巴菲特致股东的信（2019年）③非保险业务

Non-Insurance Operations

非保险业务

Tom Murphy, a valued director of Berkshire and an all-time great among business managers, long ago gave me some important advice about acquisitions: “To achieve a reputation as a good manager, just be sure you buy good businesses.”

汤姆·墨菲 (Tom Murphy) 是伯克希尔一位很受尊敬的董事，也是史上最杰出的商业管理者之一。很早以前他就给过我一条关于收购的重要忠告："要想赢得好经理人的名声，关键是要收购好企业。"

Over the years Berkshire has acquired many dozens of companies, all of which I initially regarded as “good businesses.” Some, however, proved disappointing; more than a few were outright disasters. A reasonable number, on the other hand, have exceeded my hopes.

这些年来，伯克希尔收购了好几十家公司，最初我都认为它们是"好生意"。然而其中一些结果令人失望；有好几家简直是彻头彻尾的灾难。另一方面，也有相当数量的公司超出了我的期望。

In reviewing my uneven record, I’ve concluded that acquisitions are similar to marriage: They start, of course, with a joyful wedding – but then reality tends to diverge from pre-nuptial expectations. Sometimes, wonderfully, the new union delivers bliss beyond either party’s hopes. In other cases, disillusionment is swift. Applying those images to corporate acquisitions, I’d have to say it is usually the buyer who encounters unpleasant surprises. It’s easy to get dreamy-eyed during corporate courtships.

回顾我这份好坏参半的记录，我得出的结论是：收购很像一场婚姻。当然，开头都是一场欢天喜地的婚礼——然而此后的现实往往与婚前的期望大不相同。有时候，美妙的是，新的结合会带来双方始料未及的幸福。另一些时候，幻灭来得飞快。把这些画面套到企业收购上，我不得不说，遇到不愉快意外的通常是买方。在收购的"追求"阶段，人们太容易变得眼冒星星。

Pursuing that analogy, I would say that our marital record remains largely acceptable, with all parties happy with the decisions they made long ago. Some of our tie-ups have been positively idyllic. A meaningful number, however, have caused me all too quickly to wonder what I was thinking when I proposed.

顺着这个类比说下去，我们的"婚姻"记录总体上还算过得去，各方都对多年前做出的决定感到满意。我们有些合作关系堪称田园诗般的美满。但也有相当一部分让我很快就在想：当初"求婚"的时候我到底在想什么？

Fortunately, the fallout from many of my errors has been reduced by a characteristic shared by most businesses that disappoint: As the years pass, the “poor” business tends to stagnate, thereupon entering a state in which its operations require an ever-smaller percentage of Berkshire’s capital. Meanwhile, our “good” businesses often tend to grow and find opportunities for investing additional capital at attractive rates. Because of these contrasting trajectories, the assets employed at Berkshire’s winners gradually become an expanding portion of our total capital.

幸运的是，我许多错误造成的后果，被大多数令人失望的企业所共有的一个特征给冲淡了：随着时间推移，"差"生意往往趋于停滞，进而进入一种所需伯克希尔资本占比越来越小的状态。与此同时，我们的"好"生意往往会持续增长，并找到以有吸引力的回报率投入更多资本的机会。由于这两条截然相反的轨迹，伯克希尔赢家所使用的资产在我们总资本中的占比持续扩大。

As an extreme example of those financial movements, witness Berkshire’s original textile business. When we acquired control of the company in early 1965, this beleaguered operation required nearly all of Berkshire’s capital. For some time, therefore, Berkshire’s non-earning textile assets were a huge drag on our overall returns. Eventually, though, we acquired a spread of “good” businesses, a shift that by the early 1980s caused the dwindling textile operation to employ only a tiny portion of our capital.

作为这种金融变迁的一个极端例子，来看看伯克希尔最初的纺织业务。1965年初我们取得公司控制权时，这项陷入困境的业务几乎吞噬了伯克希尔全部资本。因此有一段时间，伯克希尔这些不赚钱的纺织资产严重拖累了我们的整体回报。但最终，我们收购了一批"好"企业，到1980年代初，这种转变使得日益萎缩的纺织业务仅占用了我们一小部分资本。

Today, we have most of your money deployed in controlled businesses that achieve good-to-excellent returns on the net tangible assets each requires for its operations. Our insurance business has been the superstar. That operation has special characteristics that give it a unique metric for calibrating success, one unfamiliar to many investors. We will save that discussion for the next section.

