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1987 Berkshire Letter and
Buffetts Thoughts on High
ROE
By John Huber On February 20, 2014 18 Comments
I am in the midst of writing a few posts on the importance of Return
on Invested Capital (ROIC). I wrote two posts last week discussing
Greenblatts formula and some thoughts on the topic (Here and
Here). Ill have one or two more posts next week discussing a few
brief examples of compounders (companies that exhibit
unusually high returns on capital over extended periods of time,
allowing them to growor compoundshareholder value over
long periods of time).
There always seems to be a strong divide between value and
growth, deep value (aka cigar butts) and quality value, etc I too
have mentioned these differences numerous times. And its true that
many investors can do well simply buying great businesses at fair
prices and holding them for long periods of time, while other
investors prefer to slowly and steadily buy cheap stocks of average
quality and sell them as they appreciate to fair value, repeating the
process over time as they cycle through endless new opportunities.
The styles are different, but not as different as most people describe
them to be. The tactics used are different, but the objective is
exactly the same: trying to buy something for less than what
its really worth. Both strategies rely on Grahams famous
Great Quotes
Just practice diligently
and you will do very well.
Johann Sebastian Bach,
arguably the greatest
musical composer of all
time.
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margin of safety concept, which is probably the most important
concept in the investing discipline.
Both Quality and Valuation Impact Margin of
Safety
The margin of safety can be derived from the gap between price and
value, and it can also be derived from the quality of the
business. The latter point is really part of the former For
example, a business that can steadily grow intrinsic value at a rate of
say 12% annually is worth much more than a business that is
growing its value at say 4% annuallyall other things being equal.
And since the higher quality compounder is worth more than the
lower quality business, the quality compounder offers a larger
margin of safety.
Of course, in the real world, its not that easy. The lower quality
business might offer an extremely attractive discount between
current price and value, which is significant enough to make the
investment opportunity preferable to the compounder. This is often
the case in real lifecompounders are rarely are offered cheaply.
But too often, value investors get enticed by cheap metrics and
seemingly large discounts between price and value in businesses
with shrinking intrinsic value. The problem in these types of cigar
butts is that the margin of safety (gap between purchase price and
value) is largest the day of the investment. Every day thereafter the
business value slowly erodes further, making the investment a race
against time.
Now, not all cheap stocks have eroding intrinsic value. On the
contrary, many high quality, or average quality businesses are
occasionally offered quite cheap. But in my opinion, its always
much more reassuring to be invested in businesses that have
intrinsic values that are growing over time, as it allows for larger
margins of error in the event that youre wrong, and better returns
in the event that youre right. A couple days ago I read a quote
somewhere that I believe Allan Mecham said that Ill paraphrase: If
investors focused on reducing unforced errors as opposed
to hitting the next home run, their returns would
improve dramatically.
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So its like the amateur tennis champion that wins because they had
the fewest mistakes, not necessarily the most forehand winners.
Reducing Unforced Errors and Buffetts 1987
Roster
One way to reduce unforced errors in investing is to carefully
choose the businesses that you decide to own. The gap between
price and value will ultimately determine your returns, but picking
the right business is one important step in reducing errors.
One way to reduce errors is to focus on studying high quality
businesses with high returns on capital. In the last post, I mentioned
an article that Buffett referenced in the 1987 Berkshire shareholder
letter. In this letter, Buffett mentions that Berkshires seven largest
non-financial subsidiary companies made $180 million of operating
earnings and $100 million after tax earnings. But, he says by
itself, this figure says nothing about economic
performance. To evaluate that, we must know how much
total capital debt and equity was needed to produce
these earnings.
So Buffett was interested in return on invested capital. However, he
goes on to state that these seven business units used virtually no
debt, incurring just $2 million of total combined interest charges in
1987, so virtually all capital employed to produce those earnings
was equity capital. And these 7 businesses had a combined equity of
only $175 million.
So Berkshire had seven businesses that combined to
produce the following numbers:
$178 million pretax earnings
$100 million after tax earnings
$175 equity capital
57% ROE
102% Pretax ROE
So Buffetts top 7 non-financial businesses produced fabulously high
returns on equity with very little use of debt. In short, they were
outstanding businesses. Buffett proudly goes on to say that Youll
seldom see such a percentage anywhere, let alone at
large, diversified companies with nominal leverage. Of
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course, investor returns depend on price paid in relation to value
received, and we are only discussing the value received part of the
equation here.
