Greg Abel’s tenure as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO is off to a robust start.
Abel, who succeeded Warren Buffett at the start of this year, oversaw a 17% jump in operating earnings to $11.3 billion in the three months to March 31, Berkshire’s first quarter earnings report revealed on Saturday.
Berkshire posted strong growth in insurance-underwriting profits, and higher earnings across its BNSF Railway, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, and manufacturing, service, and retailing units. However, its earnings were flattered by a foreign-exchange gain.
Abel and his team offloaded a net $8 billion of stocks last quarter, purchasing $15.9 billion of shares but selling $24.1 billion worth. The disposals marked the 14th consecutive quarter in which the company has been a net seller of stocks. The last time they bought more stocks than they sold was the third quarter of 2022.
Berkshire refrained from stock buybacks in January and February, but resumed repurchasing shares in March. It repurchased $24 million worth of Class A shares at an average price of about $730,000, and $210 million worth of Class B shares at an average price of around $487.
For comparison, it bought back around $17 billion worth of Berkshire shares over the course of 2022 and 2023.
The stock sales and relative lack of buybacks catapulted Berkshire’s pile of cash and Treasury bills to a record $380 billion, after deducting about $17 billion of payables for Treasury bills.
Berkshire’s cash pile has almost tripled in size over the last three years, from around $130 billion at the end of 2022. It now exceeds the current market capitalizations of some of the world’s biggest companies, including Netflix, Chevron, and Bank of America.
Buffett, a renowned bargain hunter, has struggled to find stocks and businesses worth buying in recent years. Abel said in his first letter to shareholders in February that he wouldn’t roll out a dividend or strike deals just for the sake of putting the cash pile to work.
The quarterly results are the first set since Buffett ended his six-decade tenure as Berkshire’s CEO. While the firm released Q4 results in February, after Buffett had stepped down, the “Oracle of Omaha” was still in charge when the results were compiled.
Abel, long groomed to be Buffett’s successor, will preside over his first annual meeting at the helm of Berkshire on Saturday.
He will take the stage for a Q&A with shareholders from 9:30 a.m. local time (10:30 a.m. ET). The Q&A is expected to be much shorter than Buffett’s traditional appearances onstage, which often ran to several hours as he discussed everything from stocks to politics to his favorite food and drink.
Business Insider’s Theron Mohamed will be in the press box watching the event live and reporting on what unfolds.
