【朝花夕拾】-【经济学人】- 企业无形资产二三事

【经济学人】 April, 2019

  翻译练习：青澄青果

(注：本文仅用于英语翻译练习和单词学习之用）

【朝花夕拾】-【经济学人】- 企业无形资产二三事

Baby-boomers may recall, perhaps wistfully, how the golden-arched sign outside every McDonald's restaurant would proclaim how many customers had been served by the chain. As they became adults, the number kept on climbing: 5bn in 1969; 30bn in 1979; 80bn in 1990. Jerry Seinfeld, a wry chronicler of the trivial, was moved to ask：“Why is McDonald's still counting?" Do we really need to know about every last burger?Just put up a sign that says, "We're doing very well."

40后50后可能还记得（或许还有点恋恋不舍）麦当劳的金拱门标志一直在纪录莅临快餐店的客人数目。即使他们成人，这个数字仍不断攀升，在1969年是50亿，1979年达到300亿，而到1990年则达到800亿人次。擅长吐槽各种破事的森费得，忍不住提问“麦当劳怎么还在点人头？“我们当真在乎最后一个汉堡卖到多少人了吗？”或者干脆立个牌子告诉大家“生意兴隆”是不是更好？

【朝花夕拾】-【经济学人】- 企业无形资产二三事

The counting stopped. The signs said simply:"Billions and billions served". If this seems unhelpfully vague, that is how the counting business sometimes is. Many of America's biggest companies, including McDonald's, report a negative book value, a gauge of a firm's net assets. Many more have a book value that is small relative to their market value: their shares look dear on a price-to-book basis. Much of this is down to the complexity of valuing a firm's assets in the digital age. But the result is that price-to-book is a bad guide to a stock's true value.

麦当劳停止点数了，牌子上只写着“已接待千亿用户”。虽然略有模糊，不过计数本就历来如此。美国的特大型企业（包括麦当劳）的账面价值（衡量企业净资产的标准）都是负数，还有些企业的账面价值相较于其市值却小得可怜：即按照市净率（市值和净资产之比）来算其股价偏高。这主要归因于数字时代评估公司资产的复杂性，但结果就是市净率无法真实反映股票的实际价值。

【朝花夕拾】-【经济学人】- 企业无形资产二三事

Stock-pickers make a distinction between the price of a share and what it is truly worth. Price is a creature of fickle sentiment, of greed and fear. Value, in contrast, depends on a firm's capabilities. There are various shorthand measures for this, but true "value" investors put the greatest store by the price-to-book ratio. It is the basis for inclusion in benchmarks such as the Russell value index. Countless studies have shown that buying stocks with a low price-to-book is a winning strategy.

股票高手可以明确区分股票价格和真正价值。股价是莫测的情绪性动物，充满恐惧和贪婪。价值取决于企业实力。衡量企业实力有多种捷径，价值投资者更重视市净率。市净率也是股票被纳入基准指数（如“罗素指数”）的基础。无数的研究表明根据市净率逢低买入方是取胜之策。

【朝花夕拾】-【经济学人】- 企业无形资产二三事

But not recently. For much of the past decade, value stocks have lagged behind the general market and a long way behind "growth" stocks, their antithesis. Perhaps this is because, as the industrial age gives way to the digital age, the intangible assets that increasingly matter are not easy to put a value on. The tangible world is easier. Factories, machines, land and office buildings count as capital assets on a firm's books, because they will generate profits for many years. It is a fairly straightforward business to come up with a value for them: it is what the firm paid. This value is gradually written off (depreciated) over time to reflect wear and tear and obsolescence.

然而情况今非昔比。过去十年间，价值型股票在大市表现不佳，远远落后于其对照版：成长型股票。也许是由于工业化时代已经让位于数字时代，却难以对越发重要的无形资产进行估值。对于有型资产的估值却极其容易：工厂、机器、土地和办公厂房，因为它们长期为企业创造收益而列入资产账册；对其估值也相对直接：就是企业为之所付款项；该部分价值因反映资产正常损耗和报废而呈逐年递减（折旧）。

【朝花夕拾】-【经济学人】- 企业无形资产二三事

Such fixed capital assets, along with current assets (cash, stocks of unsold goods, and so on) typically make up the bulk of book value. The problem is what it leaves out. These days, the value of a firm lies as much in its reputation, its processes, the know-how of staff and relationships with customers and suppliers as in tangible assets. Putting an accounting value on these intangibles is notoriously tricky. By their nature, they have unclear boundaries. Not every dollar of R&D or advertising spending can be ascribed to a well-defined asset, such as a brand or patent. That is in large part why, with a few exceptions, such spending is treated as a running cost, like rent or electricity.

