- Final Fantasy Maker Square Enix Will Aggressively Pursue a Multiplatform Strategy After Profits Tumble IGN
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- Square Enix announces new medium-term business plan – “Square Enix Reboots and Awakens: 3 Years of Foundation-Laying for Long-Term Growth” Gematsu
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- Square Enix to ‘Aggressively’ Pursue Multiplatform Strategy from Now On Push Square
Tag Archives: profits
‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Financier Claims Disney Is Withholding Profits in Shocking New Lawsuit – Collider
- ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Financier Claims Disney Is Withholding Profits in Shocking New Lawsuit Collider
- Disney accused of withholding hundreds of millions of dollars from ‘Avatar’ sequel financier CNBC
- Disney Sued By Film Finance Partner TSG, Which Claims Media Giant Used “Every Trick In The Hollywood Accounting Book” To Hoard Slate Profits Deadline
- Disney Sued by Film Financier TSG Over “Chilling Example” of Hollywood Accounting Hollywood Reporter
- Avatar 2 financier dues Disney for “chilling” accounting “cheating” with millions Dexerto
Bobby Lashley gifts The Street Profits with new suits: SmackDown highlights, July 28, 2023 – WWE
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- WWE SmackDown Results (7/28/23) Wrestlezone
- LA Knight vs. Ashante “Thee” Adonis: SmackDown highlights, July 28, 2023 WWE
- 7/28 WWE Friday Night Smackdown results: Powell’s review of Roman Reigns and Jey Uso on the road to Tribal Combat, Rey Mysterio vs. Santos Escobar for a shot at the Intercontinental Title, Karrion Kross vs. Karl Anderson – Pro Wrestling Dot Net ProWrestling.net
- WWE Friday Night SmackDown free live stream, TV channel, how to watch without cable (7/28/2023) OregonLive
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Live news: Clean energy group ITM Power warns on profits for third time in eight months
Are you ready for Blue Monday, the day that falls this year at the start of this week, calculated by former Cardiff university psychologist Cliff Arnall in 2005 to be the most depressing 24 hours in the calendar?
Arnall’s damning conclusion about the third Monday in the first month (which he has since tried to counter) was based on analysis of data, such as consumer surveys, divorce filings and weather reports. The main conclusion many of us draw from this analysis is that not all academic research is useful to society.
If you are a world leader or senior executive at least you have the World Economic Forum in Davos to distract you from the January blues. The FT Live team will also be at the Swiss resort town, hosting several in-person and digital events in which leaders in policy, business and finance will share insights into the big issues being debated. You can view the events and register for free here.
For the rest of us, we will just have to live with the grim economic news going into 2023 and hope things can only get better.
If you’re in the UK, the dominant reality is mass strike action. This might not yet be near to being a second “winter of discontent”, at least according to my colleague Jonathan Guthrie, but another strike ballot among ambulance workers is due this week while the University and College Union will announce a wave of 18 new strike days this week covering 150 British universities in February and March after its members voted last week to reject their latest pay offer.
The Northern Ireland Protocol will rear its head again with Thursday’s deadline for the restoration of power sharing at Stormont. Do not expect this to make you feel better about life or cross-border politics.
Sunday is the 50th anniversary of the Roe vs Wade ruling by the US Supreme Court that enshrined Americans’ constitutional right to an abortion. This is of course a very live debate — stretching even into the boardroom — in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision to strike down the 1973 decision. Anti-abortion campaigners will march in Washington on Friday, sparking further commentary on a fundamental US political fault line.
The week will end with another man-made day, this time based on astronomy: the lunar new year celebration. This year’s mass movement of people to visit families and friends celebrating the occasion will take place under the shadow of rising Covid levels in China. Concerns about the impact on the spread of illness are high.
Something to look forward to a bit further ahead is an evening with FT columnist Martin Wolf. Join Martin and other thought leaders online for a subscriber-exclusive event on January 31 debating the major changes required at this time of great global uncertainty. The discussion coincides with the publication of Martin’s new book, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. Register for free here.
Economic data
It will be a busy run of data from China, the UK and the US this week. The European Central Bank will publish the minutes of its December meeting on Thursday and various central bankers will be discussing regional and global economics at Davos.
The UK inflation rate will be updated on Wednesday. The outlook is not good, particularly after recent comments by Bank of England chief economist Huw Pill. Ken Murphy, chief executive of the UK’s largest food retailer Tesco, even warned that UK inflation could climb further. Last month’s release showed that the cost of living as defined by the consumer price index was 10.7 per cent in November, down from 11.1 per cent in October.
