My Visit to Omaha: The View from the Exhibition Floor

I returned from Omaha last weekend following the 2026 Berkshire Hathaway meeting, where I spent most of my time in the Exhibition Hall and closely observed twenty-seven subsidiaries.

A lesson from the book, The Warren Buffett CEO, stayed with me: Buffett’s devotion to management integrity, drive, and culture. In the Exhibition Hall, this lesson came to life. The employees were approachable and eager to talk. Beyond their kindness, they talked about the same things: a company has a hundred ways to polish its short-term financials, from skipping R&D investments to trading price for volume. Resisting these temptations requires long-term thinking. R&D was one of the words I heard the most on the floor. Berkshire is “slow” by design. It will miss opportunities, but its true value emerges during a downturn.

On Communication and Trust

For decades, Berkshire held no analyst calls and issued no earnings guidance. Instead, it provides what Buffett believes an owner would want to know. It is an exemplary case of a culture that respects minority shareholders.

While many companies have been criticized for overcommunicating to Wall Street, others swing to the opposite extreme — no calls, no guidance, and only vague disclosures. These are not the same thing as Berkshire’s discipline. “Saving time” and guarding “secrets” are not valid excuses. Management that hides behind brevity deserves skepticism. This is common sense, though easily forgotten.

Greg Abel

Those who work with Mr. Abel describe him as detail-oriented, more hands-on than his predecessor. His challenge lies in finding the balance between a decentralized management culture and using a firmer hand to unlock value among the portfolio companies.

Greg has also been candid about the tech debt and investments needed to modernize many of the portfolio businesses. For the first time, BNSF’s industry ranking via combined ratio appeared at the meeting, a signal that operating companies are being held accountable in a more public setting.

Berkshire has many talented, strong-willed CEOs accustomed to autonomy. To earn their respect while introducing coordination, without bruising the spirits of the businesses, is the real test. I will continue to observe.

About Customer Experience

Outside the exhibition booths, people in Omaha spoke warmly of Buffett’s contributions to the city. Berkshire’s businesses are woven into life here. I gained another insight while visiting Nebraska Furniture Mart (NFM): a great customer experience needs neither a know-it-all lecturing on product specs nor a clerk hovering over the hunt, interpreting your every body movement. It is the peace of knowing help is near and the freedom to browse as if no one is watching.

I had pictured a dimly lit, bare-bones warehouse with sofas stacked to the rafters. I imagined customers flying through a thirty-second drive-through, furniture in tow. In this vision, speed drove the high turnover and sales-per-square-foot that translate into the lowest prices in the country.

In reality, Nebraska Furniture Mart is so vast it might house the whole of Omaha and still feel empty. I stood at the entrance and could not see the end of the hall. It is a polished, brightly lit world where futuristic finishes replace warehouse dust. Beyond furniture, the store sells everything but clothing. In the gaming section, I found an arcade where the play is free; in the aisles, I discovered luxury kitchen brands I never knew existed.

The customer experience was the greatest surprise. Salespeople are not eager, and I mean that as a compliment. Families gather on sofas and mattresses as if at home. Exhausted after the shareholder meeting, I lay flat on a cushy recliner. When a salesperson approached, I told her I was only resting. She smiled and said, “I’ll leave you to it!” before walking away. I felt so comfortable I briefly considered shipping one home.

Local Uber drivers told a consistent story. One bought her entire kitchen appliance at NFM; another borrows his brother’s shareholder pass every May for family shopping. In Omaha, Christmas arrives in the spring.

NFM operates on thin margins and high turnover, but it is this permissive culture that keeps the wheel turning.

Berkshire’s Operating Businesses

Buffett applies the same principles to private acquisitions as he does to public equities. I noticed a few patterns: pricing power in niches like Bell Labs, high inventory turns at Pilot and NFM, and the cost advantages of vertical integration at Clayton Homes, with my notes as follows:

Pricing Power

Duracell: 6 factories across 3 countries, producing over a billion batteries a year. It invests heavily in R&D and branding, as can be seen from the limited-edition Messi batteries. As a private subsidiary, it can observe publicly-traded competitors going into price wars at the expense of eroding margins.

Benjamin Moore: deliberately avoids mass retail, selling only through independent dealers. This protects pricing and premium brand image, avoiding commoditization. BM offers premium paint to customers who care about quality and wide range of color selection.

Bell Laboratories: high-quality rodent control products with pricing power in a niche where quality matters.

See’s Candies and Dairy Queen: well-known case studies, no need to elaborate.

High Inventory Turn

Pilot: low margin and high inventory turnover driving ROIC. Pilot’s current CEO, who previously worked under Greg Abel, professionalized the business with more structured processes, a contrast to founder-driven competitors.

Nebraska Furniture Mart: low prices, high turnover.

Borsheims: similar model to NFM.

Shaw Industries: similar dynamics.

Cost Advantage

Clayton Homes: Clayton doesn’t just build homes; it is vertically integrated providing financing and insurance to homeowners. It also sources materials from other Berkshire portfolio companies such as Shaw, Acme and Johns Manville. The cost advantage is that it borrows at lower cost by leveraging Berkshire’s AAA-rated balance sheet.

GEICO: sells direct, cutting out the middleman, and has lower cost than traditional insurers.

Pampered Chef: sells through consultants and cooking events, bypassing Amazon and Walmart entirely. Same direct model as GEICO.

Benjamin Moore: sells to independent dealers only, avoiding large retailers like Home Depot and Lowes. This helps the company control distribution and protects pricing (see also Pricing Power section above).

Other Interesting Findings

BNSF uses Meta’s Oculus for basic locomotive operator training, an interesting enterprise application for VR.
Lubrizol is a specialty chemical company serving a wide range of industries. It supplies active ingredients to major skincare brands including La Mer and The Ordinary and is the inventor and largest producer of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), a high-performance specialty plastic bridging rubber and rigid polymers.
MidAmerican Energy is cautious amid significant developer speculation around data center development and state-by-state energy competition.
Clayton Homes builds residential homes in factories and ships them to homeowners at very affordable costs ranging $200K–$450K. I always assumed these were temporary construction site units, but Clayton now holds ~50% share of the manufactured home market, which is ~10% of new single-family homes in the US.
Flight Safety International manufactures simulators for pilot training, using similar parts as planes, and serves the military market. They don’t yet use Precision Castparts components in their simulator manufacturing, which could be a future opportunity.
Johns Manville, a natural supply chain partner for Clayton Homes, provides premium fiberglass and mineral wool insulation for manufactured housing.
Two shoe companies, Brooks and Berkshire Hathaway Shoes, were also in the Exhibition Hall; these are quite confusing acquisitions as it made me wonder why he bought Brooks but not just hold Nike. Buffett seems to focus on function over fashion. Wells Lamont, which sells gloves, fits the same mold.

Berkshire is a collection of businesses at every stage of their lifecycle, held together by a culture that prizes the long term over the next quarter. I left the Exhibition Hall having made the rounds at the retail booths, See’s, Fruit of the Loom, and Dairy Queen, happily filled with sugar, $1 Dilly Bars, and new learnings from Berkshire’s subsidiary companies.