Berkshire 2026 AGM: $397B Cash, $235M Buyback
Key Takeaways
- Berkshire's Q1 2026 cash pile hit a record $397.4 billion. Operating profit rose 18%, insurance underwriting up 28.5%. The company was a net seller of $8.1 billion in equities.
- Buybacks resumed March 4 but totalled only $235 million in Q1 — $226 million of which hit the tape on the resumption day itself. The buyback is a permission, not a programme.
- Abel introduced a 'core four' framework — Apple, American Express, Moody's, Coca-Cola — plus the Japanese trading houses as the foundation of the equity portfolio. Top five holdings = 61% of fair value.
- BRK has trailed the S&P 500 by over 30 percentage points since Buffett's May 2025 step-down announcement. The first AGM under Abel will not close that gap quickly.
- Track five things over the next 2-4 quarters: buyback pace, equity portfolio churn, BHE utility capex, insurance underwriting margin, and any signs of a Buffett-style 'phones not being answered' deployment trigger.
Berkshire Hathaway's cash pile hit a record $397.4 billion at the end of Q1, up from $381.6 billion at the prior peak. In the same quarter, the company bought back $235 million of its own stock — and roughly $226 million of that hit the tape in a single day on March 4. The remaining 60-odd trading sessions of Q1 produced $9 million of repurchases. That is the entire window in which Greg Abel could have signalled what kind of capital allocator he intends to be.
He used Saturday's annual meeting in Omaha — his first as CEO — to answer that question directly. The answer is patience. Berkshire is not breaking up. The cash hoard is not being deployed at current prices. Buybacks have resumed but at a token pace. And the equity portfolio is being modestly reshuffled around what Abel now calls the "core four" — Apple, American Express, Moody's and Coca-Cola — plus the Japanese trading houses.
The pragmatist read on this AGM: Abel has codified continuity, not reinvented it. Shareholders who wanted aggressive deployment, a special dividend, or a structural rethink will not get one. Shareholders who own Berkshire for the framework — patience, balance-sheet flexibility, owner-operator discipline — got their thesis confirmed. The 30-percentage-point gap to the S&P 500 since Buffett announced his step-down is the price of that patience. Whether it pays is the only question that matters now.
The Q1 print: operating profit jumps, equity selling continues
Berkshire posted an 18% year-over-year increase in Q1 operating profit, with insurance underwriting up 28.5% to roughly $1.7 billion. The wholly-owned businesses delivered. Insurance, the railroad, the energy operations and the consumer franchises ran well in a quarter the rest of the market spent worrying about tariffs, the Iran war, and a re-acceleration in Core PCE.
The equity portfolio activity tells the more interesting story. Berkshire was a net seller of about $8.1 billion in stocks during the quarter — $24.1 billion sold, $16 billion purchased. That is the shape of a portfolio being trimmed and tightened, not one being expanded. Some of the selling reflects the departure of investment manager Todd Combs to JPMorgan at the end of 2025 and the reshuffling of positions he had owned. Some reflects Abel's own active hand: he told shareholders he is "absolutely collaborating" with Buffett on equity decisions and intends to add to or rightsize positions over time.
The result is a cash pile that surged past $397 billion. Excluding BNSF cash and subtracting Treasury-bills payable — Berkshire's preferred internal metric — the figure is $380.2 billion, up 3.0% from year-end. Either way, the conglomerate has more dry powder than at any point in its history, and it accumulated more of it during a quarter when Abel could have started spending.
The buyback paradox: resumed in March, then almost nothing
Berkshire resumed share repurchases on March 4 after a pause of nearly two years. The market took that as a signal. Some investors expected a sustained programme as the stock slipped lower through the rest of the month — BRK.A trading near $710,300 and BRK.B near $473 at meeting time, with the conglomerate's market cap just above $1.02 trillion and a trailing P/E of 15.24 on the B shares.
The Q1 10-Q tells a different story. Of the $235 million bought back across the entire quarter, $226 million was the March 4 transaction — the equivalent of 309 Class A shares purchased on a single day. The remaining $9 million was scattered across the rest of the month. The share count as of April 14, disclosed in the same filing, indicates no significant repurchases in the first two weeks of April either.
This is not what "resumed buybacks" usually looks like. At $235 million on a $1.02 trillion market cap, Berkshire repurchased roughly 0.023% of itself in Q1. The trailing P/E on the B shares was 15.24 at meeting time. Buffett's long-standing stated buyback discipline — which he formalised in 2018 — is to repurchase only when shares trade meaningfully below intrinsic value, with 1.2x book historically cited as a soft floor. The Q1 pace is consistent with shares trading above that level, even after a 6% YTD decline.
For shareholders, the takeaway is that the buyback resumption is a permission, not a programme. Abel has the authority to repurchase. He is choosing not to, even with the stock down 6% year-to-date and trailing the S&P 500 by more than 10 percentage points so far in 2026. Read that as discipline if you trust the framework. Read it as inflexibility if you do not.
