By now, you've probably heard the sad news that Warren Buffett, widely regarded as one of, if not the, greatest investors of all time, will be stepping down from Berkshire Hathaway Inc (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B) at the end of this year.
Buffett has been at the helm of Berkshire for as long as anyone can remember – 1962, to be specific. Over the subsequent six decades, he has led Berkshire to unprecedented success. He has delivered a compounded annual growth rate of almost 20% per annum for Berkshire shareholders and turned the company into one of the largest in the world.
But time sadly waits for no one. At the age of 94, Buffett has finally decided to close the curtain on what is arguably the most consequential career in American corporate history.
Berkshire's board has just formally determined that Buffett will be succeeded by his hand-picked vice-chair, Greg Abel, on 1 January 2026. Saying that, it has also elected Buffett to stay on as chairman of Berkshire. So he isn't riding off into the sunset just yet.
So, now that we know Buffett's decades-long tenure as Berkshire CEO is sadly coming to an end, it's a great time to look back on some of the best decisions of his career.
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Warren Buffett's best bets
Many of Warren Buffett's best investments are his most famous. And his most famous investment is arguably the US$1.3 billion stake that Buffett first started amassing in Coca-Cola Co (NYSE: KO) back in the 1980s. Buffett has long been known for his love of the classic American soft drink, with the distinctive red cans usually on his desk at Berkshire's annual shareholder meetings.
Buffett reportedly wanted to buy Coca-Cola shares for years. But, in classic Buffett style, he bided his time until the right price came along. Back in his 2022 letter to shareholders, Buffett confirmed that Berkshire received a total of $704 million in dividends alone (up from US$75 million in 1994) from that US$1.3 billion investment.
That means his yield on cost had grown to an astonishing 46.9% of his original investment. It would be even higher today, noting Buffett's quip that dividend "growth occurred every year, just as certain as birthdays".
The US$1.3 billion Coca-Cola position? It's now worth almost US$28.7 billion.
It's a similar story with another famous Buffett investment – his purchase of American Express Inc (NYSE: AXP). Buffett first bought American Express stock in the 1960s, but accelerated Berkshire's buying up until the 1990s. By 1995, the company's stake was also worth US$1.3 billion. In that same letter, Buffett revealed that the dividends from Amex shares had risen from US$41 million in 1995 to US$302 billion by 2022. The total position is today worth US$42.15 billion.
The best until last…
A final winner to note has been one of Buffett's more recent buys. And, despite some selling over the past year or so, it remains Berkshire's largest investment by far. It is none other than Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL).
Despite an aversion to tech companies (more on that later), Buffett first started buying Apple stock back in 2016 when the company was around US$25 per share, and loaded the boat over that year and 2017. He eventually amassed a ~$US$35 billion stake, which subsequently rode a 915% increase in the Apple share price by December 2024. This stake was worth north of US$170 billion by 2023, but Buffett has sold a lot of that since.
Today, Berkshire's Apple investment sits at US$59.67 billion. In the weekend shareholder meeting, Buffett stated that "I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that [longtime Apple CEO] Tim Cook has made Berkshire a lot more money than I've ever made".
