Operator
Operator
Welcome to the Royal Dutch Shell 2016 Q1 Results Announcement. There will be a presentation followed by a Q&A session. I would now like to introduce your host, Mr. Simon Henry. Please go ahead, sir. Simon P. Henry - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Director: Many thanks. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's presentation. We announced our first quarter results this morning. These results included two months of contribution from BG following the completion of the acquisition on February 15. We've taken the opportunity to enhance our financial disclosure across the company today, and I hope you will find the new figures useful, although I do appreciate some of the modeling challenges it may now bring. Let me give you a summary, and then of course there'll be plenty of time for your questions. Before we start, just let me highlight the disclaimer. Shell's integrated activities from the wellhead through to the customer do differentiate us with our Downstream and Integrated Gas businesses delivering good results, underpinning our financial performance despite the continued low oil and gas prices at $34 average Brent for the quarter. We delivered $1.6 billion of underlying current cost of supply, or CCS, earnings this quarter, $9.3 billion of similar earnings over the last 12 months. We're already seeing positive effects from our acquisition of BG. BG delivered strong production growth in this quarter and some $200 million straight to the bottom line. We're off to a good start with the integration, building on six months of detailed planning before the deal was closed, at the same time continuing to reduce costs and spending overall across both portfolios with material opportunities to do exactly this in the down cycle. It's early days, but we're extremely pleased with what we have seen so far from the acquisition. Turning to the results, and I'll start with the macro. We've seen a sharp decline in oil and gas prices compared to the year ago, reflecting primarily the OPEC policy change. Brent oil prices were some 37% lower than year-ago levels; similar declines in WTI and the other crude markets. The realized gas prices were some 36% lower than one year ago with a strong decline in gas prices seen in all the markets. We appreciate there has been a recent recovery of prices during April, but this does relate to the fundamentals of supply and demand. But it is far too soon to be calling a break in the weaker environment. On the Downstream side, the refining margins were significantly lower in all regions driven by oversupply, higher inventory and a relatively mild winter in the US and in Northern Europe. Chemicals, the industry cracker margin strengthened in Europe and in Asia (3:15) last year and was driven by the further reduction in naphtha feedstock costs due to the decline in crude. US gas cracker margins also declined as ethylene prices continued to fall over and above the decline in the gas price. You will I hope have seen the enhanced financial disclosures from the company this quarter. We now report Integrated Gas earnings separately from the Upstream, rather than as a subset, and in more detail than in the past. In Downstream, we'd given an earnings split formally, with a combination of refining and trading, obviously separate from marketing. Also taken on board some comments around the exchange rate impacts, which have been a bit noisy over the past couple of years in terms of quarterly impact. So we're now treating noncash foreign currency impact in Australia and Brazil, and specifically on the deferred tax assets, we're now treating them as identified items. So you'll see a restatement of that in the results tables today, both explicitly and also implicitly in the businesses. As this effect was large and a positive this quarter, had we reported on the prior basis, the underlying earnings would have been higher by some $570 million. Excluding identified items, Shell CCS earnings were $1.6 billion. That's a 63% decrease in earnings per share from the first quarter last year. And that EPS figure for Q1 uses the weighted average number of shares in the quarter, and clearly that changed during the quarter. Much lower opening balance, 1.5 billion roughly shares, roughly higher by the end of the second quarter due to the acquisition of BG. On a Q1-to-Q1 basis, we saw an increase in the loss in the Upstream and lower earnings in both Integrated Gas and in Downstream. Return on the average capital employed was 3.8% excluding identified items, and cash flow from ops was around $650 million or $4.6 billion excluding working capital movement. Dividends distributed in the first quarter were $3.7 billion or US$0.47 a share, of which $1.5 billion, $1.5 billion, were settled under the Scrip Programme. Turning to the business segments in a little more detail, Upstream earnings excluding identified items for the first quarter 2016 were a loss of $1.4 billion but with $2 billion of positive cash generation excluding working cap. Low oil prices dominated these earnings. That's a $1.4 billion effect compared to a year ago. However, I think it's very important to point out that the actual operating performance continues to improve. The focus on margins, reliability and uptime, it is delivering. You can see the increase in underlying production contributing, and we also have a decline in the operating costs. Turning now to Integrated Gas, earnings there were $1.0 billion in the quarter, and that compares with $1.5 billion a year ago. Lower oil and gas prices reduced these results by some $700 million, and results also exclude the dividends from the Malaysian LNG Dua joint venture, which last year were $90 million in the first quarter. We exited that joint venture in May last year. Uplift from BG increased the contribution from trading, and lower well write-offs, they all combined to deliver a profitable quarter despite the lower oil price. The headline oil and gas production for the first quarter was 3.7 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, 16% higher than the first quarter last year, and the uplift from the BG acquisition accounts for the majority of that increase. So let me also note we're seeing the benefits of Shell's actions to improve the uptime, less maintenance than the year ago, better reliability and uptime for example in the UK and in Malaysia. All good to see. The LNG volumes were also higher, mainly reflecting higher volumes as a result of the BG combination. Turning now to the Downstream, earnings there for the quarter excluding identified items were $2 billion, mainly due to lower results in oil products. In oil products, the refining and trading results were lower than in the same quarter last year, and that reflected the weaker global refining conditions across the board and also reduced availability due to downtime, particularly in the Bukom refinery in Singapore. Marketing delivered strong underlying performance for the quarter, results at the same level as last year in fact, driven by higher unit margins and lower costs. Chemicals earnings were 8% lower than the year ago. That was due to the lower margins in the US base chemicals, noting the margin, excess (8:54) margin, and the downtime again at the Bukom refinery in Singapore. This was partly offset by lower costs and recovery and production at the Moerdijk site in the Netherlands. But overall, another good quarter for the Downstream. Return on average capital on the clean CCS basis was 18.8% at the end of the quarter on 12-month basis, and the Downstream CFFO, cash from ops, was around $11 billion over that same 12-month period. We made several announcements on the Downstream portfolio during the quarter. In the US, Shell and Saudi Aramco decided to end the Motiva joint venture on the Gulf Coast. We're dividing the refining and the marketing assets (9:39) between us. We have recently completed the sale of the Denmark marketing business for around $300 million. We also delivered a $400 million MLP equity offer in the Midstream pipeline company in the United States. We expect complete the Showa Shell divestment in Japan and the sale of shares in the refinery company in Malaysia this year. Taken together, the Showa Shell, Malaysia, Denmark and the typical MLP yearly deals should result in around $3 billion of disposal proceeds this year, and together with potential contribution from the Motiva dissolution, that's pretty good start for the year. Turning now to the cash position. Cash from ops on the 12-month rolling basis was $23 billion at an average Brent price of around $48 per barrel. That's pretty close to today's spot. Cash portion of the BG deal was $19 billion. That resulted in a negative free cash flow position in total for the quarter. The net debt position, which is around $69 billion, now reflects the total BG balance sheet and of course the purchase price paid for that. Gearing at the end of the quarter was 26.1%. We recognize certain operating leases from BG as financed leases. These include FPSOs, some of the shipping vessels and one LNG facility. Overall, the BG deal added some 9%, nine percentage points, that are gearing, and 2 percentage points of that is as a result of effectively the financed lease changes. Priorities for cash have not changed, first debt reduction, then dividend, then capital investments and share buybacks compete for the margin. Dividends declared were $12.7 billion over the last 12 months. Now more specifically on the BG consolidation, because it was quite a significant one-off impact. The final transaction price for the BG acquisition was $54 billion or some £37 billion. We'll find details of the accounting impact for BG in the results announcement. But the headlines, goodwill was $9 billion. Now this is an accounting definition and artifact, if you like. Goodwill is the balancing number between the fair value as seen by market participants and the purchase consideration, the $54 billion. So under the accounting standards, fair value is calculated using forward price curves as at the day of completion for the first two years, and then analyst macro forecasts thereafter. So just a reminder, the oil price on Feb 15 was around $33 a barrel, therefore the forward curve was fairly low, and this did impact a lower fair value and therefore a higher goodwill. The profit and loss account going forward will include annually a $1.2 billion after-tax depreciation charge for the purchase price premium. That's basically $100 million a