No. of Recommendations: 26
Very similar views and observations that parallel your great bullet list.
I also like that he called out a good number of data point such as "Berkshire delivered operating earnings of $44.5 billion in 2025, below $47.4 billion in 2024 and above the $37.5 billion we have averaged over the past five years" - there were a number of five year recent average sort of data points. A few more:
"In 2025, Berkshire produced $46 billion of net cash flows from operating activities, compared to a five-year average of more than $40 billion"
"We produced a combined ratio of 87.1% across our property and casualty businesses in 2025, comparing favorably with our five-year average of 90.7%, ten-year average of 93.0% and twenty-year average of 92.2%"
"In 2025, BNSF produced $8.1 billion in net operating cash flows and. returned $4.4 billion of that cash to Berkshire through dividends. For context, its average annual dividend over the past five years was $4.1 billion."
"In 2025, BNSF’s operating margin improved to 34.5% from 32.0% in 2024. It remained only modestly above its five-year average."
What seemed absent? No mention of Todd Combs, but in passing (Ted taking over his investing portfolio) - no sort of "we thank Todd for his service, both in investing decisions and turning around Geico, and hope we'll be able to do business in the future".
Sure, Warren's gone. But...we're measuring the new guy (who has effectively been there since 1992, but will always be new guy) against the legend, which is not fair. Greg is going to fix some things that Warren cannot, or would not, fix. He pointed out plenty of warts - Pilot, Heinz, Shaw come to mind. He was candid; we often see Warren simply no longer mention things that are distasteful. You all probably read The Snowball - Alice Schroeder recounted *many* times he was sort of passive or quiet.
Reaffirming the culture was the right move. A decent page-ish tribute to Warren which seemed the correct length - and mentioning he was still in the office 5 days a week. I'm looking forward to what is next, and am not going to grouse about the tone or composition of this letter. Greg gave more data and numbers than Warren has in the past few years, like the excerpts I listed above.
I too am neither a buyer nor seller.
