Warren Buffett on growth and value...

Our equity-investing strategy remains little changed from what it was fifteen years ago, when we said in the 1977 annual report:  "We select our marketable equity securities in much the way we would evaluate a business for acquisition in its entirety.  We want the business to be one (a) that we can understand; (b) with favorable long-term prospects; (c) operated by honest and competent people; and (d) available at a very attractive price."  We have seen cause to make only one change in this creed: Because of both market conditions and our size, we now substitute "an attractive price" for "a very attractive price." 

But how, you will ask, does one decide what's "attractive"?  In answering this question, most analysts feel they must choose between two approaches customarily thought to be in opposition:  "value" and "growth."  Indeed, many investment professionals see any mixing of the two terms as a form of intellectual cross-dressing. 

We view that as fuzzy thinking (in which, it must be confessed, I myself engaged some years ago).  In our opinion, the two approaches are joined at the hip:  Growth is alwaysa component in the calculation of value, constituting a variable whose importance can range from negligible to enormous and whose impact can be negative as well as positive. 

In addition, we think the very term "value investing" is redundant.  What is "investing" if it is not the act of seeking value at least sufficient to justify the amount paid?  Consciously paying more for a stock than its calculated value - in the hope that it can soon be sold for a still-higher price - should be labeled speculation (which is neither illegal, immoral nor - in our view - financially fattening). 

Whether appropriate or not, the term "value investing" is widely used.  Typically, it connotes the purchase of stocks having attributes such as a low ratio of price to book value, a low price-earnings ratio, or a high dividend yield.  Unfortunately, such characteristics, even if they appear in combination, are far from determinative as to whether an investor is indeed buying something for what it is worth and is therefore truly operating on the principle of obtaining value in his investments.  Correspondingly, opposite characteristics - a high ratio of price to book value, a high price-earnings ratio, and a low dividend yield - are in no way inconsistent with a "value" purchase. 

Similarly, business growth, per se, tells us little about value.  It's true that growth often has a positive impact on value, sometimes one of spectacular proportions.  But such an effect is far from certain.  For example, investors have regularly poured money into the domestic airline business to finance profitless (or worse) growth.  For these investors, it would have been far better if Orville had failed to get off the ground at Kitty Hawk: The more the industry has grown, the worse the disaster for owners. 

Growth benefits investors only when the business in point can invest at incremental returns that are enticing - in other words, only when each dollar used to finance the growth creates over a dollar of long-term market value.  In the case of a low-return business requiring incremental funds, growth hurts the investor.