OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The folksy wisdom and jokes that were a staple of the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting for decades when Warren Buffett led the show was mostly replaced Saturday with detailed business discussions led by new CEO Greg Abel.
Attendance is down significantly this year with the arena only a little over half full, but still no other corporate meeting can come close to matching the crowds at Berkshire’s Woodstock for Capitalists. For years, more than 40,000 attended to listen to the 95-year-old Buffett and — before his death in 2023, Buffett’s longtime partner Charlie Munger was always part of the fun. Buffett gave up the CEO title in January, but he remains chairman and did make a few comments during the meeting.
Berkshire’s businesses were the focus, but timely topics like the Iran war and the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence also came up.
Vice Chairman Ajit Jain said Berkshire would be willing to insure ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz if the price was right and the U.S. Navy escorted those ships.
Jain said he believes there is enough capacity across the insurance industry to take on that risk and there is definitely a need for it because that waterway is the path for so much of the world’s oil supply.
“The short answer is it depends on the price,” Jain said.
Abel said the war in the Middle East is definitely creating challenges for Berkshire’s businesses because oil is such a fundamental input, but he’s confident that the managers will find a way to deal with that.
“We very quickly move to what is the best solution for our customers,” Abel said.
Honoring Buffett’s contributions
Saturday’s meeting began with a video tribute to Buffett beginning with a clip showing the standing ovation Buffett received last year after he surprised shareholders by announcing that he would step down.
Abel then announced the symbolic move of retiring jerseys with Buffett’s and Munger’s names on them that will hang in the rafters of the arena.
Buffett again praised Abel and said he’s glad that he made the decision to promote him now.
“He’s very, very smart about businesses,” Buffett said during a live interview that aired during the meeting. And Abel is close to earning his American citizenship after growing up in Canada. He has been with Berkshire more than 25 years.
Buffett complained that too many people treat the stock market like a casino and gamble with their investments. He said the world would work better if more people treated each other well.
“If the whole world lived by the golden rule then it would be such a more wonderful society,” Buffett said.
Easing the transition to Abel
Signs of the transition were peppered throughout the 200,000-square-foot exhibit hall where Berkshire companies sold their products. A caricature of Abel playing his favorite sport of hockey is front and center on commemorative boxes of See’s Candy. At the Pilot Travel Center booth, pictures of Abel and Buffett are plastered on a semitrailer truck windshield, but Abel is in the driver’s seat. And shareholders lined up to buy a Squishmallow version of Abel to go with the latest versions of the popular Buffett and Munger stuffed dolls.
“Sadly we miss Warren and Charlie and that show which was fun, but it’s a business meeting for a lot of us and hearing what the businesses are doing is what it’s all about,” investor Chris Bloomstran, who is president of Semper Augustus Investments Group said.
Also, many people travel to Omaha primarily to meet up with like-minded value investors, who practice the approach that Buffett employed, and attend some of the investment conferences and meetings that are scheduled around Berkshire’s shareholder meeting.
“That’s why I’m really here, really here is to network with other people,” said Bob Robotti, who runs his own investment company.
Focusing on Berkshire’s businesses
Abel opened the meeting with a detailed discussion of how Berkshire’s biggest businesses are performing. He gave a granular explanation about the performance of Berkshire’s insurers, its BNSF railroad, utilities and manufacturers. He talked about how Berkshire is using artificial intelligence “to solve problems at our companies.”
But Abel also used a deepfake video of Buffett asking a question about Berkshire’s long-term prospects at the start of the Q-and-A session to highlight some of the cyber challenges and risks AI presents.
“It’s scary,” Buffett said later in the meeting. For example, AI could easily create an extremely convincing fake version of the leader of a country with nuclear weapons, he said.
Abel stressed over and over that Berkshire’s basic approach that trusts CEOs to manage the day-to-day operations of their companies will not change, and he won’t feel pressured to spend the company’s nearly $400 billion in cash prematurely.
“One of our greatest strengths at Berkshire is patience and being disciplined at allocating our capital,” Abel said. “We’re not anxious to deploy capital into subpar opportunities.”
Enduring culture at Berkshire
The CEOs of Dairy Queen, See’s Candy, Jazwares and Brooks Running all said very little has changed since Abel was promoted other than they now report to NetJets CEO Adam Johnson who is overseeing 32 retail and service businesses.
“I think this is a very deeply rooted culture that Warren has created, and I believe the transition to Greg is going to be rooted in those values that Warren has for 60 years instituted and will continue,” Brooks CEO Dan Sheridan said.
For years Buffett always said he was having too much fun running Berkshire to ever retire, but once the shock of his announcement in the final minutes of last year’s meeting wore off, the company’s executives quickly agreed this plan for the transition was better because Buffett can still be around to advise Abel.
“That’s the greatest combination right now, to be able to have that transition in leadership where Greg and Warren can still work together,” DQ CEO Troy Bader said as his staff sold Dilly Bars to shareholders.
Striving to improve
Abel is known to be a more demanding and hands-on boss than Buffett ever was, but he does that by challenging Berkshire’s CEOs to strengthen their competitive advantages while taking care of their customers. Abel asks tough questions and offers advice that his CEOs appreciate, but he doesn’t tell them exactly what to do.
And with Buffett remaining Berkshire’s chairman and its largest shareholder it’s unlikely that Abel will make any drastic changes.
Robotti said the performance of Berkshire’s businesses should be much more important to shareholders than the entertainment value of the annual meetings.
“My hope and expectation are they’re picking people who have competency in running a business and not necessarily public speakers and presenters,” Robotti said.
Berkshire said Saturday morning that its profits more than doubled in the first-quarter to $10.1 billion, or $7,027 per Class A share, as the value of its investments grew and most of its businesses improved.
Berkshire’s massive cash pile continues to grow, and it hit $397.4 billion at the end of the first quarter.
Most of Berkshire’s varied businesses reported better operating earnings this year. The insurance unit that includes Geico reported an underwriting profit of $1.7 billion, up from $1.34 billion last year. Profits also grew somewhat at BNSF railroad and Berkshire’s utility and manufacturing companies.
But Abel acknowledged there is more improvement needed — especially at BNSF, which lags behind most of the other major freight railroads.
