Eyes Down For Royal Dutch Shell Plc's Results
Oil super-major Royal Dutch Shell (LSE: RDSB) (NYSE: RDS-B.US) is due to announce its annual results on Thursday this coming week (31 January).
The shares of this FTSE 100 behemoth are trading at 2,300p -- down 5% from a year ago compared with a 10% rise in the Footsie.
How will Shell's businesses have performed in 2012 compared with last year? And will the results justify the weak performance of the shares? Here's your cut-out-and-check results table!
FY 2011 | Forecast FY 2012 | Forecast FY growth | |
|---|---|---|---|
Revenue | $470bn | $467bn | -0.6% |
Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) | $3.97 | $4.19 | +5.5% |
Dividend per share | $1.68 | $1.72 | +2.4% |
Revenue
Shell has seen quarter-on-quarter declines in revenue through the first nine months of 2012, but analysts are forecasting revenue to strengthen in the fourth quarter.
Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 (forecast) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Revenue ($bn) | 120 | 117 | 112 | 118 |
If analyst Q4 forecasts are on the button, revenue for the full year of $467bn will be modestly down on the 2011 number.
Earnings
Shell has done adjusted EPS of $3.13 for the first nine months of 2012, which is 2% down on the same period last year.
However, analysts are expecting the 2% nine-month lag to be reversed for the full year. The consensus forecast for Q4 is $1.06 -- well ahead of 2011's weak Q4 ($0.77).
The upshot of this much stronger Q4 would be Shell finishing 2012 with EPS 5.5% ahead of 2011. The full-year EPS number to look out for is $4.19 with the comparative being $3.97.
Dividend
Prior to 2012, Shell had paid out no less than 12 consecutive quarterly dividends of $0.42 per share. The dividend finally climbed above the three-year plateau in Q1 2012 when the company paid out $0.43. Further $0.43 dividends followed in Q2 and Q3.
Assuming the same distribution in Q4, the total dividend payout for the year would be $1.72 -- 2.4% ahead of the $1.68 paid out in 2011.
Unsure of Shell
Volatile energy prices continued through 2012, which -- together with swings in investor sentiment about the global economy in general -- made the market unsure of Shell and created short-term noise around the shares.
However, despite investor sentiment turning optimistic in recent months and Shell's share price having climbed a good bit, the shares are still down on the level they were trading at a year ago. That means, at the recent price of 2,300p, investors are paying less than nine times forecast 2012 earnings and getting a dividend yield of around 4.7%.
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