Munger Mode rating: 2 out of 5 — Sell. Our own rating from the research report below, on business quality first: moat durability and management, with price separating the top three.
We have spent our lives looking for wonderful businesses — the kind that can raise prices without losing customers, that gush cash without demanding it all back, and that compound intrinsic value decade after decade. ExxonMobil is not that kind of business. It is, we will say plainly, the best-run company in a fundamentally average industry: a price-taker on its only product, chained to a depletion treadmill that consumes roughly $28 billion of capital every year just to stay in place, and currently earning windfall profits because a war in the Middle East closed the Strait of Hormuz for part of the second quarter and sent refining margins to records. The company's execution since 2021 has been genuinely excellent — record Permian and Guyana volumes, $15 billion of structural cost cuts, a fortress balance sheet.
Recent filings analysed: 10-Q (2026-08-03), 8-K (2026-07-31), 8-K (2026-07-07), 8-K (2026-07-01).
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