month. So we had a $200 million impact the first quarter of 2016. It will be $300 million in quarters going forward. Let me now just move on to the ex-BG assets and their performance. We will of course talk about this somewhat in more detail at the Capital Markets Day we're having in London on June 7. However, it's great to see that the former BG asset growth really is coming through now in this quarter. The oil and gas production from these assets averaged around 800,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day in the first quarter. That's 25% higher than a year ago, and it's a third higher than the production that was in the public domain when we negotiated and announced the bid. Their production in 2014 was 600,000 barrels a day. In the first quarter accounts for Shell, the share we booked, only two thirds of this amount, 522,000 barrels a day oil equivalent to be precise. And now obviously that reflects just two months of contribution. The growth actually comes from the ramp up of Queensland Gas in Australia and also the sixth and seventh nonoperated FPSOs in deepwater Brazil. BG's assets overall added around $200 million to Shell's earnings in the quarter, and approximately $800 million of cash flow from ops. Still early days, but the synergies program is on track, but it's actually more than on track, and you will have seen some announcements recently to reduce our United Kingdom office presence. Based on the excellent progress that we made in the detailed integration planning, we are likely to see delivery of the synergy targets much earlier than planned and at a lower than expected implementation cost. So overall, great start with the integration and obviously a lot more to come there. Before I close, a few words on spending. We continue to reduce capital spending and operating costs. We're reducing those costs across the board, redesign, postpone new options. Earlier this year, a few months ago, we provided the capital investment guidance for 2016 of $33 billion, potential to reduce that figure further, because of course we hadn't actually got under the hood of the BG portfolio at that point. Now capital investment for 2016, this is the actual results, is clearly trending towards $30 billion. We look at detail at the BG portfolio. We continue to drive more capital efficiency in our own opportunity funnel, and in practice we're taking costs out of projects, and projects add to the funnel. The $30 billion figure, and just to be clear, in 2014 before acquisition, before we started either company working on reductions, the combined capital in 2014 was $47 billion. So this $30 billion figure is 35% below that level. It includes, and it actually includes well over $1 billion of noncash items for financed leases still to come this year, a couple of FPSOs in Brazil and Stones in the Gulf of Mexico. On operating costs, similarly the underlying operating costs are trending downwards to a run rate of around $40 billion by the end of the year, but during the year we'll take a few one-off costs most likely associated with the transaction, which is why we don't give a full-year figure. But that $40 billion compares again, go back to 2014, we're something $52 billion, $53 billion, 20% lower than the 2014 combined level. So in simple terms, we were saying all through last year judge us on what we do, not what we say we're going to do. We're effectively taking $17 billion after the CapEx and $13 billion after the OpEx. That's $30 billion, three zero billion dollars, out of the spend between 2014 and 2016. And in very simple terms, we are expecting to absorb the entirety of BG's activity, OpEx and CapEx, and keep the spend level in both cases at the same level it was for Shell alone in 2015. And that's all a result of what I would humbly suggest is a world class integration process that has been running since July last year, and has really hit the ground running, both teams BG and Shell. So just to summarize again then, integrated activities, wellhead through the customer, two differentiators, Downstream, Integrated Gas, both delivering good results, underpinning the financial performance despite $34 oil and $2 Henry Hub. We're already seeing the positive effects from BG. We're very busy now combining the two companies, looking to add yet more value for shareholders. At the same time, we're continuing across the board reduction of costs and spending, lots of material opportunities out there in the down cycle. Early days, very pleased with what we're seeing so far from the acquisition. So with that, let's take your questions. I sort of raised it earlier, but I do acknowledge for all of you out there, we have changed some of the reporting segmentation, and this may be making some of the modeling quite difficult. Can I suggest that we don't cover those on the call, and that we can follow up with the IR team primarily. I'll do what I can to help, but it may be a distraction for the main points in the call. So also I'll remind you we're having a Capital Markets Day in London on June 7, when hopefully everybody on the call will be able to join us. And so please could we move to questions, just one or two each so that everybody has the opportunity. Operator, please could we poll for questions? Thanks.