A few weeks ago, Nick iao reported that the five biggest U. S. Tech companies are carrying $1.65 trillion of dead that doesn’t appear anywhere on their single sheets. The debt that you can see a second larger pile hidden behind it. A few days later, the Financial Times found a financial leases that in video had signed for a single data center in Texas, stuff full of its own chips, a commitment nobody had known about. And the number keeps moving.
几周前，尼克·伊奥报道称，美国五大科技公司背负着1.65万亿美元的债务，这些债务并未出现在它们的资产负债表上。你能看到的债务背后，还隐藏着第二堆更大的债务。几天后，《金融时报》发现英伟达为得克萨斯州一个数据中心签署了融资租赁协议，里面堆满了它自己的芯片，这是一项此前无人知晓的承诺。而且这个数字还在不断变化。
Nick, I did their account before another 600 companies had even reported earnings, and when they did report, basically three of them alone signed nearly $900 billion of new AI commitments in a single quarter. A 1.65 trillion is already an underestimate, which is why if you spend any time on financial YouTube, you already know what people are calling this. The word being thrown around is and Ron commentators, the ones with big social media followings and no obvious background in accounting, have looked at these numbers and concluded at an all over again.
尼克，我在另外600家公司公布财报之前就核对了它们的账目，而当它们公布时，基本上仅其中三家就在一个季度内签署了近9000亿美元的新AI承诺。1.65万亿美元已经是一个低估的数字，这就是为什么如果你花点时间看金融类YouTube，你已经知道人们把这称为什么。被抛出的词是“安然”，那些拥有大量社交媒体粉丝、但明显没有会计背景的评论员们看着这些数字，得出结论说这又是安然事件重演。
So I’ve been practicing my shocked face in the mirror turn out to be surprisingly hard to hold that frozen, open mounted pointing at a red line expression while also looking like you understand what the lease is. Is, is the question this video is actually about, is any of that true? Is this fraud the real numbers being hidden from investors, the way and round hit them right up until the holding fell apart? Or is it something much more boring and much more interesting? Let’s find out first though, because a lot of you weren’t following the financial news into the house in a one a quick word on n Ron, since the entire accusation rests on it.
所以我一直在镜子前练习我的震惊表情，结果发现要同时保持那种目瞪口呆、指着红线的表情，还要看起来像是你理解租赁是什么， surprisingly 很难。这个视频真正要讨论的问题是，这些说法有几分是真的？这是欺诈吗？真实数字是否像安然那样对投资者隐藏，直到控股公司崩溃？还是说事情要无聊得多，也有趣得多？让我们先来弄清楚，不过首先，因为你们很多人当时并没有关注财经新闻，所以简单说一下安然，因为整个指控都建立在它之上。
Andron was an American energy giant that turned out to be a fraud. It had been hiding enormous debt and losses in a web of secret of the books. Entities the count investors could see were essentially a fiction when it unravel. The company collapsed in a matter of weeks. It took down arter understand, one of the five biggest accounting firms in the world and wiped out the retirement savings of persons of its own employees. It is still the definitive corporate accounting raud.
安然是一家美国能源巨头，最终被证实是欺诈。它一直在一个由账外秘密实体组成的网络中隐藏巨额债务和亏损。投资者能看到的账目基本上是虚构的，当它瓦解时，公司在几周内就崩溃了。它拖垮了安达信——全球五大会计师事务所之一，并抹去了其员工自己的退休储蓄。它至今仍是企业会计欺诈的典型。
So when someone points a big tech and says andron, they aren’t complaining about confusing book, keeping their alleging deliberate fraud on a criminal scale that the charge that we’re going to test when you see a headline claiming the tech giants are hiding over a trillion dollars in dead, it’s natural to assume a crime is being committed. But when you did a bit deeper, a lot of the dead turns out to be long term purchase agreements for graphics cards and leased on data starts that haven’t been built yet. Understanded accounting rules if the goods haven’t been delivered or if the building isn’t running, you don’t recorded as a liability on the balance sheet you disclosed in the fort. Note, when you sign a two year phone contract, you’ve committed to paint the network something like $50a month for the next 24 months. That’s a real obligation. You can just stop. And if you added it up, you’re on the hook for over a thousand dollars and the same companies and record a twelve of hundred dollar liability and personal balanced the day you sign and pay for a month, month as you use it.
所以当有人指着大型科技公司说“安然”时，他们并不是在抱怨令人困惑的账目处理，而是在指控刑事级别的蓄意欺诈，这就是我们要检验的指控。当你看到头条新闻声称科技巨头隐藏了超过一万亿美元的债务时，自然会认为有犯罪行为发生。但当你稍微深入一点，很多债务其实是显卡的长期采购协议，以及尚未建成的数据中心的租赁。根据会计规则，如果货物尚未交付，或者建筑尚未投入运营，你就不会将其记录为资产负债表上的负债，而是在脚注中披露。注意，当你签一份两年期手机合同时，你承诺在未来24个月每月向网络支付大约50美元。这是一项真实的义务。你不能随便停止。如果你把它加起来，你就背负了一千多美元的债务，而同样的公司会在你签约当天记录一笔1200美元的负债，然后随着你逐月使用而逐月支付。
The tech companies are doing the exact same thing just with more periods instead of a phone contract is a 15 year lease on a data center in Ohio. For decades, financial commentators have been complaining about tech companies hold in cash, that they use their cash flow to buy back shares, are instead of ana, and anything that the text companies are issuing securities to invest in new infrastructure. And the same commentators have found a way to be unhappy about that too, which raises the question, what does it actually signal when the company chooses to borrow instead of raising equity? Because it tells you quite a lot.
科技公司做的正是同样的事情，只是期限更长——不是手机合同，而是俄亥俄州一个数据中心的15年租约。几十年来，金融评论员一直在抱怨科技公司囤积现金，用现金流回购股票，而不是进行任何投资；现在科技公司发行证券来投资新基础设施，同样是这些评论员又找到了不满的理由。这就引出一个问题：当一家公司选择借贷而不是股权融资时，这实际上传递了什么信号？因为它能告诉你很多信息。
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Today, investors pay close attention to how a company pays for things. This is because the choice they make send clear signals to the market. Here’s the intuition. If you actually taught you build a machine to turns 5 profit and pay off alone. You want to keep all of the ownership stake yourself in such a high conviction investment. You only want to sell a percentage of the business when you’re less sure about the likelihood of it making a lot of money so that it isn’t about sign. Borrowing to build tends to signal that management thinks the return on investment is worth keeping for the existing owners.
如今，投资者密切关注一家公司如何为事物融资。这是因为他们做出的选择会向市场发出明确的信号。直觉是这样的：如果你真的相信自己能造出一台把1美元变成5美元的机器，你不会把机器的一半卖给陌生人去筹集建造资金。你反而会尝试借钱来建造机器，保留全部5美元利润，然后还清贷款。在如此高信念的投资中，你想自己保留所有所有权。只有当你对赚大钱的可能性不那么确定时，你才会想出售一部分业务，这样就不是一个信号了。借贷来建设往往表明管理层认为投资回报值得为现有股东保留。
Although, and this is where it’s interesting, these firms are also raising equity. In June, alphabet completed the largest equity rates in corporate history, almost 10 billion check from Berkshire. T away. Burker might be the last name you d expect on that list. A farm that generally regards buying back its own shares is more sensible than funding somebody else is moon shot. And the firm, which drives a notoriously hard bargain, it reportedly bought its alphabet stock and around a 6% discount for the market because because, of course, it did this in the a firm that overpass for a story. But they decided that the AI built out was worth a $10 billion investment. Anyway, when you see big tech raising money by every route available all at once, record ad, record equity convertibles, a lot, the signal isn’t in which when they picked it in the scale of the capital race itself, but they decide capital like a company fighting for its life. Unless you think there’s something on the other side worth the fight, whether they’re right about that is the rest of this video. But it’s hard to argue they’re hiding the spending when they announced part of it in the largest stock offering ever filed.
不过，有趣的是，这些公司同时也在进行股权融资。6月，Alphabet完成了公司历史上最大规模的股权融资，接近850亿美元，其中伯克希尔开出了100亿美元的支票作为基石投资。伯克希尔可能是你在这份名单上最意想不到的名字。这家公司通常认为回购自己的股票比资助别人的登月计划更明智。而且这家以谈判强硬著称的公司，据报道以比市场价低约6%的价格买入了Alphabet股票，因为，当然，它就是这么做的——一家不会为故事多付钱的公司。但他们仍然认为AI建设值得100亿美元的投资。无论如何，当你看到大型科技公司同时通过所有可用渠道筹集资金——创纪录的债务、创纪录的股权、可转换债券，信号并不在于他们选择了哪一种，而在于资本竞赛的规模本身。他们像一家为生存而战的公司那样筹集资本。除非你认为另一边有值得一搏的东西，他们是否正确就是本视频接下来的内容。但很难说他们在隐藏支出，因为他们把其中一部分放在有史以来最大规模的股票发行中宣布了。
And a lot of this resolves itself over time. The leases haven’t started yet, will commented, balanced as reliability is Wednesday data center switch, John, that, that is just the timing difference. Meter alone sign $233000000000 in new commitments last quarter, 96 billion of it leases that will move on to the balance sheet as the data centers come into use. The purchase commitments mostly turned into chips and buildings the companies actually owned doesn’t tidy itself up so easily. Is the clever of stuff. The joint ventures and off balance sheet vehicles engineered on purpose to stay off the books. But even that isn’t hidden in the Enron sense. The details are all there in the accounts. You just have to go looking for them. So it isn’t in round like fraud. It’s come on flag, which only only works on people. People aren’t paying much, much attention.
而且很多这类问题会随着时间自行解决。尚未开始的租赁，将在数据中心投入使用时作为负债计入资产负债表，这只是时间差异。仅Meta一家上个季度就签署了2330亿美元的新承诺，其中960亿是租赁，随着数据中心投入使用，这些将转入资产负债表。采购承诺大多会变成公司实际拥有的芯片和建筑，但事情并不会这么简单地自行理顺。还有一些更巧妙的东西：合资企业和表外工具，是故意设计来保持在账外的。但即使如此，也不是安然意义上的隐藏。细节都在账目里，你只需要去找。所以这不是安然式的欺诈，而是一种障眼法，只对不太注意的人有效。
Now none of this means the tech plays it straight. There are plenty aggressive. They just do it in playing side on the front page of the earnings report under a heading that says it is it earning if you’re spending billions on data centers and chips, those assets wear out and need replacing. But many of these firms would rather talk to you about Edda earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization. Charly manger suggested that every time you read the word bata, you should replace it in your head with B. S. Earnings. This point about depreciation was that is a kind of reverse float. You pay the cash up front for the equipment and the expense shows up later as the thing wears out. Leaving it out is just assuming that physical objects last forever, which is a lovely, taught and very rarely true. And you can see the strain in the real cash numbers when the latest earnings landed, the four biggest hyper scales posted their lowest combined free cash flow in the decade, $7 billion between them. And alphabet went cash negative for the first time since it went public.
现在，这一切并不意味着科技公司在会计上很规矩。它们相当激进。它们只是把激进放在明处，放在财报首页，标题写着“盈利”。如果你在数据中心和芯片上花费数十亿美元，这些资产会磨损并需要更换。但许多这类公司更愿意跟你谈论EBITDA——息税折旧摊销前利润。查理·芒格曾建议，每次你读到“EBITDA”这个词，都应该在脑子里把它替换成“BS盈利”。他关于折旧的观点是，折旧是一种反向浮存金。你预先为设备支付现金，费用在设备磨损时之后才显现。把它排除在外，就是假设实物可以永久使用，这是一个美好的想法，但很少是真的。你可以从真实现金数字中看到压力：最新财报公布时，四大超大规模公司公布了十年来最低的合计自由现金流，合计仅70亿美元。Alphabet自上市以来首次出现现金净流出。
Then they stock based compensation. Tech companies love paying staff in stock and then taking that expand straight back out of the earnings. They show investors on grounds that it’s non cash, as what the modern in it. NYU. Has called adding back stock based compensation of the worst abuse is in modern reporting. His point is that it isn’t a noncash expense in the way to compensation is a barter. If the company sold shares on the market and use the cash to pay employees, everyone we call out at the cash expense, handing over the shows directly instead of selling them and paying cash doesn’t make the cost disappear. Warring buffer has been asking the same question for years. If options aren’t a form of compensation, what are they? If compensation isn’t an expense, what is it? And if expenses shouldn’t go into the calculation of earnings, where in the world should they go to stop all that stock, their handing to staff from inflation, the share expense? The companies use real cash to buy their own shares back, which they present two investors as returning capital. Really, they’re running on an expensive trade, mild to stay in the same place.
然后是股票薪酬。科技公司喜欢用股票支付员工，然后把那笔费用直接从盈利中加回来。它们向投资者展示的理由是这是非现金费用，正如纽约大学教授所说，将股票薪酬加回是现代报告中最严重的滥用之一。他的观点是，这并非真正意义上的非现金费用，因为薪酬是一种以物易物。如果公司在市场上出售股票，用现金支付员工，每个人都会把它称为现金费用；直接交出股票而不是出售后支付现金，并不会让成本消失。沃伦·巴菲特多年来一直在问同样的问题：如果期权不是一种薪酬形式，那它是什么？如果薪酬不是费用，那它是什么？如果费用不应计入盈利计算，那它们到底应该去哪里？为了阻止发给员工的股票稀释股份，公司用真金白银回购自己的股票，并向投资者展示为“返还资本”。实际上，他们是在进行一笔昂贵的交易，只是为了原地踏步。
And here’s the catch. A buyback only actually rewards the remaining shareholders if the shares are bought cheaper, but the company moving up its own stock based compensation doesn’t get to wait for a good price. It has to keep buying on a schedule whatever the shares cost that quarter, which lately has not been cheap. While tech executives might be aggressive with accounting, the actual cash they’re spending on AI is very real and it’s the way they’re spending it that has some investors worried in video is currently working on a round of a idea worth more than 35 billion long soft bank, committed 65 billion to OpenAI, and took out $100 billion billion to finance the bed.
关键在于：只有当股票被以更便宜的价格回购时，回购才真正奖励剩余股东。但一家要抵消自身股票薪酬的公司无法等待好价格。它必须按计划持续买入，无论当季股价是多少，而最近股价并不便宜。虽然科技高管在会计上可能很激进，但他们在AI上花费的实际现金是非常真实的，而他们花钱的方式让一些投资者感到担忧。英伟达目前正在筹划一轮价值超过7500亿美元的