美国价值投资公司Semperaugustus 2020年致客户信

美国价值投资公司Semperaugustus 2020年致客户信

从通货紧缩到恶性通货膨胀的道路；珠穆朗玛峰探险队；和伯克希尔：这只山羊疯狂回购

前言

分享国外的价值投资理念,本文为机翻,翻译的不好请见谅,重要的是学习思想,如果你对翻译有兴趣请联系我们,我们一起学习,共同进步。

时间有限只翻译简介,如果有更多需要请留言

一、Semper Augustus投资公司介绍

成立于1998年

丹佛和圣路易斯注册投资顾问

价值驱动

安全双保证金：业务质量和价格问题

深度基础自下而上研究

对波动性耐心的猎物

集中投资组合

通常营业额低,由两个投资管理人组成

二、Semper Augustus投资收益

 

 

三、Semperaugustus2020年致客户信目录

致股东信简介

A、内在价值更新——机会冲击和机会成本

迪士尼

投资组合活动

基本面与市场

Semper投资组合和标准普尔500指数（表）远期预期的关键共同规模数据

B、探险珠穆朗玛峰

百年波峰波谷（表）价格对销售额创历史新高

市值与GDP之比创历史新高

波峰到波谷

你开玩笑吧

C、不归路

我们现在都是凯恩斯主义者

从通货紧缩到恶性通货膨胀的路径

D、回到学校

在职培训

E、TAMs是新的眼球

销售的代价很高

F、阅读或不阅读建议

G、伯克希尔哈撒韦：回购疯狂

Repo Man先生

回购之外——资本配置

伯克希尔哈撒韦：十年预期回报

估计第四季度和全年GAAP净收入和股票投资组合账面价值的变化

有债券吗？

一口苹果

完整记录

伯克希尔的表现与标准普尔500指数（表）

伯克希尔哈撒韦内在价值更新

净收益基础

伯克希尔部分总和法的其他估值方法

能源公司

BNSF公司

制造业、服务业、零售业和金融保险业

再保险

GEICO公司

BH初级

整体保险结果

权益法投资

按GAAP账面价值计算的简单价格

双管齐下的方法

GAAP调整财务方法

GAAP经济收益调整摘要（表）

摘要

附录

附录A–关键业务部门信息–伯克希尔2020预期

附录B–资本支出和折旧；递延所得税负债

附录C–现金和GAAP税务调节

附录D–伯克希尔合资伙伴报告的分部利润附录E–MSR和财务摘要数据

附录F-Semper Augustus Investments Group历史回报

致客户信简介

One short year seems like a decade ago. With the 2019 letter put to bed, I had the good fortune to speak to the finance and economics students at my daughter’s school in Southern California over parent’s weekend. From there, a couple of quick business trips to the hearts of auto country and horse country. The second weekend of March was circled in anticipation of seeing said daughter tee it up in Phoenix for her first collegiate spring tournament. Who would have known that instead, she and I would be driving her Jeep back from L.A. to St. Louis, with me riding shotgun spending the entire drive on the phone and iPad, navigating the early financial stage of a pandemic?

短短的一年似乎是十年前的事了。把2019年的信放在床上，我有幸在家长周末和我女儿在南加州的学校的财经学生们交谈。从那里开始，我们将进行几次快速的商务旅行，前往汽车之乡和马匹之乡的心脏地带。三月的第二个周末被圈起来,期待看到说的女儿在凤凰城为她的第一个大学开学。谁会知道，相反，她和我会开着她的吉普车从洛杉矶回到圣路易斯，而我的注意力在手机和iPad上度过了整个旅程，度过了大流行的早期财务阶段？

Just east of the junction of I-15 and I-70, Salina to Green River is a desolate 110-mile stretch across Utah with no motorist services, the longest in the U.S. interstate system. There is a point beyond which your remaining fuel is insufficient for a return to the “last chance for gas” station that you decided to breeze by. The economy is low on fuel and past such a point.

