Buffett's Thanksgiving Letter to Shareholders on November 10, 2025

Today, Warren Buffett converted 1,800 Class A shares into 2.7 million Class B shares and donated these B shares to four family foundations: 1.5 million shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, and 400,000 shares each to the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, and the Novo Foundation. These donations were completed today.

Here is Mr. Buffett's speech to the other shareholders:

To all shareholders:

I will no longer write Berkshire's annual report, nor will I speak at the annual meeting at length. In the words of the British, I will "shut up."

Sort of.

Greg Abel will take over as boss at the end of the year. He is an excellent manager, hard-working, and straightforward. I wish him a long tenure.

I will continue to talk to you and my children about Berkshire through my annual Thanksgiving address. The individual shareholders of Berkshire are a very special group who generously share their earnings with those less fortunate than I. I am glad to have the opportunity to stay in touch with you. This year, please allow me to reminisce a bit first. After that, I will discuss my plans for distributing Berkshire shares. Finally, I will share some thoughts about the company and individuals.

As Thanksgiving approaches, I feel both grateful and surprised to have lived to 95. When I was young, I never dared to hope I would make it this far. I almost died when I was younger.

It was 1938, when residents of Omaha thought hospitals were either Catholic or Protestant, a classification that seemed quite natural at the time.

Our family doctor, Dr. Harle Hots, was a kindly Catholic who always carried a black medical bag when he made house calls. Dr. Hots called me "Captain," and his fees were always low. In 1938, I had a terrible stomachache, and Dr. Hots came over, did a simple examination, and told me I would feel better by the next morning.

Afterward, he went home for dinner and played some bridge. However, Dr. Hots couldn't shake off my somewhat strange symptoms, and later that evening, he arranged for me to have an emergency appendectomy at St. Catherine's Hospital. For the next three weeks, I felt as if I were in a convent and began to enjoy my new "pulpit." I loved to talk—yes, even then—and the nuns welcomed me.

Worse still, my third-grade teacher, Miss Madsen, had my 30 classmates each write me a letter. I might have thrown away the boys' letters, but I read the girls' letters over and over; hospitalization wasn't all bad.

The most comforting thing during my recovery—actually, the first week was pretty tough—was the gift from my dear Aunt Eddie. She brought me a very professional-looking fingerprinting kit, and I immediately fingerprinted all the nuns who came to my house. (I might have been the first Protestant child they had ever met at St. Catherine's, and they didn't know what to expect.)

My theory—of course, this was pure whimsy—was that someday a nun would fall from grace, and the FBI would discover they had neglected to fingerprint the nun. In the 1930s, the FBI and its director, J. Edgar Hoover, were highly respected by Americans, and I even fantasized about Mr. Hoover coming to Omaha to inspect my precious collection. I imagined that he and I would quickly find and arrest that rebellious nun. If that happened, I would surely become famous nationwide.

Obviously, my fantasy never came to fruition. But ironically, a few years later, I realized I should have fingerprinted Hoover himself, as he fell from grace due to abuse of power.

That was Omaha in the 1930s, and my friends and I dreamed of owning a sled, a bicycle, a baseball glove, and an electric train. Let's look at a few other kids from that era who lived close to me and had a significant impact on my life, but I knew nothing about them.

I'll start with Charlie Munger, my dear friend of 64 years. In the 1930s, Charlie lived just a block away from the house I have owned and lived in since 1958.

In my early years, I almost became friends with Charlie. He was six years and nine months older than I, and in the summer of 1940, he worked ten hours a day at my grandfather's grocery store for two dollars a day. (Frugality is a Buffett family tradition.) The following year, I had a similar job at the store, but I didn't meet Charlie until 1959, when he was 35 and I was 28.

After World War II, Charlie graduated from Harvard Law School and then permanently moved to California. However, Charlie always believed that his early life in Omaha had a profound impact on him. For over sixty years, Charlie has had a tremendous influence on me; he is a flawless teacher and a protective "big brother." Although we have our differences, we have never quarreled. "I told you so" has never been in his vocabulary.

In 1958, I bought my first and only house. Of course, it was in Omaha, about two miles from where I grew up (roughly speaking), less than two blocks from my in-laws' house, and about six blocks from the Buffett grocery store, a 6-7 minute drive to the office building where I worked for 64 years.

