Buffett’s Berkshire buys more Occidental Petroleum, edges closer to 20% stake

July 18 (Reuters) – (This July 18 story corrects paragraph 2 to reflect amended regulatory filing that shows Berkshire bought some Occidental stock on July 18, not July 16, after the company corrected details)

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) on Monday said it has bought another 1.94 million shares of Occidental Petroleum Corp (OXY.N), putting it nearer a threshold where it could record some of the oil company’s earnings with its own.

Berkshire’s latest purchases from July 14 to July 18 cost $112 million, and gave Buffett’s conglomerate a 19.4% Occidental stake worth about $10.9 billion, regulatory filings show.

If it reached 20% ownership, Berkshire could record its proportionate share of Houston-based Occidental’s earnings, known as the equity method of accounting.

Analysts on average expect Occidental to post about $10.7 billion of net income this year, according to Refinitiv I/B/E/S.

Though some analysts and investors have speculated that Berkshire could eventually buy all of Occidental, Berkshire could contend that its accounting should remain unchanged because its stake is passive. read more

Berkshire, based in Omaha, Nebraska, uses the equity method for its 26.6% stake in packaged food company Kraft Heinz Co (KHC.O), which it controls with Brazilian private equity firm 3G Capital.

It also owns $10 billion of Occidental preferred stock, and has warrants to buy an additional 83.9 million common shares for $5 billion.

Occidental’s share price has more than doubled this year, benefiting from rising oil prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York
Editing by Matthew Lewis

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