British energy giant Shell said on Thursday that its net profit tripled to $10.8bn in the second quarter as the Middle East war sent oil prices soaring.
Profit after tax for the April-June period compared with $3.6bn in the second quarter of 2025, Shell said in an earnings statement. Energy majors are profiting also from their trades as oil and gas futures swing between big gains and losses on the war's latest headlines.
By Thursday, crude futures remained far above pre-war levels.
"Shell's operational performance enabled very strong results during another quarter of severe disruption in global energy markets," said chief executive Wael Sawan.
Oil prices traded far higher in the second quarter of 2026 compared with the equivalent period one year earlier as the US-Iran war disrupted global supplies.
Shell's revenue jumped 45% to $96.4bn in the second quarter year-on-year.
It noted, however, that "higher realised prices" were "partly offset by lower volumes, mainly due to the impact of the Middle East conflict".
Shell said that its gas production had slumped in the April-June period to 631,000 barrels of oil equivalent daily from 909,000 barrels per day in the first quarter.
Shell added on Thursday that its latest share buyback would return $3bn to shareholders.
Following the company update, Shell's share price rose 1.6% in early trading on London's top-tier FTSE 100 index, which was up 0.6 % overall.
"Records for both upstream production in Brazil and refinery utilisation have helped counter hindered Middle East output," noted Keith Bowman, equity analyst at Interactive Investor.
The huge earnings and returns to shareholders once again prompted strong reaction from NGOs, as they link fossil fuel companies to severe climate events.
French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies last week reported that its net profit doubled in the second quarter to $5.4bn.
Deutsche Bahn
State-owned German railway operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) announced on Thursday its first profitable half-year since 2019, and said it expected to remain in the black for the full year.
The company made €900mn ($1.03bn) more than last year thanks to savings including redundancies, resulting in a net profit of €147mn for the first six months of 2026, it said in a statement.Rising passenger numbers also boosted revenue by almost 2% to €13.6bn, helped by the war in the Middle East prompting people to give up "their cars for trains due to rising fuel prices", DB spokesperson Achim Stauss said.
As a result, DB "also expects to be in the black for the full 2026 financial year" despite risks related to its cargo division, whose result is largely dependent on the wider economy.
Excluding its logistics arm Schenker, which the group sold in 2025 to shore up its finances, crisis-hit DB had not seen a profitable half-year period since 2019.
Despite the positive financial news, DB continues to struggle to improve its dismal punctuality, a cause of frequent customer complaints.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz fired his transport minister Patrick Schnieder on Wednesday after concluding he could not turn the situation around.In the first half of this year only 59% of long-distance trains arrived on time, four percentage points fewer than last year.
The figure does not include trains that are cancelled.
Company boss Evelyn Palla said that while the profit was an "important milestone, I will only be happy when people are satisfied with the quality of the everyday rail network".
Palla took over at the helm in September after her predecessor's dismissal and has warned travellers it will take years for the operator to tackle deteriorated infrastructure and improve services.In the first half of the year, DB's gross investments rose by 18% year-on-year to €8.7bn.
Adidas
German sportswear maker Adidas missed profit expectations on Thursday after it reported results weighed by the costs of World Cup marketing, putting its shares on track for their largest ever one-day decline.
Core profit came in at €574mn ($657mn) for the three months to the end of June, Adidas said, higher than last year but about 8% below expectations when compared to a poll of analysts by financial platform FactSet.
Adidas spent over €200mn more on marketing than this time last year as it developed a World Cup campaign that brought in footballing stars like Lionel Messi, Lamine Yamal and Jude Bellingham — bringing total marketing outlays to almost €1bn for the quarter.Speaking on an earnings call, Adidas' outgoing finance boss Harm Ohlmeyer said the money spent would pay off in the long-run.
The company wanted not just "to win the World Cup commercially, but we also want to invest in that platform, to pay for (the) future, not just for the North American, but for the Latin American market, for the brand," he said.
Higher transport costs and US tariffs also weighed on the result, the maker of Gazelle and Samba trainers said.Adidas also took in about €1.5bn of World Cup-linked sales since the end of 2025, it said, selling four times as many football jerseys and twice as many balls as during the last event.Mexico shirts sold best, Adidas said, followed by those of Germany.
Overall sales in the second quarter rose 13% to €6.74bn.Adidas slightly raised its guidance for the year, saying it sees sales growth of between nine and 10%, up from a previous forecast of high single-digit growth on last year's sales of €24.8bn.
It kept its core profit target of €2.3bn
Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce raised its full-year outlook far beyond market expectations on Thursday following a 46% jump in first-half operating profit, sending its shares more than 5% higher.
Rolls, whose Trent XWB-97 engines powered the ultra-long-range Airbus A350 that flew this week from Australia to France, improved the profitability of all of its divisions: civil aerospace, defence and power systems.
Its CEO Tufan Erginbilgic said his transformation of the British engineering company continued to deliver, with significant operational and strategic progress in the period.
"In Civil Aerospace, where we continued to improve our aftermarket profitability, we have also effectively eliminated aircraft on ground, providing a significant operational benefit to our customers," he said in a statement.
Rolls said it now expected to make £4.7bn to £4.9bn in underlying operating profit.
It had previously forecast £4.0bn to £4.2bn and analysts were expecting £4.2bn before Thursday's update.
In civil aerospace, Rolls increased its margin to 25.3%, from 24.9%, driven by operational improvements in its business maintaining and servicing its engines and more profitable contracts with its airline customers.
In its power systems business, Rolls said it was seeing increased demand led by data centres, both for back-up and as the main power source.
Erginbilgic said the latter offered greater opportunities for aftermarket revenue.
The outlook in defence was also bright, underpinned by Britain's 10-year investment plan, Rolls said."This performance is driven both by strong sales, 11% above consensus, (...) but also meaningful margin uplift across all divisions," said analysts at Jefferies, adding it was an "exceptional" first-half.
Rolls reported £2.5bn ($3.34bn) in underlying operating profit for the first half, a rise of 46%, while free cash flow increased to £2.0bn.
BMW
Net profit at premium carmaker BMW fell over a third in the second quarter, the firm said Thursday as it prepares to cut almost 10 % of its German workforce.
Net income in the three months to the end of June came in at €1.2bn ($1.4bn), BMW said, a fall of almost 35% on this time last year.
That was BMW's lowest quarterly profit since late 2024 when faulty brakes fitted to vehicles ended up costing the carmaker hundreds of millions of euros.
Challenging conditions in China — where a sluggish economy and cutthroat competition have hit automakers — drove the result, BMW said.
Even as vehicle deliveries rose in Europe and the US, they plunged 30.2% in China over the quarter."Competition in the global automotive market has sharpened noticeably," BMW finance boss Walter Mertl said, adding that the company would let an unspecified number of people go to bring costs down.
"We are intensifying and accelerating our efficiency measures," he said.
"Our goal is to reduce complexity and establish a sustainably lower cost base."
A BMW source told AFP on Wednesday that it would offer severance to almost half its German employees with a view to cutting about 8,000 jobs by the end of 2027.
BMW has roughly 85,000 permanent employees in its home country.Speaking on a press call, BMW CEO Milan Nedeljkovic said the company was preparing for Chinese competitors to arrive in Europe even if the impact on BMW's continental sales had been limited so far.
"We are of course seeing rising sales from Chinese competitors in Europe," he said.
"We need to see how the market develops in future and are preparing ourselves." Other German carmakers have also looked to cut overheads as collapsing sales in China have started to look less like a blip and more like a new normal at the same time as Chinese car exports rise.
BMW confirmed its adjusted guidance for the year, saying it expects profit to fall over 10% in 2026.
BAE Systems
BAE Systems raised its 2026 outlook on Thursday, continuing to benefit from strong demand as its biggest customer, the US, ramps up munitions output and Britain pushes ahead with submarine and fighter jet programmes."
In this heightened threat environment, our products and services remain in high demand," said BAE CEO Charles Woodburn.BAE, which provides the US with combat vehicles, electronic warfare systems and space capabilities, has seen its order book almost double since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Many western countries have pledged to lift their military budgets, while the Iran war means US and Middle East customers are also looking at new orders.
BAE's shares, which have rocketed 260% over the last five years and 18% in the year to date, were up 1% in early deals after it said it expected underlying operating profit to rise by 10% to 12% this year, up from its previous 9% to 11% forecast."
BAE Systems has once again demonstrated why it remains one of the standout names in the European defence sector," said Quilter Cheviot analyst Matt Dorset."
The upgraded guidance reflects both the strength of execution and the structural tailwinds supporting the sector."