Buffett then voices his opinion on the importance of predictability
and stability in business models:
He then references an interesting study by Fortune that backs up his
empirical observation. In this study, Fortune looked at 1000 of the
largest stocks in the US. Here are some interesting facts:
Only 6 of the 1000 companies averaged over 30% ROE over the
previous decade (1977-1986)
Only 25 of the 1000 companies averaged over 20% ROE and
had no single year lower than 15% ROE
These 25 business superstars were also stock market
superstars as 24 out of 25 outperformed the S&P 500 during
the 1977-1986 period.
The last statistic is remarkable. Even in the really high
performing value baskets such as low P/B or low P/E groups, youll
typically see a ratio of around one-half to two-thirds of the stocks
that outperform the market. Sometimes youll even have a majority
of underperformers that are paid for by a few large winners in these
basket situations. But in this case, even with a small sample space,
its pretty telling that 96% of the group outperformed over a period
of meaningful length (10 years).
Of course, this begs a question along the following lines: Great, by
looking in the rear view mirror, its easy to determine great
businesses how do we know what the next 10 years will look like?.
Buffett again provides some ideas:
November 2013 (6)
October 2013 (6)
September 2013 (6)
August 2013 (6)
July 2013 (4)
June 2013 (10)
May 2013 (11)
April 2013 (21)
March 2013 (12)
February 2013 (17 )
January 2013 (5)
December 2012 (12)
November 2012 (2)
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The idea is to locate quality businesses in an effort to reduce
unforced errors. Again, one way to do this is to focus on valuation
alone. I think Schloss implemented this method the best. Another
way is to study compounders and be disciplined to only invest when
the valuation aligns with your hurdle rate.
And in terms of percentages, there will likely be fewer errors made
(fewer permanent capital losses) in the compounder category than
there will be in the cigar butt category. It doesnt mean one will do
better than the other, as higher winning percentage doesnt
necessarily mean higher returns. But if you want to reduce
unforced errors (reduce losing investments), it helps to
get familiar with stable, predictable businesses with long
histories of producing above average returns on invested
capital.
So circling back to the compounders and the question of: Yeah
the last 10 years are great, but how do we find the winners for the
next 10 years? One possible place to look would be to glance at the
same list that Fortune put together. I attempted to recreat the
Fortune list in Morningstar based on the last 10 years (2004-2013).
As Ive mentioned before, I keep a few quality lists at Morningstar
including:
Non-financial stocks that have grown revenues and
maintained positive earnings for 10 consecutive years
(81 stocks, less than 1% of the database)
Non-financial stocks that have produced positive free cash
flow in each of the last 10 years (596 stocks, 6% of the
database)
Stocks that have produced returns on equity of 15% or
more in each of the last 10 years (143 stocks, or just over
1% of the database)
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My attempt to recreate Fortunes list will fall short, because I cant
easily determine the average ROE of these 143 businesses, but this
list would be a good place to start looking. Many of these stocks
have performed very well in the past 10 years, just from glancing at
the list.
And its worth noting that this list is the previous 10 years, it doesnt
mean that these stocks will maintain their strong returns on equity
over the next 10, although research shows that most strong
businesses tend to remain strong over time (mean reversion plays
much less a role than is commonly assumed).
So it might be worth checking out this list, and keeping it as a
watchlist for quality companies that might become available at low
prices at some time or another. Or use it as a list to go through one
by one, learning about successful business models in the process.
Here is a look at the list of consistent ROE stocks sorted
by lowest 25 P/E ratios:
Here is a look at the same list of 143 stocks that have produced 15%
ROE in each of the past 10 years, this time sorted by highest Returns
on Assets:
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Remember, all of these firms have achieved at least 15% ROE in
each of the past 10 years, something 99% of public companies failed
to do. This list certainly contains stocks that arent undervalued
(many are quite expensive), but its probably a good list to keep an
eye on from time to time, as it certainly contains a healthy amount
of businesses with compounding intrinsic values.
T AGGED WI T H Berkshire Shareholder Letters Inv estment
Philosophy Returns on Capital ROE ROIC Warren Buffett
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18 Responses to 1987 Berkshire Letter
and Buffetts Thoughts on High ROE
Undertherockstocks says:
February 20, 2014 at 10:23 pm
1 Like
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John nice follow-up thoughts. It is rare to find
a high ROIC company at a cheap price,
especially today. But when both factors align, it
is the fat pitch Buffett writes that one needs to
be ready to hit. Until the high ROIC, cheap
price companies in ones circle of competence
appear, what do you tend to do? Look for
special situations, or low ROIC companies at
less than asset value? Or do nothing and wait?
