Berkshire annual meeting: Greg Abel rules out break-up, stressing continuity with Buffett

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Six minutes after the meeting began, a Buffett “jersey” with a large 60, reflecting his 60 years as Berkshire CEO, was raised to the rafters of the CHI Health Center arena.

That was followed by a three-minute video produced by Berkshire showing videos and photos from those six decades.

Buffett then spoke from his seat on the floor saying, “This is not my show today, but there are two anniversaries that we are kind of celebrating today.”

It’s been about one year since the board approved Abel as CEO in the wake of Buffett’s surprise announcement that he would be stepping down, and “you couldn’t have made a better decision.”

“That’s been a hundred percent successful. Greg is doing everything I did and then some, and he’s doing it better in all cases. He’s the right person.”

It’s also been roughly 10 years since Berkshire bought $35 billion of Apple shares. Buffett said that’s turned into roughly $185 billion, “and I didn’t have to do a damned thing.”

He praised outgoing CEO Tim Cook for making that investment so successful.

The first Q&A session began with a “deepfake” video version of “Warren from Ohama” asking Abel why Berkshire shareholders should hold on to their stock for the long term.

In his reply, Abel highlighted the company’s now almost $400 billion in cash, saying it “creates a unique opportunity” for investment.

If there is a “strong value proposition,” Berkshire “will be prepared to act decisively and with significant capital. That’s what it’s there for.”

And then, during the lunch break, viewers of the CNBC.com live stream and attendees in the arena saw a live interview of Buffett by CNBC’s Becky Quick.

Asked why it’s not a good environment for Berkshire to invest right now, Buffett said, “We’ve never had people in a more gambling mood that now [in the financial markets] but that doesn’t mean that investing is terrible.

“It does mean that prices for an awful lot of things will look very silly.”

He also repeated his long-held practice of only investing in companies that he understands, and “I understand fewer of the businesses as a percentage of the whole than I did ten years ago. I’ve not learned new industries for some years.”

The entire 25-minute interview appears below.

Asked, “Is there a point where it doesn’t make sense for Berkshire to be a conglomerate, where you would break up the company?” Abel replied, “Absolutely not.”

“We see our conglomerate structure working without the bureaucracy and bloated costs.

“We do not see ourselves divesting subsidiaries for that reason or ever breaking off a group.”

Abel and insurance chief Ajit Jain recalled the interplay between Buffett and Charlie Munger in past years when Jain was asked if Berkshire would insure ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz.

“The short answer is, it depends on the price,” which prompted laughter from the audience and praise from Abel. “I like your Charlie answer.”

Before the meeting began, Berkshire reported an 18% increase in operating profit in the first quarter, with insurance underwriting up more than 28%.

In what it called a one-time announcement two months ago, Berkshire said it had resumed stock buybacks on March 4 after an almost two-year pause. The SEC filing didn’t include any details.

A week later, however, Berkshire filed a definitive proxy statement ahead of its annual meeting that included a count of the company’s outstanding shares as of March 4, the meeting’s record date.

As we reported at the time, a comparison to a share count in late January revealed Berkshire had bought back the equivalent of 309 Class A shares, or roughly $226 million worth, on that day.

Some investors hoped it would be the start of some aggressive repurchasing.

It hasn’t happened, at least so far.

The company’s first quarter 10-Q released Saturday says Berkshire bought back $234 million of stock in all of March, only $8 million more than the March 4 amount, even though the shares slipped lower through the end of the month.

And the share count as of April 14 listed in that 10-Q indicates there weren’t any significant repurchases in the first two weeks of last month, either.

The AP reports that “attendance is down significantly this year with the [18-975-seat] arena only a little over half full,” but adds that even with the empty seats, “No other corporate meeting can come close to matching the crowds at Berkshire’s Woodstock for Capitalists.”

CNBC.com’s Yun Li wrote there was “a bit more breathing room this year” in the exhibit hall where Berkshire-themed merchandise is sold.

“Unlike past years, lines were shorter and the crowds noticeably thinner.”

Legendary trader Paul Tudor Jones now says he’s sorry he downplayed Warren Buffett’s investing successes over the years, by saying “he just happened to be in the right place at the right time,” catching a bull market for U.S. stocks.

Appearing on the Invest Like the Best podcast with Patrick O’Shaughnessy, CEO of Positive Sum, Jones now acknowledges Buffett is a “flipping genius” for understanding the power of compound interest when he was just 9 years old and staying calm when facing stock losses.

“Warren, if you happen to hear this, deeply apologetic. You are the OG of compound interest, and I wish I was one-tenth as smart as you are.”

Here’s the section in which Jones talks about Buffett and trading vs. investing:

The charity auction of “A Seat at the Table” for lunch with Warren Buffett, Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry and his wife, lifestyle entrepreneur Ayesha Curry, is being expanded to include a series of weekly, limited, timed online auctions offering signed collectibles.

Among the items to be sold: a Warriors jersey signed by Stephen Curry and a $1 bill sign by Buffett.

The auctions will run from April 29 through May 15 at  ebay.com/glide_eatlearnplay. 

The lunch auction starts on May 7 and ends on May 14 at A Seat at the Table.

Proceeds will be split between San Francisco’s Glide Foundation and the Currys’ Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation that is “working to transform the school experience for a generation of Oakland students.”

Holdings are as of December 31, 2025, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing on February 17, 2026, except for:

The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, but we don’t forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)

Also, Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders are highly recommended reading. There are collected here on Berkshire’s website.

— Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch