From the Wall Street Journal:
Energy giant’s revenue falls 33%, hurt by weak exploration and production results
Exxon Mobil Corp. , the biggest and richest U.S. oil company, reported its lowest earnings in six years on Friday as bigger profits from refining couldn’t offset plunging earnings in its exploration and production business.The stock is down 4.6% ($3.80) at 79.20. That decline is weighing on both the DJIA and the XLE in which it is an outsized component.
Shares of Exxon Mobil tumbled as much as 5% on Friday to their lowest level since mid-2012. Recently, shares were down 4.7% to $79.11.
Exxon also said it would again scale back its share buybacks during the current quarter to a level of $500 million. Exxon bought back $1 billion in shares in the second quarter, which was down from its previous level of about $3 billion in buybacks each quarter. Stock repurchases are popular with investors because they shrink the number of shares available to the public and tend to make them more valuable.
n a news release, Chief Executive Rex Tillerson said results in the latest quarter “reflect the disparate impacts of the current commodity price environment.”
Profit in the exploration and production, or upstream, business plunged 74% to $2.03 billion in the latest quarter, as its U.S. division swung to a loss....MORE
Earlier:
Buying Oil Stocks: It's Still Too Early (XLE; XOP)
