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2022-02-27

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Buffett Full Annual Letter：Apple is One of ‘Four Giants’ Driving the Conglomerate’s Value<blockquote>巴菲特年度信函全文：苹果是推动企业集团价值的 “四巨头 ”之一</blockquote>

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The 91-yea","content":"<html><head></head><body>Warren Buffett released his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders on Saturday. The 91-year-old investing legend has been publishing the letter for over six decades and it has become required reading for investors around the world.<blockquote><html><head></head><body>沃伦·巴菲特周六发布了致伯克希尔·哈撒韦公司股东的年度信。这位 91 岁的投资传奇人物六十多年来一直在发表这封信，它已成为世界各地投资者的必读书目。</body></html></blockquote>Warren Buffett said he now considers tech giant Apple as one of the four pillars driving Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate of mostly old-economy businesses he’s assembled over the last five decades.<blockquote>巴菲特说，他现在认为科技巨头苹果是推动伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司发展的四大支柱之一。</blockquote>In his annual letter to shareholders released on Saturday, the 91-year-old investing legend listed Apple under the heading “Our Four Giants” and even called the company the second-most important after Berkshire’s cluster of insurers, thanks to its chief executive.<blockquote>在周六发布的年度致股东信中，这位 91 岁的投资传奇人物将苹果列为 “我们的四大巨头 ”，甚至称该公司是仅次于伯克希尔保险公司集团的第二重要公司，这要归功于其首席执行官。</blockquote>“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,” the letter stated.<blockquote>“信中写道：”苹果才华横溢的首席执行官蒂姆-库克（Tim Cook）将苹果产品的用户视为自己的初恋，但他的所有其他支持者也都受益于蒂姆的管理风格。</blockquote>Buffett made clear he is a fan of Cook’s stock repurchase strategy, and how it gives the conglomerate increased ownership of each dollar of the iPhone maker’s earnings without the investor having to lift a finger.<blockquote>巴菲特明确表示，他是库克股票回购策略的粉丝，也是库克股票回购策略的粉丝，以及库克如何在投资者无需动一根手指的情况下，让库克集团增加对这家 iPhone 制造商每一美元收益的所有权。</blockquote>“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,” Buffett said in the letter. “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.”<blockquote>“巴菲特在信中说：”苹果--以年终市值衡量，我们的亚军巨头--是一种不同的持股方式。在这里，我们的持股比例仅为 5.55%，高于一年前的 5.39%。“这种增长听起来就像小土豆。但考虑到苹果 2021 年收益的每 0.1% 就相当于 1 亿美元。我们没有动用伯克希尔的资金来获得我们的增值。苹果的回购做到了。”</blockquote>Berkshire began buying Apple stock in 2016 under the influence of Buffett’s investing deputies Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. By mid-2018, the conglomerate accumulated 5% ownership of the iPhone maker, a stake that cost $36 billion. Today, the Apple investment is now worth more than $160 billion, taking up 40% of Berkshire’s equity portfolio.<blockquote>在巴菲特的投资副手 Todd Combs 和 Ted Weschler 的影响下，伯克希尔于 2016 年开始购买苹果股票。到 2018 年年中，该企业集团积累了这家 iPhone 制造商 5% 的所有权，价值 360 亿美元。如今，苹果的投资价值已超过 1600 亿美元，占伯克希尔股票投资组合的 40%。</blockquote>“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,” Buffett said.<blockquote>“重要的是要明白，在伯克希尔公司的公认会计准则收益报告中，只有苹果的股息被计算在内--去年，苹果支付了其中的 7.85 亿美元。然而，我们在苹果公司收益中的'份额'却达到了惊人的 56 亿美元。公司保留的大部分资金都用于回购苹果股票，我们对此表示赞赏，”巴菲特说。</blockquote>Berkshire is Apple’s largest shareholder, outside of index and exchange-traded fund providers.<blockquote>伯克希尔是苹果除指数和交易所交易基金提供商之外的最大股东。</blockquote>Buffett also credited his railroad business BNSF and energy segment BHE as two other giants of the conglomerate, which both registered record earnings in 2021.<blockquote>巴菲特还称赞他的铁路业务 BNSF 和能源部门 BHE 是该集团的另外两大巨头，这两家公司在 2021 年的盈利均创下历史新高。</blockquote>“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,” Buffett said. “BHE has become a utility powerhouse and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.”<blockquote>“巴菲特说：”我们的第三大巨头 BNSF 仍然是美国商业的第一大动脉，这使其成为美国和伯克希尔不可或缺的资产。“BHE 已成为美国大部分地区风能、太阳能和输电领域的公用事业巨头和领先力量”。</blockquote>Read the full letter here：<blockquote>点击此处阅读全文：</blockquote>To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.:<blockquote>致伯克希尔哈撒韦公司股东：</blockquote>Charlie Munger, my long-time partner, and I have the job of managing a portion of your savings. We are honored by your trust.<blockquote>我的长期合作伙伴查理·芒格和我的工作是管理你的一部分积蓄。我们很荣幸能得到你的信任。</blockquote>Our position carries with it the responsibility to report to you what we would like to know if we were the absentee owner and you were the manager. We enjoy communicating directly with you through this annual letter, and through the annual meeting as well.<blockquote>如果我们是缺席的所有者，而你是经理，我们有责任向你报告我们想知道的事情。我们很高兴通过这封年度信函以及年会与您直接沟通。</blockquote>Our policy is to treat all shareholders equally. Therefore, we do not hold discussions with analysts nor large institutions. Whenever possible, also, we release important communications on Saturday mornings in order to maximize the time for shareholders and the media to absorb the news before markets open on Monday.<blockquote>我们的政策是平等对待所有股东。因此，我们不与分析师或大型机构进行讨论。此外，只要有可能，我们还会在周六上午发布重要通讯，以便在周一开市前最大限度地让股东和媒体有时间吸收新闻。</blockquote>A wealth of Berkshire facts and figures are set forth in the annual 10-K that the company regularly files with the S.E.C. and that we reproduce on pages K-1 – K-119. Some shareholders will find this detail engrossing; others will simply prefer to learn what Charlie and I believe is new or interesting at Berkshire.<blockquote>伯克希尔公司定期向美国证券交易委员会提交的年度 10-K 报告中列出了大量伯克希尔的事实和数据。我们在K-1-K-119页复制了这一点。一些股东会发现这个细节引人入胜；其他人只是更喜欢了解查理和我认为伯克希尔的新事物或有趣的事物。</blockquote>Alas, there was little action of that sort in 2021. We did, though, make reasonable progress in increasing the intrinsic value of your shares. That task has been my primary duty for 57 years. And it will continue to be.<blockquote>唉，2021年几乎没有这样的行动。不过，我们在提高您股票的内在价值方面确实取得了合理的进展。57年来，这项任务一直是我的主要职责。并将继续如此。</blockquote>What You Own<blockquote>你拥有什么</blockquote>Berkshire owns a wide variety of businesses, some in their entirety, some only in part. The second group largely consists of marketable common stocks of major American companies. Additionally, we own a few non-U.S. equities and participate in several joint ventures or other collaborative activities.<blockquote>伯克希尔拥有各种各样的企业，有些是全部的，有些只是部分的。第二组主要由美国主要公司的可交易普通股组成。此外，我们还拥有一些非美国股票，并参与多家合资企业或其他合作活动。</blockquote>Whatever our form of ownership, our goal is to have meaningful investments in businesses with both durable economic advantages and a first-class CEO. Please note particularly that we own stocks based upon our expectations about their long-term business performance and not because we view them as vehicles for timely market moves. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers.<blockquote>无论我们的所有权形式如何，我们的目标都是对具有持久经济优势和一流首席执行官的企业进行有意义的投资。请特别注意，我们持有股票是基于我们对其长期业务表现的预期，而不是因为我们将其视为及时市场走势的工具。这一点至关重要：查理和我不是选股者；我们是商业挑剔者。</blockquote>I make many mistakes. Consequently, our extensive collection of businesses includes some enterprises that have truly extraordinary economics, many others that enjoy good economic characteristics, and a few that are marginal. One advantage of our common-stock segment is that – on occasion – it becomes easy to buy pieces of wonderful businesses at wonderful prices. That shooting-fish-in-a-barrel experience is very rare in negotiated transactions and never occurs en masse. It is also far easier to exit from a mistake when it has been made in the marketable arena.<blockquote>我犯了很多错误。因此，我们广泛收集的企业包括一些真正具有非凡经济效益的企业，许多其他享有良好经济特征的企业，以及一些边缘企业。我们普通股部门的一个优势是——有时——很容易以优惠的价格购买优秀的企业。这种在谈判交易中打鱼的经历非常罕见，而且从未大规模发生。当一个错误是在可销售的舞台上犯下的，也更容易摆脱它。</blockquote><h2>Surprise, Surprise</h2>Here are a few items about your company that often surprise even seasoned investors:<blockquote><h2>惊喜，惊喜</h2>以下是有关贵公司的一些事项，即使是经验丰富的投资者也常常感到惊讶：</blockquote>• Many people perceive Berkshire as a large and somewhat strange collection of financial assets. In truth, Berkshire owns and operates more U.S.-based “infrastructure” assets – classified on our balance sheet as property, plant and equipment – than are owned and operated by any other American corporation. That supremacy has never been our goal. It has, however, become a fact.<blockquote>- 许多人认为伯克希尔是一个庞大且有点奇怪的金融资产集合。事实上，伯克希尔拥有和运营的美国 “基础设施 ”资产--在我们的资产负债表上被归类为房地产、厂房和设备--比任何其他美国公司拥有和运营的都要多。至高无上从来都不是我们的目标。然而，这已经成为事实。</blockquote>At yearend, those domestic infrastructure assets were carried on Berkshire’s balance sheet at $158 billion. That number increased last year and will continue to increase. Berkshire always will be building.<blockquote>截至年底，这些国内基础设施资产在伯克希尔的资产负债表上的结转价值为 1,580 亿美元。这个数字去年有所增加，并将继续增加。伯克希尔将永远在建设。</blockquote>• Every year, your company makes substantial federal income tax payments. In 2021, for example, we paid<blockquote>- 每年，您的公司都要缴纳大量的联邦所得税。例如，在2021年，我们支付了</blockquote>$3.3 billion while the U.S. Treasury reported total corporate income-tax receipts of $402 billion. Additionally, Berkshire pays substantial state and foreign taxes. “I gave at the office” is an unassailable assertion when made by Berkshire shareholders.<blockquote>33亿美元，而美国财政部报告的企业所得税收入总额为4020亿美元。此外，伯克希尔还缴纳巨额州税和外国税。伯克希尔股东提出 “我在办公室给的 ”是一句无可辩驳的断言。</blockquote>Berkshire’s history vividly illustrates the invisible and often unrecognized financial partnership between government and American businesses. Our tale begins early in 1955, when Berkshire Fine Spinning and Hathaway Manufacturing agreed to merge their businesses. In their requests for shareholder approval, these venerable New England textile companies expressed high hopes for the combination.<blockquote>伯克希尔的历史生动地说明了政府与美国企业之间无形且往往不被认可的金融伙伴关系。我们的故事始于 1955 年初，当时伯克希尔精纺公司和哈撒韦制造公司同意合并业务。在请求股东批准时，这些古老的新英格兰纺织公司对合并表达了很高的期望。</blockquote>The Hathaway solicitation, for example, assured its shareholders that “The combination of the resources and managements will result in one of the strongest and most efficient organizations in the textile industry.” That upbeat view was endorsed by the company’s advisor, Lehman Brothers (yes, that Lehman Brothers).<blockquote>例如，哈撒韦公司向股东保证，“资源和管理的结合将产生纺织行业最强大、最高效的组织之一”。这一乐观观点得到了该公司顾问雷曼兄弟（没错，就是雷曼兄弟）的认可。</blockquote>I’m sure it was a joyous day in both Fall River (Berkshire) and New Bedford (Hathaway) when the union was consummated. After the bands stopped playing and the bankers went home, however, the shareholders reaped a disaster.<blockquote>我相信，当工会完成时，福尔里弗（伯克郡）和新贝德福德（哈撒韦）都是欢乐的一天。然而，在乐队停止演奏，银行家们回家后，股东们收获了一场灾难。</blockquote>In the nine years following the merger, Berkshire’s owners watched the company’s net worth crater from<blockquote>在合并后的九年里，伯克希尔的所有者眼睁睁地看着公司的净资产从</blockquote>$51.4 million to $22.1 million. In part, this decline was caused by stock repurchases, ill-advised dividends and plant shutdowns. But nine years of effort by many thousands of employees delivered an operating loss as well. Berkshire’s struggles were not unusual: The New England textile industry had silently entered an extended and non-reversible death march.<blockquote>5140万美元至2210万美元。这种下降的部分原因是股票回购、不明智的股息和工厂关闭。但数千名员工九年的努力也带来了运营亏损。伯克希尔的挣扎并不罕见： 新英格兰纺织业已经悄然进入了一场旷日持久、不可逆转的死亡行军。</blockquote>During the nine post-merger years, the U.S. Treasury suffered as well from Berkshire’s troubles. All told, the company paid the government only $337,359 in income tax during that period – a pathetic $100 per day.<blockquote>在合并后的九年里，美国财政部也遭受了伯克希尔的麻烦。总而言之，该公司在此期间仅向政府缴纳了 337,359 美元的所得税——每天可怜的 100 美元。</blockquote>Early in 1965, things changed. Berkshire installed new management that redeployed available cash and steered essentially all earnings into a variety of good businesses, most of which remained good through the years. Coupling reinvestment of earnings with the power of compounding worked its magic, and shareholders prospered.<blockquote>1965年初，情况发生了变化。伯克希尔安装了新的管理层，重新部署了可用现金，并将基本上所有收益引导到各种良好的业务中，其中大多数业务多年来一直保持良好。将收益再投资与复利的力量相结合，发挥了它的魔力，股东也因此繁荣起来。</blockquote>Berkshire’s owners, it should be noted, were not the only beneficiary of that course correction. Their “silent partner,” the U.S. Treasury, proceeded to collect many tens of billions of dollars from the company in income tax payments. Remember the $100 daily? Now, Berkshire pays roughly $9 million daily to the Treasury.<blockquote>值得注意的是，伯克希尔的所有者并不是这一路线调整的唯一受益者。他们的 “沉默伙伴 ”美国财政部接着向该公司收取了数百亿美元的所得税。还记得每天100美元吗？现在，伯克希尔每天向财政部支付大约900万美元。</blockquote>In fairness to our governmental partner, our shareholders should acknowledge – indeed trumpet – the fact that Berkshire’s prosperity has been fostered mightily because the company has operated in America. Our country would have done splendidly in the years since 1965 without Berkshire. Absent our American home, however, Berkshire would never have come close to becoming what it is today. When you see the flag, say thanks.<blockquote>公平地说，我们的股东应该承认--实际上是大肆宣扬--伯克希尔的繁荣之所以能得到极大的促进，是因为该公司在美国开展业务。如果没有伯克希尔，我们的国家在1965年以来的几年里会做得很好。然而，如果没有我们的美国大本营，伯克希尔永远不会成为今天的样子。当你看到旗帜时，说谢谢。</blockquote>• From an $8.6 million purchase of National Indemnity in 1967, Berkshire has become the world leader in insurance “float” – money we hold and can invest but that does not belong to us. Including a relatively small sum derived from life insurance, Berkshire’s total float has grown from $19 million when we entered the insurance business to $147 billion.<blockquote>- 自 1967 年斥资 860 万美元购买国家赔偿以来，伯克希尔已成为保险 “浮动 ”领域的全球领导者--我们持有并可以投资但不属于我们的资金。