All the highlights from Berkshire CEO Abel’s first shareholder letter
(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis, covering all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You can sign up Here To get it in your inbox every Friday evening.)
Abel: Berkshire’s culture and values ’remain unchanged and will endure forever’
in it First letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholdersnew CEO Greg Abel didn’t try to emulate Warren Buffett’s friendly, conversational writing style.
But he emphasized that he would not make major changes to the way the company has operated for decades under Buffett’s leadership.
At the beginning of his letter, Abel called Buffett “arguably the greatest investor of all time” and acknowledged that “Warren is certainly a very difficult act to follow.”
Berkshire Vice Chairman Greg Abel at the Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Summit held in Omaha, Nebraska, USA on May 2, 2025. speaking to shareholders at the annual shareholder meeting.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Abel wrote last month that he “sent a letter to our employees to emphasize that Berkshire’s culture and values remain unchanged and will continue forever.”
“We are committed to strengthening the great legacy built by Buffett and Charlie Munger and ensuring it endures through our commitment to excellence.”
Abel said in comments at Munger’s 2021 annual meeting:Greg will preserve the culture“It will forever resonate with me” as “a reminder that our culture is our most valuable asset, a call to preserve what defines Berkshire, and a challenge to ensure our culture endures.”
No change to buybacks or dividends
Investors hoping Abel would be more specific about buyback criteria were not satisfied.
His sentence on the subject could have been written by Buffett himself: “We will repurchase Berkshire shares when they trade below our conservative estimate of intrinsic value, ensuring that the repurchases increase per share value for continuing holders.”
There were no buybacks in the fourth quarter, extending a streak that extends into May 2024.
Abel also disappointed any shareholders who had hoped that Buffett could reverse his longstanding opposition to using some of Berkshire’s huge cash pile to pay dividends.
“Our approach to cash dividends continues to be that Berkshire will not pay dividends unless there is a reasonable likelihood that each dollar of retained earnings will create more than one dollar of market value for shareholders.”
‘No withdrawal from investment’
Abel promised that Buffett would “preserve his fortress-like balance sheet and ensure that Berkshire’s foundation is never compromised.”
Describing cash as Berkshire’s “dry powder,” he acknowledged that “there will undoubtedly be increased opportunities to deploy our owner’s capital without compromising Berkshire’s resilience.” “My mission is to ensure that our liquidity levels and capital allocation remain deliberate and intentional.”
“Many times in Berkshire’s history, some observers have suggested that our significant cash position indicates disinvestment. It does not. We continue to evaluate many opportunities and will remain patient and disciplined in pursuing the right ones for the benefit of our owners.”
Greg Abel speaks at the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder Meeting on May 3, 2025 in Omaha, Nebraska.
CNBC
There’s still plenty of money in Berkshire
Berkshire’s total cash fell 2.2% in the fourth quarter, to $373.3 billion as of Dec. 31.
Excluding BNSF’s cash and treasury bills payable, it rose 4.1% to $369.0 billion.
Operating earnings It reached 10.2 billion dollars, a decrease of 29.8% compared to the fourth quarter of last year. While insurance commitments fell 54%, insurance investment income fell 25%, BNSF rose 5.3%, and manufacturing, services and retail rose 3.3%.
Ajit, Kraft and who manages the portfolio?
Abel praised Ajit Jain’s “determination and discipleship” for four decades but gave no hints about who might replace him as Berkshire’s insurance chief.
Also Berkshire still plans to reduce or eliminate its stake inside Kraft Heinz now this New CEO scraps plans to split company in twohe said only that the return was “far from adequate.”
Abel confirmed that responsibility for Berkshire’s equity portfolio “ultimately lies with me as CEO”; Ted Weschler continues to manage approximately 6% of the investments, including those previously overseen by Todd Combs. left in December For a new job at JPMorgan.
Warren Buffett and Greg Abel cover the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder Meeting on May 3, 2025 in Omaha, Nebraska.
David A. Grogen | CNBC
New additions to annual meeting Q&A
Some new faces will join the Q&A sessions at the company’s shareholders meeting May 2 in Omaha.
