To some extent, this was covered in my previous post.
Airlines and automakers come to mind as good examples.
Those businesses tend to have earnings more in an accounting sense but less so in a real economic sense.
(If earnings need to be reinvested in the asset just to survive, they can hardly be considered useful economically to owners. It's the investor's equivalent of running to stay in place.)
The very best investments require modest amounts of capital to deliver a growing cash stream. If most, or all, of the cash earned needs to be plowed back into a business just to remain competitive, shareholders cannot do well in the long run.
Investing* is about buying an asset at a price that allows the stream of cash produced to provide a sufficient return considering the risks being taken and the total capital that's employed (over the full life cycle of the investment).
Businesses like Pepsi (PEP), Heinz (HNZ), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), and Kellogg (K) among others have lots of quality excess cash earnings that can be used for direct distribution to shareholders or to make incremental investments that ultimately benefit shareholders at a later time.
Each needs modest capital to remain competitive.
Each requires little in the way of capital relative to the cash that is produced.
In that previous post, to help make the point, I also used the following quote by Charlie Munger:
There are two kinds of businesses: The first earns 12%, and you can take it out at the end of the year. The second earns 12%, but all the excess cash must be reinvested — there's never any cash. It reminds me of the guy who looks at all of his equipment and says, "There's all of my profit." We hate that kind of business. - Charlie Munger at the 2003 Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meeting
Pepsi, of course, is an example the first kind of business while things like airlines, obviously, represent the second kind.
Here is another variation of this idea that Munger presented during this 1994 talk at USC Business School:
The great lesson in microeconomics is to discriminate between when technology is going to help you and when it's going to kill you. And most people do not get this straight in their heads. But a fellow like Buffett does.
For example, when we were in the textile business, which is a terrible commodity business, we were making low-end textiles—which are a real commodity product. And one day, the people came to Warren and said, "They've invented a new loom that we think will do twice as much work as our old ones."
And Warren said, "Gee, I hope this doesn't work because if it does, I'm going to close the mill." And he meant it.
What was he thinking? He was thinking, "It's a lousy business. We're earning substandard returns and keeping it open just to be nice to the elderly workers. But we're not going to put huge amounts of new capital into a lousy business."
And he knew that the huge productivity increases that would come from a better machine introduced into the production of a commodity product would all go to the benefit of the buyers of the textiles. Nothing was going to stick to our ribs as owners.
That's such an obvious concept—that there are all kinds of wonderful new inventions that give you nothing as owners except the opportunity to spend a lot more money in a business that's still going to be lousy. The money still won't come to you. All of the advantages from great improvements are going to flow through to the customers. - Charlie Munger
So, once again, what seems like earnings is actually of the poor quality variety. Those earnings are an illusion. They are there up until the point that shareholders would like to benefit from them.
The earnings exist, for the most part, in an accounting sense only. They are effectively good 'til needed by the owners, I guess. Like a fruit that's rotten before it is even ripe.
The result?
Earnings that are not available as dividends.
Earnings that cannot be used to fund high return future growth.
Why? They get used up just keeping the existing business alive.
Running in place.
Adam
Charlie Munger: 2 Kinds of Businesses - Part II
* I've already mentioned something like Pepsi as a good example among many. It is both able to pay cash dividends to shareholders, make investments in new products, distribution etc. at a high rate of return to produce future streams of cash, while remaining competitive in its existing business. Favorable returns can also come from something like See's Candy: a business that has little need for capital yet reliably produces a growing stream of cash. If See's were a separate public company, a nice dividend or smart acquisitions would be in order since only modest high return opportunities exist within that business. So it is limited as far as how much capital it can put to work internally (though for the capital it does employ, it works beautifully). Outsized returns obviously can also come from the redeployment of excess earnings into other high return assets by competent management (i.e. Berkshire Hathaway: BRKa).
Charlie Munger: 2 Kinds of Businesses - Part II
* I've already mentioned something like Pepsi as a good example among many. It is both able to pay cash dividends to shareholders, make investments in new products, distribution etc. at a high rate of return to produce future streams of cash, while remaining competitive in its existing business. Favorable returns can also come from something like See's Candy: a business that has little need for capital yet reliably produces a growing stream of cash. If See's were a separate public company, a nice dividend or smart acquisitions would be in order since only modest high return opportunities exist within that business. So it is limited as far as how much capital it can put to work internally (though for the capital it does employ, it works beautifully). Outsized returns obviously can also come from the redeployment of excess earnings into other high return assets by competent management (i.e. Berkshire Hathaway: BRKa).
Charlie Munger: 2 Kinds of Businesses
![Charlie Munger: 2 Kinds of Businesses]()
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