包括来自人寿保险的相对较少的资金在内，伯克希尔的总流通股已从我们进入保险业务时的 1900 万美元增长到 1470 亿美元。</blockquote>So far, this float has cost us less than nothing. Though we have experienced a number of years when insurance losses combined with operating expenses exceeded premiums, overall we have earned a modest 55-year profit from the underwriting activities that generated our float.<blockquote>到目前为止，这个花车花了我们很少的钱。尽管我们经历了几年保险损失加上运营费用超过保费的情况，但总体而言，我们从产生流通量的承保活动中赚取了 55 年的适度利润。</blockquote>Of equal importance, float is very sticky. Funds attributable to our insurance operations come and go daily, but their aggregate total is immune from precipitous decline. When it comes to investing float, we can therefore think long-term.<blockquote>同样重要的是，浮动非常粘。我们保险业务的资金每天来来去去，但其总额不会急剧下降。因此，当谈到投资流通股时，我们可以考虑长远。</blockquote>If you are not already familiar with the concept of float, I refer you to a long explanation on page A-5. To my surprise, our float increased $9 billion last year, a buildup of value that is important to Berkshire owners though is not reflected in our GAAP (“generally-accepted accounting principles”) presentation of earnings and net worth.<blockquote>如果您还不熟悉浮动的概念，我向您推荐A-5页上的详细解释。令我惊讶的是，去年我们的流通股增加了 90 亿美元，这一价值的增加对伯克希尔公司的所有者来说非常重要，但并没有反映在我们的 GAAP（“公认会计准则”）收益和净资产列报中。</blockquote>Much of our huge value creation in insurance is attributable to Berkshire’s good luck in my 1986 hiring of Ajit Jain. We first met on a Saturday morning, and I quickly asked Ajit what his insurance experience had been. He replied, “None.”<blockquote>我们在保险业创造的巨大价值很大程度上要归功于伯克希尔在 1986 年聘请阿吉特-贾恩（Ajit Jain）时的好运。我们第一次见面是在一个周六的早晨，我很快问阿吉特他的保险经历如何。他回答说：“没有。”</blockquote>I said, “Nobody’s perfect,” and hired him. That was my lucky day: Ajit actually was as perfect a choice as could have been made. Better yet, he continues to be – 35 years later.<blockquote>我说 “人无完人”，然后雇佣了他。那是我的幸运日：阿吉特实际上是一个完美的选择。更好的是，35年后，他仍然如此。</blockquote>One final thought about insurance: I believe that it is likely – but far from assured – that Berkshire’s float can be maintained without our incurring a long-term underwriting loss. I am certain, however, that there will be some years when we experience such losses, perhaps involving very large sums.<blockquote>关于保险的最后一点想法： 我相信，伯克希尔的流通量很有可能--但还远未得到保证--能够维持，而我们不会遭受长期承保损失。然而，我确信，在某些年份，我们会经历这样的损失，也许涉及非常大的金额。</blockquote>Berkshire is constructed to handle catastrophic events as no other insurer – and that priority will remain long after Charlie and I are gone.<blockquote>伯克希尔在处理灾难性事件方面是其他保险公司无法比拟的——在查理和我离开后很长一段时间内，这一优先事项仍将存在。</blockquote><h2>Our Four Giants</h2>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.<blockquote><h2>我们的四大巨头</h2>通过伯克希尔，我们的股东拥有数十家企业。其中一些反过来又有自己的子公司集合。例如，Marmon 拥有 100 多项独立业务，从火车车厢租赁到医疗设备制造。</blockquote>• 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.<blockquote>- 尽管如此，我们的 “四大 ”公司的运营还是占伯克希尔公司价值的很大一部分。位居榜首的是我们的保险公司集群。伯克希尔实际上拥有该集团 100% 的股份，我们前面描述了其巨大的流通股价值。我们为支持这些保险公司的承诺而投入的巨额资金进一步扩大了这些保险公司的投资资产。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>保险业务是为伯克希尔定制的。产品永远不会过时，销量通常会随着经济增长和通货膨胀而增加。此外，诚信和资本将永远很重要。我们公司能够而且将会表现良好。</blockquote>There are, of course, other insurers with excellent business models and prospects. Replication of Berkshire’s operation, however, would be almost impossible.<blockquote>当然，还有其他保险公司拥有出色的商业模式和前景。然而，复制伯克希尔的业务几乎是不可能的。</blockquote>• 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.<blockquote>- 苹果--按年终市值衡量，我们的亚军巨头--是一种不同类型的控股。在这里，我们的所有权仅为 5.55%，高于一年前的 5.39%。这个增长听起来像小土豆。但考虑到苹果 2021 年收益的每 0.1% 就相当于 1 亿美元。我们没有花费伯克希尔基金来获得我们的增值。苹果的回购起到了作用。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>重要的是要明白，伯克希尔的 GAAP 收益报告中只计算了苹果的股息--去年，苹果支付了其中的 7.85 亿美元。然而，我们在苹果收益中的 “份额 ”却达到了惊人的 56 亿美元。该公司保留的大部分资金用于回购苹果股票，我们对此表示赞赏。苹果出色的首席执行官蒂姆-库克（Tim Cook）非常正确地将苹果产品的用户视为自己的初恋，但他的所有其他支持者也都受益于蒂姆的管理风格。</blockquote>• 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.<blockquote>- 我们的第三大巨头 BNSF 仍然是美国商业的第一大动脉，这使其成为美国和伯克希尔不可或缺的资产。如果 BNSF 运输的许多必需品改用卡车运输，美国的碳排放量将会飙升。</blockquote>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 )<blockquote>你们的铁路在2021年的收入达到了创纪录的60亿美元。这里，应该指出的是，我们谈论的是我们所青睐的老式收益：在利息、税收、折旧、摊销和所有形式的补偿之后计算的数字。（我们的定义暗示了一个警告：随着股市上涨，欺骗性的盈利“调整”——用一个礼貌的描述——变得越来越频繁，也越来越离谱。说得不那么礼貌一点，我想说牛市滋生了虚张声势的牛市）</blockquote>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.<blockquote>BNSF列车去年行驶了1.43亿英里，运载了5.35亿吨货物。这两项成就都远远超过了任何其他美国航空公司。你可以为你的铁路感到骄傲。</blockquote>• 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.<blockquote>- 我们的最后一家巨头 BHE 在 2021 年创下了 40 亿美元的收入。这比伯克希尔在 2000 年（伯克希尔首次购买 BHE 股份的那一年）获得的 1.22 亿美元增长了 30 多倍。现在，伯克希尔拥有该公司91.1%的股份。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>BHE 的社会成就记录与其财务业绩一样引人注目。2000年，该公司没有风能或太阳能发电。当时，它被简单地视为庞大的电力公用事业行业中一个相对较新且次要的参与者。随后，在大卫-索科尔（David Sokol）和格雷格-阿贝尔（Greg Abel）的领导下，BHE 已成为一家公用事业巨头（请不要抱怨），并成为美国大部分地区风能、太阳能和输电领域的主导力量。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>格雷格关于这些成就的报告刊登在 A-3 和 A-4 页。您将在那里找到的个人资料绝不是目前流行的 “洗绿 ”故事之一。自2007年以来，BHE每年都忠实地详细介绍其在可再生能源和输电方面的计划和绩效。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>如需进一步查看此信息，请访问 BHE 网站 brkenergy.com。在那里，你会看到该公司长期以来一直在采取具有气候意识的举措，吸收了其所有收益。更多的机会就在前方。BHE拥有我国所需的大型电力项目的管理、经验、资金和胃口。</blockquote><h2>Investments</h2>Now let’s talk about companies we don’t control, a list that again references Apple. Below we list our fifteen largest equity holdings, several of which are selections of Berkshire’s two long-time investment managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. At yearend, this valued pair had total authority in respect to $34 billion of investments, many of which do not meet the threshold value we use in the table. Also, a significant portion of the dollars that Todd and Ted manage are lodged in various pension plans of Berkshire-owned businesses, with the assets of these plans not included in this table.<blockquote><h2>投资</h2>现在让我们来谈谈我们无法控制的公司，这份名单再次提到了苹果。下面我们列出了我们持有的 15 只最大的股票，其中几只是伯克希尔的两位长期投资经理托德-库姆斯（Todd Combs）和泰德-韦施勒（Ted Weschler）的精选股票。年底时，这对估值对拥有 340 亿美元投资的总权限，其中许多投资不符合我们在表格中使用的阈值。此外，托德和泰德管理的很大一部分资金存放在伯克希尔旗下企业的各种养老金计划中，这些计划的资产不包括在本表中。</blockquote><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d43587e9f59c0ff76e6c04c6bf9af324\" tg-width=\"1047\" tg-height=\"530\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>* This is our actual purchase price and also our tax basis.<blockquote>*这是我们的实际购买价格，也是我们的税基。</blockquote>** Held by BHE; consequently, Berkshire shareholders have only a 91.1% interest in this position.<blockquote>**由BHE持有；因此，伯克希尔股东仅持有该职位 91.1% 的权益。</blockquote>*** Includes a $10 billion investment in Occidental Petroleum, consisting of preferred stock and warrants to buy common stock, a combination now being valued at $10.7 billion.<blockquote>*** 包括对西方石油公司 100 亿美元的投资，包括优先股和购买普通股的认股权证，目前这一组合的价值为 107 亿美元。</blockquote>In addition to the footnoted Occidental holding and our various common-stock positions, Berkshire also owns a 26.6% interest in Kraft Heinz (accounted for on the “equity” method, not market value, and carried at $13.1 billion) and 38.6% of Pilot Corp., a leader in travel centers that had revenues last year of $45 billion.<blockquote>除了脚注中的西方石油控股公司（Occidental holding）和我们的各种普通股头寸外，伯克希尔还拥有卡夫亨氏 26.6% 的权益（按 “权益 ”法而非市值入账，账面价值 131 亿美元）和 Pilot Corp. 38.6% 的权益，Pilot Corp.</blockquote>Since we purchased our Pilot stake in 2017, this holding has warranted “equity” accounting treatment. Early in 2023, Berkshire will purchase an additional interest in Pilot that will raise our ownership to 80% and lead to our fully consolidating Pilot’s earnings, assets and liabilities in our financial statements.<blockquote>自我们于 2017 年购买试点股份以来，该持股已获得 “权益 ”会计处理。2023 年初，伯克希尔将购买 Pilot 的额外权益，这将使我们的所有权提高到 80%，并使我们在财务报表中全面合并 Pilot 的收益、资产和负债。</blockquote><h2>U.S. Treasury Bills</h2>Berkshire’s balance sheet includes $144 billion of cash and cash equivalents (excluding the holdings of BNSF and BHE). Of this sum, $120 billion is held in U.S. Treasury bills, all maturing in less than a year. That stake leaves Berkshire financing about 12 of 1% of the publicly-held national debt.<blockquote><h2>美国国库券</h2>伯克希尔的资产负债表包括 1440 亿美元的现金和现金等价物（不包括持有的 BNSF 和 BHE）。其中，1200亿美元持有美国国库券，全部到期时间不到一年。这笔股份使伯克希尔哈撒韦公司能够为大约 1% 的公开持有国债提供融资。</blockquote>Charlie and I have pledged that Berkshire (along with our subsidiaries other than BNSF and BHE) will always hold more than $30 billion of cash and equivalents. We want your company to be financially impregnable and never dependent on the kindness of strangers (or even that of friends). Both of us like to sleep soundly, and we want our creditors, insurance claimants and you to do so as well.<blockquote>查理和我承诺，伯克希尔（以及我们除 BNSF 和 BHE 以外的子公司）将始终持有超过 300 亿美元的现金和等价物。我们希望你的公司在经济上坚不可摧，永远不要依赖陌生人（甚至朋友）的善意。我们都喜欢睡个好觉，我们希望我们的债权人、保险索赔人和你也能这样做。</blockquote><h2>But $144 billion?</h2>That imposing sum, I assure you, is not some deranged expression of patriotism. Nor have Charlie and I lost our overwhelming preference for business ownership. Indeed, I first manifested my enthusiasm for that 80 years ago, on March 11, 1942, when I purchased three shares of Cities Services preferred stock. Their cost was $114.75 and required all of my savings. (The Dow Jones Industrial Average that day closed at 99, a fact that should scream to you: Never bet against America.)<blockquote><h2>但是1440亿美元？</h2>我向你保证，这笔巨款并不是爱国主义的疯狂表达。查理和我也没有失去对企业所有权的压倒性偏好。事实上，我第一次表现出对此的热情是在 80 年前的 1942 年 3 月 11 日，当时我购买了三股城市服务优先股。他们的费用是114.75美元，需要我所有的积蓄。（道琼斯工业平均指数当天收于99点，这一事实应该让你尖叫：永远不要押注美国。）</blockquote>After my initial plunge, I always kept at least 80% of my net worth in equities. My favored status throughout that period was 100% – and still is. Berkshire’s current 80%-or-so position in businesses is a consequence of my failure to find entire companies or small portions thereof (that is, marketable stocks) which meet our criteria for long- term holding.<blockquote>在我最初的暴跌之后，我总是将至少80%的净资产保留在股票上。在那段时间里，我的支持率是100%，现在仍然是。伯克希尔目前在企业中占据80%左右的份额，是因为我找不到符合我们长期持股标准的整个公司或其中一小部分公司（即有价证券）。</blockquote>Charlie and I have endured similar cash-heavy positions from time to time in the past. These periods are never pleasant; they are also never permanent. And, fortunately, we have had a mildly attractive alternative during 2020 and 2021 for deploying capital. Read on.<blockquote>查理和我过去也不时经历过类似的现金密集型头寸。这些时期从来都不是愉快的；它们也从来都不是永久的。幸运的是，我们在2020年和2021年有一个略有吸引力的替代方案来部署资本。继续读下去。</blockquote><h2>Share Repurchases</h2>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.<blockquote><h2>股份购回</h2>我们可以通过三种方式增加您的投资价值。第一个始终是我们最关心的问题： 通过内部增长或收购来提高伯克希尔控股企业的长期盈利能力。如今，内部机会比收购带来的回报要好得多。然而，与伯克希尔的资源相比，这些机会的规模很小。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>我们的第二个选择是购买许多公开交易的优秀或伟大企业的非控股权。有时，这样的可能性既众多又极具吸引力。然而今天，我们很少发现让我们兴奋的事情。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>这在很大程度上是因为一个不言而喻的事实：长期低利率会推高所有生产性投资的价格，无论是股票、公寓、农场、油井还是其他投资。其他因素也会影响估值，但利率始终很重要。</blockquote>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.)<blockquote>我们创造价值的最终途径是回购伯克希尔股票。通过这一简单的行为，我们增加了您在伯克希尔拥有的许多受控和非受控企业中的份额。当价格/价值方程正确时，这条路径是我们增加您财富的最简单、最确定的方法。（除了继续股东的价值增加外，其他几个方面也受益：回购对回购股票的卖方和社会都有适度的好处。）</blockquote>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).<blockquote>有时，随着其他途径变得没有吸引力，回购对伯克希尔的所有者来说也很有意义。因此，在过去两年中，我们回购了截至2019年底9%的流通股，总成本为517亿美元。这笔支出使得我们的持续股东拥有伯克希尔所有业务中约 10% 的股份，无论是全资（如 BNSF 和 GEICO）还是部分全资（如可口可乐和穆迪）。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>我想强调的是，伯克希尔的回购要想有意义，我们的股票必须提供适当的价值。我们不想为其他公司的股票支付过高的价格，如果我们在收购伯克希尔时支付过高的价格，那将是对价值的破坏。截至2022年2月23日，自年底以来，我们以12亿美元的成本回购了额外的股票。我们的胃口仍然很大，但将永远取决于价格。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>需要注意的是，由于伯克希尔的投资者基础较高，其回购机会有限。如果我们的股票被短期投机者大量持有，价格波动和交易量都会大幅增加。这种重塑将为我们提供更多通过回购创造价值的机会。尽管如此，查理和我还是更喜欢我们现有的所有者，尽管他们令人钦佩的买入并保留态度限制了长期股东从机会主义回购中获利的程度。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>最后，伯克希尔特有的一个容易被忽视的价值计算： 正如我们所讨论的，正确的保险 “浮动 ”对我们来说非常有价值。事实上，回购会自动增加每股 “流通量 ”的数量。在过去两年中，这一数字增长了 25%，从每股 A 股 79,387 美元增加到 99,497 美元，这是一个有意义的增长，如前所述，部分原因是回购。</blockquote><h2>A Wonderful Man and a Wonderful Business</h2>Last year, Paul Andrews died. Paul was the founder and CEO of TTI, a Fort Worth-based subsidiary of Berkshire. Throughout his life – in both his business and his personal pursuits – Paul quietly displayed all the qualities that Charlie and I admire. His story should be told.<blockquote><h2>一个了不起的人和一个了不起的企业</h2>去年，保罗·安德鲁斯去世了。保罗是伯克希尔位于沃思堡的子公司TTI的创始人兼首席执行官。在他的一生中——无论是在他的事业中还是在他的个人追求中——保罗悄悄地展示了查理和我钦佩的所有品质。他的故事应该被讲述。</blockquote>In 1971, Paul was working as a purchasing agent for General Dynamics when the roof fell in. After losing a huge defense contract, the company fired thousands of employees, including Paul.<blockquote>1971年，保罗在通用动力公司担任采购代理时，屋顶倒塌了。在失去一份巨额国防合同后，该公司解雇了数千名员工，其中包括保罗。</blockquote>With his first child due soon, Paul decided to bet on himself, using $500 of his savings to found Tex-Tronics (later renamed TTI). The company set itself up to distribute small electronic components, and first-year sales totaled $112,000. Today, TTI markets more than one million different items with annual volume of $7.7 billion.<blockquote>由于他的第一个孩子即将出生，保罗决定把赌注押在自己身上，用他的500美元积蓄创办了德克萨斯电子公司（后来更名为TTI）。该公司致力于分销小型电子元件，第一年的销售额总计 112,000 美元。如今，TTI 销售超过 100 万种不同的商品，年销售额达 77 亿美元。</blockquote>But back to 2006: Paul, at 63, then found himself happy with his family, his job, and his associates. But he had one nagging worry, heightened because he had recently witnessed a friend’s early death and the disastrous results that followed for that man’s family and business. What, Paul asked himself in 2006, would happen to the many people depending on him if he should unexpectedly die?<blockquote>但回到2006年：63岁的保罗发现自己与家庭、工作和同事相处得很开心。但他有一个挥之不去的担忧，因为他最近目睹了一位朋友的英年早逝，以及随之而来的给这位朋友的家庭和生意带来的灾难性后果。保罗在2006年问自己，如果他意外去世，许多依赖他的人会怎么样？</blockquote>For a year, Paul wrestled with his options. Sell to a competitor? From a strictly economic viewpoint, that course made the most sense. After all, competitors could envision lucrative “synergies” – savings that would be achieved as the acquiror slashed duplicated functions at TTI.<blockquote>一年来，保罗一直在纠结自己的选择。卖给竞争对手？从严格的经济角度来看，这个过程是最有意义的。毕竟，竞争对手可以设想利润丰厚的 “协同效应”--当收购方削减 TTI 的重复职能时，就能实现节省。</blockquote>But . . . Such a purchaser would most certainly also retain its CFO, its legal counsel, its HR unit. Their TTI counterparts would therefore be sent packing. And ugh! If a new distribution center were to be needed, the acquirer’s home city would certainly be favored over Fort Worth.<blockquote>但是 . .这样的买家肯定还会保留其首席财务官、法律顾问和人力资源部门。因此，他们的TTI同类产品将被打包发送。还有啊!如果需要一个新的配送中心，收购方的家乡城市肯定会比沃斯堡更受欢迎。</blockquote>Whatever the financial benefits, Paul quickly concluded that selling to a competitor was not for him. He next considered seeking a financial buyer, a species once labeled – aptly so – a leveraged buyout firm. Paul knew, however, that such a purchaser would be focused on an “exit strategy.” And who could know what that would be? Brooding over it all, Paul found himself having no interest in handing his 35-year-old creation over to a reseller.<blockquote>不管经济利益如何，保罗很快得出结论，卖给竞争对手不适合他。他接下来考虑寻找一个金融买家，一个曾经被贴上杠杆收购公司标签的物种。然而，保罗知道，这样的买家会专注于 “退出策略”。谁知道会是什么呢？沉思了这一切，保罗发现自己没有兴趣把他35岁的作品交给经销商。</blockquote>When Paul met me, he explained why he had eliminated these two alternatives as buyers. He then summed up his dilemma by saying – in far more tactful phrasing than this – “After a year of pondering the alternatives, I want to sell to Berkshire because you are the only guy left.” So, I made an offer and Paul said “Yes.” One meeting; one lunch; one deal.<blockquote>当保罗见到我时，他解释了为什么他作为买家排除了这两个选择。然后，他用比这更委婉的措辞总结了自己的困境：“经过一年的思考，我想卖给伯克希尔，因为你是唯一剩下的人了”。于是，我提出了一个提议，保罗答应了。一次会议；一份午餐；一笔交易。</blockquote>To say we both lived happily ever after is an understatement. When Berkshire purchased TTI, the company employed 2,387. Now the number is 8,043. A large percentage of that growth took place in Fort Worth and environs. Earnings have increased 673%.<blockquote>说我们从此过上了幸福的生活是一种轻描淡写的说法。伯克希尔收购 TTI 时，该公司拥有 2,387 名员工。现在这个数字是8043。很大一部分增长发生在沃思堡及其周边地区。盈利增长了673%。</blockquote>Annually, I would call Paul and tell him his salary should be substantially increased. Annually, he would tell me, “We can talk about that next year, Warren; I’m too busy now.”<blockquote>每年，我都会去找看涨期权·保罗，告诉他他的工资应该大幅提高。每年，他都会告诉我：“我们可以明年再谈，沃伦；我现在太忙了。”</blockquote>When Greg Abel and I attended Paul’s memorial service, we met children, grandchildren, long-time associates (including TTI’s first employee) and John Roach, the former CEO of a Fort Worth company Berkshire had purchased in 2000. John had steered his friend Paul to Omaha, instinctively knowing we would be a match.<blockquote>格雷格-阿贝尔（Greg Abel）和我参加保罗的追悼会时，我们见到了孩子们、孙子们、老同事（包括 TTI 的第一位员工）以及伯克希尔于 2000 年收购的沃思堡一家公司的前首席执行官约翰-罗奇（John Roach）。约翰带着他的朋友保罗去了奥马哈，本能地知道我们会是一对。</blockquote>At the service, Greg and I heard about the multitudes of people and organizations that Paul had silently supported. The breadth of his generosity was extraordinary – geared always to improving the lives of others, particularly those in Fort Worth.<blockquote>在仪式上，格雷格和我听说了保罗默默支持的许多人和组织。他慷慨的广度是非凡的——总是致力于改善他人的生活，尤其是沃思堡的人。</blockquote>In all ways, Paul was a class act.<blockquote>在各方面，保罗都是一流的演员。</blockquote>* * * * * * * * * * * *<blockquote>**</blockquote>Good luck – occasionally extraordinary luck – has played its part at Berkshire. If Paul and I had not enjoyed a mutual friend – John Roach – TTI would not have found its home with us. But that ample serving of luck was only the beginning. TTI was soon to lead Berkshire to its most important acquisition.<blockquote>好运——偶尔是非凡的运气——在伯克希尔发挥了作用。如果保罗和我没有一个共同的朋友——约翰·罗奇——TTI就不会在我们这里找到自己的家。但大量的运气仅仅是开始。TTI 很快就带领伯克希尔进行了最重要的收购。</blockquote>Every fall, Berkshire directors gather for a presentation by a few of our executives. We sometimes choose the site based upon the location of a recent acquisition, by that means allowing directors to meet the new subsidiary’s CEO and learn more about the acquiree’s activities.<blockquote>每年秋天，伯克希尔的董事们都会聚集在一起，听我们的几位高管做演讲。我们有时会根据最近收购的地点来选择地点，这样董事们就可以与新子公司的首席执行官会面，并更多地了解被收购方的活动。</blockquote>In the fall of 2009, we consequently selected Fort Worth so that we could visit TTI. At that time, BNSF, which also had Fort Worth as its hometown, was the third-largest holding among our marketable equities. Despite that large stake, I had never visited the railroad’s headquarters.<blockquote>2009年秋天，我们选择了沃思堡，这样我们就可以参观TTI。当时，同样以沃思堡为家乡的BNSF是我们有价证券中的第三大持股。尽管赌注很大，但我从未去过铁路总部。</blockquote>Deb Bosanek, my assistant, scheduled our board’s opening dinner for October 22. Meanwhile, I arranged to arrive earlier that day to meet with Matt Rose, CEO of BNSF, whose accomplishments I had long admired. When I made the date, I had no idea that our get-together would coincide with BNSF’s third-quarter earnings report, which was released late on the 22nd.<blockquote>我的助手黛布-博萨内克（Deb Bosanek）将我们董事会的开幕晚宴安排在 10 月 22 日。与此同时，我安排当天早些时候到达，会见BNSF的首席执行官马特·罗斯，我长期以来一直钦佩他的成就。当我确定这个日期时，我并不知道我们的聚会会与 BNSF 于 22 日晚些时候发布的第三季度财报相吻合。</blockquote>The market reacted badly to the railroad’s results. The Great Recession was in full force in the third quarter, and BNSF’s earnings reflected that slump. The economic outlook was also bleak, and Wall Street wasn’t feeling friendly to railroads – or much else.<blockquote>市场对铁路公司的业绩反应强烈。大衰退在第三季度全面展开，BNSF 的盈利也反映了这种衰退。经济前景也很黯淡，华尔街对铁路或其他任何事情都不友好。</blockquote>On the following day, I again got together with Matt and suggested that Berkshire would offer the railroad a better long-term home than it could expect as a public company. I also told him the maximum price that Berkshire would pay.<blockquote>第二天，我再次与马特见面，并建议伯克希尔为铁路公司提供一个比它作为一家上市公司所能期望的更好的长期家园。我还告诉了他伯克希尔愿意支付的最高价格。</blockquote>Matt relayed the offer to his directors and advisors. Eleven busy days later, Berkshire and BNSF announced a firm deal. And here I’ll venture a rare prediction: BNSF will be a key asset for Berkshire and our country a century from now.<blockquote>马特把这个提议转达给了他的董事和顾问。忙碌的11天后，伯克希尔和BNSF宣布了一项确定的交易。在这里，我将做出一个罕见的预测： 一个世纪后，BNSF 将成为伯克希尔和我们国家的重要资产。</blockquote>The BNSF acquisition would never have happened if Paul Andrews hadn’t sized up Berkshire as the right home for TTI.<blockquote>如果不是保罗-安德鲁斯（Paul Andrews）认为伯克希尔是 TTI 的合适所在地，BNSF 的收购就不会发生。</blockquote><h2>Thanks</h2>I taught my first investing class 70 years ago. Since then, I have enjoyed working almost every year with students of all ages, finally “retiring” from that pursuit in 2018.<blockquote><h2>谢谢</h2>70年前，我教了我的第一堂投资课。从那时起，我几乎每年都喜欢与各个年龄段的学生一起工作，终于在 2018 年 “退休 ”了。</blockquote>Along the way, my toughest audience was my grandson’s fifth-grade class. The 11-year-olds were squirming in their seats and giving me blank stares until I mentioned Coca-Cola and its famous secret formula. Instantly, every hand went up, and I learned that “secrets” are catnip to kids.<blockquote>一路上，我最难缠的听众是我孙子五年级的班级。11岁的孩子们在座位上蠕动着，茫然地盯着我，直到我提到可口可乐及其著名的秘方。立刻，每个人都举起了手，我才知道《秘密》对孩子们来说就是猫薄荷。</blockquote>Teaching, like writing, has helped me develop and clarify my own thoughts. Charlie calls this phenomenon the orangutan effect: If you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will yourself exit thinking more clearly.<blockquote>教学和写作一样，帮助我发展和澄清了自己的思想。查理·评级这种现象猩猩效应：如果你和一只猩猩坐下来，仔细地向它解释你珍视的一个想法，你可能会留下一只困惑的灵长类动物，但你自己会更清楚地思考出来吗？</blockquote>Talking to university students is far superior. I have urged that they seek employment in (1) the field and (2) with the kind of people they would select, if they had no need for money. Economic realities, I acknowledge, may interfere with that kind of search. Even so, I urge the students never to give up the quest, for when they find that sort of job, they will no longer be “working.”<blockquote>与大学生交谈要优越得多。我敦促他们在（1）这个领域找工作，（2）如果他们不需要钱，他们会选择的那种人。我承认，经济现实可能会干扰这种搜索。即便如此，我还是敦促学生们永远不要放弃追求，因为当他们找到那种工作时，他们就不再是 “工作”了。</blockquote>Charlie and I, ourselves, followed that liberating course after a few early stumbles. We both started as part- timers at my grandfather’s grocery store, Charlie in 1940 and I in 1942. We were each assigned boring tasks and paid little, definitely not what we had in mind. Charlie later took up law, and I tried selling securities. Job satisfaction continued to elude us.<blockquote>在经历了一些早期的挫折后，查理和我遵循了解放的道路。我们都是从我祖父的杂货店开始的，查理是1940年，我是1942年。我们每个人都被分配了无聊的任务，而且报酬很少，绝对不是我们想要的。查理后来从事法律工作，我尝试销售证券。我们仍然无法获得工作满意度。</blockquote>Finally, at Berkshire, we found what we love to do. With very few exceptions, we have now “worked” for many decades with people whom we like and trust. It’s a joy in life to join with managers such as Paul Andrews or the Berkshire families I told you about last year. In our home office, we employ decent and talented people – no jerks. Turnover averages, perhaps, one person per year.<blockquote>最后，在伯克希尔，我们找到了我们喜欢做的事情。除了极少数例外，我们现在已经和我们喜欢和信任的人一起“工作”了几十年。能加入保罗-安德鲁斯（Paul Andrews）或我去年告诉过你的伯克希尔家族这样的经理人，是人生中的一件乐事。在我们的家庭办公室，我们雇佣正派有才华的人——没有混蛋。平均每年可能有一个人。</blockquote>I would like, however, to emphasize a further item that turns our jobs into fun and satisfaction working<blockquote>然而，我想强调另一个项目，它将我们的工作变成工作的乐趣和满足感</blockquote>for you. There is nothing more rewarding to Charlie and me than enjoying the trust of individual long-term shareholders who, for many decades, have joined us with the expectation that we would be a reliable custodian of their funds.<blockquote>为了你。对查理和我来说，没有什么比享受个人长期股东的信任更有意义的了，几十年来，他们一直希望我们能成为他们资金的可靠托管人。</blockquote>Obviously, we can’t select our owners, as we could do if our form of operation were a partnership. Anyone can buy shares of Berkshire today with the intention of soon reselling them. For sure, we get a few of that type of shareholder, just as we get index funds that own huge amounts of Berkshire simply because they are required to do so.<blockquote>显然，我们不能像合伙企业那样选择所有者。任何人今天都可以购买伯克希尔的股票，并打算很快转售。当然，我们会有一些这样的股东，就像我们会有指数基金持有大量伯克希尔股票一样，因为他们被要求这样做。</blockquote>To a truly unusual degree, however, Berkshire has as owners a very large corps of individuals and families that have elected to join us with an intent approaching “til death do us part.” Often, they have trusted us with a large – some might say excessive – portion of their savings.<blockquote>然而，伯克希尔公司拥有一大批个人和家庭，他们选择加入我们，其意图接近 “至死不渝 ”。通常，他们把他们积蓄的一大部分——有些人可能会说是过多的——托付给我们。</blockquote>Berkshire, these shareholders would sometimes acknowledge, might be far from the best selection they could have made. But they would add that Berkshire would rank high among those with which they would be most comfortable. And people who are comfortable with their investments will, on average, achieve better results than those who are motivated by ever-changing headlines, chatter and promises.<blockquote>这些股东有时会承认，伯克希尔可能远不是他们所能做出的最佳选择。但他们会补充说，伯克希尔在他们最满意的公司中排名靠前。平均而言，对自己的投资感到满意的人会比那些被不断变化的头条新闻、闲聊和承诺所激励的人取得更好的结果。</blockquote>Long-term individual owners are both the “partners” Charlie and I have always sought and the ones we constantly have in mind as we make decisions at Berkshire. To them we say, “It feels good to ‘work’ for you, and you have our thanks for your trust.”<blockquote>长期的个人所有者既是我和查理一直在寻找的 “合作伙伴”，也是我们在伯克希尔做决策时不断想到的合作伙伴。我们对他们说：“为你们‘工作’的感觉真好，我们感谢你们的信任”。</blockquote><h2>The Annual Meeting</h2>Clear your calendar! Berkshire will have its annual gathering of capitalists in Omaha on Friday, April 29th through Sunday, May 1st. The details regarding the weekend are laid out on pages A-1 and A-2. Omaha eagerly awaits you, as do I.<blockquote><h2>年会</h2>清空你的日历!伯克希尔将于4月29日星期五至5月1日星期日在奥马哈举行年度资本家聚会。关于周末的细节列在A-1和A-2页上。奥马哈热切地等着你，我也是。</blockquote>I will end this letter with a sales pitch. “Cousin” Jimmy Buffett has designed a pontoon “party” boat that is now being manufactured by Forest River, a Berkshire subsidiary. The boat will be introduced on April 29 at our Berkshire Bazaar of Bargains. And, for two days only, shareholders will be able to purchase Jimmy’s masterpiece at a 10% discount. Your bargain-hunting chairman will be buying a boat for his family’s use. Join me.<blockquote>我将以推销来结束这封信。“表弟 ”吉米-巴菲特设计了一艘浮桥 “派对 ”船，目前由伯克希尔子公司森林河公司生产。这艘船将于4月29日在我们的伯克希尔廉价集市上亮相。而且，只有两天时间，股东们可以以 10% 的折扣购买吉米的杰作。你讨价还价的董事长要买一艘船给家人用。加入我。