Oil stocks compared: Exxon Mobil, Chevron and the commodity cycle

Energy is the most cyclical sector we cover. An oil company does not set the price of what it sells: crude oil and natural gas trade on world markets, and a producer's revenue and profit rise and fall with them. We cover the two largest US oil companies, Exxon Mobil and Chevron. Both are "integrated", which means each runs the whole chain — finding and producing oil and gas, refining it into fuels, and turning part of it into chemicals. All figures are trailing twelve months to 30 June 2026, with valuations at the 14 October 2026 close.

The numbers side by side

Exxon is the larger company, with $727.8bn of market value against Chevron's $438.7bn, and it sells far more. On these figures, though, Chevron is the cheaper share and the bigger cash generator for its size.

Why both companies show negative growth

Every growth rate in the table is negative, and the reason is the starting point. Our three-year window measures from 2022, the year oil and gas prices spiked after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and both companies earned record profits. Prices have since come down, and with them revenue: Exxon's fell 7.05% a year to 2025 and Chevron's 7.85%.

Start the clock somewhere else and the picture flips. Over five years, measured from 2020, when the pandemic collapsed demand for fuel, Exxon's revenue grew 12.85% a year and Chevron's 14.32% — the same two companies suddenly look like growth stocks. Neither has a five-year EPS growth rate in our data, because both lost money in 2020, and a growth rate measured from a loss means nothing; the numbers we refuse to print explains the rule. For commodity producers, growth rates mostly tell you where the window starts and ends in the price cycle.

Earnings per share fell faster than revenue mainly because margins came down from their 2022 peak. Both companies also bought other producers and paid in shares — Exxon took over Pioneer Natural Resources in 2024 and Chevron bought Hess in 2025 — but buybacks offset most of the new shares, and Chevron's average share count was lower in 2025 than in 2022. Our guide to revenue versus EPS growth shows how to read the two side by side.

Our growth factor scores these rates exactly as reported, which is why Exxon wins growth against Chevron: it shrank less. That is a fair reading of the figures and a poor guide to the future, which will be set mainly by oil prices.

Margins and returns

Chevron earns more on each dollar of sales: an operating margin of 15.37% against Exxon's 12.51%, and a net margin of 9.87% against 8.88%. Exxon earns slightly more on each dollar of capital: a return on invested capital of 11.78% against 10.05%. Returns on equity are almost identical, at 12.38% for Exxon and 12.22% for Chevron.

Our data shows a gross margin for Chevron, 43.65%, but none for Exxon, whose filings give no cost-of-sales line our reader can use. That blank has a consequence: the quality factor needs all four of its inputs for both companies, so on our Exxon vs Chevron page quality is not scored. That means the factor could not be measured, not that the two are equally good.

Cash, and what happens to it

Free cash flow is where an oil company's results become real. Exxon generated $30.55bn over the twelve months and Chevron $27.01bn — nearly as much, on a little over half the revenue. Relative to market value that gives Chevron a free cash flow yield of 6.16% against Exxon's 4.2%.

Both hand most of it back. Exxon paid dividends of $4.08 a share, a yield of 2.3% and 52.63% of its earnings, and bought back shares worth 2.82% of its market value. Chevron paid $6.98 a share, a yield of 3.14% and 67.33% of earnings, and bought back 2.54%. Add the two together and Exxon returned more than its free cash flow over the year, while Chevron returned a little less. In a business whose cash flow moves with the oil price, that gap matters: a payout set in a good year has to be paid in a bad one. Our guides to free cash flow yield and dividends versus buybacks explain both measures.

Balance sheets built for the cycle

Both companies borrow little relative to what they earn, and for a cyclical business that is deliberate: debt that is easy to carry at today's prices can become heavy if prices fall. Exxon carries $42.37bn of debt and $10.59bn of cash, net debt of 0.42 times EBITDA, and its operating profit covers interest 59.52 times. Chevron carries $37.08bn of debt and $8.53bn of cash, net debt of 0.51 times EBITDA, with interest covered 22.46 times. Their current ratios are 1.13 and 1.25. Exxon's lower leverage and far higher interest cover give it the balance-sheet factor. For how these measures work, see debt and balance-sheet risk.

Reading the valuations

Chevron is the cheaper share on most measures: 21.37 times earnings against 22.78, an enterprise value of 8.4 times EBITDA against 10.02, and 2.31 times book value against 2.81. Only on sales does Exxon look cheaper, at 1.97 times revenue against Chevron's 2.1, a gap consistent with Exxon's larger refining business, where sales are large and margins thin. Our valuation factor, which votes on EV/EBITDA, price-to-sales, price-to-book and free cash flow yield, goes to Chevron by three votes to one.

Treat any P/E for an oil company with care. When oil prices are high, profits swell and the P/E looks low; when prices fall, profits shrink and the P/E jumps — the cyclical trap described in our P/E guide. A high P/E at the bottom of the cycle and a low one at the top can both mislead.

How the head-to-heads come out

On our six-factor score, Exxon Mobil vs Chevron is a 3 to 3 draw. Exxon wins growth and the balance sheet; Chevron wins valuation and income; quality is not scored because Exxon has no gross margin in our data, and momentum is not scored, as on every page.

Apple vs Chevron also ends 3 to 3, for different reasons: Chevron wins valuation and income, Apple wins growth and quality, and the balance sheet is not scored because Apple's filings carry no interest-expense figure we can read. Both pairings show why our six-factor score is a summary of the figures, not a ranking of the companies.

What the numbers cannot show

The forces that matter most for oil companies are absent from any trailing table. The oil and gas price is the biggest, and no company controls it. Reserves — how much oil and gas each company can still produce, and at what cost — determine what the business is worth over decades, and they do not appear in our figures. Refining and chemical margins move on their own cycles. And the long-run demand for oil depends on policy, technology and the pace of the shift to other energy sources, which no quarterly filing can settle.