Henry Singleton Concepts

The Everything Blueprint: The Microchip Design That Changed the World

by James Ashton · 11 May 2023 · 401pp · 113,586 words

’s enthusiasm after Wozniak presented to Intel’s board on the merits of the personal computer. Seeing potential through the hippy exterior, Rock roped in Henry Singleton, chairman of the US electronics conglomerate Teledyne, to become a third backer.19 Their faith was rewarded as Apple II unit sales leapt from 2

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former Intel marketer, who for a time also served as Apple’s chief executive. Alongside him sat the venture capitalist Arthur Rock and Teledyne’s Henry Singleton. For such a modest sum, their assent was never in doubt, but the final agreement still came down to the wire. Tesler cannily kept two

The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success

by William Thorndike · 14 Sep 2012 · 330pp · 59,335 words

2012012451 Contents Preface: Singletonville Introduction An Intelligent Iconoclasm 1. A Perpetual Motion Machine for Returns Tom Murphy and Capital Cities Broadcasting 2. An Unconventional Conglomerateur Henry Singleton and Teledyne 3. The Turnaround Bill Anders and General Dynamics 4. Value Creation in a Fast-Moving Stream John Malone and TCI 5. The Widow

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his tenure at GE, was an undeniably great CEO. He wasn’t even in the same zip code as Henry Singleton, however. . . . Known today only to a small group of investors and cognoscenti, Henry Singleton was a remarkable man with an unusual background for a CEO. A world-class mathematician who enjoyed playing chess

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performance.1 Surprisingly, in business the best are not studied as closely as in other fields like medicine, the law, politics, or sports. After studying Henry Singleton, I began, with the help of a talented group of Harvard MBA students, to look for other cases where one company handily beat both its

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laser-like focus on a few select variables that shaped each firm’s strategy, usually in entirely different directions from those of industry peers. For Henry Singleton in the 1970s and 1980s, it was stock buybacks; for John Malone, it was the relentless pursuit of cable subscribers; for Bill Anders, it was

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with maximizing shareholder value. This pragmatic focus on cash and an accompanying spirit of proud iconoclasm (with just a hint of asperity) was exemplified by Henry Singleton, in a rare 1979 interview with Forbes magazine: “After we acquired a number of businesses, we reflected on business. Our conclusion was that the key

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shareholders have also been excellent—the stock has appreciated over fourfold since the company’s 2006 initial public offering. CHAPTER 2 An Unconventional Conglomerateur Henry Singleton and Teledyne Henry Singleton has the best operating and capital deployment record in American business . . . if one took the 100 top business school graduates and made a composite

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tax inefficient (dividends are taxed twice—once at the corporate level and again at the individual level). In fact, under its reclusive founder and CEO, Henry Singleton, this dividend policy was, as we’ve seen, just one in a series of highly unusual and contrarian practices at Teledyne. In addition to eschewing

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&P 500 over the same period and an 11.6 percent return for other major conglomerate stocks (see figure 2-2). A dollar invested with Henry Singleton in 1963 would have been worth $180.94 by 1990, an almost ninefold outperformance versus his peers and a more than twelvefold outperformance versus the

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makes is how he spends his time—specifically, how much time he spends in three essential areas: management of operations, capital allocation, and investor relations. Henry Singleton’s approach to time management was, not surprisingly, very different from peers like Tex Thornton and Harold Geneen and very similar to his fellow outsider

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of the sale to AT&T, the company had spun off a remarkable fourteen different entities to shareholders. In utilizing these spin-offs, Malone, like Henry Singleton and Bill Stiritz, was consciously increasing the complexity of his business in pursuit of the best economic outcome for shareholders. After Sparkman retired in 1995

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diverse as cellular telephony, records management, and communications towers. Among the CEOs in this book, he most resembles that other high-level mathematician (and PhD), Henry Singleton. For mathematicians, insights often come when variables are taken to extremes, and Malone was no exception. Nothing about TCI was characterized by half measures. TCI

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at this time, coached by Buffett, that Graham made another unconventional decision and began aggressively buying her own stock, something very few people (outside of Henry Singleton and Tom Murphy) were even thinking about at the time. Over the next several years, she would repurchase almost 40 percent of the company’s

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his board to support him, he became an active repurchaser. He would eventually repurchase a phenomenal 60 percent of Ralston’s shares, second only to Henry Singleton among the CEOs in this book, and he would earn very attractive returns on these buybacks, averaging a long-term internal rate of return of

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in 2003 and 2006. This accordion-like pattern of expansion and contraction, of diversification and divestiture, was highly unusual (although similar in some ways to Henry Singleton’s at Teledyne) and paid enormous benefits for General Cinema’s shareholders. . . . Dick Smith was born in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1924. He was the eldest

