Exxon Mobil Corp Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Neil Mehta - Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. - Analyst : Thank you, Darren, good rundown there. The question I had was really around project start-ups and specifically, Guyana. Can you give us a sense of the key milestones you're watching for in '25 at this asset? How it continues to track relative to expectations? And there's been a lot of investor debate following the upstream day about what the long-term capacity of this asset could look like. So any thoughts on terminal plateau would be great. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. JANUARY 31, 2025 / 2:30PM, XOM.N - Q4 2024 Exxon Mobil Corp Earnings Call

Question: Neil Mehta - Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. - Analyst : Thank you, Darren.

Question: John Royall - JPMorgan Chase & Co - Analyst : Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I was hoping for an update on your expectations around North American tariffs, assuming those are implemented and assuming they're in place for a material amount of time. You have upstream and downstream assets in Canada, but also downstream assets in the US that could be impacted. So how should we think about what that could mean for ExxonMobil overall?

Question: John Royall - JPMorgan Chase & Co - Analyst : Thank you.

Question: Betty Jiang - Barclays Capital Inc. - Analyst : Good morning. I wanted to ask about your data center strategy or enabling the expansion of AI in the US. Carbon capture, CCS value chain is a key senior advantage for Exxon. Are you seeing any interest in the market for the low-carbon gas solutions versus just traditional gas power plants? How do you think Exxon can bring these solutions to the market? And just given the recent news with DeepSeek, are you seeing any change in tone from your conversation with the end customers?

Question: Devin McDermott - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So I wanted to come back to Neal's earlier question on growth. There's a lot in the queue in the near term beyond just Guyana. You highlighted 10 start-ups with over $3 billion of earnings, earnings that also hold the current margins, and I appreciate that guidance. But I was wondering if you could provide a little bit more detail on the timing for some of the key projects in that growth as we move through 2025? How they impact earnings through the year? And then when you expect to get to that full over $3 billion run rate? Thanks.

Question: Devin McDermott - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Great. Thanks for all the detail.

Question: Doug Leggate - Wolfe Research - Analyst : Hi, everybody. Thank you for having my questions. Thanks for all the details, Darren. I think you missed out your 25% of (inaudible) in your startup list, but who's counting? My question specifically is about -- I hate to be predictable -- it's about your cash distribution philosophy, buybacks versus dividends. And I want to kind of position it like this. If I look at buybacks last year and the $20 billion commitment for the next two years, you could make a case that you're basically buying back the shares that you issued for Pioneer. And I know it's not as cut and dried as that, but I'm curious, with the inflection in free cash flow that you clearly have, your capacity for dividend growth is substantially greater than the 4% bump that you gave to shareholders now for several years running. Are you waiting to buy in the Pioneer stock before you step up that dividend, is my question.

Question: Doug Leggate - Wolfe Research - Analyst : I appreciate the answer. I would just footnote that dividend growth per share seems to be the driver or at least the mechanism for market recognition of value. So that's why we came in this issue. But I appreciate the answers. Thanks so much.

Question: Stephen Richardson - Evercore ISI - Analyst : Hi, good morning. I was wondering, Darren, now that we've had a little bit of time to sit with the corporate plan update and all the visibility you provided out till 2030, and maybe this is a beyond 2025 question, but it seems to us that internal to Exxon, the biggest risk to hitting that return on capital employed target seems to be on the CapEx line. And so I was wondering if you could kind of talk about the forward look on CapEx upside downside risks, any proportion that you think is market indexed versus contractual. And it would just seem to us like a lot of the things you're doing the next couple of years are replication of things that you've already executed in the last number of years. You know, Guyana, Permian, those types of things. Thanks.

Question: Stephen Richardson - Evercore ISI - Analyst : Thanks so much.

Question: Jean Ann Salisbury - Bank of America - Analyst : Hi, good morning. You have two major LNG projects coming online and are a major seller of LNG already. You've also signed some contracts to buy LNG from third parties that may now, kind of with the LNG permit ban being lifted, have a better chance of coming online later in the decade. Can you give more color on your LNG contracting strategy from here and how you see the LNG market in the medium term, oversupplied or not? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. JANUARY 31, 2025 / 2:30PM, XOM.N - Q4 2024 Exxon Mobil Corp Earnings Call

Question: Jean Ann Salisbury - Bank of America - Analyst : Great. Thank you.

Question: Bob Brackett - Bernstein Research - Analyst : Good morning. A bit of a follow-up on the LNG theme, but more specifically around the FID cadence this year and next. We've got Papua LNG and PNG. You've got Rovuma and maybe even Coral North in Mozambique. Those are very different investments than adding another well in the Permian. What do you need to see in terms of maybe returns and certainty and maybe even local situation to give you the confidence to move forward on those multi-decadal assets?

Question: Bob Brackett - Bernstein Research - Analyst : Very clear. We should think 2025 for PNG and '26 for Rovuma still?

Question: Bob Brackett - Bernstein Research - Analyst : Thank you.

Question: Neal Dingmann - Truist Securities - Analyst : Morning. Thanks for the time. Darren, my question is around your long-term plan. I believe you all have suggested about growing the earnings around $20 billion in cash flow by an additional $30 billion by 2030. I think that goes along with the US production, I think, doubling or severely increasing. I'm just wondering, in order to achieve this, I'm just wondering what type of levels are you all assuming on broad strokes for annual capital spend and OpEx during this period in order to achieve it? I'm just wondering, like, directionally, what are you assuming?

Question: Neal Dingmann - Truist Securities - Analyst : Well said. Thanks, Darren. Thanks, Kathryn.

Question: Roger Read Read - Wells Fargo - Analyst : Good morning. Maybe to take a slightly different tack here on some of the policy changes, like you mentioned at the beginning of the call, Darren, some favorable changes. One of the other ones that's percolating a little bit in the executive order was for the EPA to take a look at the endangerment finding on CO2. I know there's a lot of ways CO2 is approached in terms of what's in the IRA and stuff, but if we were to see a change in federal government regulations on CO2, how do you think about that affecting some of the decisions you're making on the renewable and low-carbon investment approaches here?

Question: Paul Cheng - Scotiabank - Analyst : Thank you. Good morning, Darren, you guys clearly have an expertise in the deep water, in your success, whether, say, two decades ago in Angola or recently in Ghana. But one deep water area that you are noticeable missing is the Gulf of Mexico. You really, relative to the size of the company, you're really small. I'm trying to understand that. Is it because when you guys looking at that, you don't like about the cost structure there or you don't like about the regulatory environment or you don't like about the geologies? And as such that with the new administration, the approach there, is that going to change the way that how you look at that basin?

Question: Paul Cheng - Scotiabank - Analyst : Thank you.

Question: Ryan Todd - Piper Sandler - Analyst : Maybe one on carbon capture. You have four decent-sized projects set to start up over the next 24 months on your list. I know in the past you've talked about some of the challenges of effectively creating a new industry that doesn't currently exist, particularly on the commercial side. Can you maybe give some color as to how the commercial side of that business has evolved, what challenges remain, including maybe on the regulatory support side, and maybe what contribution you expect to see over the next couple years out of the CCS business?

Question: Ryan Todd - Piper Sandler - Analyst : Thank you.

Question: Biraj Borkhataria - RBC - Analyst : Hi, thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to get some perspective on the chemicals market. You show a helpful slide every quarter on the margins related to a 10-year average. Obviously the Chem's margin has been well below that very consistently. So do you see any signs of green shoots in that space, either regionally or product-wise that you can talk about? And as a quick follow-on to that separately, are you able to disclose your reserve replacement ratio for the year, both total and organic? Thank you.

Question: Biraj Borkhataria - RBC - Analyst : Anything on the reserve replacement ratio?

Question: Jason Gabelman - TD Cowen - Analyst : Hey, morning. Thanks for squeezing me in here. I wanted to ask a question on slide six where you lay out all the projects. And, you know, Doug alluded to it earlier. It seems like you're missing a couple of projects that are starting up here, TCO, the Permian Pipeline project. We would have thought the overall potential earnings number from all the projects combined are closer to $5 billion, including those two projects. So, first, is that correct? And, second, is there any major difference you see between the earnings contribution of these projects and the cash flow contribution? Thanks.

Question: Jason Gabelman - TD Cowen - Analyst : Great. And any difference between earnings and cash flow contribution from these projects? Any major difference?

Question: Jason Gabelman - TD Cowen - Analyst : Great. Thanks. Thank you.