The 2025 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder Meeting occurred on May 3rd, 2025, and you’ve probably already heard the big news: Warren Buffett will step down as the CEO at the end of the year, to be replaced by Greg Abel (recent Fortune profile). He will remain Chairman of the Board. This is a big deal, but I view it more as a step change. This will allow Abel to directly manage all of their wholly-owned subsidiary companies with full authority, while still having Buffett around to make big deals in the event of a market crisis opportunity. I doubt Buffett’s day-to-day routine will change drastically.
In any case, I still enjoyed watching and listening to the entire Q&A session with Warren Buffett, Greg Abel, and Ajit Jain. The absence of Charlie Munger was still noticeable.
CNBC again has the broadcast rights. You can find the full 6+ hour live re-broadcast on CNBC YouTube and they have also uploaded most of it to the CNBC Buffett Archives site. Their official transcript is not yet available, but you can find a helpful transcript from Steady Compounding or listen to the audio podcast version here. Personally, I like to listen to the audio in the car once, and then read through the transcript for the second round.
Here are a few personal takeaways and notes.
Nothing new regarding the cash pile. They only swing when it’s a fat pitch. They remain disciplined and remain patient and opportunistic. From Greg Abel:
Looking at our balance sheet, as Warren commented, we will have a fortress of a balance sheet. I thought Sue Decker, our lead director, said it well yesterday. We’ve got a significant amount of cash right now, but it’s an enormous asset to have that and that will continue to be a philosophy. When we can deploy it, we’ll deploy it well. We recognize it as a strategic asset that allows us to weather difficult times and not be dependent on anybody.
From Buffett:
We don’t think it’s improper for passive investors to make a few simple investments and sit with them for life. But we’ve made the decision to be in the business, so we think we can do a little better by behaving in a very irregular manner.
To young workers: find people you respect and really want to work for. Don’t worry about the salary as much.
You really want to work at something you enjoy. I’ve had five bosses in life and I liked every one of them – they were all interesting. I still decided that I’d rather work for myself than anybody else. But if you find people that are wonderful to work with, that’s the place to go. I’ve told my kids basically that you don’t get lucky like I did when I found what interested me at seven or eight years of age. It could have taken a lot longer, but you want to find what you love.
Alternatively, find a good teacher or mentor in an area you are passionate about:
People that teach, in general, love having a young student who’s actually really interested in the subject, and they’ll spend extra time with you. I ran into that. I had Graham and Dodd at Columbia. Dave Dodd treated me like a son basically. But I was interested in what they were saying and they found it kind of entertaining that I was so interested, so I would look around at what really fascinates you. I wouldn’t try and be somebody else.
On crypto and trying to get rich quick without creating any value. Much of crypto is based on the Greater Fool theory.
If very stupid things are happening around you, you do not want to participate. If people are making more money because they’re borrowing money or participating in securities that are pieces of junk but they hope to find a bigger sucker later on, you have to forget that. That’ll bite you at some point. The basic game is so good, and you’ve been so lucky to be born now.
A temporary 15% drop in the stock market is nothing.
If it had gone up 15% instead of down 15%, people would take that with remarkable grace. But if it makes a difference to you whether your stocks are down 15% or not, you need to get a somewhat different investment philosophy because the world is not going to adapt to you. You’re going to have to adapt to the world.
You will see a period in the next 20 years that will be a “hair curler” compared to anything you’ve seen before. That just happens periodically. The world makes big mistakes, and surprises happen in dramatic ways. The more sophisticated the system gets, the more the surprises can come out of left field.
Meanwhile, paying 1% annually constantly every year for investment management fees is a lot.
Incidentally, if all of you were paying 1% for investment management fees at Berkshire last year, you would have paid $8 billion for managing, and you really wouldn’t have had to do it. Investment management is a very good game because other people put up the capital and you charge them for the capital whether they do well or not, and then you charge them a lot more if they do well. It’s a well-designed business for the people who practice it – and who can blame them? That is capitalism.
Most of the time, nobody has much of an edge.
Charlie always pointed out that we made most of our money out of about eight or nine ideas over 50 years. We talked about it every day and read every report and did everything else. But if you think you can get an idea a day from listening to your broker or reading financial information, forget it. Every now and then you get extraordinary opportunities, and most of the time you don’t have much of an edge.
Overall, listening to this session as a Berkshire shareholder reminds me that the company retains a long-term mindset, thinking in decades and not quarters. A lot of companies say things like they think for the long-term, they put shareholder interests first, but their actions don’t match.
I am thankful for these reminders of how things should be done. Of course, it’s sad that things are changing, and Buffett’s increasing age does remind me of my own. I can’t believe how long he’s been at this. Carpe Diem.
Past BRK meetings: