巴菲特致股东的信（2021年）⑦股票回购

Share Repurchases

股票回购

There are three ways that we can increase the value of your investment. The first is always front and center in our minds: Increase the long-term earning power of Berkshire’s controlled businesses through internal growth or by making acquisitions. Today, internal opportunities deliver far better returns than acquisitions. The size of those opportunities, however, is small compared to Berkshire’s resources.

我们有三种方式可以增加你们投资的价值。第一种始终是我们心中的头等大事：通过内生增长或收购来增强伯克希尔旗下控股企业的长期盈利能力。如今，内生增长机会带来的回报远好于收购。但相对于伯克希尔的资源而言，这些机会的规模偏小。

Our second choice is to buy non-controlling part-interests in the many good or great businesses that are publicly traded. From time to time, such possibilities are both numerous and blatantly attractive. Today, though, we find little that excites us.

我们的第二个选择是购买众多优秀乃至伟大的上市企业的非控股权益。有时候，这样的机会既多又明显诱人。但如今，我们几乎找不到让自己兴奋的标的。

That’s largely because of a truism: Long-term interest rates that are low push the prices of all productive investments upward, whether these are stocks, apartments, farms, oil wells, whatever. Other factors influence valuations as well, but interest rates will always be important.

这在很大程度上源于一个老生常谈的道理：长期低利率推升了所有生产性投资的价格，无论是股票、公寓、农场还是油井。其他因素当然也影响估值，但利率始终是最重要的变量。

Our final path to value creation is to repurchase Berkshire shares. Through that simple act, we increase your share of the many controlled and non-controlled businesses Berkshire owns. When the price/value equation is right, this path is the easiest and most certain way for us to increase your wealth. (Alongside the accretion of value to continuing shareholders, a couple of other parties gain: Repurchases are modestly beneficial to the seller of the repurchased shares and to society as well.)

我们创造价值的最后一条路径是回购伯克希尔的股票。通过这个简单的举动，我们增加了你们在伯克希尔旗下所有控股和非控股企业中的份额。当价格与价值的等式合适时，回购是增加你们财富最容易、最确定的方式。（在留存股东获得价值增值的同时，还有两方也会受益：回购对卖出股票的一方以及社会整体都有一定好处。）

Periodically, as alternative paths become unattractive, repurchases make good sense for Berkshire’s owners. During the past two years, we therefore repurchased 9% of the shares that were outstanding at yearend 2019 for a total cost of $51.7 billion. That expenditure left our continuing shareholders owning about 10% more of all Berkshire businesses, whether these are wholly-owned (such as BNSF and GEICO) or partly-owned (such as Coca-Cola and Moody’s).

当其他两条路径变得缺乏吸引力时，阶段性的回购对伯克希尔的股东就是明智之举。过去两年，我们因此回购了以2019年末流通股数为基准的9%的股份，总计花费517亿美元。这笔支出让留存股东在伯克希尔所有业务中的权益增加了约10%，无论是全资子公司（如BNSF和盖可保险）还是部分持股的公司（如可口可乐和穆迪）。

I want to underscore that for Berkshire repurchases to make sense, our shares must offer appropriate value. We don’t want to overpay for the shares of other companies, and it would be value-destroying if we were to overpay when we are buying Berkshire. As of February 23, 2022, since yearend we repurchased additional shares at a cost of $1.2 billion. Our appetite remains large but will always remain price-dependent.

我想强调的是，伯克希尔的回购要有意义，我们的股票必须处于合适的价值区间。我们不想在买其他公司股票时出价过高，在买自家股票时出价过高同样会损害价值。截至2022年2月23日，今年以来我们又花了12亿美元回购了股票。我们的胃口依然很大，但始终取决于价格。

It should be noted that Berkshire’s buyback opportunities are limited because of its high-class investor base. If our shares were heavily held by short-term speculators, both price volatility and transaction volumes would materially increase. That kind of reshaping would offer us far greater opportunities for creating value by making repurchases. Nevertheless, Charlie and I far prefer the owners we have, even though their admirable buy-and-keep attitudes limit the extent to which long-term shareholders can profit from opportunistic repurchases.

需要指出的是，由于伯克希尔拥有高质量的投资者群体，我们的回购机会实际上是受限的。如果我们的股票主要被短线投机者持有，股价波动和成交量都会大幅增加。这种格局变化将为我们提供远更多的回购创造价值的机会。尽管如此，查理和我还是远更偏爱我们现有的股东群体，即使他们令人钦佩的买入并持有的态度限制了长期股东从机会性回购中获利的空间。

Finally, one easily-overlooked value calculation specific to Berkshire: As we’ve discussed, insurance “float” of the right sort is of great value to us. As it happens, repurchases automatically increase the amount of “float” per share. That figure has increased during the past two years by 25% – going from $79,387 per “A” share to $99,497, a meaningful gain that, as noted, owes some thanks to repurchases.

最后，有一个容易被忽略的、伯克希尔特有的价值计算要素：如我们已经讨论过的，合适类型的浮存金对我们价值巨大。恰好，股票回购会自动增加每股对应的浮存金。这个数字在过去两年里增长了25%——从每股A类股的79,387美元升至99,497美元。正如前面提到的，这一可观增长在一定程度上要归功于回购。