Boston, MA 06/04/2014 (wallstreetpr) – Oil and gas company, Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE:OXY) shares are hitting its peak crossing the psychological mark of $100 in Tuesday trading. This comes on the heels of the company’s directors buying the shares and different brokerages viewing the stock differently with majority of them favoring a Buy rating.
Insiders Buying Shares
Between December and now, four Directors of the Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE:OXY) have evinced interest in its stock. They have bought 17,500 shares together during the same period. This could well induce investors to go for the stock as the shares have also crossed both the technical barriers of 50-day as well as 200-day moving averages.
The stock had crossed $100 mark to reach one year high of $100.53 on June 3. Occidental Petroleum Corporation director William Klesse has acquired 10K shares on two different days, i.e. one on March 25 and another on May 20. In other words, he has split his purchase before and after the quarterly announcement of the financial results.
Similarly, another director Eugene Batchelder also acquired 1K shares each, one on March 12 and another on May 12, while director Carlos Gutierrez bought 5K shares on December 16 last year. One more director Elisse Walter purchased 500 shares on February 24.
Rating of Stock
While thirteen analysts have kept the rating Buy on the company’s shares, six brokerages have kept the rating of Hold. The average rating is for Buy with an average price tag of $108.81.
While Citigroup analyst has upgraded Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE:OXY) shares to a Buy rating recently from Neutral besides lifting its price target to $111.00 from $103.00, Barclays has cut its price target to $109.00 from $112.00 with an Overweight rating. Credit Suisse analyst has also reduced its price target to $115.00 from $120.00.
The Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE:OXY) earned $1.75 a share as profit for the first quarter, which came in above analysts’ predictions of $1.70 a share. However, its revenue of $6.09 billion fell shy of analysts’ estimation of $6.21 billion.
