Posts under ‘The Motley Fool’

The Motley Fool

An Activist Hedge Fund Wants to Break Up Shell Oil

The oil industry has a spill, and the leaky commodity is drama. Less than six months after an activist hedge fund planted itself on Exxon’s board…

The Daily Upside: Oct 27, 2021 at 8:00PM

The oil industry has a spill, and the leaky commodity is drama.

Less than six months after an activist hedge fund planted itself on Exxon’s board with plans to overhaul the company’s climate agenda, New York-based Third Point revealed on Wednesday its plans to slice up Royal Dutch Shell by carving off its renewables businesses. read more

The Motley Fool

Rupert Hargreaves | Saturday, 14th August, 2021

Extracts:

The Royal Dutch Shell (LSE: RDSB) share price used to be a staple holding for income investors. That was until the company cut its dividend last year for the first time since the Second World War.

Volatile oil prices have always been a risk for the enterprise. In the past, the group’s size and diversification has helped it manage this uncertainty. However, I think the threat of climate change now presents an even more considerable risk for the company and one that could jeopardise its very existence. read more

How Royal Dutch Shell is riding this huge trend

Jay Yao: Fri, 15 January 2021, 5:39 pm

It’s becoming more and more clear that low carbon is the future for the energy industry.

The green sector is a huge and growing one as the world will need low carbon energy to fight against global warming. The world will also need green energy to continue developing economically.

Royal Dutch Shell (LSE: RDSB) management has taken notice of this huge trend and has adjusted its future plans. With the market having awarded many green energy companies with high valuations, I think there could be upside potential if the company executes correctly. read more

Is now the time to sell my Shell shares?

Tom Rodgers: Wed, 18 November 2020, 10:23 am GMT

There’s an old maxim in the wealth management business that no one ever lost money investing in Royal Dutch Shell(LSE:RDSB) shares. No matter how excited young analysts get about the next big thing in battery metals, cloud data storage or AI, they would still recommend buying Shell shares. That’s because the Anglo-Dutch giant has offered predictable dividend income since 1945.

But could the tide have turned on Shell shares for good? read more

Investing in oil: I wonder if a BP-Shell merger could be a possibility?

Kirsteen Mackay: Fool.co.uk: 20 Oct 2020, 09:38

With the crude oil price stagnating around $40 for the past few months and no solution to Covid-19 yet in sight, investing in oil is a risky business and oil companies are out of favour with investors.

Premier Oil is merging with Chrysaor, and rumours abound that Tullow Oil might be next in line for a takeover. No less than 36 US oil and gas companies had declared bankruptcy by August. But with pressure piling on, even the majors are in trouble and as both Royal Dutch Shell (LSE:RDSB) and  (LSE:BP) appear to be struggling, could a merger be on the cards? read more

Shell Plans to Cut Thousands of Jobs Amid Shift to Carbon Neutrality: What Investors Need to Know

Shell’s job cuts are just the latest unsettling news for Wall Street’s least-loved oil major (shares of Shell are down more than any other integrated oil and gas company so far this year).

BY Daniel Foelber:(TMFpalomino2) Oct 10, 2020 at 7:54AM

The case for why the job cuts are the right decision for investors.

To say it’s been an off-year for big oil would be an understatement. Shockwaves of volatility and lower energy demand have rippled through global markets. An added threat is the increasing role of renewables in the energy mix as wind and solar companies continue to gain market share — and oil companies lose it. read more

Why Royal Dutch Shell Outperformed Expectations in Q2 2020

Europe’s top oil company had a few tricks up its sleeve.

John Bromels: (TMFTruth2Power): Aug 24, 2020  

It’s been a horrible earnings season for most top oil and gas companies. Oil supermajors ExxonMobil, Chevron, and  all did worse than expected in Q2 2020 as low oil prices forced drastic spending cuts and the coronavirus pandemic destroyed demand.

Bucking the trend was Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A)(NYSE:RDS.B), which managed to squeak out an adjusted profit of $0.16 per share, versus analysts’ expectations of a $0.31-per-share loss. As surprising as it was to see a profit — even on an adjusted basis — out of the oil industry, even Shell couldn’t pump oil profitably in Q2. Instead, it made money another way. read more

James J. McCombie | Wednesday, 22nd January, 2020

There is plenty of evidence that human activity is causing climate change and the Global Risks Report 2020 from the World Economic Forum has revealed that it is the number one long-term concern of the interviewed stakeholders.

Willingness to do more to safeguard the environment, particularly encouraging the slashing of emissions seems to be growing among the investment community.

