Saudi Arabian Oil Company (2222) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to Saudi Aramco's Q3 2023 Results Call. We will be holding Q&A after the presentation. [Operator Instructions] I should now hand over to Mr. Peter Hutton to begin.

Hello, and welcome to this audio webcast discussing Saudi Aramco's third Quarter 2023 Results. I'm Peter Hutton, Head of Investor Relations at Aramco, and I'm delighted that we're joined today by our CFO, Ziad Al-Murshed. Our webcast today will comprise a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session, and we anticipate the entire call to last around an hour. I would also like to remind you that this webcast and conference call are being recorded and to draw your attention to this cautionary statement. During today's presentation, we may make forward-looking statements that refer to estimates, plans and expectations. Actual results and outcomes could differ materially due to factors we note on this slide. Please also refer to our regulatory filings and the website for more details. With that, our...

Group net income and cash from operations, excluding working capital movements, were also up compared to the previous quarter. And the balance sheet remains strong with gearing of negative 7.6% at the end of September. We continue to deliver high reliability and flexibility while maintaining our disciplined focus on costs. We are also progressing well in the execution of our growth strategy by investing in our expanding and integrated portfolio and by remaining the world's preferred supplier of conventional, low-cost, lower upstream carbon intensity barrels. At the same time, we are actively building industry leadership positions in lower-carbon fuels and solutions. Our dividend distribution framework is both resilient on the downside while also sharing the upside. In Q3, we paid USD 29.4 billion in dividends. This included our first performance-linked dividend of USD 9.9 billion on top of our base dividend of USD 19.5 billion. Yesterday, the Board declared a third-quarter base dividend of USD 19.5 billion, and the performance-linked dividend to be paid in Q4 at the same level as Q3 of USD 9.9 billion. The actual precise calculation for performance-linked dividend is USD 9.7 billion, which is largely unchanged. So, the Board decided to keep the performance-linked dividends at the same level as Q3, given that Q3 included a USD 3.4 billion payment for the Rongsheng acquisition and a higher buildup in working capital due to higher prices. We also remain confident in our forecast of mid- and long-term demand growth. Clearly, there is some near-term volatility. And despite that, oil demand is currently at an all-time high. I will now turn to our progress in delivering on our strategy. We continue steadily progressing the execution of our strategy. We have demonstrated our ability to scale up our capital program over the past couple of years. This year, the scale-up of our capital program is a significant increase over last year, which was a record in our history. Nevertheless, we remain confident in our ability to deliver, and we are comfortably on track and well within our capital investment guidelines provided earlier. As a result, we are now narrowing the capital investment guidance range to be USD 48 million to USD 52 billion, including external investments. We will outline our CapEx expectations for 2024 with our full-year 2023 results in March. In the meantime, as we have said previously, we expect our CapEx to continue to increase until around the middle of the decade as we implement our growth plans. With that, let me now highlight our progress on several key initiatives. In Upstream, we continue to expand our crude oil capacity, with the first increase in capacity coming online in 2025. We also continue executing the growth of our gas production by more than 50% over 2021 levels by 2030 to meet growing demand domestically while also adding associated liquids for exports. We achieved a major milestone in the third quarter with the Haile gas plant expansion being commissioned and brought online, adding approximately 750 million standard cubic feet per day of sales gas capacity. During the third quarter, we also announced the signing of agreements to acquire a stake in Mid-Ocean Energy, which has interests in 4 LNG projects in Australia and plans to develop a more diversified LNG portfolio. We are also seeing significant progress in downstream, where our focus remains on locking in dedicated outlets to convert a higher percentage of our upstream production into chemicals and capturing integration benefits along the value chain. Also, in the third quarter, we signed separate agreements for the potential acquisition of 10% strategic equity interest in Jiangsu Shenghong Petrochemicals and 10% of Shandong Yulong Petrochemicals. These 2 highly integrated refining and chemicals complexes have a total capacity of 720,000 barrels per day and chemical conversion rates of over 50%. Similar to previous acquisitions we recently announced, this supports our strategic target to increase liquids to chemicals throughput to up to 4 million barrels per day and to expand into high-growth and strategic geographies. We are currently negotiating the amounts of crude oil and other feedstocks we would supply on a long-term basis to both companies. We also agreed to purchase a 100% equity stake in S-MAX, which is a fuels retailer in Chile and the net importer of refined products. We see this as having synergies with fuel supply from Motiva with Valvoline for its growth in the region and as a platform to build on the Aramco brand. In low carbon fuels and solutions, we completed the financial close of the Al Shuaibah 1 and Al Shuaibah 2 solar projects with our consortium partners, PIF and ACWA Power. Aramco holds a 30% equity stake in these projects with a combined capacity of around 2.7 gigawatts. And with this, we are steadily making progress with our planned target of 12 gigawatts of renewables by 2030. We also continue investing in technologies that could help lower emissions across our industry as part of a realistic and robust global energy transition. For example, we progressed our collaboration with the global automaker, Stellantis with extensive testing of Aramco provided prototype e-fuels concluding that 24 engine families in Europe are compatible with e-fuels without any powertrain modifications. This