Exxon Mobil Corporation

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to ExxonMobil's earnings call. Today's call is being recorded. We appreciate you joining us. I'm Jim Chapman, and I'm joined by Darren Woods, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Neil Hansen, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. This quarter's presentation and pre-recorded remarks are available on the Investors section of our website. They're meant to accompany this quarter's earnings release, which is posted in the same location. During today's presentation, we'll make forward-looking remarks, including comments on our long-term plans, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Please read our cautionary statement on slide two. You can find more information on the risks and uncertainties that apply to any forward-looking statements in our SEC filings on our website. We also provide supplemental information at the end of our earnings slides, which are also posted on our website. And now I'll turn it over to Darren for opening remarks.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Let me begin by recognizing the impact of the conflict in the Middle East on our colleagues and partners in the region. We've been in close contact with our regional partners, as well as with companies and countries we've worked with for many years. We are proud to stand beside them during these very difficult times. While the financial impact in the region is real, what is even more real is the daily threat our colleagues and partners have been living under. We remain committed to supporting them as we work to restore operations and repair assets with a clear focus on safety and disciplined risk management. The Middle East is and will continue to be an advantaged and meaningful component of our global portfolio. The disruption to the broader economy we are seeing underscores the critical role our company plays in providing the affordable, reliable energy and products the world depends on. What we produce remains essential to development and progress, sustaining and improving living standards around the world. In this environment, scale, integration and execution excellence matters. Those advantages, combined with the deep experience and capability of our employees, give us the ability to respond quickly and manage effectively through disruptions. Our competitive advantages are on display in this quarter's results. We delivered strong operational performance in a challenging environment, maintained rigorous safety and reliability standards, and continued advancing key priorities across the portfolio, supporting long-term value creation for our shareholders. We saw those advantages in our response to supply disruptions. leveraging our global portfolio to support customers. We delivered on our plans to increase permian production year over year, achieve record levels of production in Guyana, achieve first LNG at Golden Pass, optimize logistics and crude product flows, and safely maximize refinery throughput where possible. In fact, in March, refinery throughput increased by approximately 200,000 barrels a day versus February, or the equivalent of a mid-sized refinery. as we brought back refineries from turnaround and deferred maintenance activities where we could without impacting safety or long-term reliability. Our global supply chain organization rapidly executed alternate routings from the US Gulf Coast to Asia to sustain critical supplies for our customers. Despite the unprecedented impacts in the global energy system, we maintain deliveries to our customers globally through coordinated planning and real-time vessel visibility. Financially, Excluding identified items and estimated timing effects, our first quarter earnings per share were up versus the fourth quarter of 2025, reflecting the strength and resiliency of the underlying business. Stronger portfolio mix, structural cost reductions, and execution excellence continue to drive improving performance. Those same factors leave us better positioned to manage uncertainty versus several years ago. The strength of that advantage portfolio is clear in the work we're doing today. we are expanding our LNG footprint. Our newest facility, Golden Pass LNG, a joint venture with Cutter Energy, is increasing U.S. export capacity at an important moment for global supply. Train 1 of the facility achieved first LNG in March and will deliver an increase of about 5% relative to 2025 U.S. exports. By the time the third train is online, we will increase the country's current LNG exports by roughly 15%. At the same time, We continue to progress toward final investment decisions on LNG projects in Papua New Guinea and Mozambique, both expected later this year. Elsewhere in the upstream, Guyana continues to set the standard for execution, development pace, and value creation. We delivered record production, continued strong reliability, and have Uwaru, Whiptail, and Hammerhead projects under construction, with Uwaru expecting first oil late this year. Consistent with our broader approach to support long-term economic development in countries where we operate, we've committed a $100 million investment over 10 years to support national STEM education in Guyana, strengthening our bond with the people of Guyana and establishing a foundation for long-term prosperity. In the Permian, we continue to show how scale and proprietary technologies improve efficiency, recovery, and long-term value creation. We remain on track to grow full-year Permian production to 1.8 million oil equipment barrels in 2026, with that growth grounded in value, not volume. We're also progressing our Permian net zero ambition, with continuous methane monitoring implemented across all key assets in New Mexico. In product solutions, performance remains strong, driven by higher value products and technology-led differentiation. The Beaumont Refinery expansion, completed in 2023, fully recovered its initial investment, ahead of expectation, and is contributing to stronger margins and cash flow. This underscores how disciplined investments, grounded in long-term market fundamentals, rigorously executed, generate durable returns independent of price cycles. In parallel, we continue to progress our journey to build a reliable, domestic supply of advanced synthetic graphite. We recently held a ribbon cutting ceremony at the pilot production plant in Kentucky, which represents a critical milestone between lab scale development and full commercial deployment. In low carbon solutions, we began transporting and storing captured CO2 from the new generation gas gathering project, our second startup in less than a year. Through this year and next, we plan to start facilities with the capacity to capture an additional 4 million tons per year of CO2. Importantly, with our advantages, these projects deliver attractive returns that compete with the investments in our base business. Technology as a core competitive advantage remains central to our strategy. It is one of the ways we improve structural competitiveness, strengthen returns, and create new earnings opportunity. In Guyana, we achieved the first deepwater fully autonomous well section using rig automation and automated downhole steering tools, improving both safety and efficiency. Additionally, we're on track to leverage our approximate technology in subsea applications with hammerhead and future FPSOs, further demonstrating the material's performance in demanding offshore environments. Across the company, we're making further progress to simplify how we run the business through effective application of technology. Our enterprise-wide process and data platform transformation, the largest ever undertaken in the industry, reached an important milestone with the successful launch of a new modern workforce enablement system. This significantly simplifies the work processes that underpinned our talent management approach and streamlines our payroll processes in more than 50 countries. It provides a single, consistent data foundation on which future system deployments will be built. We deliver this with no business disruption, demonstrating the strength of our centralized core capabilities, fully leveraging our scale advantage. This is the first step of many to make our processes more efficient and effective, ultimately enhancing the experience of our global workforce. This will allow our people to focus their efforts on high-value work, further reinforcing our competitive advantages. Without the changes we made over the last decade and the focus we've put on leveraging our core advantages, this game-changing enterprise system would not be possible. It is establishing a truly differentiating foundation for long-term competitive advantage. With recent events, the world has been reminded of the critical role and long-term need for reliable, affordable energy products. Today, more people recognize that demand for oil and natural gas remains substantial and will continue to play an important role in global economic growth far into the future. This fundamental and the competitive advantages we bring underpin our strategy, our capital allocation decisions, and the long-term success of our company. We are confident in our advantages the importance of scale and integration, the critical role of technology and execution excellence, and the power of talented people. We are confident in our continuing transformation and the critical role our company will play in any future scenario. And we're confident in our plan to build long-term, sustainable earnings and cash flow growth, the basis for long-term growth and shareholder value. Thank you.

Thank you, Darren. Before we move to Q&A, I want to highlight that we plan to publish our 2026 Advancing Climate Solutions report this month, detailing all of our progress on solving the AND equation, meeting demand and reducing emissions, as well as our latest sustainability report. All these documents can be found on the Investors section of our website. We really encourage you to take a look. And with that, let's move to Q&A. Please note that we ask each analyst to limit themselves to one question as a courtesy to others. And operator, we'll ask you to please open the line for our first question.