BlackRock, a US-based global investment manager, will be offering more sustainable investment funds, and some individual investors globally are shunning the shares of polluters. Putting your capital in ‘green’ companies supports the efforts of those firms to make a difference and could mean that ‘dirty’ companies change their ways in response, or suffer if they do not change. read more

Joe Tenebruso, The Motley Fool: Motley Fool July 19, 2019

Shell Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of international oil titan Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS-A), is investing in blockchain-focused energy company LO3. 

LO3 says it has developed a system that overcomes the challenge of integrating distributed energy resources into supply networks. The company says the system “promises to democratize the energy industry” by allowing people to both produce and consume electricity at their homes and businesses.

Shell’s investment will help LO3 scale its “blockchain-based energy networks around the world,” according to LO3 CEO Lawrence Orsini. “Energy is going through a revolution, with renewable distributed energy resources increasingly picking up market share — but to integrate them efficiently we need to reinvent our energy networks,” Orsini said. “These investments will help us accelerate the rollout of less carbon-intensive microgrids, which help all stakeholders benefit through distributed, decentralized, and decarbonized local energy transactions and demand response energy management on a building-by-building level.” read more

Management thinks the things it has done in recent years will set it up to deliver huge returns for shareholders.

Tyler Crowe (TMFDirtyBird) Mar 19, 2018  It’s hard for a $250-billion-plus business to change its stripes, butRoyal Dutch Shell’s(NYSE:RDS-A)(NYSE:RDS-B) has done a rather incredible job over the past few years transforming the company into one of the most compelling investments in the integrated oil and gas industry. 

Now that Shell has weathered the storm of low oil prices and is back to generating returns, management has plans both within and without the oil industry to preserve what it calls a “world-class investment case.” Here are several quotes from the company’s most recent earnings conference call that highlight some of the efforts Shell is taking to both grow the business and make the stock a better investment. read more

Shell has had a great year, and October added to the up trend, even though there wasn’t much actual news.

Reuben Gregg Brewer (TMFReubenGBrewer) Nov 6, 2017 at 4:32PM

However, since around July and August, Shell has been on a tear. There are two parts to this solid showing. First, oil has been heading in a generally upward direction since about that point. Shell is a commodity company, so energy prices will be a big piece of the performance puzzle. But second, and perhaps more important, Shell appears to be executing well. For example, it has made material headway on its debt reduction goals, which is being driven by asset sales. The oil major has also notably improved its return on capital employed, which has been hindered in recent years by high-profile misses like a now-curtailed effort to drill in the Arctic. The company also posted strong second-quarter earnings results, which fellow Fool Tyler Crowe described at the time as “turn[ing] on the cash flow tap.” FULL ARTICLE read more

Sep 13, 2017 at 7:06AM The dream for those of us following renewable energy is to someday be able to produce 100% of the world’s energy from renewable sources. Wind and solar power could easily provide enough energy to replace every power plant and barrel of oil in the world, if only there were a cheap, easy way to store it. Batteries are expensive and chemically intensive, so hydrogen was always seen as a top-option for long-term energy storage. Royal Dutch Shell (and ITM Power) may have taken a small step toward building a hydrogen-fueled renewable future earlier this month by announcing a 10-megawatt  electrolyzer complex in Germany that will supply hydrogen to its refining plant. The hydrogen could also be used to help balance the grid or be sold to customers for their own uses. FULL ARTICLE

It’s for this reason that I don’t believe the end is nigh for fossil fuels. That really matters to companies like  and Royal Dutch Shell. In fact I’ve been listening to experts harping on about the end of our reliance on fossil fuels ever since I was a child. And believe me, that was a very long time ago.

Think again

So for those of you who think that the big oil firms are doomed, I would say, think again. Oil has been described as the lifeblood of the global economy on many occasions, with the invasion of Iraq and bombing of Libya possibly serving as proof that we are willing to do just about anything to keep it flowing. Indeed, government documents have revealed that plans to exploit Iraq’s oil reserves were discussed by ministers a whole year before the invasion and subsequent destruction of the country. FULL ARTICLE read more

What Shell looks like now

There’s no question about how Royal Dutch Shell makes money. It is one of the world’s largest oil and natural gas drillers, with a large footprint in liquified natural gas. Oil and gas have been the driving force, broadly speaking, throughout all of the company’s over 100-years of existence. Investor questions generally focus on what management is doing to support and grow its core operations. FULL ARTICLE

READ MORE

By The Motley Fool  Saturday 24 Jun 2017, 8:57

At the end of last year, when it looked as if OPEC was making a concerted effort to rein-in oil market oversupply, shares in Royal Dutch Shell(LSE: RDSB) charged to a 52-week high of just under 2,400p. Unfortunately, this rally didn’t last long. By the end of the first quarter, the shares had fallen by nearly 10% and have continued to slide as worries about a new oil glut have continued to grow. The falling oil price has reignited the argument about the sustainability of Shell’s dividend payout. FULL ARTICLE read more