Welcome to the Royal Dutch Shell Q3 Results Announcement Call. There will be a presentation followed by a Q&A session. I would like to introduce you to your host, Mr. Ben van Beurden. Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Okay, thank you, operator. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's presentation. So we've announced our third quarter results this morning and you would have seen some substantial headline losses on your screen this morning. There are significant one-time charges in these figures which are a consequence of actions that the Shell management team are taking on portfolio as well as, of course, the impact of lower oil prices. So what I wanted to do is to update you on that, and then Simon will take you through the numbers and, of course, there's plenty of time for questions afterwards. Before we start, of course, the disclaimer statement. So Shell current cost of supply earnings for the quarter were a loss of $6 billion and these results included $7.9 billion of identified items and around half of these charges, $3.7 billion to be precise, are primarily related to a revised oil and gas price outlook and the remainder, $4.2 billion, is a result of management actions on the longer-term portfolio. Now if you would exclude these impacts on an underlying CCS basis earnings were $1.8 billion with $11 billion of cash flow and a $0.47 per share dividend declared. And these results were underpinned by a strong downstream earnings and a strong performance on uptime, volumes across the company. The recommended combination with BG is on track and we are expecting completion of this transaction, subject of course to Shell and BG shareholder approvals and also the satisfaction of the pre-conditions, in early 2016, pretty much as planned.…

Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A session. Our first question today comes from Theepan Jothilingam from Nomura International.

Yeah, hi, good afternoon, gentlemen. Just two questions. Firstly, you discussed sort of a cost improvement target of around $4 billion earlier this year. I was just wondering how much of that has filtered through into the Q3 numbers and if you could break that down between upstream and downstream. Secondly, and I imagine you'll talk a little bit more about this next week, but just upstream Americas remains a problem child and that's been exacerbated by lower liquid prices. Was there anything in particular outside simply the operational gearing that we saw come through in Q3 that might reverse out if we look into 2016? Thank you. Simon P. Henry - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Director: Thanks, Theepan, good afternoon. The $4 billion cost reduction wasn't really a target. It was an achievement. We had already done it. So, yes, it's already there and we also said we expect to see further improvements. It's roughly split between upstream and downstream. We're currently putting together our expectations for 2015, but certainly on a like-for-like basis we would expect to see further improvements, so all of it in year-to-date effectively. On the upstream Americas, remember there's a combination of businesses in there: deepwater, Alaska, the heavy oil and the unconventional, the shale business. There is a one-off charge of around $300 million on the Brazilian deferred tax that is included in upstream Americas. And other than that, there's not too much one-off that really relates in the clean earnings. Of course, quite a lot of the impairment one-offs were indeed in the Americas. So the issue is really realized oil and gas prices. And while the costs are certainly coming down there, we will need to take more out in the current price environment to return to profitability. The actual performance of the assets, both in the heavy oil and in the Gulf, was better than a year ago, underlying performance, reliability up. And in the shale business, for quite a reduction in the capital investment, we are maintaining the production levels and target that were originally posited before we reduced the investment level. So, in general, good progress but not enough to see a big impact yet on the bottom line. Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Okay. Thanks for that. Operator, can I have the next question, please?

We will now take a question from Oswald Clint from Sanford Bernstein. Please go ahead.

Thank you, yes. Thank you very much. Maybe two questions on North America. Sorry, the first question, I wanted to ask about the impairments in the upstream. I think it's North American gas potentially, Duvernay or Groundbirch. Could you talk about the gas price changes that have been incorporated into that exercise? And also does it imply anything about your appetite for kind of West Coast Canadian LNG exports? That's the first question. And then secondly, maybe just on Carmon Creek. I heard your comments. I just want to know in addition was there anything with respect to the technology or actually the reservoir in terms of the Carmon Creek that forced you to make this decision? Thank you. Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Okay, thanks very much, Oswald. Good questions. Let me take the first one – well, actually I'll be happy to take them both. Let me talk a little bit more broadly on our oil and gas price outlook changes. You know, the screening values that we have been talking about before I think ultimately ended up being characterized almost as a central management tool, which of course they're not. They also at some point in time got characterized as a Shell forecast, which of course they also are not. So the reality is that we manage the company differently. We manage the company on the fundamentals of the market and on the reality of the day, and if you look at the fundamentals, be it oil or gas, the point is that industry will not invest trillions of dollars if the price, if the cost is such that you can't make a profit. And if the investment slows down, supply will quickly fall short of demand and as a result of…

Brandon Wong (sic) [Brendan Warn] from BMO Capital Markets has our next question.

