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2022-09-17
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5 Warren Buffett Stocks to Buy and Never Sell
HH_18
2022-09-17
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Apple Stock: Watch Out for These Catalysts
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2022-09-12
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Oracle, Occidental, JPMorgan And More: U.S. Stocks To Watch
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2022-09-11
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How a CEO Rescued a Big Bet on Big Oil; "There Were a Lot of Doubters"
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08:10","market":"us","language":"en","title":"5 Warren Buffett Stocks to Buy and Never Sell","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2267698524","media":"Motley Fool","summary":"These highly profitable companies offer sustainable competitive advantages that make them no-brainer buys.","content":"<html><head></head><body><p>When <b>Berkshire Hathaway</b> CEO Warren Buffett buys or sells shares of a company, investors wisely pay attention. That's because the Oracle of Omaha has generated a jaw-dropping total return of 3,641,613% for his Class A shareholders (BRK.A) since taking the reins of Berkshire Hathaway more than 57 years ago.</p><p>Considering Buffett's penchant for buying high-quality stocks and hanging onto them for the long run, riding the Oracle of Omaha's coattails has proven quite profitable for decades. It's an especially smart time for investors to go shopping for Buffett stocks, with the <b>S&P 500</b> and <b>Nasdaq Composite</b> plunging into a bear market.</p><p>What follows are five Warren Buffett stocks investors can confidently buy right now and never have to sell.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9dff3932ab34c4852ce5e15e7b312f41\" tg-width=\"700\" tg-height=\"467\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/><span>Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. Image source: The Motley Fool.</span></p><h2>Amazon</h2><p>The first Buffett stock that can be bought without investors losing any sleep is e-commerce leader <b>Amazon</b>. Although Amazon's leading online marketplace is susceptible to weakness during recessions, this top revenue segment isn't the key to the company potentially tripling its operating cash flow over the next four years.</p><p>Even though Amazon is estimated to bring in nearly 40% of all U.S. online retail sales in 2022, it's the company's higher-margin ancillary operating segments that are driving its profitability and cash flow. For example, the popularity of Amazon's marketplace has helped the company sign up more than 200 million Prime members worldwide. Amazon is bringing in approximately $35 billion in annual run-rate sales from subscription services, which is allowing it to reinvest in its vast logistics network and other high-growth initiatives.</p><p>The other heavy-hitter is cloud infrastructure services segment Amazon Web Services (AWS). According to a recent report from Canalys, AWS brought in an estimated 31% of cloud-service spending during the second quarter. Even though AWS only accounts for a sixth of Amazon's net sales, it's been consistently producing more than half of the company's operating income. With cloud growth still in its early innings and AWS growing into a larger percentage of Amazon's total sales, the company looks cheaper than ever, relative to its future cash flow-generating potential.</p><h2>Visa</h2><p>The second Warren Buffett stock investors can buy and never have to consider selling is payment processor <b>Visa</b>. Despite being cyclical, Visa's sustainable competitive advantages make it a no-brainer stock to hold for the long term.</p><p>To begin with, Visa accounted for a whopping 54% of U.S. credit card network purchase volume in 2020. The U.S. is the leading market for consumption in the world, and Visa holds a 31-percentage-point lead over its next-closest competitor. To boot, it's the only payment processor that significantly expanded its share of the U.S. processing market following the Great Recession (2007-2009).</p><p>To add to the above, the vast majority of global transactions are still being conducted with cash. This should give Visa ample opportunity to organically expand into underbanked markets, such as the Middle East, Africa, and Southeastern Asia, and to make acquisitions to further its reach.</p><p>It's also worth noting that Visa doesn't act as a lender. By only focusing on payment processing, Visa doesn't have to worry about possible loan delinquencies, and therefore isn't required to set aside capital to cover potential loan losses. This is a big reason why Visa's profit margin is usually at or above 50%.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/119223042d623151afc6d0a8e0774989\" tg-width=\"700\" tg-height=\"393\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\"/><span>The GMC Hummer EV is one of 30 electric vehicles GM is releasing by the end of 2025. Image source: General Motors.</span></p><h2>General Motors</h2><p>A third Warren Buffett stock to buy and never sell is Detroit auto giant <b>General Motors</b>. Though economic weakness and historically high inflation threaten to sap auto sales in the short run, the long-awaited growth catalyst for General Motors has arrived.</p><p>The electrification of autos for consumers and enterprise fleets is the multidecade opportunity the auto industry has been waiting for. With most developed countries angling to reduce their carbon footprints, electric vehicles (EVs) are viewed as a sustainable growth story.</p><p>General Motors intends to spend $35 billion on EVs, autonomous vehicles, and battery research through the midpoint of the decade. The expectation, according to CEO Mary Barra, is for GM to roll out 30 new EVs by the end of 2025. The company should have two fully devoted battery plants up and running by the end of next year, with over 1 million EVs produced annually in North America in 2025.</p><p>What's more, GM has a sizable presence in China, the world's No. 1 auto market. General Motors has sold 2.9 million vehicles in back-to-back years in China, and should have the opportunity to gobble up market share in China's still-nascent EV industry.</p><h2>Bank of America</h2><p>The fourth Warren Buffett stock that can be bought hand over fist and never sold is financial juggernaut <b>Bank of America</b>. To keep with the prevailing theme of this list, short-term recessionary concerns should take a back seat to BofA's numerous long-term advantages.</p><p>The beauty of bank stocks is that they benefit from the natural expansion of the U.S. economy. The disproportionate amount of time the economy spends expanding, relative to contracting, allows Bank of America to grow its loan portfolio and deposits, which boosts its net-interest income over the long run.</p><p>Something else worth noting about Bank of America is that it's the most interest-sensitive money-center bank. With the Federal Reserve aggressively hiking interest rates in order to tame inflation, outstanding variable-rate loans are becoming more profitable for banks and credit unions without them having to lift a proverbial finger. Since the federal funds target rate is coming off an extended period where it was effectively at 0%, the implication is that BofA can expect a sizable uptick in net-interest income in the years ahead.</p><p>This is also a company that's done a phenomenal job of encouraging its customers to bank digitally. As of the end of June, 43 million active users were banking online or via mobile, with 48% of all sales being completed digitally. Because digital transactions are considerably cheaper than in-person and phone interactions for banks, this digital push has allowed BofA to consolidate some of its physical branches and reduce its noninterest expenses.</p><h2>Berkshire Hathaway</h2><p>The fifth and final Warren Buffett stock you can buy and never sell is (cue ironic music) ...Berkshire Hathaway. Over the past four years, there's no stock Warren Buffett has spent more money buying than his own company.</p><p>What makes Berkshire Hathaway such a rock-solid performer is Buffett's affinity for cyclical businesses and his love of dividend stocks.</p><p>As I've pointed to throughout this list, cyclical companies benefit from the substantially longer amount of time the U.S. and global economy spend expanding. Instead of trying to guess when these economic downturns will occur, Buffett has packed Berkshire Hathaway's investment portfolio with companies that thrive off the natural growth of U.S. and global gross domestic product over time. Tech stocks, financials (banks, insurers, and payment processors), and energy stocks (oil companies) all benefit immensely from extended bull markets.</p><p>Additionally, Berkshire Hathaway is on track to collect approximately $6.07 billion in dividend income over the next 12 months. Income stocks are usually profitable, have navigated their way through prior recessions, and offer an extensive history of outperformance when compared to their non-paying peers.</p><p>With Warren Buffett overseeing a 20.1% average annual return for his company's Class A shares over the past 57 years (ended Dec. 31, 2021), investors probably can't go wrong adding Berkshire Hathaway to their own portfolios.</p></body></html>","source":"fool_stock","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>5 Warren Buffett Stocks to Buy and Never Sell</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\n5 Warren Buffett Stocks to Buy and Never Sell\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2022-09-17 08:10 GMT+8 <a href=https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/09/16/5-warren-buffett-stocks-to-buy-and-never-sell/><strong>Motley Fool</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>When Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett buys or sells shares of a company, investors wisely pay attention. That's because the Oracle of Omaha has generated a jaw-dropping total return of 3,641,613%...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/09/16/5-warren-buffett-stocks-to-buy-and-never-sell/\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BAC":"美国银行","V":"Visa","GM":"通用汽车","BRK.A":"伯克希尔","AMZN":"亚马逊","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/09/16/5-warren-buffett-stocks-to-buy-and-never-sell/","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2267698524","content_text":"When Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett buys or sells shares of a company, investors wisely pay attention. That's because the Oracle of Omaha has generated a jaw-dropping total return of 3,641,613% for his Class A shareholders (BRK.A) since taking the reins of Berkshire Hathaway more than 57 years ago.Considering Buffett's penchant for buying high-quality stocks and hanging onto them for the long run, riding the Oracle of Omaha's coattails has proven quite profitable for decades. It's an especially smart time for investors to go shopping for Buffett stocks, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite plunging into a bear market.What follows are five Warren Buffett stocks investors can confidently buy right now and never have to sell.Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett. Image source: The Motley Fool.AmazonThe first Buffett stock that can be bought without investors losing any sleep is e-commerce leader Amazon. Although Amazon's leading online marketplace is susceptible to weakness during recessions, this top revenue segment isn't the key to the company potentially tripling its operating cash flow over the next four years.Even though Amazon is estimated to bring in nearly 40% of all U.S. online retail sales in 2022, it's the company's higher-margin ancillary operating segments that are driving its profitability and cash flow. For example, the popularity of Amazon's marketplace has helped the company sign up more than 200 million Prime members worldwide. Amazon is bringing in approximately $35 billion in annual run-rate sales from subscription services, which is allowing it to reinvest in its vast logistics network and other high-growth initiatives.The other heavy-hitter is cloud infrastructure services segment Amazon Web Services (AWS). According to a recent report from Canalys, AWS brought in an estimated 31% of cloud-service spending during the second quarter. Even though AWS only accounts for a sixth of Amazon's net sales, it's been consistently producing more than half of the company's operating income. With cloud growth still in its early innings and AWS growing into a larger percentage of Amazon's total sales, the company looks cheaper than ever, relative to its future cash flow-generating potential.VisaThe second Warren Buffett stock investors can buy and never have to consider selling is payment processor Visa. Despite being cyclical, Visa's sustainable competitive advantages make it a no-brainer stock to hold for the long term.To begin with, Visa accounted for a whopping 54% of U.S. credit card network purchase volume in 2020. The U.S. is the leading market for consumption in the world, and Visa holds a 31-percentage-point lead over its next-closest competitor. To boot, it's the only payment processor that significantly expanded its share of the U.S. processing market following the Great Recession (2007-2009).To add to the above, the vast majority of global transactions are still being conducted with cash. This should give Visa ample opportunity to organically expand into underbanked markets, such as the Middle East, Africa, and Southeastern Asia, and to make acquisitions to further its reach.It's also worth noting that Visa doesn't act as a lender. By only focusing on payment processing, Visa doesn't have to worry about possible loan delinquencies, and therefore isn't required to set aside capital to cover potential loan losses. This is a big reason why Visa's profit margin is usually at or above 50%.The GMC Hummer EV is one of 30 electric vehicles GM is releasing by the end of 2025. Image source: General Motors.General MotorsA third Warren Buffett stock to buy and never sell is Detroit auto giant General Motors. Though economic weakness and historically high inflation threaten to sap auto sales in the short run, the long-awaited growth catalyst for General Motors has arrived.The electrification of autos for consumers and enterprise fleets is the multidecade opportunity the auto industry has been waiting for. With most developed countries angling to reduce their carbon footprints, electric vehicles (EVs) are viewed as a sustainable growth story.General Motors intends to spend $35 billion on EVs, autonomous vehicles, and battery research through the midpoint of the decade. The expectation, according to CEO Mary Barra, is for GM to roll out 30 new EVs by the end of 2025. The company should have two fully devoted battery plants up and running by the end of next year, with over 1 million EVs produced annually in North America in 2025.What's more, GM has a sizable presence in China, the world's No. 1 auto market. General Motors has sold 2.9 million vehicles in back-to-back years in China, and should have the opportunity to gobble up market share in China's still-nascent EV industry.Bank