One of my favorite activities is to read letters to shareholders from different companies across different countries. My favorite ones are of course Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio)’s letters.
Most of the time I can get a good sense of the culture of the company and the capability of the chairman and the CEO just by reading the letters. A majority of the letters don’t impress me. However some letters just jump out, especially those from the CEOs who quote either Buffett or Benjamin Graham. I thought it would be extremely interesting to compile a list of companies whose CEOs have quoted either Buffett or Graham in their letters to shareholders, interviews or in any industry conferences. (If you can find one who quotes Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio), you will be my hero.) So today I’d like to share the very few CEOs and CFOs that I have found. Please comment if you can add anyone to the list.
1. Neal Patterson from Cerner (CERN, Financial) – 2005 letter to shareholders:
Warren Buffett says the key to investing is “determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage. The products or services that have wide, sustainable moats around them are the ones that deliver rewards to investors.”
Where is Cerner’s moat? It is clearly in our intellectual property and in the intellectual capital of our associates and their experiences. Only time will tell how wide, deep and enduring our moat is. We have tried to give you some ideas in this letter of where we are investing to improve Cerner’s moat.
2. Jeff Bezos, Amazon (AMZN, Financial) –Â 2000 letter to shareholders:
So, if the company is better positioned today than it was a year ago, why is the stock price so much lower than it was a year ago? As the famed investor Benjamin Graham said, ‘‘In the short term, the stock market is a voting machine; in the long term, it’s a weighing machine.’’ Clearly there was a lot of voting going on in the boom year of ’99 – and much less weighing. We’re a company that wants to be weighed, and over time, we will be – over the long term, all companies are. In the meantime, we have our heads down working to build a heavier and heavier company.
3. Herbjørn Hansson, chairman and CEO of Nordic American Tanker (NAT, Financial) – August 2016 letter to shareholders:
I do not have a strong view of where the market is headed in the short-term, but I believe in Warren Buffett's famous advice, "Be greedy when others are fearful; be fearful when others are greedy."
4. Ciro DeFalco, senior vice president and CFO of The Navigators Group Inc. (NAVG, Financial) –Â KBW Insurance Conference, September 2013
And it’s something that – I’m probably going to have to start paying the family of Ben Graham or at least Warren Buffett. But I always use some of the Ben Graham lines that Warren Buffett takes credit for, and my favorite line – I always tell Stan this and he laughs – in the short term, the stock market is a voting machine, but in the long term, it’s a weighing machine. And we are confident, as we continue on on the next 39-year journey of this company, that we’re going to weigh a lot more than we do today.
I am sure there are more CEOs and CFOs who have quoted Buffett and Graham. This article is a start of the project. Again, please comment if you can add anyone to the list.
Disclosure: Long Cerner and Nordic American Tanker.
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