巴菲特致股东的信（2011年）①概述

To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.:

致伯克希尔·哈撒韦公司所有股东：

The per-share book value of both our Class A and Class B stock increased by 4.6% in 2011. Over the last 47 years (that is, since present management took over), book value has grown from $19 to $99,860, a rate of 19.8% compounded annually.*

我们公司在 2011 年 A/B 股的每股账面价值都增长了 4.6%(标普 2.1%)。自现任管理层接手的 47 年以来，每股账面价值从 19 美元增长到了 99860 美元，年复合增长率为 19.8%。*

* All per-share figures used in this report apply to Berkshire’s A shares. Figures for the B shares are 1/1500th of those shown for A.

* 本报告中使用的所有每股数字均适用于伯克希尔的A股。B股的数字是A股的1/1500。

Charlie Munger, Berkshire’s Vice Chairman and my partner, and I feel good about the company’s progress during 2011. Here are the highlights:

伯克希尔公司的副董事长兼我的合伙人查理·芒格，以及我对公司 2011 年的业务进展感到相当满意。以下是其中的亮点：

•The primary job of a Board of Directors is to see that the right people are running the business and to be sure that the next generation of leaders is identified and ready to take over tomorrow. I have been on 19 corporate boards, and Berkshire’s directors are at the top of the list in the time and diligence they have devoted to succession planning. What’s more, their efforts have paid off.

1，董事会首要工作是确保由正确的经理人在经营管理企业业务，并确保已经选定下一代接班的领导人而且已经准备好明天就能接手。我曾加入过 19 家公司的董事会，我认为，在接班人规划上付出的时间和精力上，伯克希尔公司的董事会肯定排名前列。更重要的是，他们的努力已经得到了回报。

As 2011 started, Todd Combs joined us as an investment manager, and shortly after yearend Ted Weschler came aboard. Both of these men have outstanding investment skills and a deep commitment to Berkshire. Each will be handling a few billion dollars in 2012, but they have the brains, judgment and character to manage our entire portfolio when Charlie and I are no longer running Berkshire.

2011 年初，托德·康布斯(ToddCombs)作为投资经理人加入我们，2012 年初泰德·韦斯勒(TedWeschler)也加入了我们。他们两位都具有杰出的投资技巧，而且愿意全心全意为伯克希尔服务。2012 年他们俩人都将管理几十亿美元的投资，但是当查理和我不再管理伯克希尔的时候，他们俩人具备的头脑、判断和性格完全能够管理我们的整个投资组合。

Your Board is equally enthusiastic about my successor as CEO, an individual to whom they have had a great deal of exposure and whose managerial and human qualities they admire. (We have two superb back-up candidates as well.) When a transfer of responsibility is required, it will be seamless, and Berkshire’s prospects will remain bright. More than 98% of my net worth is in Berkshire stock, all of which will go to various philanthropies. Being so heavily concentrated in one stock defies conventional wisdom. But I’m fine with this arrangement, knowing both the quality and diversity of the businesses we own and the caliber of the people who manage them. With these assets, my successor will enjoy a running start. Do not, however, infer from this discussion that Charlie and I are going anywhere; we continue to be in excellent health, and we love what we do.

公司董事会对我的继任 CEO 同样充满信心，他们对他已经非常了解，对于此人的管理能力和个人品德也非常敬仰。(我们同时还有两位出色的候选人)。未来需要移交管理职责的时候，一切将会是平滑过渡无缝衔接，伯克希尔的前景仍将是一片光明。我个人 98%以上的财富都放在伯克希尔股票上，所有这些持股将会捐赠慈善机构。如此高度集中投资于一只股票完全违背传统的投资智慧。但是我对这种安排非常满意，因为我本人既非常了解我们所拥有的企业的品质和多元化程度，也了解管理这些企业的经理人的出色能力。能够拥有如此优质的资产，我的继任者将会拥有一个很好的起点。然而，千万不要根据这些讨论，就推断查理和我将很快将会离开管理岗位，我们仍然非常健康，而且我们非常热爱我们的工作。

•On September 16th we acquired Lubrizol, a worldwide producer of additives and other specialty chemicals. The company has had an outstanding record since James Hambrick became CEO in 2004, with pre-tax profits increasing from $147 million to $1,085 million. Lubrizol will have many opportunities for “bolt-on” acquisitions in the specialty chemical field. Indeed, we’ve already agreed to three, costing $493 million. James is a disciplined buyer and a superb operator. Charlie and I are eager to expand his managerial domain.

