The mysteries of Buffett's COVID-era meeting
| What will, won't, and might happen at Berkshire's annual meeting Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting is just about a week away and we still don't have a very good picture of what will be happening.
We do know what won't be happening. In a mid-March letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett said that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, shareholders won't be able to physically attend the meeting on Saturday, May 2 and all special events have been canceled.
So we do know there won't be any marathon 6-hour Q&A with Buffett and Charlie Munger sitting at a table and answering questions in front of thousands of shareholders packed into the CHI Health Center Omaha arena.
And there certainly won't be scenes of Buffett being surrounded by hundreds of people as he tours the exhibition floor, like this one from the 2011 meeting.  There will be a formal annual meeting to handle the board elections and any other corporate business.
It's scheduled for 4:45 pm ET with attendance limited to Buffett, "possibly Charlie, and several Berkshire employee who will deliver proxy votes."
In his letter, Buffett said "it's possible" that one or more of the journalists who have been at past meetings to ask questions will be able to do so again this year.
(They are retired Fortune editor Carol Loomis, CNBC's Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times and CNBC.)
In what may, or may not, be a clue, Yahoo Finance's live webcast of the proceedings is scheduled to begin at 4pm ET, potentially leaving some room for questions before the formal meeting is scheduled to start 45 minutes later.
Buybacks push U.S. Bancorp stake above 10% In an SEC filing late today, Berkshire said its roughly 150 million share stake in U.S. Bancorp is now more than 10% of the bank's outstanding shares.
The stake didn't change. U.S. Bancorp's outstanding shares decreased due to stock repurchases.
The 10% level triggers extra regulatory requirements that Buffett generally tries to avoid.
Given Berkshire's recent sales that brought its stakes below 10% for several other stocks, don't be surprised if USB gets trimmed a bit, too.
USB does some trimming of its own UBS analyst Brian Meredith has reduced his 12-month price targets for Berkshire Hathaway's two share classes, reports Yahoo Finance.
Citing the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, Meredith reduced his Class A target to $358,000 from $393,000 and his Class B target to $239 from $262.
The new BRKA target would be a 28% increase from today's close of $279,460. The BRKB target is also 28% above today's close of $186.65.
Meredith thinks the impact of the virus on Berkshire's operating businesses "will be manageable." BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH
  BERKSHIRE'S TOP STOCK HOLDINGS
 Berkshire's top stock holdings by market value, based on today's closing prices. The number of shares held is as of December 31, 2019, as disclosed in the company's February 14 13F SEC filing, and other filings on that date.
The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.
QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS
Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, but we don't forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)
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-- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch
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