就在15号州际公路和70号州际公路交界处的东面，萨利纳到格林河是一条横跨犹他州110英里的荒凉路段，没有汽车服务，是美国州际公路系统中最长的。有一点是需要你处理的你的燃料不足以返回最近的一次加油站,那就是你明白经济刺激不会轻易回到以前那个点。

Thanks to the gents from Topeka for inspiring the theme of this year’s letter. Who knew that a pandemic would send interest rates back to zero and monetary and fiscal policy past the point of no return? Triple entendre right there – interest rates being the point, no return being the yield for the indefinite future, and the point of no return being the inability of central bankers and policy making legislators to ever walk back the path to financial ruin laid by their own hands.

感谢来自Topeka的男士们激发了今年信件的主题。谁知道一场大流行会让利率回到零，让货币和财政政策过了不归路的地步？就在这里，利率是关键，没有回报是无限未来的收益，没有回报的关键是央行行长和政策制定者永远无法走回自己亲手铺设的金融破产之路。

The job description reads capital allocation with professional worry skills required. I try to have fun with the annual letter, making light when possible of dry finance, accounting and economic theory. The “intelligent investor” is conditioned to focus on the first two, ignoring the dark art of economics for the betterment of the investment result. The process at Semper is very bottom up with a majority of time spent under the hood and in the footnotes of businesses, trying to mesh business quality and price. A dual margin of safety approach we call it. The majority of my career spent ignoring the “macro” has proven the wise course. However, a wary eye on a growing debt bubble compels worry and forces strategic thought on how to best deal with the issue that’s now front and center.

这份工作描述包含了所需的专业技能和资本分配。试着从年信中获得乐趣，尽可能地让枯燥的金融、会计和经济理论变得轻松。“聪明的投资者”习惯于关注前两者，忽视了改善投资效果的经济学阴暗艺术。Semper的流程是自下而上的，大部分时间都花在企业内部和脚注中，试图将业务质量和价格联系起来。我们称之为双重安全边际法。我职业生涯中的大部分时间都忽略了“宏观”因素，这证明了这是一条明智的道路。然而，对不断增长的债务泡沫的警惕，迫使人们担忧，并迫使人们对如何最好地处理目前处于前沿和中心的问题进行战略思考。

The Point of No Return examines the history of how we got to this point and the likelihood of dealing first with deflation and ultimately hyperinflation, perhaps…2021 marks the 40th anniversary of record high interest rates in the United States. For four decades we have become a society conditioned on immediate gratification. The entirety of the industrialized global economy is in the same boat. We are a society living beyond our means, governed by none willing to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow. A willingness to spend with no governor and a false belief that no level of debt is too great if interest rates can be set at a low enough level comes with consequences. The role of central banks is apparently to finance unlimited deficits. Whichever direction the monetary and fiscal paths take us, austerity is coming. Our role as stewards of capital only grows more complicated. Owning proper assets, at the right time, will require every ounce of focus and every bit of cumulative experience. COVID-19 pulled forward in a short span so many trends and disruption already unfolding, accelerating the timeline on dealing with the coming fallout of the debt bubble On a cheerier note (thank God), the portfolio trades at a wide discount to intrinsic value. The section in the letter titled Intrinsic Value Update – Opportunity Knocks and Opportunity Cost is a portfolio-specific discussion of portfolio activity and rationale for prospective expected returns. Despite stock market returns outstripping underlying business fundamentals, our ability to shift capital around – adding and eliminating a few positions from the portfolio and adding to and trimming others – kept quality high and price low, yielding substantial earning power and prospective accretion to fair value. The quality and valuation gap between world markets and the Semper portfolio widened considerably, and we again compare fundamentals and valuation against the market.

《不归路》回顾了我们如何走到这一步的历史，以及首先应对通货紧缩和最终恶性通胀的可能性，或许……2021年是美国创纪录的高利率40周年。四十年来，我们已经成为一个以即时满足为条件的社会。整个工业化的全球经济都在同一条船上。我们是一个入不敷出的社会，没有人愿意为更美好的明天牺牲今天。央行的作用显然是为无限的赤字融资。无论货币和财政路径朝哪个方向发展，紧缩政策都会到来。我们作为资本管理者的角色只会变得更加复杂。

在适当的时候赚取适当的资产，需要每一盎司的专注和每一点的积累经验。COVID-19在很短的时间内推进了许多已经出现的趋势和破坏，加快了处理债务泡沫即将到来的后果的时间

