Berkshire Hathaway stake in Occidental Petroleum rises to 23.6%
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By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) – Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc boosted its possession stake in Occidental Petroleum Corp to about 23.6% after shopping for almost 3.7 million extra shares.
Berkshire disclosed the purchases, which value about $216 million and occurred on March 23 and 27, in a U.S. Securities and Change Fee submitting on Monday night time.
Buffett’s firm started shopping for giant portions of Occidental inventory simply over one yr in the past, round when Russia invaded Ukraine, and has spent greater than $1 billion on the inventory this month.
It now owns about 211.7 million Occidental shares price $12.6 billion primarily based on the oil firm’s closing worth of $59.65 on Monday.
In August, Berkshire received U.S. Federal Vitality Regulatory Fee permission to purchase as much as 50% of Occidental’s widespread inventory.
It additionally owns $10 billion of Occidental most well-liked inventory with an 8% dividend, plus warrants to purchase one other $5 billion of widespread shares at $59.62 every.
Berkshire is Occidental’s largest shareholder, and a few analysts and traders have speculated that it would finally purchase the Houston-based firm.
Buffett, 92, has longed to make one other giant acquisition for his Omaha, Nebraska-based conglomerate, whose dozens of companies embody Geico automobile insurance coverage and the BNSF railroad.
Berkshire constructed a 22.6% stake in BNSF earlier than paying $26.5 billion for the rest in 2010.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Modifying by Jamie Freed)
