The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting kicks off Saturday May 2 at the CHI Health Center in Omaha. This year is the first time since 1965 that Warren Buffett will not run the meeting from the stage. Buffett stepped down as CEO at the end of 2025 and now serves as chairman emeritus. Greg Abel, who took over as CEO on January 1, will run the question and answer session alongside Vice Chairman Ajit Jain. Charlie Munger's empty chair will not be replaced. It will simply not be there.
Last year drew 35,000 shareholders to Omaha. This year's registered attendance has crossed 41,000, which would be the largest in the meeting's history. The interest is not nostalgia, though some of it is that. The interest is what Berkshire looks like in the post Buffett era. The company sits on roughly 348 billion dollars in cash, which is the largest cash position any non bank corporation in the world has ever held.
That cash position is the central question shareholders are bringing to Omaha. Buffett built the cash pile through 2023, 2024, and 2025 by selling Apple, trimming Bank of America, and reducing the equity portfolio across the board. He famously refused to deploy capital into a market he considered overvalued. With Buffett in the chairman seat, the discipline held. Without him as CEO, shareholders want to know whether Abel will follow the same approach or accelerate deployment.
Abel has been quiet publicly since taking over. His one notable interview came in February with the Wall Street Journal, where he described his approach as steady and committed to Berkshire's existing structure. He did not commit to either holding the cash or deploying it aggressively. The annual meeting is the first venue where shareholders will hear him answer follow up questions in real time, and the questions will be sharper than the ones a brand new CEO usually faces.
The operating businesses that drive Berkshire's earnings are mostly fine. BNSF Railway had a soft 2025 but is showing recovery in 2026 first quarter freight volumes. Geico is back to underwriting profitability after the 2022 to 2024 difficult stretch. Berkshire Hathaway Energy continues to expand in renewables and grid storage. The reinsurance businesses, which Ajit Jain runs, had one of their best years in 2025. The operating earnings number that comes out Friday May 1 will frame the meeting.
Apple remains the largest equity position at roughly 75 billion dollars, down from a peak of 174 billion in 2023. The trim has slowed. Bank of America has stabilized as the second largest holding. Coca-Cola, American Express, and Chevron round out the top five. The portfolio looks much more concentrated than it did three years ago, and Abel will get questions about whether that concentration is intentional or whether more selling is coming.
The succession structure beyond Abel is also on the table. Howard Buffett, Warren's son, has been chairman since January and his role is largely ceremonial as expected. Ajit Jain, who runs insurance, is 73 and his eventual successor has not been named. Todd Combs and Ted Weschler still manage subsets of the equity portfolio, though their combined share of Berkshire's stock book remains under 15 percent. Shareholders want to know who the next generation looks like.
The cash deployment question has dollar signs attached. If Berkshire returned all 348 billion in excess cash to shareholders, that would be roughly 240 thousand dollars per Class A share or 158 dollars per Class B share. Nobody expects a special dividend. A major buyback is more likely if the stock pulls back. So is a single very large acquisition, which Buffett famously called the elephant gun and which he never quite fired in his last decade.
Abel's track record is in operating businesses, not capital allocation. He ran Berkshire Hathaway Energy for 16 years and grew it into one of the largest utility holding companies in the country. He understands utilities, he understands acquisitions in regulated industries, and he understands how to run people. What is less clear is whether he has the same instinct for major equity portfolio decisions that defined Buffett's tenure. Some shareholders see that as a feature, not a bug.
The meeting agenda runs from 7 a.m. Saturday morning through Sunday afternoon. The CNBC livestream begins at 9:45 a.m. Central. The full question and answer session runs five hours with a lunch break. Abel and Jain will field shareholder questions on a rotating basis with no preview of what they will be asked. That format has been Berkshire tradition for forty years and Abel chose to keep it. The decision to keep the format is itself a signal about how Abel intends to lead.
Berkshire stock is up roughly 11 percent year to date through Friday's close, ahead of the S&P 500's 9 percent return. The company's market capitalization sits at 1.18 trillion dollars. None of that is unusual. What is unusual is the moment, and shareholders are paying for plane tickets to Omaha to see it for themselves.