has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions from existing internal combustion engines by at least 70% on a lifetime cycle basis. In addition, our nonmetallic materials JV with Baker Hughes, Novel commenced operations in Q3 at the King Salman Energy Park in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia. Novel's nonmetallic production facility is now producing reinforced thermoplastic pipes, which will reduce both costs and the carbon footprint across the life cycle. On portfolio optimization, we continue to ensure we direct resources to where they generate the highest returns. In the third quarter, our subsidiary, SABIC has announced it will be divesting Hadeed, which is a metal product supplier. Overall, we are pleased with the progress we are making on our strategy execution. Let me now turn to our key operational and financial highlights for the third quarter. In Q3, we generated USD 32.6 billion of net income and a free cash flow of USD 20.3 billion. As I said, we also paid USD 29.4 billion of dividends in the third quarter, which is a combination of USD 19.5 billion of our sustainable and progressive base dividend and USD 9.9 billion being the first of 6 quarterly payments of our performance-linked dividend. In addition to increasing total dividends by 56% year-on-year, we continue to maintain a robust balance sheet with a balance sheet gearing of negative 7.6%. We continue to focus on maintaining a high investment-grade credit rating across oil price cycles. Also, as I mentioned earlier, we are progressing well with implementing our growth plans. Our capital investments are on plan, totaling USD 37.5 billion for the first 3 quarters of the year, including external investments. This is 42% higher compared to the same period of last year and further demonstrates our track record and ability to scale up our capital program as well as our commitment to growth. Zooming in on some specifics of our third quarter performance, which was robust due to a combination of operational flexibility and favorable prices and margins. Upstream EBIT was robust at USD 60.6 billion in Q3, which is higher than in Q2, benefiting from the increase in average realized oil prices. This was, however, partially offset by lower volumes in Q3. Downstream EBIT was USD 5.3 billion, which is significantly higher than the previous quarter. This is mainly due to stronger refining margins and positive inventory valuation movements resulting from much higher prices compared to last quarter. This was partially offset by weaker chemical margins. Putting all this together, our group net income was USD 32.6 billion in Q3, which is also an improvement on the second quarter. ROACE, which we report on a 12-month rolling basis, remains strong at 23.4%. So overall, we delivered high profitability, high cash flows, and a strong balance sheet in the third quarter. Let me now take a couple of minutes to highlight how we've been focusing on maximizing shareholder value. First, we continue to exercise fiscal discipline and invest in a unique set of attractive growth opportunities to drive underlying future free cash flow growth. Second, we are continuing to strengthen our financial position and diversify our financing sources with new pools of liquidity. We recently signed 2 heads of terms, one with Korea Trade Insurance Corporation and the other with Italy's export credit agency in order to add significant capacity to our financing tools. These would be similar to the framework agreement we signed earlier this year with the Korea Export-Import Bank, KEXIM, for facilities of up to USD 6 billion. Third, we are delivering on our clear mechanism for balanced and enhanced distributions which as I mentioned earlier, provides both downside resilience while also sharing in the upside. Finally, in the past, we acknowledged that daily traded volumes of Aramco shares on the Tadawul exchange were not high enough to attract some investors, and we highlighted that we are focused on helping resolve that concern. I want to draw your attention to the chart on the right-hand side of this slide, which shows that over recent months, we've seen a material increase in our daily traded volumes, in fact, by 3 times since the announcement of our performance-linked dividend, and this has also been assisted by new market-making activities by certain domestic facts. Now, before we go to Q&A, I want to summarize our dividend distribution mechanism to make sure we're all on the same page. With our focus on maximizing shareholder value through strong prospects and free cash flow growth, our approach to dividends is based on 3 main factors: number one is providing downside resilience through a base dividend that is not only sustainable but also progressive through the years. Number 2 is providing a mechanism to share the upside with shareholders through the performance-linked dividend and, finally, by continuing to heavily reinvest in the business through unique attractive growth opportunities. Back in August, we said that our performance-linked dividend payments would be adjusted on actual performance for the remainder of the 2022-2023 period and distributed quarterly through the end of 2024, at which point we would calculate performance-linked dividends based on full-year financial results starting financial year 2024. With that, as I've mentioned, we've declared a USD 9.9 billion performance-linked dividend for Q3 payable in Q4 in addition to the USD 19.5 billion base dividend. As a result, the total dividends paid during 2023 will total USD 97.8 billion. This is 30% higher than the dividends we paid to shareholders in 2022, and it is a clear and positive indicator of our ability to share excess cash balances while also maintaining a very strong balance sheet and reinvesting heavily, in fact, at record high levels in our 90-year history in order to considerably grow our business. Meanwhile, the remaining performance-linked dividend payments for the combined 2022-2023 results will be actualized with Q4 results and announced in March with our full-year results. It is important, of course, to also keep in mind that all dividends are at the Board's sole discretion after considering our financial position and ability to fund commitments, including growth capital plans in accordance with our dividend distribution policy. Thank you very much for your attention, ladies and gentlemen. Peter and I are looking forward to answering your questions.

Thank you, Charlie. So, let's move through to the Q&A. And the first question comes from Iyad Khalid Ghulam at SMB Capital.

Congratulations on the strong results. I have a question regarding your recent acquisitions. What is Aramco aspirations regarding LNG following to the acquisition of Mid-Ocean, and also, if you could shed some light on the rationale behind the acquisition of Esmax actually.

Thank you for the questions. On the LNG acquisition, we have the domestic gas strategy that has us increasing production by more than 50%. Yes, it's focusing on captive Kingdom demand, which is growing, excess gas, we look at as going preferably into blue hydrogen, but also into LNG, if additional amounts are available, we're complementing that by an international gas strategy, which is focusing on LNG. We look at our strategic partnership in Mid-Ocean Energy, which hopefully closes in the first quarter of 2024. Once that closes, it gives us a foothold into this LNG business. As you probably know, Mid-Ocean Energy is in the process of acquiring interests in 4 Australian LNG projects. We have the option to increase our shareholding from the announced 25% as well as our associated rights. The intent is to develop a more diversified or a diversified LNG business, and we're looking for additional opportunities, but we're being opportunistic in that regard, and we're tying it to our trading business as well. With regards to Esmax in Chile, the rationale is that retail system provides a short position, which is very useful, given our long position in Motiva in the United States. And so the potential synergies for fuel placement there are clear. It also provides synergies with Valvoline. It allows us to grow the products of Valvoline in the region. And finally, it's a platform that we can build on the Aramco brand to strengthen our presence throughout the downstream value chain. Esmax has 294 retail fuel stations. It's got about 140 convenience stores, some fuel depots and a lubricant blending plant. Overall, it has 15% market share and about 41,000 barrels per day of sales.

Thank you,. And the next questions come from Mazen Al-Sudairi of Al Rajhi Capital.

Congratulations for the great results. I have a question regarding your presentation. You have mentioned that there is a progress in the CapEx in the coming 3 years. Besides that core ambitions for acquisitions and with this new policy of dividend, what is your actually target or acceptable range of gear ratio in the coming 3 to 4 years?

Mazen, thank you for the question. We look at gearing as one of the metrics to maintain a high investment-grade credit rating. Therefore, the actual balance sheet gearing, as we've always highlighted, while it's important to look at and report on, it's not our main KPI. We take a credit agency view when it comes to gearing because we have attractive opportunities that we want to make sure that we have the funding capacity throughout the cycle. So, 2 things to remember when looking at gearing; one is that we take a cross-cycle view, which means that we're looking at the next 5 to 7 years at least. And the other thing is we look at the credit rating agency definition of gearing, which is considerably different from balance sheet gearing definition. Overall, we're confident that we are able to or we will be able to fund our capital program going forward, which like you said, is increasing considerably until it peaks mid-decade. And we're confident of our ability to fund and distribute a sustainable and progressive dividend.

Thank you, Mazen. And the next question is from Henri Patricot of UBS.

Thank you for the presentation. I have 2 questions, please, on gas. The first one, just on the third quarter results and the production saw quite an increase in natural gas liquids production, if you can expand on the driver of that increase in production this quarter? And then secondly, coming back to LNG and then moving to that business. Can you give us perhaps an update on your plans when it comes to monetizing the Saudi gas? Are you now more really thinking about LNG rather than blue hydrogen, olden update on that as well?

Okay. I just want to repeat the question to make sure we understood the second part, but the first one was relating to the gas in the third quarter and the volumes there. And could you repeat the question on the second question, please.

