Notes from my 27th consecutive Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
I just spent the weekend in Omaha, Nebraska attending my favorite event of the year...
It was my 27th consecutive Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B) annual meeting – and the first without Charlie Munger.
Longtime readers know that other than my parents and my wife, Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett and his lifelong business partner Munger have had the biggest impact on my life.
They didn't just help teach me investing – the reason I originally started coming to the Berkshire meetings – but in every other aspect (and the reason I keep coming to these every year): habits, how to treat people, becoming a learning machine, integrity, duty, etc.
And when I go to the annual meetings, I also enjoy catching up with old friends, making new ones, and meeting dozens of my longtime readers/subscribers (I posted pictures on Facebook here)...
- One shared with me how much money he made on Meta Platforms (META) when it traded below $100 per share after I pounded the table on it in a six-part series beginning on November 1, 2022.
- Another said she just bought her 16-year-old twins a new car rather than passing down the old family car after reading my articles about car safety.
- And many said they especially enjoyed the recent article I co-authored with my daughter about how she uses LinkedIn to network her way into jobs.
Thanks for all the kind words!
In today's e-mail, I'll cover the highlights from the annual meeting... and tomorrow I'll focus on the Berkshire's performance and update my estimate of the stock's intrinsic value.
First off, Berkshire shareholders will be relieved to know that Buffett is still going strong at age 93.
He shared the stage with two of his successors, Greg Abel and Ajit Jain, but it was, as always, the Warren Buffett Show... and he didn't disappoint.
All morning and again for two hours after lunch, Buffett deftly fielded dozens of questions – pulling facts out of the air, such as the number of auto deaths per hundred million miles driven.
If I had closed my eyes and listened to him yesterday versus, say, 25 years ago, I wouldn't have noticed any difference.
The one big difference, of course, was Munger's absence.
We all missed his wisdom and weren't on the edge of our seats waiting for one of his classic zingers.
The meeting began with a beautiful 24-minute video of his life and partnership with Buffett, which you can watch here (starting at 30:53), followed by a four-minute video (starting at 55:15) of Buffett crediting Munger with being the "architect" of Berkshire.
(You can watch videos of the morning and afternoon sessions here and here, respectively... and here's a transcript of the entire meeting.)
In one of the funniest and most poignant moments, early in the meeting Buffett answered a question and then – as he has done thousands of times over many decades – he turned to his left and said, "Charlie?"
Of course, Abel was sitting there and everyone laughed and clapped as Buffett said, "I'd actually checked myself a couple times already... I'll slip again." (You can watch the video of it here.)
In another poignant moment, a young boy asked Buffett, "If you had one more day with Charlie, what would you do with him?" For the next seven minutes (you can watch it here), Buffett eulogized Munger and ended with these wise words:
What you should probably ask yourself is that who do you feel that you'd want to start spending the last day of your life with?
And then figure out a way to start meeting them tomorrow and then meet with them as often as you can. Why wait until the last day? And don't bother with the others...
One shareholder asked Buffett to comment on something he has said many times in the past – that he could earn 50% annual returns if he had only $1 million to invest. You can see his reply here. Excerpt:
I don't know what the equivalent of Moody's manuals or anything would be now, but I would try and know everything about everything small, and I would find something. And with a million dollars you could earn 50% a year.
But you have to be in love with the subject. You can't just be in love with the money.
Most of the meeting, as always, focused on Berkshire Hathaway: its businesses, capital allocation, succession plans, etc.
I was glad to see Buffett clarify that Abel, his successor as CEO, will not only run the operating businesses, but make all final capital allocation decisions – including stock picks (for more on this, see this CNBC article: Warren Buffett says Greg Abel will make Berkshire Hathaway investing decisions when he's gone).
For years, there had been ambiguity about this... Would Ted Weschler and Todd Combs handle all stock picking? Who would make the final decisions about buying private businesses like Iscar or making negotiated investments like Goldman Sachs (GS) and Bank of America (BAC)?
I had also been unsure about Buffett's succession plan. You had Jain running insurance over here, Abel running the operating businesses over there, and Combs and Weschler picking stocks – it just seemed very muddy.
At the end of the day, there needs to be one final decisionmaker. I assume Abel will have the good sense to give Ajit, Todd, and Ted great autonomy to do what they're best at, but they will all report to him.
I also agree with Buffett's decisions to trim Berkshire's stake in Apple (AAPL) and exit its investment in Paramount (PARA) – you can see his full answers here and here, respectively.
For additional highlights, CNBC has an excellent summary here: Full recap of Warren Buffett's comments at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. CNBC also posted video clips here.
I also did a number of interviews after the meeting, one of which is already posted on YouTube here:
In it, I answer questions about:
- Berkshire's first annual meeting without Munger
- Whether Buffett is actually a good stock picker
- My single biggest investing mistake
- Buffett's forays into China and Japan
- How Buffett's 12 best positions generated most of Berkshire's returns
- Why index funds win by being patient
And then beyond the meeting itself...
I'm glad I decided to get up early Sunday morning to run the 5K race – it was a gorgeous day, and I ran two minutes faster than I expected. (It's like what Buffett and Munger say about the key to a happy marriage: Have low expectations going in!)
I finished in 23:04, which was 29 seconds faster than my time the last time I ran it five years ago. That was good enough for top 5% overall and fifth of 104 men ages 55 to 59 (I'm 57)... so don't send this old horse to the glue factory yet!
I posted pictures before and after the race on my Facebook page, and a video clip of me crossing the finish line here.
After the race, I met Sharon Osberg – who was once one of the top bridge players in the world, through which she met and became good friends with Buffett and Bill Gates (see this Washington Post article for more: Meet the woman who gives bridge tips to Warren Buffett and Bill Gates).
As you can see in this picture of us, she was wearing a hat for the Glide Foundation, which fights homelessness in San Francisco:
Glide is one of Buffett's favorite charities – he has raised millions of dollars for it by auctioning off a lunch with him.
When I asked Sharon about it, she said this year the organization is auctioning off lunch with Salesforce (CRM) CEO Marc Benioff, and I said I could share it with my readers:
If you're interested, you can learn more and bid here.
Best regards,
Whitney
P.S. Back in the December issue of our flagship Stansberry's Investment Advisory newsletter, my team and I officially recommended buying shares of Berkshire. Since then, subscribers who followed our advice are up 11%.
And in the latest monthly issue of the Investment Advisory, which just published on Friday, we tweaked our official advice for Berkshire... and released a brand-new recommendation.
If you aren't already a subscriber, learn how to get access to all the details and get started with a subscription to the Investment Advisory right here.
P.P.S. I welcome your feedback – send me an e-mail by clicking here.