ExxonMobil beat was best in quality among supermajors: Analyst
Exxon Mobil on Thursday reported quarterly earnings and revenue that topped analysts' expectations.



Exxon Mobil's shares were little changed in early trading Thursday. (Get the latest quote here.)



The oil giant reported a 46 percent decline in quarterly earnings as a steep drop in crude prices cut into profits at the world's largest publicly traded oil company.

However, the company's performance relative to other supermajors shows that it is built for tough commodity prices, said Doug Terreson, oil analyst at Evercore ISI Institutional Equities.

"The strength of its model was pretty clear today with its earnings report, which surpassed the Street's expectations by almost 45 percent even though the oil price declined considerably during the quarter," he said on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

The surprise that set ExxonMobil's earnings apart from its peers was that the beat came from upstream and downstream operations, making for the best earnings quality in the supermajor category this quarter, he said.

The Irving, Texas-based company had a first-quarter profit of $4.9 billion, or $1.17 per share, compared with $9.1 billion, or $2.10 per share, a year earlier.

Oil and natural gas output was 4.2 million barrels oil equivalent per day, an increase of 97,000 barrels from a year earlier.

Revenue fell to $67.62 billion from $106.77 billion a year ago.

Analysts expected the oil giant to post quarterly earnings per share of 83 cents on revenue of $56.39 billion, according to a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate.