Earnings call transcript: ExxonMobil Q1 2025 beats EPS estimates, stock rises

ExxonMobil reported its financial results for the first quarter of 2025, posting earnings per share (EPS) of $1.76, surpassing analysts’ expectations of $1.73. The company’s revenue, however, fell short of forecasts, coming in at $83.13 billion against an expected $86.09 billion. Despite the revenue miss, the stock saw a premarket increase of 1.05%, reflecting investor optimism fueled by solid earnings and strategic advancements. According to InvestingPro analysis, ExxonMobil appears undervalued based on its Fair Value calculation, with analysts maintaining a moderate buy consensus and a high price target of $144.

Key Takeaways

• ExxonMobil’s Q1 2025 EPS surpassed expectations by $0.03.
• Revenue fell short of forecasts, impacting overall financial performance.
• The stock rose by 1.05% in premarket trading, boosted by strong earnings.
• The company achieved significant operational milestones, including project startups and cost savings.
• ExxonMobil maintains a strong competitive position with a low net debt to capital ratio of 7%.

Company Performance

ExxonMobil demonstrated robust financial performance in Q1 2025, achieving $7.7 billion in earnings. The company continues to lead among integrated oil companies with $13 billion in cash flow from operations. With an impressive EBITDA of $64.29 billion and a healthy gross profit margin of 30.73% over the last twelve months, ExxonMobil has maintained its competitive edge through strategic investments and operational efficiencies. InvestingPro subscribers can access 10+ additional exclusive financial metrics and insights about ExxonMobil’s operational excellence.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $83.13 billion, below the forecast of $86.09 billion.
• Earnings per share: $1.76, exceeding the forecast of $1.73.
• Cash flow from operations: $13 billion, highest among peers.
• Shareholder distributions: $9.1 billion, including $4.8 billion in share buybacks.

Earnings vs. Forecast

ExxonMobil’s actual EPS of $1.76 exceeded the forecasted $1.73, marking a positive surprise of approximately 1.7%. However, the revenue of $83.13 billion fell short of the $86.09 billion forecast, a miss of about 3.4%. This mixed performance highlights the company’s ability to manage costs and deliver earnings despite revenue challenges.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, ExxonMobil’s stock price increased by 1.05% in premarket trading, reaching $106.83. This rise reflects investor confidence in the company’s strategic direction and earnings resilience. With a beta of 0.58, the stock demonstrates historically low volatility, making it an attractive option for stability-focused investors. The stock remains within its 52-week range, with a low of $97.80 and a high of $126.34, indicating potential for future growth. Get comprehensive insights into ExxonMobil’s valuation metrics and future potential with a InvestingPro subscription, which includes access to detailed Pro Research Reports.

Outlook & Guidance

ExxonMobil continues to focus on high-return projects and operational efficiencies. The company expects to launch 10 major projects in 2025, potentially contributing $3 billion in earnings by 2026. With a disciplined capital allocation strategy, ExxonMobil aims to reduce breakeven costs to $35 per barrel by 2027 and $30 per barrel by 2030.

Executive Commentary

Jim Chapman, VP Treasurer and Investor Relations, emphasized, "We are built for this. In any market environment, our focus stays the same." He highlighted the company’s commitment to strategic investments, stating, "Discipline is not about investing less. It is investing in the right things."

Risks and Challenges

• Economic uncertainty and market volatility could impact future earnings.
• Persistent low chemical margins may pressure profitability.
• Fluctuations in crude and natural gas prices remain a concern.
• Regulatory changes and environmental policies could affect operations.
• Supply chain disruptions may pose risks to project timelines.

ExxonMobil remains focused on leveraging its strengths in technology, scale, and integration to navigate market challenges and deliver value to shareholders. The company maintains a "GOOD" overall Financial Health Score according to InvestingPro analysis, supported by its 42-year track record of consecutive dividend increases and strong cash flow coverage of interest payments. These are just 2 of the 10+ exclusive ProTips available to subscribers, along with comprehensive financial analysis and expert insights.

Full transcript - Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM) Q1 2025:

Jim Chapman, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations, ExxonMobil: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to ExxonMobil’s First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Disclosure. I’m Jim Chapman, Vice President, Treasurer and Investor Relations. This quarter’s presentation and prerecorded remarks are available on the Investors section of our website. They’re meant to accompany the first quarter earnings news release, which is posted in the same location.