更令人高兴的是（感谢上帝），投资组合的交易价格大大低于内在价值。信中题为“内在价值更新-机会冲击和机会成本”的部分是对投资组合活动和预期收益的基本原理的投资组合特定讨论。世界市场和Semper投资组合之间的质量和估值差距大大扩大，我们再次将基本面和估值与市场进行比较。

Regarding the market, valuations are consistent with those seen at major historical secular peaks. Expedition Everest, a nod to Disney’s famous rollercoaster, compares current valuation and economic yardsticks against those at various inflection points in the past. By several measures, prices have never been more expensive. Others, such as durably higher profit margins than in past cycles and low interest rates perhaps temper some of the excesses. But in the context of a debt bubble, overall capital market valuations are troubling.

就市场而言，估值与主要历史长期峰值时的估值一致。“探险珠穆朗玛峰”是对迪斯尼著名的过山车的致敬，它将当前的估值和经济标准与过去不同拐点的估值和经济标准进行了比较。从几个方面来看，价格从未如此昂贵。其他因素，如持续高于过去周期的利润率和低利率，可能会缓和一些过度行为。但在债务泡沫的背景下，资本市场的整体估值令人不安。

TAMs are the New Eyeballs continues the valuation discussion and specifically drills down on price-to-sales as a valuation metric. A working hypothesis that paying high prices portends weak investment returns is tested. The investment derby in 2020 was led by unprofitable companies, stocks with a high proportion of shares sold short and those with prices at more than ten times sales. The number of companies trading at very high multiples ballooned, bringing back memories of the late 1990s. A brief discussion about Tesla is included in this section. The reaction by Tesla shareholders to a fundamental case that future returns stand to be poor because the stock is way ahead of the business is the same visceral response we confronted when making the same case about many tech and Internet stocks in 1999 and early 2000. One chap suggested I return my degrees and CFA charter because clearly, I learned nothing. Social media provides endless entertainment value.

TAMs是新的眼球，继续进行估值讨论，并特别深入到以销售价格比作为估值指标。一个工作假设，即支付高价格预示着疲软的投资回报进行了测试。在2020年的投资德比中，无利可图的公司居于领先地位，股票卖空比例高，价格超过销售价格10倍的股票。以极高倍数交易的公司数量激增，让人回想起上世纪90年代末。本节简要讨论特斯拉。特斯拉的股东们对一个基本案例的反应是，由于股票远远领先于业务，未来的回报率很低，这与我们在1999年和2000年初对许多科技和互联网股票提出同样的案例时所面临的本能反应是一样的。一个家伙建议我归还我的学位和CFA章程，因为很明显，我什么也没学到。社交媒体提供了无限的娱乐价值。

A great privilege is spending time on campus with aspiring investors each year. Opportunities available to business students today are just awesome. Most institutions of higher learning have endowments and foundations, a growing number of which have carved out small (in some cases not so small) pieces that students directly manage. I can think of no better teaching tool, and no reason why schools that have, A) an endowment, and B) undergraduate and/or master’s programs in business, finance, investing or economics, would not have a student-run “fund.” Back to School highlights some “best practices” that I’ve encountered among some of the funds with which we are familiar. We added a tab on the website in hopes that sponsors or students themselves will contribute data points about their respective programs, which will be summarized in next year’s letter. The purpose of the exercise is to share best practices among student funds that they may adopt or incorporate, and also to encourage schools that either don’t have funds, or do but don’t give them proper emphasis, to get it in gear. My hope is that each of you will look into what’s being done at your respective alma maters and get involved. In addition to being a great teaching tool, a well-organized student-run fund showcases the schools that do it right. They serve to strengthen the alumni base and open doors for participating students.

每年与有抱负的投资者在校园里共度时光是一种莫大的荣幸。今天，商学院的学生有很多机会。大多数高等学校都有捐赠基金和基金会，其中越来越多的基金会已经划出了学生直接管理的小部分（在某些情况下不是那么小）。我想不出有什么更好的教学工具，也没有什么理由让学校拥有，A）捐赠基金，B）商业、金融、投资或经济学的本科和/或硕士课程，不会有学生管理的“基金”更有用。返校强调了我在我们熟悉的一些基金中遇到的一些“最佳实践”。 我们在网站上增加了一个标签，希望赞助商或学生自己能提供他们各自项目的数据点，这些数据将在明年的信中总结。这项活动的目的是在学生基金会之间分享他们可能采用或合并的最佳做法，同时也鼓励那些没有资金的学校，或是没有资金但没有给予适当重视的学校，使资金到位。我希望你们每个人都能调查一下各自母校的情况，并参与进来。除了是一个伟大的教学工具，一个组织良好的学生管理基金展示了学校的做法是正确的。它们有助于加强校友基础，并为参与的学生敞开大门。