The "core four" framework — Abel's clearest portfolio signal
Abel introduced a framework at the AGM that should change how shareholders model the equity book. He described what he called the "core four" — Apple, American Express, Moody's and Coca-Cola — as the foundation of Berkshire's $300-billion-plus equity portfolio. Add the Japanese trading houses (Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Itochu, Marubeni, Sumitomo) as a fifth pillar, with a long-term commitment Abel made explicit. Beyond those, Bank of America, Chevron and Alphabet got name-checks. Berkshire bought roughly $4 billion of Alphabet in Q3 2025.
The top five holdings — American Express, Apple, Bank of America, Coca-Cola and Chevron — accounted for 61% of the equity portfolio's aggregate fair value at the end of March. That is concentration in line with the Buffett era. What is new is the framing. Buffett rarely talked about a "core four." He talked about businesses he understood and managers he trusted. Abel's vocabulary is closer to a conventional CIO's, and that is an information event: Abel is signalling that the portfolio is no longer a black box driven by Buffett's reads, but a more deliberate, layered structure with a top tier he intends to defend and a longer tail he is willing to actively manage.
That aligns with the Combs reshuffling and with the Apple comments. Buffett used his floor-microphone time to remind shareholders that Berkshire's roughly $35 billion Apple investment a decade ago is now worth around $185 billion — "and I didn't have to do a damned thing." That is both a credit to outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook (who was in the room) and a defence of Berkshire's continued large position even after the recent paring. Apple stays in the core four. So does Buffett's relationship to it.
Abel also disclosed that he is using his entire after-tax salary of $15 million to buy Berkshire stock personally and intends to do so every year as long as he is CEO. That detail first surfaced earlier in the year at $373B cash levels — the AGM confirmed it as ongoing policy.
Where Abel does pivot: utilities and the data-centre buildout
If you want the actionable Abel edge — the place where his operating background changes the company's trajectory — it is utilities. Abel ran Berkshire Hathaway Energy before becoming CEO. He framed the data-centre buildout as the largest growth opportunity in the energy business in years. His Iowa benchmark: hyperscaler peak load is currently at 8% of available capacity. The industry is targeting 5-10%, and Abel told shareholders Berkshire sees "opportunities to grow that by 50% over the next five years or potentially more."
That is the kind of capex-intensive, regulated, long-duration buildout Berkshire has historically done well. It is also the most concrete forward-looking number anyone offered all day. With the 10-year Treasury at 4.40% and the Fed funds rate at 3.64%, the cost-of-capital math for utility capex is tighter than it was, but still workable for projects with 30-year regulatory clarity.
Abel's caveat matters too. He said the hyperscalers and the data-centre operators "have to bear the full cost" of the energy they consume — meaning Berkshire is not going to subsidise AI demand by passing costs through to residential ratepayers. That is the right answer politically (electricity-affordability complaints are mounting in Iowa, Virginia and Texas) and the right answer economically (it preserves the regulatory compact that lets utility ROEs exist).
BNSF Railway is the other operating-side story. Abel announced the railroad is hiring engineers and developers to build AI tools internally rather than license them from outside vendors. He framed it as "a massive challenge" that "doesn't happen overnight." After two rounds of layoffs in 2024 and 2025, BNSF needs the productivity gains. Read this as Abel's operating instinct in action — he prefers to own the toolchain rather than rent it.
The capital-allocation pivot that did not happen
Several things shareholders might have hoped for did not show up at the AGM.
No break-up. Asked directly whether there was ever a point at which it would not make sense for Berkshire to remain a conglomerate, Abel said "absolutely not." He called Berkshire "an efficient conglomerate" with no layers of management, and said the firm does not see itself divesting subsidiaries or breaking off groups. The conglomerate-discount thesis — that Berkshire would be worth more in pieces — was foreclosed.
No special dividend. The cash pile did not produce a one-time return-of-capital announcement. Buffett used his sideline interview with Becky Quick to defend the cash position: "It isn't our ideal surrounding area or environment in terms of deploying cash for Berkshire." When asked what would change his mind, Buffett said it would come when "nobody else will answer their phones" — code for a market dislocation in which sellers desperate enough to lift Berkshire's bid emerge. That is not a 2026 environment with the S&P 500 closing May 1 above 7,230.
No aggressive equity buying. Abel signalled active management of the existing book but no large new positions. Berkshire was a net seller in Q1 by $8 billion. Buffett's tonal note on the markets was withering: "We've never had people in a more gambling mood than now." He compared the financial markets to "a church with a casino attached" and said one-day options buying or selling "is not investing, it's not speculating — it's gambling." That is not a man getting ready to deploy $400 billion.
