#431 How Henry Singleton Worked

Henry Singleton was a remarkable figure in American business, a CEO whose unconventional approach to management and capital allocation led to extraordinary success with Teledyne, the conglomerate he founded in the early 1960s. A world-class mathematician and engineer, Singleton's background was anything but typical for a corporate leader. He programmed MIT's first computer, developed technology to evade radar detection during WWII, and created a guidance system still used in military and commercial aircraft—all before founding Teledyne and becoming one of history's greatest CEOs.

The Unconventional Conglomerate

Conglomerates were the internet stocks of the 1960s, with many going public. However, Singleton ran a very unusual conglomerate. Long before it became popular, he aggressively repurchased his company's stock, eventually buying over 90% of Teledyne's shares. He avoided dividends, emphasized cash flow over reported earnings, ran a famously decentralized organization, and never split the company's stock. Known as "the Sphinx" for his reluctance to speak with analysts or journalists, Singleton proved his skeptics wrong. While his peers delivered mediocre returns, Singleton led Teledyne for almost 30 years, achieving an extraordinary annual compound return of 20.4% for his investors. Charlie Munger famously described Singleton's financial returns as "a mile higher than anyone else's" and "utterly ridiculous."