Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting brings together tens of thousands of like-minded investors to Omaha, Nebraska. And this year, the company’s 60th, was particularly crowded (Buffett said the meeting had an all-time-high attendance of 19,700 people, up from 16,200 the year prior), as Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren Buffett was set to give a five-hour talk.
Berkshire also reported its first-quarter earnings on Saturday, with operating earnings of $9.6 billion, a 14% decrease year-over-year. The decline was due to lower earnings in the company’s manufacturing, service, and retail businesses. Berkshire is worth $1.11 trillion at the time of writing and is the eighth most valuable company in the world, behind Meta and ahead of Broadcom.
Here are five key takeaways from Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting on Saturday.
Buffett is leaving as CEO, staying on as chairman
Buffett, 94, announced in the final five minutes of the meeting that “the time [had] arrived” for him to step down and his successor, Greg Abel, to take over the CEO role by the end of the year. Abel, 62, is currently the vice chairman of non-insurance operations and was appointed Buffett’s successor in 2021.
The Berkshire Hathaway board voted unanimously on Sunday to make Abel president and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway effective Jan. 1, 2026, and keep Buffett as chairman. This means that Abel will move from overseeing Berkshire’s non-insurance businesses to deciding where to invest the firm’s cash. Buffett will keep his chairman role, but retire as CEO.
As a vote of confidence in Abel’s leadership, Buffett said at the meeting that he had “no intention — zero — of selling one share of Berkshire Hathaway” because he thought “the prospects of Berkshire” would be “better under Greg’s management” than his own.
Who Is Greg Abel?
Abel was born in Alberta, Canada, and graduated from the University of Alberta with a bachelor’s degree in accounting in 1984. He started his career as an accountant for PricewaterhouseCoopers and later joined the power company CalEnergy in 1992. He joined Berkshire in 1999 after the firm acquired MidAmerican Energy Holdings, an energy company where he was an executive.
Abel has been at Berkshire for more than 25 years and has been on the company’s board since 2018. As vice chairman of non-insurance operations, Abel is in charge of areas like retail and utilities.
He was announced as Buffett’s successor at a shareholder meeting in 2021. At this year’s shareholder meeting, Abel said that he and Buffett “have strong dialogue every week” and that he thinks of Buffett “as a teacher.”
Berkshire’s cash pile is now at an all-time high
Berkshire Hathaway revealed in a statement on Saturday that its cash pile is now at a record-high $347.7 billion. A shareholder asked Buffett about the rationale behind Berkshire’s decision to raise cash reserves.
Buffett disclosed that Berkshire had spent almost $10 billion on an investment “recently” but had decided against it. He shared that Berkshire looks for investments that offer “good value” and “where we don’t worry about losing.”
He also said that investment opportunities don’t always arise in an “orderly” way.
“The one problem with the investment business is that things don’t come along in an orderly fashion and they never will,” Buffett said, adding later that Berkshire had “made a lot of money by not wanting to be fully invested at all times.”
Abel said that Berkshire’s “significant” cash pile is “an enormous asset to have” and that the value behind using it would be to “deploy it well” when the time comes.
Berkshire’s critical values were outlined
Abel explained that Berkshire operated under a few critical values, the first being that its investments should bolster its reputation.
“That will always be a priority,” he said.
Abel also said that Berkshire has invested in a set of companies that yield substantial cash flows, like Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, and Chevron. A value of the company is ensuring that those companies remain a strength going forward.
Related: Warren Buffett’s Company Is Worth $1 Trillion For the First Time — But He May Not Be Celebrating
Buffett defended his love of fast food
Buffett said that despite his well-known diet of fast food and soda, he has been able to eat and drink whatever he wants for 94 years.
“They predict all kinds of terrible things for me, but it hasn’t happened yet,” he said, joking that he was “carefully preserving” himself by never exercising.
Buffett has previously stated that he drinks five cans of Coke a day, eats at McDonald’s for breakfast, and regularly eats ice cream and hot dogs.
