評論
打印
Buttonwood
梧桐樹專欄
Sound the retreat
鳴金收兵
Profits in America may have peaked for this cycle
美國公司的利潤可能已達到本周期內的最高值
ARE corporate profits at last running out of steam? The lead-up to the first-quarter results season on Wall Street was marked by an unusually large number of profit warnings, such as that from Chevron, an oil group. According to Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, earnings estimates for S&P 500 companies were revised down by 4.4 percentage points in the first quarter.
公司的利潤最終失去勢頭了么？即將到來的華爾街第一季度財報季中，包括石油集團雪福龍在內的異常多的盈利警告成為了顯著特征。根據投行摩根史坦利的說法，第一季度標普500指數成分股公司的盈利預期被調低了4.4個百分點。
As is the custom, having lowered the bar, companies will now beat those revised forecasts, allowing Wall Street analysts to proclaim a “successful” results reason. But when one removes the effect of exceptional items, American profits are now falling, not rising, according to data from MSCI.
按照慣例，各公司降低了標準后，現在能擊敗了那些調低的預測值，并使得華爾街分析師們紛紛贊揚這個“成功的”財報季。但根據來自MSCI的數據，一旦排除掉那些例外事項的影響，美國公司的利潤現在正在下滑，而非上升。
In a sense, this is about time. The recovery in American corporate profits since the recession has been remarkable: they are close to a post-war high as a proportion of GDP. Bulls have a number of arguments why this is a lasting, not cyclical, phenomenon. Economic power has shifted from labour to capital thanks to globalisation, they say; companies can move production to parts of the world where wages are lower. But if that effect is so strong, why aren’t profits as high elsewhere? In Britain the return on corporate capital is below its post-1997 average.
從某種意義上講，現在確實到時候了。自經濟衰退以來，美國公司的利潤復蘇取得了顯著進展：其占GDP的比重已接近了二戰之后的最高值。對行情持樂觀態度的人們有著一大堆的理由來解釋為何這是一種持續性現象，而非周期性現象。他們表示，全球化使得經濟實力從勞動力轉移到了資本；公司可以把生產轉移到世界上那些工資更低的地區。但是，如果這種效應如此強烈，為何其他地區公司的利潤沒有這么高？英國的資本收益率已低于其1997年以后的平均水平。
An alternative, but related, line of reasoning is that foreign profits have boosted the earnings of companies in the S&P 500, making the relationship with domestic GDP less relevant. America may still be running a trade deficit but its global champions, the argument runs, are raking in the money overseas. Research by Audit Analytics found that the amount of profits held abroad and not repatriated nearly doubled to 2.1 trillion between 2008 and 2013.
另一種與此有關聯的推測在于，國外利潤提升了標普500指數成分股公司的總體收益，使得后者與國內GDP的相關性更低。美國可能仍存在貿易赤字，但是如本觀點所說，其國際領軍企業在海外賺了不少錢。Audit Analytics研究發現，2008-2013年間，海外獲得且尚未匯回的利潤數達到了2.1萬億美元，幾乎翻了一番。
But where will American multinationals make so much money in future? Not in either Europe or Japan, where the economies have barely grown in recent years. Emerging markets might seem more promising, but their economies have been slowing, as companies like Diageo, a drinks producer, and Cisco, a tech-components group, have reported. Several developing economies have seen their currencies fall sharply too. It seems unlikely that American multinationals are going to get a further spurt of profits from this source.
但是，將來美國的跨國公司還能從哪兒賺到這么多錢呢？不會是歐洲或是日本，因為近些年它們的經濟幾乎沒有增長。新興市場可能看上去更有前景，但鑒于諸如飲料生產企業帝亞吉歐和技術元件集團思科等公司已經發布的數據，它們的經濟也已放緩。一些發展中經濟體也已目睹了本國貨幣大幅下降。似乎美國的跨國公司不可能再從這個源頭得到進一步的井噴式利潤增長。
In any case, the global data do not bear out the overseas-profit argument. Just as in America, there have been regular disappointments. In 2012, according to Citibank, global profits growth was just 2%, compared with initial forecasts of 11%. At the start of 2013 profits were forecast to rise by 12%; the actual increase was 7%.
無論如何，全球的數據并不支持“海外利潤”理論。正如在美國，也已出現了常見的令人失望的結果。根據花旗銀行結論，2012年全球利潤增長率僅為2%，相比之下，初步預測可是到了11%。2013年初，利潤預測增長12%，但實際增長僅為7%。
The stockmarket has been remarkably resilient in the face of these setbacks. In 2012 global equities rose by 13%; last year they managed 24%. In part, that is due to optimism about the economy’s future trajectory. The euro-zone crisis has disappeared from the headlines while the American economy has been showing signs of returning to healthy growth.
面臨著這些波折時，股市已表現出極強的彈性。2012年全球股票增長了13%；去年增長了24%。在某種程度上，這要歸因于對經濟未來發展軌跡的樂觀情緒。歐元區金融危機已從新聞頭條上消失，同時美國經濟也已出現了回歸健康增長的跡象。
But it is also down to supportive monetary policy. Short-term interest rates have not budged for the past two years (in the developed world) and government-bond yields have been close to historic lows. Investors have accordingly turned to the stockmarket in search of higher returns. Low interest rates have also played their part in keeping profits high, by reducing borrowing costs and by encouraging companies to use their spare cash to buy back stock, thereby increasing earnings per share.
但它同樣是支持性貨幣政策所起的作用。過去兩年短期利率一直沒有變化，政府債券收益率也接近了歷史最低水平。投資者相應地轉向股票市場尋求更高回報。低利率通過降低借款成本、鼓勵公司使用閑置資金回購股票，在提升利潤方面起到了一定作用，也由此提高了每股收益。
However, buying back shares suggests a certain lack of imagination on the part of chief executives, or a lack of profitable projects to back. That remains an odd aspect of the profits boom: in theory, if the return on capital is high, one would expect a lot of capital to be invested. The resulting competition would eventually cause profits to fall. The process acts as a natural check on profits growth, but has yet to occur this cycle.
然而，回購股票表明了首席執行官在一定程度上缺乏前景設想，或公司缺少需要支持的盈利項目。利潤豐厚的現象中仍存在一個奇怪之處：理論上，如果資本收益率很高，人們將期望能擁有大量可供投資的資本，由此導致的競爭將最終導致利潤下滑。這一過程是對利潤增長率的一種自然而然的檢驗，但本周期內尚未出現。
Instead, chief executives are turning to that old device for boosting sluggish profits: takeovers. According to Thomson Reuters, the global value of mergers and acquisitions in the first quarter was 36% higher than in the same period of 2013. The right takeover can result in cost cuts through economies of scale—although in the long run, the academic evidence in favour of takeovers is mixed.
相反地，首席執行官們正在轉向“收購”這一陳舊手段來刺激緩慢增長的利潤。根據湯森路透的結果，第一季度全球的并購價值比2013年同期高出了36%。適宜的收購能通過規模經濟實現成本削減——但是長遠來看，支持收購的學術證據比較混雜。
A takeover boom is a classic signal of the final stages of a bull market, a sign that financial engineering has taken over from genuine business expansion. And that is hardly a surprise: the current rally is already the fourth-largest and the fifth-longest-running since 1928.
收購熱潮是牛市最后階段的一個典型信號，這一信號表明，金融運作已經接替了真正的業務擴張。而且這不奇怪：當前這已經是1928年以來第四次最大規模、第五次持續時間最長的反彈了。
