How XOM Expects Oil Prices & Refining Margins to Impact Q3 Earnings

In its latest 8-K SEC filings,Exxon Mobil Corporation XOM announced its expectations for third-quarter 2025 earnings. The large integrated energy company expects its earnings to have increased sequentially by $300 million, solely due to the change in oil prices.

XOM added that it is likely to have also witnessed a sequential increase in its September quarter earnings by $200 million, thanks only to the change in natural gas prices. Notably, the energy giant revealed that the oil price change is likely to have affected its third-quarter 2025 bottom line sequentially. This impact is likely to be between a loss of $100 million and earnings of $300 million. Similarly, the natural gas price change is expected to have impacted its bottom line sequentially. The impact is expected to be in the range of a $200 million loss to a $200 million profit.

Just to have an idea of how oil and natural gas prices behave in the September quarter, let's analyze the commodity prices from the data provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (“EIA”). The average Cushing, OK WTI spot prices for July, August, and September of this year were $68.39 per barrel, $64.86 per barrel and $63.96 per barrel, respectively, per EIA data. In the prior quarter, the commodity prices were $63.54 per barrel, $62.17 per barrel, and $68.17 per barrel, respectively, for the months of April, May, and June, according to the EIA. Thus, in the first two months of the third quarter of 2025, the pricing environment of oil was healthier sequentially, which is possibly backing the upper band of ExxonMobil’s projected earnings range.

In its latest filings, XOM also revealed its expectations for the energy products business unit, stating that it is likely to have generated earnings of $300 million to $700 million in the third quarter of 2025 compared to the prior quarter, thanks to favorable industry refining margins.

Notably, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for XOM’s third-quarter 2025 earnings is pegged at $1.72 per share, suggesting a year-over-year decrease of 10.4%.

Chevron Corporation CVX and BP plc BP, two other integrated giants, are also highly vulnerable to oil and natural gas prices. Hence, the crude pricing environment, as discussed above, is also expected to have influenced the upstream business of both CVX and BP.

It is to be noted that the Zacks Consensus Estimate for CVX’s third-quarter 2025 earnings is pegged at $1.88 per share, suggesting a year-over-year decrease of 25.1%. For the British energy giant, the Zacks Consensus Estimate is pegged at 70 cents per share, depicting a plunge of almost 16%.

Currently, ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP carry a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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