Royal Dutch Shell PLC yesterday reported a 37 percent drop in second-quarter profits and said it would cut 6,500 jobs this year and reduce spending further to deal with an extended period of lower oil prices.
The Anglo-Dutch oil and gas company also said it was planning more asset disposals alongside its proposed US$70 billion acquisition of BG Group, bringing total asset sales between last year and 2018 to US$50 billion.
Shell reported net income of US$3.835 billion, down from US$6.13 billion the previous year and US$3.25 billion the previous quarter.
Photo: AP
The result compared with expectations of US$3.18 billion according to an analyst consensus provided by the company.
Shell said it anticipated 6,500 staff and direct contractor reductions this year from a total of nearly 100,000 employees.
The company said it would reduce this year’s capital investment to US$30 billion, down by 20 percent from the previous year as it expects the downturn in oil prices to last for several years.
Shell maintained its dividend at US$0.47 per share.
The drop in earnings is against a backdrop of lower oil prices, which averaged US$60 a barrel in the second quarter, up about US$5 a barrel from the previous quarter, but down from US$110 a barrel the previous year.
A sharp decline of about 75 percent in revenue from oil production was once again offset by refining and trading, where earnings more than doubled in the second quarter from the previous year.
The company said its operating costs were expected to fall by US$4 billion, or about 10 percent, this year as part of a broad efficiency drive to boost its balance sheet.
Shell said it expects US$30 billion of asset sales between next year and 2018, on top of a total of US$20 billion in disposals for last year and this year combined.
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
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained