Berkshire Hathaway’s New Era: What to Watch at This Year’s Shareholder Meeting

Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A BRK.B will hold its annual shareholder meeting on Saturday, May 2. As the first shareholder meeting since former CEO Warren Buffett‘s retirement, the event is entering uncharted territory. New CEO Greg Abel will take the stage to provide a business update and will then be joined by Ajit Jain and other Berkshire executives for Q&A sessions thereafter.

How might the meeting differ from meetings past? What questions will Abel and his team answer? Will there be more discussion than in recent years about individual companies?

On a bonus episode of The Morning Filter podcast from March 3, 2026, Morningstar’s longtime Berkshire analyst Greggory Warren talked about his expectations for Berkshire Hathaway’s post-Buffett era. Here are some excerpts from the episode that reflect what shareholders might want to hear more about.

How Does Greg Abel Differ From Warren Buffett?

Susan Dziubinski: Let’s talk a little bit about Greg Abel, who has taken over as CEO at the end of last year. What would you say are his strengths? Is there anything that you think he might do differently?

Gregg Warren: He’s different than Buffett. He’s an operations guy. I think at this point in Berkshire’s lifecycle, they need an operations guy. Buffett was never interested in overseeing the operations. He was not interested in getting down in the weeds and understanding how the businesses operated. He was content with getting updates regularly from the managers and the capital coming up from below. So, a different management style to begin with. Like I said, I think that’s what Berkshire needs at this point. There are definitely places within the organization where I think they would benefit from having somebody who’s more operations-focused helping to improve things.

Greg’s always been, in our view, a little bit more of an alpha personality, a little bit more driven. Buffett is less confrontational and prefers to sort of be in the background. So it will change. Like I said, I think Berkshire needs to do that. We’ve gone from this historical 60-plus years where Buffett ran the show, built up this very, very large business, and had a certain way of doing things. And that worked, for the most part, for a long time. But it’s gotten to the point now where there’s just so much excess capital on the books. The environment in which they’re operating has shifted, or the way they’d like to operate, which is to continue to acquire companies and actually make big-scale investments in stocks. It’s a lot harder for them to do that than it was, say, 20 or 30 years ago.

Will Berkshire Sell Kraft Heinz?

Dziubinski: Let’s talk a little bit about one of their larger investments, and that’s Kraft Heinz KHC. Earlier this year, Berkshire filed paperwork sort of indicating, “Hey, market, we might get rid of our substantial stake in Kraft Heinz stock.” No promise, but by filing the paperwork, that’s sort of a big signal that they might. Before we talk a little bit about what might happen with that, give us a brief reminder about how big that Kraft Heinz stake is and how Berkshire first got involved with Kraft Heinz.

Warren: Yeah, it’s still about 28% of the equity, so that’s how much they own. Berkshire came by that by, originally, back in 2013, they joined up with 3G Capital and bought out Heinz Foods, which was stand-alone at that point. Their initial stake included preferred stock, plus cash for the equity. In 2015, 3G engineered the merger with Kraft Foods, which gave us the Kraft Heinz business. And it seemed like everything was all right. Berkshire had to give up the preferred stock within a few years. That was a nice 9% yield on that, which is disappointing to give up. Everything’s been on the stock since then.

Unfortunately, 3G’s way of running businesses can sometimes starve them for resources. They did a great job of improving the margins, but at the same time, they cut so much to the bone that it created problems for them. The packaged-food industry continues to change, so the dynamics of the business were not keeping up with what was going on within the industry. Even though it was last year, him and Abel were quite vocal about some of the changes Kraft was proposing; it wasn’t the first time. I mean, they’ve written the company down a few times over the years. Their cost basis, I think, is $8.5 billion right now.

