Royal Dutch Shell’s profit leaps 20%

LONDON (Reuters) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc bucked an industry-wide trend of falling earnings on Thursday, posting a 20 percent rise in second-quarter profits as fat refining margins helped outweigh lower output.

Shell said its current cost of supply profit, which strips out changes in the value of inventories, rose to $7.556 billion.


Excluding a non-operating gain of $660 million, partly related to asset sales, underlying profits rose 5 percent to $6.896 billion, beating an average forecast of $6.77 billion given in a Reuters poll of 10 analysts.

It is the eighth straight quarter when the world’s second-largest, non-government-controlled oil company by market value has beaten analysts’ forecasts, suggesting it has turned the corner after difficult years when it admitted overstating reserves and announced multibillion-dollar cost overruns on key fields.

Reuters