Wolfe Research Analyst: Exxon Results Are A Slight Miss

The world’s largest oil company, Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE: XOM), posted better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings, which came as a surprise to most market participants as oil prices have plunged significantly over the last few months. The company posted an EPS of $1.56, compared to analysts’ expectations of around $1.34.

Paul Sankey, senior oil and gas analyst at Wolfe Research, was on CNBC Monday, February 2 to discuss Exxon Mobil's earnings beat and the outlook for oil prices.

"The call is frankly boring, it always is," Sankey began, "but I think the tone here just today is that we are beginning to rally a little bit in oil prices and Exxon is going up relatively less than the other oil companies."

"But, it is still catching a little bit of a bid here, given that the markets stopped going down every day, which is what happened for [the] past several months."

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"Yeah, don’t forget that these results were flattered by legal win, that they had regarding Venezuela and some additional U.S. tax givebacks -- neither of which are true operational earnings," Sankey said.

"So, we are not considering this to be a beat from Exxon."

So, Is This A Miss?

"Let's be clear: we think it's a slight miss. Yeah, I mean it's tough. Exxon is obviously considered to be defensive, and this is a terrific stand out here right now, because it's retained some kind of buyback."

"We had Chevron going to 0 buyback on Friday. Exxon has retained a billion dollars of quarter buyback, and so we will remain very defensive as oil falls."