We recently published a list of 10 Best Stocks to Buy According to Billionaire Warren Buffett. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Occidental Petroleum Corp (NYSE:OXY) stands against other best stocks to buy according to billionaire Warren Buffett.
Known and admired for his success, wealth and philanthropy, Warren Buffett is still at the helm of his diversified holding company. From a struggling New England textile company in the 1960s, Buffett has grown Berkshire to a firm boasting a range of businesses from Geico insurance to BNSF Railway, an equity portfolio exceeding $267 billion, and a cash reserve of $334.20 billion at the end of 2024.
Given his success on the investment horizon – a result of decades of strong returns – it doesn’t come as a surprise that Buffett is often touted as one of the greatest investors of all time. In an attempt to mirror his trading activity, many investors search for what stocks is Warren Buffett buying today.
READ ALSO: Warren Buffett’s Portfolio: 15 Longest Held Stocks and 10 Stocks Warren Buffett and Insiders Are Crazy About.
The Oracle of Omaha focuses on companies with strong economic moats and undervalued assets, applying his well-known investment strategy – long-term value investing. Buffett is not that fond of diversification, as he is investing in businesses instead of stocks, picking those he understands.
While diversification as a risk mitigation technique is popular among those who are at the start of their investing journey, Buffett believes diversification could limit knowledge. He also doesn’t consider money the greatest investment tool, given his statement that “the best investment by far is anything that develops yourself, and it’s not taxed at all.”
Despite the strong market performance throughout much of 2024, Buffett appears to have taken a more cautious approach. With overinflated valuations due to high interest rates and deteriorating economic conditions in mind, he opted to sell off substantial stakes in companies whose valuations have become too high.
Buffett is also not fond of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on imports that sent shockwaves through global stock markets, even though his company’s Class B shares dipped 1.4% only on April 3, outperforming the broader market.
In the fourth quarter, Buffett’s 13F portfolio was comprised of a total of 38 security holdings and was worth roughly $267 billion, slightly up from $266 billion in the third quarter. Given that Buffett doesn’t like to diversify much, his top ten holdings account for nearly 90% of his 13F portfolio.
Our Methodology
To make the list of Warren Buffett’s top portfolio holdings we reviewed Berkshire’s fourth-quarter 2024 portfolio and ranked the list according to the hedge fund’s stake value in each firm. If there was an overlap, we prioritized the holding that was worth more money. We have also assessed the number of shares acquired by Berkshire Hathaway and hedge fund sentiment toward each stock from Insider Monkey’s database of hedge investor letters.
Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).
That said, please see if there are overlaps between our compilation of the 10 longest-held stocks by The Oracle of Omaha wrapped up in November, and a new list of Warren Buffett’s top portfolio holdings.
Oil derricks in the background with a few workers in the foreground, emphasizing the company’s oil and gas production activities.
Occidental Petroleum Corp (NYSE:OXY)
Portion of portfolio: 4.88%
Value of holdings: $13,053,055,436
The Oracle of Omaha has been purchasing holdings in the Houston-based Occidental Petroleum Corp (NYSE:OXY), an energy company and one of the largest oil and gas producers in the United States in recent years, with the latest purchase bringing his stake in the company up to 28.2%.
Buffett grew his stake in Occidental Petroleum by 4% sequentially to 264,178,414 shares, according to a regulatory SEC filing, making the stock his sixth biggest holding.
The company generated $4.9 billion of free cash flow in 2024 with $1.4 billion generated in the fourth quarter only, paid about $800 million of common dividends and achieved its near-term debt repayment target of $4.5 billion seven months ahead of schedule. The oil and gas producer raised its quarterly dividend by 9.1% to $0.24 per share in February. For 2025, the company announced $1.2 billion of divestiture proceeds utilized for debt reduction, the company’s president-CEO Vicki A. Hollub said in her fourth-quarter earnings call.
That said, on March 21, Occidental wrapped up the sale of a significant mineral and royalty position spanning approximately 250,000 net royalty acres (NRA) in the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) Basin in Colorado, to Elk Range Royalties for $905 million, according to Reuters. The assets are being developed by top operators such as Chevron and Civitas, who together are behind more than half of the wells being drilled in 2024.
Hollub said in March that U.S. oil production will peak between 2027 and 2030 relying on the U.S. President Donald Trump’s pledge to boost fossil fuel production and reduce prices for consumers.
In the meantime, Occidental’s $12 billion acquisition of CrownRock in 2024 has grown its domestic well inventory, adding 1,700 new well locations and 170,000 barrels of oil per day. The company has also boosted its carbon capture business via the acquisition of Carbon Engineering in 2023 and the development of the Stratos DAC plant in Texas, capturing 500,000 metric tons of CO2 annually. It plans 100 more DAC plants by 2035.
However, Jim Cramer believes there might be better companies out there even though Occidental is one of Warren Buffett’s top portfolio holdings.
Appearing on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, Jim Cramer said, “A lot of people always want Occidental because it’s Buffett’s company, it’s not as well run as Coterra. It’s not as well run as Chevron. Which has really lagged.”
Year-to-date the company’s stock lost 18.32% in its value, trading at $40.36 per share on April 24 at the time of writing.
Overall, OXY ranks 6th on our list of best stocks to buy according to billionaire Warren Buffett. While we acknowledge the potential of OXY as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than OXY but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.
READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.