In the past, supervisors were able to seek exemptions for their staff if they were ranked at the bottom for reasons they thought were not fair, a person familiar with the process said. To cover that $14.7 billion paymentâthird-highest among S&P 500 companiesâalong with its aggressive capital spending, Exxon needed crude to fetch about $77 a barrel, the highest breakeven among oil majors, according to RBC Capital Markets.As for the lower earnings and sliding share price, Woods assured his conference-call audience that things were under control. By Kevin Crowley and Bryan GruleyâGood morning, everyone,â Woods said when he stepped onstage at Exxonâs most recent Investor Day, on March 5 in New York. Nobody doubted anymore that there were oceans of oil in the ground; it was a matter of getting it out as inexpensively as you could.
Energy now makes up less than 3% of the S&P 500 Index, compared with more than 10% in 2009.On March 16, S&P again downgraded Exxonâs credit rating, to AA from AA+, and said it could happen again âif the company does not take adequate steps to improve cash flows and leverage.â A week later the stock closed at $31.45, the lowest since 2002. But upfront costs ran 18% higher than expected, and in 2014 oil prices began a nearly two-year swoon as OPEC flooded the world with oil in the hope of suffocating American shale drillers.ANIMATED ILLUSTRATION BY SCOTT GELBEREven then, a lot of institutional investors were inclined to take an Exxon CEOâs word as gospel. Revenue was $425 billion, the stock closed that day at $76, and Exxon pumped more oil than any OPEC member except Saudi Arabia and Iran.The industrial giant missed the shale boom, overspent on projects, and saw its debt rise to $50 billion as its stock plummeted.Woods certainly canât be faulted for not foreseeing the oil carnage of April, with the industry abandoning fracking and laying off more than 50,000 workers in March alone. âCome on now,â Woods said. âThe large companies might actually get bigger on the back of this,â says Medlock.At his first annual Investor Day, in March 2017, Woods vowed to spend more on new ventures so Exxon would be ready when the market turned. Darren Woods, chief executive officer of ExxonMobil Corp., was chipper as he bandied with industry analysts on Jan. 31 about his company’s poor 2019 performance. Social distancing wasnât yet happening widely, though guests at the Exxon presentation were offered small bottles of hand sanitizer. LinkedIn; Subscriptions; Intelligence; ... Darren Woods, the chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp., in 2017.
So did Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP. This year, those requests must be approved by a president-level employee, documents showed.Exxon doesn't offer some of the benefits of its competitors, such as hefty bonuses, people familiar with the company's benefits program said. "It's a very subjective process."Employees ranked in the bottom category are forced to resign, retire, or enroll in a performance-improvement plan, depending on how long they've been with the company, documents seen by Business Insider and people familiar with the matter said.Days ago, Katie was told she was among the company's worst performers during Exxon's annual review process. âWhile we would prefer higher prices and margins,â he said, âwe donât want to waste the opportunity this low-price environment provides.âShale changed the calculus. Her manager told her as much, often throwing compliments her way about the value she was delivering to Exxon — her employer and the largest oil company in the US.Two people familiar with Exxon's internal human-resources policies said it was rare for anyone to successfully complete a performance-improvement plan and stay with the company.In April, Exxon changed its policy, requiring that managers put 8 to 10% of US salaried workers into the lowest category this year, regardless of whether they actually considered 8% of workers to be poor performers. Burned investors were cooling on energy stocks and diverting their money into tech, pharma, and other sectors. But an odd turning point came a year into Woodsâs tenure. You can do that if you have the opportunities and the financial capacity, which we do. There are 100+ professionals named "Darren Woods", who use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas, and opportunities. BP and Schlumberger, for instance, are cutting a combined 31,000 workers.In a statement to Business Insider, Ashley Alemayehu, an Exxon representative, said the company's performance-review process wasn't designed to cut workers.