The Guardian: Shell beats forecasts with 28% rise in profits
Terry Macalister
Friday April 29, 2005
Shell plans to hand over $15bn (£7.9bn) to investors through dividends and share buybacks this year after beating City forecasts with a 28% rise in first-quarter profits.
The strong results came on the back of soaring oil and gas prices but masked an 8% fall in the Anglo-Dutch group’s hydrocarbon production.
Jeroen van der Veer, the chief executive, described the $5.6bn cost of supply earnings as an “excellent start to the year”.
The profits – in line with BP’s – compared with analysts’ estimates of $4.7bn and came despite losses incurred by its petrol sales in Britain.
Shell shrugged off the fall in physical output to 3.8m barrels of oil equivalents per day, saying this was in line with expectations and partly due to the expiry of a gas contract in Oman. Mr Van der Veer said he was still “reasonably confident” of reaching a 100% reserve replacement ratio over five years, although he acknowledged the uncertainties.
Under the most extreme measurement criteria – including the impact of divestments and year-end pricing – the 2004 reserve replacement figure for Shell was just 19%.
The cash handouts to share holders will come via $10bn of dividends, plus share buybacks of $3bn to $5bn. A first-quarter dividend of 4.55p a share cost Shell nearly $2bn.
The company generated $8.1bn of cash from operations in the first quarter, bolstered not only by the exploration division but by a strong downstream performance of the oil products and chemicals unit.
Bruce Evers, of Investec Securities, said Shell had produced “staggeringly good numbers” with strong evidence of even better times to come. He shrugged off the falling output, noting that, without divestments, production figures were only 2% down year-on-year.
The company admitted that its huge production business in Nigeria was always vulnerable to economic shocks. Recent warnings of debt-repayment failures by the West African nation were the kind of thing Shell had to live with. “I think there are always concerns,” said Mr Van der Veer.
Shell’s strong results were echoed in New York where ExxonMobil reported a 44% rise in quarterly profits. Net income rose to $7.86bn – from $5.44bn a year before – but without a one-off gain from asset sales, the figures were slightly below forecasts.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1472772,00.html
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Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
