Berkshire finishes its handover with $365.5bn still in cash

Run the second-quarter repurchase four times and Berkshire is spending $18bn a year, about 4.9% of the cash it holds ^[2]. Drawing that balance to zero at the same rate takes roughly twenty years ^[3]. Cryptopolitan's account of the quarter reports the buyback and does not report an acquisition.

A repurchase is a judgement about price. Abel paid cash for Berkshire equity because it looked cheaper to him than the alternatives, and $4.5bn is a small version of that judgement ^[7]. The balance can also be read as a held position. Buffett has said the basic ideas of investing "are to look at stocks as business, use the market's fluctuations to your advantage, and seek a margin of safety" ^[16]. By that standard, $365.5bn uninvested is what the margin of safety costs in a year when nothing clears the bar ^[6].

The two jobs that bear on the spending decision are now separate. Abel runs the businesses ^[5] and Howard Buffett chairs the board ^[3]. "Greg runs the company; Howard will guard its culture and values, both worth more than anything on our balance sheet. Think of Howard as a policy the shareholders own and hope never to claim against," Warren said ^[10]. Abel said in the company's statement that "the culture Warren built and the values he championed will remain at the heart of Berkshire, and Howard will be their guardian" ^[11].

Cryptopolitan attributes Berkshire's flat 2026 partly to higher oil prices and partly to investors putting money into faster growing firms ^[9]. Whatever the cause, a holder sitting through that stretch is paying to keep open the option on Abel's next large purchase, and the option has a running cost.

I would expect the next two repurchase figures to say more about how Abel prices assets than any statement about culture does. One acquisition in the tens of billions would make the twenty-year figure irrelevant, and that is the likeliest way this reading fails. A repurchase line that doubles would say Berkshire has decided its own stock is the cheapest thing available to it. Buffett first told shareholders he was leaving the CEO job at the May 2025 annual meeting ^[13], and he closed Friday's letter by writing that "my expectations for him were sky high from the start, and he has exceeded them" ^[12].