Greg Abel takes the Berkshire Hathaway stage in Omaha at 9:15 a.m. Central this morning, the first new chief executive of Berkshire in sixty years. [1] Warren Buffett, who handed over the keys on December 31, sits in the audience as chairman emeritus. The cash pile on the balance sheet is roughly $373 billion. The buyback question is the loudest one in the room. [2]

Abel's first shareholder letter, released February 28, ran conservative. He called the Kraft Heinz position "well short of adequate" without committing to sell. [3] He named Apple and Moody's as the two new entries on the list of compounders. [3] Berkshire's January filing suggested the firm is considering selling some or all of its 325 million Kraft Heinz shares; Abel did not confirm. [4] On buybacks he held Buffett's frame — Berkshire will repurchase shares only at a "conservatively determined" discount to intrinsic value, not as a regular schedule.

The format change is real. Abel will sit beside Ajit Jain, Katie Farmer of BNSF, and Adam Johnson of Berkshire Hathaway Energy. [5] The four-person panel replaces the two-stool tableau Buffett ran with Charlie Munger and then Abel. The quarter Buffett spent on each question becomes four quarters split four ways. The annual letter, Morningstar wrote, "reads more like a CEO report than a folksy essay." [6] Today's Q&A is the first time the audience hears whether the same is true at the microphone.

The catechesis question is not whether Abel can do Buffett. It is whether the shareholders will let him not.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco