Berkshire Hathaway shareholders will get their first extended look at Greg Abel, Warren Buffett’s likely successor, at the annual shareholders meeting on Saturday.

Shareholders will get their first extended look at Buffett’s likely successor. Charlie Munger will not be taking questions.

Berkshire Hathaway investors will get their first extended look at Greg Abel, a Berkshire vice chairman and potential successor to CEO Warren Buffett, when he and Buffett take questions on Saturday at Berkshire’s annual meeting in Omaha.

Buffett, who is 89 years old, and Abel, who is 57, will be the only directors present at the meeting, Berkshire said in a statement on Monday.

The annual meeting, which normally draws 30,000 or more Berkshire shareholders, will not permit attendance this year because of the Covid-19 crisis. Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, 96, who has shared the stage with Buffett at the annual meetings, will not be part of the Q&A nor will Ajit Jain, 68, another Berkshire vice chairman. The meeting will get under way at 3:45 p.m. Central time (4:45 p.m. Eastern time) on Saturday.

Investors will also be focused on Berkshire’s first-quarter earnings, which will be released earlier on Saturday, at 8 a.m. Eastern time, to see if Berkshire was an active buyers of equities in the period and its own stock.

The actual earnings will likely be less important because Buffett has told investors to take a long-term view, and the profits won’t reflect much impact of the recent economic swoon. The headline earnings figure will likely show a big loss because of the declining value of Berkshire’s investment portfolio of about $250 billion, but investors are more interested in operating profits.

Buffett has been quiet publicly about investments in recent weeks, but Munger, in a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, suggested that Berkshire has been cautious amid the financial storm.

“We’re always going to be on the safe side,” Munger told The Journal. “That doesn’t mean we couldn’t do something pretty aggressive or seize some opportunity. But basically we will be fairly conservative.”

Some Berkshire holders are hoping that Buffett took advantage of the sharp stock-market selloff in March to scoop up a lot of equities and aggressively repurchase Berkshire’s own stock using the company’s more than $120 billion of cash and equivalents. Buffett has often referred to Berkshire’s “Fort Knox” balance sheet.

Berkshire was a light buyer of stocks in 2019 and a modest buyer of its own shares. Berkshire purchased a net $4.3 billion of stocks in 2019, down from $24.4 billion in 2018. The company bought back $4.9 billion of its down stock in 2019, less than 1% of the shares outstanding.

Berkshire did pick up the repurchase pace in the fourth quarter and bought back $2.1 billion of its own stock and some Berkshire investors would like to see at least that level of buybacks in the first quarter, considering that the stock trades at an estimated 1.2 times its book value—a level that Buffett has said in the past is an attractive purchase price for the shares.

Berkshire’s Class A shares (ticker: BRK.A) were up 0.4%, to $280,500 in early trading Monday. The Class B shares (BRK.B) were up 0.2%, to $186.89. The stock is trailing the S&P 500 index this year by about 6 percentage points.

At the meeting, Berkshire said that Buffett and Abel will not take questions on “politics and or specific investment holdings.”

That is a disappointment since Buffett has typically addressed questions about individual holdings like Apple (AAPL) or Coca-Cola (KO) or Wells Fargo (WFC). He is likely to be asked about Berkshire’s big investments in financial companies and airline stocks that have been hard hit this year.

Barron’s has written that Buffett should showcase the next generation of leadership at Berkshire’s annual meetings.

Veteran Berkshire executives Abel and Jain have been viewed as the most likely successors to Buffett since they were elevated to become vice chairmen in early 2018, with Abel responsible for oversight of Berkshire’s vast noninsurance operations and Jain, the insurance businesses. Abel was CEO and remains chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Berkshire’s big utility business, and Jain has headed Berkshire’s specialty reinsurance unit.

Given Abel’s widespread responsibilities and younger age than Jain, Barron’s has tapped him as the most likely successor to Buffett, who shows no signs of wanting to give up the reins at Berkshire with his 90th birthday approaching in August.

Abel could get questions from holders about the utility and energy business. Berkshire Hathaway Energy owns utilities in Iowa, the Pacific Northwest, and in the U.K., as well as operating two natural-gas pipelines.

Buffett and Abel could also field questions about the impact of the economic downturn on major Berkshire businesses like Burlington Northern Santa Fe, one of the two main railroads west of the Mississippi, and Precision Castparts, a maker of aircraft parts that is exposed to the slowdown in aerospace.

Write to Andrew Bary at andrew.bary@barrons.com

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