2012年伯克希尔股东会问答：
CAROL LOOMIS: You're interested in businesses that throw off lots of cash, for instance, See's Candies, as well as those where you expect significant capital reinvestment needs, for example, Burlington Northern.
What is it about a capital-consuming business that persuades you to forego the cash yield you seem to have historically preferred?
How do you balance the expected need for reinvestment in a capital-consuming business against the other possible uses of cash Berkshire may have in the future, such as new investments or stock repurchases?
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, cash-consuming businesses, by their nature, are unattractive unless the cash they consume gets to earn a reasonable return.
And, in the electric utility business, you know, we can expect, cash retained to perhaps earn an average of 12 percent or something like that, which we regard as quite satisfactory.
It's not as exciting as having some business that's going to grow 20 percent a year and not require any capital. I mean, there are a few wonderful businesses like that, but it's perfectly satisfactory.
Same way with the railroad business. You know, we are going to invest a lot of capital over the next 10 years in railroads. Every year we will spend way more than depreciation charges. I think the prospect of earning reasonable returns on that are pretty darn good.
But if I had to put a lot of money, you know, into some capital intensive business where all we were doing was staying alive with that money, you know, we would be in a terrible situation.
And we don't have — in any meaningful way — we do not have any capital-consuming businesses where I see that as the prospect.
It's true, if you go back to a world where we thought we could earn 20 percent on equity or something of the sort, then there's very few capital-consuming businesses where huge amounts of incremental capital can earn at a 20 percent rate.
So that would be disadvantageous, but we don't know how to make 20 percent on equity going forth in the future with the kind of sums we're working with.
And we will be very happy if we can earn 12 percent or something like that on equity, particularly when some of that capital is being consumed is generated by float, which doesn't cost us anything. We've got some small advantage there.
Charlie?
CHARLIE MUNGER: Well, I think it's going to work pretty well. (Laughter)
There's some Mungers here. I hope you won't listen to the siren songs of others and kind of stay with the family heirloom.
WARREN BUFFETT: My family is just hoping for an heirloom. (Laughter)
1、他管理的资本规模过于庞大，没有那么多轻资产的业务可以投资；
延伸阅读：
戳关注，右上角菜单栏● ● ●键，设为星标
