Henry Earl Singleton

Wall Street had a hard time getting the drift of that.

Sam's idea, he admitted, was absurdly simple: buy cheap, sell low every day, and while doing it with a smile." Then it goes into the fact that he, just like Henry Singleton, you and I talked about Henry Singleton a few weeks ago.

Singleton was criticized because-- by a lot of people who said, "Oh, you don't have, like, you know, a five-year or ten-year or fifteen-year business plan." Michael Bloomberg last week, uh, was the exact same way.

Sam Walton was also the same way.

I think his book is great.

I particularly like my favorite part is part three, where you can kind of see the influences on Fairfax's investment style, whether it be from, you know, Singleton or Phil Fisher or Munger or Buffett.

You know, there's a...

Cundill, Peter Cundill and Templeton, like, you know, all these guys have have done a tremendous influence on on on Prem and on Fairfax and Prem.

Part of their philosophy is no ego.

And so the ability to sort of accept wisdom from others and then apply it, I think Fairfax is really good at that.

And if you look at what Prem's talked about Henry Singleton for a long time and what he did at Teledyne in terms of buying back shares, Fairfax has taken the share count down from... $28 million a few years ago to $20 million now.

And I suspect that if the valuation stays low, that that will continue, especially if we stay in a soft market longer, right? So a longer soft market just means that we'll probably be able to buy a lot more stock back cheap.

I gotta stop there.

He's used the word improvise steering the boat, you know, a little bit every day just to use the words of Henry Singleton.

He uses that over and over again.

We improvised every day.

And then in the 1960s, people won't know the names anymore, but he had helped finance Teledyne Scientific Data-

Refer to Henry Singleton, right?

Henry Singleton.

Henry Singleton, who later became one of the early board members, our first board members at Apple.

Scientific Data Systems, and then became the chairman and original investor in Intel, day one.

And then a few years later, backed Apple.

He's used the word improvise.

Steering the boat, you know, a little bit every day, just, uh, to use the words of Henry Singleton.

He uses that over and over again.

We improvised every day.

You know, something that shows they are capable of, of, of putting their passion into something.

So in your S1, I think you reference Singleton, Henry Singleton-

Yeah

... and Tom Murphy.

Yeah.

I just read...

I did another episode on my other podcast, Founders, on Singleton, and what was remarkable, Singleton made a very early investment in Apple, right? And then he wound up joining the board.

And he was asked by his partner, he's just like, "Well, there's a million companies." Not a million, but there's a bunch of companies trying to make the personal computer.

The less clever man, by neglecting one thing, sometimes misses everything." And then we have a sentence where Napoleon describes himself.

"What I am, I owe to strength of will, character, application, and daring." And then if you listen to last week's episode on Henry Singleton, this is gonna sound a lot like Singleton, and this is something, again, where Napoleon, uh, repeats this.

"I had few really definitive ideas, and the reason for this was that instead of obstinately seeking to control circumstances, I obeyed them, and they forced me to change my mind all the time.

Most of the time, I had no definitive plans but only projects." That is gonna be one of the most, to me, it was one of the most surprising things that I've read about, that, read about Napoleon and something I was surprised that he repeated over and over again, the fact that he j- he didn't control the circumstances, he obeyed them.

I don't care who knows it." And this is another example I've told you in the past.

I think the order in which you read things is very important.

So having just spent, you know, a week reading about Henry Singleton, reading those two books on Henry Singleton, this idea where it's like these scholars don't understand themselves, they just talk, talk, talk.

You know, I hate these people.

But neither one tells you if you, the shareholder, actually got richer from it.

Henry Singleton understood this better than almost anyone alive.

He co-founded Teledyne in 1960 and built it into a sprawling conglomerate of over 130 businesses.

Think electronics, insurance, specialty metals, mostly by acquiring companies with Teledyne's own richly priced stock.

Jack Welch GE traded at a premium for years as the best-run conglomerate in America, and that premium would unwound hard after he left.

once the leverage buried inside GE Capital came to light under his successor.

Buying a stock because the CEO reminds you of Henry Singleton is not the same thing as checking whether today's decisions still make sense at today's price.

And maybe the hardest one.

men who can recognize that rare prince who is disguised as a toad, and who have managerial abilities that enable them to peel away the disguise.

We salute such managers as Ben Heinemann at Northwest Industries, Henry Singleton at Teledyne, Erwin Zoban at National Service Industries, and especially Tom Murphy at Capital Cities Communications, a real managerial twofer, whose acquisition efforts have been properly focused in Category 1 and whose operating talents also make him a leader of Category 2.

From both direct and vicarious experience, we recognize the difficulty and rarity of these executives' achievements.

So do they.

Henry Singleton is one of those CEOs that really challenges our assumptions about leadership.

This wasn't some MBA who climbed the corporate ladder.

He was a world-class mathematician, an MIT-trained engineer who helped develop wartime technology before founding Teledyne.