Chevron Corp slashed US$5 billion from its investment budget and shut down its share buyback program on Friday as the crude price plunge continued to savage budgets of oil industry powerhouses.
The news came after another US oil leader, ConocoPhillips Inc announced on Thursday its second sharp reduction in exploration spending in two months as oil prices showed no sign of rebounding.
Anglo-Dutch giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC unveiled plans to slash spending by more than US$15 billion over the next three years after posting lower annual profits on tumbling oil prices.
Chevron said it would spend US$35 billion on exploration and production projects, 13 percent less than last year, in response to the nearly 60 percent fall in oil prices since the middle of last year due to a global glut.
In addition, after spending US$5 billion on share repurchases last year — a program that shores up the company’s share price, benefiting stockholders — chief financial officer Patricia Yarrington said the program would be frozen this year.
“Given the change in market conditions, we are suspending our share repurchase program for 2015,” she announced as the company presented its fourth-quarter earnings.
The company turned in its poorest quarter, profits-wise, since 2009, “largely due to the sharp decline in crude oil prices,” chairman and chief executive John Watson said.
Revenues for the three months dropped 17.9 percent from a year earlier to US$42.1 billion, and net income sank 30 percent to US$3.5 billion.
The company produced the same amount of oil as it did a year ago — an average of 2.58 million barrels per day in the quarter — but the average sales price was US$66 per barrel, compared with US$90 a year ago.
Watson said earnings were helped by gains in refining operations.
“Improved downstream results and higher gains on asset sales related to our divestment program partially offset the effect of lower crude prices,” he said in a statement.
Chevron shares took a small hit from the news, falling 0.8 percent in afternoon trade to US$102.16.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six