公司利潤

員工拿得多，股東得到的就可能變少

幾十年來，沃倫·巴菲特秉承的指導原則中一直有這么一條，那就是當公司利潤在GDP中的占比達到不成比例的高點時，資本主義的競爭屬性就會產生吸引力，進而把這個比例拉回到歷史正常水平。這位奧馬哈圣人擔心，公司盈利能力將下降，股票回報率也會變得很低，甚至更糟。

如果這條原則仍然適用，投資者就有可能要經歷一段艱難旅程了。就某些指標而言，巴菲特所說的吸引力已經開始發揮作用。2012年美國的公司利潤/GDP比例在11%見頂，但到了2018年第四季度，公司利潤仍占GDP的9.3%，比60年來的平均值高2.6個百分點。這表明它還會進一步下跌。金融數據和分析公司FactSet調查的分析師預計，今年第一季度標普500指數的每股收益將同比下滑4.2%，第二季度則會出現零增長。

上述變化表明平衡點正在重新向勞動者靠攏。2000年至今，薪酬、工資和獎金在GDP中的比重從46%降至43%；最近其走勢開始反轉。Moody’s Analytics實時經濟部門負責人瑞安·斯威特說：“美國目前有700萬個職位空缺，待業者平均每人一個以上。”勞動力供應吃緊以及企業員工離職速度加快使工資上漲了3.1%，是2010年增速的兩倍。通常，這些情況會不斷給整個經濟帶來利潤壓力，同時抑制股價。

但有一位投資者認為我們或許已經進入了可以長期維持較強盈利能力的新常態，而他正是沃倫·巴菲特，這確實讓人驚訝。在伯克希爾-哈撒韋的2018年投資者大會上，巴菲特承認互聯網、社交媒體以及數據革命已經孕育出了“輕資產經濟”，推動其發展的是僅憑少量資本就創造出高額利潤的大型科技公司。亞馬遜、蘋果公司、谷歌母公司Alphabet、Facebook和微軟主導著各自的行業，它們強有力的品牌和巨大的規模提高了單用戶收入，同時降低了吸引新用戶的成本。這五家公司目前占標普500指數利潤的12%并非巧合。雖然它們的勞動力成本也在上升，但這些公司根本不需要那么多的人手（或者廠房、庫存）就能使銷售達到很高的水平。

結論：和其他行業的利潤率下跌相比，科技巨頭盈利能力的下滑將較為平緩，這還應有助于它們在股市上領跑。美股整體回報率可能會低于投資者已經習慣的水平。但如果員工拿了更多工資是股市回報率下滑的原因之一，那就有希望。—Shawn Tully（財富中文網）

本文刊登在2019年5月出版的《財富》雜志上，題為《解碼市場信號》（Decoding the Market’s Messages）。

譯者：Charlie

審校：夏林

Corporate Profits

As workers get more, shareholders could get less

For decades, it’s been one of Warren Buffett’s guiding principles: When corporate profits swell to a disproportionately large share of GDP, the Omaha sage has cautioned, the competitive nature of capitalism exercises a gravitational force that pulls them back to historical norms. Profitability shrinks, and stock returns become sluggish, or worse.

If that principle holds true, investors could be facing a rough ride. By some measures, Buffett’s gravitational shift is already underway. U.S. earnings peaked at 11% of GDP in 2012, but in the fourth quarter of 2018, they still accounted for 9.3%, or 2.6 percentage points higher than the 60-year average (see chart), suggesting they have further to fall. Analysts polled by FactSet forecast a year-over-year decline in earnings per share for the S&P 500 of 4.2% in the first quarter, and zero growth in the second.

The change reflects a tipping of the balance back toward labor. Since 2000, the share of GDP going to salaries, wages, and bonuses has dropped from 46% to 43%; lately, that trend is reversing. “America now has 7 million job openings, more than one for every unemployed worker,” says Ryan Sweet of Moody’s Analytics. That tightening labor market and the increased rates at which workers are leaving jobs for new ones are why wages are growing at 3.1%, twice the pace of 2010. Ordinarily, these trends would continue pressuring profits, and suppressing share prices, across the economy.

But there’s one investor who thinks we may have entered a new normal that could sustain higher profitability for a long time—and that investor, surprisingly enough, is Warren ?Buffett. At the 2018 annual investor meeting for Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett acknowledged that the Internet, social media, and data revolutions have spawned an “asset-light economy,” driven by tech giants that generate floods of profits from mere trickles of capital. Amazon, Apple, Google parent Alphabet, Facebook, and Microsoft dominate their industries, and their powerful brands and enormous scale swell their revenues per customer and lower their costs of attracting new ones. It’s not coincidental that those five companies now account for 12% of the S&P 500’s profits. While they, too, face rising labor costs, they don’t need nearly as much labor (or plants, or inventories) to generate hefty sales.

The takeaway: The profitability of the tech titans will decline more gradually than margins in other industries, which should help their stocks outperform too. Overall U.S. stock returns will likely be lower than what investors have grown used to. But if workers pocketing higher wages are a reason for that slowdown, that will be a silver lining. —Shawn Tully

A version of this article appears in the May 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “Decoding the Market’s Messages.”