My Takeaway from Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2026

Every time when I decided to go to the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting, I told myself it would be the last year because I don't like trips that much in general. For this, I would have to pay top dollars for the plane tickets and hotel rooms, and would not have enough sleep given I would spend a lot of unstructured time at night with friends for sharing and catching up, and would need to catch events in the mornings, including lining up for the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting .

But after attending the event, after meeting a lot of great people, interesting people, hearing some insightful talks, seeing how successful and rich people being super humble to wait in line for free lunches, being able to become a full time value investor attending conferences for a few days (my day job is being a software engineer), I would always think that I will come one more time next year.

I found it helpful to have some questions in mind before going to Omaha. While most conferences and talks are about Berkshire Hathaway, for example, this year it's all about whether Berkshire Hathaway will still be fine after Warren Buffett is no longer the CEO, how well the culture will be maintained, how Greg Abel is performing in the shareholders meeting, what the intrinsic value of Berkshire Hathaway is, the expected return of the stock, etc., there are always panels with experts talking about some bigger pictures, like the macro environment, different industries and different companies. For this year, I want to know how people think about private credits and how AI will change our world. And I was glad that I got some insights from different industry experts during my trip:

Private Credits

• A lot of investment "experts" do not actually have much insights about private credits. They mostly just dismiss it by repeating some news from the headlines, i.e. private credits are not transparent, they are risky (as a whole), etc. They pretty much see them as banks during 2009-2010 (i.e. after the great financial crisis).

• An expert on private credits said he was fine with the public BDCs because they have a fixed pool of capital to invest without any urgency to reinvest capital with poor underwriting standards. He felt less comfortable for private BDCs which need to constantly raise capital and find new opportunities to invest the capital as soon as possible. So he was not very fond of the private BDCs side of Blue Owl. 

• An expert who is responsible for an endowment fund with about 5% private credits said that he was not a friend of private credits about 6 months ago when interest rate was on the way down. He said now facts changed and he likes them very much for the reason of the interest rate being held up. He didn't request any redemptions for the private credits the fund owned. He didn't give any colors on the credits concerning the private credits, so I would take that as a positive.

AI and Leadership

• Greg Abel did not expect AI to change their business models that much. That being said, they will develop more software in house for Geico, and maybe in other businesses.

• Most experts believe Greg Abel has a much stronger grasp on the businesses controlled by Berkshire Hathaway, and will increase their performance much more than when Warren Buffett was the CEO. It's not clear whether Greg would do better in terms of stock picking.

• Some experts believe Greg Abel is underrated. They believe Berkshire Hathaway subsidiaries will perform better under Greg.

• Most experts do not see AI as a big threat to the US economy.

• Some experts think AI is overhyped in terms of its capability to replace human jobs. None of them identified any big companies that would be deemed obsolete by AI.
  
  

I just want to add that I believe the investing experts who spoke on stage were wrong about AI. AI will change the landscape of jobs and the competitive advantages of companies by a lot. Berkshire Hathaway subsidiaries, while already under-invested given Warren Buffett focus on return on investment too much, would be further behind their peers. Greg Abel is definitely better than Warren Buffett in fighting the trend, but their conservative capital allocation culture would hammer their ability to innovate their businesses with AI.

The whole Omaha event is very interesting because the business knowledge of investing is so vast that you can always learn from others, and you can also provide values to others. It is very unlike some technical conferences that unless you are already an expert in the field, most participants know more than you on everything relevant to the conferences. To get the most from the event, be humble, be open, and don't be afraid to share. It's okay to agree to disagree. Try to absorb more opinions from others without judging. Simply get your ideas across and hold the urge to change other people's mind.

I feel that I can get different things every time I come to Omaha. I know a little bit more about myself, my weaknesses, things that I have to work on, and the knowledge gap that I have to fill. I become a little bit better as an investor every time. I am looking forward to the meeting next year, and I hope Warren Buffett will come as well.

2025-03-20 Sold BRK Partially and Bought PAX

Robinhood is not going to support fractional shares for Berkshire Hathaway Class A (BRK.A) on April 3, 2025.

My position was very tiny, and my original intent of buying Class A shares on 2023/12/22 was to hope that one day I could accumulate enough to own one large share of Berkshire Hathaway Class A by accumulating one tiny piece at a time. Now that cannot happen, so I decided to just dispose of it.

This will be a tax hit to me given the shares went up 45%. While I could simply use the sales proceeds to buy Class B shares, I decided to use this opportunity to add into a position that is more attractively priced today, Patria (PAX).

From the share price perspective, unlike Berkshire Hathaway shares, PAX went down 18% since 2023/12/22 even adjusted for dividends.

From the fundamental perspective, my buy below price calculated on 2024/12/14 was $16.18 for PAX, so the current share price of $11.85 is 27% discount to the buy below price, very attractive.

Price	$11.85
Div	$0.6 (5.06%)
DE	$1 (P/DE = 11.85)
Adjusted DE	70% of DE, which is $1 * 0.7 = $0.7. P/ADE = 16.92
Expected annual growth	~12%
Buy below price	2027 $1.7 FRE/share. $1.7 * 0.9 * 0.7 = $1.07 adjusted DE/share. $1.07 * 20 / (1.15^2) = $16.18 (based on P/ADE = 20 in 2027)

On the other hand, Whitney Tilson, a Berkshire Hathaway bull, estimated the intrinsic value of Berkshire Hathaway was $742,000 per A-share on March 3, 2025 (source):

I believe it's similar to the one CEO Warren Buffett uses: Take the cash and investments per share and add the value of the operating businesses.

At the end of the fourth quarter, cash and investments were about $454,000 per A-share. Since then, Berkshire's stock portfolio has increased by about $2,000 per share, so that's about $456,000 today.

...

Berkshire's 2024 pretax operating earnings were about $26,000 per share. (I adjust for volatile insurance and investment income by subtracting it and then adding back half of the average over the past two years, which is $11.7 billion of pretax earnings. I think this is conservative, given that Berkshire's total insurance and investment income has averaged $9.7 billion annually over the past 10 years, and the company is much larger now.)"

I apply a conservative below-market multiple of 11 times to Berkshire's pretax operating EPS of about $26,000, to arrive at a value of around $286,000 per share.

Thus, my estimate of Berkshire's intrinsic value is about $456,000 (cash and investments) plus roughly $286,000 (operating businesses), for a total of around $742,000 per A-share, or $495 per B-share.

BRK class A traded at $792,880 today, so a 6.8% premium on Whitney's estimated intrinsic value.

PAX has a higher growth perspective (12+%) in earnings, higher dividend yield (5% compared to 0%), and lower P/E ratio. It is also a capital light business, unlike Berkshire Hathaway. The only edge that Berkshire has is its superb safety provided by its diversified revenue streams. With the much higher expected return from PAX, I believe the risk-reward ratio of trading BRK for PAX is very favorable.

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Recent and upcoming dividend distributions

Portfolio

All-time return:

Breakdown by categories (real-time):

All-time returns for individual holdings:

Last prices:

2024-01-02 Portfolio Update

Put in $2200. Then purchased:

• $100 for SPY

• $100 for VWO

• $300 for APO

• $200 for BABA

• $200 for BAM

• $200 for BN

• $100 for BRK.A

• $409.88 for GTY

• $200 for MAIN

• $200 for MPW

• $300 for PAX

Not much to update, just keep betting big on alternative asset managers and some triple-net lease REITs.

One thing to notice in transactions is that I have 10 dividends coming by January for a total of about $200. It feels good to see that my accumulated wealth is generating some meaningful income. As you have seen, most of the individual stock allocation for new funds are usually in the $100-$200 range, so the upcoming dividends add up to one allocation, not bad!

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Portfolio

All-time return:

One-year return:

Portfolio IRR: 10.41%

Approximated IRR for an SPY-only portfolio: 11.07%

Individual holdings:

Breakdown by categories:

All-time returns for individual holdings:

Last prices:

Portfolio holdings conviction

The convictions in the table below reflects my current opinions and will guide the future contribution of additional investment to existing holdings. Stocks not inside the table are stocks with subpar return on equity that will be very unlikely to receive more contributions from new money (there can be exceptions for very cheap stocks).

Stock	Conviction in long-term prospect	Valuation	Price
SPY	strong	neutral	$472.65
VWO	moderate	slightly undervalued	$40.62
ADC	moderate	neutral	$63.51
SQ	weak	neutral	$72.22
PYPL	weak	slightly undervalued	$61.46
META	moderate	neutral	$346.29
BRK.B	strong	neutral	$362.46
AMZN	strong	neutral	$149.93
PLTR	moderate	slightly overvalued	$16.58
OWL	moderate	neutral	$14.6
APO	moderate	slightly undervalued	$91.33
BN	moderate	undervalued	$38.85
BAM	moderate	neutral	$38.83
BX	moderate	neutral	$128.27
CKHUY	moderate	undervalued	$5.19
AHH	moderate	slightly undervalued	$12.43
EPRT	moderate	neutral	$26
MAIN	strong	neutral	$43.45
BABA	moderate	greatly undervalued	$74.76
PAX	moderate	slightly undervalued	$15.34
GTY	moderate	slightly undervalued	$29.41

Conviction in long-term prospects means how much I believe a company would match or outperform the market (e.g. S&P 500) in the long run. Valuation matters so the conviction generally corresponds to the neutral rating of Valuation. It has the following ratings: weak, moderate, strong

Valuation: overvalued, slightly overvalued, neutral, slightly undervalued, undervalued, greatly undervalued

Brief comments on individual holdings

ADC

Agree Realty is one of the lowest leverage triple-net lease REITs with a debt to EBITDA ratio of 4.9x. Its tenants are mostly investment grade (67%) retailers and restaurants. At the worst time of 2021, it collected 95% of the rents, which shows the quality of its assets. 

