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Rosneft, Russia's oil company reports 70% drop in nine-month net profit
Rosneft, Russia's biggest oil producer, reported a 70% drop in net income from January to September, falling by $3.57 billion or 277 billion Russian roubles. The company attributed the decline to high interest rates and cheaper oil, as well as a stronger rouble. Shell and TotalEnergies have seen their quarterly profits fall due to lower oil prices. Rosneft stated that the increased "anti-terror" security was putting additional pressure on its results. The company didn't elaborate on specific security measures. Ukraine has increased drone attacks against Russia's energy infrastructure. Rosneft reported that its revenues dropped 17.8% to 6.29 trillion rubles in the first nine-month period of the year. The high key interest rate of the Bank of Russia continues to negatively impact the profit. Rosneft also said that non-monetary factors and special events had a negative impact on the indicator's dynamic during the reporting period. EBITDA (earnings before taxes, depreciation, and amortization) decreased by 29.3% for the period to 1.6 trillion Russian roubles.
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Silver sets new record for silver; gold heads to fourth consecutive monthly gain
Gold spot rose 1% on Friday to a new two-week-high, amid expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve would cut interest rates in the coming months. Silver also hit a record high. Gold spot was up by 1.3% at $4,210.94 an ounce as of 03:11 pm EST (20:11 GMT) after hitting its highest price in November 13 earlier this morning. Bullion is expected to rise 5.2% for the month and 3.6% for the week, marking a fourth consecutive increase. Silver reached a new record high at $56.78 an ounce. This is up 6.1% in the session, and 16.6% over the course of the month. After an outage that lasted for several hours at CME, trading in foreign exchange, commodities and futures, including Treasuries, stocks, and Treasuries, resumed around 8 a.m. U.S. Gold Futures for February Delivery settled 1.3% higher, at $4.254.9 an ounce. INVESTORS FOCUS ON FED Bart Melek is global head of commodity strategies at TD Securities. He said that some investors are returning to gold because they believe the Federal Reserve will cut rates. Gold is more likely to perform well when interest rates are low. The recent dovish comments from Fed Governor Christopher Waller, and New York Fed president John Williams, coupled with the softer economic data after the recent U.S. Government shutdown, has strengthened expectations that central bank rates will be cut next month. The traders now see 87% of a chance that the rate will be cut in December. This is up from 50% just last week. Jim Wyckoff is a senior analyst at Kitco Metals. He said that "the technical charts have become more bullish over the last week or two, which has encouraged chart-based investors to bet on the long side of silver." This week, gold demand in major Asian markets was muted as high prices slowed retail purchases despite the beginning of India's festive season. The removal of the tax exemption for gold purchases in China has slowed consumer demand. Palladium gained 0.8%, to $1450.16, and is set to gain 5.6% for the week. Platinum rose 4%, to $1672.50. (Reporting from Bengaluru by Pablo Sinha; Additional reporting by Sarah Qureshi, Editing by Rod Nickel and Paul Simao; Vijay Kishore).
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Silver sets new record for silver; gold heads to fourth consecutive monthly gain
Gold spot rose 1% on Friday to a new two-week-high, amid expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve would cut interest rates in the coming months. Silver also hit a record high. Gold spot was up 1.6% at $4,222 an ounce as of 01:44 pm EST (18.44 GMT), the highest price since 11 November. It was also set to gain 3.9% per week. Bullion is on course to record a 5.5% increase this month and is set for its fourth monthly gain. Silver reached a new record high at $56.52 an ounce. This is a 5.5% increase for the session, and a 16% gain for the entire month. After an outage that lasted for several hours at CME, trading in foreign exchange, commodities and futures, including Treasuries, stocks, and Treasuries, resumed around 8 a.m. U.S. Gold Futures for February Delivery settled 1.3% higher, at $4.254.9 an ounce. INVESTORS ARE FOCUSED UPON THE FED Bart Melek is the global head of commodity strategies at TD Securities. He said that some investors are returning to gold because they believe rates will be cut by the Federal Reserve. Gold is more likely to perform well when interest rates are low. The recent dovish comments from Fed Governor Christopher Waller, and New York Fed president John Williams, coupled with the softer economic data after the recent U.S. Government shutdown, has strengthened expectations that central bank rates will be cut next month. The traders now see 87% of a chance that the rate will be cut in December. This is up from 50% just last week. Jim Wyckoff is a senior analyst at Kitco Metals. He said that "the technical charts have become more bullish over the last week or two, which has invited chart-based investors to be on the long side of silver." This week, gold demand in major Asian markets was muted as high prices curbed the retail buying of the precious metal despite India's wedding season. The removal of the tax exemption for gold purchases in China has slowed consumer demand. Palladium rose 0.5%, to $1.445.20, and is set to gain 5.2% for the week. Platinum was up 3.2% at $1,659.83. (Reporting from Pablo Sinha, Bengaluru Editing done by Rod Nickel and Paul Simao)
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Adani, an Indian company, wants to invest up to $5 billion in Google's data centers to take part in the AI boom
Adani Group, owned by Alphabet, plans to invest $5 billion into Google's India AI Data Centre Project, an executive revealed on Friday. The company is looking to capitalize on the booming demand in data capacity across the world's largest nation. Google announced in October that it would invest $15 Billion over five years in the state of Andhra Pradesh to build an artificial intelligence data center. This is its largest investment in India. AI demands enormous computing power. This is driving demand for data centres with thousands of chips linked together in clusters. Adani Group CFO Jugeshinder Singh stated that the Google project may mean an investment up to $5 billion in Adani Connex, a joint venture of Adani Enterprises with private data centre operator EdgeConneX. Singh told reporters Friday that "It is not only Google. There are many parties who would like to collaborate with us, particularly when the capacity of our data centres goes up to gigawatts and beyond." Google has committed to investing about $85 billion in expanding data centres capacity this year. Tech companies are investing heavily in infrastructure as they try to meet the demand for AI-based services. The Indian billionaires Mukesh and Gautam Ambani also announced investments to build data centres. The campus of the data centre in Visakhapatnam, a port city, will initially have a power capacity of one gigawatt. $1 = 89.3660 Indian Rupees (Reporting and editing by Kevin Liffey; Harshita Pandya, Dhwani Pandya)
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Silver sets new record for silver; gold heads to fourth consecutive monthly gain
Silver also hit a new record high. Spot gold rose by 1% on Friday to a 2-week high, amid expectations that the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates in the coming months. By 12:10 pm EST (1710 GMT), spot gold had risen 1.3% to $4210.49 an ounce, its highest price in two weeks. It was also set for a weekly gain of 3.4%. Bullion is on course to record a 5% increase this month and is set for a fourth consecutive monthly rise. Silver reached a new record high of 56.41 dollars per ounce. This is a 5.3% gain for the session, and a 15.2% increase for the month. After an outage that lasted for several hours at CME, trading in the currency platform, as well as futures covering foreign exchange, commodities and Treasuries, resumed around 8:15 a.m. U.S. Gold futures for delivery in February rose by 1%, to $4245.70 an ounce. INVESTORS FOCUSED UPON FED Bart Melek is global head of commodity strategies at TD Securities. He said that some investors are returning to gold because they believe the Federal Reserve will cut rates. Gold does well in environments with low interest rates. Recent dovish comments from Fed Governor Christopher Waller, New York Fed president John Williams and softer economic data after the recent U.S. Government shutdown have increased expectations that the central banks will reduce rates next month. The traders now see 87% of a chance that the rate will be cut in December. This is up from 50% just last week. Jim Wyckoff is a senior analyst with Kitco Metals. He said that "the technical charts of silver have become more bullish over the last week or two, which invites chart-based traders to be on the long side in the silver market." The demand for gold was muted across the major Asian markets during this week as high prices discouraged retail purchases despite India's wedding season. The removal of the tax exemption for gold purchases in China has slowed consumer demand. Platinum rose 3.2%, to $1659.02 and was up 10% on the week. Palladium rose 1.3%, to $1456.68, for a gain of 6%. (Reporting from Pablo Sinha, Bengaluru Editing done by Rod Nickel and Paul Simao.)
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Eskom's South Africa sees its annual profit match last year after a strong first half
Eskom, the South African power utility, said that it expects this year's profits to be similar to those of last year. This is after a good first half-year helped by higher rates and lower financing costs. Eskom's profit was 16 billion rands after taxes last year. This is its first profit for a full year in eight years. The profit came after Eskom drastically reduced the number of recurring blackouts, which have been holding back Africa's largest economy for over a decade. A multi-year bailout by the government and a dramatic turnaround in performance at its coal-fired energy stations have been key factors in its financial recovery. Eskom made a profit of 24.3 billion rand (1.4 billion dollars) in the first six months of the current financial year. This coincided with winter months in the Southern Hemisphere, when Eskom sells a lot more electricity and performs less maintenance on its plants. Eskom stated that the results showed that last year's profits were not an isolated event. The average tariff increased by 12.7%, helping to boost revenue to 191.3 billion rand in the six-month period ending September. Due to lower interest rates, and debt levels, net finance costs dropped by 14% to 15,3 billion rand. The amount of money owed to struggling municipalities has increased from 90.1 billion rand in the previous year to 105 billion. Eskom reported that power cuts only occurred on four days during the six-month period covered in its latest results. When power cuts in 2023 reached record levels, outages occurred on more than 300 of the 365 days. Former state monopoly still dominates the electricity market in the country. It generates most of its power through coal-fired facilities, but also has a small number of smaller plants that use diesel or water to produce energy.
