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Exxon Mobil sets record with $45.2 billion profit
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Miami Herald/Associated Press
Posted: February 6th, 2009
http://www.miamiherald.com/business/nation/story/879748.html
Exxon Mobil Corp. ... reported a profit of $45.2 billion for 2008, breaking its own record for a U.S. company. The previous record for annual profit was $40.6 billion, which the world's largest publicly traded oil company set in 2007. The extraordinary full-year profit wasn't a surprise given crude's triple-digit price for much of 2008, peaking near an unheard of $150 a barrel in July. Since then, however, prices have fallen roughly 70 percent amid a deepening global economic crisis. In the fourth quarter alone crude tumbled 60 percent, prompting spending and job cuts in an industry that was reporting robust, often record, profits as recently as last summer. Irving, Texas-based Exxon said net income slid sharply to $7.8 billion, or $1.55 a share, in the October-December period. That compared with $11.7 billion, or $2.13 a share, in the same period a year ago, when Exxon set a U.S. record for quarterly profit. It has since topped that mark twice, first in last year's second quarter and then with earnings of $14.83 billion in the third quarter. Revenue in the most-recent quarter fell 27 percent to $84.7 billion. The industry went into retrenchment toward the end of the year with demand falling. The company, which produces about 3 percent of the world's oil, said overall output fell 3 percent in the most-recent period. For the full year, Exxon Mobil's massive profit amounted to $8.69 a share, versus $7.28 a share a year ago.
Note: How can it be said that this record-breaking profit "wasn't a surprise," when ethically we would all expect the oil companies not to gouge consumers world-wide at the time when oil prices were artificially driven to record highs? Why should the oil companies be allowed to rake in huge profits causing the vast majority of us to suffer even greater losses at the gas pump? This is generally called gross profiteering. Shouldn't these "windfall profits" be taxed away?
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