巴菲特致股东的信（2021年）④我们的四巨头

Our Four Giants

我们的四巨头

Through Berkshire, our shareholders own many dozens of businesses. Some of these, in turn, have a collection of subsidiaries of their own. For example, Marmon has more than 100 individual business operations, ranging from the leasing of railroad cars to the manufacture of medical devices.

通过伯克希尔，我们的股东拥有几十家企业。其中一些企业本身又有一系列子公司。比如，马蒙集团 (Marmon) 旗下有超过100个独立业务，涵盖铁路车辆租赁到医疗设备制造等各个领域。

● Nevertheless, operations of our “Big Four” companies account for a very large chunk of Berkshire’s value. Leading this list is our cluster of insurers. Berkshire effectively owns 100% of this group, whose massive float value we earlier described. The invested assets of these insurers are further enlarged by the extraordinary amount of capital we invest to back up their promises.

尽管如此，我们"四巨头"公司的运营贡献了伯克希尔很大一部分价值。排在首位的是我们的保险公司集群。伯克希尔实际上100%拥有这个集群，其巨额浮存金的价值我们前面已经介绍过。我们投入大量资本来支撑这些保险公司的承保承诺，这进一步扩大了它们的可投资资产规模。

The insurance business is made to order for Berkshire. The product will never be obsolete, and sales volume will generally increase along with both economic growth and inflation. Also, integrity and capital will forever be important. Our company can and will behave well.

保险简直就是为伯克希尔量身定做的行业。保险产品永远不会过时，保费收入通常会随着经济增长和通胀而增加。此外，诚信和资本实力在这个行业中永远至关重要。我们的公司能够而且一定会做到这些。

There are, of course, other insurers with excellent business models and prospects. Replication of Berkshire’s operation, however, would be almost impossible.

当然，也有其他保险公司拥有出色的商业模式和前景。但要复制伯克希尔的运营模式，几乎不可能。

● Apple – our runner-up Giant as measured by its yearend market value – is a different sort of holding. Here, our ownership is a mere 5.55%, up from 5.39% a year earlier. That increase sounds like small potatoes. But consider that each 0.1% of Apple’s 2021 earnings amounted to $100 million. We spent no Berkshire funds to gain our accretion. Apple’s repurchases did the job.

苹果公司 (Apple)——按年末市值计算是我们的第二大巨头——属于不同类型的持股。我们的持股比例仅为5.55%，高于一年前的5.39%。这个增幅听起来微不足道。但请想想，苹果2021年每0.1%的收益就对应1亿美元。我们没有花伯克希尔一分钱就实现了这一增持——全靠苹果自己的股票回购。

It’s important to understand that only dividends from Apple are counted in the GAAP earnings Berkshire reports – and last year, Apple paid us $785 million of those. Yet our “share” of Apple’s earnings amounted to a staggering $5.6 billion. Much of what the company retained was used to repurchase Apple shares, an act we applaud. Tim Cook, Apple’s brilliant CEO, quite properly regards users of Apple products as his first love, but all of his other constituencies benefit from Tim’s managerial touch as well.

重要的是要理解，在伯克希尔按通用会计准则报告的收益中，只计入了苹果支付给我们的分红——去年苹果给我们分了7.85亿美元。然而，我们"应得"的苹果收益高达惊人的56亿美元。苹果留存的大部分利润用于回购股票，对此我们拍手叫好。苹果才华横溢的CEO蒂姆·库克 (Tim Cook) 理所当然地把苹果产品的用户视为他的首要关注对象，但蒂姆的管理才能也同样惠及所有其他利益相关方。

● BNSF, our third Giant, continues to be the number one artery of American commerce, which makes it an indispensable asset for America as well as for Berkshire. If the many essential products BNSF carries were instead hauled by truck, America’s carbon emissions would soar.

BNSF铁路，我们的第三大巨头，继续扮演着美国商业第一大动脉的角色，使其成为美国和伯克希尔都不可或缺的资产。如果BNSF承运的众多重要产品改用卡车运输，美国的碳排放量将飙升。

Your railroad had record earnings of $6 billion in 2021. Here, it should be noted, we are talking about the old-fashioned sort of earnings that we favor: a figure calculated after interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and all forms of compensation. (Our definition suggests a warning: Deceptive “adjustments” to earnings – to use a polite description – have become both more frequent and more fanciful as stocks have risen. Speaking less politely, I would say that bull markets breed bloviated bull . . ..)

你们的铁路公司2021年创下了60亿美元的利润纪录。需要指出的是，我们这里说的是我们偏爱的那种老派利润：扣除利息、税收、折旧、摊销及所有形式报酬之后的数字。（我们的定义顺带提出一个警告：随着股市上涨，对利润进行欺骗性"调整"——用客气的说法——已经变得越来越频繁，也越来越天马行空。说得不客气一点，牛市滋生的是牛皮哄哄的胡扯……）

BNSF trains traveled 143 million miles last year and carried 535 million tons of cargo. Both accomplishments far exceed those of any other American carrier. You can be proud of your railroad.

BNSF的列车去年行驶了1.43亿英里，运输了5.35亿吨货物。这两项数据都远远超过任何其他美国运输公司。你们可以为自己的铁路公司感到骄傲。

● BHE, our final Giant, earned a record $4 billion in 2021. That’s up more than 30-fold from the $122 million earned in 2000, the year that Berkshire first purchased a BHE stake. Now, Berkshire owns 91.1% of the company.

伯克希尔·哈撒韦能源 (BHE)，我们最后一个巨头，2021年创下40亿美元的利润纪录。这比2000年——伯克希尔首次投资BHE那年——的1.22亿美元增长了30倍以上。如今，伯克希尔持有该公司91.1%的股权。

BHE’s record of societal accomplishment is as remarkable as its financial performance. The company had no wind or solar generation in 2000. It was then regarded simply as a relatively new and minor participant in the huge electric utility industry. Subsequently, under David Sokol’s and Greg Abel’s leadership, BHE has become a utility powerhouse (no groaning, please) and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.

BHE对社会的贡献与其财务业绩一样令人瞩目。2000年时，公司既没有风能发电也没有太阳能发电，当时它仅被视为庞大的电力公用事业行业中一个相对新生的小角色。此后，在戴夫·索科尔 (David Sokol) 和格雷格·阿贝尔 (Greg Abel) 的领导下，BHE已经成为公用事业领域的一方霸主（请不要发出嘘声）——在美国大部分地区的风能、太阳能和输电方面都是领军力量。

Greg’s report on these accomplishments appears on pages A-3 and A-4. The profile you will find there is not in any way one of those currently-fashionable “green-washing” stories. BHE has been faithfully detailing its plans and performance in renewables and transmissions every year since 2007.

格雷格对这些成就的报告见A-3和A-4页。你在那里看到的内容，绝不是时下流行的那种"洗绿"故事。自2007年以来，BHE每年都在如实详细地披露其在可再生能源和输电方面的计划与表现。

To further review this information, visit BHE’s website at brkenergy.com. There, you will see that the company has long been making climate-conscious moves that soak up all of its earnings. More opportunities lie ahead. BHE has the management, the experience, the capital and the appetite for the huge power projects that our country needs.

如需进一步了解，请访问BHE的网站brkenergy.com。在那里你会看到，公司长期以来一直在推进有利于气候的举措，这些举措吞噬了公司的全部利润。前方还有更多机遇。BHE拥有我们国家所需的大型电力项目所必备的管理团队、经验、资本和雄心。