For the first six months of the year, BAE posted operating profit of £1.70bn, beating an analyst consensus of £1.66bn and up 11% on the year earlier.
Stellantis
Fiat and Jeep maker Stellantis said on Thursday it had returned to profit in first quarter of 2026 after a dramatic loss in the same period last year.
The US-French-Italian giant said in a statement it had posted a net profit of €293mn ($335mn) from March to June, compared with a loss of €1.9bn a year earlier.
However, traders appeared unimpressed and shares in the group fell almost 6% in early dealing on the Paris exchange."The second quarter was marked by continued progress, led by North America and supported by important contributions from all other regions," said CEO Antonio Filosa.
"We improved performance across our key financial metrics," he said, singling out gains in net revenue and operating income among others.The group — which comprises 14 brands including Fiat, Opel, Citroen, Peugeot and Jeep — reported sales of €43.5bn for March to June, up 13% year-on-year.
And it estimated the net impact of tariffs would come in between €1bn and €1.2bn this year.
Filosa, brought in last year to put the world's fourth largest automaker on stronger financial ground, unveiled a strategic plan in May aimed at a turnaround following huge losses in the 2025 financial year.
The five-year plan, primarily focused on North America, will see €60bn of investment combined with capacity cuts in Europe.
Air France-KLM
Air France-KLM said on Thursday its net profit had plunged by 71% in the second quarter due to high fuel costs triggered by the war in the Middle East.
The Franco-Dutch carrier said its net profit stood at €190mn ($217mn).
The group's three airlines, Air France and Dutch carriers KLM and Transavia, saw their fuel bill rising by more than €800mn in the quarter compared with the same period in 2025."As expected, the sharp increase in fuel prices significantly impacted our results during the second quarter.
Thanks to agile pricing and cost discipline, we were largely able to mitigate this strong headwind," group CEO Benjamin Smith said.
Meta
Facebook-parent Meta reported profits on Wednesday that fell short of Wall Street expectations, as the cost of staying in the race to deploy artificial intelligence — along with hefty legal and severance charges — hurt its bottom line.
The social media giant said net income dropped 14% from a year earlier to $15.8bn.
Revenue, however, climbed 28% to $60.8bn, beating estimates and underscoring the continued strength of its advertising business.
The results contrasted with those of Microsoft, another tech giant that has faced investor doubts but beat analyst expectations on Wednesday, driven by its cloud and artificial intelligence businesses.
At Meta, the profit decline was driven largely by one-time items, including $2.4bn in charges tied to legal proceedings and $1.2bn in severance from a round of layoffs in May.
Meta has been fighting court and regulatory battles around the world, including one in which a California jury in March ordered Meta and Google to pay $6mn to a 20-year-old woman who said the platforms had addicted her as a child.
The decision was a first-of-its-kind verdict that could be echoed in thousands of similar cases against Meta still pending.Meta reaffirmed that it would keep spending heavily on the data centers and chips underpinning its AI effort, telling investors it now expects capital expenditures of $130bn to $145bn this year — nearly double what it spent in 2025 and slightly higher than its last forecast."
AI is accelerating our core business today, powering our next generation of products, and opening the door to entirely new enterprise opportunities," chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.
The new opportunities referred to Meta's plan to launch a cloud computing business that would rent out its vast computing power to outside customers.
"We have quite a number of offers at a meaningful premium over what we paid for the (computing power)," Zuckerberg said on a call to analysts after the earnings report.
This would offer a new revenue stream, echoing a strategy Elon Musk's SpaceX has used to help finance its own AI infrastructure.
Meta's virtual reality division, Reality Labs, remained deep in the red, posting an operating loss of $4.6bn in the quarter.
The unit has bled tens of billions of dollars, and Meta has increasingly shifted its hardware focus toward AI-powered smart glasses, a promising consumer release outside social media.
Unusually for a big tech company, Meta's AI spending spree has seen its cash pile wind down, with free cash flow falling to $784mn from $8.5bn a year earlier.
A similar AI-related cash burn spooked Wall Street last week when Google reported its latest earnings.
Microsoft
Microsoft beat analysts' expectations in its latest quarterly report, saying on Wednesday that the results were partly driven by its cloud and artificial intelligence divisions.
