ExxonMobil Corp (XOM)

NicieNicie (53.05) Submitted: 5/01/07 1:54 PM : Start Price: $77.65 XOM Score: 20.58

Okay, boss Rex Tillotson is an unabashed hydrocarbons-only guy and comes across as authoritarian. But at least XOM didn't get tangled up in the apparent hypocrisy that BP did--its incredibly soft and green commercial campaign was stabbed by the ugly reality of a dripping arctic pipeline they were supposed to have fixed.

XOM is a player (among investables, perhaps THE player) globally in a field with more big oil companies than is apparent here in the US with its four or five biggies. Exxon-Mobil has done quite well recently, and I for one like to think it isn't just the rising price of oil that boosts stock prices (if nothing else raising the value of oil in XOM's literal and figurative vertically integrated "pipeline").

Exxon is still the leader in petrochemicals and keeps looking for new areas to enter, with an eye to practical means Example: gas-to-olefin technology, which adds value much closer to the field and is economically advantageous over the more common transshipment or pipelining over long distances. Consumer-wise the co. seems to merit approval: its "On the Go" stores are almost everywhere an Exxon or Esso (Europe, Canada) station is to be found. (Those three words are always used despite the local language.)

Drawing on its Mobil aviation-fuel heritage, XOM also provides aviation fuel to most of the nation's premier private airports like Teterboro in New Jersey, near Manhattan. Exxon's services at these privileged locales doesn't stop at fuel and runways; the company has earned a very good reputation for providing luxury pilot- and passenger-oriented ground services -- the food, the atmosphere, concierge, places to meet and so on -- just ask John Travolta!

A couple of intangibles: Exxon sends all shareholders its quarterly magazine, THE LAMP, the inside back cover of which contains the quarterly financials: two birds with one stone. And their dividend-reinvestment plan is easier and cheaper than most.

If Rex Tillotson doesn't stop bad-mouthing green, slate a shareholder initiative for the Annual Meeting -- you'll have plenty of company along with enviro advocates, corporate-democracy advocates, advocates of restricted or merit-based salary, and one individual from Southern Illinois who seems to have made it his mission to strike "gay and lesbian" from the corporation's anti-discrimination policy. In other words, a vote AGAINST, Exxon-Mobil's recommendation, is a vote allowing the status quo to stand; a vote FOR is for disenfranchisement (for lack of a better word).

Does the feistier COP make more sense for the very long run? Perhaps, but again IMHO I think you'll make out well enough and safely by sticking with the tiger, at least for a couple of years.

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