Friday, October 31, 2008
HOUSTON (AP) — Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, reported income Thursday that shattered its own record for the biggest profit from operations by a U.S. corporation, earning $14.83 billion in the third quarter.
Yet numbers contained within the company’s most recent financial report revealed production numbers that continue to sag.
The Irving, Texas-based company has reported unprecedented back-to-back quarters, the end of the most recent coinciding with a rapid plunge in crude prices. Benchmark oil prices fell an additional $2.91 to $64.59 Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, about 56 percent off record highs in July.
Exxon said net income jumped nearly 58 percent to $2.86 a share in the July-September period. That compares with $9.41 billion, or $1.70 a share, a year ago.
The previous record for U.S. corporate profit was set in the last quarter, when Exxon Mobil earned $11.68 billion.
Revenue rose 35 percent to $137.7 billion. On average, analysts expected the company to earn $2.39 per share in the latest quarter on revenue of $131.4 billion.
Exxon Mobil’s results got a boost of $1.62 billion in the most-recent quarter from the sale of a natural gas transportation business in Germany. It also took a special, after-tax charge of $170 million for a punitive damages award related to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.
Excluding those items, third-quarter earnings amounted to $13.38 billion — nearly 15 percent above its previous profit.