2009: Is BYD a value investment?
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Excellent. This question actually just came across the BlackBerry before lunch from what I think is an audience member.
Josh Wolfe (PH) of New York writes the following: “BYD appears to be more like a venture capital speculative investment than a value investment. Would you both explain that investment, your logic behind it, and your expectations for it?”
WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah. I’m going to turn that over to Charlie in just one second. But Charlie and I think there is no other kind of investment than a value investment.
In other words, we don’t know how anybody would invest in a non-value investment. So we’ve always been puzzled by the term, “value,” and saying that contrasts with growth or anything.
Value relates to getting a lot for the expectable flow of cash in the future, in terms of what you’re laying out today.
So we — we’ve always — every time somebody characterizes us as value investors, we always ask them, what other kind can there be?
Some of the questions that are asked to Buffett and Munger, really answer themselves. They’ve probably said a thousand times that every kind of sensible investment is a value investment