of AmericaThe fourth Warren Buffett stock that can be bought hand over fist and never sold is financial juggernaut Bank of America. To keep with the prevailing theme of this list, short-term recessionary concerns should take a back seat to BofA's numerous long-term advantages.The beauty of bank stocks is that they benefit from the natural expansion of the U.S. economy. The disproportionate amount of time the economy spends expanding, relative to contracting, allows Bank of America to grow its loan portfolio and deposits, which boosts its net-interest income over the long run.Something else worth noting about Bank of America is that it's the most interest-sensitive money-center bank. With the Federal Reserve aggressively hiking interest rates in order to tame inflation, outstanding variable-rate loans are becoming more profitable for banks and credit unions without them having to lift a proverbial finger. Since the federal funds target rate is coming off an extended period where it was effectively at 0%, the implication is that BofA can expect a sizable uptick in net-interest income in the years ahead.This is also a company that's done a phenomenal job of encouraging its customers to bank digitally. As of the end of June, 43 million active users were banking online or via mobile, with 48% of all sales being completed digitally. Because digital transactions are considerably cheaper than in-person and phone interactions for banks, this digital push has allowed BofA to consolidate some of its physical branches and reduce its noninterest expenses.Berkshire HathawayThe fifth and final Warren Buffett stock you can buy and never sell is (cue ironic music) ...Berkshire Hathaway. Over the past four years, there's no stock Warren Buffett has spent more money buying than his own company.What makes Berkshire Hathaway such a rock-solid performer is Buffett's affinity for cyclical businesses and his love of dividend stocks.As I've pointed to throughout this list, cyclical companies benefit from the substantially longer amount of time the U.S. and global economy spend expanding. Instead of trying to guess when these economic downturns will occur, Buffett has packed Berkshire Hathaway's investment portfolio with companies that thrive off the natural growth of U.S. and global gross domestic product over time. Tech stocks, financials (banks, insurers, and payment processors), and energy stocks (oil companies) all benefit immensely from extended bull markets.Additionally, Berkshire Hathaway is on track to collect approximately $6.07 billion in dividend income over the next 12 months. Income stocks are usually profitable, have navigated their way through prior recessions, and offer an extensive history of outperformance when compared to their non-paying peers.With Warren Buffett overseeing a 20.1% average annual return for his company's Class A shares over the past 57 years (ended Dec. 31, 2021), investors probably can't go wrong adding Berkshire Hathaway to their own portfolios.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":308,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9937898225,"gmtCreate":1663388240667,"gmtModify":1676537264248,"author":{"id":"4124872574010152","authorId":"4124872574010152","name":"HH_18","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4124872574010152","authorIdStr":"4124872574010152"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Ok","listText":"Ok","text":"Ok","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9937898225","repostId":"2267061868","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"2267061868","kind":"news","pubTimestamp":1663374316,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/2267061868?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2022-09-17 08:25","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Apple Stock: Watch Out for These Catalysts","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2267061868","media":"TipRanks","summary":"Story HighlightsApple’s blockbuster Far Out show has the world buzzing over what could potentially b","content":"<div>\n<p>Story HighlightsApple’s blockbuster Far Out show has the world buzzing over what could potentially be the most successful iteration of the iPhone. Moreover, with its relatively strong results in the ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.tipranks.com/news/article/apple-stock-nasdaqaapl-watch-out-for-these-catalysts\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n","source":"lsy1606183248679","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Apple Stock: Watch Out for These Catalysts</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nApple Stock: Watch Out for These Catalysts\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2022-09-17 08:25 GMT+8 <a href=https://www.tipranks.com/news/article/apple-stock-nasdaqaapl-watch-out-for-these-catalysts><strong>TipRanks</strong></a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\n<p>Story HighlightsApple’s blockbuster Far Out show has the world buzzing over what could potentially be the most successful iteration of the iPhone. Moreover, with its relatively strong results in the ...</p>\n\n<a href=\"https://www.tipranks.com/news/article/apple-stock-nasdaqaapl-watch-out-for-these-catalysts\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"AAPL":"苹果"},"source_url":"https://www.tipranks.com/news/article/apple-stock-nasdaqaapl-watch-out-for-these-catalysts","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2267061868","content_text":"Story HighlightsApple’s blockbuster Far Out show has the world buzzing over what could potentially be the most successful iteration of the iPhone. Moreover, with its relatively strong results in the third quarter, it has the potential to continue expanding its top and bottom-line results.September has been a forgettable month for the stock market, but it turned out to be the opposite for Apple stock (NASDAQ:AAPL). The tech giant wrapped up its hotly anticipated Far Out event recently, where it unveiled the latest versions of the iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch, much to the delight of its loyal customer base. Moreover, despite the headwinds, its steady revenue expansion and EBITDA growth over the past year make it a solid bet over the long term. Hence, we are bullish on AAPL stock.Similar to previous versions of the iPhone, the newest iteration was able to capture the imaginations of its customer base yet again. Moreover, the biggest surprise was no hike in the price of the iPhone 14 in the U.S. The ability to retain its pricing suggests it’s struck an incredible balance between growth and profitability. The strategy is likely to boost sales immensely once it hits the markets.Furthermore, keeping its prices in check is doubly important now, considering the drop in discretionary spending. High prices will likely make customers fret over spending over $1,000 on an iPhone, but keeping its prices steady is an incredible achievement.Apple’s latest products will likely be a major catalyst for its business. Layer that up with its sticky Apple services, and you have a juggernaut that should steamroll its competition. Most analysts believe these new products will likely elevate its stock price soon. With the current pull-back in prices, it’s probably the right move to invest in AAPL stock.AAPL Stock Could Move Higher in the Near-TermDespite the economic challenges, AAPL stock was able to kick start a few short-lived rallies. Before the Far Out event, Apple stock was deep in the red, but the event’s success kickstarted a rally. Also, the upcoming quarter will be an important litmus test for the business, which could also boost AAPL stock to new heights.With rising inflation across the globe, most tech companies reported low sales numbers, and their stock prices took a massive beating. However, Apple’s third-quarter results were much better than expected, considering the circumstances. With the company’s amazing track record, it’s tough to count out its growth trajectory.Apple Had a Remarkable Third Quarter ShowingApple’s revenues came in at $83 billion for Q3, almost a 2% improvement from the prior-year period. Despite the economic downturn, Apple reported its net profit of $19.4 billion and earnings per share of $1.20, which came in $0.04 higher than analyst estimates. Moreover, it generated record sales in its Services segment. The resilient results during the quarter demonstrate the impact of Apple on its massive customer base.Moreover, the company could generate close to $40.7 billion while dealing with the threat of recession. It seems Apple has done well to manage the impact of inflation and grow its results at a steady pace. It has set itself up for bumper quarters ahead with the release of new products.Apple Expands Production Outside of ChinaApple has announced that it will expand its production outside China to diversify its supply chain and reduce its reliance on a single country. Consequently, Apple invested $1 billion in India, along with expanding into existing facilities in Vietnam and Brazil. The company is also working on setting up a new production line in the U.S.This represents a major shift for Apple, which has so far relied on China for most of its manufacturing. With the reduction in production-related bottlenecks, Apple can effectively manage its operational costs and boost its bottom-line results in the years to come. With the global supply chain challenges, its imperative for companies to have a diversified production base.Is Apple Stock a Buy or a Sell?Turning to Wall Street, AAPL stock maintains a Strong Buy consensus rating. Out of 28 total analyst ratings, 23 Buys, four Holds, and one Sell were assigned over the past three months. The average AAPL price target is $183.56, implying a 20.5% upside potential. Analyst price targets range from a low of $136 per share to a high of $220 per share.Takeaway: AAPL Stock is the Leader of Big TechApple is the crème de la crème as far as tech companies are concerned. It has a history of producing premium products, which continue to capture the imaginations of its customer base. The iPhone Series has been a cash cow for the company and is unlikely to change anytime soon. It has generated billions of dollars for the company, and every new version of the iPhone proves its naysayers wrong.Moreover, the company’s penchant for innovation and diversification remains its strong suit and is arguably the growth catalyst it needs to be successful in the long haul. Additionally, the company remains consistent in rewarding its shareholders.Considering its strong customer base, high demand, high returns, and massive free cash flow, it would not be surprising if AAPL stock performs exceedingly well over the long term. It has, time and again, proven its critics wrong by posting incredible results across all its core and non-core segments.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":146,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9932488671,"gmtCreate":1662976607593,"gmtModify":1676537174708,"author":{"id":"4124872574010152","authorId":"4124872574010152","name":"HH_18","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4124872574010152","authorIdStr":"4124872574010152"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Ok","listText":"Ok","text":"Ok","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9932488671","repostId":"2266734519","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"2266734519","kind":"highlight","weMediaInfo":{"introduction":"Stock Market Quotes, Business News, Financial News, Trading Ideas, and Stock Research by Professionals","home_visible":0,"media_name":"Benzinga","id":"1052270027","head_image":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d08bf7808052c0ca9deb4e944cae32aa"},"pubTimestamp":1662974873,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/2266734519?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2022-09-12 17:27","market":"us","language":"en","title":"Oracle, Occidental, JPMorgan And More: U.S. Stocks To Watch","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2266734519","media":"Benzinga","summary":"With US stock futures trading higher this morning on Monday, some of the stocks that may grab investor focus today are as follows:\n","content":"<html><head></head><body><p>With US stock futures trading higher this morning on Monday, some of the stocks that may grab investor focus today are as follows:</p><ul><li>Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway bought more stock in <b>Occidental Petroleum</b> (NYSE:OXY) to increase its holdings to 26.8% of outstanding shares, a regulatory filing shows.</li></ul><ul><li>Wall Street expects <b>Oracle Corporation</b> (NYSE:ORCL) to report quarterly earnings at $1.07 per share on revenue of $11.46 billion. Oracle will report its first quarter fiscal year 2023 results after market closes on Monday.</li><li><b>JPMorgan Chase & Co.</b> (NYSE:JPM) agreed to acquire California-based Renovite Technologies to solidify its presence in the payment processing arena.</li><li>Analysts expect <b> <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/MTRX\">Matrix Service Company</a> </b> (NASDAQ:MTRX) to post a quarterly loss $0.30 per share on revenue of $181.84 million for the latest quarter. The company will release earnings after the markets close. Matrix Service shares fell 0.4% to $5.72 in after-hours trading.</li></ul><ul><li><b><a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/IDYA\">IDEAYA Biosciences</a>, Inc. </b> (NASDAQ:IDYA) disclosed interim Phase 2 clinical results for darovasertib and crizotinib synthetic lethal combination in metastatic uveal melanoma. IDEAYA Biosciences shares fell 1% to close at $9.25 on Friday.</li><li>Analysts expect <b> <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/RENT\">Rent the Runway, Inc.</a></b> (NASDAQ:RENT) to post a quarterly loss at $0.65 per share on revenue of $73.26 million after the closing bell. Rent the Runway shares fell 2% to $4.39 in the after-hours trading session.</li></ul></body></html>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>Oracle, Occidental, JPMorgan And More: U.S. Stocks To Watch</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nOracle, Occidental, JPMorgan And More: U.S. Stocks To Watch\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n<div class=\"head\" \">\n\n\n<div class=\"h-thumb\" style=\"background-image:url(https://static.tigerbbs.com/d08bf7808052c0ca9deb4e944cae32aa);background-size:cover;\"></div>\n\n<div class=\"h-content\">\n<p class=\"h-name\">Benzinga </p>\n<p class=\"h-time\">2022-09-12 17:27</p>\n</div>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<html><head></head><body><p>With US stock futures trading higher this morning on Monday, some of the stocks that may grab investor focus today are as follows:</p><ul><li>Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway bought more stock in <b>Occidental Petroleum</b> (NYSE:OXY) to increase its holdings to 26.8% of outstanding shares, a regulatory filing shows.</li></ul><ul><li>Wall Street expects <b>Oracle Corporation</b> (NYSE:ORCL) to report quarterly earnings at $1.07 per share on revenue of $11.46 billion. Oracle will report its first quarter fiscal year 2023 results after market closes on Monday.</li><li><b>JPMorgan Chase & Co.