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GAAP, they would be carried at little or no value. GAAP measured results in terms of net
profit; in economic reality, the results of a business were its
flows of cash
.
A key feature to Buffett’s approach defined economic reality at the level of the business
itself, not the market, the economy, or the security—he was a
fundamental analyst
of the
business. His analysis sought to judge the simplicity of the business, the consistency of its
operating history, the attractiveness of its long-term prospects, the quality of management,
and the firm’s capacity to create value.
2.
The cost of the lost opportunity
. Buffett compared an investment opportunity against the next
best alternative, the “lost opportunity.” In his business decisions, he demonstrated a tendency
to frame his choices as either/or decisions rather than yes/no decisions. Thus, an important
standard of comparison in testing the attractiveness of an acquisition was the potential rate of
return from investing in the common stocks of other companies. Buffett held that there was
no fundamental difference between buying a business outright, and buying a few shares of
that business in the equity market. Thus, for him, the comparison of an investment against
other returns available in the market was an important benchmark of performance.
3.
Value creation: time is money
. Buffett assessed intrinsic value as the present value of future
expected performance:
[All other methods fall short in determining whether] an investor is indeed
buying something for what it is worth and is therefore truly operating on the
principle of obtaining value for his investments.… Irrespective of whether a
business grows or doesn’t, displays volatility or smoothness in earnings, or
carries a high price or low in relation to its current earnings and book value, the
investment shown by the discounted-flows-of-cash calculation to be the cheapest
is the one that the investor should purchase.
10
Enlarging on his discussion of intrinsic value, Buffett used an educational example:
We define intrinsic value as the discounted value of the cash that can be taken
out of a business during its remaining life. Anyone calculating intrinsic value
necessarily comes up with a highly subjective figure that will change both as
estimates of future cash flows are revised and as interest rates move. Despite its
fuzziness, however, intrinsic value is all important and is the only logical way to
evaluate the relative attractiveness of investments and businesses.
To see how historical input (book value) and future output (intrinsic value) can
diverge, let us look at another form of investment, a college education. Think of
the education’s cost as its “book value.” If it is to be accurate, the cost should
include the earnings that were foregone by the student because he chose college
rather than a job. For this exercise, we will ignore the important non-economic
benefits of an education and focus strictly on its economic value. First, we must
estimate the earnings that the graduate will receive over his lifetime and subtract
from that figure an estimate of what he would have earned had he lacked his