Berkshire’s Post-Buffett Era Opens With a Growing Cash Mountain and a Slow Deployment Start

The Oracle stepped aside, but his playbook is still running the show. Berkshire HathawayBRK.B

opened Greg Abel’s first quarter as CEO with a record ~$381B cash pile, a 14th straight quarter of net stock sales, and profits that more than doubled year over year. Abel stuck to the script, warning against the “ABCs — arrogance, bureaucracy, and complacency” creeping in.

• Berkshire Hathaway dumped $24B in stocks while buying $15.9B — its biggest sale since trimming AppleAAPL
  in 2024.
• Operating earnings rose 18%, while the conglomerate repurchased $234M of its own stock in March, ending a 22-month buyback drought.

The torch passes: Abel told the “Woodstock for Capitalists” crowd, “We’re not going to do AI for the sake of AI,” while doubling down on Berkshire Hathaway’s “core four” — Apple, American ExpressAXP

, Moody’sMCO

, and Coca-ColaKO

. However, Class A shares are down 12% since the day before Warren Buffett announced his exit, trailing the S&P 500 over the same stretch. And although Buffett called the succession “100% successful,” investors want to see that firepower deployed.