Exxon Revenues, Earnings Tumble 21% From Year Ago, Sales Miss Expectations By $5 Billion; Stock Buyback Grinds To Near Halt
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
02/02/2015
Moments ago, following our chart showing the devastation in Q1 earning forecasts, Exxon Mobil came out with its Q4 earnings, and – as tends to happen when analysts take a butcher knife to estimates – beat EPS handily, when it reported $1.56 in EPS, above the $1.34 expected, if still 18% below the $1.91 Q4 EPS print from a year earlier. A primary contributing factor to this beat was surely the $3 billion in Q4 stock buybacks, with another $2.9 billion distributed to shareholders mostly in the form of dividends. However, while XOM did the best with margins and accounting gimmickry it could under the circumstances, there was little it could do to halt the collapse in revenues, which printed at $87.3 billion, well below the $92.7 billion expected, and down a whopping 21% from a year ago. And this is just in Q4 – the Q1 slaughter has yet to be unveiled!
The Rest…HERE
