Chevron on Friday reported first-quarter earnings that met Wall Street estimates, but said it would spend less on share repurchases in the current quarter, reflecting the shaky economic outlook faced by Big Oil.
The company’s share repurchases this year could be between $11.5bn (about R212bn) and $13bn, said Chevron CFO Eimear Bonner, which would be in the lower end of the company’s guidance of $10bn to $20bn.
The company’s shares fell 2% in pre-market trading on Friday.
Chevron and other oil producers have been contending with falling crude prices since April 2, when US President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs that are expected to reduce global economic growth. An unexpected decision by Opec+ to increase output has further pressured oil prices, which hit a four-year low last month. The lower crude prices have raised questions about whether producers will meet their goals for paying dividends and repurchasing shares — a cornerstone of Big Oil’s strategy to woo investors — or cut capital expenditure budgets.
Chevron said it paid $3bn in dividends and repurchased $3.9bn in shares during the quarter. In the second quarter, the company said it expects to repurchase between $2bn and $3.5bn in shares. If rolled forward, that would mean Chevron could land between $11.5bn and $13bn in repurchases for 2025, Bonner said in an interview.
We’re still buying back a significant amount of our shares annually, on top of a dividend that’s growing faster than our peers
— Eimear Bonner, Chevron CFO
“We’re still buying back a significant amount of our shares annually, on top of a dividend that’s growing faster than our peers,” she said.
The second-largest US oil producer posted adjusted earnings of $3.8bn during the three months ended March 31, or $2.18 per share, matching analyst estimates, according to LSEG data.
Chevron’s global oil production totalled 3.35-million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), flat from the same period last year. Earnings from oil and gas production were $3.76bn, down from $5.24bn in the year-ago quarter.
Scheduled maintenance in oil and gas production during the current quarter will lower output by about 105,000 boepd, the company said. Refining profit improved from the previous quarter, when Chevron’s downstream operations reported the first loss in four years. The company completed an expansion at the Tengiz oilfield in Kazakhstan in January and grew production from the Permian basin, the top US oilfield, by 12% year-over-year. Those gains were offset by loss of production from asset sales.
Chevron also started production at the Ballymore project in the US Gulf of Mexico in April. Operations at Tengiz have been in focus as Kazakhstan has repeatedly exceeded Opec+ oil production quotas.
Bonner said the company is operating unrestricted. During the first quarter, Chevron was hit by a Trump administration order to wind down operations in Venezuela, which will affect the company’s second-quarter shipments from the country.
Reuters
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