</b> (NYSE:JPM) agreed to acquire California-based Renovite Technologies to solidify its presence in the payment processing arena.</li><li>Analysts expect <b> <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/MTRX\">Matrix Service Company</a> </b> (NASDAQ:MTRX) to post a quarterly loss $0.30 per share on revenue of $181.84 million for the latest quarter. The company will release earnings after the markets close. Matrix Service shares fell 0.4% to $5.72 in after-hours trading.</li></ul><ul><li><b><a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/IDYA\">IDEAYA Biosciences</a>, Inc. </b> (NASDAQ:IDYA) disclosed interim Phase 2 clinical results for darovasertib and crizotinib synthetic lethal combination in metastatic uveal melanoma. IDEAYA Biosciences shares fell 1% to close at $9.25 on Friday.</li><li>Analysts expect <b> <a href=\"https://laohu8.com/S/RENT\">Rent the Runway, Inc.</a></b> (NASDAQ:RENT) to post a quarterly loss at $0.65 per share on revenue of $73.26 million after the closing bell. Rent the Runway shares fell 2% to $4.39 in the after-hours trading session.</li></ul></body></html>\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"RENT":"Rent the Runway, Inc.","BK4534":"瑞士信贷持仓","BK4097":"系统软件","BK4538":"云计算","OXY":"西方石油","BK4516":"特朗普概念","BK4504":"桥水持仓","BK4533":"AQR资本管理(全球第二大对冲基金)","BK4581":"高盛持仓","BK4566":"资本集团","BK4528":"SaaS概念","BK4550":"红杉资本持仓","MTRX":"Matrix Service Company","IDYA":"IDEAYA Biosciences","BK4207":"综合性银行","JPM":"摩根大通"},"source_url":"","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2266734519","content_text":"With US stock futures trading higher this morning on Monday, some of the stocks that may grab investor focus today are as follows:Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway bought more stock in Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:OXY) to increase its holdings to 26.8% of outstanding shares, a regulatory filing shows.Wall Street expects Oracle Corporation (NYSE:ORCL) to report quarterly earnings at $1.07 per share on revenue of $11.46 billion. Oracle will report its first quarter fiscal year 2023 results after market closes on Monday.JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) agreed to acquire California-based Renovite Technologies to solidify its presence in the payment processing arena.Analysts expect Matrix Service Company (NASDAQ:MTRX) to post a quarterly loss $0.30 per share on revenue of $181.84 million for the latest quarter. The company will release earnings after the markets close. Matrix Service shares fell 0.4% to $5.72 in after-hours trading.IDEAYA Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ:IDYA) disclosed interim Phase 2 clinical results for darovasertib and crizotinib synthetic lethal combination in metastatic uveal melanoma. IDEAYA Biosciences shares fell 1% to close at $9.25 on Friday.Analysts expect Rent the Runway, Inc. (NASDAQ:RENT) to post a quarterly loss at $0.65 per share on revenue of $73.26 million after the closing bell. Rent the Runway shares fell 2% to $4.39 in the after-hours trading session.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":345,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9932128343,"gmtCreate":1662901581082,"gmtModify":1676537159988,"author":{"id":"4124872574010152","authorId":"4124872574010152","name":"HH_18","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4124872574010152","authorIdStr":"4124872574010152"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Oh","listText":"Oh","text":"Oh","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9932128343","repostId":"2266817381","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"2266817381","kind":"highlight","weMediaInfo":{"introduction":"Dow Jones publishes the world’s most trusted business news and financial information in a variety of media.","home_visible":0,"media_name":"Dow Jones","id":"106","head_image":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/150f88aa4d182df19190059f4a365e99"},"pubTimestamp":1662861434,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/2266817381?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2022-09-11 09:57","market":"us","language":"en","title":"How a CEO Rescued a Big Bet on Big Oil; \"There Were a Lot of Doubters\"","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2266817381","media":"Dow Jones","summary":"Occidental Petroleum Corp. entered the thick of the pandemic among the worst prepared of its U.S. oi","content":"<html><head></head><body><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/be5cb2e717152d9e61504d0803ac3654\" tg-width=\"1278\" tg-height=\"1278\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>Occidental Petroleum Corp. entered the thick of the pandemic among the worst prepared of its U.S. oil-and-gas peers. Struggling with debt from an ill-timed $38 billion deal, Chief ExecutiveVicki Hollubwas fending off activist investorCarl Icahn, who controlled two board seats.</p><p>Two years later, the company has emerged as the top performer in the S&P 500, and Ms. Hollub has traded Mr. Icahn, who sold all of his Occidental shares in March, for Warren Buffett, whoseBerkshire Hathaway Inc. now owns more than 20% of the company.</p><p>It was touch and go for a time. Months before the pandemic took hold, she implemented widespread layoffs. To stave off bankruptcy after oil prices collapsed in 2020, she slashed spending and nearly eliminated Occidental’s once-sacrosanct dividend—“the biggest and toughest decision that I made and I’ve ever made in my career,” she said in an interview.</p><p>Her 2019 acquisition of rival Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which Mr. Icahn called a “disaster,” has given Occidental the dominant position in the largest U.S. shale-oil field, the Permian Basin. Lifted by climbing oil prices, Occidental generated a record $4.35 billion in free cash flow and $3.7 billion in profit in the second quarter. It has cut its debt to $22 billion from nearly $36 billion a year ago.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/61847881fba325e1dc5c7ed3280e29db\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>Oil-and-gas producers have reported banner profits this year, even as a global energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has threatened to derail European industries, left the U.K. facing its worst economic crisis since the 1970s and forced the Netherlands, Germany and India to rely heavily on coal to make up for a dearth of natural gas.</p><p>But Ms. Hollub, the first woman to be CEO of a major U.S. oil company, says she doesn’t feel vindicated. “I just feel relief,” she said. “There were a lot of doubters.”</p><p>Mr. Buffett has publicly lauded Ms. Hollub’s leadership. After she detailed the company’s future plans for analysts in February, Mr. Buffett told his own shareholders, “What Vicki Hollub was saying made nothing but sense.” Last month, Berkshire received regulatory approval to buy up to 50% of the oil company’s shares, spurring speculation it might seek to purchase all of Occidental.</p><p>Mr. Buffett declined to comment for this story. Ms. Hollub said she has “tremendous respect” for Mr. Buffett, adding that “he will be very beneficial for us as we go forward.” She declined to discuss the possibility of Berkshire purchasing the entire company.</p><p>Some former investors remain skeptical, saying a spike in oil prices has rescued the company, not Ms. Hollub.</p><p>“I have nothing personal against Vicki,” Mr. Icahn said in an interview. “However, that will never change my mind that she should not have made a bet-the-company investment by way of overpaying for Anadarko.”</p><p>A University of Alabama graduate, Ms. Hollub joined Occidental in 1982 and soon found herself running operations in Russia and Venezuela. She almost got laid off in 2003, butTodd Stevens, an executive at the company who had followed her rise, arranged for her to lead a team evaluating acreage in Colorado, said Mr. Stevens, who has since left.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/bf58d7d767a23cfb352e019504bafa44\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>Equipment used to process carbon dioxide, crude oil and water at an Occidental Petroleum project in Hobbs, N.M.PHOTO:ERNEST SCHEYDER/REUTERS</span></p><p>Ms. Hollub became known as a hard worker, once spending three weeks straightening out operations at a new gas field’s first well, said Donnie Enns, a former geophysicist who worked under her. “Nobody worked harder than Vicki,” he said. She also found time to run an office March Madness basketball pool.</p><p>After being named CEO of the company in 2016, Ms. Hollub departed from her predecessor’s preference for low-risk, “bolt-on” transactions. A little over a year into the job, she started courting Anadarko, an oil producer of comparable size, for a deal.</p><p>She outflanked largerChevronCorp. in a bidding war that riveted the oil patch, offering $5 billion more than her rival for Anadarko and its prized assets in the epicenter of U.S. shale production. Yet victory came at a steep cost.</p><p>Some of Occidental’s largest shareholders decried the deal—especially a pricey loan from Mr. Buffett in the form of $10 billion in preferred stock paying 8% annually in dividends, or $800 million. Ms. Hollub negotiated the funding at the eleventh hour after meeting with the financier in Omaha, Neb. Mr. Icahn, who first bought stock as the Anadarko bidding war came to a close, wrote to Occidental shareholders that “Buffett figuratively took her to the cleaners.”</p><p>Ms. Hollub acknowledged the deal damaged the company’s standing with some investors. “I was never offended at the fact that our shareholders were skeptical,” she said.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/58cf5cd81991220ec1f42821cee2554b\" tg-width=\"639\" tg-height=\"959\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>Vicki Hollub said she never doubted the wisdom of the Anadarko acquisition.PHOTO:ANGELA OWENS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL</span></p><p>But she said she never doubted the wisdom of the acquisition, even after it sparked an investor revolt that created an opportunity for Mr. Icahn.</p><p>Central to Ms. Hollub’s strategy was building on Occidental’s already-large position in the oil-rich Permian of West Texas and New Mexico. She believed purchasing and drilling a huge swath of new acreage, much of it near the company’s existing assets, would give Occidental economies of scale and allow it to outperform Permian rivals. Occidental, she said, was one of the most technologically advanced drillers in the field; it would turn Anadarko’s undeveloped assets into oil-gushing wells.</p><p>By the end of 2019, the oil producer said it was making progress on its merger goals. It had divested itself of more than $6 billion in assets, including stakes in a liquefied natural gas export project in Mozambique and in a Houston-based pipeline company. Occidental recorded single-day and monthly production records in the Permian and other oil fields. Occidental announced its 182nd consecutive quarterly dividend, which Ms. Hollub noted at the time that “few other companies can claim.”</p><p>Ms. Hollub believed the merger was on track, but investors remained skeptical. From the time of Occidental’s counteroffer for Anadarko in April 2019 to February 2020 Occidental’s stock fell around 35%. Then the global pandemic took hold.</p><p>As billions of people around the world began to lock down, demand for oil plummeted. In the spring, oil prices reached historic lows, briefly turning negative for the first time ever as traders paid counterparties to take oil off their hands. Falling demand for their product hammered oil-and-gas companies, forcing dozens into bankruptcy.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9090db9eab1ac4c91bd5b1b441d26206\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>Gasoline prices sank in April 2020 after the global pandemic caused oil prices to drop below zero.PHOTO:FREDERIC J. BROWN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES</span></p><p>Every day, Ms. Hollub would drive to Occidental’s Houston offices in her red Jeep Wrangler, said Glenn Vangolen, a former senior vice president at Occidental and close adviser to the CEO. Mondays and Fridays, she and her lieutenants would mask up and gather in a conference room to discuss operations. Her office was spartan—a mostly bare room, except for a TV playing business news on mute, and a plush stuffed version of a costumed elephant, the Alabama Crimson Tide’s mascot, Mr. Vangolen said.</p><p>Occidental was in a worse situation than many of its peers: At the end of 2019, its long-term debt of about $39 billion was equivalent to roughly four times its earnings, excluding interest, taxes and other accounting items, quadruple the ratio from a year earlier, S&P Capital IQ data show. The divestitures it had planned on to pay it down were no longer viable as assets were losing value.</p><p>Ms. Hollub said that Occidental made a lot of the difficult decisions before the pandemic to mitigate the downside risks of the Anadarko acquisition, including hedging a portion of its oil production and bumping its line of credit to $5 billion. But the company still faced painful months ahead as it had barely enough cash on hand to meet debt maturities coming due in 2021 and was later forced to hire restructuring advisers.</p><p>Ms. Hollub moved to cut her executives’ salaries—including her own by 81%—offer employees voluntary buy-outs, slash expenses in the oil patch and cancel employee perks. She also cut the dividend, which rankled investors.</p><p>Mr. Icahn amplified his calls for Ms. Hollub’s ouster and said he would seek to replace the entire board of directors at the company’s annual meeting. As the oil producer’s stock plunged to under $10 from around $45 before the pandemic, Mr. Icahn—facing paper losses of about $1 billion—doubled down on his shares, boosting his stake to roughly 10% from about 2%.</p><p>After a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia caused oil prices to plunge below $25 a barrel in March, Occidental reached a settlement with Mr. Icahn. The deal gave board seats to two of his deputies and added another director, required Occidental to create an oversight committee that must be informed of any offers to acquire the company or its assets, and replaced the board chairman withStephen Chazen, Ms. Hollub’s predecessor as CEO.</p><p>Mr. Icahn’s camp pushed for Occidental to give its shareholders warrants that could allow them to buy discounted shares in the future. After he prevailed, Mr. Icahn received roughly 11 million warrants initially and bought more when they were worth around $3.</p><p>Mr. Vangolen said Mr. Icahn’s demand for warrants was part of the investor’s “raider playbook,” which he described as “trying to extract as much cash out of the business as you can before you bail.”</p><p>Mr. Icahn said that all the shareholders who rode the stock down deserved something for their loyalty.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3af2c050a88b00dd9846de958b65be1b\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>A crude oil pump jack in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas.PHOTO:ANGUS MORDANT/REUTERS</span></p><p>As the pandemic dragged on, Occidental logged a roughly $14.8 billion loss for 2020, its largest on record, according to S&P Capital IQ data. Still, it continued to whittle down its mammoth debt, closing around $2.5 billion in asset sales at the end of 2020. Anadarko’s assets, meanwhile, were starting to shine, with production in the Permian reaching the high end of company estimates.</p><p>Even as Ms. Hollub wrestled with Mr. Icahn, she was building a relationship with Mr. Buffett.</p><p>In 2020, she traveled to Omaha to discuss Occidental's long-term strategy with Mr. Buffett, according to a person familiar with the meeting. The investor expressed a strong interest in the company's goal to become a leader in carbon capture, this person said.</p><p>Occidental says it has no plans to stop producing oil but also aims to be a leader in "carbon management." It wants to develop 70 plants by 2035 to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, store it in the ground and sell carbon credits to businesses seeking to offset their own emissions -- a technology still in its commercial infancy that received a boost thanks to tax credits included in the climate package President Biden signed into law last month. The company also plans to use the gas to squeeze more oil from underground.</p><p>Then, in late February of this year, Russia invaded Ukraine.</p><p>The war propelled oil prices to their highest level in years, with Brent crude oil topping $120 in March, translating into a windfall for oil companies. In the first quarter of the year, Occidental made roughly $4.9 billion in profit, its highest quarterly earnings on record, according to S&P Capital IQ.</p><p>The company now holds the most acreage across the Permian, with leases covering about 2.8 million net acres, according to data firm Enverus. Its domestic oil output in the second quarter of this year was up roughly 80% compared with before it acquired Anadarko, Occidental reported.</p><p>As Occidental's stock rose above $50 a share in March, Mr. Icahn sold his common stake. The investor's two representatives on Occidental's board also resigned, as was required by the settlement agreement. Mr. Icahn made over $1.5 billion on his investment and still holds some warrants, according to public filings and people familiar with the matter.</p><p>As Mr. Icahn got out of the stock, Mr. Buffett bought in. In May, Berkshire reported it had purchased roughly $8 billion worth of shares.</p><p>Mr. Icahn said that Mr. Buffett's investment could be ill-timed. "I respect Buffett a lot but I think buying this stock at this level is obviously not like buying warrants at $3," he said. "I made a great deal of money on my investment in Occidental, especially with the warrants, and activism worked in that regard," he said.</p><p>Ms. Hollub and Mr. Buffett have developed a personal relationship and the two talk periodically, said Mr. Vangolen. Ms. Hollub said in an interview she had no personal relationship with Mr. Icahn when he was an investor, and that he turned out not to be the kind of long-term shareholder the company prizes.</p><p>Mr. Icahn's retort: "She came very close to not being a long-term shareholder also, because her ill-timed investment put the company on the brink of bankruptcy."</p></body></html>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>How a CEO Rescued a Big Bet on Big Oil; \"There Were a Lot of Doubters\"</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nHow a CEO Rescued a Big Bet on Big Oil; \"There Were a Lot of Doubters\"\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n<div class=\"head\" \">\n\n\n<div class=\"h-thumb\" style=\"background-image:url(https://static.tigerbbs.com/150f88aa4d182df19190059f4a365e99);background-size:cover;\"></div>\n\n<div class=\"h-content\">\n<p class=\"h-name\">Dow Jones </p>\n<p class=\"h-time\">2022-09-11 09:57</p>\n</div>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<html><head></head><body><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/be5cb2e717152d9e61504d0803ac3654\" tg-width=\"1278\" tg-height=\"1278\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>Occidental Petroleum Corp. entered the thick of the pandemic among the worst prepared of its U.S. oil-and-gas peers. Struggling with debt from an ill-timed $38 billion deal, Chief ExecutiveVicki Hollubwas fending off activist investorCarl Icahn, who controlled two board seats.</p><p>Two years later, the company has emerged as the top performer in the S&P 500, and Ms. Hollub has traded Mr. Icahn, who sold all of his Occidental shares in March, for Warren Buffett, whoseBerkshire Hathaway Inc. now owns more than 20% of the company.</p><p>It was touch and go for a time. Months before the pandemic took hold, she implemented widespread layoffs. To stave off bankruptcy after oil prices collapsed in 2020, she slashed spending and nearly eliminated Occidental’s once-sacrosanct dividend—“the biggest and toughest decision that I made and I’ve ever made in my career,” she said in an interview.</p><p>Her 2019 acquisition of rival Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which Mr. Icahn called a “disaster,” has given Occidental the dominant position in the largest U.S. shale-oil field, the Permian Basin. Lifted by climbing oil prices, Occidental generated a record $4.35 billion in free cash flow and $3.7 billion in profit in the second quarter. It has cut its debt to $22 billion from nearly $36 billion a year ago.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/61847881fba325e1dc5c7ed3280e29db\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>Oil-and-gas producers have reported banner profits this year, even as a global energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has threatened to derail European industries, left the U.K. facing its worst economic crisis since the 1970s and forced the Netherlands, Germany and India to rely heavily on coal to make up for a dearth of natural gas.</p><p>But Ms. Hollub, the first woman to be CEO of a major U.S. oil company, says she doesn’t feel vindicated. “I just feel relief,” she said. “There were a lot of doubters.”</p><p>Mr. Buffett has publicly lauded Ms. Hollub’s leadership. After she detailed the company’s future plans for analysts in February, Mr. Buffett told his own shareholders, “What Vicki Hollub was saying made nothing but sense.” Last month, Berkshire received regulatory approval to buy up to 50% of the oil company’s shares, spurring speculation it might seek to purchase all of Occidental.</p><p>Mr. Buffett declined to comment for this story. Ms. Hollub said she has “tremendous respect” for Mr. Buffett, adding that “he will be very beneficial for us as we go forward.” She declined to discuss the possibility of Berkshire purchasing the entire company.</p><p>Some former investors remain skeptical, saying a spike in oil prices has rescued the company, not Ms. Hollub.</p><p>“I have nothing personal against Vicki,” Mr. Icahn said in an interview. “However, that will never change my mind that she should not have made a bet-the-company investment by way of overpaying for Anadarko.”</p><p>A University of Alabama graduate, Ms. Hollub joined Occidental in 1982 and soon found herself running operations in Russia and Venezuela. She almost got laid off in 2003, butTodd Stevens, an executive at the company who had followed her rise, arranged for her to lead a team evaluating acreage in Colorado, said Mr. Stevens, who has since left.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/bf58d7d767a23cfb352e019504bafa44\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>Equipment used to process carbon dioxide, crude oil and water at an Occidental Petroleum project in Hobbs, N.M.PHOTO:ERNEST SCHEYDER/REUTERS</span></p><p>Ms. Hollub became known as a hard worker, once spending three weeks straightening out operations at a new gas field’s first well, said Donnie Enns, a former geophysicist who worked under her. “Nobody worked harder than Vicki,” he said. She also found time to run an office March Madness basketball pool.</p><p>After being named CEO of the company in 2016, Ms. Hollub departed from her predecessor’s preference for low-risk, “bolt-on” transactions. A little over a year into the job, she started courting Anadarko, an oil producer of comparable size, for a deal.</p><p>She outflanked largerChevronCorp. in a bidding war that riveted the oil patch, offering $5 billion more than her rival for Anadarko and its prized assets in the epicenter of U.S. shale production. Yet victory came at a steep cost.</p><p>Some of Occidental’s largest shareholders decried the deal—especially a pricey loan from Mr. Buffett in the form of $10 billion in preferred stock paying 8% annually in dividends, or $800 million. Ms. Hollub negotiated the funding at the eleventh hour after meeting with the financier in Omaha, Neb. Mr. Icahn, who first bought stock as the Anadarko bidding war came to a close, wrote to Occidental shareholders that “Buffett figuratively took her to the cleaners.”</p><p>Ms. Hollub acknowledged the deal damaged the company’s standing with some investors. “I was never offended at the fact that our shareholders were skeptical,” she said.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/58cf5cd81991220ec1f42821cee2554b\" tg-width=\"639\" tg-height=\"959\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>Vicki Hollub said she never doubted the wisdom of the Anadarko acquisition.PHOTO:ANGELA OWENS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL</span></p><p>But she said she never doubted the wisdom of the acquisition, even after it sparked an investor revolt that created an opportunity for Mr. Icahn.</p><p>Central to Ms. Hollub’s strategy was building on Occidental’s already-large position in the oil-rich Permian of West Texas and New Mexico. She believed purchasing and drilling a huge swath of new acreage, much of it near the company’s existing assets, would give Occidental economies of scale and allow it to outperform Permian rivals. Occidental, she said, was one of the most technologically advanced drillers in the field; it would turn Anadarko’s undeveloped assets into oil-gushing wells.</p><p>By the end of 2019, the oil producer said it was making progress on its merger goals. It had divested itself of more than $6 billion in assets, including stakes in a liquefied natural gas export project in Mozambique and in a Houston-based pipeline company. Occidental recorded single-day and monthly production records in the Permian and other oil fields. Occidental announced its 182nd consecutive quarterly dividend, which Ms. Hollub noted at the time that “few other companies can claim.”</p><p>Ms. Hollub believed the merger was on track, but investors remained skeptical. From the time of Occidental’s counteroffer for Anadarko in April 2019 to February 2020 Occidental’s stock fell around 35%. Then the global pandemic took hold.</p><p>As billions of people around the world began to lock down, demand for oil plummeted. In the spring, oil prices reached historic lows, briefly turning negative for the first time ever as traders paid counterparties to take oil off their hands. Falling demand for their product hammered oil-and-gas companies, forcing dozens into bankruptcy.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9090db9eab1ac4c91bd5b1b441d26206\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>Gasoline prices sank in April 2020 after the global pandemic caused oil prices to drop below zero.PHOTO:FREDERIC J. BROWN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES</span></p><p>Every day, Ms. Hollub would drive to Occidental’s Houston offices in her red Jeep Wrangler, said Glenn Vangolen, a former senior vice president at Occidental and close adviser to the CEO. Mondays and Fridays, she and her lieutenants would mask up and gather in a conference room to discuss operations. Her office was spartan—a mostly bare room, except for a TV playing business news on mute, and a plush stuffed version of a costumed elephant, the Alabama Crimson Tide’s mascot, Mr. Vangolen said.</p><p>Occidental was in a worse situation than many of its peers: At the end of 2019, its long-term debt of about $39 billion was equivalent to roughly four times its earnings, excluding interest, taxes and other accounting items, quadruple the ratio from a year earlier, S&P Capital IQ data show. The divestitures it had planned on to pay it down were no longer viable as assets were losing value.</p><p>Ms. Hollub said that Occidental made a lot of the difficult decisions before the pandemic to mitigate the downside risks of the Anadarko acquisition, including hedging a portion of its oil production and bumping its line of credit to $5 billion. But the company still faced painful months ahead as it had barely enough cash on hand to meet debt maturities coming due in 2021 and was later forced to hire restructuring advisers.</p><p>Ms. Hollub moved to cut her executives’ salaries—including her own by 81%—offer employees voluntary buy-outs, slash expenses in the oil patch and cancel employee perks. She also cut the dividend, which rankled investors.</p><p>Mr. Icahn amplified his calls for Ms. Hollub’s ouster and said he would seek to replace the entire board of directors at the company’s annual meeting. As the oil producer’s stock plunged to under $10 from around $45 before the pandemic, Mr. Icahn—facing paper losses of about $1 billion—doubled down on his shares, boosting his stake to roughly 10% from about 2%.</p><p>After a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia caused oil prices to plunge below $25 a barrel in March, Occidental reached a settlement with Mr. Icahn. The deal gave board seats to two of his deputies and added another director, required Occidental to create an oversight committee that must be informed of any offers to acquire the company or its assets, and replaced the board chairman withStephen Chazen, Ms. Hollub’s predecessor as CEO.</p><p>Mr. Icahn’s camp pushed for Occidental to give its shareholders warrants that could allow them to buy discounted shares in the future. After he prevailed, Mr. Icahn received roughly 11 million warrants initially and bought more when they were worth around $3.</p><p>Mr. Vangolen said Mr. Icahn’s demand for warrants was part of the investor’s “raider playbook,” which he described as “trying to extract as much cash out of the business as you can before you bail.”</p><p>Mr. Icahn said that all the shareholders who rode the stock down deserved something for their loyalty.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3af2c050a88b00dd9846de958b65be1b\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>A crude oil pump jack in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas.PHOTO:ANGUS MORDANT/REUTERS</span></p><p>As the pandemic dragged on, Occidental logged a roughly $14.8 billion loss for 2020, its largest on record, according to S&P Capital IQ data. Still, it continued to whittle down its mammoth debt, closing around $2.5 billion in asset sales at the end of 2020. Anadarko’s assets, meanwhile, were starting to shine, with production in the Permian reaching the high end of company estimates.</p><p>Even as Ms. Hollub wrestled with Mr. Icahn, she was building a relationship with Mr. Buffett.</p><p>In 2020, she traveled to Omaha to discuss Occidental's long-term strategy with Mr. Buffett, according to a person familiar with the meeting. The investor expressed a strong interest in the company's goal to become a leader in carbon capture, this person said.