Renewed buying raises Occidental stake to almost 25%
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Berkshire Hathaway resumed purchases late last week of Occidental Petroleum shares, buying a total of almost 4.7 million shares on Thursday, Friday, and Tuesday of this week.
Since the market was closed on Monday for Memorial Day, that’s three consecutive sessions.
It paid $273 million for those shares, putting the average purchase price at $58.57 per share.
On Tuesday, OXY went as low as $57.90 per share and Berkshire reports in its SEC filing that some of its purchases were made at that price.
The shares went even lower the next day, falling to as low as $57.52 and closing at $57.66, so the buying could have continued.
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Since it began purchasing OXY stock early last year, Berkshire has spent $12 billion to build a stake of just under 222 million shares, which is 24.9% of Occidental’s outstanding shares.
At today’s closing price of $59.76, the position has a market value of almost $13.3 billion for a paper profit of around 10.5%. Its overall average purchase price is $54.07.
In addition, Berkshire has warrants to buy an additional 84 million shares for $59.62 each. It received them as part of its 2019 financing of Occidental’s Anadarko Petroleum purchase.
But Buffett told shareholders at last month’s annual meeting that Berkshire will not buy control of the company because “we wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
In August of last year, it did receive regulatory approval to buy up to 50% of the oil company.
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