Dividend Aristocrats Part 31: ExxonMobil

Oil prices have fallen around 60% in the last year and a half.

ExxonMobil (XOM) is the largest oil corporation in the world…The company’s earnings are tied to oil prices. The image below shows ExxonMobil’s stock price through the recent period of falling oil prices.

Despite a roughly 60% decline in oil prices, ExxonMobil stock is down around 20% from highs in mid-2014.

How is this possible? Despite low oil prices, ExxonMobil is still expected to make around $17 billion in 2015…

ExxonMobil is well diversified within the oil and gas industry.The company operates in 3 segments:Upstream, Downstream, and Chemical.The company’s earnings by segment in its most recent quarter are shown below:

Most businesses can only dream (if they even dream that big) of making over $4 billion a quarter in profit. ExxonMobil is doing this in a very difficult operating environment for the company.

Compare ExxonMobil’s earnings by segment above to its earnings by segment in the 3rd quarter of 2013, when oil prices were high.

In 2 years, the Downstream segment’s earnings have nearly tripled, while the Upstream segment’s earnings have declined by about 80%.The Chemical segment’s earnings have grown by about 20% in the last two years.

This shows how ExxonMobil combats periods of low oil prices.It makes considerably more money in its downstream division.

There’s no question that the Upstream division is ExxonMobil’s ‘cash cow’.When oil prices are high, it generates more on its own than the entire company does when oil prices are low.Obviously, high oil prices are great for ExxonMobil.

Low oil prices, however, don’t hurt the company as much as you’d expect.That’s because low oil prices are good for the Downstream and Chemical divisions.

This is not ExxonMobil’s first experience with low oil prices.The company has paid increasing dividends for 33 consecutive years.The company’s dividend streak is really much longer than that.ExxonMobil has paid steady or increasing dividends every year since 1949.Even better, ExxonMobil has paid a dividend every year since 1911.