While technology stocks were being sold off, the old economy was quietly delivering. ExxonMobil and Chevron both reported third-quarter earnings ahead of analyst forecasts on Friday, powered by strong production, surging refining margins and crude prices lifted by geopolitical turmoil. Analysts said energy earnings would anchor the defensive trade into November.
Energy Earnings: Numbers That Beat the Street
Exxon reported earnings excluding identified items of $4.23 a share and used the occasion to announce a $20 billion share buyback programme for 2027, a signal of confidence in its cash generation. Chevron posted adjusted earnings of $5.28 a share against expectations nearer $4.78, generating $12 billion of free cash flow in the quarter, with record US refinery throughput helping results. Both stocks rose in pre-market trading even as the wider market fell, a split-screen day for investors that our economy coverage has been tracking all season.
Geopolitics in the price
Energy earnings cannot be separated from the map. Brent crude settled above $117 a barrel amid tanker incidents in the Strait of Hormuz and ongoing attacks on Russian and Ukrainian energy infrastructure. For integrated majors, high prices are a windfall; Exxon’s result was described as its strongest profit since the price surge that followed Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, underlining how directly the war still feeds the sector’s bottom line.
What comes next
Attention now shifts to capital discipline. Investors rewarded both companies partly because buybacks and dividends kept flowing despite heavy spending plans. The calendar of who reported, and how the numbers compared with expectations, is set out in this earnings-day rundown, which also covers the drugmakers and consumer names that reported before the bell.
The oil majors’ strength this quarter is not simply a story of high prices; it is also a story of portfolios rebuilt for exactly this environment. Both Exxon and Chevron spent the past decade high-grading their assets toward low-cost production in places like the Permian Basin and Guyana, which means margins hold up across a wide range of prices while weaker rivals scramble. Refining, long the sector’s volatile afterthought, has become a profit engine as global capacity tightens. The buyback announcements matter for a subtler reason: they tell shareholders the companies expect cash to keep coming even if crude retreats, which is why the stocks rose on a day when almost everything exposed to technology was being sold without discrimination.
Earnings season has split the market into two stories: cash-rich energy and healthcare companies being rewarded, and high-multiple technology names being punished for spending. Exxon and Chevron landed firmly on the right side of that divide, and their results will anchor the defensive case for portfolios heading into a volatile November.