One special thing about Agree Realty is its 14% portfolio in ground leases, which has low default risk, low cash flow, with short-term inflation risk, but long-term stable return. It diversifies the risk portfolio of the company.

Its acquisition and disposition ratio is 4.2% in 2021. The ratio is kept low for the past, which again, shows the quality of the assets, so that it does not have to sell many non-performing assets.

SQ

Paypal is the leading payment company online, and Square (or Block) is the physical point-of-sale leader with a market share of 22%. Its Cash app is doing great in fintech with a bright future. CEO Jack Dorsey's big bets on bitcoin ensures Block a distinct leader in the fintech world.

PYPL

Analysts expect Paypal 2023 EPS to be $4.94, and will grow more 15-20% annually for a few years. Its top line will grow at a high single digit as well. 2023 P/E ~ 13 is quite attractive. Paypal's economic moat did not change recently. Its neutral position in payments is a good counterposition for big competitors like Apple Pay, Google Pay, Visa, Mastercard, Zelle, etc. It's OS and payment network neutral. As a case in point, Paypal was accepted as a payment on Amazon.

Short-term catalysts are continuous growth of users in Venmo, shopping super app, and the cost cutting measure to make the company more efficient. The stock price is depressed now only because the market worries about its short-term growth.

META

Global Monthly Active User (MAU) above 2.8 billion. Facebook is the biggest social network in the world. There will always be people buying Facebook/Whatsapp/Instagram.

The economic moat is weakened by Tiktok, but Tiktok is not really a social network that connects users who are familiar with each other, but another variant of youtube, so Facebook is still the top dog in social networking, although user time spent is definitely hurt.

Given Facebook's investment in VR; optional values in Facebook dating, and Facebook shops; Facebook Pay and Messenger have good monetization potential; Instagram has a unique position for people to express themselves; the improvement in Ads Infra to compensate for the loss in Apple App Tracking Transparency, I believe Facebook will come back. Long term annual growth of 15-20% in earnings should not be a problem.

BRK.B

Berkshire Hathaway in the current form was found by my idols, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. I will try to buy more if it's not very expensive.

AMZN

The biggest e-commerce company outside China. Amazon is the top company in the cloud business. The prime memberships are sticky because of the great value. Its IoT devices, while not complete, are all very popular. Amazon also owns the largest ebook market including the ebook hardware reader: Kindle. Its advertising business is growing rapidly as well. It also has a huge potential in the medical drugs market.

Basically, Amazon has potential in a lot of daily life goods and services which do not require high-end technology. It challenges incumbents with high profit margins. Amazon is definitely a killing machine. The only drawback is that the stock is quite expensive today. Annual growth around 15-20%.

PLTR

Palantir is a big data analytics company that mainly services democratic governments in the West, especially America, the strongest in the world, for the sake of global peace and prosperity. I think it's a very bold statement that is not easily found in innovative tech companies in Silicon Valley. It also services large scale manufacturers, medical and financial institutions.

Palantir builds solutions for customers, so the service it sells often needs some long lead-time, which creates a natural barrier of entry. Once Palantir gets into the business process of a customer, it's sticky. Its support of the US military makes it stand out among other Silicon Valley high tech companies, which eliminates a lot of competition.

One saying is that Palantir and Google are two sides of a coin in terms of handling customer data. Google gathers a lot of user data but the usage is very restrictive, and it focuses a lot on privacy. Palantir, on the other hand, only processes data gathered by clients, to help clients "process users".

It is going to earn about $1.98 billion in revenue in 2023. Assuming a long-term profitability of 20%, that is about $400 million in earnings. With a market cap of about $35 billion, a P/E of 88 is too rich for now.

The nature of the business has a lumpy growth. The company should have no problem maintaining a 20-30% annual growth in revenue for quite a lot of years as expected by the management, mainly due to the needs of the government in big data and artificial intelligence. 

OWL

Blue Owl Capital is an alternative asset management company, similar to Blackstone. Its focus is on direct originations of loans to private-equity backed and non-sponsored companies (middle-market and upper-middle-market companies). It has a net leases real estate platform. It also provides long-term minority equity and financing to private capital investment managers. A majority of the company's assets are funded by permanent capital, so it does not have withdrawal risk. Most of its earnings come from recurring fees from asset management without performance consideration, so the earnings stream is quite stable. Given it acquired STORE Capital (STOR) recently at a decent price, the management is very good.