</p><p>Occidental says it has no plans to stop producing oil but also aims to be a leader in "carbon management." It wants to develop 70 plants by 2035 to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, store it in the ground and sell carbon credits to businesses seeking to offset their own emissions -- a technology still in its commercial infancy that received a boost thanks to tax credits included in the climate package President Biden signed into law last month. The company also plans to use the gas to squeeze more oil from underground.</p><p>Then, in late February of this year, Russia invaded Ukraine.</p><p>The war propelled oil prices to their highest level in years, with Brent crude oil topping $120 in March, translating into a windfall for oil companies. In the first quarter of the year, Occidental made roughly $4.9 billion in profit, its highest quarterly earnings on record, according to S&P Capital IQ.</p><p>The company now holds the most acreage across the Permian, with leases covering about 2.8 million net acres, according to data firm Enverus. Its domestic oil output in the second quarter of this year was up roughly 80% compared with before it acquired Anadarko, Occidental reported.</p><p>As Occidental's stock rose above $50 a share in March, Mr. Icahn sold his common stake. The investor's two representatives on Occidental's board also resigned, as was required by the settlement agreement. Mr. Icahn made over $1.5 billion on his investment and still holds some warrants, according to public filings and people familiar with the matter.</p><p>As Mr. Icahn got out of the stock, Mr. Buffett bought in. In May, Berkshire reported it had purchased roughly $8 billion worth of shares.</p><p>Mr. Icahn said that Mr. Buffett's investment could be ill-timed. "I respect Buffett a lot but I think buying this stock at this level is obviously not like buying warrants at $3," he said. "I made a great deal of money on my investment in Occidental, especially with the warrants, and activism worked in that regard," he said.</p><p>Ms. Hollub and Mr. Buffett have developed a personal relationship and the two talk periodically, said Mr. Vangolen. Ms. Hollub said in an interview she had no personal relationship with Mr. Icahn when he was an investor, and that he turned out not to be the kind of long-term shareholder the company prizes.</p><p>Mr. Icahn's retort: "She came very close to not being a long-term shareholder also, because her ill-timed investment put the company on the brink of bankruptcy."</p></body></html>\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BK4534":"瑞士信贷持仓","BK4176":"多领域控股","BK4581":"高盛持仓","BK4201":"综合性石油与天然气企业","BK4550":"红杉资本持仓","BK4533":"AQR资本管理(全球第二大对冲基金)","BRK.A":"伯克希尔","OXY":"西方石油","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2266817381","content_text":"Occidental Petroleum Corp. entered the thick of the pandemic among the worst prepared of its U.S. oil-and-gas peers. Struggling with debt from an ill-timed $38 billion deal, Chief ExecutiveVicki Hollubwas fending off activist investorCarl Icahn, who controlled two board seats.Two years later, the company has emerged as the top performer in the S&P 500, and Ms. Hollub has traded Mr. Icahn, who sold all of his Occidental shares in March, for Warren Buffett, whoseBerkshire Hathaway Inc. now owns more than 20% of the company.It was touch and go for a time. Months before the pandemic took hold, she implemented widespread layoffs. To stave off bankruptcy after oil prices collapsed in 2020, she slashed spending and nearly eliminated Occidental’s once-sacrosanct dividend—“the biggest and toughest decision that I made and I’ve ever made in my career,” she said in an interview.Her 2019 acquisition of rival Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which Mr. Icahn called a “disaster,” has given Occidental the dominant position in the largest U.S. shale-oil field, the Permian Basin. Lifted by climbing oil prices, Occidental generated a record $4.35 billion in free cash flow and $3.7 billion in profit in the second quarter. It has cut its debt to $22 billion from nearly $36 billion a year ago.Oil-and-gas producers have reported banner profits this year, even as a global energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has threatened to derail European industries, left the U.K. facing its worst economic crisis since the 1970s and forced the Netherlands, Germany and India to rely heavily on coal to make up for a dearth of natural gas.But Ms. Hollub, the first woman to be CEO of a major U.S. oil company, says she doesn’t feel vindicated. “I just feel relief,” she said. “There were a lot of doubters.”Mr. Buffett has publicly lauded Ms. Hollub’s leadership. After she detailed the company’s future plans for analysts in February, Mr. Buffett told his own shareholders, “What Vicki Hollub was saying made nothing but sense.” Last month, Berkshire received regulatory approval to buy up to 50% of the oil company’s shares, spurring speculation it might seek to purchase all of Occidental.Mr. Buffett declined to comment for this story. Ms. Hollub said she has “tremendous respect” for Mr. Buffett, adding that “he will be very beneficial for us as we go forward.” She declined to discuss the possibility of Berkshire purchasing the entire company.Some former investors remain skeptical, saying a spike in oil prices has rescued the company, not Ms. Hollub.“I have nothing personal against Vicki,” Mr. Icahn said in an interview. “However, that will never change my mind that she should not have made a bet-the-company investment by way of overpaying for Anadarko.”A University of Alabama graduate, Ms. Hollub joined Occidental in 1982 and soon found herself running operations in Russia and Venezuela. She almost got laid off in 2003, butTodd Stevens, an executive at the company who had followed her rise, arranged for her to lead a team evaluating acreage in Colorado, said Mr. Stevens, who has since left.Equipment used to process carbon dioxide, crude oil and water at an Occidental Petroleum project in Hobbs, N.M.PHOTO:ERNEST SCHEYDER/REUTERSMs. Hollub became known as a hard worker, once spending three weeks straightening out operations at a new gas field’s first well, said Donnie Enns, a former geophysicist who worked under her. “Nobody worked harder than Vicki,” he said. She also found time to run an office March Madness basketball pool.After being named CEO of the company in 2016, Ms. Hollub departed from her predecessor’s preference for low-risk, “bolt-on” transactions. A little over a year into the job, she started courting Anadarko, an oil producer of comparable size, for a deal.She outflanked largerChevronCorp. in a bidding war that riveted the oil patch, offering $5 billion more than her rival for Anadarko and its prized assets in the epicenter of U.S. shale production. Yet victory came at a steep cost.Some of Occidental’s largest shareholders decried the deal—especially a pricey loan from Mr. Buffett in the form of $10 billion in preferred stock paying 8% annually in dividends, or $800 million. Ms. Hollub negotiated the funding at the eleventh hour after meeting with the financier in Omaha, Neb. Mr. Icahn, who first bought stock as the Anadarko bidding war came to a close, wrote to Occidental shareholders that “Buffett figuratively took her to the cleaners.”Ms. Hollub acknowledged the deal damaged the company’s standing with some investors. “I was never offended at the fact that our shareholders were skeptical,” she said.Vicki Hollub said she never doubted the wisdom of the Anadarko acquisition.PHOTO:ANGELA OWENS/THE WALL STREET JOURNALBut she said she never doubted the wisdom of the acquisition, even after it sparked an investor revolt that created an opportunity for Mr. Icahn.Central to Ms. Hollub’s strategy was building on Occidental’s already-large position in the oil-rich Permian of West Texas and New Mexico. She believed purchasing and drilling a huge swath of new acreage, much of it near the company’s existing assets, would give Occidental economies of scale and allow it to outperform Permian rivals. Occidental, she said, was one of the most technologically advanced drillers in the field; it would turn Anadarko’s undeveloped assets into oil-gushing wells.By the end of 2019, the oil producer said it was making progress on its merger goals. It had divested itself of more than $6 billion in assets, including stakes in a liquefied natural gas export project in Mozambique and in a Houston-based pipeline company. Occidental recorded single-day and monthly production records in the Permian and other oil fields. Occidental announced its 182nd consecutive quarterly dividend, which Ms. Hollub noted at the time that “few other companies can claim.”Ms. Hollub believed the merger was on track, but investors remained skeptical. From the time of Occidental’s counteroffer for Anadarko in April 2019 to February 2020 Occidental’s stock fell around 35%. Then the global pandemic took hold.As billions of people around the world began to lock down, demand for oil plummeted. In the spring, oil prices reached historic lows, briefly turning negative for the first time ever as traders paid counterparties to take oil off their hands. Falling demand for their product hammered oil-and-gas companies, forcing dozens into bankruptcy.Gasoline prices sank in April 2020 after the global pandemic caused oil prices to drop below zero.PHOTO:FREDERIC J. BROWN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESEvery day, Ms. Hollub would drive to Occidental’s Houston offices in her red Jeep Wrangler, said Glenn Vangolen, a former senior vice president at Occidental and close adviser to the CEO. Mondays and Fridays, she and her lieutenants would mask up and gather in a conference room to discuss operations. Her office was spartan—a mostly bare room, except for a TV playing business news on mute, and a plush stuffed version of a costumed elephant, the Alabama Crimson Tide’s mascot, Mr. Vangolen said.Occidental was in a worse situation than many of its peers: At the end of 2019, its long-term debt of about $39 billion was equivalent to roughly four times its earnings, excluding interest, taxes and other accounting items, quadruple the ratio from a year earlier, S&P Capital IQ data show. The divestitures it had planned on to pay it down were no longer viable as assets were losing value.Ms. Hollub said that Occidental made a lot of the difficult decisions before the pandemic to mitigate the downside risks of the Anadarko acquisition, including hedging a portion of its oil production and bumping its line of credit to $5 billion. But the company still faced painful months ahead as it had barely enough cash on hand to meet debt maturities coming due in 2021 and was later forced to hire restructuring advisers.Ms. Hollub moved to cut her executives’ salaries—including her own by 81%—offer employees voluntary buy-outs, slash expenses in the oil patch and cancel employee perks. She also cut the dividend, which rankled investors.Mr. Icahn amplified his calls for Ms. Hollub’s ouster and said he would seek to replace the entire board of directors at the company’s annual meeting. As the oil producer’s stock plunged to under $10 from around $45 before the pandemic, Mr. Icahn—facing paper losses of about $1 billion—doubled down on his shares, boosting his stake to roughly 10% from about 2%.After a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia caused oil prices to plunge below $25 a barrel in March, Occidental reached a settlement with Mr. Icahn. The deal gave board seats to two of his deputies and added another director, required Occidental to create an oversight committee that must be informed of any offers to acquire the company or its assets, and replaced the board chairman withStephen Chazen, Ms. Hollub’s predecessor as CEO.Mr. Icahn’s camp pushed for Occidental to give its shareholders warrants that could allow them to buy discounted shares in the future. After he prevailed, Mr. Icahn received roughly 11 million warrants initially and bought more when they were worth around $3.Mr. Vangolen said Mr. Icahn’s demand for warrants was part of the investor’s “raider playbook,” which he described as “trying to extract as much cash out of the business as you can before you bail.”Mr. Icahn said that all the shareholders who rode the stock down deserved something for their loyalty.A crude oil pump jack in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas.PHOTO:ANGUS MORDANT/REUTERSAs the pandemic dragged on, Occidental logged a roughly $14.8 billion loss for 2020, its largest on record, according to S&P Capital IQ data. Still, it continued to whittle down its mammoth debt, closing around $2.5 billion in asset sales at the end of 2020. Anadarko’s assets, meanwhile, were starting to shine, with production in the Permian reaching the high end of company estimates.Even as Ms. Hollub wrestled with Mr. Icahn, she was building a relationship with Mr. Buffett.In 2020, she traveled to Omaha to discuss Occidental's long-term strategy with Mr. Buffett, according to a person familiar with the meeting. The investor expressed a strong interest in the company's goal to become a leader in carbon capture, this person said.Occidental says it has no plans to stop producing oil but also aims to be a leader in \"carbon management.\" It wants to develop 70 plants by 2035 to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, store it in the ground and sell carbon credits to businesses seeking to offset their own emissions -- a technology still in its commercial infancy that received a boost thanks to tax credits included in the climate package President Biden signed into law last month. The company also plans to use the gas to squeeze more oil from underground.Then, in late February of this year, Russia invaded Ukraine.The war propelled oil prices to their highest level in years, with Brent crude oil topping $120 in March, translating into a windfall for oil companies. In the first quarter of the year, Occidental made roughly $4.9 billion in profit, its highest quarterly earnings on record, according to S&P Capital IQ.The company now holds the most acreage across the Permian, with leases covering about 2.8 million net acres, according to data firm Enverus. Its domestic oil output in the second quarter of this year was up roughly 80% compared with before it acquired Anadarko, Occidental reported.As Occidental's stock rose above $50 a share in March, Mr. Icahn sold his common stake. The investor's two representatives on Occidental's board also resigned, as was required by the settlement agreement. Mr. Icahn made over $1.5 billion on his investment and still holds some warrants, according to public filings and people familiar with the matter.As Mr. Icahn got out of the stock, Mr. Buffett bought in. In May, Berkshire reported it had purchased roughly $8 billion worth of shares.Mr. Icahn said that Mr. Buffett's investment could be ill-timed. \"I respect Buffett a lot but I think buying this stock at this level is obviously not like buying warrants at $3,\" he said. \"I made a great deal of money on my investment in Occidental, especially with the warrants, and activism worked in that regard,\" he said.Ms. Hollub and Mr. Buffett have developed a personal relationship and the two talk periodically, said Mr. Vangolen. Ms. Hollub said in an interview she had no personal relationship with Mr. Icahn when he was an investor, and that he turned out not to be the kind of long-term shareholder the company prizes.Mr. Icahn's retort: \"She came very close to not being a long-term shareholder also, because her ill-timed investment put the company on the brink of bankruptcy.