ExxonMobil at J.P. Morgan Conference: Strategic Growth and Sustainability

On Tuesday, 24 June 2025, ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) participated in the J.P. Morgan 2025 Energy, Power, Renewables & Mining Conference. The company outlined its strategic vision of delivering affordable energy while reducing emissions. ExxonMobil’s Senior Vice President, Jack Williams, discussed the company’s growth prospects, financial health, and long-term sustainability plans, highlighting both opportunities and challenges.

Key Takeaways

• ExxonMobil aims to generate $20 billion in incremental earnings by 2030, driven by upstream volume growth and high-value product solutions.
• The company projects an 18% return over the next five years, outperforming peers.
• ExxonMobil is focusing on LNG projects and advanced materials for post-2030 growth.
• A strong balance sheet with 7% net debt to capital supports ongoing dividend growth and share buybacks.
• The company is targeting $18 billion in structural cost reductions by 2030.

Financial Results

• Total Shareholder Return (TSR): ExxonMobil led TSR for one, three, and five years ending in 2024.
• Dividend Growth: The company has increased dividends for 42 consecutive years.
• Share Buybacks: Plans for $20 billion in annual share buybacks for 2025 and 2026.
• Earnings Growth: Aims for 10% annual earnings growth, totaling $20 billion by 2030.
• Cash Flow: Projects $110 billion in surplus cash at $55 Brent between 2025 and 2030.
• Cost Reduction: Targets $18 billion in structural cost reductions by 2030.

Operational Updates

• Upstream Growth: Anticipates 25% volume growth by 2030, driven by Permian and Guyana assets.
• Product Solutions: Chemical Performance Products franchise growing at 7% to 8% annually.
• Facility Upgrades: Singapore facility upgrade expected to yield $20 per barrel uplift.
• Low Carbon Solutions: Starting up CCS opportunities soon.
• Project Startups: 10 major projects planned for 2025, with $3 billion in earnings expected in 2026.

Future Outlook

• Energy Demand: Projects a 15% increase in global energy demand by 2050, with a 25% reduction in emissions.
• Post-2030 Strategy: Focused on LNG projects in Mozambique and Papua New Guinea.
• Advanced Materials: Proxima and advanced graphite to match energy products business earnings by late 2030s.
• CCS Expansion: Aims to grow CCS business to 100 MTA through Gulf Coast development.

Q&A Highlights

• Pioneer Acquisition: Increased synergy estimate to $3 billion annually due to enhanced recovery.
• Capital Allocation: Future CapEx in new businesses depends on policy support.
• M&A Strategy: Open to acquisitions that create value through synergistic combinations.

Readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript for a detailed discussion of ExxonMobil’s strategic plans and financial performance.

Full transcript - J.P. Morgan 2025 Energy, Power, Renewables & Mining Conference:

John: Let’s get started with our next session. We’re very pleased to welcome Jack Williams, Senior Vice President of ExxonMobil. Jack runs the Product Solutions business at Exxon.

So Jack, welcome and thanks for joining us this morning.

Jack Williams, Senior Vice President, ExxonMobil: Thank you John, appreciate it. Good to be here. Yeah, we run the corporation with a four person management committee of which I sit on and not only have product solutions, I also have supply chain and global projects reporting in to me, and our global operations and sustainability organization. So I’ll get into more of that a little bit later. I want to go through just a couple of slides real quick, a cautionary statement, I’ll be making some forward statements.

Just to introduce you a little bit to kind of what we are as a corporation, what we’re about, what we’re trying to do, and what our look is between now and 02/1930, and then John and I can talk a little bit about that and other things. The way we look at our purpose for our corporation is that we are really trying to solve this and equation. So we are producing the energy, affordable reliable energy, and also the essential products that society needs and will continue to need for decades and decades, and also reduce emissions at the same time. We think both missions are very important and we take both very seriously and have a lot of efforts in each. We have, as you look at the corporation right now, we have an unmatched pipeline of opportunities.

Probably the best since the ExxonMobil merger back at the beginning of the century. When you think about the upstream, you know we have the big Permian opportunity, we’re continuing to grow in the Permian for many years to come. That’s of course accentuated by the Pioneer acquisition that has entered into our portfolio recently, which has opened up even more opportunities for us. We have the Guyana asset where we have three FPSOs producing, we’ll have eight by the February, so a lot more growth to go there. We have LNG projects, further opportunities in Papua New Guinea and Mozambique.

In the product solutions business we have this chemicals performance products franchise that continues to grow at 7% to 8% a year. We just started up our China One steam cracker, we’ll continue to grow with that demand. We have a really good lubricants value chain, the Mobile One finished lubricants business as well as a good base stocks business. We have these integrated manufacturing facilities throughout the world that we are focused on high grading the yield, so a good example of that is Singapore where we’re upgrading resid up to clean fuels and base stocks. And then we have these new products, specialty products Proxima and carbon materials I’ll get into a little bit later.

And then we have the low carbon solutions business where we have CCS opportunities, we’ll be starting that up really soon, blue hydrogen, lithium, further opportunities in the low carbon solutions business. And all these are underpinned by these competitive advantages we have around scale integration, the technology that drives those products like Proxima and CMV, our capability or execution excellence, and our people. And so what that’s resulted in is some pretty impressive results recently. If you look at the end of twenty four, leading TSR for the group, one year, three years, and five years, and we have a very exciting opportunity into the future to 2,030. So let me kind of talk about that a second.

This graph just kind of shows what would a share of ExxonMobil do over the next, out to 02/1930. And you first start with dividends and we’ve grown our dividends for forty two consecutive years, committed to continue to embark on that going forward. We show the sheer buybacks that we’ve had, this shows the ’25 and 26 plans for those, which is 20,000,000,000 a year and you can see the accretion with that. And then the next bar, this big 10% bar is showing what our plan that we talked about back in December out to 02/1930, which generates $20,000,000,000 of incremental earnings by 02/1930, we put that on an annual basis, so it’s 10% annual earnings growth between now and then. And that’s, I just talked about a lot of the generators of that, but in the upstream it’s 25% volumes growth over that period and it’s Permian and Ghana is really driving that.

And in our product solutions business it is 80% growth in high value products and that’s these chemical performance products, lubricant, high value lubricants I talked about. And then our low carbon solutions business is starting to contribute in that timeframe as well. So wrap that up 10% CAGR out to 2030 and you wind up with a high teens 18% return we’re looking for over the next five years, which is strong I would say not only versus IOCs but also versus the S and P industrials which we show up there and we’ve outperformed over the past five years and we have good shot at outperforming over the next five as well. So we think that ExxonMobil’s a, that blaze out a pretty strong case for ExxonMobil being a strong contender for most every portfolio out there. So with that John, I’ll maybe turn it over and have a little Q and A.

John: Great, thanks for the intro Jack. And from there why don’t we start with maybe some of your high level views on the broader industry. Exxon is obviously an enormous global player touching many different sub segments of energy. And so you’re uniquely positioned to speak to the broader energy market. What’s your view on global energy supply and demand today?

Jack Williams, Senior Vice President, ExxonMobil: Well, I would say the word uncertainty certainly comes to mind. We’ve had perhaps the shortest oil spike in the history of the oil markets. It started on a Sunday evening and ended by Monday morning. So, and you can see the results. So I mean I think it’s really hard to predict near term where things are going to go.

We have a lot of volatility out there. The market is pretty well supplied with OPEC plus continuing to unwind the voluntary cuts. And we will be opportunistic should there be any downturn. We think we’re well positioned and ready in that kind of environment. Obviously, if things prices go the other way, we’ll benefit pretty hugely with the production we have going on.

But if you look longer term, I mean, kind of look out to 02/1950, we put out a global outlook every year and our look at 2050 shows that due to population growth and higher living standards across the world, we’ll need 15% more energy by 02/1950, and we’ll have 25% lower emissions. Now there’ll be some that say 25% lower emissions is not enough, we need to do better and we are advocating for good sound policy that would do just that. But we do see a world where you have more energy that’s needed and also lower emissions that will be emitted over that time period. And so that’s what we’re focused on. We’re focused on what do we need to do to participate in all of that and that’s why we have these, you know, the upstream oil and gas business focused on Permian, Ghana, good growth opportunities and a low carbon solutions business that is going to be have world scale CCS up and running here very shortly.

And then these new products, new technology driven products Proxima and graphite going in lithium ion batteries that we think is also going to play a big role in a lower carbon, but still high energy future.

John: Okay, then maybe drilling more into ExxonMobil in particular, I think you addressed this a little bit in your opener, but how does Exxon differentiate versus your peers both in energy and really just you know other large cap companies?

Jack Williams, Senior Vice President, ExxonMobil: I think in terms of energy, I think we stand out in terms of the breadth of our portfolio and the depth of our capability. I mentioned these competitive advantages we had around technology. We’re investing a billion dollars a year in new technology. It’s getting to the bottom line with these new products and we’re continuing to invest in that, so I think that bodes us well for not only the growth to 02/1930, but well beyond that. We have a lot of scale.

Obviously, we’re a large company and just because you’re large doesn’t mean you’re leveraging scale. We think the way we’ve restructured the corporation over the last five years where we have these businesses, you have upstream product solutions and low carbon solutions business, and then we have these large central organizations like our global projects organization, technology organization, supply chain organization, operations, trading, that look at all these areas enterprise wide. They support all the businesses. And that really enables us to leverage that scale and that has led to this $12,000,000,000 $13,000,000,000 now structural cost reductions in route to $18,000,000,000 by 02/1930. So we think the scale and integration has really been unlocked with some of the organizational changes we’ve made over last five years and provides a real advantage.

And then, you know, I think the other areas where I’d like to emphasize is execution excellence. We really executed well and that has delivered some significant returns. We solved the difficult problems, we were able to execute the difficult projects and have done so successfully and I think that bodes well also for future owners trusting us for their developments going forward. And then finally, I just, you know, have to, I know everybody says their people are the best, I know you hear that all the time, but we dedicate a lot of time to developing our people, ours really are the best. But we spend a lot of time on making sure that we’re developing people to their full potential, to looking at what skills and capabilities that the corporation need to succeed this decade, next decade, and the decade after that, and how are we developing those, what is our succession planning for making sure we have the experts in all those areas, and I think that is, we built that up over decades and I think we’ll be working on it for decades more and it serves as well.

So I think that to me is really what differentiates us is these competitive advantages and then that large portfolio of opportunities that I mentioned earlier.

John: Great, and then maybe moving on to your long term strategy, you mentioned the uncertainty in the market and there’s a great deal of that now. How is that causing you to or is it causing you to rethink your strategy or to revisit your 2030 plan? Has that changed anything in any way?

Jack Williams, Senior Vice President, ExxonMobil: Yeah, you know, we built the 2030 plan, again leveraging these competitive advantages, but we kind of generated the results and talked about this $20,000,000,000 of earnings growth and $30,000,000,000 of cash flow growth. We did that kind of on mid cycle prices, so kind of average twenty ten and twenty nineteen margins, dollars 65 Brent kind of mid cycle type margins. But we’re very resilient to lower than that. If you look at $25 to $30 at $55 Brent, we generate $110,000,000,000 of surplus cash after dividends and CapEx. So we certainly can withstand lower pricing for and that would be for an extended period of time over that entire period.

We have a 7% net debt to capital balance sheet, so sitting very, very good there. We’ve done a lot of portfolio improvement over the last several years. We divested $24,000,000,000 of non core assets, and it got us really down to our fighting weight. So we’re in really good shape and so we would see any potential downturn opportunistically. And so if we varied from our plan, it would be because we see a really, really good attractive opportunity in front of us.

Not because we need to because of market conditions kind of forcing, kind of tying our hands. So we’re continuing forward with the plan, we think it’s the right plan. We’re of course keeping our head up and looking around for opportunities and we’ll take advantage of those as they present themselves.

John: Great, maybe we can dig in a little bit more on the 2030 plan. Can you just talk through some of the various drivers of earnings and cash flow growth that’s embedded in the plan?

