Oil majors will start reporting financial results for the first quarter later this month, prompting the usual flurry of analyst predictions, where some are very confident that Big Oil will make their shareholders happy, and others, such as Barclays, are playing the naysayer, warning of disappointing figures.
The British bank is especially gloomy when it comes to Exxon and Chevron. For the former, it expects earnings per share of $0.79, versus a Wall Street consensus of $0.89, based on the fact that its fourth-quarter 2016 results included asset sale gains of almost a billion dollars, and according to Barclays, the other banks have failed to factor this in their forecasts for the first quarter, Oil Price reported.
It is true that last quarter, Exxon missed Thomson Reuters analyst EPS estimates by $0.29, reporting $0.41 per share. Yet in the first quarter the company has been quite active in ensuring sustainable growth, such as focusing much more on shale and on offshore projects abroad.
Barclays analysts believe that Chevron will miss predictions for its Q1 results by an even wider margin due to lower international oil prices in March and an overestimation on the part of other analysts of Chevron’s refining and marketing performance.
Still, the company is going into shale and selling assets, which could boost its figures. Chevron is also betting big on LNG, which, according to optimistic analysts, will help it boost its overall production and financial performance.
Analysts rarely agree on everything. In fact, most often there are striking differences among forecasts. That is because forecasts involve quite a lot of assumptions on top of the interpretation of facts.
Chevron and Exxon are reporting first-quarter figures on April 28 before, and ConocoPhillips will be releasing its report on May 2.
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