Royal Dutch Shell said yesterday that net profit rose slightly in the third quarter of its financial year, when the Anglo-Dutch energy major was buffeted by lower oil prices.
Earnings after taxation added just one% to $5.9bn (€5.3bn) in the three months to the end of September from a year earlier, Shell said in a results statement.
Profit on a current cost-of-supplies (CCS) basis — stripping out changes to the value of oil and gas inventories — sank 15% to $4.8bn in the reporting period, it added.
That reflected lower prices for oil, gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG). Turnover was almost 12% lower at $81.2bn.
“This quarter we continued to deliver strong cash flow and earnings, despite sustained lower oil and gas prices, and chemicals margins,” said chief executive Ben van Beurden in the earnings release.
“Our earnings reflect the resilience of our market-facing businesses and their ability to capitalise on market conditions,” he added, but also sounded a note of caution over the “prevailing weak macroeconomic conditions and challenging outlook”.


Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters Corp, parent of Reuters News, reported higher-than-expected quarterly operating profit yesterday and said it would raise its dividend payout ratio and buy back more shares.
Chief executive Jim Smith said the company had spent just over half the $2bn it had set aside for acquisitions to expand its main divisions and would love to spend the rest.
Operating profit rose to $262mn, or 27 cents a share, in the third quarter, from $173mn or 12 cents a share a year ago.
Analysts, on average, expected profit of 19 cents a share, according to Refinitiv.
Thomson Reuters affirmed its 2019 and 2020 sales and earnings outlook.
It said it intended to increase its dividend payout ratio to 50% to 60% of free cash flow, from 40% to 50% previously.
The company, controlled by Canada’s Thomson family, also said its board had approved a new buyback worth $200mn of shares both this year and next.
Revenue rose 10% to $1.41bn in the quarter, slightly below estimates of $1.43bn.
So-called organic sales growth was 4%, matching the pace of the second quarter, driven by subscription sales to legal, corporate and other customers.
Its Toronto- and New York-listed shares dipped about 0.9%. They have each gained more than 30% in 2019.


Sanofi
Sanofi expressed confidence for the fourth quarter and confirmed its full-year objectives yesterday after posting lower third-quarter sales, hit by a fall in revenue at its primary care and vaccines businesses.
The French drug maker also warned that a new procurement scheme adopted in China to cut purchasing costs of drugs would lead to a decline in two of its key treatments in the country next year.
Over the first nine months of the year, vaccine sales rose 3.9% to €3.8bn ($4.24bn). Quarterly sales of Sanofi’s primary care unit, which includes diabetes and cardiovascular medications, were down 17.5% to €2.2bn, reflecting falling prices for diabetes products in the US, the world’s largest health market.
Its third-quarter net income edged up 0.2% to €2.4bn, above expectations.
Overall sales were down 1.1% to 9.5bn.


Repsol 
Spanish energy giant Repsol plans to buy and sell more assets in a drive to get stronger in a smaller number of markets, its CEO said yesterday, after weak energy prices prompted it to cut capital spending and core profits forecasts.
CEO Josu Jon Imaz said the company now expected capital spending (capex) for 2018-2020 to be 12.5-€13.5bn ($13.9-15.0bn), including 500mn euros on renewable energy assets.
That is down from €15bn previously.
Though weak energy prices dragged down Repsol’s third quarter adjusted net profit, it still beat market expectations thanks to downstream businesses such as refining and marketing.
Repsol trimmed its 2019 core earnings forecast to €7.5bn from 7.8bn previously, and also lowered its production forecasts for 2019 and 2020.
The oil and gas firm reported net income of €522mn in the three months to the end of September, down 11.2% on the same period last year.
Analysts had expected net income of €479mn, according to a poll provided by the company.
The downstream unit, which includes refining, marketing and liquefied petroleum gas businesses, reported a 10.7% rise in quarterly adjusted net income, helped by a rise in refining margins in Spain from the previous quarter.