Equity compensation related expenses were about 35% of DE that got added back into GAAP when getting DE. Its "true" EPS is about $0.1 per quarter, or about $0.4 in 2023. The P/E is about 30, not cheap, but not very expensive considering its growth is 15-20% annually. Another way to look at it is that its dividend yield is about 4.5%, and it's growing in double digits for at least 3+ years, which makes it quite attractive.

APO

Apollo specialized in distress situations, which reduced the number of competitors. Its famous slogan is purchase price matters, which shows how price conscious they are in picking investment. It has another slogan "we want 25% of everything and 100% of nothing on the asset", which is a goal post of the company about engaging in a lot of asset managing transactions even for other asset managers. It's a good way to position the company to have a large adjustable market. Their use of reinsurance company, Athene, helps them to grow assets under management effortlessly as well.

Expected 2023 EPS is $6.61, so P/E around 12, pretty cheap with an expected growth of 10-15%. 2.5% dividend yield helps a bit as well.

BN

With an IFRS book value of $52.36, Brookfield Corporation is trading at a 37% discount to book. With their asset management business and reinsurance company, they will be able to continue to earn stable cash flow to deploy into their attractive return opportunities from real estate and infrastructure. Mohnish Pabrai believes Brookfield has the best alternative management DNA (video, full interview), so I have no doubt this is a great company to own for the long run.

With their asset management business growing 10-15%, and their holdings in various real estate and infrastructure earning 10-20% annual return, it's a stock that can achieve an annual return of 15% easily given the huge discount to book.

BAM

The pure asset management company part of the Brookfield Corporation. With BN, BAM can grow its asset under management (AUM) easily. Oaktree Capital, founded by the famous Howard Marks, is part of it, so it's very reputable.

The management has already indicated they are locked in to grow its cash flow 15% annually for the next field years. Its management fees do not rely on performance that much, so they are stable. With an expected 2023 EPS of $1.39, P/E 25 is not cheap, but with the help of 3.8% dividend yield (close to 100% payout, thanks to the asset light business model), there is a fair chance the stock can return 15% annually.

BX

A very reputable company in real estate. Its management fees rely on performance much more than Brookfield, but Blackstone has a track record, so I am not too worried about it.

Expected 2023 EPS is $4.36, P/E ~ 21. A 3.5% dividend yield with expected annual growth of 10-15%, this stock can potentially get a 15+% return in the long run.

MPW

Brief analysis and latest updates here

CKHUY

CK Hutchison Holdings (OTC: CKHUY, SEHK: 0001) is a diversified conglomerate with interests mostly in telecommunications, retail, ports, infrastructure, and energy. The company was founded in 1979 by Li Ka-shing, one of Asia's richest men.

CK Hutchison is a well-managed business with a long history of profitability. The company has a strong track record of generating free cash flow, which it has used to invest in growth mostly by M&A, and return to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.

CK Hutchison's businesses are all essential services that are not easily disrupted by new technologies or competition. This gives the company a moat that protects its profits and allows it to generate stable cash flow over the long term.

It is trading at $6/$18 ~ 33% of book value, P/E ~ 8, and a dividend yield of over 6%. The ADR costs probably $0.05-$0.1, which unfortunately is quite costly for lowly-priced stock like CKHUY.  

HASI

Brief analysis and latest updates here

AHH

Brief analysis and latest updates here

EPRT

Brief analysis and latest updates here

MAIN

Brief analysis and latest updates here

BABA

Brief analysis and latest updates here

PAX

Brief analysis and latest updates here

GTY

Brief analysis and latest updates here

BXMT

Brief analysis and latest updates here.

On 2023/06/24, I bought it at $19.60 for the high dividend yield ($2.48 annually, 12.65%, ex-div date next thursday). It's mainly to cover the monthly fees for the Robinhood Gold membership. I do not intend to add more because its high leverage makes me a bit uncomfortable.

TSM

Taiwan Semiconductor is a global leader in chip manufacturing. It has passed Intel and is getting farther and farther ahead of Intel. It has a wide economic moat as a popular company in Taiwan beloved by common people. It's a national treasure.

With all technological gadgets today requiring chips to operate, including military weapons, its business is neverending. Supply problems are just small hiccups which do not hurt the fundamentals of the company.

Starting from the 2023/04/04 update, I did not intend to increase my stake any more because Buffett sold pretty much all of Berkshire Hathaway's stakes in 2023 Q1, and my exposure in VWO has included TSM already.

SPY, VWO, MCHI

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