Liam Denning, Columnist

Exxon Finally Speaks Up as Chevron Catches Up

Putting its CEO on an earnings call for the first time in 15 years shows the challenge is serious.

February 1, 2019 at 4:55 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Darren Woods, chairman and chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil Corp.
Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg

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Exxon Mobil Corp. wants you to know it is serious. On Friday morning, Darren Woods became the first CEO of the famously aloof oil major to grace an earnings call in 15 years.

Fortunately for him, he had some decent results to talk about. After several quarters of decline, year over year, Exxon’s production finally ticked up in the last few months of 2018. Earnings of $1.41 a share handily beat the consensus forecast of $1.08. They still do even after stripping out about 20 cents’ worth of one-off benefits. Cash flow from operations for the year, a cool $36 billion, more than covered rising capital expenditure of almost $21 billion as well as dividends of almost $14 billion.