We also published a new company overview presentation, which is posted alongside materials. This document provides some new financial and other perspectives on ExxonMobil. During today’s presentation, we’ll make forward looking comments, including discussions of our long term plans, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please read our cautionary statement on Slide two. You can find more information on the risks and uncertainties that apply to any forward looking statements in our SEC filings on our website.

Note that we also provided supplemental information at the end of our earnings slides, which are also posted on the website. Before diving into our first quarter results, I wanna say a few things about the current market environment and how ExxonMobil is positioned within it. The headlines today are dominated by the uncertainty from tariffs, which is weighing on economic forecasts and causing market volatility. This economic uncertainty combined with threats of potential increase in OpEx supply has put pressure on prices and margins. For us, these are not obstacles, but reminders that we built our business with the flexibility to thrive through market cycles.

This flexibility makes us stronger now than ever before. Despite increased uncertainty, our strategy is unchanged, our position is strong, and our track record speaks for itself. We have built the business to excel in any market. We stay focused on the things we can control. The things that make us stronger by ensuring our assets are the most competitive in industry, which helps us to deliver leading value in any environment.

One thing that sets us apart is our disciplined approach to capital allocation, which ensures we drive long term growth by investing in advantaged opportunities across our portfolio and through commodity cycles. We don’t chase trends. We focus on the fundamentals, making well informed choices about where and how to deploy capital. Then we execute. Our unique advantages, technology, scale, integration, execution excellence, and of course, people have underpinned the transformation of our business.

We’ve spent years cultivating these advantages. So it would be extremely difficult for other companies to replicate what we do. These unique competitive advantages deployed towards our unmatched opportunity set equip us to continue executing our proven strategy and enable us to reliably create leading shareholder value again in any market. You’ve heard us talk about our business transformation. From growing our portfolio of advantaged assets and improving the mix of products we produce and sell to structurally removing costs across our business, we’ve fundamentally transformed our company and in turn our underlying earnings power.

You recall, we’ve talked in recent disclosures about improving earnings power by about $3,500,000,000 quarterly since 2019 at constant prices and margins. This is driven by structural earnings improvements, which include our volume and mix improvements as well as continued efforts to drive structural cost efficiencies. On this slide, we’re taking a different look at earnings power, calculating our earnings improvement versus 2019 using the prices we’ve seen recently in April. We’ve taken our twenty twenty five first quarter results and our first quarter results from 2019 and adjusted them to this current price environment. Since 2019, even in this weaker market environment, the strength of our strategy and our improvement in earnings power is significant.

While our strategic acquisition of Pioneer, which closed a year ago, is certainly a contributor, even more so is the significant business transformation we’ve delivered over the past six years. In total, our structural earnings improvements have contributed around $4,000,000,000 to improving our earnings power, more than offsetting higher inflation and other costs. As with everything we do, we don’t just promise results, we deliver them a proven strategy, relentless execution and real measurable results. The first quarter, our transformed business continued to outperform. We delivered $7,700,000,000 in earnings, highlighting the differentiated strengths of our portfolio and our improved earnings power.

Underpinning our results were continued execution excellence, the strength of our advantaged portfolio and continued cost discipline across our businesses. The transformation we’ve executed over the past five years has clearly made us stronger. This is evident in this quarter’s results, especially when compared with the same quarter a year ago. We remain laser focused on investing in competitively advantaged, low cost of supply, high return opportunities, on delivering execution excellence in everything we do and on driving additional structural cost improvements. The importance of this is evident now more than ever.

We’re delivering on 10 key project startups in 2025 that are part of a rich pipeline of advantaged opportunities growing both our traditional and our new businesses. From Yellowtail, our fourth and largest FPSO in Guyana, which has arrived on location and is progressing hookup and commissioning activities to our 25 ktA production capacity expansion of Proxima resin, a product with the potential to capture a large share of growing less cyclical markets. In a minute, I’ll go into more detail about two of these 10 projects that have now commenced operations. Our China Chemical Complex and our second advanced recycling unit in Baytown. More broadly, the delivery of so many major projects in a single year is a testament to the capability of our global projects organization across a diverse range of project types from upstream to downstream to low carbon, we are delivering.

