“Our expectation is that economic conditions and the conditions for our sector, in particular, will remain likely stressed through 2021 and 2022,” Uhl said.
AstraZeneca’s shares are up 9% this year, while Shell’s are down 40%. It was 30% in April, which obliges a management to budget for lower oil prices for longer.Shell reckons it can knock $9bn (£7.1bn) off operating costs and capital expenditure, but the saving is insufficient if a barrel of Brent could fetch $20 to $30 for a while yet. The 95% plunge to £74m in Lloyds Banking Group’s first-quarter profits was driven by an £1.4bn impairment charge, the largest part of which was an estimate of the size of the bad loans that will inevitably show up soon.Managements have to conduct these impairment exercises even in normal times, but rarely does the process feel so much like guesswork. The stock market values the equity at just £80m while the borrowings are £4.5bn.Has Intu’s “ongoing dialogue” with government gone nowhere? Finance chief cites potential to revive both dividend, buyback We’ve heard the good intentions; let’s see the arithmetic. It’s not as if Shell’s balance sheet was unencumbered by debt at the time.Still, the new preference for prudence stands in contrast to BP’s stance on divis earlier this week, which was to keep paying at the old rate, or try to do so. Shell plans to boost payouts to investors through dividends and share buybacks to $125 billion between 2021 and 2025. Shareholders have been sure of Shell’s dividend since the second world war, but now the distribution has been cut by two-thirds. Van Beurden, while congratulating himself for being responsible with the divi now, forgot to express remorse over the buyback. A pillar of the UK stock market has tumbled.
The company said in January it had The investor call is a precursor to Shell’s annual general meeting in The Hague next week, where shareholders won’t be able to gather physically due to the pandemic. With the best will in the world, nobody would put Intu in that bracket. And how goes the other dialogue with banks and bondholders? Shell reduced its first-quarter dividend to $0.16 per share, down from $0.47 at the end of 2019, as it reported a 46% fall in net profit. Shell cuts dividend and first buyback tranche due to Covid-19 The oil major has cut its quarterly dividend by two-thirds, the first time since World War 2, as first-quarter profits slump 46%. As coronavirus sorts stock market winners from losers at startling speed, buybacks prove costlyIt looks the correct move, however, for the reasons Van Beurden gave. Royal Dutch Shell Plc cut its dividend for the first time since at least the Second World War as the oil slump triggered by the coronavirus pandemic reshapes the energy industry.
The stresses caused by the current crisis were evident in March, and will continue more significantly in the second quarter, Uhl told shareholders.Second-quarter production is expected to decline by 10% to 20%, Uhl said, due to assets being located in countries that are part of the OPEC+ group -- which has pledged output curbs -- as well as logistical constraints and other economic pressures.The current environment won’t have a significant long-term effect on the company’s production but, for now, there will be a drop-off. That’s how much Shell spent on share buybacks between July 2018 and January this year – all at prices above £22 v the current £12.86.
title on Ben van Beurden’s bookshelf in his video message to Shell investors captured the mood – Fall of Giants, by Ken Follett. The energy giant also suspended the next tranche of its share buyback programme.
The collapse in global demand for oil isn’t a matter of a few percentage points. Its new preference for prudence stands in contrast to BP’s dividend stance, which was to keep paying at the old rate, or try to do so.
Still, the £1.4bn impairment was at the conservative end of City analysts’ own guesses, so it’ll do for now. Yet a “base” assumption of a 5% decline in GDP feels a little bullish – many economists expect much worse. April 30 • Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) cut its dividend by 66% to 16 cents a share, the first reduction since 1945. The first three were awarded 30% probability and hell was given 10%.It’s one way to do it and the transparency is commendable. The main difference between dividends and buybacks is that a dividend payment represents a definite return in the current timeframe that will be taxed, whereas a buyback … The Anglo-Dutch major tore up the industry’s financial playbook when oil’s collapse forced it to slash payouts. That’s a reduction of 66 percent.
BP chief Bernard Looney, whose balance sheet looks as strained as Shell’s, needs to explain how he will protect his much-trumpeted planned investments in long pay-back renewable assets.
The aim is to protect Shell’s balance sheet at a moment “when we have no idea what could happen”. Royal Dutch Shell (LON:RDSB) has cut its dividend for the first time since the Second World War on the "prolonged" oil market uncertainty created … Royal Dutch Shell slashes its quarterly dividend by two-thirds amid the global oil price shock. With perfect timing, soaraway AstraZeneca, as it unveiled its tie-up with Oxford University to develop and produce (we hope) a Covid vaccine, edged ahead on market capitalisation on Thursday.
Everyone knows the end-of-year figure will be bigger.It is now five full weeks since Intu, the debt-laden owner of shopping centres, including Lakeside in Essex and Trafford near Manchester, said it had an “ongoing dialogue with the UK government and may look to access their £330bn support package”.The statement was mysterious since the Covid Corporate Finance Facility, the relevant scheme for companies the size of Intu, is only open to firms that can demonstrate they were in sound financial shape before the crisis.