Quotes About Capital

It's not that I want money. It's the fun of making money and watching it grow.

For Buffett, managers are stewards of shareholder capital. The best managers think like owners in making business decisions.

operating earnings plus depreciation and amortization less normalized capital expenditures—was adequate to cover both interest and modest reductions in debt.

Our capital is underutilized now, but that will happen periodically. It's a painful condition to be in — but not as painful as doing something stupid. (I speak from experience.)

References to EBITDA make us shudder — does management think the tooth fairy pays for capital expenditures?

Leaving the question of price aside, the best business to own is one that over an extended period can employ large amounts of incremental capital at very high rates of return.

But we will never allow Berkshire to become some monolith that is overrun with committees, budget presentations and multiple layers of management. Instead, we plan to operate as a collection of separately-managed medium-sized and large businesses, most of whose decision-making occurs at the operating level. Charlie and I will limit ourselves to allocating capital, controlling enterprise risk, choosing managers and setting their compensation.

if we center our efforts on war prepa­rations, we cannot build what we want, we cannot devote ourselves to creative work. All work, all capital invested in preparing for military action, is labor lost, money lost. Unfortunately, it has to be done, because others are preparing. But the money I am most saddened to see leave the National Bank coffers-and I say this with all honesty and pride as a soldier-is money to pay for some weapon of destruc­tion.

This line of thought led Toyota (and others) to conclude, eventually, that it often is more profitable to empower workers to be flexible "learning machines" than it is to invest in new capital equipment.

Without water the desert was worthless. With water the productive possibilities of that great territory were enormous. Without Capital the water could not be had. Therefore Capital was master of the situation and, by controlling the water, could exact royal tribute from the wealth of the land.

One of the cost of holding a Federal office was geographic isolation in the nation's capital.

A woman's health is her capital.

A very humane jurist once said, The worst use you can put a man to is to hang him. No; there is another use that a man can be put to that is WORSE!

A very humane jurist once said, 'The worst use you can put a man to is to hang him.' No; there is another use that a man can be put to that is worse!

If autonomous workers' power forces reorganization and changes in capital that develop it, then capital cannot be understood as an outside force independent of the working class. It must be understood as the class relation itself. [...] In other words, capital seeks to incorporate the working class within itself as simply labor-power, whereas the working class affirms itself as an independent class-for-itself only through struggles which rupture capital's self-reproduction.

Capital isn't that important in business. Experience isn't that important. You can get both of these things. What is important is ideas.

In 1980 the Latin American nations collectively were receiving from their external creditors—major banks, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank—about $11 billion more than they were losing in capital transfers back to wealthy-nation interests. But by 1985 these nations would be losing $35 billion more a year in capital transfers to North America and Europe than they received in loans and investments.41

companies that tie up very little extra working capital with incremental sales tend to be more attractive.

To achieve sustained high returns on capital requires possessing features that protect returns from competition; namely, competitive advantages. Identifying what these competitive advantages are and understanding their sustainability is an essential part of the quality investment process.

Asset-light industries are attractive since they require less capital to be deployed in order to generate sales growth. The finest examples are franchise operations, such as Domino's Pizza, where growth is funded by franchisees rather than by the company. Other

high capital intensity companies can also be attractive, especially where the capital requirement confers stability and deters entrants.

Opportunities for growth maximize the benefits derived from high returns on capital. Such opportunities can arise from market growth, either cyclical or structural, or through a firm grabbing share from rivals in existing markets or expanding geographically. The very best companies enjoy a diversified set of growth drivers through ingenuity in the design of products, pricing, and product mix.

The value any business creates, listed or not, is determined by the rate at which it deploys incremental capital. And

p.14: La esencia de la llamada economía del conocimiento es enormes flujos de inversión para capital humano lo mismo que para tecnología informática.