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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (328745)	3/13/2007 10:26:43 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576189

In that post you were talking about XOM. Exact quote - "But how is 10% profit margin, during the good times in a cyclical industry gouging". In any case the difference isn't that huge. re: In a cyclical industry you have to make money in the good times. In the bad times many oil companies make pathetic margins or even lose money. Straw man. Your misusing the term. Even if my argument is faulty (and its not) it isn't a straw man. I'm not assuming a weak argument for my opponents so that I can beat it to make my argument look good. An 18% operating margin is pretty good for a commodity company. But that is a higher margin than most of the industry, and its higher than XOM normally has. I never said it wasn't a good margin (if anything your the person attacking the straw man here), it is a good margin, but there is nothing wrong about one of the larger better run companies in an cyclical industry, currently enjoying good times, having a good margin. How about you compare it to Kroger, good company and they have a 5 year average of 3.35% operating margin. Kroger is a retailer. Try a company that actually produces things. Also I don't think Kroger's business is nearly as cyclical. Cyclical companies have higher margins when times are good like they are now in the oil industry. Kroger's business is more stable. It's intellectually weak to compare it to MSFT. Maybe, if your making a general comparison, and trying to say that XOM's margins are low because they are much lower than MSFT's but its no more weak than comparing it to Kroger, and its not weak if your defending it against gouging claims. Gouging is typically defined as taking example of a disaster in order to charge much higher prices, so it might not be the best charge against XOM's margins for the last few years, but if you are going to apply it the margins should have to not just be healthy but truly exceptional. In that context (and perhaps only in that context) is not weak or inappropriate to compare the margins to MSFT's.