Exxon is slashing its 2020 capital spending plan as depressed oil prices hammer the energy sector, but CEO Darren Woods said that the company’s dividend is safe for the time being.
“A lot of our shareholders are retail shareholders — people who depend on that dividend — so we’ve been pretty committed to maintaining that and if necessary in the short-term using the balance sheet to support it,” Woods said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “It’s a capital-intensive commodity business so we know we are going to go through cycles, and the way we have prepared ourselves to manage through those cycles is to maintain a strong balance sheet,” he added.