\"","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":291,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"hots":[{"id":9937898512,"gmtCreate":1663388261236,"gmtModify":1676537264248,"author":{"id":"4124872574010152","authorId":"4124872574010152","name":"HH_18","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4124872574010152","authorIdStr":"4124872574010152"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Ok","listText":"Ok","text":"Ok","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9937898512","repostId":"2267698524","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":308,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9932488671,"gmtCreate":1662976607593,"gmtModify":1676537174708,"author":{"id":"4124872574010152","authorId":"4124872574010152","name":"HH_18","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4124872574010152","authorIdStr":"4124872574010152"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Ok","listText":"Ok","text":"Ok","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":2,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9932488671","repostId":"2266734519","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":345,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9937898225,"gmtCreate":1663388240667,"gmtModify":1676537264248,"author":{"id":"4124872574010152","authorId":"4124872574010152","name":"HH_18","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4124872574010152","authorIdStr":"4124872574010152"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Ok","listText":"Ok","text":"Ok","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9937898225","repostId":"2267061868","repostType":4,"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":146,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0},{"id":9932128343,"gmtCreate":1662901581082,"gmtModify":1676537159988,"author":{"id":"4124872574010152","authorId":"4124872574010152","name":"HH_18","avatar":"https://community-static.tradeup.com/news/default-avatar.jpg","crmLevel":5,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"followedFlag":false,"idStr":"4124872574010152","authorIdStr":"4124872574010152"},"themes":[],"htmlText":"Oh","listText":"Oh","text":"Oh","images":[],"top":1,"highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":0,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/9932128343","repostId":"2266817381","repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"2266817381","kind":"highlight","weMediaInfo":{"introduction":"Dow Jones publishes the world’s most trusted business news and financial information in a variety of media.","home_visible":0,"media_name":"Dow Jones","id":"106","head_image":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/150f88aa4d182df19190059f4a365e99"},"pubTimestamp":1662861434,"share":"https://ttm.financial/m/news/2266817381?lang=&edition=fundamental","pubTime":"2022-09-11 09:57","market":"us","language":"en","title":"How a CEO Rescued a Big Bet on Big Oil; \"There Were a Lot of Doubters\"","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=2266817381","media":"Dow Jones","summary":"Occidental Petroleum Corp. entered the thick of the pandemic among the worst prepared of its U.S. oi","content":"<html><head></head><body><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/be5cb2e717152d9e61504d0803ac3654\" tg-width=\"1278\" tg-height=\"1278\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>Occidental Petroleum Corp. entered the thick of the pandemic among the worst prepared of its U.S. oil-and-gas peers. Struggling with debt from an ill-timed $38 billion deal, Chief ExecutiveVicki Hollubwas fending off activist investorCarl Icahn, who controlled two board seats.</p><p>Two years later, the company has emerged as the top performer in the S&P 500, and Ms. Hollub has traded Mr. Icahn, who sold all of his Occidental shares in March, for Warren Buffett, whoseBerkshire Hathaway Inc. now owns more than 20% of the company.</p><p>It was touch and go for a time. Months before the pandemic took hold, she implemented widespread layoffs. To stave off bankruptcy after oil prices collapsed in 2020, she slashed spending and nearly eliminated Occidental’s once-sacrosanct dividend—“the biggest and toughest decision that I made and I’ve ever made in my career,” she said in an interview.</p><p>Her 2019 acquisition of rival Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which Mr. Icahn called a “disaster,” has given Occidental the dominant position in the largest U.S. shale-oil field, the Permian Basin. Lifted by climbing oil prices, Occidental generated a record $4.35 billion in free cash flow and $3.7 billion in profit in the second quarter. It has cut its debt to $22 billion from nearly $36 billion a year ago.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/61847881fba325e1dc5c7ed3280e29db\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>Oil-and-gas producers have reported banner profits this year, even as a global energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has threatened to derail European industries, left the U.K. facing its worst economic crisis since the 1970s and forced the Netherlands, Germany and India to rely heavily on coal to make up for a dearth of natural gas.</p><p>But Ms. Hollub, the first woman to be CEO of a major U.S. oil company, says she doesn’t feel vindicated. “I just feel relief,” she said. “There were a lot of doubters.”</p><p>Mr. Buffett has publicly lauded Ms. Hollub’s leadership. After she detailed the company’s future plans for analysts in February, Mr. Buffett told his own shareholders, “What Vicki Hollub was saying made nothing but sense.” Last month, Berkshire received regulatory approval to buy up to 50% of the oil company’s shares, spurring speculation it might seek to purchase all of Occidental.</p><p>Mr. Buffett declined to comment for this story. Ms. Hollub said she has “tremendous respect” for Mr. Buffett, adding that “he will be very beneficial for us as we go forward.” She declined to discuss the possibility of Berkshire purchasing the entire company.</p><p>Some former investors remain skeptical, saying a spike in oil prices has rescued the company, not Ms. Hollub.</p><p>“I have nothing personal against Vicki,” Mr. Icahn said in an interview. “However, that will never change my mind that she should not have made a bet-the-company investment by way of overpaying for Anadarko.”</p><p>A University of Alabama graduate, Ms. Hollub joined Occidental in 1982 and soon found herself running operations in Russia and Venezuela. She almost got laid off in 2003, butTodd Stevens, an executive at the company who had followed her rise, arranged for her to lead a team evaluating acreage in Colorado, said Mr. Stevens, who has since left.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/bf58d7d767a23cfb352e019504bafa44\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>Equipment used to process carbon dioxide, crude oil and water at an Occidental Petroleum project in Hobbs, N.M.PHOTO:ERNEST SCHEYDER/REUTERS</span></p><p>Ms. Hollub became known as a hard worker, once spending three weeks straightening out operations at a new gas field’s first well, said Donnie Enns, a former geophysicist who worked under her. “Nobody worked harder than Vicki,” he said. She also found time to run an office March Madness basketball pool.</p><p>After being named CEO of the company in 2016, Ms. Hollub departed from her predecessor’s preference for low-risk, “bolt-on” transactions. A little over a year into the job, she started courting Anadarko, an oil producer of comparable size, for a deal.</p><p>She outflanked largerChevronCorp. in a bidding war that riveted the oil patch, offering $5 billion more than her rival for Anadarko and its prized assets in the epicenter of U.S. shale production. Yet victory came at a steep cost.</p><p>Some of Occidental’s largest shareholders decried the deal—especially a pricey loan from Mr. Buffett in the form of $10 billion in preferred stock paying 8% annually in dividends, or $800 million. Ms. Hollub negotiated the funding at the eleventh hour after meeting with the financier in Omaha, Neb. Mr. Icahn, who first bought stock as the Anadarko bidding war came to a close, wrote to Occidental shareholders that “Buffett figuratively took her to the cleaners.”</p><p>Ms. Hollub acknowledged the deal damaged the company’s standing with some investors. “I was never offended at the fact that our shareholders were skeptical,” she said.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/58cf5cd81991220ec1f42821cee2554b\" tg-width=\"639\" tg-height=\"959\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>Vicki Hollub said she never doubted the wisdom of the Anadarko acquisition.PHOTO:ANGELA OWENS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL</span></p><p>But she said she never doubted the wisdom of the acquisition, even after it sparked an investor revolt that created an opportunity for Mr. Icahn.</p><p>Central to Ms. Hollub’s strategy was building on Occidental’s already-large position in the oil-rich Permian of West Texas and New Mexico. She believed purchasing and drilling a huge swath of new acreage, much of it near the company’s existing assets, would give Occidental economies of scale and allow it to outperform Permian rivals. Occidental, she said, was one of the most technologically advanced drillers in the field; it would turn Anadarko’s undeveloped assets into oil-gushing wells.</p><p>By the end of 2019, the oil producer said it was making progress on its merger goals. It had divested itself of more than $6 billion in assets, including stakes in a liquefied natural gas export project in Mozambique and in a Houston-based pipeline company. Occidental recorded single-day and monthly production records in the Permian and other oil fields. Occidental announced its 182nd consecutive quarterly dividend, which Ms. Hollub noted at the time that “few other companies can claim.”</p><p>Ms. Hollub believed the merger was on track, but investors remained skeptical. From the time of Occidental’s counteroffer for Anadarko in April 2019 to February 2020 Occidental’s stock fell around 35%. Then the global pandemic took hold.</p><p>As billions of people around the world began to lock down, demand for oil plummeted. In the spring, oil prices reached historic lows, briefly turning negative for the first time ever as traders paid counterparties to take oil off their hands. Falling demand for their product hammered oil-and-gas companies, forcing dozens into bankruptcy.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9090db9eab1ac4c91bd5b1b441d26206\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>Gasoline prices sank in April 2020 after the global pandemic caused oil prices to drop below zero.PHOTO:FREDERIC J. BROWN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES</span></p><p>Every day, Ms. Hollub would drive to Occidental’s Houston offices in her red Jeep Wrangler, said Glenn Vangolen, a former senior vice president at Occidental and close adviser to the CEO. Mondays and Fridays, she and her lieutenants would mask up and gather in a conference room to discuss operations. Her office was spartan—a mostly bare room, except for a TV playing business news on mute, and a plush stuffed version of a costumed elephant, the Alabama Crimson Tide’s mascot, Mr. Vangolen said.</p><p>Occidental was in a worse situation than many of its peers: At the end of 2019, its long-term debt of about $39 billion was equivalent to roughly four times its earnings, excluding interest, taxes and other accounting items, quadruple the ratio from a year earlier, S&P Capital IQ data show. The divestitures it had planned on to pay it down were no longer viable as assets were losing value.</p><p>Ms. Hollub said that Occidental made a lot of the difficult decisions before the pandemic to mitigate the downside risks of the Anadarko acquisition, including hedging a portion of its oil production and bumping its line of credit to $5 billion. But the company still faced painful months ahead as it had barely enough cash on hand to meet debt maturities coming due in 2021 and was later forced to hire restructuring advisers.</p><p>Ms. Hollub moved to cut her executives’ salaries—including her own by 81%—offer employees voluntary buy-outs, slash expenses in the oil patch and cancel employee perks. She also cut the dividend, which rankled investors.</p><p>Mr. Icahn amplified his calls for Ms. Hollub’s ouster and said he would seek to replace the entire board of directors at the company’s annual meeting. As the oil producer’s stock plunged to under $10 from around $45 before the pandemic, Mr. Icahn—facing paper losses of about $1 billion—doubled down on his shares, boosting his stake to roughly 10% from about 2%.</p><p>After a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia caused oil prices to plunge below $25 a barrel in March, Occidental reached a settlement with Mr. Icahn. The deal gave board seats to two of his deputies and added another director, required Occidental to create an oversight committee that must be informed of any offers to acquire the company or its assets, and replaced the board chairman withStephen Chazen, Ms. Hollub’s predecessor as CEO.</p><p>Mr. Icahn’s camp pushed for Occidental to give its shareholders warrants that could allow them to buy discounted shares in the future. After he prevailed, Mr. Icahn received roughly 11 million warrants initially and bought more when they were worth around $3.</p><p>Mr. Vangolen said Mr. Icahn’s demand for warrants was part of the investor’s “raider playbook,” which he described as “trying to extract as much cash out of the business as you can before you bail.”</p><p>Mr. Icahn said that all the shareholders who rode the stock down deserved something for their loyalty.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3af2c050a88b00dd9846de958b65be1b\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>A crude oil pump jack in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas.PHOTO:ANGUS MORDANT/REUTERS</span></p><p>As the pandemic dragged on, Occidental logged a roughly $14.8 billion loss for 2020, its largest on record, according to S&P Capital IQ data. Still, it continued to whittle down its mammoth debt, closing around $2.5 billion in asset sales at the end of 2020. Anadarko’s assets, meanwhile, were starting to shine, with production in the Permian reaching the high end of company estimates.</p><p>Even as Ms. Hollub wrestled with Mr. Icahn, she was building a relationship with Mr. Buffett.</p><p>In 2020, she traveled to Omaha to discuss Occidental's long-term strategy with Mr. Buffett, according to a person familiar with the meeting. The investor expressed a strong interest in the company's goal to become a leader in carbon capture, this person said.