You can condition shareholders, and or build your company such that you target specific types of shareholders.
Too often I see people lump shareholders into one group, as though they're all the same.
You can focus on long-term shareholders, or you can focus on short-term shareholders - IBM chose the latter, and as usual they're paying the price for it in expectations (and those shareholders will be nowhere to be found if the stock erodes later).
Berkshire Hathaway, as an example, chose the former. Buffett carefully cultivated very long term shareholders.
To say that Buffett is concerned with creating shareholder value (he is), means something different than to say that IBM is focused on creating shareholder value (they are) - because they have different types of shareholders, and go about it differently.
Jeff Bezos has talked about this concept a few times in relation to Amazon. He'd rather short-term shareholders just move along to the next stock.
Too often I see people lump shareholders into one group, as though they're all the same.
You can focus on long-term shareholders, or you can focus on short-term shareholders - IBM chose the latter, and as usual they're paying the price for it in expectations (and those shareholders will be nowhere to be found if the stock erodes later).
Berkshire Hathaway, as an example, chose the former. Buffett carefully cultivated very long term shareholders.
To say that Buffett is concerned with creating shareholder value (he is), means something different than to say that IBM is focused on creating shareholder value (they are) - because they have different types of shareholders, and go about it differently.
Jeff Bezos has talked about this concept a few times in relation to Amazon. He'd rather short-term shareholders just move along to the next stock.