</blockquote>February 26, 2022<blockquote>2022年2月26日</blockquote>Warren E. Buffett Chairman of the Board<blockquote>沃伦·E·巴菲特董事会主席</blockquote></body></html><blockquote></blockquote>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Buffett Full Annual Letter：Apple is One of ‘Four Giants’ Driving the Conglomerate’s Value<blockquote>巴菲特年度信函全文：苹果是推动企业集团价值的 “四巨头 ”之一</blockquote></title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 12.5px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nBuffett Full Annual Letter：Apple is One of ‘Four Giants’ Driving the Conglomerate’s Value<blockquote>巴菲特年度信函全文：苹果是推动企业集团价值的 “四巨头 ”之一</blockquote>\n</h2>\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n<a class=\"head\" href=\"https://laohu8.com/wemedia/1079075236\">\n\n<div class=\"h-thumb\" style=\"background-image:url(https://static.tigerbbs.com/8274c5b9d4c2852bfb1c4d6ce16c68ba);background-size:cover;\"></div>\n\n<div class=\"h-content\">\nTiger Newspress \n2022-02-27 09:48\n</div>\n</a>\n</h4>\n</header>\n<article>\n<html><head></head><body>Warren Buffett released his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders on Saturday. The 91-year-old investing legend has been publishing the letter for over six decades and it has become required reading for investors around the world.<blockquote><html><head></head><body>沃伦·巴菲特周六发布了致伯克希尔·哈撒韦公司股东的年度信。这位 91 岁的投资传奇人物六十多年来一直在发表这封信，它已成为世界各地投资者的必读书目。</body></html></blockquote>Warren Buffett said he now considers tech giant Apple as one of the four pillars driving Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate of mostly old-economy businesses he’s assembled over the last five decades.<blockquote>巴菲特说，他现在认为科技巨头苹果是推动伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司发展的四大支柱之一。</blockquote>In his annual letter to shareholders released on Saturday, the 91-year-old investing legend listed Apple under the heading “Our Four Giants” and even called the company the second-most important after Berkshire’s cluster of insurers, thanks to its chief executive.<blockquote>在周六发布的年度致股东信中，这位 91 岁的投资传奇人物将苹果列为 “我们的四大巨头 ”，甚至称该公司是仅次于伯克希尔保险公司集团的第二重要公司，这要归功于其首席执行官。</blockquote>“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,” the letter stated.<blockquote>“信中写道：”苹果才华横溢的首席执行官蒂姆-库克（Tim Cook）将苹果产品的用户视为自己的初恋，但他的所有其他支持者也都受益于蒂姆的管理风格。</blockquote>Buffett made clear he is a fan of Cook’s stock repurchase strategy, and how it gives the conglomerate increased ownership of each dollar of the iPhone maker’s earnings without the investor having to lift a finger.<blockquote>巴菲特明确表示，他是库克股票回购策略的粉丝，也是库克股票回购策略的粉丝，以及库克如何在投资者无需动一根手指的情况下，让库克集团增加对这家 iPhone 制造商每一美元收益的所有权。</blockquote>“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,” Buffett said in the letter. “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.”<blockquote>“巴菲特在信中说：”苹果--以年终市值衡量，我们的亚军巨头--是一种不同的持股方式。在这里，我们的持股比例仅为 5.55%，高于一年前的 5.39%。“这种增长听起来就像小土豆。但考虑到苹果 2021 年收益的每 0.1% 就相当于 1 亿美元。我们没有动用伯克希尔的资金来获得我们的增值。苹果的回购做到了。”</blockquote>Berkshire began buying Apple stock in 2016 under the influence of Buffett’s investing deputies Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. By mid-2018, the conglomerate accumulated 5% ownership of the iPhone maker, a stake that cost $36 billion. Today, the Apple investment is now worth more than $160 billion, taking up 40% of Berkshire’s equity portfolio.<blockquote>在巴菲特的投资副手 Todd Combs 和 Ted Weschler 的影响下，伯克希尔于 2016 年开始购买苹果股票。到 2018 年年中，该企业集团积累了这家 iPhone 制造商 5% 的所有权，价值 360 亿美元。如今，苹果的投资价值已超过 1600 亿美元，占伯克希尔股票投资组合的 40%。</blockquote>“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,” Buffett said.<blockquote>“重要的是要明白，在伯克希尔公司的公认会计准则收益报告中，只有苹果的股息被计算在内--去年，苹果支付了其中的 7.85 亿美元。然而，我们在苹果公司收益中的'份额'却达到了惊人的 56 亿美元。公司保留的大部分资金都用于回购苹果股票，我们对此表示赞赏，”巴菲特说。</blockquote>Berkshire is Apple’s largest shareholder, outside of index and exchange-traded fund providers.<blockquote>伯克希尔是苹果除指数和交易所交易基金提供商之外的最大股东。</blockquote>Buffett also credited his railroad business BNSF and energy segment BHE as two other giants of the conglomerate, which both registered record earnings in 2021.<blockquote>巴菲特还称赞他的铁路业务 BNSF 和能源部门 BHE 是该集团的另外两大巨头，这两家公司在 2021 年的盈利均创下历史新高。</blockquote>“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,” Buffett said. “BHE has become a utility powerhouse and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.”<blockquote>“巴菲特说：”我们的第三大巨头 BNSF 仍然是美国商业的第一大动脉，这使其成为美国和伯克希尔不可或缺的资产。“BHE 已成为美国大部分地区风能、太阳能和输电领域的公用事业巨头和领先力量”。</blockquote>Read the full letter here：<blockquote>点击此处阅读全文：</blockquote>To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.:<blockquote>致伯克希尔哈撒韦公司股东：</blockquote>Charlie Munger, my long-time partner, and I have the job of managing a portion of your savings. We are honored by your trust.<blockquote>我的长期合作伙伴查理·芒格和我的工作是管理你的一部分积蓄。我们很荣幸能得到你的信任。</blockquote>Our position carries with it the responsibility to report to you what we would like to know if we were the absentee owner and you were the manager. We enjoy communicating directly with you through this annual letter, and through the annual meeting as well.<blockquote>如果我们是缺席的所有者，而你是经理，我们有责任向你报告我们想知道的事情。我们很高兴通过这封年度信函以及年会与您直接沟通。</blockquote>Our policy is to treat all shareholders equally. Therefore, we do not hold discussions with analysts nor large institutions. Whenever possible, also, we release important communications on Saturday mornings in order to maximize the time for shareholders and the media to absorb the news before markets open on Monday.<blockquote>我们的政策是平等对待所有股东。因此，我们不与分析师或大型机构进行讨论。此外，只要有可能，我们还会在周六上午发布重要通讯，以便在周一开市前最大限度地让股东和媒体有时间吸收新闻。</blockquote>A wealth of Berkshire facts and figures are set forth in the annual 10-K that the company regularly files with the S.E.C. and that we reproduce on pages K-1 – K-119. Some shareholders will find this detail engrossing; others will simply prefer to learn what Charlie and I believe is new or interesting at Berkshire.<blockquote>伯克希尔公司定期向美国证券交易委员会提交的年度 10-K 报告中列出了大量伯克希尔的事实和数据。我们在K-1-K-119页复制了这一点。一些股东会发现这个细节引人入胜；其他人只是更喜欢了解查理和我认为伯克希尔的新事物或有趣的事物。</blockquote>Alas, there was little action of that sort in 2021. We did, though, make reasonable progress in increasing the intrinsic value of your shares. That task has been my primary duty for 57 years. And it will continue to be.<blockquote>唉，2021年几乎没有这样的行动。不过，我们在提高您股票的内在价值方面确实取得了合理的进展。57年来，这项任务一直是我的主要职责。并将继续如此。</blockquote>What You Own<blockquote>你拥有什么</blockquote>Berkshire owns a wide variety of businesses, some in their entirety, some only in part. The second group largely consists of marketable common stocks of major American companies. Additionally, we own a few non-U.S. equities and participate in several joint ventures or other collaborative activities.<blockquote>伯克希尔拥有各种各样的企业，有些是全部的，有些只是部分的。第二组主要由美国主要公司的可交易普通股组成。此外，我们还拥有一些非美国股票，并参与多家合资企业或其他合作活动。</blockquote>Whatever our form of ownership, our goal is to have meaningful investments in businesses with both durable economic advantages and a first-class CEO. Please note particularly that we own stocks based upon our expectations about their long-term business performance and not because we view them as vehicles for timely market moves. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers.<blockquote>无论我们的所有权形式如何，我们的目标都是对具有持久经济优势和一流首席执行官的企业进行有意义的投资。请特别注意，我们持有股票是基于我们对其长期业务表现的预期，而不是因为我们将其视为及时市场走势的工具。这一点至关重要：查理和我不是选股者；我们是商业挑剔者。</blockquote>I make many mistakes. Consequently, our extensive collection of businesses includes some enterprises that have truly extraordinary economics, many others that enjoy good economic characteristics, and a few that are marginal. One advantage of our common-stock segment is that – on occasion – it becomes easy to buy pieces of wonderful businesses at wonderful prices. That shooting-fish-in-a-barrel experience is very rare in negotiated transactions and never occurs en masse. It is also far easier to exit from a mistake when it has been made in the marketable arena.<blockquote>我犯了很多错误。因此，我们广泛收集的企业包括一些真正具有非凡经济效益的企业，许多其他享有良好经济特征的企业，以及一些边缘企业。我们普通股部门的一个优势是——有时——很容易以优惠的价格购买优秀的企业。这种在谈判交易中打鱼的经历非常罕见，而且从未大规模发生。当一个错误是在可销售的舞台上犯下的，也更容易摆脱它。</blockquote><h2>Surprise, Surprise</h2>Here are a few items about your company that often surprise even seasoned investors:<blockquote><h2>惊喜，惊喜</h2>以下是有关贵公司的一些事项，即使是经验丰富的投资者也常常感到惊讶：</blockquote>• Many people perceive Berkshire as a large and somewhat strange collection of financial assets. In truth, Berkshire owns and operates more U.S.-based “infrastructure” assets – classified on our balance sheet as property, plant and equipment – than are owned and operated by any other American corporation. That supremacy has never been our goal. It has, however, become a fact.<blockquote>- 许多人认为伯克希尔是一个庞大且有点奇怪的金融资产集合。事实上，伯克希尔拥有和运营的美国 “基础设施 ”资产--在我们的资产负债表上被归类为房地产、厂房和设备--比任何其他美国公司拥有和运营的都要多。至高无上从来都不是我们的目标。然而，这已经成为事实。</blockquote>At yearend, those domestic infrastructure assets were carried on Berkshire’s balance sheet at $158 billion. That number increased last year and will continue to increase. Berkshire always will be building.<blockquote>截至年底，这些国内基础设施资产在伯克希尔的资产负债表上的结转价值为 1,580 亿美元。这个数字去年有所增加，并将继续增加。伯克希尔将永远在建设。</blockquote>• Every year, your company makes substantial federal income tax payments. In 2021, for example, we paid<blockquote>- 每年，您的公司都要缴纳大量的联邦所得税。例如，在2021年，我们支付了</blockquote>$3.3 billion while the U.S. Treasury reported total corporate income-tax receipts of $402 billion. Additionally, Berkshire pays substantial state and foreign taxes. “I gave at the office” is an unassailable assertion when made by Berkshire shareholders.<blockquote>33亿美元，而美国财政部报告的企业所得税收入总额为4020亿美元。此外，伯克希尔还缴纳巨额州税和外国税。伯克希尔股东提出 “我在办公室给的 ”是一句无可辩驳的断言。</blockquote>Berkshire’s history vividly illustrates the invisible and often unrecognized financial partnership between government and American businesses. Our tale begins early in 1955, when Berkshire Fine Spinning and Hathaway Manufacturing agreed to merge their businesses. In their requests for shareholder approval, these venerable New England textile companies expressed high hopes for the combination.<blockquote>伯克希尔的历史生动地说明了政府与美国企业之间无形且往往不被认可的金融伙伴关系。我们的故事始于 1955 年初，当时伯克希尔精纺公司和哈撒韦制造公司同意合并业务。在请求股东批准时，这些古老的新英格兰纺织公司对合并表达了很高的期望。</blockquote>The Hathaway solicitation, for example, assured its shareholders that “The combination of the resources and managements will result in one of the strongest and most efficient organizations in the textile industry.” That upbeat view was endorsed by the company’s advisor, Lehman Brothers (yes, that Lehman Brothers).<blockquote>例如，哈撒韦公司向股东保证，“资源和管理的结合将产生纺织行业最强大、最高效的组织之一”。这一乐观观点得到了该公司顾问雷曼兄弟（没错，就是雷曼兄弟）的认可。</blockquote>I’m sure it was a joyous day in both Fall River (Berkshire) and New Bedford (Hathaway) when the union was consummated. After the bands stopped playing and the bankers went home, however, the shareholders reaped a disaster.<blockquote>我相信，当工会完成时，福尔里弗（伯克郡）和新贝德福德（哈撒韦）都是欢乐的一天。然而，在乐队停止演奏，银行家们回家后，股东们收获了一场灾难。</blockquote>In the nine years following the merger, Berkshire’s owners watched the company’s net worth crater from<blockquote>在合并后的九年里，伯克希尔的所有者眼睁睁地看着公司的净资产从</blockquote>$51.4 million to $22.1 million. In part, this decline was caused by stock repurchases, ill-advised dividends and plant shutdowns. But nine years of effort by many thousands of employees delivered an operating loss as well. Berkshire’s struggles were not unusual: The New England textile industry had silently entered an extended and non-reversible death march.<blockquote>5140万美元至2210万美元。这种下降的部分原因是股票回购、不明智的股息和工厂关闭。但数千名员工九年的努力也带来了运营亏损。伯克希尔的挣扎并不罕见： 新英格兰纺织业已经悄然进入了一场旷日持久、不可逆转的死亡行军。</blockquote>During the nine post-merger years, the U.S. Treasury suffered as well from Berkshire’s troubles. All told, the company paid the government only $337,359 in income tax during that period – a pathetic $100 per day.<blockquote>在合并后的九年里，美国财政部也遭受了伯克希尔的麻烦。总而言之，该公司在此期间仅向政府缴纳了 337,359 美元的所得税——每天可怜的 100 美元。</blockquote>Early in 1965, things changed. Berkshire installed new management that redeployed available cash and steered essentially all earnings into a variety of good businesses, most of which remained good through the years. Coupling reinvestment of earnings with the power of compounding worked its magic, and shareholders prospered.<blockquote>1965年初，情况发生了变化。伯克希尔安装了新的管理层，重新部署了可用现金，并将基本上所有收益引导到各种良好的业务中，其中大多数业务多年来一直保持良好。将收益再投资与复利的力量相结合，发挥了它的魔力，股东也因此繁荣起来。</blockquote>Berkshire’s owners, it should be noted, were not the only beneficiary of that course correction. Their “silent partner,” the U.S. Treasury, proceeded to collect many tens of billions of dollars from the company in income tax payments. Remember the $100 daily? Now, Berkshire pays roughly $9 million daily to the Treasury.<blockquote>值得注意的是，伯克希尔的所有者并不是这一路线调整的唯一受益者。他们的 “沉默伙伴 ”美国财政部接着向该公司收取了数百亿美元的所得税。还记得每天100美元吗？现在，伯克希尔每天向财政部支付大约900万美元。</blockquote>In fairness to our governmental partner, our shareholders should acknowledge – indeed trumpet – the fact that Berkshire’s prosperity has been fostered mightily because the company has operated in America. Our country would have done splendidly in the years since 1965 without Berkshire. Absent our American home, however, Berkshire would never have come close to becoming what it is today. When you see the flag, say thanks.<blockquote>公平地说，我们的股东应该承认--实际上是大肆宣扬--伯克希尔的繁荣之所以能得到极大的促进，是因为该公司在美国开展业务。如果没有伯克希尔，我们的国家在1965年以来的几年里会做得很好。然而，如果没有我们的美国大本营，伯克希尔永远不会成为今天的样子。当你看到旗帜时，说谢谢。</blockquote>• From an $8.6 million purchase of National Indemnity in 1967, Berkshire has become the world leader in insurance “float” – money we hold and can invest but that does not belong to us. Including a relatively small sum derived from life insurance, Berkshire’s total float has grown from $19 million when we entered the insurance business to $147 billion.<blockquote>- 自 1967 年斥资 860 万美元购买国家赔偿以来，伯克希尔已成为保险 “浮动 ”领域的全球领导者--我们持有并可以投资但不属于我们的资金。包括来自人寿保险的相对较少的资金在内，伯克希尔的总流通股已从我们进入保险业务时的 1900 万美元增长到 1470 亿美元。</blockquote>So far, this float has cost us less than nothing. Though we have experienced a number of years when insurance losses combined with operating expenses exceeded premiums, overall we have earned a modest 55-year profit from the underwriting activities that generated our float.<blockquote>到目前为止，这个花车花了我们很少的钱。尽管我们经历了几年保险损失加上运营费用超过保费的情况，但总体而言，我们从产生流通量的承保活动中赚取了 55 年的适度利润。</blockquote>Of equal importance, float is very sticky. Funds attributable to our insurance operations come and go daily, but their aggregate total is immune from precipitous decline. When it comes to investing float, we can therefore think long-term.<blockquote>同样重要的是，浮动非常粘。我们保险业务的资金每天来来去去，但其总额不会急剧下降。因此，当谈到投资流通股时，我们可以考虑长远。</blockquote>If you are not already familiar with the concept of float, I refer you to a long explanation on page A-5. To my surprise, our float increased $9 billion last year, a buildup of value that is important to Berkshire owners though is not reflected in our GAAP (“generally-accepted accounting principles”) presentation of earnings and net worth.<blockquote>如果您还不熟悉浮动的概念，我向您推荐A-5页上的详细解释。令我惊讶的是，去年我们的流通股增加了 90 亿美元，这一价值的增加对伯克希尔公司的所有者来说非常重要，但并没有反映在我们的 GAAP（“公认会计准则”）收益和净资产列报中。</blockquote>Much of our huge value creation in insurance is attributable to Berkshire’s good luck in my 1986 hiring of Ajit Jain. We first met on a Saturday morning, and I quickly asked Ajit what his insurance experience had been. He replied, “None.”<blockquote>我们在保险业创造的巨大价值很大程度上要归功于伯克希尔在 1986 年聘请阿吉特-贾恩（Ajit Jain）时的好运。我们第一次见面是在一个周六的早晨，我很快问阿吉特他的保险经历如何。他回答说：“没有。”</blockquote>I said, “Nobody’s perfect,” and hired him. That was my lucky day: Ajit actually was as perfect a choice as could have been made. Better yet, he continues to be – 35 years later.<blockquote>我说 “人无完人”，然后雇佣了他。那是我的幸运日：阿吉特实际上是一个完美的选择。更好的是，35年后，他仍然如此。</blockquote>One final thought about insurance: I believe that it is likely – but far from assured – that Berkshire’s float can be maintained without our incurring a long-term underwriting loss. I am certain, however, that there will be some years when we experience such losses, perhaps involving very large sums.<blockquote>关于保险的最后一点想法： 我相信，伯克希尔的流通量很有可能--但还远未得到保证--能够维持，而我们不会遭受长期承保损失。然而，我确信，在某些年份，我们会经历这样的损失，也许涉及非常大的金额。</blockquote>Berkshire is constructed to handle catastrophic events as no other insurer – and that priority will remain long after Charlie and I are gone.<blockquote>伯克希尔在处理灾难性事件方面是其他保险公司无法比拟的——在查理和我离开后很长一段时间内，这一优先事项仍将存在。</blockquote><h2>Our Four Giants</h2>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.<blockquote><h2>我们的四大巨头</h2>通过伯克希尔，我们的股东拥有数十家企业。其中一些反过来又有自己的子公司集合。例如，Marmon 拥有 100 多项独立业务，从火车车厢租赁到医疗设备制造。</blockquote>• 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.<blockquote>- 尽管如此，我们的 “四大 ”公司的运营还是占伯克希尔公司价值的很大一部分。位居榜首的是我们的保险公司集群。伯克希尔实际上拥有该集团 100% 的股份，我们前面描述了其巨大的流通股价值。我们为支持这些保险公司的承诺而投入的巨额资金进一步扩大了这些保险公司的投资资产。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>保险业务是为伯克希尔定制的。产品永远不会过时，销量通常会随着经济增长和通货膨胀而增加。此外，诚信和资本将永远很重要。我们公司能够而且将会表现良好。</blockquote>There are, of course, other insurers with excellent business models and prospects. Replication of Berkshire’s operation, however, would be almost impossible.<blockquote>当然，还有其他保险公司拥有出色的商业模式和前景。然而，复制伯克希尔的业务几乎是不可能的。</blockquote>• 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.<blockquote>- 苹果--按年终市值衡量，我们的亚军巨头--是一种不同类型的控股。在这里，我们的所有权仅为 5.55%，高于一年前的 5.39%。这个增长听起来像小土豆。但考虑到苹果 2021 年收益的每 0.1% 就相当于 1 亿美元。我们没有花费伯克希尔基金来获得我们的增值。苹果的回购起到了作用。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>重要的是要明白，伯克希尔的 GAAP 收益报告中只计算了苹果的股息--去年，苹果支付了其中的 7.85 亿美元。然而，我们在苹果收益中的 “份额 ”却达到了惊人的 56 亿美元。该公司保留的大部分资金用于回购苹果股票，我们对此表示赞赏。苹果出色的首席执行官蒂姆-库克（Tim Cook）非常正确地将苹果产品的用户视为自己的初恋，但他的所有其他支持者也都受益于蒂姆的管理风格。</blockquote>• 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.<blockquote>- 我们的第三大巨头 BNSF 仍然是美国商业的第一大动脉，这使其成为美国和伯克希尔不可或缺的资产。如果 BNSF 运输的许多必需品改用卡车运输，美国的碳排放量将会飙升。</blockquote>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 )<blockquote>你们的铁路在2021年的收入达到了创纪录的60亿美元。这里，应该指出的是，我们谈论的是我们所青睐的老式收益：在利息、税收、折旧、摊销和所有形式的补偿之后计算的数字。（我们的定义暗示了一个警告：随着股市上涨，欺骗性的盈利“调整”——用一个礼貌的描述——变得越来越频繁，也越来越离谱。说得不那么礼貌一点，我想说牛市滋生了虚张声势的牛市）</blockquote>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.<blockquote>BNSF列车去年行驶了1.43亿英里，运载了5.35亿吨货物。这两项成就都远远超过了任何其他美国航空公司。你可以为你的铁路感到骄傲。</blockquote>• 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.<blockquote>- 我们的最后一家巨头 BHE 在 2021 年创下了 40 亿美元的收入。这比伯克希尔在 2000 年（伯克希尔首次购买 BHE 股份的那一年）获得的 1.22 亿美元增长了 30 多倍。现在，伯克希尔拥有该公司91.1%的股份。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>BHE 的社会成就记录与其财务业绩一样引人注目。2000年，该公司没有风能或太阳能发电。当时，它被简单地视为庞大的电力公用事业行业中一个相对较新且次要的参与者。随后，在大卫-索科尔（David Sokol）和格雷格-阿贝尔（Greg Abel）的领导下，BHE 已成为一家公用事业巨头（请不要抱怨），并成为美国大部分地区风能、太阳能和输电领域的主导力量。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>格雷格关于这些成就的报告刊登在 A-3 和 A-4 页。您将在那里找到的个人资料绝不是目前流行的 “洗绿 ”故事之一。自2007年以来，BHE每年都忠实地详细介绍其在可再生能源和输电方面的计划和绩效。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>如需进一步查看此信息，请访问 BHE 网站 brkenergy.com。在那里，你会看到该公司长期以来一直在采取具有气候意识的举措，吸收了其所有收益。更多的机会就在前方。BHE拥有我国所需的大型电力项目的管理、经验、资金和胃口。</blockquote><h2>Investments</h2>Now let’s talk about companies we don’t control, a list that again references Apple. Below we list our fifteen largest equity holdings, several of which are selections of Berkshire’s two long-time investment managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. At yearend, this valued pair had total authority in respect to $34 billion of investments, many of which do not meet the threshold value we use in the table. Also, a significant portion of the dollars that Todd and Ted manage are lodged in various pension plans of Berkshire-owned businesses, with the assets of these plans not included in this table.<blockquote><h2>投资</h2>现在让我们来谈谈我们无法控制的公司，这份名单再次提到了苹果。下面我们列出了我们持有的 15 只最大的股票，其中几只是伯克希尔的两位长期投资经理托德-库姆斯（Todd Combs）和泰德-韦施勒（Ted Weschler）的精选股票。年底时，这对估值对拥有 340 亿美元投资的总权限，其中许多投资不符合我们在表格中使用的阈值。此外，托德和泰德管理的很大一部分资金存放在伯克希尔旗下企业的各种养老金计划中，这些计划的资产不包括在本表中。</blockquote><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d43587e9f59c0ff76e6c04c6bf9af324\" tg-width=\"1047\" tg-height=\"530\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>* This is our actual purchase price and also our tax basis.<blockquote>*这是我们的实际购买价格，也是我们的税基。</blockquote>** Held by BHE; consequently, Berkshire shareholders have only a 91.1% interest in this position.<blockquote>**由BHE持有；因此，伯克希尔股东仅持有该职位 91.1% 的权益。</blockquote>*** Includes a $10 billion investment in Occidental Petroleum, consisting of preferred stock and warrants to buy common stock, a combination now being valued at $10.7 billion.<blockquote>*** 包括对西方石油公司 100 亿美元的投资，包括优先股和购买普通股的认股权证，目前这一组合的价值为 107 亿美元。</blockquote>In addition to the footnoted Occidental holding and our various common-stock positions, Berkshire also owns a 26.6% interest in Kraft Heinz (accounted for on the “equity” method, not market value, and carried at $13.1 billion) and 38.6% of Pilot Corp., a leader in travel centers that had revenues last year of $45 billion.<blockquote>除了脚注中的西方石油控股公司（Occidental holding）和我们的各种普通股头寸外，伯克希尔还拥有卡夫亨氏 26.6% 的权益（按 “权益 ”法而非市值入账，账面价值 131 亿美元）和 Pilot Corp. 38.6% 的权益，Pilot Corp.</blockquote>Since we purchased our Pilot stake in 2017, this holding has warranted “equity” accounting treatment. Early in 2023, Berkshire will purchase an additional interest in Pilot that will raise our ownership to 80% and lead to our fully consolidating Pilot’s earnings, assets and liabilities in our financial statements.<blockquote>自我们于 2017 年购买试点股份以来，该持股已获得 “权益 ”会计处理。2023 年初，伯克希尔将购买 Pilot 的额外权益，这将使我们的所有权提高到 80%，并使我们在财务报表中全面合并 Pilot 的收益、资产和负债。</blockquote><h2>U.S. Treasury Bills</h2>Berkshire’s balance sheet includes $144 billion of cash and cash equivalents (excluding the holdings of BNSF and BHE). Of this sum, $120 billion is held in U.S. Treasury bills, all maturing in less than a year. That stake leaves Berkshire financing about 12 of 1% of the publicly-held national debt.<blockquote><h2>美国国库券</h2>伯克希尔的资产负债表包括 1440 亿美元的现金和现金等价物（不包括持有的 BNSF 和 BHE）。其中，1200亿美元持有美国国库券，全部到期时间不到一年。这笔股份使伯克希尔哈撒韦公司能够为大约 1% 的公开持有国债提供融资。</blockquote>Charlie and I have pledged that Berkshire (along with our subsidiaries other than BNSF and BHE) will always hold more than $30 billion of cash and equivalents. We want your company to be financially impregnable and never dependent on the kindness of strangers (or even that of friends). Both of us like to sleep soundly, and we want our creditors, insurance claimants and you to do so as well.<blockquote>查理和我承诺，伯克希尔（以及我们除 BNSF 和 BHE 以外的子公司）将始终持有超过 300 亿美元的现金和等价物。我们希望你的公司在经济上坚不可摧，永远不要依赖陌生人（甚至朋友）的善意。我们都喜欢睡个好觉，我们希望我们的债权人、保险索赔人和你也能这样做。</blockquote><h2>But $144 billion?</h2>That imposing sum, I assure you, is not some deranged expression of patriotism. Nor have Charlie and I lost our overwhelming preference for business ownership. Indeed, I first manifested my enthusiasm for that 80 years ago, on March 11, 1942, when I purchased three shares of Cities Services preferred stock. Their cost was $114.75 and required all of my savings. (The Dow Jones Industrial Average that day closed at 99, a fact that should scream to you: Never bet against America.)<blockquote><h2>但是1440亿美元？</h2>我向你保证，这笔巨款并不是爱国主义的疯狂表达。查理和我也没有失去对企业所有权的压倒性偏好。事实上，我第一次表现出对此的热情是在 80 年前的 1942 年 3 月 11 日，当时我购买了三股城市服务优先股。他们的费用是114.75美元，需要我所有的积蓄。（道琼斯工业平均指数当天收于99点，这一事实应该让你尖叫：永远不要押注美国。）</blockquote>After my initial plunge, I always kept at least 80% of my net worth in equities. My favored status throughout that period was 100% – and still is. Berkshire’s current 80%-or-so position in businesses is a consequence of my failure to find entire companies or small portions thereof (that is, marketable stocks) which meet our criteria for long- term holding.<blockquote>在我最初的暴跌之后，我总是将至少80%的净资产保留在股票上。在那段时间里，我的支持率是100%，现在仍然是。伯克希尔目前在企业中占据80%左右的份额，是因为我找不到符合我们长期持股标准的整个公司或其中一小部分公司（即有价证券）。</blockquote>Charlie and I have endured similar cash-heavy positions from time to time in the past. These periods are never pleasant; they are also never permanent. And, fortunately, we have had a mildly attractive alternative during 2020 and 2021 for deploying capital. Read on.<blockquote>查理和我过去也不时经历过类似的现金密集型头寸。这些时期从来都不是愉快的；它们也从来都不是永久的。幸运的是，我们在2020年和2021年有一个略有吸引力的替代方案来部署资本。继续读下去。</blockquote><h2>Share Repurchases</h2>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.<blockquote><h2>股份购回</h2>我们可以通过三种方式增加您的投资价值。第一个始终是我们最关心的问题： 通过内部增长或收购来提高伯克希尔控股企业的长期盈利能力。如今，内部机会比收购带来的回报要好得多。然而，与伯克希尔的资源相比，这些机会的规模很小。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>我们的第二个选择是购买许多公开交易的优秀或伟大企业的非控股权。有时，这样的可能性既众多又极具吸引力。然而今天，我们很少发现让我们兴奋的事情。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>这在很大程度上是因为一个不言而喻的事实：长期低利率会推高所有生产性投资的价格，无论是股票、公寓、农场、油井还是其他投资。其他因素也会影响估值，但利率始终很重要。</blockquote>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.)<blockquote>我们创造价值的最终途径是回购伯克希尔股票。通过这一简单的行为，我们增加了您在伯克希尔拥有的许多受控和非受控企业中的份额。当价格/价值方程正确时，这条路径是我们增加您财富的最简单、最确定的方法。（除了继续股东的价值增加外，其他几个方面也受益：回购对回购股票的卖方和社会都有适度的好处。）</blockquote>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).<blockquote>有时，随着其他途径变得没有吸引力，回购对伯克希尔的所有者来说也很有意义。因此，在过去两年中，我们回购了截至2019年底9%的流通股，总成本为517亿美元。这笔支出使得我们的持续股东拥有伯克希尔所有业务中约 10% 的股份，无论是全资（如 BNSF 和 GEICO）还是部分全资（如可口可乐和穆迪）。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>我想强调的是，伯克希尔的回购要想有意义，我们的股票必须提供适当的价值。我们不想为其他公司的股票支付过高的价格，如果我们在收购伯克希尔时支付过高的价格，那将是对价值的破坏。截至2022年2月23日，自年底以来，我们以12亿美元的成本回购了额外的股票。我们的胃口仍然很大，但将永远取决于价格。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>需要注意的是，由于伯克希尔的投资者基础较高，其回购机会有限。如果我们的股票被短期投机者大量持有，价格波动和交易量都会大幅增加。这种重塑将为我们提供更多通过回购创造价值的机会。尽管如此，查理和我还是更喜欢我们现有的所有者，尽管他们令人钦佩的买入并保留态度限制了长期股东从机会主义回购中获利的程度。</blockquote>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.<blockquote>最后，伯克希尔特有的一个容易被忽视的价值计算： 正如我们所讨论的，正确的保险 “浮动 ”对我们来说非常有价值。事实上，回购会自动增加每股 “流通量 ”的数量。在过去两年中，这一数字增长了 25%，从每股 A 股 79,387 美元增加到 99,497 美元，这是一个有意义的增长，如前所述，部分原因是回购。</blockquote><h2>A Wonderful Man and a Wonderful Business</h2>Last year, Paul Andrews died. Paul was the founder and CEO of TTI, a Fort Worth-based subsidiary of Berkshire. Throughout his life – in both his business and his personal pursuits – Paul quietly displayed all the qualities that Charlie and I admire. His story should be told.<blockquote><h2>一个了不起的人和一个了不起的企业</h2>去年，保罗·安德鲁斯去世了。保罗是伯克希尔位于沃思堡的子公司TTI的创始人兼首席执行官。在他的一生中——无论是在他的事业中还是在他的个人追求中——保罗悄悄地展示了查理和我钦佩的所有品质。他的故事应该被讲述。</blockquote>In 1971, Paul was working as a purchasing agent for General Dynamics when the roof fell in. After losing a huge defense contract, the company fired thousands of employees, including Paul.<blockquote>1971年，保罗在通用动力公司担任采购代理时，屋顶倒塌了。在失去一份巨额国防合同后，该公司解雇了数千名员工，其中包括保罗。