Warren Buffett: Growth Can Have Both A Positive And Negative Impact For The Investor

In his 1992 Berkshire Hathaway Letter, Warren Buffett explained that growth can have both a positive and negative impact for the investor. Here’s an excerpt from the letter:

Similarly, business growth, per se, tells us little about value. It’s true that growth often has a positive impact on value, sometimes one of spectacular proportions. But such an effect is far from certain. For example, investors have regularly poured money into the domestic airline business to finance profitless (or worse) growth. For these investors, it would have been far better if Orville had failed to get off the ground at Kitty Hawk: The more the industry has grown, the worse the disaster for owners.

Growth benefits investors only when the business in point can invest at incremental returns that are enticing – in other words, only when each dollar used to finance the growth creates over a dollar of long-term market value. In the case of a low-return business requiring incremental funds, growth hurts the investor.

You can read the entire letter here:

Berkshire Hathaway 1992 Shareholder Letter