Yeah, thanks, gentlemen. It's Brendan Warn from BMO Capital Markets. Just two questions if I may. Just first question, this I guess relates to the acquisition of BG. And just in terms of current oil price and if we took the forward curve as given as an example, can you just talk around the share buyback and the pressure that may be under the share buyback in terms of what trigger points you'd look at to buy back shares that you previously announced from 2017? And then I guess just a second question, again just relating back to Carmon Creek. If you could just talk around if this is a one-off in terms of post-sanction cancellations. I appreciate it's a tough decision, but if we're still in this environment certainly in the next couple of quarters from here, just sort of what percentage of committed CapEx spend is at the edge of assessment in terms of cancellation, please? Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Yeah, thanks, Brendan. Let me take the Carmon Creek one, and then Simon will talk about share buybacks. Yeah, I think Carmon Creek was quite a special case, challenging project because of the economic environment in which it had to operate. As I said, not just cash costs but also the very, very difficult dynamic that we had in oil prices, and not just the bitumen price that you would see in Alberta, the bitumen netback, but also the whole pricing dynamic around bill events, the uncertainty around the evacuation route. And ultimately it was just too many things coming together conspiring against the project that made the project not just attractive enough but also not resilient enough to have the comfort to take it forward. And we had of course several…

Lydia Rainforth from Barclays has our next question.

Hi. Good afternoon. Two questions to focus on the numbers, if I could. The first, just thinking about the cash flow from operations for the quarter, clearly those numbers, the $11.3 billion (31:01), you then got $5.3 billion given the same as increasing working cap. But what I'm thinking about what is an underlying and ongoing cash flow number, if I add up the inventory holding offers it gets me to about $6.6 billion. Is that the right way to think about the cash generation over this quarter itself? And then secondly, just a very quick one, the writedowns in OCR, did that relate to the Arrow project? Thanks. Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Simon? Simon P. Henry - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Director: Thanks, Lydia. Working capital movement is always a bit volatile and not always representative of inventory, which actually went up in the quarter in volume terms; was obviously down in price. It was a high movement. There are movements in there that are driven by the provisions, for example, that we took relating to Carmon Creek and Alaska. So to be representative the other way around, take the clean earnings and add back the non-cash $1billion or so on currency, and around $4.3 billion of depreciation per quarter. We start with an EBITDA-type number, but then take off effectively the tax payments are not aligned either with the tax charge. You get to a more representative figure, which is not that far off the figure you've got but a little bit higher. So between $7 billion and $8 billion is probably the underlying cash generation from ops. Writedown in OCR, we looked at I think clearly lower oil and gas for longer. There are implications from lower gas prices, Henry Hub in North America, explicitly noted in OCR we have multiple assets, most of which, although they're gas production, are ultimately exposed to oil prices because of the netback from Asian LNG, so wouldn't identify any one asset but there are multiple assets down there. Thanks, Lydia. Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Thanks, Lydia. Thanks, Simon. Can I have the next question, please, operator?

Irene Himona from Societe Generale has our next question. Irene Himona - Société Générale SA (Broker): Thank you, good afternoon. Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Hi, Irene. Irene Himona - Société Générale SA (Broker): I had two questions. Firstly, on the FX, the $1 billion non-cash input on the P&L. Obviously we have zero visibility on that and normally companies would take such a move through the balance sheet. Can you just remind us of the logic of taking it through the P&L, please? And then secondly, very quickly on CapEx, you have spent $20 billion in the nine months, just under $7 billion a quarter, your guidance remains for $30 billion. Are you likely to undershoot, do you think, this year or are we going to see quite a step-up in Q4 spending? Thank you. Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Thanks, Irene. Simon, will you take them? Simon P. Henry - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Director: Thanks, Irene. Indeed, there are three elements to the FX move this quarter that we have deferred tax assets in Brazil and Australia, which are slightly complicated in terms of the way that the currency moves on it, but we have given sensitivities through the IR team on what they may be. And they basically reflect the exchange rates on the last day of the quarter. There's no choice as to whether they go through the P&L or not. They are not balance sheet items in terms of the way they translate. This quarter there are a few other currencies where we have loans, some of them intergroup, held in non-U.S. dollar currency because that's the currency of operation in those activities where the general strengthening of the dollar has also added…

Our next question comes from Fred Lucas from JP Morgan.

Thank you. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Two questions, if I may. The first one on impairments. Could you specify what price curve you've assumed for the Q3 impairments and also perhaps the sensitivity were you to reduce that curve by $10 a barrel? And related to impairments, the $60 billion or thereabouts that your deal for BG is currently valued at, that implies quite a sizeable balance sheet uplift to the value of BG's assets, order of magnitude $25 billion, $30 billion. So I just wondered how safe that uplift would be to your current impairment test. The second question is on exploration. Obviously, you have good and bad quarters, Q3 perhaps not a vintage one with Burger J and E&I's discovery on Shell acreage in Egypt. I just wonder where you think the internal decision-making at Shell regarding what equity exposure you should take in blocks and when or when not to relinquish blocks is really fit for purpose. Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Okay. Thanks, Fred. Let me take the second question first and then Simon will talk a bit about the impairments. Yeah, I think it's a fair question and a question that we have to address. If you look at Alaska, the only good news about Alaska is that it was a very conclusive result, so at least we knew immediately what to do as a result of it. But of course it's a very expensive dry hole and of course we can rationalize that to a large extent by sort of pointing at the unbelievably complex regulatory environment that we were looking at. Of course, generally you would expect exploring in this type of climate to be more expensive because of the weather and the remoteness and everything else, and you…

Our next question comes from Jon Rigby from UBS.

Hello. Hi. Just one question. It's about impairments really and sort of a broader perspective. It seems sort of the modern era of Shell is being periodically scarred by these events where you take very large impairment charges. And I think in the context of the company that is obviously deploying a lot of capital, a lot of CapEx annually, is there a problem there in terms of the process by which you go through thinking about how you deploy capital and could that be tightened up, the process be tightened up, going forward? Because it would seem to me that even though you've talked about a fairly sophisticated process and you've talked about the environment and the scenarios, there is evidence that you periodically get it quite wrong. Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Yeah. That's a good philosophical question, Jon, and it – of course, charges and if I characterize, for instance, what happened in the last kind of charges that come with it, you will have them as a result of the nature of our industry. But I'm sure that's not exactly what you are referring to. It's more impairments on assets, leaseholds, operating assets that we have on the balance sheet. The only thing I can say is this has been of course a significant focus area over the last few years. I'm not going to sit here and say, no, impairments are actually good and healthy and we use it as a way to clean the cupboard out. That would be the complete wrong way to characterize it. I think we have to make sure that in the main you import impairments that can clearly be traced back to poor decision-making around capital investments and deals that we have done. And a lot of the focus, one of my key priorities from day one, has been how can we improve decision-making around capital investments and deals and how can we do that by making not only the decision process more robust but also make it much earlier in the cycle. And ultimately I think it is processes like this where we have better visibility, earlier visibility, much clearer guidance on what you want to see in terms of Brazilians and tying it into very well-articulated strategic intents for each of the investment themes. These are going to be the processes that need to get it right. It is tough that you have to make decisions that lead to impairments. Believe me, I don't like them at all. But you have to take them in the environment that we find ourselves with the legacy that we have in certain areas. But the processes that we have in place are clearly designed to make the decision process and the resulting portfolio from it much higher quality, much more predictable. Okay. Can I have the next question, please, operator?

Martijn Rats from Morgan Stanley has our next question. Martijn P. Rats - Morgan Stanley & Co. International Plc: Hi. Hello. I just had a quick question about slide number six in the short bank that you published. At the bottom there's a comment on Kazakhstan. The title of that page is "actions taken" and it refers to Kashagan and BG asset potential. I'm just wondering what actions are taken in that area. I wasn't quite sure what that bullet point referred to. Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: I think it's just an indication what – well, first of all, we always said the longer-term themes, we have also what we call INK internally – Iraq, Nigeria, Kazakhstan – and we have to take a view on how these are going to be long-term positions for us because they have unusual characteristics. And different countries in that category have different types of characteristics that make them unusual. I talked about Nigeria, which is basically sort of restructuring the portfolio. I mentioned Iraq, which is basically reviewing Majnoon and looking at what do we want to do with full field development, how do we take into account the directives that we get from the Iraqi government to spend less and what are the consequences of that. That particularly affects Majnoon, much less so the Basrah Gas Company. And then Kazakhstan, of course, has two things in it. Kashagan, which, of course, we need to see how that will come on stream exactly, hopefully late next year or early 2017. And of course what is the potential of the BG assets when they come in. So it was more mentioned for completeness sake. We don't have a particular review that is going on on Kazakhstan other than to say that these two, of course, are very material positions if you add them together. So Kazakhstan will become quite an important country, but also a country that has very, very long-live assets. So I would not read anything else in it and just mentioning it for completeness sake. Thanks, Martijn. Can I have the next question, please?