Next, let me introduce another Omaha resident, Stan Lipsey. In 1968, Stan sold the Omaha Sun (a weekly) to Berkshire, and ten years later, at my invitation, he moved to Buffalo. At that time, the Buffalo Evening News, owned by a Berkshire subsidiary, was in a fierce battle with a morning paper that published the only weekly newspaper in Buffalo. We were at a disadvantage.

Stan ultimately created our new Sunday edition, and in the following years, our once heavily loss-making newspaper generated over 100% annual returns (pre-tax) from our $33 million investment. This money was a significant source of income for Berkshire in the early 1980s.

Stan lived just five blocks from my house growing up. One of his neighbors was young Walter Scott. You may remember that Walter brought MidAmerican Energy to Berkshire in 1999. He was also an important director of Berkshire until his death in 2021 and a dear friend of mine. For decades, Walter was a philanthropic leader in Nebraska, leaving his mark on Omaha and the entire state.

Walter attended Benson High School, which I had planned to attend—until 1942, when my father unexpectedly defeated a four-term incumbent to become a congressman. Life is full of surprises.

And there's more.

In 1959, Don Keough and his young family lived in a house across the street from mine, about 100 yards from where the Mungers once lived. At that time, Don was a coffee salesman, but he was destined to become the president of Coca-Cola and a loyal director of Berkshire.

When I met Don, he was earning $12,000 a year, and he and his wife, Mickey, had to support five children, all of whom attended Catholic schools (which required tuition).

Our two families quickly became good friends. Don came from a farm in northwest Iowa and graduated from Creighton University in Omaha. Soon after, he married a local girl, Mickey. After joining Coca-Cola, Don became a legendary figure worldwide.

In 1985, while Don was president of Coca-Cola, the company launched the ill-fated New Coke. Don gave a famous speech apologizing to the public and restoring the "Old" Coke. He changed his mind because he explained that the mail sent to "super idiots" at Coca-Cola always ended up on his desk. His "retraction" speech is a classic and can be viewed on YouTube. He readily admitted that, in fact, Coca-Cola belonged to the public, not the company. After that, Coca-Cola's sales soared.

You can watch Don's great interview at CharlieRose.com. (Tom Murphy and Kay Graham also contributed some excellent interviews.) Like Charlie Munger, Don has always retained the qualities of a Midwestern boy: enthusiastic, friendly, and fundamentally an American.

Finally, Ajit Jain, who grew up in India, and our future Canadian CEO Greg Abel both lived in Omaha for a few years in the late 20th century. In fact, in the 1990s, Greg lived just a few blocks from my house on Farnam Street, although we never met at that time.

Is there something magical in the water in Omaha?

I spent a few teenage years in Washington, D.C. (when my father was a congressman), and in 1954, I found what I thought would be a long-term stable job in Manhattan. There, Ben Graham and Jerry Newman treated me well, and I made many lifelong friends. New York has unique advantages—still does. However, just a year and a half later, in 1956, I returned to Omaha and have never left since.

Later, my three children and several grandchildren grew up in Omaha. My children attended public schools (graduating from the same high school my father (class of 1921), my first wife Susie (class of 1950), and Charlie, Stan Lipsey, Irv and Ron Blumkin (who were key figures in the growth of Nebraska Furniture Mart), and Jack L. Walter (class of 1923) attended. Jack L. Walter founded National Indemnity Company and sold it to Berkshire in 1967, which became the foundation of our vast property and casualty insurance business.

Our country has many excellent companies, schools, and healthcare institutions, each with its strengths and a wealth of talent. But I feel very fortunate to have met many lifelong friends, encountered my two wives, received a good education in public schools, known many interesting and kind adults in Omaha from a young age, and made a diverse group of friends in the Nebraska National Guard. In short, Nebraska has always been my home.

Looking back, I feel that both Berkshire and I have thrived because we settled in Omaha; if I had lived anywhere else, it would have been a different story. The Midwest is a great place to be born, raise a family, and start a business. Coincidentally, I was incredibly lucky when I was born.

