24/7 Wall St.

Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM-NYSE) may be the most controversial earnings report on Thursday morning despite the trend of who beats and who misses estimates.  The EPS target by Wall Street of $1.52 "earnings per share" seems harmless enough, but the revenue projection is just a hard one to swallow for any tax payer or anyone that drives a car.  The estimates are revenues of $100 BILLION!!!!!!!!!!!!

Last quarter was "only" $90 Billion in revenues but the two prior quarters were BOTH more than $99 Billion in revenues.  At some point in a high energy price world they won’t be able to keep that number down.  Such is life.  The good news is that we check our eco-politics at the door every day and look at things from an investor point of view.

Yes, Billion; Yes One-Hundred of them.  The only other beloved company that is remotely close to this in revenue terms is the low-margin king Wal-Mart.  The company has managed to keep from being the first $100 Billion revenue shower in a single quarter, but with energy prices high and staying high it may only be a matter of time before they cannot keep the “above $100 Billion revenue” mark in a quarter tamed. 

You can pick your poison or your pleasure, but the media is going to be all over this one win or lose.  The raw dollar-number will create criticism from friends and foes.  That’s life in the oil patch. 

Jon C. Ogg
April 26, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at jonogg@247wallst.com; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.