John Huber says:
February 21, 2014 at 11:29 am
Undertherocktocks, my
investment philosophy basically
could be generalized as first
looking for high quality operating
businesses with simple,
predictable business models that
produce high returns on capital at
10 times earnings. I secondarily
look for other ideas, which I would
refer to as special situations. I
used to categorize this broad
category more specifically, but I
think it creates too much
confusion when I discuss it on the
site. The basic idea with this
other category is that Im still
looking for gaps between price and
value here Im looking at
corporate events such as spinoffs,
rights offerings, recaps, or just
plain undervalued or hidden
assets. These tend to be shorter
term investments that get sold at
fair value. The compounders are
my favorite investments as the
best ones continue to compound
value for long periods of time.
Reply
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mmel says:
February 21, 2014 at 9:20 am
I have been thinking about ROE and valuation
more seriously for the last couple of weeks as
well, mainly stemming from re-reading Buffetts
article How Inflation Swindles The Equity
Investor.
I did a screen on Morningstar for companies
that increased their OpMargin every year for
the last decade, only 8 companies showed up.
This led me to looking at Church & Dwight Co.
Despite its apparent high valuation for a long
time, its fundamentals continue improving and
its stock has dominated the SP500.
Another interesting name on the list is Shoprite
Holdings, the South African firm (not the store
in New Jersey). Seems to have some very
strong fundamentals and has been
deleveraging, but its stock ha been hammered
as a result of the emerging market concerns.
mmel says:
February 21, 2014 at 9:24 am
As a follow-up, I also posted an
article on SA yesterday that tries
to come up with an intrinsic value
for BRK by comparing the firms
potential ROE to the S&P500.
Perhaps take a look, if you are
interested. I think it aligns with the
idea of determining intrinsic value
and stock return using ROE/ROIC.
Reply
Reply
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http://seekingalpha.com/article/2037163-
an-alternative-approach-to-
calculating-berkshire-hathaways-
intrinsic-value
John Huber says:
February 21, 2014 at 11:30 am
Thanks for the comments
mmel. Ill take a look at your
piece. Thanks for reading.
Pedro Carone says:
February 21, 2014 at 11:09 am
@Undertherockstocks:
I like this Munger quote:
It takes character to sit there with all that cash
and do nothing. I didnt get to where I am by
going after mediocre opportunities.
lei says:
February 22, 2014 at 6:34 am
excellent article! but i think i am different with
you,john. looking for great business is not an
easy task for me and these stocks often have
high valuation. so i am a deep value investor.
John Huber says:
February 23, 2014 at 8:20 am
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
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Thanks Lei. Yeah there are lots of
nuances within the value investing
discipline. I too like deeply
discounted cheap or hidden assets,
but yes, my favorite situation is a
high quality compounder that will
continue to produce significant
value over long periods of time.
But Ilike youam not
comfortable extrapolating todays
results too far into the future, thus
the reason Im not willing to pay
high multiples for what I consider
to be a great business (even though
truly great businesses with long
term futures are undervalued even
at very high multiples). Its
difficult to predict what will
happen to businesses, so it helps to
pay low prices, as that increases
your margin of safety and
mitigates qualitative analysis
mistakes.
Outside of finding quality
compounders at low prices to
normal earnings, I do look at
plenty of deep value stuff,
although as Ive said in the past
couple articles, it helps not to put
each idea into a style box. Were
just looking for simple businesses
or simple ideas that have an
obvious and understandable gap
between price and value.
Sometimes they are cheap stocks
that are left for dead, other times
its possible to locate quality
companies with excellent returns
on capital at a price that gives you
a high earnings yield now, which
means you dont have to pay much
for the excellent economics and
bright future. Either way, both
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styles can work well.
jalo says:
February 24, 2014 at 6:26 am
I understand your approach with investing in
compounders very easily.
Can you explain the other investment
category? Theres special situations (spinoffs,
restructurings, net nets, bankruptcy, sum of the
parts in other words huge gaps in value) Are
there any other areas where you look for big
gaps of value other then your search for a
strong compounder?
Im personally looking for a portfolio that will
thrive in any economic environment since Im
quite bearish on the economy going forward.
Companies like Coca Cola, Pepsi, Nestle,
General Electric, and Kellogg come to mind.
What I dont understand is the other
component. Can you explain the looking for
significant gap of value. So you look for huge
undervalued situations. Maybe they have a
bunch of valuable real estate.. likelihood of
good capital allocation from a poor business, or
a net net with catalyst?
Its so broad Do you focus on any particular
thing?