Now, let's talk about my advanced age. My genes don't seem to help much— the longest-lived person in my family (of course, the family record gets fuzzier the further back you go) was 92 years old before I was born. But I have encountered many wise, kind, and dedicated doctors in Omaha, starting with Dr. Harle Hots and continuing to today. My life has been saved at least three times, each time by a doctor not far from home. (However, I no longer fingerprint nurses. At 95, many quirks can be forgiven, but there are limits.)

Those who live to old age need a lot of luck, dodging banana peels, natural disasters, drunk or distracted driving, lightning strikes, and various other misfortunes every day.

But fate is capricious, and—there's no other word for it—extremely unfair. In many cases, our leaders and the wealthy receive luck far beyond what they deserve—and they often refuse to acknowledge it. Some heirs are born into lifelong financial independence, while others suffer hardships in their early years, or worse, face serious illnesses and lose everything I take for granted. In many densely populated areas of the world, my life could have been quite miserable, and my sisters might have been even less fortunate.

I was born in 1930, healthy, reasonably intelligent, a white male in America. Wow! Thank you, Lady Luck. My sisters are as smart as I am and have better personalities, but their circumstances are vastly different. Lady Luck has favored me for most of my life, but she has more important things to do than look after nonagenarians. Luck is finite.

On the contrary, as I age, Father Time seems to take more and more interest in me. And he has never lost; for him, everyone eventually gets remembered as a "victory." When balance, vision, hearing, and memory all continue to decline, you know Father Time has quietly approached.

I age relatively late—aging comes at different times for different people—but once it appears, it cannot be denied.

What surprises me is that I feel pretty good overall. Although I move slowly and reading is becoming increasingly difficult, I go to the office five days a week and work with a great group of people. Occasionally, I get some useful ideas, or someone proactively brings up collaborations we might not have otherwise received. Due to Berkshire's size and the market conditions, good ideas are few but not nonexistent.

However, my unexpected longevity has inevitably had a significant impact on my family and the realization of my charitable goals.

Let's explore them together.

What happens next?

My children are all past the normal retirement age, at 72, 70, and 67. If they think they will be as lucky as I have been in delaying aging, they are sorely mistaken. To increase the likelihood of them properly handling almost my entire estate before the successor trustees take over, I need to accelerate my donations to their respective foundations. My children are now in the golden period of experience and wisdom but have not yet entered old age. This "honeymoon period" will not last forever.

Fortunately, adjusting the strategy is not difficult. However, there is one more thing to consider: I want to retain a significant number of Class A shares until Berkshire's shareholders, like Charlie and me, have full confidence in Greg. That confidence should be established soon. My children and the Berkshire board are 100% supportive of Greg.

All three children now possess the maturity, wisdom, energy, and intuition needed to manage substantial wealth. Moreover, they will still be alive after I pass, giving them an advantage: if necessary, they can formulate proactive or reactive policies to address federal tax policies or other factors affecting charitable development. They may need to adapt to significant changes in the world around them. Records of posthumous governance are not pretty, and I have never had such thoughts.

Fortunately, all three children have inherited dominant genes from their mother. Over time, I have gradually become a better role model for their thinking and behavior. However, I can never fully replicate the excellent qualities of their mother.

My children have three successor trustees in case I pass away prematurely or become incapacitated. These three successor trustees are not ranked and are not tied to any specific child. They are all virtuous, well-informed individuals with no conflicts of interest among them.

I assure my children that they do not need to work miracles and should not fear failure or disappointment. These are inevitable, and I have experienced them. They just need to improve upon the achievements typically made in government activities and/or private philanthropy while recognizing that these wealth redistribution methods have their shortcomings.

In my early years, I conceived various grand charitable plans. Although I was determined, these plans ultimately did not materialize. Over the years, I have also witnessed politicians considering poorly thought-out wealth transfers, choices in family inheritance, and some inept or eccentric philanthropists.

As long as my children fulfill their responsibilities, they can be assured that their mother and I would be very pleased. They have good instincts, and each of them has gone through years of practice, initially handling small amounts, gradually increasing to over $500 million a year.

All three enjoy working long hours to help others, just in different ways.

