Berkshire’s Annual Meeting Shines Spotlight on Buffett Successor Greg Abel

The man who now leads Dairy Queen must be wondering how he wound up with such unjust desserts.

Greg Abel will helm his first-ever shareholder meeting as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway this weekend, taking the reins from Omaha’s folksy oracle, Warren Buffett, who announced his retirement almost exactly a year ago, in an event dubbed “The Legacy Continues.” But Class B shares of the company have been melting like a chocolate chip cookie dough Blizzard left on the counter too long. Relative to the S&P 500, Berkshire just clocked its worst performance since the turn of the century, lagging the index by 37 percentage points in the past 12 months. In other words, the market began pricing in the dimming glow of Buffett’s halo effect the moment he announced his retirement.

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Of course, the loss of the Buffett premium doesn’t explain the company’s entire 11% share price skid in the past year. Berkshire got dinged for conceding its big Kraft-Heinz merger bet had gone bust, while operating profit fell 6% in 2025 on roughly flat revenue. Meanwhile, operating profit from insurance underwriting slumped 54% in the most recent quarter, even as much of the rest of the industry thrived. And some investors have grown a bit antsy watching the giant holding company largely sit out the artificial intelligence boom that has lifted the S&P 500 by 25% in the past year. Abel’s only big move since taking over at the start of the year was executing a $9.5 billion acquisition of Occidental Petroleum’s chemicals business.

Consequently, at least some of the 30,000-odd attendees expected at this weekend’s event might be hoping Abel reveals some slick plans or a trick or two up his sleeve. On the other hand, doing nothing in the present moment is precisely how Buffett would act:

• Want proof? Just observe the Buffett Indicator (the ratio of total US stock market value to GDP), which currently sits near a record high of over 220%, signaling to Buffett-esque value investors that now is definitively not the time to buy.
• Whenever the tides turn, Abel will have a roughly $373 billion cash pile at his disposal, a near-record war chest for the company. In the meantime, Abel restarted share buybacks in March, ending a drought of more than a year.

Square Off: Abel isn’t the only man around who fancies himself Buffett’s heir apparent. Bill Ackman’s closed-end fund Pershing Square USA went public Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange, fulfilling his long-stated goal of running a Berkshire-esque publicly traded investment vehicle. Shares plummeted 18% on the first day, and despite clawing back some ground since, are still well below their $50 IPO price. At least Abel can take solace in knowing he’s not the only one who isn’t receiving the benefit-of-the-doubt Buffett premium.