From
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits:
It is the nature of business that in even the best-run companies unexpected difficulties, profit squeezes, and unfavorable shifts in demand for their products will at times occur. Furthermore, the companies into which the investor should be buying if greatest gains are to occur are companies which over the years will constantly, through the efforts of technical research, be trying to produce and sell new products and new processes. By the law of averages, some of these are bound to be costly failures. Others will have unexpected delays and heartbreaking expenses during the early period of plant shake-down. For months on end, such extra and unbudgeted costs will spoil the most carefully laid profit forecasts for the business as a whole. Such disappointments are an inevitable part of even the most successful business. If met forthrightly and with good judgment, they are merely one of the costs of eventual success. They are frequently a sign of strength rather than weakness in a company.
How a management reacts to such matters can be a valuable clue to the investor. The management that does not report as freely when things are going badly as when they are going well usually “clams up” in this way for one of several rather significant reasons. It may not have a program worked out to solve the unanticipated difficulty. It may have become panicky. It may not have an adequate sense of responsibility to its stockholders, seeing no reason why it should report more than what may seem expedient at the moment. In any event, the investor will do well to exclude from investment any company that withholds or tries to hide bad news.
