Members of media chat before the start of a press conference by Aramco at the Plaza Conference Center in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia November 3, 2019.
Hamad I Mohammed | Reuters
Saudi state oil giant Aramco reported $29.1 billion in net profit for the second quarter, a dip of just over 3% from the same period last year as crude production volumes remained low.
Net income from the first half of the financial year was $56.3 billion, down from $62 billion during the same period last year. The firm also posted free cash flow for the second quarter of $19 billion compared to $23.2 billion one year prior.
Aramco reaffirmed its second-quarter base dividend of $20.3 billion, and declared a performance-linked dividend of $10.8 billion to be paid in the third quarter. The largest oil company in the world expects to declare total dividends of $124.2 billion in 2024, its earnings release said.
“We have delivered market-leading performance once again, with strong earnings and cash flows in the first half of the year,” Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said in the company’s press statement.
“Leveraging these strong earnings, we continued to deliver a base dividend that is sustainable and progressive, and a performance-linked dividend that shares the upside with our shareholders.”
Aramco’s stock price was trading 1.31% higher just after the opening of the Tadawul, the Saudi stock exchange, at 10:20 a.m. local time.
Many forecasters expected the oil company’s revenue to be largely flat. Analysts at Riyadh-based brokerage firm Al Rajhi Capital wrote in a July 22 report that they “anticipate Saudi Aramco’s Q2 2024 revenue to be almost flat year-on-year, owing to lower production volumes almost offset by higher Brent prices compared to Q2 2023.”
Lasting production cuts
Saudi Arabia delivered an output of 8.99 million barrels per day in the second quarter, according to a July OPEC report citing secondary sources.
The kingdom’s gross domestic product growth has contracted for four consecutive quarters, which economists say is largely due to the oil production cuts. The overall decline in the second quarter was led by an 8.5% drop in Saudi Arabia’s oil sector, the country’s General Authority for Statistics reported.
In early June, OPEC+, the alliance of OPEC and non-OPEC producers, agreed to extend their joint oil output cuts into 2025 in an effort to prop up prices amid lackluster demand growth. The supply cuts have been in place for nearly two years.
Despite this, international benchmark Brent Crude in the last month slid from trading in the mid $80-range to the mid-$70 range, both of which are lower than what several OPEC member states require to keep their budgets balanced. Saudi Arabia needs Brent at $96 per barrel to balance its budget, according to estimates from the International Monetary Fund.
In a press call with journalists, Nasser expressed optimism about oil demand growth and brushed off concerns about a potential economic downturn, following a brutal day for markets worldwide that led to a global stock market meltdown.
“The market is reading too much into the short term responses [to] the news coming from the U.S. with regard to the number of jobs,” Nasser said, referring to the recently published U.S. nonfarm payroll report for July that revealed weaker-than-expected job growth.
“I think the market, in my view, is overreacting, and the fundamentals do not support the drop in prices that we are witnessing today.”
The Aramco CEO also said he expects oil demand to grow in the second half of 2024, forecasting a global demand figure of 104.7 million barrels per day for the year.
Global oil demand, including biofuels, averaged just over 102 million barrels per day in 2023, according to the International Energy Agency.