Abel and Jain will host the morning session as expected, but the afternoon session will feature Abel, BNSF’s Katie Farmer and Adam Johnson, who runs NetJets and is president of consumer products, services and retail. new position created late last year.
Early reviews
In an email Watch Warren Buffett, Macrae Sykes, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds The letter praises Abel for handling all of Berkshire’s major divisions and says he “demonstrated humility” and “demonstrated clarity in communication and expressed confidence in his role as the new CEO.”
He also likes the inclusion of Farmer and Johnson in the Q&A. “It is good to see communications responsibilities being delegated and leadership emerging beyond Greg and Ajit.”
Christopher Davis of Hudson Value Partners said we may be seeing “the first ‘Abel Rule’ added to the Berkshire playbook,” favoring immediate full control of private businesses it captures.
He quotes Abel’s comment that although Berkshire made its initial investment in Pilot in 2017, its ability to manage it was contractually delayed until 2023. “This mistake will not happen again.”
Davis also thinks that Abel’s suggestion that the company could buy large blocks of shares from major shareholders “when the opportunity arises” supports the thesis that there will be a “massive buyback program” of Buffett’s shares after he dies “as his children spend the money on philanthropy.”
Prominent Berkshire analyst predicts annual returns of 10% to 12% over ten years
Bloomstran believes Abel may be more aggressive with Berkshire’s money than Buffett.
“Berkshire, under Greg Abel’s leadership, is likely to commit a large portion of today’s large cash reserves at yields materially higher than those currently earned on U.S. Treasuries.”
BUFFETT & BERKSHİRE ON THE INTERNET
Some links may require subscription:
HIGHLIGHTS FROM CNBC’S BUFFETT ARCHIVE
Observation ‘a training in itself’ for becoming CEO of Berkshire (2006)
Warren Buffett explains He wondered why his expected successor from Berkshire did not need any formal training.
AUDIENCE QUESTION: How do you train your successors? What do you tell them? How would you summarize to them what is important to you? …
WARREN BUFFET: We want executives to join us who believe in the kind of operation we have, a partnership with shareholders, a lifelong commitment to the business. We want these people to join us.
We want what they see after they join us to highlight the values we hold. So we hope that everything we do is consistent with what most people at Berkshire call “culture.”
That is, the written word, what they see, hear, observe. And this is an education in itself.
It’s the same education you received as a child. I mean, you learn something every day when you’re at home and from the behavior of these very important people, these great people around you.
And a house has a culture. A business has a culture. A country may have some degree of culture. And we try to do everything that’s consistent with that. We try not to do anything inconsistent with that.
And believe me, if you’re a brilliant manager at Berkshire – and they’re brilliant, too – you know, they believe in it in the beginning, they see it works, and it doesn’t require formal lessons or mentoring or anything like that.
I mean, if you talk to our Berkshire executives, they actually think in ways that are consistent with what Charlie and I think.
There are a lot of people who disagree, and they don’t agree with us…
The nice thing about this is that our culture is so well defined that there isn’t a lot of error in terms of people falling into it or behaving in a way that’s inconsistent with it.
So I think – I don’t think any formal training is necessary…
Charlie Munger: We do not train managers at headquarters. We find them. And they are not difficult to find.
You know, if a mountain stands tall like Everest, you don’t have to be a genius to understand that it is a high mountain.
BERKSHire SHARE TIME
BRK.A stock price: $757,000.00
BRK.B share price: $504.95
BRK.BP/E (TTM): 16.15
Berkshire market cap: $1,089,124,099,188
BERKSHire’S LARGEST SHAREHOLDING HOLDINGS – February 27, 2026
Berkshire’s top listed publicly traded stocks in the U.S. and Japan by market capitalization based on their latest closing prices.
Holdings as of September 30, 2025, as reported. Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing On November 14, 2025, except:
A complete list of holdings and current market values is available on CNBC.com’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.
QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS
Please send me any questions or comments about the newsletter at: alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (We’re sorry, but we do not forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)
If you are not yet subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up here.
Additionally, reading Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders is highly recommended. There are people gathered on Berkshire’s website here.
— Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch
