Who benefits from a $50 barrel of oil? ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) and its $50 stock do. Now in the $49er range, the stock is up 43% this year, leaving little doubt that the rush is on for black gold. It's a new boomtown, with oil stocks such as Motley Fool Hidden GemsselectionValero Energy (NYSE:VLO), Tesoro Petroleum (NYSE:TSO), ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP), Premcor (NYSE:PCO), and ChevronTexaco (NYSE:CVX) hitting on all cylinders. According to ExxonMobil's latest supertanker-sized results, there doesn't appear to be any ghost towns on the horizon.
For the quarter, the company posted revenues of $74.9 billion; after nine months, its sales have risen to $210 billion -- that's not a typo, folks. The run rate of sales at $279.3 billion falls just shy of ExxonMobil's enterprise value of $315.5 billion. From these quarterly revenues, ExxonMobil earned $5.7 billion -- an increase of 55.6% compared with the same quarter a year ago.
Regardless if it's upstream (operations for the exploration and production of crude oil) or downstream (operations for the manufacturing and marketing of petroleum products), there is only one direction for the money flow -- on the "cash and cash equivalents" line reading $16.1 billion. ExxonMobil's healthy cash position gives it ample flexibility in managing its long-term debt of $5.2 billion.
Through nine months, the company's structural free cash flow (SFCF) has increased to a stout $15.5 billion. Given its enterprise value, the company is valued at 15 times its run rate of SFCF of $20.6 billion. Whether ExxonMobil is a deal or not depends on whether high-priced oil is here to stay. While future prices are uncertain, there is little doubt that today's black gold rush is causing this boomtown to burst at the seams, attracting investors.
Fool contributor Jeremy MacNealy does not own shares in any of the companies mentioned.
