MOSCOW (MRC) -- ExxonMobil's fourth quarter profit should top Wall Street's consensus and surpass its pre-pandemic levels, lifted by better-than-expected earnings from oil and gas, reported Reuters with reference to analysts.
Credit Suisse, Scotiabank and JPMorgan have raised their fourth quarter earnings estimates following Exxon's flagging of sharply higher oil and gas operating profit last week. Official results are due on Feb. 1.
The higher earnings outlooks lifted Exxon shares 3.8% on Monday to USD63.51 on top of Friday's less than 1% gain. The stock rose 48% last year but remains below where it traded two years ago.
In 2020, the largest US oil producer suffered a historic USD22.4 B loss from falling oil prices and lower refining margins. Cost cuts and energy price hikes allowed it to pay down debt and plot a share buyback program this year.
An Exxon securities filing signaled quarterly results "above the midpoint" of prior guidance and "well above pre-pandemic levels," Credit Suisse analyst Manav Gupta wrote in a note on Friday.
The company could earn USD8.2 B, or USD1.93 per share, according to the mid-point average estimate of the three banks that have updated their estimates, excluding one-time items. That is above analysts' adjusted profit of USD1.79 per share as tallied by Refinitiv IBES.
As MRC wrote before, Exxon also signaled mark-to-market gains of up to USD1.1 B for oil and gas and refined products. Proceeds from asset sales including its U.K. North Sea assets could deliver up to USD500 MM, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
We remind that ExxonMobil said on Dec. 27, its Baytown, Texas, refinery continued to operate at reduced rates following a fire on Dec. 23, and that the unit involved remained shut down. The company has not yet determined the cause of the fire, but said it was continuing to empty the unit so it could safely enter the facility and assess what impact it would have on production. A filing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said the fire occurred at the facility's hydro desulfurization unit 1.
Exxon's Baytown facility is home to a chemical plant, an olefins plant and the country's fourth-biggest oil refinery, with capacity to process 560,500 bpd of crude.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 2,265,290 tonnes in the first eleven months of 2021, up by 14% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 1,363,850 tonnes in January-November, 2021, up by 25% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas supply of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
ExxonMobil is the largest non-government owned company in the energy industry and produces about 3% of the world's oil and about 2% of the world's energy.
MRC