</p><p>Occidental says it has no plans to stop producing oil but also aims to be a leader in "carbon management." It wants to develop 70 plants by 2035 to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, store it in the ground and sell carbon credits to businesses seeking to offset their own emissions -- a technology still in its commercial infancy that received a boost thanks to tax credits included in the climate package President Biden signed into law last month. The company also plans to use the gas to squeeze more oil from underground.</p><p>Then, in late February of this year, Russia invaded Ukraine.</p><p>The war propelled oil prices to their highest level in years, with Brent crude oil topping $120 in March, translating into a windfall for oil companies. In the first quarter of the year, Occidental made roughly $4.9 billion in profit, its highest quarterly earnings on record, according to S&P Capital IQ.</p><p>The company now holds the most acreage across the Permian, with leases covering about 2.8 million net acres, according to data firm Enverus. Its domestic oil output in the second quarter of this year was up roughly 80% compared with before it acquired Anadarko, Occidental reported.</p><p>As Occidental's stock rose above $50 a share in March, Mr. Icahn sold his common stake. The investor's two representatives on Occidental's board also resigned, as was required by the settlement agreement. Mr. Icahn made over $1.5 billion on his investment and still holds some warrants, according to public filings and people familiar with the matter.</p><p>As Mr. Icahn got out of the stock, Mr. Buffett bought in. In May, Berkshire reported it had purchased roughly $8 billion worth of shares.</p><p>Mr. Icahn said that Mr. Buffett's investment could be ill-timed. "I respect Buffett a lot but I think buying this stock at this level is obviously not like buying warrants at $3," he said. "I made a great deal of money on my investment in Occidental, especially with the warrants, and activism worked in that regard," he said.</p><p>Ms. Hollub and Mr. Buffett have developed a personal relationship and the two talk periodically, said Mr. Vangolen. Ms. Hollub said in an interview she had no personal relationship with Mr. Icahn when he was an investor, and that he turned out not to be the kind of long-term shareholder the company prizes.</p><p>Mr. Icahn's retort: "She came very close to not being a long-term shareholder also, because her ill-timed investment put the company on the brink of bankruptcy."</p></body></html>","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>How a CEO Rescued a Big Bet on Big Oil; \"There Were a Lot of Doubters\"</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\nHow a CEO Rescued a Big Bet on Big Oil; \"There Were a Lot of Doubters\"\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n<div class=\"head\" \">\n\n\n<div class=\"h-thumb\" style=\"background-image:url(https://static.tigerbbs.com/150f88aa4d182df19190059f4a365e99);background-size:cover;\"></div>\n\n<div class=\"h-content\">\n<p class=\"h-name\">Dow Jones </p>\n<p class=\"h-time\">2022-09-11 09:57</p>\n</div>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<html><head></head><body><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/be5cb2e717152d9e61504d0803ac3654\" tg-width=\"1278\" tg-height=\"1278\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>Occidental Petroleum Corp. entered the thick of the pandemic among the worst prepared of its U.S. oil-and-gas peers. Struggling with debt from an ill-timed $38 billion deal, Chief ExecutiveVicki Hollubwas fending off activist investorCarl Icahn, who controlled two board seats.</p><p>Two years later, the company has emerged as the top performer in the S&P 500, and Ms. Hollub has traded Mr. Icahn, who sold all of his Occidental shares in March, for Warren Buffett, whoseBerkshire Hathaway Inc. now owns more than 20% of the company.</p><p>It was touch and go for a time. Months before the pandemic took hold, she implemented widespread layoffs. To stave off bankruptcy after oil prices collapsed in 2020, she slashed spending and nearly eliminated Occidental’s once-sacrosanct dividend—“the biggest and toughest decision that I made and I’ve ever made in my career,” she said in an interview.</p><p>Her 2019 acquisition of rival Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which Mr. Icahn called a “disaster,” has given Occidental the dominant position in the largest U.S. shale-oil field, the Permian Basin. Lifted by climbing oil prices, Occidental generated a record $4.35 billion in free cash flow and $3.7 billion in profit in the second quarter. It has cut its debt to $22 billion from nearly $36 billion a year ago.</p><p><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/61847881fba325e1dc5c7ed3280e29db\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/>Oil-and-gas producers have reported banner profits this year, even as a global energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has threatened to derail European industries, left the U.K. facing its worst economic crisis since the 1970s and forced the Netherlands, Germany and India to rely heavily on coal to make up for a dearth of natural gas.</p><p>But Ms. Hollub, the first woman to be CEO of a major U.S. oil company, says she doesn’t feel vindicated. “I just feel relief,” she said. “There were a lot of doubters.”</p><p>Mr. Buffett has publicly lauded Ms. Hollub’s leadership. After she detailed the company’s future plans for analysts in February, Mr. Buffett told his own shareholders, “What Vicki Hollub was saying made nothing but sense.” Last month, Berkshire received regulatory approval to buy up to 50% of the oil company’s shares, spurring speculation it might seek to purchase all of Occidental.</p><p>Mr. Buffett declined to comment for this story. Ms. Hollub said she has “tremendous respect” for Mr. Buffett, adding that “he will be very beneficial for us as we go forward.” She declined to discuss the possibility of Berkshire purchasing the entire company.</p><p>Some former investors remain skeptical, saying a spike in oil prices has rescued the company, not Ms. Hollub.</p><p>“I have nothing personal against Vicki,” Mr. Icahn said in an interview. “However, that will never change my mind that she should not have made a bet-the-company investment by way of overpaying for Anadarko.”</p><p>A University of Alabama graduate, Ms. Hollub joined Occidental in 1982 and soon found herself running operations in Russia and Venezuela. She almost got laid off in 2003, butTodd Stevens, an executive at the company who had followed her rise, arranged for her to lead a team evaluating acreage in Colorado, said Mr. Stevens, who has since left.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/bf58d7d767a23cfb352e019504bafa44\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>Equipment used to process carbon dioxide, crude oil and water at an Occidental Petroleum project in Hobbs, N.M.PHOTO:ERNEST SCHEYDER/REUTERS</span></p><p>Ms. Hollub became known as a hard worker, once spending three weeks straightening out operations at a new gas field’s first well, said Donnie Enns, a former geophysicist who worked under her. “Nobody worked harder than Vicki,” he said. She also found time to run an office March Madness basketball pool.</p><p>After being named CEO of the company in 2016, Ms. Hollub departed from her predecessor’s preference for low-risk, “bolt-on” transactions. A little over a year into the job, she started courting Anadarko, an oil producer of comparable size, for a deal.</p><p>She outflanked largerChevronCorp. in a bidding war that riveted the oil patch, offering $5 billion more than her rival for Anadarko and its prized assets in the epicenter of U.S. shale production. Yet victory came at a steep cost.</p><p>Some of Occidental’s largest shareholders decried the deal—especially a pricey loan from Mr. Buffett in the form of $10 billion in preferred stock paying 8% annually in dividends, or $800 million. Ms. Hollub negotiated the funding at the eleventh hour after meeting with the financier in Omaha, Neb. Mr. Icahn, who first bought stock as the Anadarko bidding war came to a close, wrote to Occidental shareholders that “Buffett figuratively took her to the cleaners.”</p><p>Ms. Hollub acknowledged the deal damaged the company’s standing with some investors. “I was never offended at the fact that our shareholders were skeptical,” she said.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/58cf5cd81991220ec1f42821cee2554b\" tg-width=\"639\" tg-height=\"959\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>Vicki Hollub said she never doubted the wisdom of the Anadarko acquisition.PHOTO:ANGELA OWENS/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL</span></p><p>But she said she never doubted the wisdom of the acquisition, even after it sparked an investor revolt that created an opportunity for Mr. Icahn.</p><p>Central to Ms. Hollub’s strategy was building on Occidental’s already-large position in the oil-rich Permian of West Texas and New Mexico. She believed purchasing and drilling a huge swath of new acreage, much of it near the company’s existing assets, would give Occidental economies of scale and allow it to outperform Permian rivals. Occidental, she said, was one of the most technologically advanced drillers in the field; it would turn Anadarko’s undeveloped assets into oil-gushing wells.</p><p>By the end of 2019, the oil producer said it was making progress on its merger goals. It had divested itself of more than $6 billion in assets, including stakes in a liquefied natural gas export project in Mozambique and in a Houston-based pipeline company. Occidental recorded single-day and monthly production records in the Permian and other oil fields. Occidental announced its 182nd consecutive quarterly dividend, which Ms. Hollub noted at the time that “few other companies can claim.”</p><p>Ms. Hollub believed the merger was on track, but investors remained skeptical. From the time of Occidental’s counteroffer for Anadarko in April 2019 to February 2020 Occidental’s stock fell around 35%. Then the global pandemic took hold.</p><p>As billions of people around the world began to lock down, demand for oil plummeted. In the spring, oil prices reached historic lows, briefly turning negative for the first time ever as traders paid counterparties to take oil off their hands. Falling demand for their product hammered oil-and-gas companies, forcing dozens into bankruptcy.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/9090db9eab1ac4c91bd5b1b441d26206\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>Gasoline prices sank in April 2020 after the global pandemic caused oil prices to drop below zero.PHOTO:FREDERIC J. BROWN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES</span></p><p>Every day, Ms. Hollub would drive to Occidental’s Houston offices in her red Jeep Wrangler, said Glenn Vangolen, a former senior vice president at Occidental and close adviser to the CEO. Mondays and Fridays, she and her lieutenants would mask up and gather in a conference room to discuss operations. Her office was spartan—a mostly bare room, except for a TV playing business news on mute, and a plush stuffed version of a costumed elephant, the Alabama Crimson Tide’s mascot, Mr. Vangolen said.</p><p>Occidental was in a worse situation than many of its peers: At the end of 2019, its long-term debt of about $39 billion was equivalent to roughly four times its earnings, excluding interest, taxes and other accounting items, quadruple the ratio from a year earlier, S&P Capital IQ data show. The divestitures it had planned on to pay it down were no longer viable as assets were losing value.</p><p>Ms. Hollub said that Occidental made a lot of the difficult decisions before the pandemic to mitigate the downside risks of the Anadarko acquisition, including hedging a portion of its oil production and bumping its line of credit to $5 billion. But the company still faced painful months ahead as it had barely enough cash on hand to meet debt maturities coming due in 2021 and was later forced to hire restructuring advisers.</p><p>Ms. Hollub moved to cut her executives’ salaries—including her own by 81%—offer employees voluntary buy-outs, slash expenses in the oil patch and cancel employee perks. She also cut the dividend, which rankled investors.</p><p>Mr. Icahn amplified his calls for Ms. Hollub’s ouster and said he would seek to replace the entire board of directors at the company’s annual meeting. As the oil producer’s stock plunged to under $10 from around $45 before the pandemic, Mr. Icahn—facing paper losses of about $1 billion—doubled down on his shares, boosting his stake to roughly 10% from about 2%.</p><p>After a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia caused oil prices to plunge below $25 a barrel in March, Occidental reached a settlement with Mr. Icahn. The deal gave board seats to two of his deputies and added another director, required Occidental to create an oversight committee that must be informed of any offers to acquire the company or its assets, and replaced the board chairman withStephen Chazen, Ms. Hollub’s predecessor as CEO.</p><p>Mr. Icahn’s camp pushed for Occidental to give its shareholders warrants that could allow them to buy discounted shares in the future. After he prevailed, Mr. Icahn received roughly 11 million warrants initially and bought more when they were worth around $3.</p><p>Mr. Vangolen said Mr. Icahn’s demand for warrants was part of the investor’s “raider playbook,” which he described as “trying to extract as much cash out of the business as you can before you bail.”</p><p>Mr. Icahn said that all the shareholders who rode the stock down deserved something for their loyalty.</p><p class=\"t-img-caption\"><img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3af2c050a88b00dd9846de958b65be1b\" tg-width=\"1260\" tg-height=\"840\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\"/><span>A crude oil pump jack in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas.PHOTO:ANGUS MORDANT/REUTERS</span></p><p>As the pandemic dragged on, Occidental logged a roughly $14.8 billion loss for 2020, its largest on record, according to S&P Capital IQ data. Still, it continued to whittle down its mammoth debt, closing around $2.5 billion in asset sales at the end of 2020. Anadarko’s assets, meanwhile, were starting to shine, with production in the Permian reaching the high end of company estimates.</p><p>Even as Ms. Hollub wrestled with Mr. Icahn, she was building a relationship with Mr. Buffett.</p><p>In 2020, she traveled to Omaha to discuss Occidental's long-term strategy with Mr. Buffett, according to a person familiar with the meeting. The investor expressed a strong interest in the company's goal to become a leader in carbon capture, this person said.</p><p>Occidental says it has no plans to stop producing oil but also aims to be a leader in "carbon management." It wants to develop 70 plants by 2035 to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, store it in the ground and sell carbon credits to businesses seeking to offset their own emissions -- a technology still in its commercial infancy that received a boost thanks to tax credits included in the climate package President Biden signed into law last month. The company also plans to use the gas to squeeze more oil from underground.