Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger on how long it takes to dig an economic moat
During the Q&A Sessions of the 2002 Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Meeting (YT):
Question: You’ve said that great companies are those that have an economic moat, and I understand that phrase to mean a sustainable competitive advantage. Do businesses begin their lives with sustainable competitive advantages, or must that be developed over a very long time? And then, what are the fundamental bases upon which you’ve seen companies successfully develop sustainable competitive advantages? Of those, which do you think is the most enduring and which is the least?
Buffett: Well, sometimes they can develop it very quickly. I would say that Microsoft, in terms of the operating system, that was a relatively quick development. But that was an industry that was exploding, and things were changing very fast.
On the other hand, if you go back to See’s Candies, which started in 1921, there was no way you could build a sustainable competitive advantage, at least that would be recognizable, in times measured shorter than decades. I mean, you opened up one shop at a time, and nobody’d heard of you originally, and then a few people did. And boxed chocolates were something that people may have bought once or twice a year for a holiday occasion or whatever. So, you weren’t going to embed yourself in the minds of Californians in one or two or five years just because you were turning out outstanding box of chocolates.
So it depends on the way the industry itself is developing.
Walmart has done an incredible job in quite a short period of time. But even they [took some time] — they took it in the small towns, and they progressed along, and refined their techniques as they went.
But I would say that there could be things in new industries.
I would say with NetJets, we have a sustainable competitive advantage. And that’s an industry that was only originated in 1986 when Rich Santulli got the idea, and it was in its total infancy for a good many years after that. But what he has built, and is building and fortifying, is that sustainable competitive advantage. But it depends very much on the industry you’re in.
And I mean, Coca-Cola. 1886, Jacobs Pharmacy, Atlanta, Georgia, you know. John Pemberton came up with a product. And did he have a sustainable competitive advantage that day? If he did, he blew it because he sold the place for 2,000 bucks to Asa Candler.
It took decades, thousands of competitors over that time. They were painting one barn at a time, and designing one Saturday Evening Post ad at a time, and all of that, and pebbles — you know. Around the world in World War II, General Eisenhower went to Mr. Woodruff and he said, “I want a Coke within the arm’s length of every American serviceman.” He said, “I want something to remind them of home.” And so he built a lot of bottling plants for Coke around the world (a). And that was a huge impetus.
But that was, what? 60 years or so after the product was invented.
So it takes a long time in certain kinds of products, but I could see certain areas of the world where a huge competitive advantage is built in a very short period of time.
I would say that probably, in terms of animated feature-length films, for example, Walt Disney did that. And after Snow White and a few more, it took him a while until he could cash in on it, but it became Disney and nobody else in that field for quite a while, and fairly quickly.
Charlie?
Munger: Yeah, there are a lot of different models that create a sustainable competitive advantage.
And there are also some models where you can lose it very fast. Just ask Arthur Andersen. That was a very good name in America not very long ago.
And I think it would be harder to lose the good name of Wrigley’s gum than the good name of Arthur Andersen.
I think there’s some perfectly remarkable competitive advantages that people have gotten over time. And the great trouble with the investment process is that they’re so damned obvious that the stocks sell at very high prices.
Buffett: Snickers has been the number one candy bar for probably 30 or 40 years now. How do you really knock it off?
I mean, we make candy, we would love to displace Snickers, but it’s hard to think of ways to knock them from the number one spot.
My guess is that they’ll be number one in 10 years from now in candy bars, and the list doesn’t change much in that field because —
If you think about the nature of how you make that choice as to what candy bar [you are going to buy and eat] —
If you were chewing Spearmint chewing gum five years ago, and you buy a pack of some chewing gum today, it’s likely to be Spearmint. I mean, there’s just things that you experiment a lot with, and there’re things that you don’t fool around with once you’re happy. You can understand that if you observe your own habits and people’s habits around you.
[And then] there’s other [aspect to it] — usually if something can gain competitive advantage very quickly, you have to worry about them losing it quickly, too. I mean, when an industry is in flux, there are a lot of people that think they’re the survivors, or the ones that are going to prosper, where it turns out otherwise.
In summary:
If things are changing very fast in an industry, it could be possible to develop an economic moat relatively quickly. Examples: Microsoft (with Windows), Walt Disney (in animated feature-length films), Walmart, NetJets
But, beware: what comes quickly, may go just as quickly. And even if the moat was built over decades, it could be destroyed very quickly. Example: Arthur Andersen
If a product needs to spread out and embed itself into the mind of millions of consumers, it may take several decades. Both the frequency of consumption and the product “stickiness” impact the “spreading out” outcome. Examples: See’s Candies, Coca-Cola, Snickers
