<div id="readability-page-1"><span></span><div><p><em>(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You can sign up </em><em>here</em><em> to receive it every Friday evening in your inbox.)</em></p><p>With Warren Buffett's planned departure as Berkshire Hathaway's CEO less than two weeks away, some on Wall Street have advice for incoming CEO Greg Abel.</p><p>Glenview Trust CIO Bill Stone says the most important thing Abel can do is &#34;don't try to be Warren Buffett.&#34;</p><p>Buffett and Charlie Munger, he said on <em>Yahoo Finance</em>, were the &#34;greatest duo&#34; in investing of all time. &#34;Trying to beat them at their game, so to speak, is probably not the right thing.&#34;</p><p>Stone thinks Abel should concentrate on increasing operating earnings, reducing the number of outstanding shares, and being ready to seize opportunities when they arise.</p></div><div id="ArticleBody-InlineImage-107411050"><div><div><p>Gregory Abel, Vice Chairman overseeing non-insurance operations for Berkshire Hathaway, meets shareholders in the exhibition hall during the Berkshire Hathaway Inc annual shareholders' meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S., May 3, 2024. </p><p>Scott Morgan | Reuters</p></div></div></div><div><p>On <em>Yahoo Finance's</em> &#34;Market Dominion,&#34; Boyar Research President Jonathan Boyar told CNBC alum Josh Lipton the best thing Abel could do to win Wall Street's trust is to &#34;buy an extremely large amount of Berkshire stock personally and really put his money where his mouth is.&#34;</p><p>According to the 2025 annual meeting proxy, Abel already owns what Boyar calls a &#34;fair amount&#34; of Berkshire shares that are currently valued at around $171 million, but he notes that &#34;all of that was bought when, obviously, Buffett&#34; ran the company.</p><p>Boyar expects Abel will impose a lot more management oversight than Buffett, who famously took a hands-off approach to the subsidiaries.</p><p>As a result of that decentralization, Boyar says, &#34;There's probably a lot of fat to cut. There're probably divisions that can be consolidated. There are many things they could do to enhance profitability that Buffett just hasn't wanted to do.</p><p>&#34;Buffett is the greatest capital allocator and the greatest investor of all time. He's not known as the best manager of all time. Greg Abel might be able to do things that he couldn't or wouldn't do.&#34;</p></div><div><p>After Buffett announced at the May annual meeting that he planned to step down as CEO at the end of the year, Berkshire's B shares fell 15% over three months.</p><p>They have cut that drop to 8.4% as of Friday's close.</p></div><h2>Is Berkshire a buy going into the Greg Abel era?</h2><div><p><em>The Motley Fool's </em>David Jagielski writes Buffett's long tenure gave the company &#34;plenty of time to prepare for a successor&#34; and Abel is &#34;well prepared&#34; to be CEO.</p><p>He predicts Abel's approach&#34; won't differ a lot&#34; from Buffett's but there could still be significant changes in Berkshire's portfolio. The addition of a stake in the big tech stock Alphabet in the third quarter may have given investors a &#34;glimpse&#34; of the future.</p><p>He's also &#34;cautiously optimistic&#34; Berkshire may put more emphasis on growth stocks and &#34;pivot away from slow-growing investments like <span id="SpecialReportArticle-QuoteInBody-9">Kraft Heinz<span><span id="-WatchlistDropdown"></span></span></span>.&#34;</p><p>Jagielski expects Berkshire to be an &#34;excellent buy&#34; for next year and longer. &#34;If it dips in value after Buffett leaves, that would simply make it an even more attractive investment to buy.&#34;</p><p>Mel Casey at FBB Capital Partners tells <em>Yahoo Finance</em><em> </em>the diversity of Berkshire's subsidiaries gives it an &#34;all-weather quality&#34; so that &#34;you could almost think of it as a lower-risk alternative to owning the broader market.&#34;</p><p>He sees Berkshire as &#34;pretty reasonably valued&#34; in a &#34;year of pretty high valuations for U.S. large cap stocks.&#34;</p><p>On the bearish side, Casey warns there is a risk of losing the &#34;Buffett premium.&#34;</p><p>&#34;There's definitely a caution out there that some of the core investors are investors in Buffett rather than in the actual fundamentals of the company itself.&#34;</p></div><h2>Berkshire's BNSF: Big rail merger is 'significant threat' to consumers</h2><div><p>BNSF, Berkshire Hathaway's railroad, is not impressed by the 7,000-page merger application <span id="SpecialReportArticle-QuoteInBody-11">Union Pacific<span><span id="-WatchlistDropdown"></span></span></span> and <span id="SpecialReportArticle-QuoteInBody-12">Norfolk Southern<span><span id="-WatchlistDropdown"></span></span></span> filed Friday morning with regulators, as they seek to create the country's first trans-continental freight system.</p><p>It repeated its opposition to the $85 billion deal in a news release that quotes CEO Katie Farmer as saying the &#34;transaction poses a significant threat to the U.S. economy and the American consumer&#34; by leaving shippers with fewer options and, as a result, higher rates that will translate into higher prices for the goods being shipped.</p></div><div id="ArticleBody-InlineImage-107132154"><div><div><p>A GE AC4400CW diesel-electric locomotive in Union Pacific livery is seen near Union Station in Los Angeles on Sept. 15, 2022.</p><p>Bing Guan | Reuters</p></div></div></div><div><p>UNP CEO Jim Vena is quoted by <em>Reuters</em> as saying he is confident the deal will be approved. &#34;If we stand still, we are going to get left behind. I'm not into that. The benefits of this transaction are undeniable.&#34;</p><p>Buffett told <em>CNBC </em>last August that Berkshire would not try to counter a possible UP-NSC combination by merging BNSF with <span id="SpecialReportArticle-QuoteInBody-17">CSX<span><span id="-WatchlistDropdown"></span></span></span>, but the two railroads did announce what they called &#34;a collaboration&#34; to provide &#34;seamless, efficient, coast-to-coast solutions to ship between the western and eastern U.S.&#34;</p><p>BNSF's routes are in the western U.S. while CSX operates in the east.</p></div><h2>BUFFETT AROUND THE INTERNET</h2><div><p><strong>Some links may require a subscription:</strong></p><ul><li>CNBC Pro (subscription): Todd Combs' stellar 15-year career at Berkshire started with an unsolicited letter to Charlie Munger</li></ul><ul><li>Nebraska Public Media: The 'Oracle of Omaha' wraps up his last year as Berkshire CEO</li></ul><ul><li>The Atlantic (subscription): How Warren Buffett Did It</li></ul><ul><li>Reuters: Warren Buffett's successor Greg Abel had steady rise at Berkshire</li></ul><ul><li>MarketWatch on MSN: These are the secrets to Buffett's investment success, according to this billionaire investor</li></ul><ul><li>Reuters: How the US freight rail industry got dirtier than coal power plants</li></ul><ul><li>Business Insurance: Ackman 'taking a page' from Buffett with Vantage acquisition</li></ul></div><h2>HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ARCHIVE</h2><h2>Can Berkshire's culture endure for decades? (2016)</h2><p>Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger explain why they're confident Berkshire's culture will last even after Buffett's son Howard no longer serves as non-executive chairman.</p><div><p><strong>AUDIENCE MEMBER</strong>: You have said before that your role will be divided into parts for your succession, one of which will be the responsibility of maintaining culture by having [son] Howard [Buffett] as non-executive chairman.</p><p>What is the plan for how Berkshire will maintain its culture when Howard no longer fills the role, and what should shareholders watch for to make sure that the culture is being properly maintained decades from now when I am your age?...</p><p><strong>WARREN BUFFETT</strong>: By far, the main factor in keeping Berkshire's culture is that you have a board and you'll have successor board members. You have managers and you'll have successor managers. And you have shareholders that clearly recognize the special nature of the culture, that have embraced the culture. When they sold their businesses to us, they wanted to join that culture.</p><p>It's a — it thrusts out people that really aren't in tune with it, and there are very few of them. And it embraces those who enjoy and appreciate it. And I think, to some extent, we don't have a lot of competition on it. So it becomes very identifiable, and it works...</p><p><strong>CHARLIE MUNGER</strong>: I really think the culture is going to surprise everybody — how well it lasts — and how well they do. They're going to wonder why they ever made any fuss over us in the first place. It's going to work very well.</p><p><strong>WARREN BUFFETT</strong>: We've got so many good ingredients in place, just in terms of the businesses and people already here, you know, that — at the companies.</p><p><strong>CHARLIE MUNGER</strong>: That's what I'm saying.</p><p><strong>WARREN BUFFETT</strong>: Yeah.</p><p><strong>CHARLIE MUNGER</strong>: There's just so much power in place.</p></div><h2>BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH</h2><p><strong>Four weeks</strong></p><p><strong>Twelve months</strong></p><div><p>BRK.A stock price: $745,600.00</p><p>BRK.B stock price: $494.53</p><p>BRK.B P/E (TTM): 15.81</p><p>Berkshire market capitalization: $1,068,856,999,340</p><p>Berkshire Cash as of September 30: $381.7 billion (Up 10.9% from June 30)</p><p>Excluding Rail Cash and Subtracting T-Bills Payable: $354.3 billion (Up 4.3% from June 30)</p><p>No Berkshire stock repurchases since May 2024.</p><p>(All figures are as of the date of publication, unless otherwise indicated)</p></div><h2>BERKSHIRE'S TOP EQUITY HOLDINGS - Dec. 19, 2025</h2><div><p>Berkshire's top holdings of disclosed publicly traded stocks in the U.S. and Japan, by market value, based on the latest closing prices.</p><p>Holdings are as of September 30, 2025, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway's 13F filing on November 14, 2025, except for:</p><ul><li>Mitsubishi, which is as of August 28, 2025</li><li>Mitsui, which is as of September 30, 2025</li></ul><p>The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.</p></div><h2>QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS</h2><div><p>Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at alex.crippen@cnbc.com. (Sorry, but we don't forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)</p><p>If you aren't already subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up here.</p><p>Also, Buffett's annual letters to shareholders are highly recommended reading. There are collected here on Berkshire's website.</p><p>-- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch</p></div></div>

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<p>Warren Buffett is stepping down as Berkshire Hathaway's CEO, with Greg Abel taking over. Wall Street advises Abel to focus on operating earnings and management oversight. Abel owns $171 million in Berkshire shares. Berkshire's BNSF opposes Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern's merger, citing threats to consumers. Analysts are optimistic about Berkshire's future under Abel, despite concerns about losing the "Buffett premium."</p>

- With Warren Buffett's upcoming departure as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, experts offer advice for his successor, Greg Abel.  
- Analysts suggest that Abel should avoid trying to emulate Buffett and focus on improving operating earnings and oversight of the company’s management.  
- The potential impact of this leadership change has led to mixed market reactions and speculation about Berkshire’s future investment strategies and stock performance.

Abel takes over for Buffett in less than two weeks. Wall Street has some advice for new Berkshire CEO