John Huber says:
February 25, 2014 at 5:55 pm
Hi Jalo,
Reply
Reply
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Good question, and it might take
more explanation. But some short
thoughts I dont really look for
one category over the other. And I
dont get into the office thinking
okay lets look at special
situations today or anything like
that. After looking at my
investments in hindsight, these are
the two broad categories that I
could place them in for better
explanation but I really dont
compartmentalize the research
process. Im just turning over
rocks, spending a lot of time
reading, and researching new
ideas. Sometimes they are great
businesses with great economics,
other times they are plain cheap
stocks with some sort of
recognizable significant gap
between price and the value to a
private owner. I would group these
cheap assets with other special
situations simply because they
tend to be shorter term
investments by nature. Sometimes
a cheap stock appreciates and gets
sold in a year or two, whereas
great compounders ideally stay in
the portfolio for longer periods of
time as they continually
compound value for owners.
But in both situations, Im thinking
much more about the entry price
and value, and rarely do I think
about exiting. Im comfortable
owning stocks for long periods of
time. Its just that special
situations/asset plays tend to
resolve themselves at some point,
and if they arent compounding
value at high rates, the
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opportunity cost of holding them
increases over time as they
appreciate, so they tend to get sold
at fair value.
Regarding the significant gap
question yes, Im just looking for
very large gaps. I am very patient,
and very choosy when it comes to
investments. My feeling is that too
many investors fill their portfolios
with mediocre ideas and modestly
undervalued ideas, which means
that those ideas have much lower
margins of safety. They do this in
the name of diversification, but I
believe that it negatively impacts
both safety and future returns.
With net-nets, it might be different
as its more of an insurance bet.
But on a case by case situation,
you need to identify the most
obvious, most significantly
undervalued situations in order to
achieve large margins of safety
and large future returns. As Pabrai
says, Im not interested in a stock
that trades at 10 thats worth 14,
or 16, or even 19. He wants a
minimum 50% discount. Ideally,
were looking for these types of
gaps. There is an art to valuing
compounders, but I try to create
conservative ideas for what the
business will be doing in normal
times at various points, and I
decide what those normalized
earnings are worth to me. The
benefits to investing in quality
compounders is that they are very
forgiving. You can be wrong about
the value estimate, but as long as
the business is growing value, your
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risk of permanent loss is mitigated.
And the other major difference
between a compounder and a net-
net or other stock with static (or
eroding) intrinsic worth is that
with the compounder, the values
are a moving target. They are
increasing each year, thus
increasing your margin of safety in
the event of a stagnant stock price.
This is a very pleasant situation
when you can find it.
Also, I rarely am bullish or
bearish on the economy. You
may have a view, and many who
are smarter than me might be able
to act on a view, although its very
tough to do for even the smartest
economists. The companies you
mentioned are outstanding mature
companies, although they are in a
stage of life where their intrinsic
value is growing at unnexciting
returns (probably 6-8% or so). My
off the cuff opinion of most of the
large quality firms like that is that
your investment returns will equal
those rates of value increases over
time, and shareholders shouldnt
expect much more unless they can
acquire those firms at significant
discounts but the firms you
mentioned are certainly fortresses
that will likely be quite safe over
time.
Jonathan says:
February 24, 2014 at 3:51 pm
Reply
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well John, I guess I am a chain smoker I cant
seem to give up my cigar butts! granted owning
compounders, is a more ideal situation but a
basket of cigar butts ( 10 or so) is just so
appealing. even this past decade net nets
trading 75% or more below NCAV beat the
market by 5-10% ill have to check the numbers
once I get home for exact quotes.
like you I like cheap and good, but I also like
extremely cheap. sometimes cheapness is the
catalysis.
great post as always my friend.
John Huber says:
February 25, 2014 at 1:10 pm
Thanks Jonathan. Yeah the cheap
stocks are always interesting. And
again, Ive talked a lot about
quality lately, but were really just
trying to find the largest gaps we
can between price and value. And
it has to be understandable. The
cheap stocks are often the simplest
and the most quantifiable, thus
their attractiveness. I agree with
that, and like Graham and Schloss
taught us, it is a perfectly viable
strategy.
Tuna says:
February 28, 2014 at 8:59 pm
Hey John,
Reply
Reply
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Another amazing article! Always love reading
the comments too as there are a lot of gems in
there.
I get the feeling you coattail other successful
investors. For those investors that run a fund
above $100MM, how do you track freely what
they bought/sold? I noticed Gurufocus.com
does this for free on a delayed basis. But they
do have a $300/year where its revealed on real
time (90 day delayed still). Any resources
would be helpful!
John Huber says:
March 2, 2014 at 11:22 am
Thanks for the comment. Yeah I
like looking at what other
investors are doing, as I get
numerous ideas from them. I
wouldnt say I coattail though I
mainly use the 13-fs as idea
generators, and then do my own
research on ideas that appear to be
valuable.
I really just use the SEC site to
research the holdings. Its free,
and its easy to use. Alternatively,
you can look at sites like Whale
Wisdom, that aggregate the data
for you to make it easy to view. I
use that site, and also use
GuruFocus, which also does an
excellent job at summarizing the
buying and selling of these
gurus.
I dont spend much time trying to
figure out whos buying and selling
what, though. I really just spend a
few minutes each quarter going
Reply
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over the portfolios of a few value
investors I respect, and
occasionally I get something
interesting.
Mohammed Al-Alwan says:
March 4, 2014 at 6:32 am
I think high RoE metric is a good starting point
but totally irrelevant for future investment as
its backward looking. Theoretically as long as
RoE >Cost of equity the main value driver is
future growth. So, if you a have a business with
100% RoE but with no future growth
opportunities its franchise value is zero
regardless of how high is the RoE .While some
times a lower RoE business with say 15% RoE
has big reinvestment growth opportunities and
as result will have a much higher franchise
value. This explains buffet focus on durability
and consistency (CAP period)+Reinvestment
opportunities. Because their relationship is
multiplicative you need both factors in play.
The problem is that future investment
opportunities wont appear in the company
financial statements as buffet said before our
best performing investments were made when
the number did not support it. What I think
buffet meant was that future growth
opportunities for these companies are high and
as result they have the ability to reinvest at high
RoE for many years to come justify the
purchase price that did not look cheap at that
time. The challenge is that these future growth
opportunities cannot be easily assessed
quantitatively and needs deep industry
knowledge, common sense, and deep
understanding of the magic of compounding.
Reply
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John Huber says:
March 4, 2014 at 11:54 am
Thanks for the comment the
simplest way to think about this is
that a firms future ability to grow
its value intrinsically is simply the
product of two factors: the
incremental ROIC and the
reinvestment rate (how much can
it retain from earnings to reinvest
at that same ROIC). So a business
that produces 20% incremental
returns on capital that can reinvest
50% of its earnings at that rate will
grow intrinsic value at a rate of
10% annually (50% times 20%).
Likewise, a firm that produces
10% ROIC that can reinvest 100%
of earnings will grow at 10%
annually (100% x 10%). A
business that makes 50% ROIC
that can only reinvest 30% will
grow at 15% annually, etc Also,
the firms with lower reinvestment
rates but higher ROIC will likely
create more value for
shareholders (assuming the same
intrinsic value growth rate)
because it still has a large portion
of its earnings to either buyback
stock or make accretive
acquisitions (or just pay
dividends). Of course, they could
destroy value as well
Mohammed Al Alwan
says:
March 4, 2014 at 1:21 pm
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6/1/2014 1987 Berkshire Letter and Buffett' s Thoughts on High ROE | Base Hit Investing
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Thanks for your comment
I think there is some
confusion on terminologies
here. Reinvestment
opportunities is not the same
as reinvestment rate.Many
companies go for high
reinvestment rate but few
reinvestment opportunities
and as result end up
destroying value.
John Huber says:
March 4, 2014 at 1:43 pm
Correct as I say, a
business compounding
rate is a simple formula.
Its the product of its
reinvestment rate (the
amount of capital it
reinvests each year)
multiplied by the return
it achieves on that
capital (ROIC). A
business intrinsic value
will grow (or shrink) as a
direct result of those two
factors. As you correctly
point out, if it reinvests
money at low returns it
will grow value at low
levels (likely not
exceeding its cost of
capital, which will
destroy value). Also, if a
business doesnt have
reinvestment
opportunities (0%
reinvestment), it will not
grow. In either case,
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capital allocation is a
third component to the
overall company value,
as management can still
grow value per share by
prudent capital
allocation.
To simplify it, I wouldnt
differentiate between
reinvestment
opportunities and
reinvestment rate. If a
business reinvests 100%
of its earnings then the
reinvestment rate is
100%. As you say,
maybe they destroy
value by only achieving
4% returns on that
investment. I think what
youre saying is that
maybe management
doesnt have much
opportunity to reinvest
at high ROICs, and thats
often true.
But the math is simple:
the business will invest a
certain amount of its
earnings, and that is the
reinvestment rate. That
investment will produce
a certain return, which is
the incremental ROIC.
The enterprise will
compound at a rate that
is the product of those
two factors. And outside
of the enterprise itself,
the excess cash (earnings
that cant be reinvested
into the business) can
6/1/2014 1987 Berkshire Letter and Buffett' s Thoughts on High ROE | Base Hit Investing
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also create or destroy
value.
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