Jack Williams, Senior Vice President, ExxonMobil: Yeah, so I think it’s been relatively well understood in the upstream that we have 25% volume growth, a lot of that from the Permian and Guyana. I think people understand what that is and can do the math on that fairly easily and it’s pretty straightforward. On product solutions, it’s not quite as easy because we’re not really talking about increased throughput in a lot of our kind of fuels products. We’re really talking about high grading the yield. On chemicals, on our high value chemical products, we are talking about volumes growth.

So for instance, the Corpus Christi steam cracker we built, the China steam cracker we built, we’ll continue to grow that franchise and that is kind of a very similar to upstream in terms of just keeping up with demand and growing those volumes. On the fuels products, on these integrated manufacturing platforms, we’re upgrading the yield like Singapore. So in Singapore, we’re our throughput is not really going to go up. As matter of fact, we’re producing 80,000 barrels of fuel oil. We’ll convert that to 70,000 barrels a day of clean fuels, 50 of clean fuels and 20 of allude base stocks.

And so the way to think about that is that 70,000 barrels a day that is going get a $20 a barrel uplift, a clean dirty uplift. So the clean dirty spread again over time has been about $20 a barrel. So that’s 70,000 barrels a day that’s going to get that uplift. And that’s kind of the way to think about a project like that. Another one is Folly, where we’re putting in some hydro treating where we’ll be able to sell clean fuels into The UK market versus exporting higher sulfur fuels.

And that, so that’s maybe like a $10 a barrel difference on 35,000 barrels a day. So it’s harder to model that, we understand that, but that’s the right thing for that business. We don’t need more throughput, we need higher value products. And we have a great opportunity to add value there with our technology programs, proprietary catalyst programs, Singapore projects, 12 different catalysts to high grade all the way from resid all the way up to lube base stocks. 17 reactors, and of course that’s going to be starting up here in the next month or two.

So that’s really where the value is in product solutions. And then in CCS, again it’s more of a leveraging a dollars per ton that we’ll achieving there and that again we’re looking forward to getting that business up and running and started momentarily.

John: Great and then maybe just thinking even longer term beyond the 2030 plan, considering society’s long term energy transition ambition, do you see still the ability to continue to grow earnings and cash flows in your conventional business beyond 02/1930? Or do you start to use more of the low carbon, start to grow its share of the pie?

Jack Williams, Senior Vice President, ExxonMobil: I think this is probably the biggest issue that is out there in terms of modeling our company, valuing our corporation, because a lot of models from some of the sell side analysts have a terminal value around 2,030 in that time period that’s negative for us. So to the extent that we’ve talked about our earnings growth out to 2,030, there’s models to get to our current valuation, have to if you accept that 2030 growth, you have to start saying we’re immediately going to start declining from there. We’ll immediately start reducing earnings, losing cash flow from there, and nothing could be further from the truth. We are very focused. We have our plans locked and loaded out to 02/1930.

Like I said, we’ll be flexible, we’ll be opportunistic, but we have really good solid plans out to 02/1930. It’s not a target, it’s a plan. And beyond that, we’re focused on what comes next. So we have these really good LNG projects in Mozambique and Papua that would be post 02/1930. Proxima and the advanced graphite that we talk about are really, they’ll be making some earnings before 02/1930, but most of that is post 02/1930.

And when you look at just those two products by the late 2030s, they have the same earnings power today as our entire energy products business. So they are taking they are basically taking refinery feed and converting those into much, much higher value products. Lower volumes, but much, much higher value products. We are continuing, of course our CCS project, CCS big Gulf Coast CCS development will be really up and running by then. Think we can get up to 100 MTA through that system and throughout the 2030s we’ll be growing that volume.

And then we’ll continue our technology program. We’re continuing focusing now on what’s next after what’s the next carbon material after advanced graphite. We’re continuing to work on that today. So we have a very optimistic view beyond 02/1930. We focused on our plan to 02/1930, we felt like that was kind of, you know, as much, it’s further out than most companies go, but we wanted to provide that kind of transparency.

But beyond 02/1930, we’re going to continue to grow this business. We’re absolutely committed to it and the underpinnings of that growth are there today.

John: And then maybe drilling into your very significant slate of projects that’s starting up this year. You have 10 major 2025 startups. Can you talk about how some of those are tracking, know, talk about all 10, but maybe the major ones and kind of any updates there?

