Locator: 50692BRK.
Incredible results; it will be interesting to see how Wall Street reacts Monday.
Results:
Annual meeting.
Streaming live. Listening to the new CEO. Greg Abel is 63 years old, and a Canadian businessman. At least that's what his bio says.
Ajit will be seventy-five years old this summer. Vice Chairman of Insurance Operations.
Wow, immediately throws the mic over to Warren Buffett. Two items:
- a self-complimentary comment on his picking the CEO
- an incredibly long soliloquy on Apple and Steve Jobs; too bad BRK didn't keep adding AAPL over the years; wow, wow, wow, a meandering soliloquy...
Because of an unexpected interruption, I missed some of Abel's comments. I left when he was deep in the weeds with regard to insurance.
I came back when he was discussing BNSF. BNSF was one of six Class 1 railroads in the US, and last year, BNSF was #5 of 6!!! Are you kidding me. With all that expertise from BRK and they were ranked #5 of 6 in profitability. UNP was #1.
Now he's going back to Geico, so it's obvious I didn't miss much.
He just said that BRK needs to be more involved in "tech" and "technology transformation." He's coming across that BRK and subsidiaries were spending too much time thinking about and discussing "technology transformation" and not acting. I am really, really, really disappointed and surprised. He does mention that BRK needs to start making their own technology solutions and not simply buying / renting those technology solutions. Apparently GEICO is in year five of this transformation. One almost gets the feeling BRK as been asleep as the wheel with regard to the fourth (sixth) industrial revolution for the past ten years. I'm not impressed.
Comment: it's my impression, Abel is spending way, way too much time on things that in the big scheme don't matter that much and easily could have been covered in printed media. He needed to talk about his philosophy -- he's new -- and he needs to talk about the elephant in the room: AI. He's thinking like an insurance agent -- risk, risk, risk.
Just like Jamie Dimon thinks like a banker -- risk, risk, risk.
That's not how the folks at Nvidia, AMD, MU think. This is how they think -- opportunity, opportunity, opportunity.
Exhibit A: #2 on his technology transformation considerations -- "safeguards."
#3 -- has to be additive to their business, not just doing AI for AI's sake. Pablum.
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Energy
He is now touching on energy -- pipelines, natural gas, powering LDCs.
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Back to Wildfire Damages
Wildfires in California.
Class action suit -- against PacifiCorp -- apparently being re-visited. Very honest, transparent, but embarrassing.
Great for transparency but not exactly going to move the needle for investors' investments.
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International Metalworking Companies
Again, so much time on stuff that isn't going to move the needle. Link here to IMC. These are just really, really good companies and will be around forever.
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Sales Pitch
Abel had a great sales pitch. I believe BRK's benchmark is the S&P 500, long-term. But it would be more interesting to know which investment -- unless it's the S&P 500 ETF -- BRK is really competing with -- such as SCHB or SCHG. For the investor, in other words, if the investor is looking at SCHB or SCHG would BRK be a better investment?
It's pretty obvious where one should have invested new money this past year if one were to choose between SCHB and BRKB.
SCHB: passively managed; run by computers; algorithms; rules.
BRKB: highly, highly, highly personally be a small human team.
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Has Completed The Business Update
Now The Second Half Of Meeting: the Q&A
But first the Geico video.
Overkill.
Now Q&A.
But they're starting with insurance company in Japan. Already it's way too long. No one cares. Why wasn't this in the first hour. Folks are anxious for Q&A.
Now Cyber Insurance: BRK plays a very, very, very small role. Not a business opportunity.
Now, finally Q&A with Becky Quick as the moderator.
First question: Ajit is skeptical of AI. Oh-oh.
Second question: not even worth discussing.
Will touch on questions by exception.
I will stop here. Very, very mundane.
