Marathon Petroleum Corporation Stock Outperforms

The Shares of Marathon Petroleum Corporation rose 2.40% to $61.52 Monday. This proved to be an all-around disastrous trading session for the stock market, with the S&P 500 Index SPX falling 0.25% to 4,163.29 and Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA falling 0.16% to 34,327.79. This was the stock’s second consecutive day of gains.

Marathon Petroleum Corporation closed $0.43 short of its 52-week high of $61.95 which the company achieved on May 14th. The stock outperformed some of its competitors Monday, as Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM rose 2.34% to $62.19, Chevron Corp. CVX rose 1.22% to $110.81, and BP PLC ADR BP rose 1.61% to $27.08. Trading volume (11.2 M) eclipsed its 50-day average volume of 6.3 M.

Friday morning, Marathon closed the sale of its Speedway operations to 7-Eleven Inc., a subsidiary of Seven & I Holdings Co. Ltd. in Tokyo, Japan, for $21 billion. Marathon Petroleum Corporation will begin trading ex-dividend on May 18, 2021. A cash dividend payment of $0.58 per share is scheduled to be paid on June 10, 2021. Shareholders who purchased MPC before the ex-dividend date are eligible for the cash dividend payment. This marks the 6th quarter that has paid the same dividend. At the current stock price of $60.08, the dividend yield is 3.86%.

American Petroleum company is a part of the Energy sector, which includes companies such as Chevron Corporation and BP p.l.c. The current earnings per share, an indicator of a company’s profitability, is -$1.64. Zacks Investment Research reported the forecasted earnings growth in 2021 as 128.05%, compared to an industry average of 29.8%.