Berkshire Hathaway Corp. (NYSE:BRK.A)(NYSE:BRK.B) Billionaire Warren Buffett and its subsidiaries have increased their stake in the red-hot Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:OXY) by another $1.5 billion over the past week, as has oil. prices were at their peak, as the new filing shows.
Buffett’s firm, which bought about $3 billion worth of OXY shares less than two weeks ago, said in a report from the US Securities and Exchange Commission that its divisions added another 27.1 million shares to their stake from last Wednesday through Friday.
The company said it paid between $51.02 and $58.58 to buy shares in a series of transactions.
The disclosure comes just a week after BRK.A disclosed in an earlier SEC form that its divisions bought 60 million shares of OXY between March 2 and 4 at prices ranging from $47.07 to $56.45.
These share purchases and the latest BRK.A purchases give Buffett’s companies a total of about 118.3 million shares of OXY common stock, as well as warrants to purchase about 83.9 million additional shares of common stock at a price of about $59.62 each. Berkshire divisions also own 100,000 preferred shares of OXY.
Prior to the March purchases, the company owned about 30 million OXY shares and 83.9 million warrants.
Buffett is loading energy giant Occidental (OXY) just as the company’s share price is skyrocketing as oil prices soar due to the Russian-Ukrainian war and sanctions against Moscow.
Russia is one of the world’s largest energy producers, and questions about whether it can continue to export oil and gas have sent West Texas Intermediate (CL1:COM) crude oil to a 14-year high of around 130 earlier this week. dollars per barrel. This rise also brought OXY to a 52-week high of $59.60 on Thursday, when Buffett was buying.
WTI later slipped towards the end of Friday at $109.33 a barrel, while Occidental (OXY) ended the week at $57.95, down 0.3% in Friday’s session and down 2.8% compared to with an intraday peak on Thursday.
However, the oil giant’s stock remains at a three-year high, while West Texas Intermediate shares are trading at their highest level in about 13.5 years.
As for Occidental (OXY), Seeking Alpha members have a wide range of views on where the stock is headed. A member of The Value Portfolio gives OXY a Buy rating, while Logan Kane calls the stock a Hold and Paul Franke argues for selling or selling the name.