Tag Archives: iab-sales

Business

Shell posts profit of nearly $40 billion and announces $4 billion in buybacks

Leave a comment


Hong Kong/London
CNN
 — 

Shell made a record profit of almost $40 billion in 2022, more than double what it raked in the previous year after oil and gas prices soared following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Europe’s largest oil company by revenue reported adjusted full-year earnings of $39.9 billion on Thursday — more than double the $19.3 billion it posted in 2021 — driven by a strong performance in its gas trading business. The company’s stock was up 1.7% in London.

The company reported $9.8 billion in profit in the fourth quarter. Just over 40% of Shell’s full-year earnings came from its integrated gas business, which includes liquified natural gas trading operations.

Shell CEO Wael Sawan said the results “demonstrate the strength of Shell’s differentiated portfolio, as well as our capacity to deliver vital energy to our customers in a volatile world.”

The earnings are the latest in a series of record-setting results by the world’s biggest energy companies, which have enjoyed bumper profits off the back of soaring oil and gas prices.

ExxonMobil this week posted record full-year earnings of $59.1 billion. Last month, Chevron

(CVX) reported a record full-year profit of $36.5 billion.

That has led to renewed calls for higher taxation. Governments in the European Union and the United Kingdom have already imposed windfall taxes on oil company profits, with the proceeds used to help households struggling with rising energy bills.

Shell said it expected to pay an additional $2.3 billion in tax related to the EU windfall tax and the UK energy profits levy. The company paid $13 billion in tax globally in 2022.

Shell

(RDSA) also announced another $4 billion share buyback program and confirmed it would lift its dividend per share by 15% for the fourth quarter.

— This is a developing story and will be updated.

Read original article here

Business

GM shares surge after record earnings and new stake in lithium company

Leave a comment


New York
CNN
 — 

General Motors reported a much stronger than expected fourth-quarter profit, lifting full-year results to record levels for the second straight year.

The largest US automaker also said Tuesday it is buying a $650 million equity stake in Lithium Americas, which will give it access to the raw material needed to build batteries to power 1 million electric vehicles a year in the first phase of production.

For the quarter, GM earned adjusted earnings of $3 billion, or $2.12 a share, up from $1.35 a share a year earlier and far better than forecasts of $1.69 a share from analysts surveyed by Refinitiv. That lifted full-year adjusted income to $11 billion, up from the $10.4 billion it earned in 2021, which had been its previous record.

The company said it expects strong earnings in 2023, though it expects it to slip a bit from the just posted levels, coming in at between $8.7 billion to $10.1 billion. But company CFO Paul Jacobson said its automotive business is expected to remain strong, with much of the decline likely to be at GM Financial. That’s due to the hit it will take from higher interest rates and the sinking value of used cars, as well as the higher interest rates resulting in an accounting hit to pension earnings.

“Actually that [guidance] is a strong statement about where we see things going, stronger than others” he told journalists on a call Tuesday.

Jacobson told journalists that GM does not expect to follow Tesla and Ford in cutting the prices for its electric vehicles.

“I don’t think there’s any surprise there’s increasing competition in the EV space,” he said. “Our customers are saying we’re priced well based on the demand that we’re seeing.”

The company’s investment in Lithium Americas is part of the company’s efforts to lock-up the supply of raw materials it will need to convert from traditional gasoline powered cars to electric vehicles. The Lithium Americas deal will not supply any lithium to the company until 2026, but Jacobson told media that “we’ve already achieved all the lithium we need through 2025.”

GM expects to build 70,000 EVs this year, a small fraction of its overall vehicle output. It sold 5.9 million vehicles in 2022, down about 6% from 2021 due to the shortage of parts needed to build all the vehicles for which there was demand.

“We continue to face some supply chain and logistics issues, but overall, things remain trending in the right direction,” said Jacobson.

But the company expects to be rapidly increasing its EV supply and offerings, with a new battery plant that opened last year, two more under construction and a fourth planned soon. GM has a target to build 400,000 EVs through the middle of 2024, and 1 million annually by 2025.

CEO Mary Barra predicted there will be more deals like the Lithium Americas one to be announced soon.

“We continue to pursue strategic supply agreements and partnerships to further secure our long-term needs,” she told investors.

GM said it will reduce its staff in 2023, part of its effort to cut $2 billion in costs over the next two years. But unlike a number of major companies that have announced layoffs in recent months, company officials stressed GM would not be shrinking through layoffs. Instead the reduction would be handled through attrition.

GM did not disclose how many jobs might be trimmed, with Jacobson saying the company would end this year “slightly lower” in headcount.

GM has 167,000 employees globally, with 124,000 in North America. That includes more than 42,000 members of the United Auto Workers union. Those workers will get profit sharing bonuses of an average of $12,750 for the year, up nearly 25% from the $10,250 they received a year earlier.