Dziubinski: To your point, both Buffett and Abel were in the media last year saying they were dissatisfied with that investment and how it had turned out. Then, Kraft Heinz announced that it was going to split. I remember Buffett coming out and saying, “Yeah, well, that’s not going to solve it.” He said it more politely than that, but that’s really not going to solve the problems. Kraft Heinz recently backtracked and said, “We’re not going to split after all.” Given all of this, and given what Greg Abel said in the shareholder letter that came out over the last weekend, do you think they’re going to sell?

Warren: I think they’re sellers. I think the issue is it’s been a slow-motion separation. I think if you go back five, six years ago, Buffett was out there saying, “Hey, if 3G ever decided to sell, we’d be buyers.” And then 3G was selling, and they weren’t buyers. You get to the notion of, a couple of years back, he was like, this was a mistake, it didn’t pan out the way we thought. Last year, even before the announcement, they were going to split the company, and Berkshire pulled out of the board.

This confidence in Kraft Heinz has been slowly deteriorating over the years. I mean, they did the filing in early January, and the new CEO came out in early February and said, “Hey, we’re putting a pause on this.” I think they knew that they were probably going to put a pause on it. I don’t think it changed their mind. I think at this point, if I looked at the portfolio, it would probably be one of the highest likely stocks to be trimmed or sold in the near term.

What Other Stocks Might Berkshire Hathaway Sell?

Dziubinski: You wrote a great stock analyst note after Berkshire had filed this paperwork about Kraft Heinz. You had a great little line in there, which was something along the lines of: Kraft Heinz wasn’t going to be the only change we’d see in the public portfolio. You were expecting more streamlining to come. What makes you think that?

Warren: I think for two reasons. One, just from the fact that the portfolio is huge. We’ve already seen Berkshire willing to trim back stakes in Apple AAPL and Bank of America BAC the past couple of years. In fact, I think they’ve reduced the Apple stake by three-quarters and Bank of America by 60% just in the past few years. So, there’s a willingness there. I think it was $313 billion total, if you include the equity investment holdings at the end of last year. There’s definitely a case to be made that if Abel wants a portfolio that’s a bit more focused and a bit easier to pay attention to, then it makes sense to trim back some holdings. I think from that perspective, that’s one.

I think the other thing is that Todd Combs is gone now. He left at the end of last year, and they’re likely to continue to sell off holdings that he had. If you think about the holdings that he was probably responsible for, I mean, Visa V and Mastercard MA, probably jump out right away because those were bought in 2011. Those were holdings he had when he was at Castle Point, before he joined Berkshire. He’s always been focused on financial services, financial technology, and value stocks. I can’t remember the other one I was thinking about that could likely fall into that realm. Overall, there are other holdings within the portfolio that we’re likely to see fall off as the year progresses. We saw this, oh, was it 20 years ago, when Lou Simpson left because he was managing the Geico portfolio. It basically fell under Buffett’s auspices, and he gradually traded off some of those holdings.

Dziubinski: Now, you mentioned Bank of America and Apple, and Berkshire released its fourth-quarter 2025 13F a couple of weeks ago. That, of course, covered that final quarter, where Buffett was still CEO. They continued to scale back in Apple, though it’s still the largest holding, and continued to scale back in Bank of America. Do you expect these two stocks to remain in the portfolio over time, maybe just at smaller positions than they are, rather than the number one and number two?

Warren: It depends on your time frame.

Dziubinski: Yeah, that’s fair.

Warren: I don’t think they’re averse to selling. I think what people need to focus on, too, is why they are selling. In my view, yes, it’s building up cash that’s going to a big reserve that Greg can use, sort of a “break glass in case of emergency” big fund. I’ve always felt that way. I always felt the buildup in the cash and the balance sheet was to give him a lot more flexibility. I think there’s also some tax considerations going on here. I pointed this out a few years ago, when they first started selling Apple. Berkshire is subject to the 15% corporate alternative minimum tax. If they don’t pay an effective tax rate of more than 15% in cash taxes over a three-year running period, they will be taxed on their unrealized gains. Basically, what they’re doing is they’re realizing gains to ensure that they get over that hump over that time frame. That, in my opinion, is the main reason why we see them selling off Apple and Bank of America. Also, because they’re sitting on such huge, unrealized gains on them. Even after all the selling they’ve done, we’re still talking about billions. I think it’s like almost $50 billion on Apple and $21 billion, or something like that, on Bank of America. They’re sitting on unrealized gains. From that perspective, it makes sense for them to sort of approach it from that angle. These are names that help them in that regard. It’s harder for them to, say, go after and sell Coke KO or American Express AXP or Moody’s MCO, because the cost bases on those are so low.

