LL must’ve asked Mike this question at least three times; each time he gave a garbled 3-minute response with no clear message. Something about being safe and selling assets was mentioned. How revolutionary. “Doing better”. Idk.
If our leader can’t articulate a strategy, how are we supposed to execute?
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Since JW left and Worth Discussing took over, the strategy needs to be interpreted from the decisions as 'higher returns and lower carbon' means nothing. Our actions are to invest incremental miniscule amounts of money in shale to get cash flow and limp along with all the rest of our existing assets for same said cash flow. We have no idea what to invest in to build for the future, so we aren't. We are buying back shares with our cash flow and the share price has not done much. We are also increasing dividends, which does not really seem to be doing much either. We are reducing people and people expenses as well as essentially eliminating any sort of developmental efforts to grow competence needed for the future because we have no idea what to do in the future. Conclusion - our strategy is to become a publicly traded energy equity company that takes pieces of projects and companies, but does not manage them, just influence. Our goal is returning cash to the investors and making the principles some cash, just like private equity.
It’s clear that what Mike Wirth is doing is cannibalizing Chevron for dividends to try to make it look like it’s a good company to invest in. No reserves = no future. Look at his history with the company. It’s all downward. Now he’s cannibalizing the company so that when he leaves, he leaves with a nice chunk of change.
The response was a goal, not a strategy
OP, you're right. There is no overarching strategy. "Way back when" the strategy was clear - we will be the best (or "top quartile") at finding and producing oil and gas. People could easily embrace that. Now it is a garble of AI, diversity, lean operations, whatever is trendy in Silicon Valley. whatever "game-changing" technology is out there. Safety is a given, not a strategy. Selling assets is self-destruction masquerading as efficiency and raising capital.