- Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) finished 0.8% higher in today's trade, but it was just a small slice of the stock's 15% plunge through last Friday since issuing its Q4 earnings report on Feb. 2.
- XOM's hubris is no longer justified and leaves it increasingly vulnerable, Bloomberg's Liam Denning writes, noting that "you only have to look at the recent example of General Electric (NYSE:GE) to realize how a combination of enormous scale, century-old incumbency and an iconic brand can breed overconfidence that ultimately proves destructive."
- Denning thinks XOM should look at its rivals across the Atlantic for ways to use its giant resource base to improve shareholder value: Shell (LON:RDSa) has taken radical steps since its acquisition of BG Group in 2016 including divesting its Canadian oil sands business, and BP (LON:BP) has raised tens of billions of dollars to meet the cost of the 2010 oil spill disaster by selling off swathes of its asset portfolio
- XOM's "mammoth resource base - and downstream and chemicals infrastructure - must contain some juicy assets that aren't being valued properly and could be similarly monetized, with the proceeds going to restoring buybacks," Denning writes.
- Now read: Exxon: Get Prepared To Buy The Correction
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