Transcript
Introduction
In 1960, Henry Singleton formed a company named Teledyne to capitalize on the coming revolution in which digital technology would replace analog devices and systems in everything we could touch and imagine. They would apply semiconductors and digital technology to many fields of commerce. That company grew from $10 million in sales in 1962 to $3.5 billion in 1984. Henry was much more than a salesman, mathematician, engineer, inventor and chess champion. He was a student, an observer of the history of manufacturing of the progress and growth of corporations from the days of Henry Ford, the growth of General Motors, the manner of successful corporations and growing by acquisition.
In the 1940s and early '50s, he had spent days in the offices of brokerage houses in New York and elsewhere watching the ticker, thinking how to more efficiently get capital rolling, how shares are valued and traded, how companies with a steady growth rate are rewarded with an ever-increasing price-to-earnings multiple. On the way, Henry retold me of the GM story reported by none other than Alfred Sloan in a 1964 book. GM had no financial connections in 1919 and suffered a failure. Bailed out by the Duponts, it was near disaster. Get a strong national reputation with some financial institutional ownership, Sloan advised, and Henry did. Henry made me preach and teach ethical behavior in every way in every day, in every meeting that we held. Arthur Rock who assisted in the early financing of Teledyne had this to say, Henry reminds me of the goal, he had a singleness of purpose, a tenacity that is just overpowering. He gives you absolute confidence in his ability to accomplish whatever he says he's going to do.
Yes, he is rather aloof operating more or less by himself and dreaming up ideas in his corner office. Let me tell you this, that corner office produced a cornucopia of ideas. The man we memorialized today was born in Hassler, Texas in 1916 on a ranch where his father raised cotton and cattle. The 49 years together, we spent as friends and associates have not removed this great man from his love of ranching, cattle, and the great West. As the third largest landowner in the United States, he still had an occasional brush and contact with a cow. You know the saying, you could take the boy out of Texas, but you never take Texas out of the boy. We have lost a genius. Heaven has just gone digital, and I know it's full of apples named McIntosh.
All right. So that is actually the eulogy that the author of today's book, George Roberts, gave for his friend and longtime associate, Henry Singleton. So there's a bunch of things that were happening in that excerpt that I want to just point out. Let me just go back a couple of pages. First, it talks about his insane financial performance from $10 million in sales 1962 to $3.5 billion in 1984.