这些固定资本性资产，和企业流动资产（现金，未售产品库存等）通常构成了企业账面的大部分价值。问题在于那些未包含项目。如今企业的价值还反映在声誉、生产流程、技术诀窍和客户关系以及供应商关系上，它们和有形资产一样构成企业价值。而将其列入账面价值却勉为其难。因为从本质上而言，这些事项没有清晰的边界。研发和广告投入，无法归类某类资产范围里来，诸如品牌和专利。这也是为什么这类支出（仅仅有个别例外）大多列支为类似租金电费之类的运营成本支出。

Increasingly price is detached from book value. The median price-to-book of S&P 500 stocks is 3.0. But plenty of well-known companies, whose competitive edge rests on brands or patents, have much higher ratios or even negative book values. McDonald's has considerable brand value, which is not on its balance-sheet. It also has property assets that have been fully depreciated.

随之股票价格也就脱离了账面价值。标准普尔500股票的中位市净率是3.0。但是很多依靠品牌和专利取胜的知名公司，却有着高市净率而账面价值干脆为负数。例如，麦当劳虽有极高的品牌价值但并未在资产负债表上予以反映，它拥有的不动产也已完全折旧完毕。（所以其资产负债表并不能反映企业的真实市值。）

【朝花夕拾】-【经济学人】- 企业无形资产二三事

The effect of mergers is to make things murkier. If, say, one firm pays $100m for another that has $30m of tangible assets, the residual $70m is counted as an intangible asset - either as brand value, if that can be gauged, or as "goodwill". That distorts comparisons. A firm that has acquired brands by merger will have those reflects in its book value, says Simon Harris, of GMO, a fund-management firm; a firm that has developed its own brands will not. Share buy-backs make things murkier still. For any firm with a price-to-book greater than one, a buy-back will diminish book by proportionately more than it lowers the value of outstanding stock. So price-to-book rises further.

企业合并导致事情更趋复杂。如果一家公司以一亿美圆的价格收购了另外一家有形资产为3000万美元的公司，那么多出的7000万美元可以以无形资产纪录于公司账面，或者列入品牌价值（可以估值的话）或者列入企业商誉，因此在比较不同企业的账面价值时会发生歧义。一家基金管理公司的首席管理官哈里斯道出了他的担忧，对于通过兼并收购品牌的公司可以列入账面价值，而对于那些自行发展品牌的公司却无从列入。股票回购会使情况更为扑朔迷离。对于那些市净率大于一的公司，回购造成账面价值成比例下降，降幅超出流通股的下降。所以市净率因之会更高。

Some have called for accounting rules to change. But the more leeway a company has to turn day-to-day costs into capital assets, the more scope there is to fiddle with reported earnings. Better to spur the disclosure of spending that adds to intangible value. Analysts can then make their own judgments. My Harris finds that adjusting book value to reflect past R&D and advertising spending makes for more useful comparisons across stocks. It is not a perfect gauge. But no single measure-whether price-to-book or billions of customers served - can ever tell the whole story.

有人提出改变会计准则的提议。不过公司享有将运营成本列为资本资产的自由度越大，盈利报告就越容易被篡改造假。最好还是督促公司披露会转化为无形资产的费用。分析人士则可以做出自己的判断。哈里斯先生发现调整账面价值以反映研发和广告费用，可以成为在比较不同股票表现时行之有效的方法。虽然这也远非完美的标准，但是就像市净率或者是客户数量，任何标准单独都无法完全反映企业的真实情况，（作为投资者还需要综合考量这些参数。）

【朝花夕拾】-【经济学人】- 企业无形资产二三事