</blockquote>With his first child due soon, Paul decided to bet on himself, using $500 of his savings to found Tex-Tronics (later renamed TTI). The company set itself up to distribute small electronic components, and first-year sales totaled $112,000. Today, TTI markets more than one million different items with annual volume of $7.7 billion.<blockquote>由于他的第一个孩子即将出生，保罗决定把赌注押在自己身上，用他的500美元积蓄创办了德克萨斯电子公司（后来更名为TTI）。该公司致力于分销小型电子元件，第一年的销售额总计 112,000 美元。如今，TTI 销售超过 100 万种不同的商品，年销售额达 77 亿美元。</blockquote>But back to 2006: Paul, at 63, then found himself happy with his family, his job, and his associates. But he had one nagging worry, heightened because he had recently witnessed a friend’s early death and the disastrous results that followed for that man’s family and business. What, Paul asked himself in 2006, would happen to the many people depending on him if he should unexpectedly die?<blockquote>但回到2006年：63岁的保罗发现自己与家庭、工作和同事相处得很开心。但他有一个挥之不去的担忧，因为他最近目睹了一位朋友的英年早逝，以及随之而来的给这位朋友的家庭和生意带来的灾难性后果。保罗在2006年问自己，如果他意外去世，许多依赖他的人会怎么样？</blockquote>For a year, Paul wrestled with his options. Sell to a competitor? From a strictly economic viewpoint, that course made the most sense. After all, competitors could envision lucrative “synergies” – savings that would be achieved as the acquiror slashed duplicated functions at TTI.<blockquote>一年来，保罗一直在纠结自己的选择。卖给竞争对手？从严格的经济角度来看，这个过程是最有意义的。毕竟，竞争对手可以设想利润丰厚的 “协同效应”--当收购方削减 TTI 的重复职能时，就能实现节省。</blockquote>But . . . Such a purchaser would most certainly also retain its CFO, its legal counsel, its HR unit. Their TTI counterparts would therefore be sent packing. And ugh! If a new distribution center were to be needed, the acquirer’s home city would certainly be favored over Fort Worth.<blockquote>但是 . .这样的买家肯定还会保留其首席财务官、法律顾问和人力资源部门。因此，他们的TTI同类产品将被打包发送。还有啊!如果需要一个新的配送中心，收购方的家乡城市肯定会比沃斯堡更受欢迎。</blockquote>Whatever the financial benefits, Paul quickly concluded that selling to a competitor was not for him. He next considered seeking a financial buyer, a species once labeled – aptly so – a leveraged buyout firm. Paul knew, however, that such a purchaser would be focused on an “exit strategy.” And who could know what that would be? Brooding over it all, Paul found himself having no interest in handing his 35-year-old creation over to a reseller.<blockquote>不管经济利益如何，保罗很快得出结论，卖给竞争对手不适合他。他接下来考虑寻找一个金融买家，一个曾经被贴上杠杆收购公司标签的物种。然而，保罗知道，这样的买家会专注于 “退出策略”。谁知道会是什么呢？沉思了这一切，保罗发现自己没有兴趣把他35岁的作品交给经销商。</blockquote>When Paul met me, he explained why he had eliminated these two alternatives as buyers. He then summed up his dilemma by saying – in far more tactful phrasing than this – “After a year of pondering the alternatives, I want to sell to Berkshire because you are the only guy left.” So, I made an offer and Paul said “Yes.” One meeting; one lunch; one deal.<blockquote>当保罗见到我时，他解释了为什么他作为买家排除了这两个选择。然后，他用比这更委婉的措辞总结了自己的困境：“经过一年的思考，我想卖给伯克希尔，因为你是唯一剩下的人了”。于是，我提出了一个提议，保罗答应了。一次会议；一份午餐；一笔交易。</blockquote>To say we both lived happily ever after is an understatement. When Berkshire purchased TTI, the company employed 2,387. Now the number is 8,043. A large percentage of that growth took place in Fort Worth and environs. Earnings have increased 673%.<blockquote>说我们从此过上了幸福的生活是一种轻描淡写的说法。伯克希尔收购 TTI 时，该公司拥有 2,387 名员工。现在这个数字是8043。很大一部分增长发生在沃思堡及其周边地区。盈利增长了673%。</blockquote>Annually, I would call Paul and tell him his salary should be substantially increased. Annually, he would tell me, “We can talk about that next year, Warren; I’m too busy now.”<blockquote>每年，我都会去找看涨期权·保罗，告诉他他的工资应该大幅提高。每年，他都会告诉我：“我们可以明年再谈，沃伦；我现在太忙了。”</blockquote>When Greg Abel and I attended Paul’s memorial service, we met children, grandchildren, long-time associates (including TTI’s first employee) and John Roach, the former CEO of a Fort Worth company Berkshire had purchased in 2000. John had steered his friend Paul to Omaha, instinctively knowing we would be a match.<blockquote>格雷格-阿贝尔（Greg Abel）和我参加保罗的追悼会时，我们见到了孩子们、孙子们、老同事（包括 TTI 的第一位员工）以及伯克希尔于 2000 年收购的沃思堡一家公司的前首席执行官约翰-罗奇（John Roach）。约翰带着他的朋友保罗去了奥马哈，本能地知道我们会是一对。</blockquote>At the service, Greg and I heard about the multitudes of people and organizations that Paul had silently supported. The breadth of his generosity was extraordinary – geared always to improving the lives of others, particularly those in Fort Worth.<blockquote>在仪式上，格雷格和我听说了保罗默默支持的许多人和组织。他慷慨的广度是非凡的——总是致力于改善他人的生活，尤其是沃思堡的人。</blockquote>In all ways, Paul was a class act.<blockquote>在各方面，保罗都是一流的演员。</blockquote>* * * * * * * * * * * *<blockquote>**</blockquote>Good luck – occasionally extraordinary luck – has played its part at Berkshire. If Paul and I had not enjoyed a mutual friend – John Roach – TTI would not have found its home with us. But that ample serving of luck was only the beginning. TTI was soon to lead Berkshire to its most important acquisition.<blockquote>好运——偶尔是非凡的运气——在伯克希尔发挥了作用。如果保罗和我没有一个共同的朋友——约翰·罗奇——TTI就不会在我们这里找到自己的家。但大量的运气仅仅是开始。TTI 很快就带领伯克希尔进行了最重要的收购。</blockquote>Every fall, Berkshire directors gather for a presentation by a few of our executives. We sometimes choose the site based upon the location of a recent acquisition, by that means allowing directors to meet the new subsidiary’s CEO and learn more about the acquiree’s activities.<blockquote>每年秋天，伯克希尔的董事们都会聚集在一起，听我们的几位高管做演讲。我们有时会根据最近收购的地点来选择地点，这样董事们就可以与新子公司的首席执行官会面，并更多地了解被收购方的活动。</blockquote>In the fall of 2009, we consequently selected Fort Worth so that we could visit TTI. At that time, BNSF, which also had Fort Worth as its hometown, was the third-largest holding among our marketable equities. Despite that large stake, I had never visited the railroad’s headquarters.<blockquote>2009年秋天，我们选择了沃思堡，这样我们就可以参观TTI。当时，同样以沃思堡为家乡的BNSF是我们有价证券中的第三大持股。尽管赌注很大，但我从未去过铁路总部。</blockquote>Deb Bosanek, my assistant, scheduled our board’s opening dinner for October 22. Meanwhile, I arranged to arrive earlier that day to meet with Matt Rose, CEO of BNSF, whose accomplishments I had long admired. When I made the date, I had no idea that our get-together would coincide with BNSF’s third-quarter earnings report, which was released late on the 22nd.<blockquote>我的助手黛布-博萨内克（Deb Bosanek）将我们董事会的开幕晚宴安排在 10 月 22 日。与此同时，我安排当天早些时候到达，会见BNSF的首席执行官马特·罗斯，我长期以来一直钦佩他的成就。当我确定这个日期时，我并不知道我们的聚会会与 BNSF 于 22 日晚些时候发布的第三季度财报相吻合。</blockquote>The market reacted badly to the railroad’s results. The Great Recession was in full force in the third quarter, and BNSF’s earnings reflected that slump. The economic outlook was also bleak, and Wall Street wasn’t feeling friendly to railroads – or much else.<blockquote>市场对铁路公司的业绩反应强烈。大衰退在第三季度全面展开，BNSF 的盈利也反映了这种衰退。经济前景也很黯淡，华尔街对铁路或其他任何事情都不友好。</blockquote>On the following day, I again got together with Matt and suggested that Berkshire would offer the railroad a better long-term home than it could expect as a public company. I also told him the maximum price that Berkshire would pay.<blockquote>第二天，我再次与马特见面，并建议伯克希尔为铁路公司提供一个比它作为一家上市公司所能期望的更好的长期家园。我还告诉了他伯克希尔愿意支付的最高价格。</blockquote>Matt relayed the offer to his directors and advisors. Eleven busy days later, Berkshire and BNSF announced a firm deal. And here I’ll venture a rare prediction: BNSF will be a key asset for Berkshire and our country a century from now.<blockquote>马特把这个提议转达给了他的董事和顾问。忙碌的11天后，伯克希尔和BNSF宣布了一项确定的交易。在这里，我将做出一个罕见的预测： 一个世纪后，BNSF 将成为伯克希尔和我们国家的重要资产。</blockquote>The BNSF acquisition would never have happened if Paul Andrews hadn’t sized up Berkshire as the right home for TTI.<blockquote>如果不是保罗-安德鲁斯（Paul Andrews）认为伯克希尔是 TTI 的合适所在地，BNSF 的收购就不会发生。</blockquote><h2>Thanks</h2>I taught my first investing class 70 years ago. Since then, I have enjoyed working almost every year with students of all ages, finally “retiring” from that pursuit in 2018.<blockquote><h2>谢谢</h2>70年前，我教了我的第一堂投资课。从那时起，我几乎每年都喜欢与各个年龄段的学生一起工作，终于在 2018 年 “退休 ”了。</blockquote>Along the way, my toughest audience was my grandson’s fifth-grade class. The 11-year-olds were squirming in their seats and giving me blank stares until I mentioned Coca-Cola and its famous secret formula. Instantly, every hand went up, and I learned that “secrets” are catnip to kids.<blockquote>一路上，我最难缠的听众是我孙子五年级的班级。11岁的孩子们在座位上蠕动着，茫然地盯着我，直到我提到可口可乐及其著名的秘方。立刻，每个人都举起了手，我才知道《秘密》对孩子们来说就是猫薄荷。</blockquote>Teaching, like writing, has helped me develop and clarify my own thoughts. Charlie calls this phenomenon the orangutan effect: If you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will yourself exit thinking more clearly.<blockquote>教学和写作一样，帮助我发展和澄清了自己的思想。查理·评级这种现象猩猩效应：如果你和一只猩猩坐下来，仔细地向它解释你珍视的一个想法，你可能会留下一只困惑的灵长类动物，但你自己会更清楚地思考出来吗？</blockquote>Talking to university students is far superior. I have urged that they seek employment in (1) the field and (2) with the kind of people they would select, if they had no need for money. Economic realities, I acknowledge, may interfere with that kind of search. Even so, I urge the students never to give up the quest, for when they find that sort of job, they will no longer be “working.”<blockquote>与大学生交谈要优越得多。我敦促他们在（1）这个领域找工作，（2）如果他们不需要钱，他们会选择的那种人。我承认，经济现实可能会干扰这种搜索。即便如此，我还是敦促学生们永远不要放弃追求，因为当他们找到那种工作时，他们就不再是 “工作”了。</blockquote>Charlie and I, ourselves, followed that liberating course after a few early stumbles. We both started as part- timers at my grandfather’s grocery store, Charlie in 1940 and I in 1942. We were each assigned boring tasks and paid little, definitely not what we had in mind. Charlie later took up law, and I tried selling securities. Job satisfaction continued to elude us.<blockquote>在经历了一些早期的挫折后，查理和我遵循了解放的道路。我们都是从我祖父的杂货店开始的，查理是1940年，我是1942年。我们每个人都被分配了无聊的任务，而且报酬很少，绝对不是我们想要的。查理后来从事法律工作，我尝试销售证券。我们仍然无法获得工作满意度。</blockquote>Finally, at Berkshire, we found what we love to do. With very few exceptions, we have now “worked” for many decades with people whom we like and trust. It’s a joy in life to join with managers such as Paul Andrews or the Berkshire families I told you about last year. In our home office, we employ decent and talented people – no jerks. Turnover averages, perhaps, one person per year.<blockquote>最后，在伯克希尔，我们找到了我们喜欢做的事情。除了极少数例外，我们现在已经和我们喜欢和信任的人一起“工作”了几十年。能加入保罗-安德鲁斯（Paul Andrews）或我去年告诉过你的伯克希尔家族这样的经理人，是人生中的一件乐事。在我们的家庭办公室，我们雇佣正派有才华的人——没有混蛋。平均每年可能有一个人。</blockquote>I would like, however, to emphasize a further item that turns our jobs into fun and satisfaction working<blockquote>然而，我想强调另一个项目，它将我们的工作变成工作的乐趣和满足感</blockquote>for you. There is nothing more rewarding to Charlie and me than enjoying the trust of individual long-term shareholders who, for many decades, have joined us with the expectation that we would be a reliable custodian of their funds.<blockquote>为了你。对查理和我来说，没有什么比享受个人长期股东的信任更有意义的了，几十年来，他们一直希望我们能成为他们资金的可靠托管人。</blockquote>Obviously, we can’t select our owners, as we could do if our form of operation were a partnership. Anyone can buy shares of Berkshire today with the intention of soon reselling them. For sure, we get a few of that type of shareholder, just as we get index funds that own huge amounts of Berkshire simply because they are required to do so.<blockquote>显然，我们不能像合伙企业那样选择所有者。任何人今天都可以购买伯克希尔的股票，并打算很快转售。当然，我们会有一些这样的股东，就像我们会有指数基金持有大量伯克希尔股票一样，因为他们被要求这样做。</blockquote>To a truly unusual degree, however, Berkshire has as owners a very large corps of individuals and families that have elected to join us with an intent approaching “til death do us part.” Often, they have trusted us with a large – some might say excessive – portion of their savings.<blockquote>然而，伯克希尔公司拥有一大批个人和家庭，他们选择加入我们，其意图接近 “至死不渝 ”。通常，他们把他们积蓄的一大部分——有些人可能会说是过多的——托付给我们。</blockquote>Berkshire, these shareholders would sometimes acknowledge, might be far from the best selection they could have made. But they would add that Berkshire would rank high among those with which they would be most comfortable. And people who are comfortable with their investments will, on average, achieve better results than those who are motivated by ever-changing headlines, chatter and promises.<blockquote>这些股东有时会承认，伯克希尔可能远不是他们所能做出的最佳选择。但他们会补充说，伯克希尔在他们最满意的公司中排名靠前。平均而言，对自己的投资感到满意的人会比那些被不断变化的头条新闻、闲聊和承诺所激励的人取得更好的结果。</blockquote>Long-term individual owners are both the “partners” Charlie and I have always sought and the ones we constantly have in mind as we make decisions at Berkshire. To them we say, “It feels good to ‘work’ for you, and you have our thanks for your trust.”<blockquote>长期的个人所有者既是我和查理一直在寻找的 “合作伙伴”，也是我们在伯克希尔做决策时不断想到的合作伙伴。我们对他们说：“为你们‘工作’的感觉真好，我们感谢你们的信任”。</blockquote><h2>The Annual Meeting</h2>Clear your calendar! Berkshire will have its annual gathering of capitalists in Omaha on Friday, April 29th through Sunday, May 1st. The details regarding the weekend are laid out on pages A-1 and A-2. Omaha eagerly awaits you, as do I.<blockquote><h2>年会</h2>清空你的日历!伯克希尔将于4月29日星期五至5月1日星期日在奥马哈举行年度资本家聚会。关于周末的细节列在A-1和A-2页上。奥马哈热切地等着你，我也是。</blockquote>I will end this letter with a sales pitch. “Cousin” Jimmy Buffett has designed a pontoon “party” boat that is now being manufactured by Forest River, a Berkshire subsidiary. The boat will be introduced on April 29 at our Berkshire Bazaar of Bargains. And, for two days only, shareholders will be able to purchase Jimmy’s masterpiece at a 10% discount. Your bargain-hunting chairman will be buying a boat for his family’s use. Join me.