BBVA
Spain’s BBVA posted a 31% drop in third-quarter profit, largely due to a one-off capital gain in the year ago period, and expects financial margins in its home market to remain under pressure due to low interest rates.
The underperformance in Spain and drop in profit overshadowed solid earnings growth in the bank’s Latin American business, weighing on its shares.
BBVA, like its larger domestic rival Santander, makes most of its profit overseas, in particular in Latin America.
The country’s second-biggest bank reported net profit of €1.23bn ($1.37bn) for the three months through September, above analysts’ average forecast of €1.14bn in a Reuters poll.
In the same quarter last year, BBVA booked net capital gains of 633mn from the sale of a 68% stake in BBVA Chile.
Without taking into account this extraordinary one-off, profit rose 6.1% in the quarter.
Overall, BBVA’s net interest income (NII), a measure of earnings on loan minus deposit costs, rose 4.1% to 4.49bn euros but was down 1.7% against the previous quarter.
Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast NII of €4.48bn.


Panasonic
Panasonic Corp yesterday reported a 12% drop in its second-quarter operating profit, hurt by the ongoing Sino-US trade war and its battery business with Tesla Inc staying in the red.
Still, the Japanese electronics company’s September-quarter earnings of ¥83.9bn ($772.06mn) was 33% higher than analysts’ average estimate polled by Refinitiv, thanks to its housing and home appliances businesses posting solid profits.
A year earlier, Panasonic, the exclusive battery cell supplier for new electric vehicles (EVs) made by Tesla, had earned ¥95.2bn.
“We are quickly ramping up battery production (at the Gigafactory joint venture with Tesla), but improvements in production efficiency have been delayed,” chief financial officer Hirokazu Umeda said at an earnings briefing yesterday.
But Umeda said the joint venture is still aiming to make start making profits at least on a monthly basis, by the end of the financial year on March 31. “Tesla posted profits in the latest earnings and that’s positive for us.”
The US electric carmaker surprised investors last week with a quarterly profit that sent its shares soaring.
Panasonic’s automotive business, which includes car batteries, recorded an operating loss of ¥12.7bn compared with a ¥7.1bn loss in the year-ago quarter.
The company maintained its profit forecast for the year through March at ¥300bn, compared with an average estimate of ¥293.94bn from 19 analysts.


Lloyds Banking Group
Britain’s Lloyds Banking Group dived into the red in the third quarter after setting aside more cash to compensate customers mis-sold the controversial insurance product PPI, it said yesterday.
The UK high-street giant, which received a vast bailout during the global financial crisis, said in a results statement that it made a loss after taxation of £238mn ($307mn, €276mn) in the three months to September.
That contrasted with net profit of about £1.4bn in the same period a year earlier.
The lender revealed that it took another £1.8bn hit to cover last-minute claims regarding a UK-wide practise of mis-selling payment protection insurance (PPI) over a number of years.
Lloyds was by far the worst affected British bank in the crisis — and the latest provisions take its total bill to more than £22bn.
That is almost half the sector’s total, which stands at in excess of £50bn.


Air France-KLM
Air France-KLM said slowing travel demand will hurt ticket sales in the rest of 2019, sending its shares tumbling as the airline group posted lower-than-expected quarterly earnings.
Unit revenue, which tracks airline takings in relation to flight capacity, fell 0.6% in the July-September quarter and is poised to decline further, the company said yesterday.
The group posted gains in passenger traffic and load factor — a measure of seats filled — but finance chief Frederic Gagey said trade tensions and a litany of economic and geopolitical problems had dampened demand and fares.
Air France-KLM’s operating profit fell 16% to €900mn ($1bn) in July-September, with net income down 53% at 366mn euros on a 2% gain in revenue to 7.7bn.
Capacity expanded 2.3% and traffic by 2.6%. Analysts had expected operating profit of 951mn and 631mn in net income, based on the company’s consensus poll.
Air France-KLM’s cargo load factor fell 3.4 points to 54.8%. The group posted a 0.4% increase in unit costs excluding fuel but said they would still come in between flat and down 1% this year.
The French carrier’s 2.1% profit margin for January-September was less than a quarter of KLM’s 8.5%. Another challenge will be to further expand the low-cost Transavia business, after striking a deal with Air France pilots’ unions to allow its expansion.


IAG
British Airways owner IAG said yesterday it had taken a hit from industrial action from pilots at the airline, knocking profits in its third quarter and reiterating a lower outlook for the year.
The group said that the action by pilots at BA, together with other disruption, resulted in a hit to operating profit of €155mn ($173.03mn) in the three months to September 30.
IAG posted third-quarter operating profit of €1.4bn ($1.56bn), in line with analyst consensus.
The group said it expects its 2019 operating profit before exceptional items to be €215mn lower than 2018, reiterating a September profit warning.
Analysts at RBC said that the pilot dispute could overshadow holiday trading at Christmas.


