Greg Abel Writes First Letter to Berkshire Shareholders as Buffett’s $334 Billion Cash Pile Grows

Abel signals the transition is running on continuity, not change, with $373 billion cash ready to deploy when opportunity arises at scale.

The Letter Everyone Was Waiting For

For 55 consecutive years, the most-read document in American investing was Warren Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. Written in plain English, filled with wit, self-deprecation, and lessons that held up across decades, the letters became something bigger than a CEO update — they were a masterclass in how to think about money, risk, and time.

On Saturday, Greg Abel published his first one.

Gone is the folksy charm, the cherry Coke references, the one-liners. What replaced it was something more measured — a 20-page letter from a 63-year-old engineer-turned-executive who knows the shoes he’s stepping into and chose not to pretend otherwise. “Warren is obviously a very hard act to follow,” Abel wrote near the top, and then got down to business.

The message, read carefully, was a single word repeated in different forms across 20 pages: continuity.

What the Numbers Actually Said

Q4 2025 was Buffett‘s last quarter at the helm, and the headline number wasn’t pretty. Operating earnings fell 29.8% from a year earlier, landing at $10.2 billion. The culprit was insurance — underwriting income collapsed 54%, and insurance investment income dropped 25%. Berkshire’s railroad business BNSF was a bright spot, up 5.3%, and manufacturing, service, and retail edged up 3.3%.

Zooming out tells a different story. For the full year 2025, Berkshire posted operating earnings of $44.5 billion — below 2024’s $47.4 billion, but solidly above the five-year average of $37.5 billion. The company also generated $46 billion in net cash flow, above that same five-year average. The quarter looked weak. The year looked fine.

The cash pile — $373.3 billion in cash and Treasury holdings — drew immediate attention, as it always does. That number is down slightly from $382 billion the prior quarter, which Abel used as a point. He’s not hoarding it out of fear. “Our balance sheet is a strategic asset to be deployed at the right time,” Abel wrote. “It allows us to act decisively, invest when others are tentative or fearful, and stand firm when financial storms roll through.”

Berkshire also took a $4.5 billion write-down on the carrying value of its Kraft Heinz and Occidental Petroleum stakes, reflecting declines in those positions.

What Abel Is Actually Saying

The most important part of the letter wasn’t the numbers — it was the framework Abel laid out for how he intends to run the place.

On the equity portfolio, Abel named four positions Berkshire intends to hold with “limited activity”: Apple, American Express, Coca-Cola, and Moody’s. Notably absent from that list were Bank of America and Chevron, both significant holdings that Buffett had been trimming. Abel confirmed that investment manager Ted Weschler continues managing roughly 6% of the portfolio. Todd Combs, the other long-serving investment manager, has departed for JPMorgan.

On dividends, Abel was unambiguous. Berkshire will not pay one as long as retained earnings can generate more than a dollar of market value per dollar held. The board reviews the policy annually, but the standard is clear and the bar is high.

On buybacks, Berkshire repurchased no shares in Q4 — consistent with recent quarters where the stock price has made buybacks less attractive relative to other uses of other uses of capital.

On communication, Abel told shareholders not to expect quarterly commentary. Berkshire takes a long-term approach, and the letter will remain the primary vehicle.

The only real structural news: CFO Marc Hamburg will hand off duties to Chuck Chang on June 1, 2026, before officially retiring in June 2027. Mike O’Sullivan joins as Berkshire’s first-ever general counsel. The annual meeting is set for May 2, 2026 in Omaha.

The Transition Buffett Built

What makes this moment unusual is that Buffett, 95, isn’t gone. He remains chairman, comes into the office five days a week, and holds the largest shareholder stake in the company. The transition was designed to be gradual and deliberate — Abel was named heir apparent years ago, spent years running Berkshire’s non-insurance operations, and has been deeply embedded in the culture he’s now responsible for preserving.

Analyst Chris Bloomstran of Semper Augustus, one of the few who covers Berkshire in depth, estimates the company’s intrinsic value grew 9.3% last year to reach approximately $1.1 trillion, or $855,396 per A share — roughly 13% above current trading prices. He believes Abel may actually deploy capital more aggressively than Buffett had in his final years, writing that “it’s likely that Berkshire under Greg Abel’s leadership will commit a large portion of today’s outsized cash reserves at materially higher returns than are presently being earned on U.S. Treasuries.”

The market will take time to form its own view. What Abel gave shareholders on Saturday was a foundation — a statement of values, a reading of the balance sheet, and a disposition toward patience. It wasn’t Buffett. It wasn’t trying to be.

What to Watch

How Abel deploys the $373 billion: The single most-watched variable at Berkshire going forward. Any major acquisition or significant equity position build would be the first real signal of how Abel intends to run the portfolio on his own terms.

Insurance recovery: The segment that drove Q4’s decline. Watch whether underwriting income rebounds in Q1 2026 — if it does, the Q4 weakness looks like a blip. If it persists, it becomes a story.

Kraft Heinz: Berkshire filed in January suggesting it may sell some or all of its 325 million Kraft Heinz shares. That position, once worth nearly $24 billion, was marked at approximately $7.89 billion at the time of the write-down. Watch for any SEC disclosure of a sale.

Annual meeting, May 2, Omaha: Abel’s first public Q&A as CEO — alongside Ajit Jain in the morning, and BNSF CEO Katie Farmer and NetJets CEO Adam Johnson in the afternoon. A new panel, a new format, and the first chance for shareholders to put questions directly to the man now running the machine.