Greg Abel wants Berkshire Hathaway to outlast Warren Buffett
This wasn’t a quarter built for a victory lap. Berkshire recorded $1.6 billion of after-tax goodwill impairment losses in 2025. That’s accounting language for “some things we bought aren’t worth what we said they were,” and it’s the sort of detail Berkshire tends to treat as a footnote rather than a confession. A $1.56 billion noncash goodwill impairment disclosed in the 10-K made the fourth-quarter operating decline look worse than the underlying run rate.
Buybacks were still treated as an option, not a promise. Berkshire’s annual report spelt out the constraint that matters — repurchases won’t happen if they would push consolidated cash, cash equivalents, and Treasury bill holdings below $30 billion — and then delivered the punch line: “There were no share repurchases in 2025.” That decision looks even more intentional against the way Berkshire describes what actually matters. Before getting into the weeds, the annual report reiterated the company’s preference for operating earnings over GAAP net earnings, then pointed to the kind of fact Berkshire loves because it’s hard to argue with. In 2025, Berkshire produced $46 billion of net cash flows from operating activities.
The pitch is that Berkshire doesn’t need a new story because it already has the only one it truly believes in: disciplined underwriting, durable operating businesses, and capital allocation that waits until the math is attractive and the moment is right.
The 20-year promise in a 60-year shadow
Abel didn’t duck the obvious comparison. “Warren is obviously a very hard act to follow,” he wrote. Then he set a timeline intended to move the conversation out of the shadow. “Our owners’ time horizon extends beyond the tenure of any individual CEO,” Abel wrote. “I will not be your CEO for the next 60 years as simple arithmetic makes that — shall we say — an ambitious plan.”
“However, 20 years from now,” he said, “my intention is that you — or your descendants — will be proud that your company is even stronger.” This isn’t a brief interlude between eras. It’s the start of one.
Abel isn’t saying that he can replicate Buffett’s six-decade run. Abel is 63; even compounding has limits. And Abel isn’t saying he’s here to be a transitional figure, either. He’s laying claim to the kind of runway that forces investors to take him seriously on his own terms.
But at the same time, he kept Buffett close in the narrative. Buffett isn’t an emeritus mascot or a ceremonial chair. Abel wrote that Berkshire is “fortunate” to have Buffett in the office. The message to shareholders is clear: Continuity isn’t a talking point; it’s physically present in Omaha, Nebraska. That’s a neat bit of succession choreography: the new CEO is promising independence over the long run while reassuring everyone that the original source code is still easily accessible.
You can also see the next phase of Berkshire’s public choreography taking shape. At the May shareholder meeting, the first Q&A will reportedly feature Abel alongside Ajit Jain, and a second Q&A panel will bring in BNSF CEO Katie Farmer and NetJets CEO Adam Johnson. That’s still Berkshire, still slow, still annual-meeting-centric. It also widens the spotlight in a way that quietly supports Abel’s broader claim that Berkshire’s durability comes from “knowing who we are and how we operate,” not from any single figure stepping up to the microphone.
Abel is trying to do two things at once: keep the Buffett premium from evaporating overnight, and begin the long work of making sure Berkshire is valued as an institution rather than a personality cult.
The $373 billion question
Berkshire’s cash pile has become its own recurring character, the kind who barges into every scene and demands lines. Abel knows that, so he addresses it directly. “Many times in Berkshire’s history, some observers have suggested that our substantial cash position signals a retreat from investing,” he wrote. “It does not.”
The balance sheet shows the scale behind the debate. In the “Insurance and Other” segment alone, Berkshire lists $47.7 billion in cash and cash equivalents and $321.4 billion in short-term Treasury bills at year-end. In the annual report’s narrative, Berkshire describes “cash, cash equivalents and U.S. Treasury Bills” held by its insurance and other businesses as $369 billion, net of payables for unsettled Treasury bill purchases. Add the $4.2 billion of cash and cash equivalents sitting in the railroad, utilities, and energy segment, and you arrive at roughly $373 billion across the enterprise. That hoard creates a perpetual two-sided argument. One side sees optionality and crisis-ready firepower. The other sees the world’s most patient admission that Berkshire is too large to find enough deals worth doing.
Abel tried to settle the debate by pointing to what Berkshire did buy. In 2025, he wrote, Berkshire announced the acquisition of “two very different businesses: OxyChem and Bell Laboratories.” He went out of his way to describe Bell as the kind of company Berkshire loves — essential and run by people who sound like they would never use the phrase “brand refresh.” Abel then delivered the most Berkshire kicker possible: “We only wish it had been ten times bigger.”
Berkshire can still find things it likes. Berkshire’s problem is scale. Even good deals can feel like side quests when you’re managing hundreds of billions in liquid assets — and trying to deploy capital without compromising discipline.
The other reason Abel can afford to be patient is that Berkshire’s engine is still doing what it was built to do, even as it cycles. The annual report noted that Berkshire produced a combined ratio of 87.1% across its property and casualty businesses in 2025. It also acknowledged the less comforting part: After several years of improving pricing and policy terms, the industry began to see “a deceleration or reversal” in 2025, “particularly in the latter half of the year,” which “likely means we will write less property and casualty business for a period of time.”
Abel even sounded a bit like an executive trying to ward off hero worship in real time: “Nature controls the winds, not Warren and certainly not me.”
The cycle is shifting. Insurance underwriting earnings fell to $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter from $3.4 billion a year earlier, and insurance investment income declined to $3.1 billion from $4.1 billion. Berkshire’s operating earnings dropped alongside that, even as the company reiterated that quarterly investment swings are the kind of accounting mirage that can make investors feel informed while they’re actually being misled. Still, Abel promised to avoid investments “that undermine the fabric of society or could jeopardize Berkshire’s reputation.”
Abel is inheriting a company with an insurance cycle that remains strong but is no longer getting easier, a deal environment that offers plenty of activity but not enough needle-movers, and a balance sheet that can fund almost anything — as long as the price makes sense and the risk can be lived with. If Abel is going to be defined as Berkshire’s CEO, it probably won’t be by a quarter or a letter. It’ll be by a moment when patience stops being a virtue and starts being a test: The day the world breaks in a way that creates real bargains, and the new steward has to prove he can swing decisively.
Abel isn’t trying to dazzle investors with a new, exciting Berkshire. He’s trying to convince them that Berkshire’s old promises still work even when the storyteller changes. He even has a time frame for the bet. Not the next quarter. Not the next annual meeting. See you all in 20 years.
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