Samsung Electronics
The world’s largest smartphone and memory chip maker Samsung Electronics saw net profits slump by more than half in the third quarter, it said yesterday, hit by an enduring downturn in the global chip market.
Net profits in the three months to September were 6.29tn won ($5.40bn), it said in a statement — down 52% year-on-year.
“Earnings from the memory business slumped significantly year-on-year as memory chip prices continued its downward trend,” the company said.
The firm is the flagship subsidiary of the giant Samsung Group, by far the largest of the family-controlled conglomerates known as “chaebols” that dominate business in the world’s 11th-largest economy.
But in recent months it has been battered by falling chip prices as global supply increases.
Samsung also faces challenges from the US-China trade war and tough export restrictions imposed by Tokyo on key supplies as part of a dispute with Seoul over wartime forced labour. The South Korean tech titan leads the global smartphone market with a 23% share, trailed by Chinese competitors Huawei and Oppo, with Apple in fourth place, according to sales tracker IHS Markit.
The premium smartphone market has grown fiercely competitive and overall sales have cooled as a lack of major innovation has seen buyers waiting longer before upgrading to new models.
But Samsung said profits in its mobile division had been boosted by strong sales of the Galaxy Note 10 and its A series devices, along with bigger margins for mass-market models.
Operating profit plunged 55.7% to 7.8tn won in the third quarter, the firm said, while sales fell 5.3% to 62tn won.
Sberbank
Russia’s top bank Sberbank yesterday reported a 32% fall in third-quarter net profit, hurt by a foreign exchange loss due to the sale of Denizbank in Turkey.
The sale of Denizbank, once Sberbank’s largest unit outside Russia, was completed in July and has marked the end of its foreign expansion era, capped by western sanctions on Russia and lower returns in the banking industry worldwide.
Sberbank sold Denizbank to Emirates NBD Group for 170.7bn roubles ($2.7bn). Yesterday, Sberbank said it has faced a loss of 73.3bn roubles in the third quarter, mainly from foreign exchange, due to the sale.
Net profit fell to 156.1bn roubles ($2.45bn) in the quarter.
Excluding the sale of Denizbank, net profit rose 6.3% to 230.8bn roubles, the bank said.
The bank’s return on equity — a measure of profitability — excluding the Denizbank sale, stood at 22.4%, down from 24.3% a year ago.
The share of non performing loans at the end of the third quarter was 7.9%, largely unchanged from the end of June.


ING Groep
ING Groep NV reported third-quarter underlying pretax profit of €1.91bn ($2.13bn), slightly above analyst expectations but less than a year ago, as regulatory costs rose and the bank’s loan book shrank by a billion euros.
Analysts polled by Refinitiv had expected the largest Dutch financial services firm to report an underlying pre-tax profit of €1.88bn.
In the three months through September 30 a year ago, its underlying net profit was €2.12bn.
Costs rose for ING as it hired employees to combat money laundering, with 500 new recruits in the past quarter, and now such employees account for 3,500 of its 53,500 employees.
At this time a year ago, ING was fined €775mn for failing to spot money laundering being carried out by its customers.
ING’s operating expenses rose to €2.44bn in the quarter just ended, from €2.31bn a year ago.
Interest margin rose to 1.54% from 1.52%. ING noted that its lending to retail customers increased by €3bn, but that was outweighed as loans to wholesale customers dropped by €4.6bn.
Provisions for bad loans rose to €276mn in the third quarter, from €215mn a year ago.


PetroChina
PetroChina Co, Asia’s largest oil and gas producer, reported a sharp fall in third-quarter profit on Wednesday, dragged down by weaker global energy prices and slowing growth in its domestic gas market.
Net profit for the July to September quarter was 8.83bn yuan ($1.25bn), down 58.4% compared with the same period a year ago and the weakest quarterly results this year, according to a company filing with Hong Kong stock exchange.
For the first nine months of 2019, net income fell 23.4% from a year earlier to 37.25bn yuan, the state firm said.
Revenue for the quarter edged up 1.8% from a year ago to 618.14bn yuan.
For the first nine months, revenue rose 5.1% to 1.81tn yuan.
PetroChina also said its natural gas import business recorded a 21.76bn yuan net loss during the January-September period, deepening from a 19.96bn loss recorded for the same period in 2018 due to a weaker Chinese currency and higher import cost.
The firm imported a total of 15.7bn cubic meters of gas in the third quarter, flat from the previous quarter, Wang added.


