ExxonMobil doled out US$8.2B to shareholders for 2023 fourth quarter

Feb 06, 2024 ExxonMobil, News, Oil & Gas

ExxonMobil Corporation’s Senior Vice President & Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Kathy Mikells

– says it is taking advantage of opportunities to pump more from Guyana, other assets

Kaieteur News – ExxonMobil Corporation’s Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Kathy Mikells, recently noted that the oil giant gave its shareholders a big pay day in the fourth quarter of 2023.

During the company’s recent earnings call, Mikells said Exxon distributed US$8.2 billion to shareholders. The Vice President said this brings total distributions for the year to more than US$32 billion. “This includes about US$17.5 billion in share repurchases, consistent with the programme that we laid out in December 2022, and leading peers,” said Mikells, adding, “We raised our fourth-quarter dividend by 4.4%, to US$0.95 per share, and saw growth in the annual dividend for the 41st consecutive year, a long track record that leads our peers.”

Mikells also announced the company’s plans to increase the share repurchase pace to US$20 billion annually through 2025, assuming reasonable market conditions.

With respect to Exxon’s year-end cash balance, Mikells said this was US$31.6 billion, up almost by US$2 billion when compared to the end of 2022.

Mikells also noted that its upstream business (which refers to the exploration and production phase of the oil sector), saw earnings totalling US$6.3 billion. She said this primarily reflected improved volume and mix driven by continued growth from “our advantaged Guyana and Permian assets, consistent with our objective of growing value.”

With respect to the capital and exploration expense for the fourth quarter, she said this was US$7.8 billion, bringing its full expenditure on this category to just above US$26 billion for the full year. “That’s a bit above the top end of our guidance range as we opportunistically accelerated drilling activity in our advantaged Permian and Guyana assets and entered the lithium business.”

Looking ahead to the first quarter of 2024, Mikells said Exxon expects slightly lower volumes of oil barrels across assets outside of Guyana. The Executive was keen to note that Guyana will play a critical role in offsetting those lost barrels as there are plans to ramp up production at Payara, the third development project in the Stabroek Block. That project is utilizing the Prosperity floating, production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel. The production output for Prosperity is now at 220,000 barrels and will go beyond this before the end of the second quarter.

For 2024, Exxon said it expects average net production to be about 3.8 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (Moebd).

Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Corporation, ExxonMobil, Kathy Mikells, senior, Vice President

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