Ahead of a big shareholder vote (27 Jan) on its £36 billion takeover of BG (BG.), Royal Dutch Shell (RDSB) is giving guidance on its fourth quarter and full year numbers. Unsurprisingly given what has happened to oil prices it doesn’t make for great reading and the shares are down 5.7% to £12.91.
This slide is of course exacerbated by another big plunge in crude - with Brent back below $29 per barrel as the market frets about the impact on demand of a teetering Chinese economy and the scope for a significant flood of new supply as Iran emerges from sanctions.
Shell says 2015 will be in the region of $10.4bn, nearly half what it posted for 2014. Q4 profits expected to be in a range between $1.6 billion and $1.9 billion, less than half the $4.2 billion it made in the same period of 2014. BG, itself down 2.5% to 916.6p, is a bit more upbeat.
Ahead of a meeting of its own shareholders to approve the Shell deal (28 Jan) it says results will be in line with and, in some areas, ahead of its previous guidance.
We look in detail at the Shell-BG merger in tomorrow’s issue of Shares.
