Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting: Warren Buffett on Wells Fargo, Buybacks and More

Berkshire has also become one of Apple’s biggest shareholders with a roughly $40 billion stake.

Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, the two investment managers whom Berkshire had hired in the past decade, are behind the push into tech stocks. Mr. Buffett credited the pair for Berkshire’s Amazon and Apple investment.

At last year’s meeting, Mr. Buffett addressed a question about why he hadn’t bought Amazon early on:

“The truth is that I’ve watched Amazon from the start, and I think what Jeff Bezos has done is something close to a miracle. The problem is if I think something will be a miracle, I tend not to bet on it.”

Mr. Munger made that point again at this year’s meeting, but added, of Berkshire’s decision not to buy shares of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, early on: “We screwed up.”

‘I’m a card-carrying capitalist’

Capitalism has come under increasing criticism while support for socialism has grown in the United States. One shareholder wanted to know what Mr. Buffett, as a lifelong Democrat, thinks of these shifting views and whether they could affect Berkshire.

Mr. Buffett responded:

“My position at Berkshire is not to further my political beliefs.”

He then added:

“I’ll just say it: I’m a card-carrying capitalist. You don’t have to worry about me changing in that matter. But I also think capitalism does involve regulation. It involves taking care of people who are left behind.”

Mr. Munger said:

“We’re all in favor of some kind of government social safety net in a country as prosperous as ours.”

About Berkshire’s stock buybacks

The first question Mr. Buffett faced had to do with stock buybacks.

Berkshire bought back $1.7 billion of its own stock during the first quarter, but the shareholder wanted to know why Berkshire didn’t buy back more.

Mr. Buffett didn’t answer the question directly, but offered his general views on buying back Berkshire’s stock.

“We will buy stock when it is trading below a conservative estimate of its intrinsic value,” he said. “We want to be sure when we repurchase stock that those that have not sold are better off than they were before.”

Mr. Buffett had largely eschewed buying back Berkshire stock. But as the price to acquire big companies rose over the past few years and Berkshire’s cash pile swelled, Mr. Buffett’s reluctance to buy back Berkshire’s stock began to fade.