Billionaire investor Warren Buffett heaped praise on Tim Cook during a surprise address at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting on Saturday — inviting the outgoing Apple CEO to ‘take a bow’ and touting his bet on the company. He also hailed successor Greg Abel for “doing everything I did and then some” and calling the leadership transition “100% successful”.
Berkshire Hathaway held its annual meeting on Saturday with Warren Buffett seated among the audience for the first time. Greg Abel addressed the event exactly four months after succeeding the famous investor as chief executive officer — assuring shareholders that he would invest wisely and manage the conglomerate’s massive cash stake without the burdens of bureaucracy.
Investing Berkshire’s record cash hoard
The Nebraska-based conglomerate built by Warren Buffett (and now led by Greg Abel) reported a record cash level on Saturday — reflecting its years-long difficulty in finding a major acquisition as well as the sale of some of its largest stock holdings led by Apple. Cash totaled $380.2 billion at the end of March, excluding purchases of U.S. Treasury bills that had yet to settle by March 31.
Profit from Berkshire’s dozens of businesses rose 18% to $11.35 billion, or about $7,891 per Class A share, from $9.64 billion a year earlier. Net income, including from common stock investments, more than doubled to $10.1 billion, or $7,027 per Class A share, from $4.6 billion.
“It’s all working. It isn’t our ideal surrounding area or environment, I should say, in terms of deploying cash for Berkshire, but in terms of how we got the right management, we got the right arrangement, and you know, we can pick our spots, and nobody can tell us what to do exactly. And so sometimes we’re doing nothing, but other times we get quite active,” Buffett told CNBC during an interview on Saturday.
Buffett asks Tim Cook to ‘take a bow’
Buffett also gave a surprise sendoff to outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook during his address — asking him to “take a bow” and urging shareholders to thank the tech leader. The company has been one of Berkshire’s most successful investments to date and Cook was seen waving and clasping his hands together to thank the crowd in response to the comments.
How would you like to step into the shoes of Steve [Jobs] and come through his record? It’s one of the miracles of American business management. … Thank you, Tim. When Steve died and when we made our investment and turned over 10% of the resources of Berkshire, we were turning it over to Tim, and he has turned that into $185 billion or something pretax. We’re very big around here on having other people do the work,” Buffett quipped amid applause.
‘A nuclear bomb could come out of the blue’
The ongoing US-Israeli war against Iran has highlighted growing tensions across the world and the looming threat of nuclear weapons. The concern was also highlighted somewhat tangentially by Buffett on Saturday as he spoke to CNBC about the use of artificial intelligence and the possibility of a catastrophic military response.
“I mean, it (AI deepfakes) is scary. And it’s particularly scary when you have nine countries or so with nuclear weapons and people working on it, something even more, we haven’t dealt with this. We don’t know what’s going to happen,” he told the publication.
He also touched upon the unpredictable risks that could send the global markets into a tailspin while discussing the resilience of Berkshire Hathaway.
“I mean, you’ve got all kinds – you don’t worry about what people are talking about can happen. It’s something that comes out of the blue, but something will come out of the blue. I mean, a nuclear bomb could come out of the blue,” he added.