Berkshire Hathaway Phillips 66

Berkshire Hathaway Phillips 66, Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company led by Warren E. Buffett, disclosed a $4.48 billion stake in the oil refiner Phillips 66, rebuilding a bet Berkshire had made in the energy industry before oil prices fell.

Berkshire’s stake of 57.98 million shares, or roughly 10.8 percent of the stock, was revealed on Friday night in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Phillips 66 shares closed at $77.23 on Friday.

Mr. Buffett’s company once held a large stake in Phillips 66, which is based in Houston, but shed nearly two-thirds of it in February 2014 when Berkshire swapped $1.35 billion worth of shares for a chemicals business that it folded into its Lubrizol unit.

Crude oil prices have since fallen more than half, though Phillips 66’s share price has dropped less than 1 percent.

A Phillips 66 spokesman, Dennis Nuss, said on Saturday that the oil company did not comment on specific shareholders.

Berkshire may have begun rebuilding its Phillips 66 stake in the second quarter, when it bought $3.09 billion of equities over all.

In an Aug. 14 S.E.C. filing detailing its United States stock holdings, Berkshire did not mention Phillips 66 — after previously reporting a stake of 7.5 million shares as of March 31 — but said it had disclosed some information confidentially to the regulator.

The S.E.C. sometimes lets Berkshire, which is based in Omaha, privately disclose details so that Mr. Buffett can quietly buy a large amount of stock without worrying about investors piggybacking on what they may think to be the famed investor’s stamp of approval. Mr. Buffett did this in 2013, when Berkshire amassed a $3.45 billion stake in Exxon Mobil. Mr. Buffett sold that stake in the fourth quarter of last year.

Berkshire does not normally say whether Mr. Buffett or his portfolio managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, make specific investments, but larger investments are generally Mr. Buffett’s.

Since April, Phillips 66 shares have traded around or slightly above their current price, except for a brief drop last week to nearly $70.

Berkshire ended June owning $117.7 billion worth of equities. It also owns more than 80 businesses. On Aug. 10, Berkshire said it would buy Precision Castparts, which makes parts for the aerospace and energy industries, for $32.3 billion.
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