今天，你们的大部分资金被配置在那些运营净有形资产回报率良好乃至优异的控股企业之中。我们的保险业务一直是超级巨星。这项业务有些特殊的性质，赋予了它一套衡量成功与否的独特指标，许多投资者对此并不熟悉。我们留到下一节再讨论。

In the paragraphs that follow, we group our wide array of non-insurance businesses by size of earnings, after interest, depreciation, taxes, non-cash compensation, restructuring charges – all of those pesky, but very real, costs that CEOs and Wall Street sometimes urge investors to ignore. Additional information about these operations can be found on pages K-6 – K-21 and pages K-40 – K-52.

接下来的段落中，我们将种类繁多的非保险业务按收益规模分组列示。收益数字已经扣除了利息、折旧、税项、非现金薪酬、重组费用——所有这些让人头疼但却是实实在在的成本。CEO们和华尔街有时会劝投资者忽略这些成本。更多信息请参阅年报K-6至K-21页和K-40至K-52页。

Our BNSF railroad and Berkshire Hathaway Energy (“BHE”) – the two lead dogs of Berkshire’s non- insurance group – earned a combined $8.3 billion in 2019 (including only our 91% share of BHE), an increase of 6% from 2018.

我们的BNSF铁路 (BNSF) 和伯克希尔·哈撒韦能源 (Berkshire Hathaway Energy，简称"BHE") 是伯克希尔非保险业务的两大领头羊，2019年合计收益83亿美元（仅计入我们在BHE中91%的份额），较2018年增长6%。

Our next five non-insurance subsidiaries, as ranked by earnings (but presented here alphabetically), Clayton Homes, International Metalworking, Lubrizol, Marmon and Precision Castparts, had aggregate earnings in 2019 of $4.8 billion, little changed from what these companies earned in 2018.

按收益排名再往下的五家非保险子公司（按字母顺序排列）：克莱顿房屋 (Clayton Homes)、国际金属加工 (International Metalworking)、路博润 (Lubrizol)、马蒙集团 (Marmon) 和精密铸件公司 (Precision Castparts)，2019年合计收益48亿美元，与2018年相比几无变化。

The next five, similarly ranked and listed (Berkshire Hathaway Automotive, Johns Manville, NetJets, Shaw and TTI) earned $1.9 billion last year, up from the $1.7 billion earned by this tier in 2018.

再往下的五家（同样按排名和字母顺序）：伯克希尔·哈撒韦汽车 (Berkshire Hathaway Automotive)、Johns Manville、利捷航空 (NetJets)、Shaw和TTI，去年合计收益19亿美元，高于2018年的17亿美元。

The remaining non-insurance businesses that Berkshire owns – and there are many – had aggregate earnings of $2.7 billion in 2019, down from $2.8 billion in 2018.

伯克希尔拥有的其余非保险业务——数量众多——2019年合计收益27亿美元，略低于2018年的28亿美元。

Our total net income in 2019 from the non-insurance businesses we control amounted to $17.7 billion, an increase of 3% from the $17.2 billion this group earned in 2018. Acquisitions and dispositions had almost no net effect on these results.

2019年，我们控制的非保险业务总净收益为177亿美元，较2018年的172亿美元增长3%。收购和出售对这些业绩几乎没有净影响。

I must add one final item that underscores the wide scope of Berkshire’s operations. Since 2011, we have owned Lubrizol, an Ohio-based company that produces and markets oil additives throughout the world. On September 26, 2019, a fire originating at a small next-door operation spread to a large French plant owned by Lubrizol.

我必须补充最后一件事，它充分体现了伯克希尔业务版图之广。我们自2011年起拥有路博润 (Lubrizol)，这是一家总部位于俄亥俄州的公司，在全球范围内生产和销售润滑油添加剂。2019年9月26日，路博润旗下一座法国大型工厂被隔壁一家小企业引发的火灾殃及。

The result was significant property damage and a major disruption in Lubrizol’s business. Even so, both the company’s property loss and business-interruption loss will be mitigated by substantial insurance recoveries that Lubrizol will receive.

火灾造成了重大的财产损失和严重的业务中断。即便如此，路博润将获得大额保险赔偿，从而减轻公司的财产损失和营业中断损失。

But, as the late Paul Harvey was given to saying in his famed radio broadcasts, “Here’s the rest of the story.” One of the largest insurers of Lubrizol was a company owned by . . . uh, Berkshire.

但正如已故的保罗·哈维 (Paul Harvey) 在他那档著名的广播节目中爱说的："接下来才是故事的精华。"路博润投保的最大保险公司之一是……呃，伯克希尔旗下的公司。

In Matthew 6:3, the Bible instructs us to “Let not the left hand know what the right hand doeth.” Your chairman has clearly behaved as ordered.

《马太福音》6:3中，圣经教导我们："你施舍的时候，不要让左手知道右手所做的。"你们的董事长显然严格遵照了这一教诲。