Exxon Mobil posts highest profit ever
July 31, 2008 by Tisa Silver
Filed under Finance
Exxon Mobil has posted the largest quarterly profit ever for a corporation in the United States: $11.68 billion. The company held the previous record and this is beginning to sound like a broken record!
Exxon Mobil’s record earnings should come as no surprise, as they were mainly driven by record crude oil prices.
The second quarter results revealed that revenues were up 40 percent and profits were up 14 percent but, shares of oil company are trading down today because investors and analysts expected more.
If $11.68 billion is not enough, what is?
Exxon and big oil are hardly to blame for high gas prices. I’m glad to see they’ve come down a bit from the peaks, but in looking at the raw data…. XOM’s profit margins are still only around 8% which is less than the S&P500 average.
Any windfall taxes on big oil profits, especially those proposed by Senator Obama, will not help curb our dependence for foreign oil. In fact, new taxes will potentially raise prices at the pump. Drilling offshore and in ANWR, while we develop alternative plans, will help shock the crude curve to more friendly levels.
Thanks for the comment Steve. Just looking at the dollar value of the profits in isolation, the notion of $11.7 billion not being enough is ridiculous. But you are right, relatively speaking XOM’s profits/margins are not out of line, they actually failed to meet expectations.