2020 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting (Full Version)

Well, it's uh 3:45 in Omaha, and this is the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway. It doesn't look like an annual meeting; it doesn't feel exactly like an annual meeting, and it particularly doesn't feel like an annual meeting because, uh, my partner 60 years, Charlie Munger, is not sitting up here.

I think most of the people that come to our meeting really come to listen to Charlie, but I want to assure you Charlie, at 96, is in fine shape. His mind is as good as ever; his voice is as strong as ever, but it just didn't seem like a good idea to have him, uh, make the trip, uh, to Omaha for this, uh, meeting.

Charlie is really taking to this new life; he's added Zoom to his repertoire. So, he has meetings every day with various people, and he's just skipped right by me technologically. But, uh, that really isn't such a huge achievement; it's more like, you know, kind of like stepping over a peanut or something. But nevertheless, I want you to share it: Charlie is in fine shape, and he'll be back next year, and we'll try to have everything in the show that we normally have next year.

G. Jane, also, who is the vice chairman in charge of insurance safely in New York, and again, it just did not seem worthwhile for him to travel to Omaha for this meeting. But on my left, we do have Greg Abel. Greg is the vice chairman in charge of all operations except insurance.

So, Greg manages a business that has more than 150 billion in revenues, crosses dozens of industries, and has more than three hundred thousand employees. He's been at that job a couple of years, and frankly, I don't know what I'd be doing today if I didn't have a cheating Greg, uh, handling the duties that I was doing only about a quarter as well a couple of years ago. So, I owe a lot of thanks to Greg, and you'll get exposed to him more as this meeting goes along.

The meeting will be divided into four parts. In a moment or two, I will talk, uh, the sort of a monologue with slides. I've never really used slides before. I've taught college classes intermittently but pretty steadily from age 21 to age 88, and I never recall using a single slide. But, uh, you know, who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? So we'll see whether you can or not.

I've got a number of slides, and I would, uh, like to take you through those in the first section, which will start in just a minute. And then, uh, we'll move on to a brief recap of Berkshire's first quarter results. Now we put those up in the 10-Q, which was posted on the internet and BerkshireHathaway.com this morning, and there's lots and lots of detail in there.

So I'm not going to go through that; I'll just point out one or two things that may be of interest to you. And actually, I'll talk a little bit about what we did in April, which, uh, is something that is new to Berkshire, to be that current. But, uh, I'll give you that. Then we'll have the formal meeting, which will take maybe 15 or 20 minutes, and from there, we'll go to Becky Quick, who, for a couple of hours, will grill me and Greg on questions she's selected from a huge batch that I'm told she's received.

They went to Carol Loomis and Andrew Ross Sorkin as well as Becky, but to simplify things, we've consolidated all those questions that, uh, Becky will ask. And, uh, like I say, we'll go for a couple of hours, and there's no specified cutoff time. Uh, we'll just see how things develop.

Now, what's, of course, on everybody's mind the last, uh, two months or so is, you know, what, uh, what's going to be the situation in terms of health in the United States, and what's going to be the situation in terms of the economy in the United States in the months and perhaps the years to come?

And, uh, I don't really have anything to add to your knowledge on health. In school, I did okay in accounting, but I was a disaster in biology. And, uh, I'm learning about these various matters the same way you are, and I think, uh, personally, I feel extraordinarily good about...