Companies
We are in the thick of the first earnings season of 2023 and it’s a smorgasbord of companies, particularly from Europe and (when Wall Street returns from the Martin Luther King Day break) the US.
Online food ordering services Just Eat Takeaway and Deliveroo will update investors on their festive sales on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. Both are under pressure to deliver improved profitability. The end of lockdown was not good for the food ordering apps as customers chose to return to restaurants.
The question now is whether recession will help these companies — as more people get takeaways instead of eating out — or hit them further as customers return reluctantly to their own kitchens. Efforts to ramp up sales of groceries, through partnerships with supermarkets and convenience apps like Getir, may give Deliveroo and JET a slice of the home cooking market too.
Last year was one to forget for Ocado Retail. The online supermarket, jointly owned by Ocado — which reports numbers on Tuesday — and Marks and Spencer, parted company with chief executive Melanie Smith and warned on profits several times; its sales are expected to fall for the first time in its history.
At its last update in September, Ocado said it expected strong growth in customers and sales growth of around 5 per cent for the fourth quarter. That would be similar to the growth posted last week by Tesco and J Sainsbury, after British shoppers splashed out for the first Christmas in two years not to be disrupted by Covid-19.
US airlines are reporting fourth-quarter and full-year earnings as public attention focuses on technical glitches at low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines and the country’s top aviation regulator that caused high-profile meltdowns. But for most airlines the news is still likely to be rosy, as (despite the increased interest in private jets post Covid) demand for commercial air travel drives profits.
United Airlines will report on Wednesday. Expect chief executive officer Scott Kirby to have a few tart words for the US Federal Aviation Administration, which grounded planes for two hours on Wednesday when a damaged database file caused a key safety system to fail. He said over the summer that the agency needs more air traffic controllers.
U.S. banks get ready for shrinking profits and recession
NEW YORK, Jan 10 (Reuters) – U.S. banking giants are forecast to report lower fourth quarter profits this week as lenders stockpile rainy-day funds to prepare for an economic slowdown that is battering investment banking.
Four American banking giants — JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N) and Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) — will report earnings on Friday.
Along with Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and Goldman Sachs (GS.N), they are the six largest lenders expected to amass a combined $5.7 billion in reserves to prepare for soured loans, according to average projections by Refinitiv. That is more than double the $2.37 billion set aside a year earlier.
“With most U.S. economists forecasting either a recession or significant slowdown this year, banks will likely incorporate a more severe economic outlook,” said Morgan Stanley analysts led by Betsy Graseck in a note.
The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates aggressively in an effort to tame inflation near its highest in decades. Rising prices and higher borrowing costs have prompted consumers and businesses to curb their spending, and since banks serve as economic middlemen, their profits decline when activity slows.
The six banks are also expected to report an average 17% drop in net profit in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, according to preliminary analysts’ estimates from Refintiv.
Still, lenders stand to gain from rising rates that allow them to earn more from the interest they charge borrowers.
Investors and analysts will focus on bank bosses’ commentary as an important gauge of the economic outlook. A parade of executives has warned in recent weeks of the tougher business environment, which has prompted firms to slash compensation or eliminate jobs.
Goldman Sachs will start laying off thousands of employees from Wednesday, two sources familiar with the move said Sunday. Morgan Stanley and Citigroup, among others, have also cut jobs after a plunge in investment-banking activity.
The moves come after Wall Street dealmakers handling mergers, acquisitions and initial public offerings faced a sharp drop in their businesses in 2022 as rising interest rates roiled markets.
Global investment banking revenue sank to $15.3 billion in the fourth quarter, down more than 50% from a year-earlier quarter, according to data from Dealogic.
Consumer businesses will also be a key focus in banks’ results. Household accounts have been propped up for much of the pandemic by a strong job market and government stimulus, and while consumers are generally in good financial shape, more are starting to fall behind on payments.
“We’re exiting a period of extraordinarily strong credit quality,” said David Fanger, senior vice president, financial institutions group, at Moody’s Investors Service.
At Wells Fargo, the fallout from a fake accounts scandal and regulatory penalties will continue to weigh on results. The lender expected to book an expense of about $3.5 billion after it agreed to settle charges over widespread mismanagement of car loans, mortgages and bank accounts with the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog’s largest-ever civil penalty.
Analysts will also watch if banks such as Morgan Stanley and Bank of America book any writedowns on the $13-billion loan to fund Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter.
More broadly, the KBW index (.BKX) of bank stocks is up about 4% this month after sinking almost 28% in the last year.
While market sentiment took a sharp turn from hopeful to fearful in 2022, some large banks could overcome the most dire predictions because they have shed risky activities, wrote Susan Roth Katzke, an analyst at Credit Suisse.
“We see more resilient earning power through the cycle after a decade of de-risking,” she wrote in a note. “We cannot dismiss the fundamental strength.”
Reporting by Saeed Azhar, Niket Nishant and Lananh Nguyen
Editing by Nick Zieminski
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Buffett’s Berkshire Lifts Chevron Bet, Profits From Rate Hikes, Dollar
- Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway reported third-quarter earnings on Saturday.
- The investor’s company appears to have boosted its Chevron stake, and ramped up stock buybacks.
- Berkshire benefited from higher interest rates and a stronger US dollar.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway published third-quarter earnings on Saturday that teased fresh purchases of Chevron stock, and signaled a faster pace of share buybacks this quarter.
Berkshire confirmed it will treat a chunk of Occidental Petroleum’s profits as its own from now on. It also revealed the billion-dollar hit to its insurance business from Hurricane Ian, and the positive impact of higher interest rates and a stronger US dollar on its operations.
Here are 6 key insights from Berkshire’s Q3 earnings:
1. Stocking up
Berkshire appears to have bolstered its Chevron stake last quarter.
It disclosed the value of its position in the oil-and-gas major was $24.4 billion at the end of September. It held 161 million shares at the end of June, which would have been worth $23.2 billion at Chevron’s stock price of about $144 on September 30.
The discrepancy suggests it raised its stake to about 170 million shares last quarter.
Moreover, Berkshire may have boosted its number-one holding, Apple. It owned about 908 million shares of the iPhone maker at the end of December, and purchased nearly 4 million more shares in the second quarter of this year.
That stake would have been worth $126 billion on September 30, based on Apple’s stock price at the time. Yet Berkshire valued the position at $126.5 billion, suggesting it bought a few more shares.
Meanwhile, Berkshire reported an estimated $4.7 billion drop in the cost base of its financial stocks, a $2 billion drop for its commercial and industrial stocks, and a $700 million drop for its consumer-products stocks. Those declines point to which parts of its portfolio it pruned last quarter.
2. Bigger buybacks
Berkshire spent $1.05 billion repurchasing shares last quarter. It appears to have spent another $500 million or so on buybacks between October 1 and October 26, based on the decline in Berkshire’s outstanding shares and the average trading price of Berkshire stock in that period.
Buffett and his team are now on track to spend upwards of $1.5 billion on buybacks this quarter, which would trump their outlays in each of the past two quarters.
3. Sharing in Oxy’s success
Berkshire, which built a 20.9% stake in Occidental from scratch this year, said it would account for that holding using the equity method.
That means it will report a proportionate share of the oil-and-gas company’s revenues and earnings as its own, with a one-quarter lag as Occidental reports its quarterly earnings later than Berkshire.
The position could contribute $2 billion in quarterly revenues and $750 million in net income to Berkshire every three months, based on Occidental’s second-quarter financials.
4. Higher rates are helping
The Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates from nearly zero in March to a range of 3.75% to 4% today, in an effort to curb historically high inflation.
The US central bank’s rate increases boosted the amount of interest that Berkshire earned on its cash and Treasury bills. As a result, the company’s income from interest and other investments soared by 182% year-on-year to nearly $400 million last quarter.
5. Disaster strikes
Hurricane Ian buffeted Florida, South Carolina, and other US States last quarter. Berkshire, which owns a raft of insurance and reinsurance companies, suffered an after-tax blow of $2.7 billion to its profits from the catastrophe.
Geico, the Berkshire-owned auto insurer, incurred about $600 million of losses and related expenses from the tropical storm. Meanwhile, the reinsurance arm of Berkshire’s property-casualty business swallowed a $1.9 billion loss.
6. Greenback gains
Buffett famously favors American stocks such as Coca-Cola and Kraft Heinz, and has built a vast collection of US businesses including the BNSF Railway and See’s Candies.
Berkshire’s domestic focus meant it enjoyed a $1.2 billion pretax gain from the dollar’s surge against other world currencies in the past quarter. It only saw a $264 million foreign-exchange gain in the same period of 2021.
Moreover, Buffett’s company notched a $858 million gain from non-dollar-denominated debt. That’s partly because the yen debt it issued to hedge its investments in five Japanese companies became less onerous, thanks to a stronger dollar.
Read more: David Rubenstein sees Warren Buffett as the ultimate investor. The private equity billionaire lays out the 12 traits and habits that are key to Buffett’s success.
Will plunging shares end big tech’s era of ‘pornographic’ profits? | Technology
Last week was a bad time to be a tech billionaire. When the pandemic drove the world online, the founders of Facebook, Google and Microsoft reaped wealth gains described as “pornographic” and cemented their position as among the richest cohort ever to have trod the planet. Well, the “good times” are over. Sort of.
The world’s biggest tech companies reported their latest earnings last week and, for most, the news was bad. Meta (formerly Facebook), Alphabet (formerly Google) and Microsoft saw billions wiped off their values as investors began to worry that the best days of the tech titans were behind them. As investors made for the exit, the five biggest tech stocks crashed by a combined $950bn (£820m) at their lowest point. The slide also hit the fortunes of their creators.
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune plunged by $11bn on Wednesday after Meta Platforms reported a second straight quarter of disappointing earnings. Shares in the company dropped by a fifth – a sharp depreciation that has brought Zuckerberg’s overall decline in wealth this year to more than $87bn. The numbers may be no more than arithmetically diverting – Zuckerberg, 38, is still worth about $38bn, according to Bloomberg – but that is a striking drop on the $142bn he could count on in September 2021. Almost all of his wealth is tied up in Meta stock; he holds more than 350m shares. As of Thursday, Zuckerberg ranked 28th on the Bloomberg list, a 25-place drop from his previous third-place positioning.
Meta’s 71% fall in value this year is due to many things, including advert-tracking controls instituted by Apple, a softening in digital ad spending, the challenge to Facebook-owned Instagram by TikTok, and Meta’s multibillion-dollar investment in the metaverse – the virtual world it is throwing money at despite a less-than-warm reception, even from its own staff.
That investment has troubled investors. Zuckerberg has said he expects the project to lose “significant” amounts of money over the next three to five years. On Wednesday, he asked for patience.
“I think we’re going to resolve each of these things over different periods of time,” Zuckerberg said. “And I appreciate the patience, and I think that those who are patient and invest with us will end up being rewarded.” Wall Street seems pretty out of patience.
The CNBC TV presenter Jim Cramer, who has been a booster for Meta, looked close to tears after the latest results were released. “I made a mistake here,” Cramer told viewers. “I was wrong. I trusted this management team. That was ill-advised. The hubris here is extraordinary and I apologise.”
Zuckerberg is not alone. According to Forbes, the tech billionaires have lost a collective $315bn since last year.
On Thursday, Amazon reported that this Christmas season would be less jolly than analysts had expected and that consumer spending was in “uncharted waters”, triggering a 20% fall in its share price. The decline hit Amazon founder Jeff Bezos by as much as $4.7bn on the day. Bezos had already lost nearly $60bn in 2022, still leaving him with a net worth of about $134bn.
A day earlier, Microsoft’s earnings report showed that the dependable cloud-computing earnings growth at its Azure division was slowing, triggering a nearly 8% decline in the company’s valuation. That will hit Bill Gates, whose fortune has declined this year by close to $30bn to about $109bn.
Even Tesla founder Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and now the owner of Twitter, has not been immune to the downturn. Shares in Tesla, the electric vehicle maker, have fallen 43.7% in the year to date. That’s reduced the would-be Mars coloniser’s fortune by $58.6bn over the past 12 months to a still astronomical $212bn.
But despite the week’s stock market bloodshed, 56 of the 65 tech billionaires on Forbes magazine’s list – one that includes Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, and former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer – are still wealthier than they were three years ago.
Earlier this year, Chuck Collins, the director at the Institute for Policy Studies thinktank who directs its programme on inequality, estimated that US billionaires had seen their combined wealth rise more than $1.7tn, a gain of more than 58%, in the pandemic. The recent declines have, Collins now says, reduced that to $1.5bn, or 51%.
“The gains were so extraordinary in the two years of the pandemic, it was almost pornographic,” he said. “The billionaires essentially disconnected from the real world and the real economy. Even if their wealth is now adjusting down, who else had a 51% gain in their assets in the past two years?”
