Occidental Petrolium Corporation
Occidental Petrolium Corporation
March 8, 2007
The Occidental Petroleum Corporation (OXY) is an oil and natural gas exploration and
chemical manufacturing company based in Los Angeles, California. The company has oil and
natural gas operations within the United States, as well as the Middle East, North Africa, South
America, and Latin America. Occidental is known as the largest oil producers in Texas and the
largest natural gas producer in California. The company holds a 25% interest in the assets and
liabilities of the Dolphin Project in Qatar. The Dolphin Project has the rights to operate and
produce natural gas within the country, as well as the right to build and own a major gas pipeline
Occidental focuses most of its business on oil and natural gas exploration, but also is
heavily involved with manufacturing chlorine and caustic soda. While producing chemicals for
pharmaceuticals, water disinfectants and detergents, Occidental has grown to become a market
Occidental possesses $38.83 billion in market capitalization, as well as over $5.3 billion
in net income. While striving to increase its revenue, Occidental has managed to decrease the
amount of debt held by $900 million. The company has improved its financial status over the
past several years, leading to an increase of its credit rating to “single A.”
The company is listed within the Independent Oil and Gas industry, competing with
several large corporations such as: China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, EnCana,
CNOOC, and Suncor Energy. Other close competitors would include Exxon Mobile, Royal
Dutch, Chevron, and Conoco Phillips. The industry has an overall market capitalization of $492
billion, with a net profit margin of 16.5. Within the past week, the industry has taken a dive,
dropping more than five percent. Interestingly, the industry follows the performance of the S&P
was very informative and thought provoking. The letter detailed the company’s operations in
each of its locations throughout the world, giving extensive information about production
statistics. Understandably, Irani is trying to give the shareholder as much information as possible
by providing eight pages of statistics. At the same time, however, the shareholder who is reading
the letter made be overwhelmed by the amount of statistics given. With a large outflow of
statistics and information, the letter is not very personal, and begins to sound mundane after the
Irani does prevent the usage of clichés throughout the letter, with only a few possible
phrases that may seem cliché. Irani explains the increase in capital expenditures over the year
due to “the large number of excellent growth projects in our portfolio.” This would be a good
explanation if Irani provided details about these growth projects. Though much of the letter
provides excellent details and graphics to describe Occidental’s success, the letter fails to provide
Ray Irani does provide significant details about the company’s vision and strategies for
the future. This includes the plans for further acquisitions throughout South America and the
Middle East. Irani also states that the company will be buying back 30 million shares within the
next few years. Though the letter does provide thorough analysis, it does not mention any
negative impacts on the company or industry. This should make a shareholder precautious about
what is actually happening within the company, since Irani does not discuss any problems.
Another glaring detail is that Occidental relies heavily on the price of oil; without the spike in
prices of oil, the company would not have seen such a prolific rise in earnings. Overall, the letter
should receive a “C+” letter grade. Many details are missing about possible obstacles the
company has faced or will later face, which should lead to questions about how honest
Occidental is being with its shareholders. Since many qualitative and quantitative details are
given about the success of the company, this offsets a potentially lower rated letter.
Compared to its industry, Occidental had a higher implied return on equity. Occidental’s
current ROE is 25.92%, about 4.2% higher than the industry. Much of this is due to their higher
operating profit margin and exceedingly high asset turnover. The implied ROE was calculated
by multiplying together the operating profit margin, tax burden, interest burden, asset turnover,
and total financial leverage. An interesting point to mention is that Occidental has an interest
burden ratio of 1, meaning that it does not pay out any interest before taxes are deducted. After
calculating the DuPont Analysis for Occidental, the company does not show any evidence of
artificially increasing its return on equity. The current implied ROE is identical to the reported
ROE, while the company shows an implied five year average ROE of 28.08%, .01% higher than
its reported counterpart. The company’s high ROE can be justified by the company’s
acquisitions of oil and natural gas facilities in the Middle East and the United States producing
financial leverage to improve their return on equity. The company reports a ratio of 1.73 of
financial leverage, more than .50 lower than that of the industry. Occidental also has maintained
a low amount of total assets to equity over the past five years, posting a ratio of 2.05. Occidental
does not rely as much on their equity capital to generate higher returns, a fundamental that
Buffett preaches. The amount of debt that Occidental has accrued has decreased dramatically
since 2003, with a decrease of about $2.3 billion. By relying less on debt to improve the
operations of the company, Occidental can focus on improving its facilities and expanding its
operations.
The company also does not try to improve its financial position by adding high amounts
of extraordinary items to its income statement, a testament that Buffett also follows. Though
Occidental has used extraordinary items in the past, the company has recently discontinued some
Since 2002, Occidental has seen an increase in its owner’s earnings. As of 2006,
Occidental reported $3.348 billion in owner’s earnings, an increase of 11.11% from 2005.
Incidentally, the five year average of owner’s earnings was 41.83% since 2002. Owner’s
earnings represent the amount of cash flows from operations a company has accumulated over
the year, less the amount of capital expenditures. By analyzing a company’s capital
expenditures, an investor can consider what purchases the company has made to improve its
current economic position. The five year average was calculated by finding the average of
Comparing the amount of owner’s earnings per share, Occidental has a current ratio of
3.927, while the five year average stands at 2.734. It can be implied that for every share
outstanding, Occidental has earned $3.93 of owner’s earnings in 2006. This difference in
owner’s earnings per share may be misleading, however. Since 2002, the change in owner’s
earnings has steadily declined. Though the company still has shown an increase in earnings, the
change each year has decreased; in 2004, earnings grew 46.60% from the previous year, in 2005
earnings grew 39.62%, and in 2006 they only grew 11.11%. The company has made $1.4 billion
in capital expenditures over the past two years, yet the change in cash flows has not seen the
same increase in growth. This may only due to the company investing more assets into more oil
Philip Fisher makes a point in The Warren Buffett Way by saying that sales growth is
only useful to determine growth if the company is able to understand and reduce costs. The five
year average sales growth for Occidental was 25.10%, a smaller growth rate compared to the
industry average 30.03%. The sales growth was calculated using the five year average of annual
sales growth since 2002. The revenue the company incurred does not include interest income or
other revenues, since interest income is a source of income from companies financing their
purchases. Though the rate of growth in revenue has been slightly erratic, Occidental is finding
methods to receive the highest return from its expenditures. Occidental has also been able to
reduce its level of debt, reducing costs from $4.658 billion in 2002 to $2.79 billion in 2006.