<blockquote>我将以推销来结束这封信。“表弟 ”吉米-巴菲特设计了一艘浮桥 “派对 ”船，目前由伯克希尔子公司森林河公司生产。这艘船将于4月29日在我们的伯克希尔廉价集市上亮相。而且，只有两天时间，股东们可以以 10% 的折扣购买吉米的杰作。你讨价还价的董事长要买一艘船给家人用。加入我。</blockquote>February 26, 2022<blockquote>2022年2月26日</blockquote>Warren E. Buffett Chairman of the Board<blockquote>沃伦·E·巴菲特董事会主席</blockquote></body></html><blockquote></blockquote>\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BRK.A":"伯克希尔","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"1125580913","content_text":"Warren Buffett released his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders on Saturday. The 91-year-old investing legend has been publishing the letter for over six decades and it has become required reading for investors around the world.Warren Buffett said he now considers tech giant Apple as one of the four pillars driving Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate of mostly old-economy businesses he’s assembled over the last five decades.In his annual letter to shareholders released on Saturday, the 91-year-old investing legend listed Apple under the heading “Our Four Giants” and even called the company the second-most important after Berkshire’s cluster of insurers, thanks to its chief executive.“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,” the letter stated.Buffett made clear he is a fan of Cook’s stock repurchase strategy, and how it gives the conglomerate increased ownership of each dollar of the iPhone maker’s earnings without the investor having to lift a finger.“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,” Buffett said in the letter. “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.”Berkshire began buying Apple stock in 2016 under the influence of Buffett’s investing deputies Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. By mid-2018, the conglomerate accumulated 5% ownership of the iPhone maker, a stake that cost $36 billion. Today, the Apple investment is now worth more than $160 billion, taking up 40% of Berkshire’s equity portfolio.“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,” Buffett said.Berkshire is Apple’s largest shareholder, outside of index and exchange-traded fund providers.Buffett also credited his railroad business BNSF and energy segment BHE as two other giants of the conglomerate, which both registered record earnings in 2021.“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,” Buffett said. “BHE has become a utility powerhouse and a leading force in wind, solar and transmission throughout much of the United States.”Read the full letter here：To the Shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.:Charlie Munger, my long-time partner, and I have the job of managing a portion of your savings. We are honored by your trust.Our position carries with it the responsibility to report to you what we would like to know if we were the absentee owner and you were the manager. We enjoy communicating directly with you through this annual letter, and through the annual meeting as well.Our policy is to treat all shareholders equally. Therefore, we do not hold discussions with analysts nor large institutions. Whenever possible, also, we release important communications on Saturday mornings in order to maximize the time for shareholders and the media to absorb the news before markets open on Monday.A wealth of Berkshire facts and figures are set forth in the annual 10-K that the company regularly files with the S.E.C. and that we reproduce on pages K-1 – K-119. Some shareholders will find this detail engrossing; others will simply prefer to learn what Charlie and I believe is new or interesting at Berkshire.Alas, there was little action of that sort in 2021. We did, though, make reasonable progress in increasing the intrinsic value of your shares. That task has been my primary duty for 57 years. And it will continue to be.What You OwnBerkshire owns a wide variety of businesses, some in their entirety, some only in part. The second group largely consists of marketable common stocks of major American companies. Additionally, we own a few non-U.S. equities and participate in several joint ventures or other collaborative activities.Whatever our form of ownership, our goal is to have meaningful investments in businesses with both durable economic advantages and a first-class CEO. Please note particularly that we own stocks based upon our expectations about their long-term business performance and not because we view them as vehicles for timely market moves. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers.I make many mistakes. Consequently, our extensive collection of businesses includes some enterprises that have truly extraordinary economics, many others that enjoy good economic characteristics, and a few that are marginal. One advantage of our common-stock segment is that – on occasion – it becomes easy to buy pieces of wonderful businesses at wonderful prices. That shooting-fish-in-a-barrel experience is very rare in negotiated transactions and never occurs en masse. It is also far easier to exit from a mistake when it has been made in the marketable arena.Surprise, SurpriseHere are a few items about your company that often surprise even seasoned investors:• Many people perceive Berkshire as a large and somewhat strange collection of financial assets. In truth, Berkshire owns and operates more U.S.-based “infrastructure” assets – classified on our balance sheet as property, plant and equipment – than are owned and operated by any other American corporation. That supremacy has never been our goal. It has, however, become a fact.At yearend, those domestic infrastructure assets were carried on Berkshire’s balance sheet at $158 billion. That number increased last year and will continue to increase. Berkshire always will be building.• Every year, your company makes substantial federal income tax payments. In 2021, for example, we paid$3.3 billion while the U.S. Treasury reported total corporate income-tax receipts of $402 billion. Additionally, Berkshire pays substantial state and foreign taxes. “I gave at the office” is an unassailable assertion when made by Berkshire shareholders.Berkshire’s history vividly illustrates the invisible and often unrecognized financial partnership between government and American businesses. Our tale begins early in 1955, when Berkshire Fine Spinning and Hathaway Manufacturing agreed to merge their businesses. In their requests for shareholder approval, these venerable New England textile companies expressed high hopes for the combination.The Hathaway solicitation, for example, assured its shareholders that “The combination of the resources and managements will result in one of the strongest and most efficient organizations in the textile industry.” That upbeat view was endorsed by the company’s advisor, Lehman Brothers (yes, that Lehman Brothers).I’m sure it was a joyous day in both Fall River (Berkshire) and New Bedford (Hathaway) when the union was consummated. After the bands stopped playing and the bankers went home, however, the shareholders reaped a disaster.In the nine years following the merger, Berkshire’s owners watched the company’s net worth crater from$51.4 million to $22.1 million. In part, this decline was caused by stock repurchases, ill-advised dividends and plant shutdowns. But nine years of effort by many thousands of employees delivered an operating loss as well. Berkshire’s struggles were not unusual: The New England textile industry had silently entered an extended and non-reversible death march.During the nine post-merger years, the U.S. Treasury suffered as well from Berkshire’s troubles. All told, the company paid the government only $337,359 in income tax during that period – a pathetic $100 per day.Early in 1965, things changed. Berkshire installed new management that redeployed available cash and steered essentially all earnings into a variety of good businesses, most of which remained good through the years. Coupling reinvestment of earnings with the power of compounding worked its magic, and shareholders prospered.Berkshire’s owners, it should be noted, were not the only beneficiary of that course correction. Their “silent partner,” the U.S. Treasury, proceeded to collect many tens of billions of dollars from the company in income tax payments. Remember the $100 daily? Now, Berkshire pays roughly $9 million daily to the Treasury.In fairness to our governmental partner, our shareholders should acknowledge – indeed trumpet – the fact that Berkshire’s prosperity has been fostered mightily because the company has operated in America. Our country would have done splendidly in the years since 1965 without Berkshire. Absent our American home, however, Berkshire would never have come close to becoming what it is today. When you see the flag, say thanks.• From an $8.6 million purchase of National Indemnity in 1967, Berkshire has become the world leader in insurance “float” – money we hold and can invest but that does not belong to us. Including a relatively small sum derived from life insurance, Berkshire’s total float has grown from $19 million when we entered the insurance business to $147 billion.So far, this float has cost us less than nothing. Though we have experienced a number of years when insurance losses combined with operating expenses exceeded premiums, overall we have earned a modest 55-year profit from the underwriting activities that generated our float.Of equal importance, float is very sticky. Funds attributable to our insurance operations come and go daily, but their aggregate total is immune from precipitous decline. When it comes to investing float, we can therefore think long-term.If you are not already familiar with the concept of float, I refer you to a long explanation on page A-5. To my surprise, our float increased $9 billion last year, a buildup of value that is important to Berkshire owners though is not reflected in our GAAP (“generally-accepted accounting principles”) presentation of earnings and net worth.Much of our huge value creation in insurance is attributable to Berkshire’s good luck in my 1986 hiring of Ajit Jain. We first met on a Saturday morning, and I quickly asked Ajit what his insurance experience had been. He replied, “None.”I said, “Nobody’s perfect,” and hired him. That was my lucky day: Ajit actually was as perfect a choice as could have been made. Better yet, he continues to be – 35 years later.One final thought about insurance: I believe that it is likely – but far from assured – that Berkshire’s float can be maintained without our incurring a long-term underwriting loss. I am certain, however, that there will be some years when we experience such losses, perhaps involving very large sums.Berkshire is constructed to handle catastrophic events as no other insurer – and that priority will remain long after Charlie and I are gone.Our Four GiantsThrough 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.• 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.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.There are, of course, other insurers with excellent business models and prospects. Replication of Berkshire’s operation, however, would be almost impossible.• 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.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.• 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.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 )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.• 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.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.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.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.InvestmentsNow let’s talk about companies we don’t control, a list that again references Apple. Below we list our fifteen largest equity holdings, several of which are selections of Berkshire’s two long-time investment managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. At yearend, this valued pair had total authority in respect to $34 billion of investments, many of which do not meet the threshold value we use in the table. Also, a significant portion of the dollars that Todd and Ted manage are lodged in various pension plans of Berkshire-owned businesses, with the assets of these plans not included in this table.* This is our actual purchase price and also our tax basis.** Held by BHE; consequently, Berkshire shareholders have only a 91.1% interest in this position.