2，2011 年 9 月 16 日，我们收购了路博润(Lubrizol)，这是一家全球性的添加剂及其它特殊化学品生产商。自 2004 年 JamesHambrick 担任 CEO 以来，该公司的业绩一直表现突出，税前利润从 1.47 亿增至 10.85 亿美元。Lubrizol 公司在专业化学品领域将会拥有很多补强式并购机会。实际上，我们已经谈成了三个，共投入 4.93亿美元。James Hambrick 既是一个训练有素的收购者，又是一个出色的经营者。查理和我急切盼望能够扩大他的管理范围。

•Our major businesses did well last year. In fact, each of our five largest non-insurance companies – BNSF, Iscar, Lubrizol, Marmon Group and MidAmerican Energy – delivered record operating earnings. In aggregate these businesses earned more than $9 billion pre-tax in 2011. Contrast that to seven years ago, when we owned only one of the five, MidAmerican, whose pre-tax earnings were $393 million. Unless the economy weakens in 2012, each of our fabulous five should again set a record, with aggregate earnings comfortably topping $10 billion.

3，去年我们旗下主要业务都表现出色。事实上，我们五大非保险企业 BNSF，Iscar，Lubrizol，Marmon 和中美能源都实现了创纪录的经营收益。2011 年这些企业的税前收益合计超过 90 亿美元。相比之下，七年前我们只拥有中美能源一家，其税前收益为 3.93 亿美元。除非 2012 年经济衰退，否则我们这五家企业都将再创纪录，税前总收益将轻松超过 100 亿美元。

•In total, our entire string of operating companies spent $8.2 billion for property, plant and equipment in 2011, smashing our previous record by more than $2 billion. About 95% of these outlays were made in the U.S., a fact that may surprise those who believe our country lacks investment opportunities. We welcome projects abroad, but expect the overwhelming majority of Berkshire’s future capital commitments to be in America. In 2012, these expenditures will again set a record.

4，总体而言，2011 年我们所有的运营业务在房产厂房设备方面的资本支出高达 82 亿美元，比我们过去的历史记录还要多 20 亿美元。其中 95%投在美国，这一事实或许会让那些认为美国缺乏投资机会的人非常震惊。我们也非常乐意在海外投资，但是我们期望伯克希尔未来绝大多数资本支出将在美国。2012 年，这些资本支出将会再创新高。

•Our insurance operations continued their delivery of costless capital that funds a myriad of other opportunities. This business produces “float” – money that doesn’t belong to us, but that we get to invest for Berkshire’s benefit. And if we pay out less in losses and expenses than we receive in premiums, we additionally earn an underwriting profit, meaning the float costs us less than nothing. Though we are sure to have underwriting losses from time to time, we’ve now had nine consecutive years of underwriting profits, totaling about $17 billion. Over the same nine years our float increased from $41 billion to its current record of $70 billion. Insurance has been good to us.

5，我们的保险业务继续为无数其它投资机会提供无成本的资金。保险业务产生了"浮存金"，这是不属于我们的钱，但我们可以为伯克希尔的利益拿来进行投资。如果我们未来赔付和运营费用支出低于我们收取的保费，我们还能额外获得承保盈利，这意味着我们的保险浮存金的成本低于零。尽管我们肯定会不时出现承保亏损，但我们已经连续 9 年实现承保盈利，累计获利 170 亿美元。这 9 年期间，我们的浮存金从 410 亿美元增长到现在创记录的 700 亿美元。保险业务对我们来说简直太棒了。

•Finally, we made two major investments in marketable securities: (1) a $5 billion 6% preferred stock of Bank of America that came with warrants allowing us to buy 700 million common shares at $7.14 per share any time before September 2, 2021; and (2) 63.9 million shares of IBM that cost us $10.9 billion. Counting IBM, we now have large ownership interests in four exceptional companies: 13.0% of American Express, 8.8% of Coca-Cola, 5.5% of IBM and 7.6% of Wells Fargo. (We also, of course, have many smaller, but important, positions.)

6，最后我们对有价证券市场进行了两笔主要投资：投资 50 亿美元买入美国银行年利率 6%的优先股，附带可以在 2021 年 9 月 2 日前以每股 7.14 美元购买 7 亿股普通股的认股权证；投资 109 亿美元买入 IBM 公司6390 万股股票。算上 IBM，我们现在拥有四家特殊公司的大量股权：美国运通 13%，可口可乐 8.8%，富国银行7.6%，IBM5.5%。当然我们还拥有其它许多较小但重要的持仓。

We view these holdings as partnership interests in wonderful businesses, not as marketable securities to be bought or sold based on their near-term prospects. Our share of their earnings, however, are far from fully reflected in our earnings; only the dividends we receive from these businesses show up in our financial reports. Over time, though, the undistributed earnings of these companies that are attributable to our ownership are of huge importance to us. That’s because they will be used in a variety of ways to increase future earnings and dividends of the investee. They may also be devoted to stock repurchases, which will increase our share of the company’s future earnings.