Beyond our traditional businesses, we’ve also continued our transformation by growing our new technology driven businesses. For example, composites represent less than 2% of an average car’s weight. Looking forward, we project that the new high performance materials in automobiles could reach more than 20% by 02/1940, consistent with that industry’s current lightweighting objectives. Our proprietary Proxima resins are very well positioned to meet that growing demand. In March, ExxonMobil showcased a revolutionary EV battery case prototype made from Proxima products that simply can’t be produced from existing composite materials.

We’re aiming to replace steel and aluminum battery cases with solutions that reduce overall vehicle weight and enable more efficient production, allowing Proxima products to compete and win in this multibillion dollar addressable market. And that’s just one application and just in automobile industry. And in another example, just last week, we announced our six large carbon capture and storage contract. In this case, with Calpine, which operates a power plant near our Baytown facility in Texas. We will transport and permanently store 2,000,000 metric tons per year of CO2, leveraging our GreenLine CO2 transport network, the world’s only end to end CCS system.

That brings our total CO2 under contract for CCS with third party customers to 8.7 MTA. Add the 7.5 MTA from our planned low carbon hydrogen plant in Baytown, and we’re more than halfway to our aim to permanently store 30 MTA of CO2 by 2,030. And finally, we continue to maintain industry leading financial strength while delivering robust returns to our shareholders. We ended the first quarter with 7% net debt to capital after distributing more than $9,000,000,000 to shareholders via dividends and share buybacks more than any other IOC. You can see every quarter that our strategy is succeeding.

We’re improving earnings by transforming our business to produce more profitable barrels and higher value products while also lowering costs. In the upstream, we’re continuing to grow advantaged production. More than 60% of upstream volume is expected to come from our advantaged assets in the Permian, Guyana and LNG by 02/1930. Even at constant prices, this helps lift our upstream profitability another $3 per barrel from $10 last year to $13 in 02/1930. In product solutions, we’re delivering advantaged projects and significantly growing our high value products.

Both are key to driving earnings growth. Our advantaged projects delivered $2,100,000,000 of earnings in 2024 and we’re expecting roughly $4,000,000,000 per year more from these and additional advantaged projects by the end of the decade. Nearly all of the advantaged projects coming online in 2025 through 02/1930 increase high value product volumes. Through the first quarter, we produced roughly 3,500,000 tons of performance chemicals, lubricants and lower emission fuels more than the same period last year. And we’re on track to achieve 25,000,000 tons of high value product sales in 02/1930.

We also remain committed to taking costs out of the business and to keeping them out. We’re not just nibbling around the edges here while others who seem to be adopting our playbook are just getting started. We’ve already removed costs at a monumental scale. For the past five years, we have consistently saved about $2,500,000,000 annually, more per year than some companies aspire to achieve over multi year periods. While others set small safe goals, we’ve been challenging our organization to aim higher with bigger, bolder targets that redefine what’s possible.

And as a result, we fundamentally transform the cost base of our company by delivering $12,700,000,000 of structural cost savings since 2019. This far exceeds anyone else in the industry. In fact, it’s more than all other IOCs reported cost savings combined. And we are not done yet. We have plans to achieve $18,000,000,000 in structural savings by 02/1930.

Our first two major project startups in 2025 are the China Chemical Complex and our second advanced recycling unit in Baytown. Both are operational and ramping production. Our ability to successfully deliver large and attractive advantage projects at or below cost and often ahead of schedule positions us well, especially in challenging market conditions. Our industry leading global projects organization delivered our China Chemical Complex, an enormous project ahead of schedule and an industry leading pace and at a significant cost advantage. At present, we’ve produced on spec olefins, polyethylene and polypropylene.

When fully operational, the project will have the capacity to produce nearly 1.7 MTA of polyethylene and nearly 900 KTA of polypropylene. Importantly, over 75% of the complex’s capacity will have the capability to produce high value differentiated performance chemicals. This Greenfield project will not only be competitive, but will also be protected from tariff impacts. It will supply China’s growing domestic market, the largest in the world with high value chemical products that have historically seen demand grow by about 7% a year. That’s double the pace of commodity chemical growth.