Shares of GM

(GM) soared more than 5% in pre-market trading on the results.

This story is developing and will be updated.

Read original article here

Business

GM is the top car seller in America, retaking the title from Toyota

Leave a comment


New York
CNN
 — 

One year after losing the title it held for nearly a century as the top car seller in America, General Motors is back on top.

GM

(GM) reported Wednesday US sales of 2.3 million vehicles. Strong fourth quarter sales, up 41% from a year ago, allowed it to end the year with sales up nearly 3% from the 2.2 million US vehicles it sold in 2021, when it suffered a 13% decline.

Meanwhile Toyota

(TM), which had captured the top sales spot in 2021, had its full-year sales fall nearly 10% to 2.1 million, despite posting a 13% increase in fourth quarter sales.

In each of the last two years, industry-wide auto sales were limited by a shortage of parts, primarily computer chips, needed to build the cars and trucks consumers wanted. Total US new vehicle sales are expected to be down to just less than 14 million vehicles when the final sales results are reported across the industry later this week.

That would be the lowest sales total since the country was just climbing out of the Great Recession more than a decade go. Sales bottomed out at 10.5 million in 2009, the year GM and Chrysler declared bankruptcy and received federal bailouts, and had only climbed back to 12.7 million by 2011, the last year the industry sales fell below 14 million.

Sales had been 17 million in 2019, the year before the pandemic upended both the economy and supply chains.

Most forecasts say the supply chain problems are getting better, and that should allow automakers to increase production in 2023. They point to the better sales that took place in the fourth quarter than earlier in the year as a proof of that, even with higher car prices and rising interest rates making it more expensive for buyers than in the past.

That in turn has led them to forecast a modest increase in sales this year to just north of 14 million vehicles once again.

But many experts caution that their forecast of increased sales depend on the US economy not falling into recession, and instead simply experiencing slower growth. And uncertainty about what will happen to the economy is making the outlook for car sales far more uncertain than in years previous, they say.

“I’ve been forecasting the car market for decades now. This next year is the most challenging,” said Charlie Chesbrough, chief economist for Cox Automotive. “Normally we an idea which way it is headed. But this year it could be up or down.”

There are a number of factors supporting new car sales in the coming year, even if the economy stumbles. One is the fact that car rental companies have not be able to buy the supply of new cars they need in the last two years, as automakers limited the supply of cars available for lower priced fleet sales, selling all or virtually all the cars they had to consumers instead.

“Rental companies have been running at half of the purchases that they’re accustomed to,” said Ivan Drury, director of insights at Edmunds.

And Drury said if automakers start to see weakness in consumer demand, they can bring back incentives, including lower rate financing, that they haven’t had to offer in recent years when there was more demand than supply.

“The incentives recently have been virtually nothing,” he said.

So far demand is still strong, as there is pent-up demand from potential buyers who have delayed purchases because they couldn’t find the vehicle they wanted. But both Drury and Chesbrough say the higher average prices and higher interest rates are already driving buyers out of the market.

A turn in the economy, especially if historically low unemployment rates start to rise, could quickly result in lower new car sales.

Read original article here

Business

Tesla shares see worst day in two years on weaker than expected sales

Leave a comment


New York
CNN
 — 

Tesla shares plunged more than 12% in trading Tuesday, as weaker than expected global sales caused the company’s massive slide in its share price that began last year to continue.

Tesla reported record 2022 sales of 1.3 million vehicles, up 40% from the 2021 total, but well below the 50% growth target the company set early in the year. While it had already warned it would miss that aggressive full-year target, its fourth quarter sales of 405,278 cars was far weaker than feared. It represented growth of only 31% from a year earlier, and was well below the median estimate of 431,000 according to analysts polled by Refinitiv.

The 12.2% drop in Tesla

(TSLA) shares in Tuesday trading was the worst day for Tesla

(TSLA) shares in more than two years. The company’s shares ended 2022 down 65% for the year, greatly cutting into Musk’s net worth and knocking him out of his position as the world’s richest person. It was the worst year ever for Tesla

(TSLA) shares, which gained 743% in 2020 and another 50% in 2021.

The drop in sales came despite the company’s two price cuts in December for US buyers who completed their purchase by year end. The fact that global sales were well short of the 439,000 cars it built in the period raised new concerns about weakening demand for Tesla cars in the face of numerous headwinds. These include higher interest rates, increased EV competition from established automakers along with upstart EV makers, and backlash against Tesla CEO Elon Musk since his controversial takeover of Twitter early in the quarter.

“Demand overall is starting to crack a bit for Tesla and the company will need to adjust and cut prices more especially in China, which remains the key to the growth story,” said Dan Ives, tech analyst for Wedbush Securities. “The Cinderella ride is over for Tesla.”

– CNN’s David Goldman contributed to this report

Read original article here