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Shell has announced a $3.5bn share buyback and raised its dividend, despite a weaker oil price hitting the oil major’s profits.
The FTSE 100 company announced the move — which followed a $3.5bn buyback in the previous quarter — alongside results for the final three months of 2025, and a pledge to lift its dividend by 4 per cent.
It posted adjusted earnings for the final three months of 2025 of $3.3bn and $18.5bn for the full year, slightly undershooting analysts’ expectations of $3.5bn for the quarter and $18.8bn for the year.
That compares with adjusted earnings of $3.7bn for the fourth quarter of 2024 and $23.7bn for the full year.
Oil prices fell by a fifth last year and are expected to weaken during the first half of this year.
Shell’s move comes despite analysts’ expectations that Europe’s biggest oil companies will collectively rein in billions of dollars of shareholder payouts when they report earnings in the coming weeks, as they protect their balance sheets amid lower oil prices.
This is a developing story.