In advanced recycling, we started up our first unit in 2022. Since then, we’ve improved upon the technology that enables this proven process to convert waste that is difficult to recycle by other means into many valuable products. We’ve expanded the range of plastic types we can recycle while enabling integration into existing operations without compromising reliability or product quality. Our latest advanced recycling unit in Baytown leverages this technology and commenced operations in early April. Like our first unit, it has the capacity to process 80,000,000 pounds per year of plastic waste annually, thereby doubling our capacity.

Additional units are now under development across sites on the Gulf Coast are expected to start up later this year and next, bringing our total advanced recycling capacity to 500,000,000 pounds per year by year end 2026. Looking at the entire slate of 10 major projects starting up this year across all our businesses, they have the potential to deliver more than $3,000,000,000 in earnings in 2026 at constant prices and margins. Now to cover some of the financial highlights of the quarter. We generated earnings of $7,700,000,000 and cash flow from operations of $13,000,000,000 in the first quarter, the highest among all integrated oil companies. As of year end, our five year compound annual growth rate of cash flow from operations was double the next highest IOC and nearly four times that of the large cap industrial group.

We are well positioned to navigate market cycles, thanks to improved corporate efficiency and lower cost of supply. Since 2019, we’ve made tremendous strides in reducing structural costs. And at the end of the quarter, we reached $12,700,000,000 of savings, more than all other IOCs combined. Our track record gives us confidence we’ll hit our plan to reach roughly $18,000,000,000 by 02/1930. Our ongoing drive to become more efficient has also lowered our breakevens with plans to further reduce them to $35 per barrel by 2027 and to $30 per barrel by 02/1930.

Our improved earnings power and disciplined capital allocation strategy is designed to deliver unmatched financial strength, giving us the flexibility we need to outperform in any market environment. Our debt to capital ratio at the end of the quarter was 12% and the net debt to capital ratio was 7%, again, leading all other IOCs. And all of our successes help ensure predictable and dependable shareholder distributions. In the first quarter, our total distributions of $9,100,000,000 including $4,800,000,000 in share buybacks were among the largest in the entire S and P five hundred. These distributions in turn support total shareholder return where we’ve led IOCs and the average of large cap industrials over the last three years and rank among the top 20% of companies across all segments of the S and P five hundred.

Looking at the macro environment, a lot has changed since the end of the first quarter. However, as I previously mentioned, our strategy, our company, our people are built for this. Within the first quarter, crude prices remained roughly flat near the middle of the ten year range, while natural gas prices improved on stronger global demand driven by LNG exports in The U. S. And colder weather in The United States and in Europe.

Sequentially, global industry refining margins were lower driven by weakness in Asia Pacific from capacity additions and higher regional feed costs. That global industry margin trend was in contrast to our own energy products business, which generated higher sequential margins based primarily on our majority weighting within the North American market. In fact, on a look back basis, all the strategic decisions we’ve undertaken since 2019, including increasing our North American footprint, have contributed over a billion dollars to our energy products earnings in the quarter. Chemical margins stayed well below the ten year range as growing demand was met by new capacity additions primarily in Asia Pacific. Our chemicals business performed well, thanks to our effort over many years to grow high value chemical products and to rigorously drive down costs.

Looking out the window, the economic uncertainty we saw reflected in the markets in March and April may indeed continue. Regardless as our results show, we’ve built our business to excel in any market environment. Turning to the quarter, I’ll start with an overview of our first quarter results compared with the same quarter a year ago. GAAP earnings of $7,700,000,000 were down roughly $500,000,000 driven primarily by market forces across our businesses. However, you can clearly see contributions from our continued investment in advantaged volume growth and our structural cost reductions.

Across our businesses, these items contributed $1,400,000,000 more to earnings in the first quarter as compared to the same period a year ago. The key drivers for this advantaged growth were the acquisition of Pioneer in the second quarter of twenty twenty four as well as growth in Guyana. This growth was partially offset by lower base volumes as we’ve continued to high grade our portfolio, including the recent Nigeria JV and Argentina divestments. Structural cost savings are key in offsetting the upward expense pressure from inflation and from growth initiatives. In the first quarter of twenty twenty five, our structural cost savings helped offset these pressures as well as higher depreciation.

Favorable timing effects of $700,000,000 were primarily driven by the absence of unfavorable impacts from last year. Now let’s look at our sequential results. First quarter GAAP earnings improved from the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four, increasing $100,000,000 Adjusted for prior quarter identified items, earnings improved $300,000,000 sequentially. This was supported by favorable prices and margins in our upstream and energy product segments and lower expenses. Higher liquids and gas prices and stronger refining margins more than offset slight market headwinds in other segments.

Overall, prices and margins were a $600,000,000 help to earnings. As mentioned during the fourth quarter earnings call, we saw higher seasonal expenses at the end of twenty twenty four across segments. In the first quarter, we saw the absence of the higher spend from fourth quarter as well as lower exploration expenses in our upstream segment, resulting in a $600,000,000 help to expenses. Lastly, other items reflect the absence of the $700,000,000 of help we had in the fourth quarter from year end inventory, asset management and tax impacts. We also saw net unfavorable ForEx, tax and divestment related impacts in the first quarter.

The combined sequential impact was a $1,200,000,000 reduction from the prior quarter. Turning to cash. We generated $13,000,000,000 of cash flow in the first quarter as the earnings power of our business reliably delivered again. We continue to consistently deploy capital according to our allocation priorities. First, we’re investing in advantaged assets and projects to drive long term earnings and cash flow growth to the end of the decade and beyond.

We invested nearly $6,000,000,000 of cash CapEx in the first quarter and as mentioned, are on track for 10 project start ups in 2025. We’re closely monitoring the changes in market conditions and remain focused on value. If we can improve the NPV of our investments by inventorying opportunities for later, we will do that. The flexibility of our investment portfolio with over a third of our production coming from short cycle U. S.

Unconventional assets gives us this option. And as discussed in our corporate plan update in December, in our newer businesses, if the necessary policy support and market development do not materialize in the timeline we expect, we’ll defer or suspend investments. Second, we strengthened our balance sheet during the quarter with more than $4,000,000,000 of debt repayment, leaving our net debt to capital ratio at 7%, again, the lowest among IOCs. Finally, strong operational results coupled with a strong balance sheet allow us to predictably and reliably return excess cash to our shareholders. During the quarter, we distributed $9,100,000,000 including $4,300,000,000 in dividends and $4,800,000,000 in share buybacks, in line with our guidance of a $20,000,000,000 annual buyback pace.

Looking ahead to the second quarter, in the Upstream, we expect scheduled maintenance primarily in Qatar and Canada to decrease volumes by about 100,000 oil equivalent barrels per day compared to the first quarter. We also had roughly 100,000,000 of net favorable divestment related earnings impacts in the first quarter that we do not expect to repeat in the second quarter. In Product Solutions, we’ll have lower scheduled maintenance versus the first quarter. We’ll be ramping up production at our China Chemical Complex throughout the year. This means higher volumes, but not full rates from this asset in the second quarter.

We expect second quarter corporate and financing expenses to be between 600,000,000 and $800,000,000 This range is higher than what we’ve guided in recent quarters, primarily driven lower interest income on cash balances. And finally, as has been the case for a number of years, we expect seasonal tax payments of $2.5 to $3,000,000,000 in the second quarter, driving a working capital outflow. To sum up our discussion today, if you come away with one key message, it’s that we are built for this. In any market environment, our focus stays the same. Our proven strategy, superior execution and cost discipline have delivered, and we are well positioned to continue creating leading shareholder value through cycles.

Uncertainty will always exist, but with great challenges also come great opportunities. The opportunities in front of us are tremendous and we are ready to seize them. The companies that will win are those that capitalize on these moments. As we said many times, we remain steadfast in our approach to capital allocation and our discipline is without question. To us, discipline is not about investing less.

It is investing in the right things. You can be assured that we will continue to leverage our unique competitive advantages to capitalize on what can only be described as an unmatched opportunity set. Combining the right advantages, the most attractive opportunities, and the best execution delivers leading results. It is the combination of these things that will drive long term shareholder value, our primary focus, delivering profitable growth and creating leading shareholder value today and long into the future. Thank you.

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