Saudi Arabian Oil Co (Aramco) posted a 12 percent decline in profit as the world’s biggest oil exporter reported first-half results for the first time, ahead of a potentially record-breaking share sale.
Net income was US$46.9 billion, down from US$52.9 billion a year earlier, state-owned Aramco said yesterday.
The results, reflecting a decline in crude prices and an increase in costs, are being closely watched as the company prepares for an initial public offering (IPO) next year, or in 2021.
“Despite lower oil prices during the first half of 2019, we continued to deliver solid earnings and strong free cash flow underpinned by our consistent operational performance,” chief executive officer Amin Nasser said in a statement.
The average selling price for Aramco’s crude fell to US$66 a barrel in the period from US$69 a year earlier.
Total hydrocarbon production held steady at 13.2 million barrels of oil equivalent a day, of which 10 million barrels was crude. The company is expanding its Marjan and Berri offshore fields to add capacity.
Aramco paid dividends of US$46.4 billion to shareholders in the first half, up from US$32 billion a year earlier. That included an additional US$20 billion to the Saudi Arabian government as a special payout.
Saudi Arabia announced plans for an IPO of Aramco three years ago, but the IPO was delayed to allow the company to acquire chemicals giant Saudi Basic Industries Corp (SABIC). Damman, Saudi Arabia-based Aramco sold bonds to buy a 70 percent stake in SABIC from the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund.
Aramco is eager to bolster its downstream business, including through acquisitions at home and abroad. Yesterday, it continued its push into Asian oil refining with an agreement to buy a 20 percent stake in Reliance Industries Ltd’s oil-to-chemicals division at an enterprise value of US$75 billion.
The deal, announced by Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani at the company’s annual general meeting in Mumbai, India, is the biggest foreign investment in the company’s history and covers all of Reliance’s refining and petrochemical operations, including the Jamnagar refinery, the world’s biggest.
Aramco would also supply the refinery with 500,000 barrels of oil a day on a long-term basis, Ambani said.
The deal is subject to due diligence, definitive agreements and regulatory and other approvals, Ambani added.
Aramco has been targeting refining deals in India since at least last year, when Nasser told reporters that the firm wanted to double capacity to produce gasoline and other fuels.
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