Anyone who has covered Berkshire Hathaway for more than a few years is familiar with the ritual of reading the company’s quarterly 13F filings. On a Friday afternoon, the PDF is posted on the SEC website. In Omaha and Manhattan, Bloomberg terminals begin to light up. The value investing world has started debating what Warren Buffett is secretly thinking after the wires analyzed the movements in less than an hour. Warren Buffett isn’t the one thinking this time, though. After leading the business for sixty years, he retired on the last day of 2025. When his successor, Greg Abel, filed his first 13F last week, it revealed a narrative that no anyone in the Buffett orthodoxy was prepared for.
The Alphabet position was tripled by Abel. Or rather, he didn’t simply triple it; by the end of March, he had increased his stake from roughly 17.85 million shares at year-end to nearly 58 million, a 224% increase that propelled Google’s parent company into Berkshire’s top five holdings, accounting for about 7% of the equity portfolio and roughly $23 billion at current prices. The move’s symbolic meaning is difficult to overlook for a corporation whose CEO famously regretted not purchasing Alphabet for years. Buffett’s late-career inclination in technology wasn’t merely carried over by Abel. He picked the exact Magnificent Seven name that his predecessor had publicly questioned most frequently, and he expedited it.
What Abel eliminated is nearly more remarkable. In a single quarter, sixteen positions were completely closed. Amazon is no more. Visa is no longer valid. Mastercard is no longer available. UnitedHealth is no more. Pool Corporation, Charter Communications, and Domino’s Pizza were all liquidated. Chevron was drastically cut. Once more, Bank of America was reduced. The 13F portfolio’s total value decreased somewhat from $274 billion to $263 billion, and its holdings decreased from approximately forty to twenty-six. Anyone who has spent years listening to value investors discuss the discipline of doing nothing will see how out of the ordinary this is. Berkshire did more than simply rebalance. It cleaned the house.
Meanwhile, the cash pile continued to increase. At the end of the quarter, Berkshire’s balance sheet showed almost $397.4 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term Treasuries. This nearly ridiculous amount subtly reveals how Abel and his staff are now interpreting market valuations. The filings and the brief remarks made by Berkshire officials during the annual meeting give the impression that the company’s leadership is still apprehensive about the overall stock market but is prepared to be extremely aggressive regarding a few individual bets. The patient-buyer-of-quality attitude that characterized most of the late Buffett era contrasts with that. It is more focused, more opportunistic, and more eager to take action.
Longtime Berkshire observers will pause over a minor element in the file. At Delta Air Lines, Abel created a new role valued at about $2.65 billion. For Berkshire, airlines are not a casual buy. During the early stages of the epidemic in 2020, Buffett notably referred to the sector as a “death trap” and resigned from his previous airline stakes, openly lamenting the loss. Abel’s decision to return to the industry during his first full quarter is a subtle statement of disagreement with the declared beliefs of his predecessor. Additionally, it shows that he is open to reexamining closed instances, which is one of the more difficult things for any prominent investor’s successor to do without appearing to be attempting to prove something.
In comparison, Apple’s position has now stopped declining. Abel seems to have drawn a line after Buffett cut what had grown to be one of the most profitable equities bets in American investing history over a period of years. That is a statement in and of itself. The idea that large technology platforms with strong competitive moats and shareholder-friendly capital return plans continue to be the most attractive places to invest significant capital is implied by holding the current Apple shareholding while actively developing Alphabet. Greg Abel built his career managing Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which includes pipelines, utilities, and regulated companies. His first action as the parent company’s leader was to put more of an emphasis on technology than Buffett ever did. It’s important to notice that.
From my perspective, it’s more of a subtle honing of the Buffett tradition than a split with it. The cash discipline is still in place. Share buybacks at current prices are still avoided. There is still a reluctance to follow trendy topics. The willingness to focus has changed. Over the course of several decades, Buffett’s portfolio grew to resemble a museum of American business. Abel is reducing that museum to a more focused, condensed, and thoughtful assortment of wagers. We won’t know for years if that technique outperforms Buffett’s patient accumulation plan in terms of long-term returns. However, the early indication is clear. Berkshire’s Warren Buffett era is truly over. The start of the Greg Abel era doesn’t appear to be what anyone in Omaha was anticipating.
