The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting is scheduled for Saturday, May 2, in Omaha. It will be the first meeting since Warren Buffett's planned succession completed at the end of 2025 with Greg Abel taking the chief executive role. Charlie Munger died in November 2023. Buffett is still chairman and is expected to attend, but Abel will run the question and answer session. Roughly 30,000 to 40,000 shareholders typically travel to Omaha for the event, and CNBC will livestream the morning session as it has since 2016.
The numbers heading into the meeting are the cleanest summary of the company's posture. Berkshire ended 2025 with approximately $348 billion in cash and short-term treasuries, the largest cash pile in the company's history and roughly 27% of the company's market cap of $1.28 trillion. The cash has grown from $147 billion at the end of 2022, a build that has frustrated some shareholders and that Buffett's annual letters defended on the grounds that he could not find anything large enough at a price he liked.
The operating businesses had a strong 2025. Insurance underwriting, particularly at Geico and the reinsurance group, generated record profits. BNSF Railway grew operating income roughly 8%. Berkshire Hathaway Energy added regulated rate base in Iowa and Nevada. The manufacturing, service, and retailing segment, which includes Lubrizol, Marmon, Precision Castparts, and dozens of smaller businesses, posted modest single-digit growth. The portfolio holdings continued to be dominated by Apple, which Berkshire trimmed substantially in 2024 and 2025, taking the position from over $170 billion at the peak to roughly $61 billion as of the most recent 13F.
Greg Abel's profile as CEO is well established within Berkshire and less well known outside it. He ran Berkshire Hathaway Energy for over a decade, growing it through acquisition and operational discipline. Buffett named him as successor in 2021, four years before the actual handoff. His communication style is direct and operational rather than philosophical. The annual meeting question and answer format runs roughly five hours and historically depended heavily on Buffett's storytelling and willingness to range across topics. Abel will need to find his own version of that or change the format. Most longtime shareholders expect some change.
The four questions the shareholder base wants answered Saturday are clear. The first is capital allocation. With $348 billion in cash and limited recent acquisitions, what is the framework for deploying it. Buffett's standing answer was discipline and patience. Abel will be pressed for something more specific, particularly around buybacks. Berkshire repurchased only $2.9 billion of its own stock in 2025, the lowest level in five years. Some shareholders want the buyback authorization expanded.
The second is succession depth. Ajit Jain runs insurance. Greg Abel runs everything else. Both are in their sixties. The next generation of leadership at Berkshire is less visible to the outside world. Joe Brandon at Alleghany, Marc Hamburg as CFO, and the operating heads at the larger subsidiaries are likely to be referenced more frequently this year than in any prior meeting.
The third is the position in Apple. The company sold roughly two thirds of its Apple stake over six quarters. The reasons given in the 2024 and 2025 letters were tax-related, with Buffett noting that capital gains rates seemed unlikely to fall and that taking some chips off the table at high valuations made sense. Whether the trimming continues in 2026, and whether Berkshire has built positions in other technology names, will be a major focus.
The fourth is the dividend question. Berkshire has not paid a dividend since 1967. Buffett's framework was that retained capital deployed at high returns inside the business beat dividends. With cash piling up and reinvestment opportunities scarce, the question of whether the company should return capital through dividends rather than buybacks has surfaced more frequently in shareholder letters and investor commentary. Abel is likely to face this directly.