Selena Maranjian, The Motley Fool
Sun, May 17, 2026 astatine 10:50 AM CDT 4 min read
If you're an capitalist successful Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY), oregon are reasoning of becoming one, you whitethorn beryllium wondering: Where volition Occidental beryllium successful 3 years, and should you beryllium a shareholder? It's a hard question to answer, but here's a reappraisal of immoderate considerations.
First off, cognize that Occidental Petroleum is simply a large vigor company, with a caller marketplace worth topping $56 billion. It's focused connected finding, producing, marketing, and transporting lipid and earthy gas. (It has a lofty tag line, too: "We unlock imaginable by reaching for the intolerable and achieving it.")
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Green lights for Occidental
Here are immoderate reasons wherefore you mightiness see investing successful Occidental Petroleum:
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It's performing well, beating expectations successful its precocious reported quarter.
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It has been carrying a batch of debt, but it's besides been paying down a batch of debt. In its astir caller quarter, absorption pointed retired that the institution has been "repaying $7.1 cardinal of main indebtedness done May 5 and reducing main indebtedness to $13.3 billion, and progressing toward [the] $10.0 cardinal milestone." (Selling its chemicals concern helped with indebtedness reduction.)
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The Iran warfare has provided a tailwind to Occidental and different vigor companies, sending lipid prices soaring.
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It pays a dividend, precocious yielding 1.9%, but it chopped its payout astir wholly successful 2020. It has since been hiking its dividend considerably successful caller years.
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Its banal valuation seems tenable astatine caller levels, with a caller forward-looking price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 12.6, a spot beneath the five-year mean of 13.1.
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If you bargain shares, you'll beryllium successful bully company, arsenic Occidental is simply a large holding of Warren Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway. Indeed, Berkshire precocious owned astir 27% of the company, reflecting a batch of assurance successful its future.
Cautions for Occidental
This stock, similar most, is not a no-brainer investment, truthful support immoderate cautions successful mind, specified as:
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Its show has been lumpy successful caller years, with an mean yearly summation of 20.2% implicit the past 5 years, but little than 0.5% implicit the past 3 and 10 years. Over the past 15 years, it has averaged an yearly nonaccomplishment of 1.25%, but twelvemonth to day (as of May 13), it's up much than 37%! (Whew!)
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A solution to the Iran warfare mightiness pb to falling lipid prices, which could wounded the company's profitability.

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