The company’s capital spending was down 6.5% at $6.49 billion. The company’s downstream loss was $203 million, down from a positive $978 million a year ago. Upstream was positive at $709 million in the U.S. and $3.3 billion international upstream, but those compare to figure of $1.88 billion U.S. and $9.09 billion international a year ago.The company also noted that cash flow from operations was $8.8 billion, which is down from 14.4 billion a year ago. All of this is also happening as output is higher at 3.69 million barrels per day vs. 3.59 million before.
The company plans to spend some $2 billion in share buybacks in Q4 to lower its outstanding shares, and that is after spending $4.2 billion to repurchase some 61 million shares in the Q3 period. Just yesterday came word that it was paying a $0.42 quarterly dividend for Q4, which is the same as the third quarter.
Shares are down 2.1% at $72.30 at 8:27 AM EST. Its 52-week trading range is $56.51 to $83.64 and its $350+ billion market cap makes Big Oil our #1 by far by market cap in our “Real Time 500” list of stocks.
JON C. OGG