ANZ
Australia’s ANZ announced a drop in bottom-line profits yesterday following misconduct charges and lower interest rates in what the bank said was a “challenging” 12 months.
Statutory profit after tax was down seven% to A$5.95bn ($4.1bn) in the full year to September 30, the bank said. Cash profits stayed steady at A$6.47bn over the same period.
ANZ, along with Australia’s other main banks, is still counting the costs of a scathing royal commission into the industry that unearthed widespread misconduct, including mortgage fraud and unethical financial and life insurance advice.
The bank said it had returned more than Aus$100mn to affected customers this financial year.
Record low interest rates around the world had also hit margins, said ANZ, which has about $110bn in deposits worldwide.


Fiat Chrysler
Fiat Chrysler yesterday posted higher than expected operating earnings for the third quarter, lifted by its North-American business, as the carmaker heads to a merger with French rival PSA.
Fiat Chrysler (FCA) and PSA, the owner of brands such as Peugeot, Citroen and Opel, said earlier yesterday they planned to join forces through a 50-50 share swap to create the world’s fourth-largest automaker.
FCA’s adjusted earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) came in at €1.96bn ($2.18bn), ahead of the 1.89bn euro average forecast from analysts polled by Reutrers.
The results, which FCA described as built on “record” North American profitability, led the automaker to reiterate its full-year guidance of an adjusted EBIT over €6.7bn.
Margins on adjusted EBIT in FCA’s North America region rose 40 basis points year on year to 10.6%. FCA added it expected a further improvement of its financial performance in 2020.


Facebook 
Facebook on Wednesday reported that its quarterly profit grew along with its user base as it grapples with concerns ranging from political ads to cryptocurrency.
The leading social network said its profit topped $6bn on revenue that climbed 28% to $17.4bn in the quarter that ended on September 30.
Meanwhile, the number of active monthly users increased eight% from a year ago to 2.45bn.
The California-based company said that costs rose 32% in the quarter, which ended with a headcount of 43,030 employees, an increase of 28% from the same quarter last year.
Facebook has been beefing up teams devoted to privacy and security to protect people’s data and thwart the kind of voter manipulation campaigns seen during the US election three years ago.
The earnings release came just hours after Facebook announced it took down accounts linked to a Russian ally of President Vladimir Putin seeking to spread disinformation in eight African countries.


Apple
Apple on Wednesday reported stronger-than-expected profits for the past quarter, fuelled by growth in digital services and wearables that helped offset slower iPhone sales.
Profit in the quarter ending in September dipped 4% from a year ago to $13.7bn while revenues edged up two% to $64bn.
Apple, set to launch a new streaming television service this week, saw strong revenue gains in its services segment, which includes music, digital payments and software, and in its segment for wearables and accessories that includes its Home Pod, Apple Watch and ear buds.
Chief executive Tim Cook said Apple saw its best-ever revenue gains for the fiscal fourth quarter period.
Apple, which has ceased reporting unit sales of iPhones, said revenue from its smartphones fell 9% in the quarter to $33.4bn.
Services accounted for 20% of revenues, according to chief financial officer Luca Maestri, with 18% growth in the segment to $12.5bn.
The wearables and accessories category produced revenue growth of 54% to $6.5bn, led by gains in sales of Apple Watch and the wearable Air Pods.
Apple saw modest sales declines in its “greater China” region and in Europe and Japan, but this was offset by gains in North America and elsewhere in Asia.
Apple has been seeking to shift its revenue mix amid a slumping smartphone market and growing competition in the segment.
The company, which recently launched a lineup of iPhone 11 handsets, said it would allow customers to purchase the devices interest-free with its Apple Card and pay over 24 months.
Apple said it ended the quarter with some $260bn cash on hand.
The report comes two days ahead of the launch of Apple TV+, a new streaming service which could challenge Netflix and will compete against an array of others including Disney+ and HBO Max.