我们把这些持股都视为伟大企业的部分合伙权益，而不是根据其近期前景而买卖的纸片。然而，我们在这些企业收益中应占的份额并未完全反映在我们的收益中，只有我们实际收到的股息才反映在我们的财务报表上。不过长期而言，这些公司归属于我们的未分配收益，对我们来说非常重要。这是因为它们将通过各种方式，进一步提高这些企业的未来收益和股息。它们也可能被用于股票回购，这将提高我们在企业未来收益中的份额。

Had we owned our present positions throughout last year, our dividends from the “Big Four” would have been $862 million. That’s all that would have been reported in Berkshire’s income statement. Our share of this quartet’s earnings, however, would have been far greater: $3.3 billion. Charlie and I believe that the $2.4 billion that goes unreported on our books creates at least that amount of value for Berkshire as it fuels earnings gains in future years. We expect the combined earnings of the four – and their dividends as well – to increase in 2012 and, for that matter, almost every year for a long time to come. A decade from now, our current holdings of the four companies might well account for earnings of $7 billion, of which $2 billion in dividends would come to us.

如果我们在去年全年持有目前的头寸，我们从四巨头获得的股息将是 8.62 亿美元。这就是伯克希尔损益表中可以报告的收益。然而，我们在这四家公司的收益中所占的份额要多得多: 33 亿美元。查理和我相信，我们报表中未报告的 24 亿美元至少为伯克希尔创造了这么多的价值，因为它在未来几年将推动收益增长。我们预计，在2012 年这四家公司的合并收益以及股息都将增长。因此，在未来很长一段时间内年年都将保持增长。十年后，我们目前持有的这四家公司的股份可能会为我们带来 70 亿美元的收益，其中有 20 亿美元为我们收到的股息。

I’ve run out of good news. Here are some developments that hurt us during 2011:

好消息我已经说完了。以下是一些在 2011 年给我们带来伤害的坏消息：

•A few years back, I spent about $2 billion buying several bond issues of Energy Future Holdings, an electric utility operation serving portions of Texas. That was a mistake – a big mistake. In large measure, the company’s prospects were tied to the price of natural gas, which tanked shortly after our purchase and remains depressed. Though we have annually received interest payments of about $102 million since our purchase, the company’s ability to pay will soon be exhausted unless gas prices rise substantially. We wrote down our investment by $1 billion in 2010 and by an additional $390 million last year.

1，几年前，我花了 20 亿美元购买了一家服务于得州部分地区的未来能源控股公司(Energy FutereHoldings)发行的债券。这是一个错误，而且是一个大错误。总体上看，这家公司的发展前景与天然气价格挂钩，而我们买入债券不久天然气价格就开始下跌，目前仍非常低迷。尽管我们买入后，每年都收到 1.02 亿美元的债券利息，但是这家公司支付利息的能力将会很快耗尽，除非天然气市场价格大幅上升。2010 年我们减记了 10 亿美元，2011 年又减记了 3.9 亿美元。

At yearend, we carried the bonds at their market value of $878 million. If gas prices remain at present levels, we will likely face a further loss, perhaps in an amount that will virtually wipe out our current carrying value. Conversely, a substantial increase in gas prices might allow us to recoup some, or even all, of our write-down. However things turn out, I totally miscalculated the gain/loss probabilities when I purchased the bonds. In tennis parlance, this was a major unforced error by your chairman.

在年底，我们持有的债券市值为 8.78 亿美元。如果天然气价格保持在目前的水平，我们很可能会面临进一步的损失，可能会使我们目前的账面价值化为乌有。相反，天然气价格的大幅上涨可能会让我们收回部分甚至全部减记。不管结果如何，我在购买债券时完全错误地估算了收益/损失的概率。用网球的话说，这是你的主席犯的一个重大的非受迫性错误。

•Three large and very attractive fixed-income investments were called away from us by their issuers in 2011. Swiss Re, Goldman Sachs and General Electric paid us an aggregate of $12.8 billion to redeem securities that were producing about $1.2 billion of pre-tax earnings for Berkshire. That’s a lot of income to replace, though our Lubrizol purchase did offset most of it.

2，2011 年，三笔规模庞大且非常具有吸引力的固定收益投资被发行人撤回。瑞士再保险(Swiss Re)、高盛和通用电气总共向我们支付了 128 亿美元以赎回这些证券，它们为伯克希尔创造了约 12 亿美元的税前收益。那可是一大笔收益需要填补，不过我们收购路博润确实抵消了大部分。

•Last year, I told you that “a housing recovery will probably begin within a year or so.” I was dead wrong. We have five businesses whose results are significantly influenced by housing activity. The connection is direct at Clayton Homes, which is the largest producer of homes in the country, accounting for about 7% of those constructed during 2011.

3，去年我告诉你说："房地产可能会在未来 1 年左右开始复苏"。我实在是大错特错。我们旗下有 5 家企业的经营业绩受到住房市场活动的显著影响。其中影响最直接的是 ClaytonHomes，它是美国最大的预制房屋生产商，在 2011 年建成的住宅中约占 7%。

Additionally, Acme Brick, Shaw (carpet), Johns Manville (insulation) and MiTek (building products, primarily connector plates used in roofing) are all materially affected by construction activity. In aggregate, our five housing-related companies had pre-tax profits of $513 million in 2011. That’s similar to 2010 but down from $1.8 billion in 2006.

此外，Acme Brick(砖块)、Shaw(地毯)、Johns Manville(隔热材料)和 MiTek(建筑产品，主要用于屋顶的连接件)都受房屋建设活动的严重影响。总体而言，2011 年我们旗下与房屋建设密切相关的 5 家企业的税前利润只有 5.13 亿美元，与去年相当，但是相比 2006 年 18 亿美元的税前利润，下跌超过 70%。

Housing will come back – you can be sure of that. Over time, the number of housing units necessarily matches the number of households (after allowing for a normal level of vacancies). For a period of years prior to 2008, however, America added more housing units than households. Inevitably, we ended up with far too many units and the bubble popped with a violence that shook the entire economy. That created still another problem for housing: Early in a recession, household formations slow, and in 2009 the decrease was dramatic.

住房市场会回来的，这一点你可以肯定。随着时间的推移，住房单元的数量必然与家庭数量相匹配(考虑到正常的空置率水平)。然而，在 2008 年之前的一段时间里，美国新增的住房单元超过了家庭数量。不可避免的是，我们最终拥有了太多的住房单元，泡沫的破灭暴力地摧毁了整个经济。这又给住房市场带来了另一个问题：在经济衰退初期，家庭组建放缓，在 2009 年又大幅下降。

That devastating supply/demand equation is now reversed: Every day we are creating more households than housing units. People may postpone hitching up during uncertain times, but eventually hormones take over. And while “doubling-up” may be the initial reaction of some during a recession, living with in-laws can quickly lose its allure.

现在这种供给远超需求的毁灭性供需关系开始逆转：每天我们创造出的新的家庭数量都超过新增住房数量。在不确定的时期，人们也许会推迟结婚，但最终荷尔蒙会战胜一切。虽然与家庭亲属"合住"可能是在经济衰退期间有些人作出的最初反应，但是"合住"很快就会失去原来的吸引力。

At our current annual pace of 600,000 housing starts – considerably less than the number of new households being formed – buyers and renters are sopping up what’s left of the old oversupply. (This process will run its course at different rates around the country; the supply-demand situation varies widely by locale.) While this healing takes place, however, our housing-related companies sputter, employing only 43,315 people compared to 58,769 in 2006. This hugely important sector of the economy, which includes not only construction but everything that feeds off of it, remains in a depression of its own. I believe this is the major reason a recovery in employment has so severely lagged the steady and substantial comeback we have seen in almost all other sectors of our economy.

以我们现在每年 60 万套新房的开工速度，大幅低于新成立的家庭数量，购买方和租房者正在逐步消化过去过度建设的房屋库存。(这个消化过程将在美国各地以不同速度进行，各地供求关系也有很大差别。)然而，尽管这一复苏现象正在进行，但我们旗下与房屋建设市场相关的企业却仍然业务萎缩，雇员人数从 2006 年的 58769 人下降到 2011 年的 43315 人。房产行业是非常重要的经济部门，不仅仅包括建筑行业，还包括所有依赖于它，仍然处于衰退之中的行业。我们已经看到美国几乎所有经济部门都出现了持续稳定的显著复苏，但就业人数的复苏却仍然严重滞后的主要原因我认为就在这里。

Wise monetary and fiscal policies play an important role in tempering recessions, but these tools don’t create households nor eliminate excess housing units. Fortunately, demographics and our market system will restore the needed balance – probably before long. When that day comes, we will again build one million or more residential units annually. I believe pundits will be surprised at how far unemployment drops once that happens. They will then reawake to what has been true since 1776: America’s best days lie ahead.

明智的货币和财政政策，在减缓衰退中发挥了重要作用，但是这些工具既不能创造出新的家庭，也不能消化过剩的房屋单元。幸运的是，人口统计数据和我们的市场体系将恢复必须的平衡，可能不久就会恢复。当那一天到来，我们将会再次每年建造 100 万套甚至更多的住房单元。我相信，一旦这种情况发生，那些专家学者们将会非常吃惊地发现失业率大幅下降。他们那时就会重新认识到自 1776 年以来始终不变的事实真相：美国最好的日子还在后头。