Figure 1 · Total Shareholder Return · ExxonMobil vs peer composite

ExxonMobil outperformed its peers — before and after the announcement

Cumulative total shareholder return for ExxonMobil (rust) and a 9-firm pre-registered peer composite (navy), measured over the trailing year and the post-announcement window. The market didn’t price a governance discount — it priced a premium.

Trailing twelve months
2025-04-02 → 2026-04-02 · 252 trading days
+40.06%ExxonMobil
+23.73%Peer composite
+16.33 ppOutperformance
Since the announcement
2026-03-10 (announcement) → 2026-04-02 · 18 trading days
+8.48%ExxonMobil
+7.32%Peer composite
+1.16 ppOutperformance
Sources & methodology notes
Total shareholder return (cumulative, compounded)TSRi,t = Πτ=t0t (1 + ri,τ) − 1
where ri,τ is the daily adjusted-close return (dividends reinvested) and t0 is the anchor date (announcement or LTM start).

Total shareholder return (TSR) computed as cumulative compound return on adjusted closes (S&P Capital IQ IQ_CLOSEPRICE_ADJ feed, which incorporates dividend reinvestment and split adjustments). Peer composite is the 9-firm pre-registered synthetic-control donor pool, weighted as in donor_weights.json with Marathon Oil (MRO) excluded and remaining weights renormalized (MRO was acquired by ConocoPhillips and delisted Nov. 22, 2024; the 10-firm pre-registered pool retains MRO at 1.7% which is dropped here for forward-looking TSR).

Active composition: Chevron 43.8% + Diamondback 15.5% + EOG Resources 14.2% + Schlumberger 8.2% + Williams 5.9% + Baker Hughes 4.7% + Occidental 3.6% + ConocoPhillips 2.3% + Phillips 66 1.8%. Day-0 anchor: 2026-03-10 (PRE 14A filing date). LTM anchor: 2025-04-02 (most recent calendar-anchored 252 trading days). Endpoint: 2026-04-02 (data cutoff).

  1. Council of Institutional Investors, TSR Best Practices (2024 ed.). Cumulative TSR convention used here: compound dividend-reinvested return measured from common anchor, percent change from base.
  2. Stephen Brown & Jerold Warner, Using Daily Stock Returns: The Case of Event Studies, 14 J. Fin. Econ. 3 (1985). Day-0 reaction is the announcement-window evidence; post-announcement TSR is the longer-horizon evidence. Both required for a complete market-evidence picture.
  3. Eugene Fama & Kenneth French, Common Risk Factors in the Returns on Stocks and Bonds, 33 J. Fin. Econ. 3 (1993). Peer-composite construction follows the size/sector matching logic in the FF factor literature; here the 9-firm composite is dollar-weighted by the synthetic-control donor weights rather than equal-weighted.
  4. Shane Goodwin, Read the Fine Print: What ExxonMobil’s Proxy Actually Says About Texas Redomiciliation, Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog (May 2026). Companion paper. Article fn. 24 frames the “efficient market should price the governance discount” null hypothesis; this chart documents the post-announcement reading of that null.

Data integrity. Same daily-close panel as the announcement-window battery (fig. 1–8). Replicable via replication/event_study.py in any of Python, R, or Stata. Endpoint freshness: TSR through 2026-04-02; chart updates dynamically when the canonical daily_closes.csv is refreshed.

Source: Author’s calculations from S&P Capital IQ daily adjusted closes; 9-firm peer composite per pre-registered donor_weights.json with MRO dropped.