Exxon Quarterly Profit 5th Highest Ever
- Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest oil company, reported Thursday the fifth highest quarterly profit for any public company in history, posting gains from higher oil prices that were likely to stoke the furor over outsized oil company earnings.
Oil Industry Earnings Disappoint Street
- NEW YORK – Oil companies fueled the firestorm over high energy prices Thursday as several of the nation’s largest firms reported soaring quarterly profits, but for Wall Street, the earnings weren’t high enough.
Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s biggest oil company, posted an $8.4 billion profit in the first quarter, but the results fell shy of analysts’ target. Marathon Oil Corp. disappointed the Street despite doubling its quarterly profit, and Apache Corp. missed estimates on an 18 percent increase in earnings.
The problem is that in January 2006, Exxon reported the highest quarterly profit for any public company in history: $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter of 2005, which is a hard act to follow…
…unless you consider return on investment, in which case Exxon looks pretty wimpy.
$8.4 billion profit on a company worth $384 billion?
Not great.
God golly this country is full of economic/business imbeciles
The governments take was 16 billion, and they did,nt lift a finger to produce refine or take any business risks at all.. now what is wrong with this picture?
This country is brim-full with people who don’t understand what the phrase “profit margin” really means.
Hmmm.
1. What frankly amazes me are the vast number of people who are bitching about paying $0.25 more per gallon of gas but don’t blink an eye at paying $150 for Windows XP.
Aren’t they aware of the ridiculous profit margin that Microsoft has?
2. The reason why the market was disappointed is because they were expecting better numbers.