From: John Cuccia 

On Wed, 14 Dec 2005 11:16:02 -0500, "Gary Britt"
 wrote:

>I don't know, and I'm not sure how the ROCE figures are calculated (what and
>how they have included/excluded items) or what precisely ROCE is an acronym.

If you don't know what it is or means, how can you say "The fact
remains that oil company profits are not excessive as a percentage of sales
or as a return on the capital invested in machinery and equipment,
inventories, etc."?

>I'm assuming slide 14 is on page 12 of the 35 page PDF file.

Page 14, which is the combined ROCE (Return on Capital Expenditure) for the
upstream and downstream segments.  The slide on page 12 is for the more
profitable upstream side.

>That's why I have been saying the simplest way for us non-oil industry
>expert analysts to know what the expert analysts think of the oil companies
>earnings and profitability levels, is to look at the oil companies share
>prices and price earnings ratios.

Share prices?  Here you go.  Looks like the experts think quite highly of
the oil industries earning and profitability potential.

Exxon stock jumped from $40 to $60/share in  the past 2 years, as did
Chevron-Texaco's.

ConocoPhillips share price has doubled in that time, going from $30 to
$60.

BP?  $50 to $70.

Royal Dutch? $50 to $65. This relatively modest increase of 30% is likely
due to their getting caught lying about reserves.

>Since
>oil company earnings per share aren't as high as most corporations,

Data, please.  What are the EPS numbers for "most corporations"?

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5