Our next question comes from Thomas Adolff from Credit Suisse. Thomas Y. Adolff - Credit Suisse Securities (Europe) Ltd.: Hi, Ben, Simon. Two questions as well. Firstly, on the BG transaction, I wondered how the two integration teams are working and whether you have any interesting update now that you have access to a bit more data, if you will, positively surprised or negatively surprised? And secondly, just going back to this thing you call cultural change, I think generally people have the perception that Shell will struggle to change culturally. You are a very complex organization. So when you talk about this platform for cultural change, can you perhaps give some example that the entire organization is actually buying into your strategy and maybe some examples that are harder to see for an outsider like myself, and what this BG transaction will actually do to accelerate this thing you call cultural change? Thank you. Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Thanks, Thomas. Simon, why don't you have a start and I will pick it up. Simon P. Henry - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Director: Many thanks. I'll just talk about the integration really. Thanks for the question. We have about 40 people working roughly half and half from Shell and BG together, separate office, separate team, 19 defined work streams and an environment in which it gives me great confidence that the two teams will be able to work together in the broader sense when we actually come together. Great contribution, positive, from all of the BG people involved. I think Helga has given a good steer that we're in this to create value and create a winning combination. And so far it's been a very positive experience. As we work, there are limits…

Our next question comes from Rob West from Redburn. Rob West - Redburn (Europe) Ltd.: Hi there, thanks very much for taking my questions. Simon, you asked at your peril about questions on the P&L, so I'm going to give you one. Just looking at the production manufacturing expenses, which is the real key cost line I always look at in the quarter. So if I take 3Q this year versus 3Q last year, it's about $4.9 billion in both quarters. And if I look at the downstream, same line, about $2.6 billion this quarter and about $2.6 billion in Q3 last quarter. I'm wondering is that a little bit unfair to look at those and say the costs are broadly flat. There are moving parts in there like restructuring effects that are relatively one-off, that the underlying trend is going down a little bit more. Second question is on production, which I thought was good in the quarter. Is there some – you alluded to this in the release – some higher uptime at your fields go into that effect? So I think you mentioned Gulf of Mexico on the call and held GTL and Malaysia in the release, but is it a general theme that you can finally can squeeze more oil out of these fields across the entire company? I'm interested in that. And then maybe one more on just something you said a second ago, which was just there's some confidential information that isn't flowing between yourself and BG yet. Would that include the terms of your LNG contracts? Thanks. Simon P. Henry - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Director: Thanks, Rob. Probably I better take them all here. The last one is easy. Yes, it does because we can't talk about LNG commercial contracts until…

Our next question comes from Aneek Haq from Exane BNP Paribas.

Hi, guys. Thank you very much. Just two questions, please, as well from me. The first one, coming back to this point on CapEx flexibility. I wondered if you could maybe – I understand obviously you can't talk about Shell-BG combined, but on Shell standalone basis, if we take that $30 billion number and were just say theoretically to assume no sanctions over the next couple of years, how much can you bring that down or how much of that roll off over the next few years? Is it $5 billion, is it $10 billion-ish? And then the second point on downstream actually. I'm just interested if we take that $2.5 billion-ish CCS earnings you've done this quarter, how much would you classify of that say as defensive, and I mean lubricants, I mean marketing, growing, etcetera, as well? Thank you. Simon P. Henry - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Director: Thanks, Aneek. CapEx flexibility we usually give numbers of something like 10%, 30%, 50% in terms of flexibility looking forward at this time of year, 10% next year, 30% 2017, and 50% in 2018. While I have to say they were non-scientific when I first used them, they've stood the test of time, so that's not unrealistic in terms of total flexibility that there may be. That's neither a projection nor a forecast. It's just a measure of the likely flexibility. And we will take decisions going forward. We have some interesting ones, for example, in chemicals over the next year. So it's not just massive upstream projects like (1:03:11) in Canada LNG that we need to think about. Is it possible just to repeat the second question, because I wasn't quite sure I understood it?

Yeah, just in terms of downstream, I'm looking to understand how much of the earnings you would classify as defensive, so not exposed necessarily to refining margins. Simon P. Henry - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Director: I've got it. Understand that I wasn't quite sure what defensive meant. We said before, and I wouldn't give too much of a preview, but there's a chance next week John Abbott will be presenting at the Investment Day. So talk to John further about this, but typically we have businesses, marketing, chemicals, trading and supply, and manufacturing. The first three are essentially what we term ratable income, i.e., consistent enough to rate that easily on it. And the manufacturing tends to go from a negative to a positive. Of the $2.6 billion or the $8 billion so far this year, more than half of it is what you term defensive, we might term ratable. And the manufacturing is doing well and I would note that because of the way we changed, or Ben changed, the accountabilities for the value chain in the downstream, putting a much greater emphasis on the integrated value from customer back through to crude, using the trading and supply organization and different accountabilities to maximize, we are capturing quite a lot more of the available margin than we would have done three years to four years ago. So we're not just benefiting from better industry refining margins. We're capturing more of them as well. Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Okay. Thanks very much. Thanks for the question, Aneek. Can I have the next question, please, operator?

Our next question will come from Anish Kapadia from TPH. Anish Kapadia - Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. International LLP: Hi, yes, a couple of questions for me as well. Just getting back to the cash flow and looking back over the last 12 months, it seems like you had a big contribution from working capital over that period. I just wanted to kind of think about it more on an organic basis, pre any working capital impacts. And when I look at it like that, it seems like your organic cash flow pre-working capital, post-interest, is around $15 billion or so less than organic CapEx and the dividend. So I was just wondering in terms of kind of just incurred, so kind of $60 world, do you think you can organically meet that kind of cash flow – sorry, meet the dividend and CapEx through cash flow over the next few years? And I was thinking Shell standalone. And then the second question, going back to Carmon Creek. Just wondering the decision to hold that project, just wondering is there anything to be kind of read into that in terms of the new government coming in in Canada, the potential for carbon tax and kind of issues in terms of carbon going forward becoming a kind of bigger issue for Shell overall, and could this be a precursor for Shell pulling out of oil sands altogether? Thank you. Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Thanks, Anish. Let me take the second question first and I'll ask Simon to take care of the first one. No, the short answer to it is no. It would be, if you want to take an investment decision on a project and decide the fate of the project knowing that…

Our last question today comes from Biraj Borkhataria from RBC.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. On the U.S. resources business, I was wondering if you could just give us a quick reminder on what you've done in the last six months in terms of activity levels, and assuming $50 to $60 over the next year, whether you need to decrease activity levels further? Thanks. Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Simon? Simon P. Henry - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Director: Well, we reduced investment below $3 billion. In fact, it's close to $2.5 billion at the moment. We're active in the Permian, in the Marcellus, the Utica, in West Canada in the Groundbirch and in the Duvernay liquids play and in Argentina. We're effectively running at sort of a care and maintain with the possible exception of some of the Permian activity at the moment. If the operation stays where it is, we will benefit because we're taking costs out on almost a daily basis, particularly away from the well pad. At the well pad we are pretty competitive today, and in our evacuation costs getting the molecules to market we are reasonably competitive as well. But there is a cost away from there that we are still working to take down. If the oil or gas prices were to recover, I'm not sure it will be top of our list of things to immediately spend more money on. Ben van Beurden - Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director: Okay, good. Thanks for that, Simon, and thanks to Biraj for that question. So that pretty much brings us to the end of this session. Thank you very much for all your questions and for of course joining the call. I'm very much aware that there is a number of calls going on more or less at the same time. Just a final reminder we have our Management Day in London next week on Tuesday, and then on the 4th of November, so the Wednesday, in New York. And I look forward to seeing many of you there. Thank you very much.

This concludes the Royal Dutch Shell Q3 results announcement call. Thank you for your participation.