Greg Abel Just Bought $15 Million of Warren Buffett’s Favorite Stock

Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-A | BRK-A Price Prediction)(NYSE:BRK-B) is in a new era. After decades at the helm, Warren Buffett stepped back from day-to-day control, handing the CEO reins to Greg Abel on January 1, 2026. Investors and analysts have watched closely to see how faithfully Abel would follow Buffett’s legendary playbook of patience, discipline, and opportunistic capital allocation.

With Berkshire sitting on a massive $373 billion cash war chest, built over several years of being a net seller of stocks, Abel wasted little time making his presence felt. His first purchase as CEO was of Buffett’s favorite stock: Berkshire itself.

Berkshire Resumes Buybacks After a 21-Month Hiatus

SEC filings confirmed that Berkshire repurchased $15 million worth of its own Class A and Class B shares in early March 2026. Though modest relative to the enormous dry powder available, the move was highly notable. It marked the first repurchase of Berkshire shares since May 2024, ending a 21-month freeze. For years prior, Buffett had strung together an unbroken track record of 24 consecutive quarters of repurchases, a streak that ran from mid-2018 through mid-2024 and totaled nearly $78 billion.

It wasn’t always possible for Buffett to buy back his company’s stock so freely. For decades, Berkshire’s board imposed strict price hurdles, limiting repurchases to levels no more than 10% (later 20%) above book value. Only in the past decade did the board relax those rules, authorizing buybacks whenever shares traded below a conservatively estimated intrinsic value. That policy change unlocked Buffett’s aggressive repurchase program, which ran uninterrupted for 24 quarters before pausing as valuations rose. Under Abel, the buybacks have now resumed in force: when Berkshire’s first-quarter 2026 results were reported, the total Q1 repurchase figure came in at approximately $235 million.

Abel Puts His Own Money Where His Mouth Is

Separately, Abel also personally purchased approximately $15 million of Berkshire stock, an amount equal to his full after-tax annual salary. He bought 21 Class A shares, bringing his total holdings to 249 Class A shares worth roughly $182 million at the time of the transaction. Abel pledged to continue devoting his full after-tax salary to Berkshire shares every year going forward.

The purchase addressed questions some investors had raised about Abel’s skin in the game. Before this transaction, his Berkshire stake stood at around $164 million. While substantial, it compared unfavorably to Buffett’s own commitment: Buffett has long said roughly 99% of his net worth remains in Berkshire stock. Abel’s move, and his commitment to repeat it annually, sends a clear signal of alignment with shareholders.

In a CNBC interview, Abel revealed he conferred directly with Buffett before the transactions. He emphasized that both the company’s buyback and his personal purchase reflect a shared conviction that Berkshire shares are trading below intrinsic value. “I absolutely talked to Warren,” Abel said, underscoring the continuity of decision-making even as leadership changed hands.

Key Takeaway

The initial $15 million buyback was not a transformative purchase in size. It barely registered against Berkshire’s $373 billion cash pile or its market capitalization. Yet the signal was deliberate. Berkshire traditionally does not announce stock repurchases in real time or issue press releases about them. Abel chose to break that silence, explaining that he “felt it was important to communicate to our shareholders, our partners, our owners, with the transition of leadership.”

What followed validated that early signal. By the time Berkshire reported second-quarter 2026 results, Abel had spent approximately $4.5 billion on buybacks in that single quarter alone, the largest repurchase amount in the company’s history. The cash pile also reached a record $397 billion by the end of Q1 2026, reflecting continued net equity sales early in Abel’s tenure before he shifted to a more active deployment posture.

The new era at Berkshire is taking shape faster than many observers expected. Abel, now 64, is not reinventing the playbook: he is following it with conviction. By putting both the company’s capital and his own salary to work in Berkshire stock, and by consulting Buffett on the terms of each move, he has demonstrated genuine fidelity to the principles that built Berkshire into one of the most admired companies on earth. Buffett himself, now 96 and serving as chairman emeritus after stepping down from the chairmanship on September 18, 2026, has effectively given the program his blessing at every step.

The shareholders who worried about Berkshire drifting under new leadership can take note. The playbook is not just intact. It is being executed with growing scale.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect post-publication developments, including Berkshire’s full first-quarter 2026 buyback total of approximately $235 million, the company’s $4.5 billion second-quarter 2026 repurchase program, the cash pile reaching a record $397 billion at the end of Q1 2026, Warren Buffett’s September 18, 2026 resignation as chairman (with his son Howard Buffett succeeding him), and Greg Abel’s current age of 64.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.