The second question is, given the announcement you've made with Mid-Ocean LNG and to move into the LNG business. Is that because you can more leaning towards LNG as a way to export your domestic gas rather than blue hydrogen? Or is that type of thing?

Thank you, Henri. On gas production, gas production did increase in Q3. What we report is total hard to carbon production. So, it includes the increase in gas production and associated liquids but also includes the reduction in crude oil production. So the answer to your question, if I understood it correctly, is yes, the amount of gas production and associated liquids actually increased in Q3. With regard to your question on LNG, it's a strategy that once gets us into this business, and it is related to gas volumes coming up to the extent that they become or that we send them through the route of LNG exports, but we are sticking to our strategy of blue hydrogen as our preferred use of these molecules. Of course, as pointed out in the past by I mean, several times, this production of blue hydrogen will depend on our ability to land offtake contracts long term. So to the extent that happens, than our preferred route is blue hydrogen. On LNG domestically, it's basically if additional gas is found beyond the blue hydrogen targets, then that's a possible route that we evaluate. And international gas should be looked at separately as a separate business, whether we end up exporting LNG from domestic sources or not.

Thank you, Henri. And next question from Biraj Borkhataria of RBC Capital Markets.

Thank you for taking my question. Just a couple of follow-ups, please. First one is on the LNG acquisition. I was just wondering why you chose to buy into sort of a portfolio of assets rather than LNG offtake or buying into an integrated product or even an undeveloped resource. And then following on from the LNG versus hydrogen debate. Presumably now you've surveyed the market and determine whether people are willing to pay for it. So have you signed any firm long-term offtake contracts as of today for blue hydrogen? And just a final quick ask is that you disclosed group production in BOE terms, but you don't disclose the split between oil and other liquids and gas. And I was wondering if that's something you'd consider going forward, given the growth is coming across the different value chains going forward?

Thank you, Biraj. On the LNG acquisition, it gives us a foothold in the LNG business and the future phases; we're hoping of this partnership will give us an offtake moving forward. We're also, like I said, always looking for opportunities to do this. We are focusing on getting offtake and tying that with our trading business. On your question on blue hydrogen, we have not signed any offtake agreements yet. We're still in the development phase of such partnerships. And, we'll announce once we sign things; we'll keep you posted. On total hydrocarbon production, we do not provide a split as of nano. We currently don't have plans to provide the split. The important piece of this is on total hydrocarbons, but we also disclose total liquids produced. We think that is sufficient to understand our business. At the end of the day, all liquids go into the same market.

Thanks, Biraj. And now to Martijn Rats of Morgan Stanley.

Two questions. I was hoping whether you could sort of give us an update when it comes to the expansion of the crude oil capacity. If you could sort of run through the various projects among Marjan and Berri and sort of sort of highlight how these projects are progressing, that would be most helpful. And also, you made a comment about sort of new agreements on facilities with the Italian credit rating agencies and you mentioned a few others. And, I sort of missed that during the quarter. Can you sort of expand on that? And also what purpose at service and why it's necessary. I mean, the balance sheet of course is very, very strong. So I was wondering, in what context we should see those things?

Sure. Thank you, Martijn, for the 2 questions. On crude oil capacity, it's easy, as we've told you the previous call, all our projects are on track, and they're progressing very well. And if you're interested in the specific date, I can mention them again, either Marjan, Berri or Zuluf. And they start coming on stream between 2024 up to 2027. On the Italian or the heads of terms that we signed with Italy's and actually the Korean export credit agencies. The intent, if you remember, earlier this year, we announced that we signed a USD 6 billion framework agreement with the Korean export-import bank (KEXIM). The idea there is it provides a facility for us to use for general corporate use as opposed to tying it to specific projects and we're trying to do the same with Kishore in Korea as well and Italy's export credit agency. The intent is to continue, as we promised, to diversify our funding sources so that we provide a more or stronger ability to finance going forward, our capital program without having to hold big amounts of cash. We told you that we don't keep cash for the sake of keeping cash and we're living up to those plans. That's the main intent of these.

Thanks, Martijn. Next up is Kim Fustier of HSBC in London.

Firstly, you've been ordering a lot of contracts with those major oil and gas developments that you just referenced. I wondered if you could give any color on the pricing, the cost and the general competitive landscape. Secondly, I wondered if you could say roughly how much of the 700 or so KBD processing capacity from those 2 Chinese refining and petrochemical complexes you'd like to tie through long-term crude supply agreements. Thank you.