What Changes Might Be Made in Berkshire’s Private Portfolio?

Dziubinski: Let’s talk a little bit about sort of the private company stake, which we don’t talk quite as much about. Do you expect changes there with Greg Abel in charge? I guess those would be harder changes to make in general because they own the companies outright.

Warren: I mean, we expect to see changes. Even though he didn’t say it in the letter, BNSF has to adopt precision scheduling. He said he was disappointed with the gap in profitability between them and his largest peers, which means Union Pacific UNP. That’s what we’ve been saying for five-plus years now, so that will be coming down the pike. There are definitely other areas where I felt for many years that Berkshire’s managers may be harming themselves in the long run by focusing more on sending capital up to Berkshire, to the corporate, rather than delving into sort of their long-term needs. We saw that with Geico, where the company underinvested in their tech stack, their ability to sort of improve and upgrade their technology systems to allow them to run telematics. It went on for such a long time until Ajit Jain came in there and basically was like, “We need to fix that.” Even then, it still took three or four years for them to get that right.

From that perspective, those are things I think he’s probably identified because he started overseeing the noninsurance businesses in early 2018. He talked to the managers, figured out where they were, and what their focus was. I think he’s always sort of held back on pushing anything harder. Really, he didn’t have the full authority because Buffett was still in charge. Now that he is in charge, I would expect to see some of that coming down a little bit harder.

What’s Geico Without Todd Combs?

Dziubinski: Last December, you mentioned that Todd Combs, who had been overseeing Geico, was leaving Berkshire for a new position at JPMorgan Chase JPM. What did you make of that?

Warren: Todd leaving was a bit of a surprise. I thought he did a fantastic job at Geico. I don’t think he got enough credit from investors for what a monumental task he had to deal with. If you don’t remember, he took over in December of 2019. At that point, Geico was already dealing with several years of poor underwriting performance based on poor decisions they made. They got too aggressive going after market share, and underwrote a lot of business that they shouldn’t have. It basically hurt them on the loss ratio front for many years. When he came in, he was going to target that.

And then, lo and behold, covid hit. The whole US auto insurance market got turned on its head for a number of years. We’re only now sort of getting back to normalized results. I mean, auto insurance prices are up 55% since the end of 2019. From that perspective, they had to do that. Because the cost of replacement vehicles, the cost of replacement parts, even the number of incidents, the amount of accidents, the severity of accidents, and stuff like that, spiked for a number of years. Some of that’s starting to come down, but the inflation is still there. The inflation didn’t go away.

We’ll have to see how things pan out from here. It would be nice to have him sort of at the helm. We’re looking at probably a multiyear declining price environment for this, because the state regulators at this point are starting to look at the profitability of the industry, and they’re calling for pricing to come down. From that perspective, it’d be interesting to see what happens. He hadn’t been as focused on the investment portfolio at that time. And he’s been sitting on the board at JPMorgan for a number of years. He’s very close with Jamie Dimon. He got an offer that he just couldn’t refuse. It’s a good opportunity for him. I understand why, but at the same time, I think it’s just one less good advisor that Abel will have around to help him.

What Will—or Won’t—Berkshire Do With All That Cash?

Dziubinski: Let’s talk a little bit about the cash hoard that seems to be growing every time we get a new earnings report or 13F to look at. Of course, Berkshire hasn’t bagged a big private deal in a long time. What do you think of that? Would you expect there to be more private deals with Greg Abel in charge? Do you think he’s going to be, I hate to say it this way, but, less picky than Warren Buffett would have been? What could be a catalyst here for that?

Warren: Berkshire’s had a tough time the past 10 to 15 years, mainly because Buffett has had a sort of strict discipline and criteria when it comes to doing acquisitions. His modus operandi has always been that he puts a price on the table. That’s it. He doesn’t renegotiate. He doesn’t rework it or anything else. That’s cost them some deals over the years. The problem is that, in that time frame, from the financial crisis till now, private equity, private capital, has raised tons and tons and tons of money. When you’re dealing with those guys who don’t have a problem pushing the envelope when it comes to price and deals and stuff like that, it just gets harder to sort of get anything done. Now, they’ve managed to do some things over time. I mean, Allegheny AWRY, in my opinion, was a good deal. The OxyChem deal looked like it was a pretty good deal last year. Precision Castparts, not so much. I think from that perspective, we’ll have to see what happens. I was a little disappointed with the letter and the fact that he dismissed one deal that would basically knock a big chunk of cash off the books.

Dziubinski: Yeah, let’s talk about that shareholder letter. That came out over the weekend. I read it. Of course, you read it and wrote about it. It was a very different letter than the letters we would get from Warren Buffett every year. So talk about it.

Warren: Well, all I can say is 18 pages. It was a lot to sift through. I feel like he did a good job from the outset of explaining Berkshire, what has made it successful, what’re the core priorities, the core values, the culture, the things that they should be focusing on, capital allocation decisions, risk management operational excellence; a lot of things that, in a way, looking to sort of just placate investors and say, “Look, I understand this business, I know what needs to be done,” and I think he needed to do that.

There were some areas where I was like, I wish you hadn’t committed yourself one way or another. One of them is basically saying, we’re not interested in buying another Class I railroad, which, I think, is boxing yourself in the corner a bit. In our view, they need to. If Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern NSC get together and have one huge transcontinental railroad, they’ll be able to bypass Chicago. They’ll be able to bypass Houston. They’ll be able to offer better service to customers shipping stuff out of the West Coast ports and vice versa. BNSF will be at a disadvantage. I think that they should be looking harder at CSX CSX. Granted, it’s probably going to cost them $90 billion to acquire it, if not a little bit more. But it would, A, reduce the cash on the balance sheet, and would help them in that regard. And, B, would ensure that they weren’t going to fall behind significantly relative to Union Pacific. I was a little disappointed with that. And the other thing is the idea of a dividend.

Dziubinski: Yeah, I wanted to talk about that, because, boy, wouldn’t a dividend help reduce the cash? That was something that you and I have talked about in the past. It’s something that, not just you, but a lot of people thought would be more likely once Buffett wasn’t CEO, because he was always very opposed to paying a dividend. Greg Abel came out in that shareholder letter and basically said, don’t hold your breath. There won’t be a dividend anytime soon.

Warren: I think my comments were that he just basically threw a dividend off the table. But I don’t know. I think Warren’s reason for not giving a dividend for all those years was, look, we can earn more with the retained capital. Instead, our shareholders can. For a long time, that was true. Past 15-plus years, I wouldn’t say that. I think that what kept him from ultimately changing his mind and actually initiating one was that basically, he wanted to leave that for the next guys. He didn’t want to take a tool out of the toolbox that they could have if they needed to, basically keep shareholders in place.

That said, initiating a dividend commits you. You have to keep paying it on a regular basis if that’s what you do. Yes, you could do a special dividend. That is an option. But then you leave shareholders wondering, well, when’s the next one? If you gave me this because you said you had too much excess capital, and now you have more capital than you did before … it just creates a lot of other issues. It’s fair to say that he’s going to sit on it for now, but it seemed a bit more dismissive than it needed to be in his verbiage. That’s why I said it seemed like he spent more time focusing on toeing the company line, as far as what Berkshire has done historically, than maybe carving out, this is what I would potentially look at down the road.

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