Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B) has a track record of excellence that is hard to match for any other stock. Much of Berkshire’s success has come as a result of its legendary leader, Warren Buffett, who just stepped down as CEO at the end of 2025. With decades of market outperforming under Buffett’s belt, successor CEO Greg Abel has his work cut out for him to build on his predecessor’s legacy.

Today, this three-part series on Berkshire Hathaway for the Voyager Wallet concludes with a closer look at CEO succession from Buffett to Abel and what investors can expect. And although I will not add to it Berkshire Hathaway shares to this portfolio, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strongly consider it a complement to other individual holdings you may own.

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Given Buffett’s incredible tenure at Berkshire, succession has been at the forefront of shareholders’ minds for a long time. For years, Buffett and former vice chairman Charlie Munger reassured investors in Berkshire stock by saying there was a plan without providing details. Then, in 2021, Berkshire announced that its board of directors had unanimously endorsed Abel as Buffett’s designated successor.

After that, Buffett said encouraging things about Abel’s abilities on several occasions. Buffett has said he would rather have Abel manage his finances than any other corporate leader or investment adviser. He even said that Abel has better management skills than he does, highlighting the important need for any Berkshire CEO to properly manage the conglomerate’s subsidiaries and leave day-to-day operational decisions to the respective leaders of each subsidiary. This has been a key ingredient in Berkshire’s past success.

Perhaps the most valuable thing that Berkshire and Buffett did to set the stage for Abel to take over was to put the company’s finances in the best shape to give the incoming CEO maximum flexibility to pursue his own vision. Berkshire has been hoarding cash for years, with the figure set to reach a record $382 billion by the end of 2025.

With this amount of cash on hand, Abel will have many options for capital allocation. If Abel found a relatively large company with an attractive valuation, Berkshire’s rich reserves would give the conglomerate opportunities that almost no other company could match. At the same time, Abel could choose to restart Berkshire’s past practice of buying back shares of its own stock, if it found the stock price attractive at some point in the future. Some analysts have even gone so far as to suggest that Abel could do what was unthinkable under Buffett: seek to initiate a dividend for shareholders.

I won’t be buying Berkshire Hathaway for mine Voyager Walletbut that doesn’t mean I think it’s a bad investment. In fact, Berkshire is already my largest individual stock holding, so there’s no need to add more stocks to my mix.

It’s true that any broad market index investor already has a sizable stake in Berkshire because of its trillion-dollar market cap. But what I’ve found that makes Berkshire particularly valuable is that it often moves higher when its more tech-focused peers in the trillion-dollar market cap club falter. This kind of ballast can make long-term investors much happier. I may not know exactly what Berkshire will look like in a few years, but I share Warren Buffett’s confidence that Greg Abel will be more than capable of taking the company to new heights.

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Dan Caplinger has positions in Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Berkshire Hathaway. The Motley Fool has one disclosure policy.

Will Berkshire Hathaway be the same after Buffett, or better? was originally published by The Motley Fool