On April 30 local time, the shareholders' meeting of Berkshire Hathaway will be held in Omaha, Brazzaville, China. Buffett, 92, and Munger, 98, will appear together again.
In 2022, the capital market changes, global inflation remains high, the hawkish interest rate hike of the Federal Reserve disturbs the secondary market, and the situation in Russia and Ukraine affects the international energy supply. In this turbulent time, how will Buffett and his close partner Munger stick to the "value investment" strategy? How to interpret the investment layout under the conflict between Russia and Ukraine?
highlight 1: the first return offline since the epidemic
In 2020, affected by covid-19 epidemic, the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders' meeting was transferred online and held in the form of webcast. In 2021, the general meeting of shareholders continued to be held online, but in order to facilitate Munger's participation, the venue was changed to Los Angeles, where Munger lived. This is also the first time that the general meeting of shareholders was held outside Omaha.
This year's general meeting of shareholders will be held at Chi Health Center in the northern urban area of Omaha, which is also the venue of the 2019 general meeting of shareholders.
highlight 2: six hour Q & a session
The shareholders' meeting lasted for three days, including business meetings, "investing in yourself" 5K jogging and various shopping activities. On April 30, the general meeting of shareholders officially opened. The heavy Q & a session will start at 9:15 a.m. local time and is expected to last for six hours.
Berkshire Hathaway said that at that time, the Q & a session will provide two question channels, one is to randomly select on-site shareholders, and the other is to collect and select the questions of shareholders who are not present by CNBC reporter Becky quick. In addition to Buffett and Munger, two vice chairmen of Berkshire, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, will also answer questions on the spot this year. It is expected that a total of about 60 questions will be answered, but they will not discuss the specific investment decision-making process and political topics.
highlight 3: Buffett was impeached in his later years or will retire
According to the schedule, this year's general meeting of shareholders will vote on a series of shareholder proposals. It is reported that CalPERS, the largest state-owned public pension fund in the United States, which holds about $2.3 billion of Berkshire shares, disclosed on April 19 that it planned to vote for Berkshire Hathaway's shareholder proposal to replace Warren Buffett as chairman. The proposal was first put forward by the national legal and policy center, a non-profit organization. The center believes that Buffett's holding the positions of chairman and CEO at the same time "greatly weakens" the roles of the two positions, thus weakening the corporate governance structure.
Berkshire said its operations have been committed to diversity, equality and inclusiveness. At present, Buffett controls 32.1% of the voting rights of Berkshire, and the shareholder proposals he opposes usually fail by a large score.
However, considering Buffett's upcoming 92nd birthday, his successor has been the focus of the outside world in recent years.
The successor may "fall to whose house"? Berkshire Hathaway has said that if Warren Buffett cannot continue to hold these positions, Abel Abel, who is in charge of the company's non insurance business, will become CEO, and Buffett's son Howard Buffett will become non-executive chairman.
How about Russia and Ukraine
Recently, the Russian Ukrainian war has impacted the global market. How Buffett will analyze the recent macro trend and what kind of investment strategy Berkshire will have under the conflict between Russia and Ukraine will also become a major focus of the shareholders' meeting.
When the international oil price fluctuated at a high level, Buffett made great efforts to increase the position of Western oil.
Documents disclosed by the securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) show that in the three days from March 14 to 16 alone, Buffett's Berkshire bought a total of 18.1 million shares of Western oil, worth nearly $1 billion. Since then, Berkshire has held 136.4 million shares, with a total value of about $7.2 billion.
Buffett has been targeting the energy sector since last year. Buffett greatly increased Chevron's 9.54 million shares at the end of the fourth quarter of last year, with an increase ratio of about 33%, making chevron one of Berkshire's top ten new heavy positions.
point 5: Berkshire's book cash is $144 billion, how will Buffett use this huge amount of money
By the end of 2021, Berkshire's book cash had reached $144 billion. Does Buffett intend to use this huge amount of money to make a big show this year? Has Berkshire identified new investment opportunities? This is also worthy of investors' expectation.
According to Buffett's 2022 shareholder letter, although Berkshire Hathaway has $350 billion in equity assets, it still has a large amount of cash positions in the balance sheet, including $144 billion in cash and cash equivalents. In other words, there are about 20% to 30% cash positions left, and there is no full allocation of equity assets.
In this regard, Yang Delong, chief economist of Qianhai open source fund, pointed out that holding cash positions can deal with some possible changes in the macro environment and some stock disasters that may be found. By holding a large amount of cash, you can also calmly layout some high-quality assets when a stock disaster occurs.
It is worth noting that Buffett's recent major moves continue. In addition to increasing his holdings of Western oil, he also spent a lot of money on the acquisition of insurance company Alleghany and increased his holdings of HP.
