Saudi oil giant Aramco said on Tuesday it expects to declare total dividends of $85.4 billion in 2025, nearly 30% less than last year, after reporting a drop in profits as a result of lower sales and higher costs.
For the first quarter of 2025, the company declared just $200 million in performance-linked dividends, a fraction of last year's quarterly payouts.
Last year's dividends of over $124 billion included about $43.1 billion in performance-linked dividends, a mechanism introduced in 2023 on top of base dividends that are paid regardless of results.
Aramco has long been a cash cow the Saudi state and its bumper payouts last year helped contain the kingdom's fiscal deficit. The government directly owns 81.5% of Aramco, while the Public Investment Fund (PIF), the kingdom's sovereign wealth fund, controls another 16% and is also a beneficiary of the payouts.
Aramco said its net profit fell over 12% to $106.2 billion in 2024. Average realised oil prices eased to $80.2 last year from $83.6 in 2023, Aramco said in a presentation.
"The decrease was primarily driven by lower revenue and other income related to sales, higher operating costs, as well as lower finance and other income," the company said in a stock exchange filing.
Aramco has been pumping crude at roughly three quarters of its capacity since mid-2023, when Saudi Arabia announced its biggest output reduction in years on top of earlier cuts agreed with allied producing countries.
Aramco made net income of about $22.34 billion in the three months ending December 2024, according to Reuters calculations, a nearly 19% drop from the same period a year earlier.
Average realised oil prices were at $73.1 in that quarter, nearly 15% lower than a year earlier.
Aramco said it expected to make capital investments of between $52 billion and $58 billion this year after reporting investments of $53.3 billion in 2024.
Last year's free cash flow declined almost 16% from 2023 to $85.3 billion.
($1 = 3.7503 riyals)
(Reuters - Reporting by Yousef Saba; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Muralikumar Anantharaman and Tomasz Janowski)