Exxon Mobil's Q1 Earnings Fall

Exxon Mobil Corporation reported a decline in its first-quarter earnings for 2024, with the company's shares falling 2.6% to $118.22 in premarket trading. The oil giant posted an adjusted profit of $2.06 per share, which was below the estimated $2.20 per share. The earnings per common share dropped from $2.83 a year earlier.

The company's revenue for the quarter ended March 31 also decreased to $83.08 billion from $86.56 billion a year earlier. The earnings were impacted by lower oil refining margins and natural gas prices, as well as timing effects from unsettled derivative mark-to-market impacts, other main non-cash impacts, and divestments.

Earnings in the energy product operations segment slumped to $1.38 billion from $4.18 billion, pulled down by the weaker industry refining margins. Earnings from oil and gas production fell 14% due to lower natural gas prices, and refining tumbled 67% on weaker fuel margins.

Exxon Mobil's net income in the first quarter dropped to $8.22 billion, or $2.06 a share, from $11.43 billion, or $2.79 a share, in the same period a year ago. The company's total costs and other deductions rose 1.4% to $70.71 billion, as crude oil and product purchases rose 3.5% to $47.6 billion and depreciation and depletion increased 13.4% to $4.81 billion. Production and manufacturing expenses fell 3.7% to $9.09 billion.

Within upstream volumes, production fell 1.2% to 3,784 thousand oil-equivalent barrels per day. Net production of crude oil, natural-gas liquids, bitumen, and synthetic oil rose 2.5% to 2,557 koebd, while net natural-gas production available for sale declined 8.2% to 7,362 million cubic feet per day. Despite the decline in earnings, Exxon shares have added about 21.4% since the beginning of the year.