Jack Williams, Senior Vice President, ExxonMobil: Yeah, I mean I think when you think about that John, I mean 10 projects this year, that’s a big year. That’s a big year and they’re all on track. So we started up our China steam cracker complex. We started up our first of our advanced recycling units. We’ll have another one in the fourth quarter.

When you think about the big Singapore Zit upgrade project that I mentioned, the Folly Hydrotreater project that I mentioned, and then also a renewable diesel project in Strathcona in Canada. All those should start up in the next month. So those are kind of July, maybe early August, that kind of timeframe start ups. So they’re all in commissioning stages right now. And then we have some upstream projects, we have the Yellowtail project at Guyana, we have the Bacalao project that is in Brazil, and then we have a Golden Pass LNG project that should start up at the end of the year, Bacalao and Yellowtail both in the third quarter.

And then we’ll have an expansion of our Proxima business out to another 25,000 tons per annum capacity addition for Proxima to meet the growing demand there. And that’s kind of a third quarter as well. So it’s, know, we’ve got a large slate of projects starting up this year. We’ve talked about these. In 2026, when you get a full year of all these projects, that’s $3,000,000,000 of earnings, additional earnings from those projects, the project slate.

Again, that kind of mid term, mid cycle pricing. And so a big, big addition for our portfolio and a big leg up when you think about that growth to 02/1930, a good chunk of that is coming with these projects in 2025. And again, all of them doing quite well.

John: Great. Then my next question is on your medium term CapEx guide that you laid out in your corporate plan. As you look at 2025 through 02/1930, base CapEx looks like it’s expected to remain relatively flattish. And there’s a pretty sizable incremental wedge from new businesses or policy dependent businesses. Out of the new or policy dependent businesses, how do you think of the priorities if you don’t get all the policy support you’re hoping for?

Jack Williams, Senior Vice President, ExxonMobil: Yeah, so if we don’t get the policy support, we won’t do the projects. So that was the idea when we talked about, we showed a graphic in our December plan that showed that, as you said John, it’s relatively flat CapEx, ex for these kind of decisions that had yet to be made. And some of those are policy dependent. You know, Baytown Blue Hydrogen Project is one of those, and it’s dependent on 45V. And so we’ll watch and see how that comes through and hopefully we have a good solid policy that yields to that investment, but that’s what we’re looking for.

In addition to that, we counted in there future chemicals growth that we knew we needed to do to keep up with that seven to 8% demand, but didn’t have any firm project that we could put into plan, but we knew we were going to do that. We have yet to make the decision whether that’s going to be an organic step or an inorganic step, so that’s iffy in terms of what the timing is going to be on that step. What I can tell you is we’re committed to keep up with this 7% to 8% of demand growth for our high value chemical products. And these are products that are 10% to 25% higher margin than commodity chemicals. We bring a lot of technology to these products, they perform a lot better and they have higher value in use.

So we’re committed to that growth. How we meet that growth, we’re still looking at what opportunities we have. And then you have on top of that, you have other opportunities that we’re looking at that are like Proxima and carbon materials that we know we want to grow. What we put in the plan was enough CapEx to make sure that we could prove out the business case for these products. And then we have additional case that we would expand those in that products.

I would say that’s looking very good right now. How we go about that, we’re still looking at opportunities that could be more capital efficient in the early days to bridge to higher CapEx and higher supply steps, but those are still looking pretty good. So, I would say there was some uncertainty in that wedge that we showed. I would say there’s still a little bit of uncertainty there and we’ll continue to watch those areas.

John: Okay, my next question is on the Pioneer acquisition. Can you just provide an update on the progress you’ve made thus far on synergies? I know you have kind of traditional synergies that you’ve talked about and kind of reverse synergies. But maybe in particular how you’re feeling about the enhanced recovery synergies that you’ve guided to?

Jack Williams, Senior Vice President, ExxonMobil: Yeah, look, mean we feel very we’re very pleased with the Pioneer acquisition. We think it’s gone extraordinarily well. We’re seeing a tremendous amount of value. When look at an acquisition like that, you know you’re going to get some efficiencies and so we kind of built that in. We knew we were going we brought some tools that would allow us to get more recovery from some of the Pioneer resource and so we kind of had that built in.

We knew we had some technology programs that were under development and we kind of risked that a little bit and put that in there as well. And so now we’re some time on past that acquisition. What we didn’t factor in enough is the quality of the Pioneer workforce, work processes, what they were doing and the reverse synergies we’re going to get from that. So it was certainly a pleasant surprise there with the quality of what Pioneer brought to the corporation. We have the technology has continued to improve.

We’re getting more and more confident on our lightweight proppant program that was significantly risked in the early days when we did the acquisition economics for Pioneer. That’s going be a big benefit for the legacy ExxonMobil acreage and the Pioneer acreage. That’s continuing to look well. And there’s other technology aspects we’re looking at as well. So I would say we’ve increased our estimate from $2,000,000,000 to $3,000,000,000 per year and in terms of the increased recovery, I would say that’s looking really good, really positive.

John: Great. Then maybe switching gears, the next question is on return of capital. You have a $20,000,000,000 share buyback that’s meant to be maintained I think through 2026 in your slides, assuming reasonable market conditions. So how do you think about the flexibility within that program? And is there a certain crude price that kind of breaks that that would lead to either a raise or a lower of the buyback?

Jack Williams, Senior Vice President, ExxonMobil: Yeah, mean we talked about reasonable conditions and of course that extends beyond just Brent price because we have a big business, go across a lot of different markets. But I did share with you that statistic that at $55 Brent, we would have $110,000,000,000 of surplus cash after dividends and after CapEx between ’25 and 2,030. So that does give you some room for a significant buyback program. And so we’ll continue to look at it. There’s not a magic price in there that we’re looking for.

We’re monitoring the conditions, but we feel good about our cash flow generation that would allow us to not only keep a dividend that we certainly intend and hope that will continue to grow, but also looking at buybacks as a way to share the benefits of the corporation with shareholders.

John: I think we have time for one more. So my final question is on M and A. You’ve done more recently the Denbury and the Pioneer acquisitions. Following these acquisitions, how do you expect Exxon to position itself in the M and A market from here? And independent of market conditions, do you see a focus of growing the low carbon business via acquisition?

Or are you favoring further opportunities to grow the traditional business?

Jack Williams, Senior Vice President, ExxonMobil: Yeah, you know I’m glad you asked that John. Think the way I’d say it is we’re pretty wide open in terms of the ability to do more acquisitions. I would not say that the Pioneer acquisition has boxed us in at all in terms of having too much organizational firepower working on that. I think we have the capability to take on additional acquisitions and we’ve continued to say what we’re looking for really is one plus one equals three, we’re looking for value. We have to be able to add significant value to where what the current owner is adding for the resources, the assets that they’re developing.

And we can bring a lot in that area. So we talked about some of the unconventional kind of tools in the toolbox if you will, that we bring to bear with these technology programs we’re working on that’s going to bring increased resource recovery. And then of course with the Pioneer acreage and our legacy acreage, we have a lot of areas where we can do some trades around the edges, so we can do real win wins or some bolt on acquisitions around the edges of our acreage we bring a lot of value. So there’s a lot in the upstream, in the unconventional in particular, where we can bring some real value to an asset or to a company. And then when you think about in chemicals, I mentioned these, you know, the ability to take similar hardware, similar reactors and manufacture products that much higher value in the market, much higher value in use and much higher margin.

Then the low carbon space as you mentioned, we have a CCS capability and a business started that is far beyond what anybody else has done and so we can leverage that too in terms of acquisitions. And then you know in the technology space, like we, this whole Proxima business was part of the origin of that was an acquisition, a small acquisition of a company called Materia in the technology space that they combined technologies and we came up with this Proxima. So we have M opportunities across kind of the whole span of the corporation and we’re continuing to look. We’re continuing to look and we’re looking for those opportunities where we think we can really bring significant value and again one plus one equals three. But with that, we’re going to be, we’ll be looking pretty hard.

John: Great, well unfortunately we’re out of time so we have to wrap up there. But Jack, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate Appreciate Thank

Jack Williams, Senior Vice President, ExxonMobil: you all.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.