Chevron Q3 2026 earnings: profit beats estimates on strong refining margins
Chevron topped Wall Street's profit and revenue expectations in Q3 2026, helped by wide refining margins and higher output tied to last year's Hess acquisition.
| Q3 2026 | Reported | Expected | Surprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| EPS | $5.28 | $4.93 | +7.1% |
| Revenue | $67.80B | $61.72B | +9.8% |
Key takeaways
- Chevron’s adjusted profit per share beat what Wall Street analysts had expected, and revenue also came in well above the consensus forecast for the quarter.
- Net income was roughly triple what it was a year earlier. The as-reported (GAAP) figure was held back by about $300 million combined in one-time items — a legal reserve, an asset write-down, and pension settlement costs — plus a currency headwind, which is why the adjusted profit figure came in higher than the plain reported number.
- A key driver was refining: Chevron’s U.S. plants ran at about 98% of capacity, processing near-record volumes of crude. CEO Mike Wirth pointed out that roughly 10% of the world’s refining capacity is currently offline, which has kept the profit margin on turning crude into fuel unusually wide.
- Production and earnings from oil and gas extraction got a boost from last year’s Hess acquisition and from the absence of one-time deal-related costs that weighed on results a year ago. Chevron said some assets, including in the Eastern Mediterranean and Australia, hit record output, even though contract pricing effects left total company-wide output slightly below last year’s level.
- International crude oil prices were sharply higher than a year ago, which helped cushion the production business against other cost pressures.
- Looking at the past year as a whole, Chevron’s margins show a business generating solid but not extraordinary profitability for an integrated energy producer — net profit margin was just under 10 cents per dollar of revenue — while per-share earnings growth over the past year has been strong, reflecting both this quarter’s beat and the added scale from the Hess deal.
- Wirth told CNBC that “the system is under stress,” and said in the earnings release that Chevron is “reinvesting to bring more energy to a supply-constrained market” — language suggesting management views the current strength in refining profits as tied to tight global supply rather than something guaranteed to continue.
Fundamentals
| Metric | Value | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Gross margin | 43.6% | Trailing 12 months |
| Operating margin | 13.2% | Trailing 12 months |
| Net profit margin | 9.9% | Trailing 12 months |
| Pretax margin | 14.7% | Trailing 12 months |
| EPS | $10.43 | Trailing 12 months |
| Revenue growth (YoY) | 11.2% | Trailing 12 months |
| EPS growth (YoY) | 34.6% | Trailing 12 months |
| Return on equity | 11.0% | Trailing 12 months |
Sources: company report · CNBC · ABC News