Berkshire Celebrates Buffett's 60 Years as CEO as Abel Emphasizes $400 Billion Cash Pile

Six minutes after the meeting began, a Buffett "jersey" with a large 60, reflecting his 60 years as Berkshire CEO, was raised to the rafters of the CHI Health Center arena. That was followed by a three-minute video produced by Berkshire showing videos and photos from those six decades. Buffett then spoke from his seat on the floor saying, "This is not my show today, but there are two anniversaries that we are kind of celebrating today." It's been about one year since the board approved Abel as CEO in the wake of Buffett's surprise announcement that he would be stepping down, and "you couldn't have made a better decision." "That's been a hundred percent successful. Greg is doing everything I did and then some, and he's doing it better in all cases. He's the right person." It's also been roughly 10 years since Berkshire bought $35 billion of Apple shares. Buffett said that's turned into roughly $185 billion, "and I didn't have to do a damned thing." He praised outgoing CEO Tim Cook for making that investment so successful. The first Q&A session began with a "deepfake" video version of "Warren from Ohama" asking Abel why Berkshire shareholders should hold on to their stock for the long term. In his reply, Abel highlighted the company's now almost $400 billion in cash, saying it "creates a unique opportunity" for investment. If there is a "strong value proposition," Berkshire "will be prepared to act decisively and with significant capital. That's what it's there for." And then, during the lunch break, viewers of the CNBC.com live stream and attendees in the arena saw a live interview of Buffett by CNBC's Becky Quick. Asked why it's not a good environment for Berkshire to invest right now, Buffett said, "We've never had people in a more gambling mood that now [in the financial markets] but that doesn't mean that investing is terrible. "It does mean that prices for an awful lot of things will look very silly." He also repeated his long-held practice of only investing in companies that he understands, and "I understand fewer of the businesses as a percentage of the whole than I did ten years ago. I've not learned new industries for some years." The entire 25-minute interview appears below. In what it called a one-time announcement two months ago, Berkshire said it had resumed stock buybacks on March 4 after an almost two-year pause. The SEC filing didn't include any details. A week later, however, Berkshire filed a definitive proxy statement ahead of its annual meeting that included a count of the company's outstanding shares as of March 4, the meeting's record date. As we reported at the time, a comparison to a share count in late January revealed Berkshire had bought back the equivalent of 309 Class A shares, or roughly $226 million worth, on that day. Some investors hoped it would be the start of some aggressive repurchasing. It hasn't happened, at least so far. The company's first quarter 10-Q released Saturday says Berkshire bought back $234 million of stock in all of March, only $8 million more than the March 4 amount, even though the shares slipped lower through the end of the month. And the share count as of April 14 listed in that 10-Q indicates there weren't any significant repurchases in the first two weeks of last month, either.