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through the Buffett Partnership. He ran the partnership for four more years with continuing excellent results, and then in 1969 (not coincidentally, the same year Henry Singleton stopped making acquisitions at Teledyne), abruptly dissolved it in the face of the high prices of the late 1960s’ bull market. He did, however, retain

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data and prevented blind crowd following. As such, they were inoculations against conventional wisdom, and they spread widely throughout the outsider companies. As George Roberts, Henry Singleton’s COO at Teledyne, told Forbes magazine, “Capital discipline is so ingrained in our managers that very few low-returning proposals are ever presented to

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through a combination of dramatically increased buybacks or dividends. Were this to happen, the market’s response would likely be rapturous, and one can imagine Henry Singleton as the CEO of one of these companies, rubbing his hands together in delight at the opportunities. A Long-Term Perspective Although frugal by nature

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or to sit on the sidelines. The right capital allocation decision varies depending on the situation at any given point in time. This is why Henry Singleton believed flexibility was so essential. As a group, these CEOs faced the inherent uncertainty of the business world with a patient, rational, pragmatic opportunism, not

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to profile an exceptional chief executive and share the lessons from that individual’s career with the managers of our portfolio companies. I had chosen Henry Singleton and, in beginning the research process, had the good luck to find my way into a very talented network of second-year students at Harvard

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. Norton and Company, 2003). 3. Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2008) 4. Robert J. Flaherty, “The Singular Henry Singleton,” Forbes, July 9, 1979. Chapter 1 1. Charles T. Munger memo, January 1, 1983. 2. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Tom Murphy come from

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William Rutledge, February 23, 2004. 9. James P. Roscow, “The Many Lives of Teledyne,” Financial World, November 1, 1978. 10. Robert J. Flaherty, “The Singular Henry Singleton,” Forbes, July 9, 1979. 11. Flaherty, “The Sphinx Speaks.” 12. Author interview with Leon Cooperman, November 20, 2003. Chapter 3 1. Author interview with William

The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley

by Leslie Berlin · 9 Jun 2005

had become a close friend to Jay Last and so knew of Last’s longstanding dissatisfactions at Fairchild. Rock had also made the acquaintance of Henry Singleton, a PhD engineer who had left his research job at Litton Industries two years before to start a high-tech conglomerate he called Teledyne. Singleton

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noticing many more people crowded around the Apple booth than any other, Rock decided to invest $60,000 in the company. He also brought in Henry Singleton of Teledyne, who invested $108,000. In 1977, Regis McKenna, who handled Intel’s public relations, began working with Apple. He hosted a party, one

The Joys of Compounding: The Passionate Pursuit of Lifelong Learning, Revised and Updated

by Gautam Baid · 1 Jun 2020 · 1,239pp · 163,625 words

. If excess free cash flow cannot be reinvested, then look for sound capital allocation that might result in dividends or value-accretive buybacks and acquisitions. Henry Singleton of Teledyne Technologies was an exemplary capital allocator. He would issue shares to acquire cheaper companies when his company’s stock was trading at expensive

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this flexibility to be one of the key mental skills required to succeed along with other skills, such as creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving. Henry Singleton, who, according to Warren Buffett, had the best operating and capital deployment record in American business in his time, said in an interview with BusinessWeek

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of New Evidence 1. Michael Rothschild, Bionomics: Economy as Business Ecosystem (Beard Books, 1990). 2. Carter Johnson, “Dr. Henry Singleton and Teledyne,” ValueWalk, April 27, 2018, https://www.valuewalk.com/2018/04/dr-henry-singleton-and-teledyne. 3. Whitney Tilson, “Notes from the 2004 Wesco Annual Meeting,” Whitney Tilson’s Value Investing Website, May

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Says.” Stanford News, June 14, 2005. https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505. Johnson, Carter. “Dr. Henry Singleton and Teledyne.” ValueWalk, April 27, 2018. https://www.valuewalk.com/2018/04/dr-henry-singleton-and-teledyne. Jordon, Steve. “Investors Earn Handsome Paychecks by Handling Buffett’s Business.” Omaha World-Herald, April 28, 2013

Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street

by William Poundstone · 18 Sep 2006 · 389pp · 109,207 words

the paper profit convinced him that there was real money to be made in stocks. The experience with Harrison made Shannon receptive when another friend, Henry Singleton, spoke of starting his own company. Singleton was a close friend of Shannon’s from MIT graduate school. They played chess together. For a while

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became a board member of Teledyne. He was not just a distinguished name in the annual report but was actively scouting potential acquisitions for CEO Henry Singleton. For instance, in 1978 Shannon investigated Perception Technology Corporation on behalf of Teledyne. Perception Technology was founded by an MIT physicist, Huseyin Yilmaz, whose training

Investment: A History

by Norton Reamer and Jesse Downing · 19 Feb 2016

capital and people has led to a reappraisal of the hierarchy of management skills.8 Noteworthy examples of these CEOs include Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway), Henry Singleton (Teledyne), and Thomas Murphy (Capital Cities), all of whom have demonstrated the signiﬁcant impact of CEOs as allocators of capital and human resources. Often this

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many management theorists, management control of this sort offers distinct advantages over the more minute-to-minute frenetic activity of dominating, control-oriented CEOs.9 Henry Singleton, the CEO of Teledyne from the 1960s to the 1980s, was a wonderful example of this management style. While there were earlier CEOs who focused

A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age

by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman · 17 Jul 2017 · 415pp · 114,840 words

colleague, Bill Harrison, had encouraged Shannon to invest in his company, Harrison Laboratories, which was later acquired by Hewlett-Packard. A college friend of Shannon, Henry Singleton, put Shannon on the board of the company he created, Teledyne, which grew to become a multibillion-dollar conglomerate. As Shannon retold the story, he

Quantitative Value: A Practitioner's Guide to Automating Intelligent Investment and Eliminating Behavioral Errors

by Wesley R. Gray and Tobias E. Carlisle · 29 Nov 2012 · 263pp · 75,455 words

of shareholders, rather than to actions that expand management's domain but that do nothing for (or even harm) shareholders.” —Warren Buffett, Shareholder Letter, 19841 Henry Singleton is most notable for two achievements: building Teledyne from scratch into one of the most profitable and successful stocks in the United States at the

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quarters as share prices tumbled.9 This behavior turns the stomach of value investors, but it's par for the course for most managements. The Henry Singletons are few and far between. Another method for measuring the performance of stocks is to measure the change in the stock's outstanding shares from

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provide favorable live performance in the future. NOTES 1. Warren Buffett, “Shareholder Letter,” Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. Annual Report, 1984. 2. Robert J. Flaherty, “The Singular Henry Singleton,” Forbes, July 9, 1979. 3. Warren Buffett, “Shareholder Letter,” Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. Annual Report, 1982. 4. John Train, The Money Masters (New York: HarperBusiness, 1994

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names in this list. For example, the strategy bought Teledyne, Inc. in 1977 just as it was about to embark on the stellar run under Henry Singleton that we described in Chapter 9. It bought a long-term Berkshire Hathaway holding, the Washington Post Company, in 1979. In 1982, Quantitative Value also

The Investment Checklist: The Art of In-Depth Research

by Michael Shearn · 8 Nov 2011 · 400pp · 124,678 words

tenures: Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; Bruce Flatt, CEO of Brookfield Asset Management; Dave and Sherry Gold, founders of 99 Cent Only Stores; and Henry Singleton, former CEO of Teledyne. Singleton, for example, did not receive any option awards and only sold stock in 1987 and 1988 after continuing to buy

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are a few examples of businesses operated by CEOs who do not follow well-formulated strategic plans but instead improve the business day by day. Henry Singleton, CEO of Teledyne Inc. from the 1960s through the 1980s, believed the best plan was no plan. Under his tenure, Teledyne’s stock compounded at

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these CEOs to see the big picture and not get bogged down in the details. One of the best capital allocators in corporate history was Henry Singleton, longtime CEO of Teledyne, who cofounded the business in 1960 and served as CEO until 1986. In John Train’s book The Money Masters, Warren

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Buffett reported that he believes “Henry Singleton has the best operating and capital-deployment record in American business.” When Teledyne’s stock was trading at extremely high prices in the 1960s, Singleton

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Falling.” U.S. News and World Report, November 8, 2004. 12. “The Brain Behind Teledyne: A Great American Capitalist.” New York Observer, April 7 2003; Henry Singleton at a Teledyne annual meeting. 13. Author’s interview with Dave and Sherry Gold in May 2010. 14. Stemberg, Thomas. “Treat People Right and They

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future

by Sebastian Mallaby · 1 Feb 2022 · 935pp · 197,338 words

in the Davis & Rock portfolio. Time passed and nothing happened. Last and Hoerni seemed too timid to act. So Rock spoke with Teledyne’s boss, Henry Singleton, explaining why his hiking friends would be assets to his enterprise. Then he placed a call to Fairchild midway through the company’s Christmas gift

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Claus. Now was the time to seize the moment, Rock pressed the vacillating Santa, wheeling out the man-or-mouse challenge beloved by later headhunters. Henry Singleton was by his phone, Rock urged him. He was sitting there, waiting, expecting Last’s call.[53] Last duly dialed Singleton and agreed to meet