Warren Buffett’s Successor, Greg Abel, Is Betting Big on a Virtual Monopoly That’s About to Become Berkshire Hathaway’s 4th-Largest Holding This year marks a new era for the trillion-dollar company that billionaire Warren Buffett built.
The Oracle of Omaha retired as Berkshire Hathaway’s (NYSE: BRKA)(NYSE: BRKB) CEO on Dec. 31, officially passing the torch to his protégé, Greg Abel
Abel has wasted little time making his presence known. According to Berkshire’s first-quarter Form 13F, he completely exited 16 positions and put tech stocks back on the menu, as evidenced by his sizable investment in Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL)(NASDAQ: GOOG). It took just one quarter for Abel to make clear that this isn’t your grandparents’ Berkshire Hathaway anymore — and he’s not done transforming Berkshire’s $325 billion investment portfolio just yet.
Abel continues to pile into one of Wall Street’s leading virtual monopolies During the first quarter, Abel more than tripled Berkshire’s stake in Alphabet’s Class A shares (GOOGL) with a 36,403,656-share purchase, and opened a brand-new position in the Class C shares (GOOGL) with a 3,585,215-share purchase. On June 1, Alphabet announced plans to sell $80 billion in stock to fund the expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. Days later, it upsized its stock offering to a staggering $84.75 billion.