Warren Buffett Quotes

Asset values and earning power are the dominant factors affecting the valuation of a controlling interest in a business. Market price, which governs valuation of minority interest positions, is of little or no importance in valuing a controlling interest.

You must value the business in order to value the stock.

Intrinsic value can be defined simply: It is the discounted value of the cash that can be taken out of a business during its remaining life.

Though it is very easy to do valuations, eyeballs and brand prominence surveys, you should never allow any of them to influence the balance sheet.

Companies always have a balance sheet of its assets, but counties do not.

Valuations are actually quite simple to grasp. A company is only worth what two acquirers are willing to pay for it. Don't you just need to find that one buyer? If there is only one potential company interested in buying your startup, chances are you won't be hearing the word 'billion' in the offer.

When somebody asserts that a stock has an earning power of so much, I am sure that the person who hears him doesn't know what he means, and there is a good chance that the man who uses it doesn't know what it means.

Your biggest asset is a positive attitude. That more than anything else determines your earnings.

In other words, the percentage change in book value in any given year is likely to be reasonably close to that year's change in intrinsic value.

The critical investment factor is determining the intrinsic value of a business and paying a fair or bargain price.

There's a company behind every stock and a reason companies - and their stocks - perform the way they do.

There is no limit on earnings.

All intelligent investing is value investing - acquiring more that you are paying for. You must value the business in order to value the stock.

Your greatest resource is your time.

Calculate a stock's price/earnings ratio yourself, using Graham's formula of current price divided by average earnings over the past three years.

Wrigley is a great business, but that doesn't solve the problem. Buying great businesses at advantageous prices is very tough.

A young financial writer once brought ridicule upon himself by stating that a certain company had nothing to commend it except excellent earnings. Well, there are companies whose earnings are excellent but whose stocks I would never recommend. In selecting investments, I attach prime importance to the men behind them. I'd rather buy brains and character than earnings. Earnings can be good one year and poor the next. But if you put your money into securities run by men combining conspicuous brains and unimpeachable character, the likelihood is that the financial results will prove satisfactory.

Managers and investors alike must understand that accounting numbers are the beginning, not the end, of business valuation.

How would you possibly sell 700 companies in a fire sale and hope to get what they were worth?It's just an unrealistic sort of standard they're trying to hold [Donald Trump] to.

To some extent, stocks are like Rembrandts. They sell based on what they've sold in the past. Bonds are much more rational. No-one thinks a bond's value will soar to the moon.

What's fascinating . . .is that you could now have a business that might have been selling for $10 billion where the business itself could probably not have borrowed even $100 million. But the owners of that business, because its public, could borrow many billions of dollars on their little pieces of paper- because they had these market valuations. But as a private business, the company itself couldn't borrow even 1/20th of what the individuals could borrow.

If you don’t feel comfortable making a rough estimate of the asset’s future earnings, just forget it and move on. No one has the ability to evaluate every investment possibility. But omniscience isn’t necessary; you only need to understand the actions you undertake.

The most valuable assets of a 20th-century company were its production equipment. The most valuable assets of a 21st-century institution, whether business or nonbusiness, will be its knowledge, workers, and their productivity.

I was producing a series about Sir Winston Churchill, about which I was extremely proud, and earning a lot of money as a producer.

We sell the movies. Women need to know they are an asset and they are the ones who should be making the money.