Charles Stanley Direct：为何投资优质公司
为了弄明白为什么你应该寻求投资于好公司，首先你得定义什么是好公司。在我看来，好公司是这样一种企业：它通过在整个商业和经济周期内获得高资本回报——显著高于其资本成本——来为股东创造价值。
In order to understand why you should seek to invest in good companies you first need to define what a good company is. In my view, a good company is one which creates value for its shareholders by making a high return on capital-significantly above its cost of capital-across the business end economic cycle.
从这一论断中可以引出几点。首先，什么是资本回报？它通常用企业的经营利润除以投入资本来衡量，投入资本指的是股权资本或股东权益加上企业的净债务，以百分比表示。
Several points arise from that statement. Firstly, what is return on capital? It is usually measured by the Operating Profit of the business, divided by the capital employed, being the equity capital or shareholders’ funds plus the net debt of the business, expressed as a percentage.
其次，什么是资本成本？债务成本相对容易——你可以在公司账目中找到其发行债券的利率参考，如果有银行贷款，你可以用利息支出除以期初与期末债务的平均值作为百分比成本。股权成本则更难确定，通常采用所谓的无风险利率，例如公司经营所在币种的政府债券收益率，再加上一个溢价，以补偿股权投资固有的额外风险。
Secondly, what is the cost of capital? The cost of debt is relatively easy – you can find a reference to the cost of bonds a company has issued in the accounts, and if there is bank debt you can just use the interest charge divided by the average of opening and closing debt as the percentage cost. Cost of equity is trickier to ascertain and is usually taken as a so-called risk free rate, such as the yield on government bonds in the same currency that the company operates in, plus a premium to compensate for the additional risks inherent in equity investment.
这个略显复杂的公式，或许至少部分解释了为什么似乎很少有投资者试图去算出它。太多时间被浪费在那些看似精确、实则只是估算的资本成本度量上。如果拿不准，就按 10% 算。
This slightly complex formula probably explains at least in part why so few investors seem to try to work this out. Too much time is wasted on spuriously accurate measures of cost of capital, which can only ever be an estimate. If in doubt, assume 10%.
为什么这很重要？公司在某些方面和我们一样。如果你以年利率 10% 借钱，投资获得 20% 的年回报，你会变得更富有。但如果你只获得 5% 的回报，你就会变得更穷。同理，一家回报高于资本成本的公司会变得更值钱——它为股东创造价值——反之亦然。
Why is this important? Companies are just like us in some respects. If you borrowed money at 10% pa year and invested it at a 20% a year return you would become richer. But if you invested at 5% you would become poorer. Similarly, a company which makes return above its cost of capital become more valuable – it creates value for its shareholders – and vice versa.
但难道不是所有公司都为股东创造价值吗？遗憾的是，并非如此。有些行业往往在大部分时间或全部时间里回报都低于资本成本，比如航空业，在其存在的大部分时间里可能都没有为股东创造价值。
But don’t all companies create value for their shareholders? Sadly not. There are some industries which are prone to make returns below their cost of capital much or all of the time, such as the airline industry which has probably not created value for shareholders throughout most of its existence.
如果整个行业一直持续毁灭价值，那为什么还有人会投资它呢？看来对某些投资者来说，希望是永恒的。他们投资于那些回报不足、因而毁灭价值的公司，因为他们希望情况会改变——希望管理层更迭、商业周期好转、被收购或行业整合会改变这一根本性的糟糕特征。
Surely if a whole industry just keeps destroying value, why would anyone invest in it? It seems hope springs eternal for some investors. They invest in companies which do not make adequate returns and so destroy value because they hope they will change – that a change of management, an upturn in the business cycle, a takeover or industry consolidation will alter this fundamentally poor characteristic.
当然，这种情况很少发生，但这还不是唯一的问题。这类事件不仅罕见且难以预测，而且在基金经理等待他们投资的不良公司好转期间，这些公司会稳步侵蚀价值，其方式相当于向你这位股东借钱，却以不足的回报率进行投资。
Of course it rarely does, but that’s not the only problem. Such events are not only rare and difficult to forecast, but whilst fund managers wait for their investments in bad companies to come good they steadily erode value by the equivalent of borrowing money from you the shareholder and investing it at an inadequate rate of return.
相反，当你持有一家好公司的股票时，你可以确信其价值会随时间上升。
Conversely, when you own shares in a good company you can be sure that its value will rise over time.
Terry Smith
Terry Smith
查尔斯·斯坦利投资平台（Charles Stanley Direct）
Charles Stanley Direct