In his first major strategic initiative since assuming day-to-day leadership at Berkshire Hathaway, the new CEO has signaled support for the long-anticipated breakup of Kraft Heinz. The sprawling food conglomerate, which Harvard-educated investors valued at roughly $41 billion at the time of Berkshire’s 2015 investment, has delivered compound annual revenue growth of just 0.8% over the past five years and incurred more than $15 billion in write-downs on underperforming brands. The proposed carve-up would separate cheese, condiments and frozen foods operations into standalone companies, unlocking an estimated $4 billion in annual cost-saving opportunities and freeing up capital for redeployment into higher-growth businesses within Berkshire’s portfolio.

Berkshire Hathaway’s Class A shares have generated a cumulative gain of over 2,800,000% since Warren Buffett took control in 1965, outperforming the S&P 500 by more than 300,000 percentage points over that span. Investors will closely watch whether the incoming CEO can sustain even a fraction of that pace. Berkshire’s float has grown from $7 million under Buffett to $150 billion today, helping to underwrite large-scale deals such as the 2016 acquisition of Precision Castparts. With nearly $140 billion in investable cash on the balance sheet, the new leadership faces the dual challenge of deploying capital at attractive returns and preserving the company’s hallmark risk-adjusted results amid rising valuations across equity and private markets.

Berkshire’s utility arm, PacifiCorp, is seeking to limit its exposure to up to $52 billion in potential wildfire liabilities in an Oregon appeals court. The company has proposed a cap at $800 million for all wildfire claims, citing regulatory precedents in California that shield utilities from open-ended damages so they can maintain investment-grade credit ratings. If the Oregon court adopts a similar framework, Berkshire Hathaway could avert a significant hit to its consolidated book value and preserve the approximately $37 billion in equity value currently attributed to its regulated utilities segment.