At Shell, the good times just keep rolling. The energy conglomerate headquartered in London announced adjusted profits for the third quarter of $9.45 billion. This figure is the company’s second-highest profit on record and is more than twice as much as the $4.1 billion it generated during the same time period in the previous year.
Shell is primarily profiting from high oil and natural gas prices, which have been partially fuelled by the conflict in Ukraine. Additionally, as a result of the conflict, Russia is restricting gas exports to Europe. The profit was a little lower than the record-breaking $11.5 billion that Shell announced for the second quarter when it got an average of just over $100 a barrel for oil. This is in comparison to the $93 that Shell received for each barrel of oil in the third quarter. The cost of natural gas, on the other hand, went up during the third quarter.
The majority of this bounty will be distributed to the company’s existing shareholders. Shell said that it intended to enhance its dividend to shareholders for the fourth quarter by 15 percent, which would bring the total amount to around 29 cents per share. In addition, the business said that it will repurchase its own shares in the amount of $4 billion, bringing the total amount of buybacks planned for this year to $18.5 billion, which represents 10 percent of the company’s share capital.
In trading that took place in London on Thursday, the price of a share of Shell rose by 4.5 percent.
The corporation said that it has not yet been required to pay the “windfall” tax on oil and gas revenues that was introduced earlier this year by the British government. This announcement may trigger a political storm in Britain.
Sinead Gorman, Shell’s chief financial officer, said on a teleconference with reporters that the business has not paid windfall taxes to Britain as of yet since the company’s earnings have been negatively impacted by the company’s capital expenditures on oil and gas projects in the British North Sea. She said that because of the expenditures on capital projects, they haven’t got more tax coming through in this quarter yet. Ms. Gorman said that the organization anticipated the tax to go effective somewhere in the first few months of the next year.
During the call, the chief executive of Shell, Ben van Beurden, expressed his acceptance of the possibility that greater taxes may be imposed on oil firms in order to partially support programs that assist needy people in paying their energy bills. He said, “I think we should be prepared and accept that our industry will be looked at for raising taxes in order to fund the transfers to those who need it most.”
Last month, Shell made the announcement that Mr. van Beurden would be stepping down as CEO at the end of the year and that Wael Sawan, a seasoned executive at the business, would take over in his place.
