Defant Aramco confronts a familiar conundrum

摘要

Saudi Aramco this week ofered an upbeat assessment of its second-quarter performance, presenting a 73pc year-on-year slump in proft as a tale of triumph in the face of adversity given the challenges of an oil market stricken by Covid-19. A year on from its first-ever public earnings presentation, the state-controlled Saudi oil giant is clearly getting to grips with the quarterly reporting pressures so familiar to its private-sector peers. But as a newly public company it is also confronting another conundrum with which the integrated majors have been wrestling in recent months - the choices that have to be made in a downturn between preserving dividends and preserving capital expenditure (capex).