A small handful of reading recommendations are listed in To Read or Not to Read, as well as a couple music recommendations. My time spent annually with the letter is done with music in the background, and I’m always happy to find new stuff. I’m trying to listen to more investing podcasts. There are some exceptional ones out there. My struggle is carving out the time. A good conversation requires focus, and I can’t write and listen well at the same time. I usually listen when working out, which for whatever reason I didn’t do as faithfully while locked down as I do in more normal times. I’ve taken to walking the dog, Big Oil, where I put the earbuds in while he sniffs and marks his territory. The moderate exercise is good for us, both overfed by the same master.

一小部分的阅读建议列在阅读或不阅读，以及一对夫妇的音乐建议。我每年花在这封信上的时间都是以音乐为背景，我总是很高兴找到新的东西。我想听听更多的投资播客。有一些例外的。我的奋斗是划出时间。一次好的谈话需要专注，而我不能同时很好地写作和倾听。我通常在锻炼的时候都会倾听，无论出于什么原因，我都没有像平时一样，在禁闭状态下忠实地去做。我开始遛狗，大石油，我把耳塞，而他嗅和标记他的领土。他适度的运动对我们是有好处的，两个人都被同一个主人喂饱了。

Finally, and as usual, a few comments are reserved for Berkshire Hathaway. By far our largest holding, the shares have fallen out of favor. It reminds me of 1999 and early 2000. Berkshire was “out of step” and the stock had declined while the tech darlings surged. Berkshire’s shares finished 2020 up only 2.4% for the year, again trailing the more fashionable. Meanwhile, underlying value clips along per expectations, making the shares incredibly inexpensive. The stock spent much of the year underwater, affording the GOAT the opportunity to practice some masterful capital allocation. Meaningful share repurchases at extraordinary discounts to intrinsic value may mark another of Berkshire’s famous and shareholder-friendly pivots.

最后，和往常一样，为伯克希尔哈撒韦公司保留了一些评论。到目前为止，我们持有的最大的股票已经失宠了。它让我想起1999年和2000年初。伯克希尔“步履蹒跚”，股价下跌，而科技宠儿却大涨。伯克希尔的股票在2020年全年仅上涨了2.4%，再次落后于更时尚的股票。同时，潜在的价值与预期一致，使得这些股票非常便宜。这只股票一年中大部分时间都在水下度过，这为山羊提供了一个练习熟练资本配置的机会。以超乎寻常的内在价值折价进行有意义的股票回购，可能标志着伯克希尔另一个著名的、对股东有利的支点。

In the win column, you will see that the letter is FOURTEEN pages shorter than last year. For the first time in a long time, perhaps ever, I kept my promise on that front. It remains a labor of love and I’m always humbled by the response. For the handful (small) that encourage me to make the letter longer each year, I’m sorry to have failed you this year…

在“赢”一栏，你会看到这封信比去年短了14页。很长一段时间以来，也许是有史以来，我第一次在这方面没有信守诺言。这仍然是一个喜欢的工作，我总是谦卑的回应。为数不多的（小的）鼓励我使信更长每年，我很抱歉让你今年失望了…

Huge thanks to everyone I was lucky to spend time with in 2020. Between Zoom, Teams and the old-fashioned iPhone, it was an unusual year for sure. I’m grateful to all of you so generous with your time and perspectives on the pandemic and in your respective fields and endeavors. We are blessed with great friends and clients. Navigating the investment seas with such engaged, supportive, remarkable people makes our job fascinating, humbling and utterly enjoyable.

非常感谢我在2020年有幸与之共度时光的每一个人。在Zoom、Teams和老式iPhone之间，这无疑是不寻常的一年。我非常感谢你们所有人在这场流行病以及在各自领域和努力中如此慷慨地拿出时间和观点。