The billionaires are not the real victims. Tech companies have come to dominate US stock markets and their decline is dragging down the wider market, and with it the pensions and savings of Americans who are also struggling with rising interest rates and a 40-year high in inflation.
The larger question is: how long will this fall continue, and who will be hurt the most? It’s unlikely to be big tech’s aristocrats. “If wealth is going to vanish from the economy, this is the best place for it to vanish from,” Collins says. “It may slow the trickle into philanthropy, but the reality is most billionaires are giving to their own foundations and donor-advised funds. But it might mean there’s less dynastic wealth, which in the end I think is a good thing.”
BYD shares jump after Chinese EV maker forecasts surging profits
Warren Buffett-backed BYD said it expects a more than 300% jump in third-quarter profit. Despite headwinds including a resurgence of Covid in China, rising material costs and a slowing economy, BYD has remained fairly resilient.
Nathan Laine | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Shares of Chinese electric carmaker BYD rose Tuesday after the company forecast a huge jump in profit for the third quarter.
Late Monday, the Warren Buffett-backed firm said net profit in the three months to Sept. 30 is estimated to be between 5.5 billion yuan to 5.9 billion yuan ($764.5 million to $820 million), a rise of 333.6% to 365.11% versus the same period last year.
BYD’s Hong Kong-listed shares were 5.6% higher in afternoon trade.
“In the third quarter of 2022, despite the complex and severe economic situation, the spread of the pandemic, extreme high temperature weather, high commodity prices and other unfavorable factors, the new energy vehicle industry continued to accelerate its upward trend,” BYD said in a statement.
The company said sales volume of its new energy vehicles, which include electric cars, “continued to reach record highs” helping boost market share and “driving significant improvement in earnings and effectively relieving the pressure on earnings brought by the rising prices of upstream raw materials.”
A number of electric carmakers from Tesla to BYD to have been grappling with the rising cost of raw materials, such as lithium, that are critical to batteries.
From the start of the year to the end of September, BYD has sold 1.18 million new energy vehicles, trumping Tesla’s figure of just over 900,000 deliveries.
BYDs various models are among the top-selling new energy vehicles in China which is the world’s largest electric car market.
While the Shenzhen-headquartered company has remained fairly resilient in the face of headwinds such as a resurgence of Covid in China and a slowing economy, its smaller rivals have faced difficulties.
In August, Chinese electric car start-up Xpeng reported weak vehicle delivery guidance for the third quarter.
Wall Street banks’ profits slide as economic clouds loom, some beat forecasts
Oct 14 (Reuters) – Profits slid at Wall Street’s biggest banks in the third quarter as they braced for a weaker economy while investment banking was hit hard, but investors saw a silver lining with some banks beating estimates.
JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Morgan Stanley (MS.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N) and Wells Fargo & Co’s (WFC.N) showed a slide in net income after turbulent markets choked off investment banking activity and lenders set aside more rainy-day funds to cover losses from borrowers who fall behind on payments.
“We’re in an environment where it’s kind of odd,” said JPMorgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, who said that while the bank was “hoping for the best, we always remain vigilant and are prepared for bad outcomes.”
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Central banks globally have been battling surging inflation which is expected to cause an economic slowdown. The Federal Reserve has raised the benchmark interest rate from near zero in March to the current range of 3.00% to 3.25% and signaled more increases.
Rising rates tend to buoy bank profits, but the broader risk of an economic downturn sparked by high inflation, supply-chain bottlenecks and the war in Ukraine could weigh on future earnings.
On a conference call, Dimon said U.S. consumers remained strong and he wasn’t predicting a recession but “there are a lot of headwinds out there.”
Money that people have in their checking accounts will “deplete probably by sometime midyear next year” while they are contending with headwinds like inflation, higher rates and higher mortgage rates, he cautioned.
Banks set aside more money in preparation for a hit from a potential economic slowdown. JPMorgan set aside $808 million in reserves, Citi added $370 million to reserves and Wells had a $385 million increase in the allowance for credit losses.
Still, shares of JPMorgan and Wells Fargo gained strongly, up 2.5% and 3.7% respectively while Citi gained 1.2% as the profit falls were not as deep as feared.
JPM also said it hopes to be able to resume stock buybacks early next year, although other banks were less bullish with Citi saying buybacks continue to be on hold and Wells Fargo saying it continues to be prudent about buybacks.
“JPMorgan delivered a solid set of results, from top to bottom,” Susan Roth Katzke, an analyst at Credit Suisse, wrote in a note. “At least equally as important is the evidence of preparedness to manage through whatever turn the macro takes; expect the latter to be in focus.”
JPMorgan reported a 17% drop in third-quarter profit to $9.74 billion, although that was less than had been feared. Wells Fargo posted a 31% decline to $3.53 billion but it also beat expectations. And Citi reported a 25% drop to $3.5 billion which also beat expectations.
“Most of these banks are making more spread income now than ever because of the change in interest rates,” said Chris Marinac, Director of Research at Janney Montgomery Scott. “And this was the first quarter where you had the full effect of the Fed, because the Fed increased a little bit in May.”
Signage is seen at the JPMorgan Chase & Co. New York Head Quarters in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., June 30, 2022. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
JPMorgan said net interest income rose 34% to a record $17.6 billion, up 34%.
“Generally banks obviously seem to be benefiting from a higher rate environment, and we’ve obviously seen banks able to earn, in terms of revenues, on higher interest rates,” said Eric Theoret, global macro strategist at Manulife Investment Management.
Marinac said investors would want to see banks build reserves at this point in the economic cycle.
“They’re bracing for a hard landing, because they’re building the reserves,” said Marinac. “But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
While a number of the banks managed to beat expectations, Morgan Stanley reported a 30% slump in profit to $2.49 billion which missed estimates. Its shares fell 5%.
Morgan Stanley’s earnings showed that investment banking revenue more than halved to $1.3 billion with declines across the bank’s advisory, equity and fixed income segments.
James Gorman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Morgan Stanley, said his firm’s performance was “resilient and balanced in an uncertain and difficult environment.”
Corporations’ interest in mergers, acquisitions and initial public offerings dried up, particularly hitting banks strong in investment banking. Global M&A lost ground in the third quarter with volumes in the United States plummeting nearly 63% as the rising cost of debt forced companies to postpone big buyouts.
While banks were optimistic they could weather the likely tougher economy ahead, some observers were concerned about the long term outlook for growth.
“Against the backdrop of economic headwinds, the solid earnings reports from this morning will quickly pass into the rearview mirror,” said Peter Torrente, KPMG US National Sector Leader for Banking and Capital Markets. “Worries of inflation, which shows little sign of slowing down, are casting a long shadow on future outlook.”
Torrente said while banks’ revenues reflect the benefit of rising interest rates and persisting loan demand, the buildup in loan loss provisions also reflects the uncertainty in the road ahead.
“Next quarter and beyond, credit risk, loan growth, and deposit balances will be key areas to monitor in the banking industry,” Torrente said.
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Reporting by Saeed Azhar and Lananh Nguyen and Davide Barbuscia in New York, Noor Zainab Hussain, Niket Nishant, Mehnaz Yasmin, Sweta Singh and Manya Saini in Bengaluru
Writing by Megan Davies
Editing by Lananh Nguyen, Mark Potter, David Gregorio and Chizu Nomiyama
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Exxon Expects To Post Strong Q3 Earnings
Exxon expects to report strong financial results for the third quarter of the year after smashing previous profit records in the second quarter on the back of the oil and gas price rally.
Per a Reuters report citing a snapshot issued by the supermajor, Exxon could book a third-quarter net profit close to its second-quarter record of $17.9 billion.
Average oil prices in the third quarter were $98 per barrel of Brent, which was substantially lower than the $109-per-barrel average in the second quarter, but still high enough to boost profits.
Natural as prices on international markets in the period averaged $7.95 per million British thermal units, however, up from $7.17 million per mmBtu in the second quarter, Reuters also noted.
Exxon booked second-quarter earnings of $4.21 per share assuming dilution. This is nearly quadruple the $4.69 billion in earnings for the second quarter of last year, and more than triple the earnings from the first quarter of this year. Exxon’s earnings per share easily beat the analyst consensus of $3.84.
Higher oil and gas prices, the highest refining margins in years, increased production, and aggressive cost control all contributed to the record-breaking profits at Exxon, which beat its previous quarterly earnings record from 2012 and the quarterly profits from 2008 when Brent prices hit a record $147 per barrel.
Now, despite the almost 25-percent slide in oil prices during the third quarter of the year, price levels remained conducive to higher profits, especially coupled with the increase in gas prices on international markets demand continued to outstrip supply.
The outlook for the immediate term is bullish, too, as the market anticipates a deep production cut from OPEC+, which would push oil prices significantly higher, creating yet another potential windfall for the industry, in which Exxon is among the biggest players.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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