*** Includes a $10 billion investment in Occidental Petroleum, consisting of preferred stock and warrants to buy common stock, a combination now being valued at $10.7 billion.In addition to the footnoted Occidental holding and our various common-stock positions, Berkshire also owns a 26.6% interest in Kraft Heinz (accounted for on the “equity” method, not market value, and carried at $13.1 billion) and 38.6% of Pilot Corp., a leader in travel centers that had revenues last year of $45 billion.Since we purchased our Pilot stake in 2017, this holding has warranted “equity” accounting treatment. Early in 2023, Berkshire will purchase an additional interest in Pilot that will raise our ownership to 80% and lead to our fully consolidating Pilot’s earnings, assets and liabilities in our financial statements.U.S. Treasury BillsBerkshire’s balance sheet includes $144 billion of cash and cash equivalents (excluding the holdings of BNSF and BHE). Of this sum, $120 billion is held in U.S. Treasury bills, all maturing in less than a year. That stake leaves Berkshire financing about 12 of 1% of the publicly-held national debt.Charlie and I have pledged that Berkshire (along with our subsidiaries other than BNSF and BHE) will always hold more than $30 billion of cash and equivalents. We want your company to be financially impregnable and never dependent on the kindness of strangers (or even that of friends). Both of us like to sleep soundly, and we want our creditors, insurance claimants and you to do so as well.But $144 billion?That imposing sum, I assure you, is not some deranged expression of patriotism. Nor have Charlie and I lost our overwhelming preference for business ownership. Indeed, I first manifested my enthusiasm for that 80 years ago, on March 11, 1942, when I purchased three shares of Cities Services preferred stock. Their cost was $114.75 and required all of my savings. (The Dow Jones Industrial Average that day closed at 99, a fact that should scream to you: Never bet against America.)After my initial plunge, I always kept at least 80% of my net worth in equities. My favored status throughout that period was 100% – and still is. Berkshire’s current 80%-or-so position in businesses is a consequence of my failure to find entire companies or small portions thereof (that is, marketable stocks) which meet our criteria for long- term holding.Charlie and I have endured similar cash-heavy positions from time to time in the past. These periods are never pleasant; they are also never permanent. And, fortunately, we have had a mildly attractive alternative during 2020 and 2021 for deploying capital. Read on.Share RepurchasesThere 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.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.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.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.)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).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.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.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.A Wonderful Man and a Wonderful BusinessLast year, Paul Andrews died. Paul was the founder and CEO of TTI, a Fort Worth-based subsidiary of Berkshire. Throughout his life – in both his business and his personal pursuits – Paul quietly displayed all the qualities that Charlie and I admire. His story should be told.In 1971, Paul was working as a purchasing agent for General Dynamics when the roof fell in. After losing a huge defense contract, the company fired thousands of employees, including Paul.With his first child due soon, Paul decided to bet on himself, using $500 of his savings to found Tex-Tronics (later renamed TTI). The company set itself up to distribute small electronic components, and first-year sales totaled $112,000. Today, TTI markets more than one million different items with annual volume of $7.7 billion.But back to 2006: Paul, at 63, then found himself happy with his family, his job, and his associates. But he had one nagging worry, heightened because he had recently witnessed a friend’s early death and the disastrous results that followed for that man’s family and business. What, Paul asked himself in 2006, would happen to the many people depending on him if he should unexpectedly die?For a year, Paul wrestled with his options. Sell to a competitor? From a strictly economic viewpoint, that course made the most sense. After all, competitors could envision lucrative “synergies” – savings that would be achieved as the acquiror slashed duplicated functions at TTI.But . . . Such a purchaser would most certainly also retain its CFO, its legal counsel, its HR unit. Their TTI counterparts would therefore be sent packing. And ugh! If a new distribution center were to be needed, the acquirer’s home city would certainly be favored over Fort Worth.Whatever the financial benefits, Paul quickly concluded that selling to a competitor was not for him. He next considered seeking a financial buyer, a species once labeled – aptly so – a leveraged buyout firm. Paul knew, however, that such a purchaser would be focused on an “exit strategy.” And who could know what that would be? Brooding over it all, Paul found himself having no interest in handing his 35-year-old creation over to a reseller.When Paul met me, he explained why he had eliminated these two alternatives as buyers. He then summed up his dilemma by saying – in far more tactful phrasing than this – “After a year of pondering the alternatives, I want to sell to Berkshire because you are the only guy left.” So, I made an offer and Paul said “Yes.” One meeting; one lunch; one deal.To say we both lived happily ever after is an understatement. When Berkshire purchased TTI, the company employed 2,387. Now the number is 8,043. A large percentage of that growth took place in Fort Worth and environs. Earnings have increased 673%.Annually, I would call Paul and tell him his salary should be substantially increased. Annually, he would tell me, “We can talk about that next year, Warren; I’m too busy now.”When Greg Abel and I attended Paul’s memorial service, we met children, grandchildren, long-time associates (including TTI’s first employee) and John Roach, the former CEO of a Fort Worth company Berkshire had purchased in 2000. John had steered his friend Paul to Omaha, instinctively knowing we would be a match.At the service, Greg and I heard about the multitudes of people and organizations that Paul had silently supported. The breadth of his generosity was extraordinary – geared always to improving the lives of others, particularly those in Fort Worth.In all ways, Paul was a class act.* * * * * * * * * * * *Good luck – occasionally extraordinary luck – has played its part at Berkshire. If Paul and I had not enjoyed a mutual friend – John Roach – TTI would not have found its home with us. But that ample serving of luck was only the beginning. TTI was soon to lead Berkshire to its most important acquisition.Every fall, Berkshire directors gather for a presentation by a few of our executives. We sometimes choose the site based upon the location of a recent acquisition, by that means allowing directors to meet the new subsidiary’s CEO and learn more about the acquiree’s activities.In the fall of 2009, we consequently selected Fort Worth so that we could visit TTI. At that time, BNSF, which also had Fort Worth as its hometown, was the third-largest holding among our marketable equities. Despite that large stake, I had never visited the railroad’s headquarters.Deb Bosanek, my assistant, scheduled our board’s opening dinner for October 22. Meanwhile, I arranged to arrive earlier that day to meet with Matt Rose, CEO of BNSF, whose accomplishments I had long admired. When I made the date, I had no idea that our get-together would coincide with BNSF’s third-quarter earnings report, which was released late on the 22nd.The market reacted badly to the railroad’s results. The Great Recession was in full force in the third quarter, and BNSF’s earnings reflected that slump. The economic outlook was also bleak, and Wall Street wasn’t feeling friendly to railroads – or much else.On the following day, I again got together with Matt and suggested that Berkshire would offer the railroad a better long-term home than it could expect as a public company. I also told him the maximum price that Berkshire would pay.Matt relayed the offer to his directors and advisors. Eleven busy days later, Berkshire and BNSF announced a firm deal. And here I’ll venture a rare prediction: BNSF will be a key asset for Berkshire and our country a century from now.The BNSF acquisition would never have happened if Paul Andrews hadn’t sized up Berkshire as the right home for TTI.ThanksI taught my first investing class 70 years ago. Since then, I have enjoyed working almost every year with students of all ages, finally “retiring” from that pursuit in 2018.Along the way, my toughest audience was my grandson’s fifth-grade class. The 11-year-olds were squirming in their seats and giving me blank stares until I mentioned Coca-Cola and its famous secret formula. Instantly, every hand went up, and I learned that “secrets” are catnip to kids.Teaching, like writing, has helped me develop and clarify my own thoughts. Charlie calls this phenomenon the orangutan effect: If you sit down with an orangutan and carefully explain to it one of your cherished ideas, you may leave behind a puzzled primate, but will yourself exit thinking more clearly.Talking to university students is far superior. I have urged that they seek employment in (1) the field and (2) with the kind of people they would select, if they had no need for money. Economic realities, I acknowledge, may interfere with that kind of search. Even so, I urge the students never to give up the quest, for when they find that sort of job, they will no longer be “working.”Charlie and I, ourselves, followed that liberating course after a few early stumbles. We both started as part- timers at my grandfather’s grocery store, Charlie in 1940 and I in 1942. We were each assigned boring tasks and paid little, definitely not what we had in mind. Charlie later took up law, and I tried selling securities. Job satisfaction continued to elude us.Finally, at Berkshire, we found what we love to do. With very few exceptions, we have now “worked” for many decades with people whom we like and trust. It’s a joy in life to join with managers such as Paul Andrews or the Berkshire families I told you about last year. In our home office, we employ decent and talented people – no jerks. Turnover averages, perhaps, one person per year.I would like, however, to emphasize a further item that turns our jobs into fun and satisfaction workingfor you. There is nothing more rewarding to Charlie and me than enjoying the trust of individual long-term shareholders who, for many decades, have joined us with the expectation that we would be a reliable custodian of their funds.Obviously, we can’t select our owners, as we could do if our form of operation were a partnership. Anyone can buy shares of Berkshire today with the intention of soon reselling them. For sure, we get a few of that type of shareholder, just as we get index funds that own huge amounts of Berkshire simply because they are required to do so.To a truly unusual degree, however, Berkshire has as owners a very large corps of individuals and families that have elected to join us with an intent approaching “til death do us part.” Often, they have trusted us with a large – some might say excessive – portion of their savings.Berkshire, these shareholders would sometimes acknowledge, might be far from the best selection they could have made. But they would add that Berkshire would rank high among those with which they would be most comfortable. And people who are comfortable with their investments will, on average, achieve better results than those who are motivated by ever-changing headlines, chatter and promises.Long-term individual owners are both the “partners” Charlie and I have always sought and the ones we constantly have in mind as we make decisions at Berkshire. To them we say, “It feels good to ‘work’ for you, and you have our thanks for your trust.”The Annual MeetingClear your calendar! Berkshire will have its annual gathering of capitalists in Omaha on Friday, April 29th through Sunday, May 1st. The details regarding the weekend are laid out on pages A-1 and A-2. Omaha eagerly awaits you, as do I.I will end this letter with a sales pitch. “Cousin” Jimmy Buffett has designed a pontoon “party” boat that is now being manufactured by Forest River, a Berkshire subsidiary. The boat will be introduced on April 29 at our Berkshire Bazaar of Bargains. And, for two days only, shareholders will be able to purchase Jimmy’s masterpiece at a 10% discount. Your bargain-hunting chairman will be buying a boat for his family’s use. Join me.February 26, 2022Warren E. Buffett Chairman of the Board","news_type":1,"symbols_score_info":{"BRK.A":0.9,"BRK.B":0.9}},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":1353,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"CN","currentLanguage":"CN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":7,"subscribersOnly":false,"subscribersOnlyAccessible":false,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ZH_CN"},"commentList":[],"isCommentEnd":true,"isTiger":false,"isWeiXinMini":false,"url":"/m/post/636224715"}