Warren Buffett’s Succession Triggers Search for His Spiritual Successors

Berkshire's Q2 operating earnings surged to $13 billion as it turned net buyer of stocks for the first time in three years, deploying $23.5 billion.

Warrior Met Coal's revenue exploded 71% year over year and free cash flow swung from negative $57 million to positive $103 million after Blue Creek came online.

St. Joe posted its best quarter in 20 years with net income up 37%, while buying back shares to the lowest count since 1997.

Just released. Our analysts combed the entire stock market and named the ten best stocks to buy right now, and Berkshire Hathaway didn't make the cut. Enter your email to see the names that beat BRK-B. The report is free. Enter your email and see if any of your stocks made the cut.

The question of who inherits Warren Buffett's mantle became more than a parlor game this past weekend. It has been widely reported that Howard Buffett was elected board chair of Berkshire Hathaway as Warren Buffett took another step back. With Greg Abel already running operations, the succession is no longer hypothetical, and investors are once again asking which public companies actually embody Buffett's playbook: a durable moat, owner-operator alignment, disciplined capital returns, a real margin of safety, and the patience to compound quietly for years.

Below are four public companies that capture Buffett's discipline, ranked from closest cousin to the benchmark itself.

24/7 Wall St has helped investors make money for over two decades, and our top analysts just finished ranking the definitive Top 10 Stocks To Buy Now . Not the ten biggest companies. Not the ten everyone is arguing about. The ten best stocks to buy right now.

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Berkshire once held a major stake in a potential acquirer of Willis Towers Watson ( NASDAQ:WTW ) but ultimately the deal collapsed. Insurance broking is a capital-light, recurring-revenue business with a wide client moat. Q2 FY26 delivered adjusted diluted EPS of $3.35, up 17%, on revenue of $2.466 billion, up 9.1% year over year, with the adjusted operating margin expanding 100 basis points to 19.5%. Management's "Propel" AI plan targets roughly $625 million in investment for about $350 million in net run-rate savings and a 30% adjusted operating margin by 2028. The board added $1.5 billion to buyback authority, and diluted share count fell from 100 million to 94 million year over year.