Each year within this time frame has posted a decrease in debt from the subsequent year. This
shows a high amount of dedication that the company has shown to improve its financial position
During the past five years, Occidental has shown an increase in market value, posting a
dollar premise of $2.73. The dollar premise was calculated by dividing the change in market
value into the amount of accumulated retained earnings for the past five years. Retained
earnings were calculated by subtracting the amount of retained earnings from 2002 from the
amount in 2006. To determine the market value, the close price for December 30th was
multiplied by the current shares outstanding for both 2002 and 2006. By using these years
instead of a more current close price, the data was able to be compared at a more consistent level
to that of retained earnings. With a dollar premise of $2.73, Occidental has created $2.73 of
market value for each dollar of retained earnings. Instead of paying out the company’s earnings
as dividends or buying back shares, Occidental has reinvested its earnings to create a higher
market value for its shareholders. It should be mentioned, however, that Occidental does pay an
annual dividend of $1.44 per share, $0.20 higher than the previous year. This information can be
To determine the intrinsic value of Occidental Petroleum, the expected earnings are
discounted to the present day. Using a normal growth rate of 6% (the expected growth rate of
the economy), a supernormal growth rate of 18.23% (from owners earnings), and a discounted
cash flow rate of 10% (since the required rate was originally 9.14%, but a 10% minimum is
required, the intrinsic value of Occidental is $40.21. To find the discounted rate, the capital asset
pricing model was used, using the current t-bill 3-month rate as the risk free rate, and the market
risk premium quoted in the handout 3.11 given in class (the average of the geometric and
determine the implied worth of the company. Much of the company’s earnings are dependent on
the price of oil, so it would be difficult to predict the amount of future earnings since an investor
Occidental should be viewed as a glamour stock, since it has high past growth rates, and
growths in revenue (25.1% compared to S&P 12.5%). Cash flow has been growing for the past
five years, yet at decreasing rates. The company has a low standard deviation of returns, which
may also suggest it to be a glamour stock. Though this may not be a good measurement for
comparison, value stocks do, on average, tend to have higher standard deviations closer to an
average of 24%. Another key point to make is that glamour stocks, on average, have done well
in the past, and do not expect to have financial issues in the future. Occidental portrays these
fundamentals, with high sales growths of 25%, and decreasing levels of debt. A final measure is
the amount of institutions that hold stock in Occidental. 77.71% of shares are held by
institutions, which is much higher than the industry and the S&P 500 (49.53% and 70.73%,
respectively). This measure would indicate that Occidental is more of a glamour stock than a
value stock.
The margin of safety provided by Occidental is very low, with the intrinsic value 13.55%
lower than the current share price. Buffett would not see this as very beneficial to him, because
there is no margin of safety, and he would have no reason to invest in a stock with no margin of
safety, since it is overvalued. The margin of safety is low compared to Buffett’s standard, who
requires a 25% discount of the intrinsic value. Occidental’s low margin of safety should be a
warning for future investors, who may be investing a lot of money in a company that may not
produce significant returns. Should the market decline, Occidental’s share price would drop due
to the low intrinsic value. Occidental does not have enough intrinsic value to justify a large
The stock price for March 1, 2007 was $46.51, which was an increase from the previous
day. Using weekly prices since March 8, 1998 to February 28, 2007, a standard deviation of
3.949% was determined, along with an average weekly return of 7.377% in adjusted closing
prices. Though the weekly returns are high, they mainly represent earlier returns from the late
1990s and early 2000s. Due to this misrepresentation, an investor may expect higher returns
because of higher returns almost ten years ago. Since May 2006, the share price for Occidental
has shown a decreasing trend. In May 2006, the stock price was about $53.00, $7.00 higher than
the current price. Shown below is a graph of the five year change in stock price:
Because of a recent decline in share price, an investor should be monitoring the continued
performance of Occidental.
Based on all of the above information, I would recommend a decision to hold shares of
Occidental. The company has been progressing by purchasing new oil fields and expanding its
operations, with an operating profit margin of 43.12% (about 11% higher than the industry).
Occidental has also been decreasing its amount of debt, as well as using a smaller amount of
financial leverage compared to its industry. Unfortunately, Occidental has also shown a decrease
in growth of owner’s earnings, mainly due to a rise in capital expenditures. This rise is higher
compared to the amount of cash flow received from these expenditures. With the company
relying so much on the price of oil, investors should be cautious about the future of Occidental.
Since the company also has a small margin of safety, an investor should be wary about the future
A reversal to this decision would be if the company’s ROE narrows closer to its industry
(sell), or if the ROE expands even more (buy). If the growth rate of owner’s earnings drops
below 11% between 2006 and 2007, I would recommend a sell decision. A rise would indicate a
hold decision, until there is a consistent rise in growth. One further factor to consider is if the
intrinsic value grows over $58, the margin of safety would be over 25%, thus implying a
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Hagstrom, Robert G. The Warren Buffett Way. Wiley and Sons, Inc. New Jersey: 2005 pg. 17,