</p><p>Then, in late February of this year, Russia invaded Ukraine.</p><p>The war propelled oil prices to their highest level in years, with Brent crude oil topping $120 in March, translating into a windfall for oil companies. In the first quarter of the year, Occidental made roughly $4.9 billion in profit, its highest quarterly earnings on record, according to S&P Capital IQ.</p><p>The company now holds the most acreage across the Permian, with leases covering about 2.8 million net acres, according to data firm Enverus. Its domestic oil output in the second quarter of this year was up roughly 80% compared with before it acquired Anadarko, Occidental reported.</p><p>As Occidental's stock rose above $50 a share in March, Mr. Icahn sold his common stake. The investor's two representatives on Occidental's board also resigned, as was required by the settlement agreement. Mr. Icahn made over $1.5 billion on his investment and still holds some warrants, according to public filings and people familiar with the matter.</p><p>As Mr. Icahn got out of the stock, Mr. Buffett bought in. In May, Berkshire reported it had purchased roughly $8 billion worth of shares.</p><p>Mr. Icahn said that Mr. Buffett's investment could be ill-timed. "I respect Buffett a lot but I think buying this stock at this level is obviously not like buying warrants at $3," he said. "I made a great deal of money on my investment in Occidental, especially with the warrants, and activism worked in that regard," he said.</p><p>Ms. Hollub and Mr. Buffett have developed a personal relationship and the two talk periodically, said Mr. Vangolen. Ms. Hollub said in an interview she had no personal relationship with Mr. Icahn when he was an investor, and that he turned out not to be the kind of long-term shareholder the company prizes.</p><p>Mr. Icahn's retort: "She came very close to not being a long-term shareholder also, because her ill-timed investment put the company on the brink of bankruptcy."</p></body></html>\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{"BK4534":"瑞士信贷持仓","BK4176":"多领域控股","BK4581":"高盛持仓","BK4201":"综合性石油与天然气企业","BK4550":"红杉资本持仓","BK4533":"AQR资本管理(全球第二大对冲基金)","BRK.A":"伯克希尔","OXY":"西方石油","BRK.B":"伯克希尔B"},"source_url":"","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/e9f99090a1c2ed51c021029395664489","article_id":"2266817381","content_text":"Occidental Petroleum Corp. entered the thick of the pandemic among the worst prepared of its U.S. oil-and-gas peers. Struggling with debt from an ill-timed $38 billion deal, Chief ExecutiveVicki Hollubwas fending off activist investorCarl Icahn, who controlled two board seats.Two years later, the company has emerged as the top performer in the S&P 500, and Ms. Hollub has traded Mr. Icahn, who sold all of his Occidental shares in March, for Warren Buffett, whoseBerkshire Hathaway Inc. now owns more than 20% of the company.It was touch and go for a time. Months before the pandemic took hold, she implemented widespread layoffs. To stave off bankruptcy after oil prices collapsed in 2020, she slashed spending and nearly eliminated Occidental’s once-sacrosanct dividend—“the biggest and toughest decision that I made and I’ve ever made in my career,” she said in an interview.Her 2019 acquisition of rival Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which Mr. Icahn called a “disaster,” has given Occidental the dominant position in the largest U.S. shale-oil field, the Permian Basin. Lifted by climbing oil prices, Occidental generated a record $4.35 billion in free cash flow and $3.7 billion in profit in the second quarter. It has cut its debt to $22 billion from nearly $36 billion a year ago.Oil-and-gas producers have reported banner profits this year, even as a global energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has threatened to derail European industries, left the U.K. facing its worst economic crisis since the 1970s and forced the Netherlands, Germany and India to rely heavily on coal to make up for a dearth of natural gas.But Ms. Hollub, the first woman to be CEO of a major U.S. oil company, says she doesn’t feel vindicated. “I just feel relief,” she said. “There were a lot of doubters.”Mr. Buffett has publicly lauded Ms. Hollub’s leadership. After she detailed the company’s future plans for analysts in February, Mr. Buffett told his own shareholders, “What Vicki Hollub was saying made nothing but sense.” Last month, Berkshire received regulatory approval to buy up to 50% of the oil company’s shares, spurring speculation it might seek to purchase all of Occidental.Mr. Buffett declined to comment for this story. Ms. Hollub said she has “tremendous respect” for Mr. Buffett, adding that “he will be very beneficial for us as we go forward.” She declined to discuss the possibility of Berkshire purchasing the entire company.Some former investors remain skeptical, saying a spike in oil prices has rescued the company, not Ms. Hollub.“I have nothing personal against Vicki,” Mr. Icahn said in an interview. “However, that will never change my mind that she should not have made a bet-the-company investment by way of overpaying for Anadarko.”A University of Alabama graduate, Ms. Hollub joined Occidental in 1982 and soon found herself running operations in Russia and Venezuela. She almost got laid off in 2003, butTodd Stevens, an executive at the company who had followed her rise, arranged for her to lead a team evaluating acreage in Colorado, said Mr. Stevens, who has since left.Equipment used to process carbon dioxide, crude oil and water at an Occidental Petroleum project in Hobbs, N.M.PHOTO:ERNEST SCHEYDER/REUTERSMs. Hollub became known as a hard worker, once spending three weeks straightening out operations at a new gas field’s first well, said Donnie Enns, a former geophysicist who worked under her. “Nobody worked harder than Vicki,” he said. She also found time to run an office March Madness basketball pool.After being named CEO of the company in 2016, Ms. Hollub departed from her predecessor’s preference for low-risk, “bolt-on” transactions. A little over a year into the job, she started courting Anadarko, an oil producer of comparable size, for a deal.She outflanked largerChevronCorp. in a bidding war that riveted the oil patch, offering $5 billion more than her rival for Anadarko and its prized assets in the epicenter of U.S. shale production. Yet victory came at a steep cost.Some of Occidental’s largest shareholders decried the deal—especially a pricey loan from Mr. Buffett in the form of $10 billion in preferred stock paying 8% annually in dividends, or $800 million. Ms. Hollub negotiated the funding at the eleventh hour after meeting with the financier in Omaha, Neb. Mr. Icahn, who first bought stock as the Anadarko bidding war came to a close, wrote to Occidental shareholders that “Buffett figuratively took her to the cleaners.”Ms. Hollub acknowledged the deal damaged the company’s standing with some investors. “I was never offended at the fact that our shareholders were skeptical,” she said.Vicki Hollub said she never doubted the wisdom of the Anadarko acquisition.PHOTO:ANGELA OWENS/THE WALL STREET JOURNALBut she said she never doubted the wisdom of the acquisition, even after it sparked an investor revolt that created an opportunity for Mr. Icahn.Central to Ms. Hollub’s strategy was building on Occidental’s already-large position in the oil-rich Permian of West Texas and New Mexico. She believed purchasing and drilling a huge swath of new acreage, much of it near the company’s existing assets, would give Occidental economies of scale and allow it to outperform Permian rivals. Occidental, she said, was one of the most technologically advanced drillers in the field; it would turn Anadarko’s undeveloped assets into oil-gushing wells.By the end of 2019, the oil producer said it was making progress on its merger goals. It had divested itself of more than $6 billion in assets, including stakes in a liquefied natural gas export project in Mozambique and in a Houston-based pipeline company. Occidental recorded single-day and monthly production records in the Permian and other oil fields. Occidental announced its 182nd consecutive quarterly dividend, which Ms. Hollub noted at the time that “few other companies can claim.”Ms. Hollub believed the merger was on track, but investors remained skeptical. From the time of Occidental’s counteroffer for Anadarko in April 2019 to February 2020 Occidental’s stock fell around 35%. Then the global pandemic took hold.As billions of people around the world began to lock down, demand for oil plummeted. In the spring, oil prices reached historic lows, briefly turning negative for the first time ever as traders paid counterparties to take oil off their hands. Falling demand for their product hammered oil-and-gas companies, forcing dozens into bankruptcy.Gasoline prices sank in April 2020 after the global pandemic caused oil prices to drop below zero.PHOTO:FREDERIC J. BROWN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESEvery day, Ms. Hollub would drive to Occidental’s Houston offices in her red Jeep Wrangler, said Glenn Vangolen, a former senior vice president at Occidental and close adviser to the CEO. Mondays and Fridays, she and her lieutenants would mask up and gather in a conference room to discuss operations. Her office was spartan—a mostly bare room, except for a TV playing business news on mute, and a plush stuffed version of a costumed elephant, the Alabama Crimson Tide’s mascot, Mr. Vangolen said.Occidental was in a worse situation than many of its peers: At the end of 2019, its long-term debt of about $39 billion was equivalent to roughly four times its earnings, excluding interest, taxes and other accounting items, quadruple the ratio from a year earlier, S&P Capital IQ data show. The divestitures it had planned on to pay it down were no longer viable as assets were losing value.Ms. Hollub said that Occidental made a lot of the difficult decisions before the pandemic to mitigate the downside risks of the Anadarko acquisition, including hedging a portion of its oil production and bumping its line of credit to $5 billion. But the company still faced painful months ahead as it had barely enough cash on hand to meet debt maturities coming due in 2021 and was later forced to hire restructuring advisers.Ms. Hollub moved to cut her executives’ salaries—including her own by 81%—offer employees voluntary buy-outs, slash expenses in the oil patch and cancel employee perks. She also cut the dividend, which rankled investors.Mr. Icahn amplified his calls for Ms. Hollub’s ouster and said he would seek to replace the entire board of directors at the company’s annual meeting. As the oil producer’s stock plunged to under $10 from around $45 before the pandemic, Mr. Icahn—facing paper losses of about $1 billion—doubled down on his shares, boosting his stake to roughly 10% from about 2%.After a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia caused oil prices to plunge below $25 a barrel in March, Occidental reached a settlement with Mr. Icahn. The deal gave board seats to two of his deputies and added another director, required Occidental to create an oversight committee that must be informed of any offers to acquire the company or its assets, and replaced the board chairman withStephen Chazen, Ms. Hollub’s predecessor as CEO.Mr. Icahn’s camp pushed for Occidental to give its shareholders warrants that could allow them to buy discounted shares in the future. After he prevailed, Mr. Icahn received roughly 11 million warrants initially and bought more when they were worth around $3.Mr. Vangolen said Mr. Icahn’s demand for warrants was part of the investor’s “raider playbook,” which he described as “trying to extract as much cash out of the business as you can before you bail.”Mr. Icahn said that all the shareholders who rode the stock down deserved something for their loyalty.A crude oil pump jack in the Permian Basin in Loving County, Texas.PHOTO:ANGUS MORDANT/REUTERSAs the pandemic dragged on, Occidental logged a roughly $14.8 billion loss for 2020, its largest on record, according to S&P Capital IQ data. Still, it continued to whittle down its mammoth debt, closing around $2.5 billion in asset sales at the end of 2020. Anadarko’s assets, meanwhile, were starting to shine, with production in the Permian reaching the high end of company estimates.Even as Ms. Hollub wrestled with Mr. Icahn, she was building a relationship with Mr. Buffett.In 2020, she traveled to Omaha to discuss Occidental's long-term strategy with Mr. Buffett, according to a person familiar with the meeting. The investor expressed a strong interest in the company's goal to become a leader in carbon capture, this person said.Occidental says it has no plans to stop producing oil but also aims to be a leader in \"carbon management.\" It wants to develop 70 plants by 2035 to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, store it in the ground and sell carbon credits to businesses seeking to offset their own emissions -- a technology still in its commercial infancy that received a boost thanks to tax credits included in the climate package President Biden signed into law last month. The company also plans to use the gas to squeeze more oil from underground.Then, in late February of this year, Russia invaded Ukraine.The war propelled oil prices to their highest level in years, with Brent crude oil topping $120 in March, translating into a windfall for oil companies. In the first quarter of the year, Occidental made roughly $4.9 billion in profit, its highest quarterly earnings on record, according to S&P Capital IQ.The company now holds the most acreage across the Permian, with leases covering about 2.8 million net acres, according to data firm Enverus. Its domestic oil output in the second quarter of this year was up roughly 80% compared with before it acquired Anadarko, Occidental reported.As Occidental's stock rose above $50 a share in March, Mr. Icahn sold his common stake. The investor's two representatives on Occidental's board also resigned, as was required by the settlement agreement. Mr. Icahn made over $1.5 billion on his investment and still holds some warrants, according to public filings and people familiar with the matter.As Mr. Icahn got out of the stock, Mr. Buffett bought in. In May, Berkshire reported it had purchased roughly $8 billion worth of shares.Mr. Icahn said that Mr. Buffett's investment could be ill-timed. \"I respect Buffett a lot but I think buying this stock at this level is obviously not like buying warrants at $3,\" he said. \"I made a great deal of money on my investment in Occidental, especially with the warrants, and activism worked in that regard,\" he said.Ms. Hollub and Mr. Buffett have developed a personal relationship and the two talk periodically, said Mr. Vangolen. Ms. Hollub said in an interview she had no personal relationship with Mr. Icahn when he was an investor, and that he turned out not to be the kind of long-term shareholder the company prizes.Mr. Icahn's retort: \"She came very close to not being a long-term shareholder also, because her ill-timed investment put the company on the brink of bankruptcy.\"","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":291,"authorTweetTopStatus":1,"verified":2,"comments":[],"imageCount":0,"langContent":"EN","totalScore":0}],"lives":[]}
