Whitney Tilson Quotes

I have long believed the corporate world is plagued by poor capital allocation decisions.

I have never run a public company. I spent my entire life working for a private company.

You go to any MBA program, and you will be taught the theory of the firm, that the purpose of the firm is the maximization of return on invested capital. I always thought this was a kind of lunacy.

I'm a businesswoman who's serious about her money. I want an empire.

All I'm trying to do is manage money and take care of my shareholders.

With the world changing fast, we needed capital for investments. There's only so much bandwidth in your own balance sheet.

I have not been a believer of point guidance. It really limits your flexibility to do what you want. It leads to behavior that is not supportive of long-term shareholder value.

United spent $1.2 billion repurchasing shares in 2015 and plans to spend $1.5 billion on share repurchases in the first quarter of 2016. We have a lot of positive momentum, but this is just the beginning.

If I were to spend investor money on nice furnishings and so forth, particularly early on, I might not have it for opportunities that can really grow our business.

Our first use of cash is invested organically, secondly returning values our shareholders - roughly 100 percent free cash flow. And then thirdly, mergers, acquisitions, partnerships that complement our organic strategy. We are going to continue down that path.

Wall Street is always too biased toward short-term profitability and biased against long-term growth.

Some of the analysts were saying, Now you're a cash cow, there's no growth at all, pay it all out in dividends, give me it all, you can't invest wisely.

I try to stay ahead of things, if you know what I mean. I take the money I make and reinvest it.

The most important thing for us is investing and making companies great, and then they have all the options they want, whether that's to go public or stay private.

I don't like stock buybacks. I think if a company has the money to buy their stock back, then they should take that and increase the dividends. Send it back to the stockholder. Let them invest their money again from the dividends.

Today we're focused on small acquisitions to add technology where necessary. I think it's fair to say we're not out looking for a large one, but I think it's also very fair to say that as a public company you can never say never.

You cannot exist as a $20 billion company with speculation.

I have a business to run and stockholders to think about.

There's such a preoccupation with liquidity and such an unwillingness to invest beyond the horizon of the next quarter and making sure that the CEOs hit their quarterly earnings.

I'm a hard-nosed businessman, that if a company is paying its way, increasing profits for thirty-odd consecutive years, you don't put it into receivership.

American capitalists, enthralled by the doctrines of finance, have put their income statements in service of the balance sheet.

The Interros strategy toward various assets generally depends on the stage of their development and level of their maturity.

Some argue shareholder capitalism has proven more efficient. It has moved economic resources to where they're most productive, and thereby enabled the economy to grow faster.

Be it $15 million here and $11 million there, it takes hundreds of millions to be successful in this business.

Any jerk can have short-term earnings. You squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and the company sinks five years later.