ExxonMobil reported Friday the largest US corporate annual profit in history at 40.6 billion dollars, benefiting from surging crude oil prices on strong demand, particularly in China and India.
The net profit was three percent higher than a year ago when the biggest US oil and gas firm reported a 2006 annual profit of 39.5 billion dollars, which had prompted ire over US policies said to favor big oil firms.
The multinational behemoth also posted a record fourth-quarter net profit, at 11.6 billion dollars, up 14 percent from the same period in 2006 as gains in crude.
Fourth-quarter profit per share rose to 2.13 dollars, beating analysts' forecasts of 1.95 dollars.
Full-year sales climbed by seven percent to 404.5 billion dollars, driven by a 29 percent spike in the final quarter, to 116.6 billion dollars.
Earnings per share jumped by 10 percent to 7.28 dollars from 2006, reflecting a program of share buybacks, the Irving, Texas-based company said in a statement.
Full-year dividends increased by seven percent to 1.37 dollars.
The company distributed 35.6 billion dollars to shareholders in 2007 through dividends and share purchases to reduce shares outstanding, up 3.0 billion dollars from 2006.
"Higher crude oil and natural gas realizations and gains on asset sales were partly offset by lower chemical margins," ExxonMobil's chairman Rex Tillerson said.
The company's fourth-quarter and full-year earnings included a special tax-related benefit of 410 million dollars. They did not include exceptional elements, unlike the 2006 results.
Tillerson said the company was pursuing a "long-term investment program, in projects often far from major consuming nations," to provide "resources essential to the increasingly interdependent global energy supply network."
The company spent 20.9 billion dollars on capital and exploration projects in 2007, an increase of five percent from 2006.
In the fourth quarter, capital and exploration spending jumped 21 percent to 6.2 billion dollars from the same period in 2006.
The record profits came despite a slight fall in production that was offset by soaring crude prices underpinned by global economic growth driven by powerful expansion in emerging-market economies such as China and India.
Production decreased by one percent in 2007 from the prior year on an oil-equivalent basis, the company said.
Excluding Venezuela's expropriation, divestments, Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries's quota effects and price and spend impacts on volumes, output rose nearly one percent in the full year, and nearly three percent in the fourth quarter.
In June the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez passed a law forcing multinationals to give at least 60 percent of the capital in their Venezuelan operations to the state-controlled Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA).
The company said it had bought back 7.9 billion dollars' worth of its own shares in the fourth quarter.
Shares in ExxonMobil, a component of the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average, were off opening highs in New York trade. Around 1600 GMT the price was down 0.20 percent at 86.23 dollars.
