我们越来越重视非保险业务收益的发展。

The following tables illustrate this shift. In the first we tabulate per-share investments at 14-year intervals. We exclude those applicable to minority interests.

下表显示了这种变迁。首先，我们在表格中按 14 年为周期，列出每股所含的投资金额以及非保险业务每股收益增长记录，均排除了少数股东权益的部分。

For the entire 42 years, our compounded annual gain in per-share investments was 27.1%. But the trend has been downward as we increasingly used our available funds to buy operating businesses.

在 42 年里，我们每股投资金额的年复合收益是 27.1％。但是随着我们越来越多的使用可用资金购买整个运营企业，这一趋势一直在下降。

Here’s the record on how earnings of our non-insurance businesses have grown, again on a per-share basis and after applicable minority interests.

这是我们非保险业务的收益增长记录，同样是按每股计算，并扣除适用的少数股权。

For the entire period, the compounded annual gain was 17.8%, with gains accelerating as our focus shifted.

在整个期间，复合年增长率为17.8%，随着我们的关注点转移，增长率还在加快。

Though these tables may help you gain historical perspective and be useful in valuation, they are completely misleading in predicting future possibilities. Berkshire’s past record can’t be duplicated or even approached. Our base of assets and earnings is now far too large for us to make outsized gains in the future.

尽管通过这些表格，让你们对伯克希尔公司的收益增长历史有了大致概念，也有助评估伯克希尔的内在价值，但是它们对于预测公司未来发展的可能性时，完全具有误导性。伯克希尔过去的增长纪录，未来不要说复制，即使是接近这个水平都是困难的。我们的资产和收益基数，现在对我们来说，已经大的不可能在未来获得超常的增长。

Charlie Munger, my partner at Berkshire, and I will continue to measure our progress by the two yardsticks I have just described and will regularly update you on the results. Though we can’t come close to duplicating the past, we will do our best to make sure the future is not disappointing.

我在伯克希尔的合伙人查理·芒格和我将继续用前面提到的两个指标来衡量我们的进展，并定期将结果报告给你们。尽管我们不可能接近复制过去的增长，但是我们将尽最大努力确保未来的增长不令人失望。

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In our efforts, we will be aided enormously by the managers who have joined Berkshire. This is an unusual group in several ways. First, most of them have no financial need to work. Many sold us their businesses for large sums and run them because they love doing so, not because they need the money. Naturally they wish to be paid fairly, but money alone is not the reason they work hard and productively.

我们的努力，得到了那些加入伯克希尔公司管理层们的有力支持。在某些方面，这是一个与众不同的团体。首先，他们中的许多人在经济上根本无需工作，在将生意卖给我们时，大都获得了大笔资金。他们之所以继续经营，只是因为他们乐此不疲，而不是因为需要钱。当然他们也希望获得公平合理的薪酬，但金钱本身，绝对不是他们如此辛勤且富有效率工作的原因。

A second, somewhat related, point about these managers is that they have exactly the job they want for the rest of their working years. At almost any other company, key managers below the top aspire to keep climbing the pyramid. For them, the subsidiary or division they manage today is a way station – or so they hope. Indeed, if they are in their present positions five years from now, they may well feel like failures.

其次，有些相关的是，这些经理人想在自己剩余工作年限里，从事自己想要的工作。而在绝大多数其他公司里，那些主要的经理们，只要还不是公司一把手，就热衷于爬上公司权力金字塔的顶端。对于他们来说，他们现在管理的子公司或部门，只是晋升途中的中转站，至少他们希望如此。事实上，让他们在目前的职位上待上五年，会让他们深感失败。

Conversely, our CEOs’ scorecards for success are not whether they obtain my job but instead are the long-term performances of their businesses. Their decisions flow from a here-today, here-forever mindset. I think our rare and hard-to-replicate managerial structure gives Berkshire a real advantage.

相比之下，我们 CEO 们的"计分牌"上的成功标准，不是坐上我的位置，而是他们企业的长期表现。他们的决策是基于"这份工作干到死"的心态做出的。我想正是这种罕见和难以复制的管理结构，才是我们真正的优势。