The collective signal: Berkshire's framework has not changed. The patience trade is still on. If you bought Berkshire expecting a step-change under Abel, the AGM was a correction. If you bought it for the framework, the AGM was a confirmation.
The performance gap: how much patience can shareholders afford?
Berkshire's Class A stock is down nearly 6% in 2026 and on pace for its first losing year since 2015. The S&P 500 is up about 5.6% over the same window. Over the last 12 months, BRK is down more than 10% while the S&P has surged more than 28%. Since Buffett signalled his step-down plans in May 2025, Berkshire has trailed the index by more than 30 percentage points.
Some of that is structural. Berkshire is heavy in insurance, railroads and consumer staples — exactly the sectors that lag in an AI-and-megacap rally. None of the Mag 7 names that have driven the S&P higher this cycle are top Berkshire holdings except Apple, and Berkshire's Apple stake is well below its 2023 peak after years of paring.
Some of it is the Buffett premium unwinding. There has always been a soft equity premium for the Oracle himself — the comfort of owning shares the world's best-known investor was personally allocating. That premium has been bleeding out over the past 12 months. The handover is now done. The premium will not come back, no matter how well Abel performs.
The pragmatist question is whether the framework still works in the post-Buffett era at the prices the market is offering. The cash pile is a real call option on a market dislocation. Insurance underwriting is genuinely strong. The utility and rail businesses have visible operating tailwinds. None of those will close a 30-percentage-point gap quickly. The trailing P/E of 15.24 on the B shares is neither the screaming bargain that would justify Berkshire buying itself in size nor a premium that suggests sentiment has fully rebuilt. It is, in other words, a sit-and-wait price.
What closes the gap is either (1) a meaningful market drawdown that Berkshire actually deploys against, (2) accelerated buybacks once the price-to-book breaks below ~1.2x, or (3) a multi-year period in which the AI/megacap leadership rotation reverses. Pragmatist shareholders should be honest that path 1 is the only one Berkshire can engineer itself, and Buffett told us on Saturday it has not arrived yet.
What Berkshire shareholders should track over the next 2-4 quarters
Five things will tell you whether Abel's framework is working.
First, the buyback pace. The next 10-Q will show whether $235 million was the floor or the ceiling. If BRK trades through 1.2x book and the buyback line item stays at low-hundreds of millions, that is a signal the company is running its repurchase budget more conservatively than Buffett did. Watch the share-count disclosure each quarter, not just the headline.
Second, the equity portfolio churn. Combs's departure tail will keep producing position changes through 2026. Watch for additions to the "core four" (especially Moody's and Coca-Cola, where Berkshire is at or near its long-term position limits) and for whether the Alphabet stake gets meaningfully expanded beyond the $4 billion Q3 2025 entry. The 13F filings every 45 days are the data source.
Third, utility capex. BHE's Iowa peak-load expansion and any new data-centre interconnect agreements will show up in segment capex disclosures. A 50% growth target over five years is concrete and falsifiable. If actual capex tracks below it, the most actionable Abel-era growth story is in trouble.
Fourth, the insurance underwriting margin. Q1's 28.5% growth in underwriting profit included favourable conditions and could moderate. Watch for Berkshire's Hormuz program participation (Ajit Jain confirmed Berkshire has a small role in the U.S.-Navy-escorted insurance program but had written no deals as of the AGM). The Iran war's Hormuz disruption is a once-in-a-decade pricing window for marine insurers willing to take the risk.
Fifth, cash deployment triggers. Buffett's "phones not being answered" line is a useful heuristic. Watch for credit-spread widening, equity volatility spikes, or distressed-seller news flow in industries Berkshire understands (insurance, railroads, energy, consumer franchises). When those align, the $397 billion will start moving — and not before.
The rest is noise. Headlines about meeting attendance, jersey ceremonies, Bill Murray cameos and deepfake Buffett videos make for good copy. They tell you nothing about returns.
Conclusion
The Berkshire shareholders own today is the same Berkshire they owned a year ago, minus Buffett at the microphone. Greg Abel's first AGM as CEO confirmed every element of the existing framework — patience over deployment, concentration over diversification, owner-operator discipline over financial engineering. That is the bet you made when you bought BRK. The AGM gave you no reason to abandon it.
It also gave you no reason to expect quick relief. The 30-percentage-point gap to the S&P 500 since Buffett's step-down announcement is real, and it will not close because of an annual meeting. It will close — if it closes — through some combination of a market dislocation Berkshire can deploy against, accelerated buybacks at lower prices, or a leadership rotation away from the AI/megacap names. None of those are in management's gift on a 90-day horizon.
The pragmatist conclusion is straightforward. If you trust the framework, hold and add on weakness. If the patience trade has gotten too painful, sell into strength and acknowledge you did not actually buy Berkshire for what Berkshire is. The first AGM under Abel did not offer a third option. That clarity is worth something — even at a 6% YTD discount.
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