Accelerating my donations to the children's foundations does not reflect any change in my view of Berkshire Hathaway's prospects. Greg Abel's performance has far exceeded my high expectations for him when I believed he should become Berkshire's next CEO. His understanding of many of our businesses and employees far surpasses mine, and he is an exceptionally quick learner, able to grasp many issues that even CEOs have not considered. Whether as a CEO, management consultant, scholar, or government official—whatever field you can think of—I cannot imagine anyone better suited to manage our savings than Greg.

For example, Greg's understanding of the potential rewards and risks of our property insurance business far exceeds that of many seasoned property insurance executives. I hope he remains healthy and lives for many more decades. If luck is on our side, Berkshire should only need five or six CEOs over the next century. The company should especially avoid those who aim to retire at 65, flaunt their wealth, or build family dynasties.

An unpleasant reality is that sometimes excellent and loyal CEOs of parent or subsidiary companies develop dementia, Alzheimer's disease, or other debilitating long-term illnesses.

Charlie and I have encountered this issue many times but have failed to take action. Such negligence can lead to grave mistakes. The board must remain vigilant about this possibility at the CEO level, and CEOs must also be vigilant about this possibility at the subsidiary level. It is easier said than done; I can cite examples from past large companies. The only advice I can give is: directors should stay alert and be willing to speak up.

During my lifetime, reformers have tried to shame CEOs by requiring disclosure of the comparison between CEO pay and that of ordinary employees. The length of proxy statements quickly ballooned from 20 pages or fewer to over 100 pages.

But these good intentions did not work; instead, they backfired. From my observations, CEO A looks to competitor CEO B and cleverly suggests to the board that he should receive a higher salary. Of course, he also raises the pay of the directors and is particularly careful in selecting members of the compensation committee. The new rules have not led to moderation but rather jealousy.

This trend of rising compensation has escalated and ultimately spiraled out of control. Those wealthy CEOs—after all, they are human—often feel uneasy that the wealth of other CEOs continues to grow. Jealousy and greed always go hand in hand. Which advisor has ever suggested significantly cutting the pay of CEOs or board members?

Overall, the prospects for the various businesses under Berkshire are slightly better than average, mainly due to a few large, high-quality companies that are unrelated to each other. However, ten or twenty years from now, many companies will outperform Berkshire; our scale advantage will ultimately become a disadvantage.

Among all the businesses I know, Berkshire has the least likelihood of experiencing a catastrophic disaster. Moreover, Berkshire's management and board are more focused on shareholder interests than almost any other company I am familiar with (and I have encountered many companies). Ultimately, Berkshire's management style will always ensure its existence as a valuable asset to America and avoid any behavior that could reduce it to begging. Over time, our management should accumulate considerable wealth—they bear significant responsibilities—but they do not pursue family wealth or flaunt their riches.

Our stock price is volatile, occasionally dropping by about 50%, a situation that has occurred three times during the 60 years under the current management. But do not be discouraged; the American economy will eventually recover, and Berkshire's stock price will rise again.

Final thoughts

Perhaps a bit self-congratulatory, but I am happy to say that I feel much better about the second half of my life than the first. My advice is: do not beat yourself up over past mistakes—at least learn some lessons from them and move on. It is never too late to mend. Find suitable role models and learn from them. You can start with Tom Murphy; he is the best.

Do you remember Alfred Nobel, who later won the Nobel Prize? It is said that when his brother died, a newspaper mistakenly published his obituary. He was very shocked when he read the obituary and realized he needed to change his behavior.

Do not expect the newsroom to make mistakes: decide what you want to write in your obituary and then live well, living a life worthy of such an obituary.

Greatness does not come from accumulating vast wealth, gaining great fame, or wielding government power. When you help others in any way, you are helping the world. Kindness costs nothing but is priceless. Whether you are religious or not, the Golden Rule is an excellent guideline for character.

I write these words because I have often thought carelessly, made many mistakes, but have also been fortunate to learn from some great friends how to be a better person (of course, I am far from perfect). Remember, a janitor and a chairman are both ordinary people.

I wish all who read this article a happy Thanksgiving. Yes, even to those bastards; it is never too late to change. Remember to be grateful for the opportunities America has created for you. But it is inevitably capricious in distributing rewards, sometimes even appearing greedy.

Choose your idols carefully, then emulate them. You can never be perfect, but you can always do better.

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