Sunday, May 17, 2026
People walk past large portraits of Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, left, and CEO Greg Abel inside the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting on Saturday, May 2, 2026, in Omaha, Neb.
OMAHA, Neb. — Greg Abel eased into the CEO role after replacing Warren Buffett at the start of the year, with Berkshire Hathaway more than tripling its stake in Google parent company and buying more than $2.6 billion of Delta Airlines stock.
The conglomerate also sold off a number of other equities including Visa, Mastercard, Domino's Pizza, Amazon and United Healthcare after the departure late last year of Todd Combs, one of the two investment mangers appointed by Buffett to help oversee the portfolio.
Buffett has always been wary of investing in tech businesses, saying he doesn’t understand them well enough to pick the long-term winners. But Buffett did break that rule late in his career when he bought a huge stake in Apple after he realized how loyal consumers are to that company’s iPhones and Macs.
But Abel looks more relaxed now: By the end of March, Berkshire owned over 58 million Alphabet shares with a value of almost $17 billion. Three months ago Berkshire had 17.8 million Alphabet shares, worth $5.6 billion.
During the first quarter, Berkshire bought approximately 40 million shares of Delta stock. Buffett has a somewhat nasty history with airline investments over the years, having aggressively bought their equities more than once before eventually dumping them.
“If a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk,” Buffett told shareholders in 2008, “he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.” Since the Wright brothers took to the air, all airlines have struggled to preserve a competitive advantage.
Berkshire also took a minor new interest in Macy's, which was worth over $55 million at the end of March.
Berkshire never speaks on its moves in the $280 billion stock portfolio from quarter to quarter because it doesn’t want to talk about what it is buying and selling. Abel conducted his first shareholders meeting as chief executive this month, with Buffett sitting on the floor with the rest of the board of directors.
Many investors have watched Berkshire’s portfolio closely throughout the years, because they preferred to mimic Buffett’s actions. That may not be the case going forward at least until Abel builds more of a record as a stock picker. He’s spent his career running corporations like Berkshire’s stable of large utilities.
A couple of the equities in which Berkshire disclosed new positions Friday jumped, however, as the conglomerate detailed its investments in a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Both Macy’s and Delta’s stock prices jumped after Berkshire’s disclosure, but Alphabet’s stock price barely moved.
The Omaha, Nebraska-based company also owns dozens of other businesses including major insurers such as Geico, BNSF railroad, huge manufacturers such as Precision Castparts and a variety of retail and service businesses that includes such well-known brands as Helzberg Diamonds, See’s Candy and Dairy Queen.
