Exxon Mobil1. The nature of Exxon Mobil's business is a natural haven for critics; reporting record profits for 2005 only added fuel to the fire, so to speak. The topic of almost every conversation across the country had something to do with how much people were spending at the pump or how the cost of most consumer goods was rising at a rate never before experienced; Exxon Mobil's exploit only brought negative attention to the company. However, Exxon Mobil knew that its profits would not be well accepted by the general public and did its best to do some damage control by creating charts comparing its profits to those of other industries, holding press conferences and trying to educate the public about the consequences. costs of running their business by creating small informative advertisements. Yet no matter how hard they tried, scrutiny was inevitable. Consumers were paying three dollars for a gallon of gasoline, the media were constantly running special stories on the rising cost of filling our gas tanks, and the Democratic Party was constantly ridiculing the Republican's lack of effort to lower gasoline prices. gasoline. Exxon Mobil's attempt to justify its profit margin by comparing the profit margins of the oil and gas industry to those of other industries can be compared to a magician's act on stage. It's a diversion game that the average person wouldn't think twice about. To get a true comparative measure of Exxon Mobil's profit margin, you want to calculate Exxon Mobil's profit margin, which I calculated at 10 cents, and compare it to the profit margins of other companies in the same industry. Looking at the chart in Figure 2, the oil and natural gas industry has an average return on sales of 5.8 cents, which is 3.2 cents less than Exxon Mobil's actual return. If we put their real numbers on this chart, they would jump straight to the real estate sector, which earns an average of 10.8 cents on the dollar. But even comparing Exxon Mobil to these different industries is not very justifiable because different industries have different operating costs, so to get a better idea of ​​how Exxon Mobil compares to other companies or industries, it is appropriate to examine ROE. ROE shows how well companies generate money with money from shareholders' equity. An ROE figure has different factors that would be taken into account, such as how much debt a company has, how high operating costs are, and how efficient a company is at generating money from its assets. , combined to give you a more accurate picture of a company's profitability..