Buffett $Berkshire Hathaway(BRK.A)$ keep buying $Occidental(OXY)$ another $250 million this Wednesday, reaching a 19% stake. Now total holding comes to 179 million shares worth $10.4 billion.
This man is ultimately rich.
The latest purchases put Berkshire closer to 20% ownership, a threshold that would let it record its proportionate share of Occidental's earnings with its own results, known as the equity method of accounting.
According to US-GAAP, Equity method need to combine the bottemline items in the income statement and some items on balance sheet.
Due to the excellent performance of oil stocks this year, OXY's net profit for trailing 12 months has reached 6.9 billion US dollars, and this year's net income expected to reach 10.7 billion US dollars, which will increase a $2.1 billion net income to Berkshire, equivalent to 7% of Berkshire's net income in the past 12 months.
Berkshire uses the equity method for its 26.6% stake in Kraft Heinz Co $The Kraft Heinz Company(KHC)$ the packaged food company
Of course, Berkshire can also argue that these holdings are passive and have a short-term sale purpose, so they can maintain accounting independence from each other.
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