Greg Abel's First Full Quarter Running Berkshire Hathaway Has Arrived. Here's What the 13F Reveals.

Berkshire Hathaway's Q1 2025 13F shows Greg Abel exited 15 positions, added Delta Air Lines and Macy's, and significantly increased Alphabet by about 40 million shares worth roughly $11 billion. Alphabet is now Berkshire's fifth-largest holding at 6.9% of the portfolio, while Apple, American Express, and Coca-Cola remain the top three positions unchanged. The filing suggests continuity with Buffett's style despite a notable portfolio reshuffle, with limited immediate market-wide impact.

Analysis

The key signal is not that Berkshire moved away from Buffett; it’s that the new regime is still operating as a balance-sheet-first allocator rather than a “conglomerate as index fund” buyer. That matters because the portfolio is now more exposed to businesses with visible cash generation and operating leverage to a soft-landing backdrop, while trimming payment network and e-commerce exposure removes some duration-like secular compounders in favor of nearer-term earnings visibility. The near-term implication is a slightly more cyclical Berkshire beta, but not a wholesale factor rotation.

Alphabet stands out as the cleanest expression of that view: the market still prices it like a mature ad business, while the incremental value is increasingly driven by AI distribution, cloud margin expansion, and buyback absorption. If Berkshire was scaling here during the March drawdown, the second-order effect is that the stock likely has a large, sticky fundamental bid on dips, which can compress volatility and weaken short interest rather than create a one-way melt-up. That also puts pressure on other megacap “quality growth” names that don’t have the same balance-sheet support or multiple margin of safety.

The more interesting contrarian read is that the consumer/travel additions are less about optimism and more about normalization. Delta benefits if corporate travel keeps healing, but it is still exposed to fuel, macro, and any consumer downtick over the next 2-3 quarters; Macy’s is a harder version of the same call because any improvement in execution can get overwhelmed if discretionary spending softens. Meanwhile, exiting Visa/Mastercard and Amazon could be a warning that Berkshire sees limited upside from crowding in the most owned secular winners at current valuations, not necessarily a bearish macro call.

The hidden risk is that this portfolio construction can look right until the market re-prices for recession or a sharp slowdown in ad spend and travel. If growth rolls over, the lower-multiple, asset-heavy additions will underperform faster than the brands Berkshire kept, and the market will likely punish the new buys before any fundamental thesis has time to work. That creates an attractive relative-value setup: Berkshire appears to be tilting toward stability-plus-upside, but the best trade is likely owning its highest-conviction new compounder versus fading the more economically sensitive additions.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long GOOG on pullbacks over the next 1-3 months; use a 5-8% downside stop. Risk/reward favors 15-20% upside if AI monetization and buybacks continue to re-rate the multiple toward other megacap compounders.
• Pair trade: long GOOG / short AMZN for 2-4 months. The setup favors the name with cleaner margin expansion and less valuation sensitivity; target 10-15% relative outperformance, stop if AMZN reaccelerates margin momentum.
• Avoid chasing DAL after the Berkshire bid; consider a tactical short or put spread if the stock rallies into earnings over the next quarter. Travel is still cyclical, and upside is capped unless business-travel recovery surprises meaningfully.
• Treat M as a high-beta turnaround, not a core consumer long. Only buy on signs of continued comp and margin improvement; otherwise fade strength on a 3-6 month horizon because small operational wins can be overwhelmed by discretionary weakness.
• Use BRK.B as a defensive relative long versus equal-weight market exposure. The portfolio shift suggests lower downside than growth indices in a soft-landing scenario, but keep sizing modest because recession would hurt the new cyclical add-ons first.