The tech giant reported $90bn in revenue and $35.8bn in net income in the last quarter of its fiscal year which ended in June, potentially alleviating concerns from investors and analysts about whether its investments in AI are paying off.
Its AI-powered business productivity tool, called Copilot, also has over 30mn paid users which shows "confidence" from customers as they use Microsoft to "power their AI transformation," CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement.
Microsoft also saw a $3.2bn gain from its investment in Anthropic, the company said.Its investments in OpenAI boosted Microsoft's net profit by $480mn in its fourth quarter and $4.9bn for its full fiscal year, the company added.Major tech companies in the US have been spending billions to build out AI infrastructure and develop increasingly more advanced AI models.
Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta are collectively on track to pour roughly $700bn into AI data centers, chips and computing infrastructure this year alone.
In June, Google parent company Alphabet announced it would raise up to $80bn in stock to fund its AI efforts, with Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway committing $10bn.
Investors and analysts will be looking for clues about Microsoft's ongoing plans to pour cash into AI projects during a call with analysts later on Wednesday.
Airbus
Airbus has said its net profit soared 47% in the first half of the year thanks to increased delivery of aircraft as well as higher sales by its defence unit.
Net profit came in at €2.2bn ($2.5bn), while revenues rose 12% year-on-year to €33.2bn."Our good first-half results mainly reflect the higher level of commercial aircraft deliveries and strong performance in Defence and Space, against the backdrop of a complex and fast-changing environment,"
Airbus chief executive Guillaume Faury said in a statement.
The company delivered 351 commercial aircraft in the first half of the year, up from 306 in the first six months of 2025.
Airbus receives the bulk of payments for an aircraft when it delivers them to clients, making it a critical indicator of overall performance.
The company has been struggling to pick up the pace of production after scaling it back during the Covid pandemic, primarily due to problems with suppliers.
Meanwhile the company said revenues at Airbus Defence and Space increased 17% year-on-year to €5.8bn, with higher volumes across all its business lines.
Samsung Electronics
South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics posted on Thursday a massive 19-fold jump in second-quarter operating profit from last year, buoyed by frenzied demand for memory chips used in AI data centres.
Samsung and other leading memory chipmakers have seen profits skyrocket in 2026, but their share prices have proven volatile as investors question whether the artificial intelligence boom is over-hyped.
April-June operating profit came to 89.5tn won ($62bn) — up more than 1,800% on-year, Samsung said.
The company posted revenue of 171.5tn won, up 130% from a year earlier. Net profit soared nearly 1,300% on-year to 71.6tn won.
The bumper figures met market expectations, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said, citing its own financial data firm.
On Wednesday South Korean stocks suffered a sharp sell-off as traders unwound AI-driven bets, fretting whether lofty profit expectations are realistic.Samsung fell more than 12%, while its main domestic rival SK Hynix tumbled nearly 20% after 14% losses the day before — halving its value from record highs last month.
SK Hynix's second-quarter operating profit and revenue posted on Wednesday came in below expectations, despite being massively higher than a year ago.
Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and US firm Micron are the world's biggest manufacturers of advanced high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, used in AI processors to generate chatbot responses and realistic images.
Samsung said in a statement that its memory business "achieved another record-breaking quarter" with a primary focus on server products.
The company said it expects robust server demand in 2026's second half, driven by infrastructure spending and the wider adoption of agentic AI — which autonomously performs real-life tasks for users.
Chief financial officer Park Soon-cheol told an earnings call the company expects a global memory chip shortage to deepen in 2027 and remain tight through 2028.
Samsung said its first chip plant in Taylor, Texas, remains on track to begin operations this year.
Construction of a second facility is slated for later in 2026, with mass production targeted for 2030.
AI expansion has also pushed up prices and shipments of conventional NAND and DRAM memory chips to Samsung's advantage, analysts say.
"Samsung is leveraging its strong position in memory to aggressively capture share across most of its business units," MS Hwang, an analyst at market research firm Counterpoint, told AFP.
Over the weekend, Samsung announced it would pursue a "strategic collaboration" for the "supply of industry-leading memory solutions, including HBM" — supporting US chipmaker Broadcom's next-generation AI accelerators.
The partnership is estimated to exceed $200bn over the next five years through 2030.
Rumours that Samsung could pursue a US listing after a $26.5bn offering by SK Hynix were dismissed by Park, who said the company has "no immediate need" to raise capital given its strong cash generation.