Thank you, Kim. On your first question, we have a massive capital program, and there are a lot of capital programs for others. So, we're seeing some competitiveness when it comes to contractors out there. we're seeing less of it because of our long-term historical strategy of increasing local content. So that helps us a lot. But we are seeing the same or similar competitiveness from pricing issues that are out there that are seen by others. But in our case, it's better because of our active and localization strategy. On the 2 announcements for the recent potential deals in China, we're still negotiating the amounts to be placed into these 2 assets. once we reach agreement, we will be announcing these. But as a reminder, these 2 assets, similar to our previous 2 transactions have a very high conversion rate, well above 50% of liquids to chemicals. So, once we reach agreement, we'll be announcing.

Thank you, Kim. Thanks very much. Next question comes from Sashank Lanka at Bank of America Securities.

Thank you for the presentation and the opportunity to ask questions. I have 2 questions. The first one just on your gas volumes. We understand that Q3 was strong, given the summer season in Saudi. Is it fair to assume that we should expect some normalization as you go into Q4 in terms of your gas volumes? That's the first question. And the second question is just on oil demand. I think on the last earnings call, you mentioned that jet fuel in China was one subsector which still had opportunity to grow. Just wanted your view on demand that you're seeing given the current global economic situation and demand is that we are talking about.

Sure. Thank you, Sashank. On the first question, yes, we expect a similar trend of gas production in the fourth quarter that we've seen the similar cyclicality that you see annually. So yes, to that extent, should normalize. On demand in general, we're seeing global demand recovery on track. Q3 demand estimates range from a growth of 1.3 million to 2 million barrels per day quarter-on-quarter. The growth came from better economic activity in Asia, and we expect the trend to continue for the rest of the year with most forecasters forecasting demand by the end of the year to hover around 104 million barrels per day. In China specifically, demand growth in Q3 came from transport fuels and expanded construction activity. These factors are expected to continue being supportive of growth in the next quarter. India's demand also contributed to growth in Q3, mainly transport fuels and industrial demand there, which we expect to continue throughout or in Q4. You referenced jet fuel, specifically in China jet fuel has been growing. In pre-pandemic demand was about 8 million barrels a day. It's 2023 so far averaged a little over 7 million barrels per day. So although that's a considerable increase by about 1 million barrels from 2022, it's still not at pre-pandemic level. At the year-end, we expect demand to be near pre-pandemic levels. We're seeing global site traffic about 84% of 2019 levels. Last year, it was in the low 70s percent compared to pre-pandemic level. So we're seeing the recovery and we're expecting it to continue.

Next question is from Alastair Syme at Citi.

I don't have a follow up on the demand question because you are seeing some pretty shocking demand numbers coming out of Europe, especially France and Germany and especially on middle distillates. So just wondering if you're seeing the same in your customer interactions into Europe. And then secondly, I wonder if you could just reflect on how the Kingdom's power system coped this summer, particularly interested in getting it where the crude burn was this summer compared to where it's been in previous years.

In Europe, it's important to tie it to economically what's happening. So let me actually take that as an opportunity to talk about generally the economy and then Suman a little bit on Europe. Economic growth has been resilient in the U.S. It has lagged in the eurozone and kind of stabilized in China. Forecasters see global demand growing by 2.1 to 2.8 between 2023 and 2024. China is recovering, it's now stabilized. In Europe specifically, we've seen lower energy prices compared to last year. That helped in trying to stabilize, but this is quickly fading and resulting in a bit of a lag on recovery. Most of our sales, more than 75% actually go into Asia. And so we're able to benefit from that recovery. I didn't catch your second question. I didn't understand it. Could you...

It was about crude burn in the summer sort of the rough volumes of crude burn and the power system versus previous years?

Yes. So we don't disclose the specific numbers for crude burn. What I can tell you is it has been -- we have the master gas system expansion that we're executing that is designed to reduce crude burning actually all but eliminate liquid burning in general, which we're expecting to avail about 1 million barrels of liquids for export as we grow our gas production by more than 50% and connect or expand the Master gas system, which is a gas grid that gets the gas across the country to the plants that are currently burning. But in terms of specifically what the crude burn is in Q3 or this year, we don't disclose these figures.

So can you say if it's improving in the last 2 or 3 years, is the trend being established.

Yes, as gas production has been increasing, that has been improving.

Thanks, Alastair. So that's it for the questions for the call this afternoon. Thank you to everybody who's joined us. As ever, if you haven't had an opportunity to ask a question, please get in touch with us in Investor Relations. That's what we're here for. I'm very happy to engage. And with that one, I'll close the call. Thank you to Ziad for joining us today, Fergus for joining us and wish you the best of luck. Thank you.

This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.