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Woodside Energy (NYSE:WDS) +0.9% in early trading Tuesday after reporting FY 2023 underlying profit fell 37% Y/Y to $3.32B from $5.32B a year earlier but beating analyst expectations of $3.03B.
The lower result was widely anticipated after Woodside (WDS) recently flagged $1.5B in impairment charges against its Shenzi oil and natural gas field and the Wheatstone natural gas project; the company maintained FY 2024 production guidance of 185M-195M boe.
Woodside (WDS) declared a final dividend of US$0.60/share, bringing the full-year payout to US$1.40/share; it returned 80% of its underlying net profit as dividends in H2, and Jarden analyst Nik Burns said he thinks investors will latch on to recent dealmaking to assess the outlook for future payouts.
Burns said investors likely will focus on “whether the recent Scarborough sell-down locks in an 80% payout ratio through the next 2-3 years,” referring to the recent agreement to sell a 15% stake in the JV developing the Scarborough natural gas field to Japan’s JERA for $1.4B.
In one of the more bullish outlooks in the industry, CEO Meg O’Neill said Woodside (WDS) expects consumption of liquefied natural gas will rise 50% over the next decade, pushing the company to consider further expansions.
“We’re seeing signs of that demand growth in emerging Asia,” O’Neill told Bloomberg in an interview, adding that the company’s M&A team “is out looking at a variety of opportunities, but we are going to be disciplined.”
On the Biden administration’s move to impose a temporary halt on new LNG export licenses while it studies the impact of climate change, the CEO said it “sends another worrying sign around the fiscal and regulatory stability in places that used to be places where you could count on investing.”