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Silver sets new record for silver; gold heads to fourth monthly gain
Gold spot rose 1% on Friday to a new two-week-high, amid expectations that the Federal Reserve would lower interest rates in the coming months. Silver also hit a record high. By 10:09 am, spot gold had risen 0.9% to $4.192.78 an ounce. ET (1510 GMT), was at its highest level since November 14. It was also on track for a weekly gain of 2.9%. Bullion is set to rise 4.6% this month and will be on course for its fourth straight monthly gain. Silver reached a new record high of $55.33 an ounce. This is a 3.5% increase for the session, and 12% for the entire month. After an outage that lasted for several hours, trading in the currency platform, as well as futures covering foreign exchange, Treasuries, and stocks, resumed at around 1330 GMT. U.S. Gold Futures for February Delivery rose by 0.61%, to $4,227.60 an ounce. FED RATE IN FOCUS Bart Melek is the head of commodity strategy at TD Securities. He said that some investors are returning to gold because they expect a continued slowdown in the economy. Gold does well when interest rates are low. Recent dovish comments from Fed Governor Christopher Waller, New York Fed president John Williams and softer U.S. data after the government shutdown have increased expectations that the central banks will reduce interest rates next month. The traders now see 89% of the chance that a rate reduction will occur in December. This is up from 50% just last week. Jim Wyckoff is a senior analyst with Kitco Metals. He said that "the technical charts of silver have become more bullish over the last week or two, which invites chart-based traders to be on the long side in the silver market." The demand for gold was muted across the major Asian markets during this week as high prices curbed consumer buying, even as India began its wedding season. The removal of the tax exemption for gold purchases in China has slowed consumer demand. Palladium rose 5.6%, to $1.519.37, and is set to gain 10.7% on a weekly basis. Platinum was up 2.9% at $1,655.14, a 9.7% increase for the week. (Reporting and editing by Rod Nickel in Bengaluru)
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Investors were rattled by exchange outages before CME's collapse
CME Group, one of the largest exchange operators in the world, suffered an outage lasting several hours on Friday. This affected trading on its currency platform, as well as futures including foreign exchange, commodities and Treasuries, and stocks. Market participants reported that the outage began early in Asia and ended mostly by morning U.S. trade. It was one of longest in recent years. Since the early 1980s, exchange outages caused by bugs in software, hardware failures and cyberattacks have caused disruptions to markets and undermined investor confidence. Check out some of the major outages that have occurred: A power outage on August 14, 2024, caused the Moscow Exchange to stop trading for over an hour. The Swiss SIX Stock Exchange experienced its worst outage in recent history on July 31st, 2024. A technical glitch caused the trading to be halted twice for several hours across stocks, bonds and mutual funds. Data and services of LSEG Group were unavailable on July 19, 2024, causing some disruptions in the financial markets. On that same day, a broader tech failure also caused a global uproar. On June 3, 2024, a glitch at the New York Stock Exchange caused massive swings of shares in Berkshire Hathaway (Berkshire Hathaway) and Barrick. Trading halted in dozens of companies. London Stock Exchange reports an incident on October 19, 2023, which forced them to stop trading in smaller UK shares. However, blue-chip stocks were not affected. Refinitiv's news and data platform Eikon, which is operated by the London Stock Exchange Refinitiv, experienced a prolonged outage on August 2, 2021. This was its third such incident that year. * Euronext, the pan-European financial market operator, experienced technical glitches that knocked index derivatives trading out for almost four hours on June 17, 2021. The Australian stock exchange had to stop trading for 20 minutes due to a software issue on November 15, 2020. ASX, the operator of the bourse, re-opened trading one day later. Qontigo, the index operator, informed its clients that Europe's STOXX key indexes would open more than an hour later on November 2, 2020 due to an "input data problem". A hardware failure brought the Tokyo Stock Exchange to a halt on October 1, 2020, the worst outage ever for the third largest equity market in the world. New Zealand stock exchange resumes trading on August 28, 2020, after four days of disruptions due to cyberattacks. In July 2020, a software glitch caused the trading to be temporarily halted on Germany's electronic trade platform Xetra. This was the second time that the system had been down since April. May 8, 2020: A software error caused the Moscow Exchange to suspend stock trading for 42-minutes. TMX Group (Canada's largest stock exchange operator) experienced its second outage within two years when a hardware problem caused order entry problems, resulting in a shutdown of trading for almost two hours across three local bourses. Nasdaq Inc.'s Nordic stock market and Baltic stock market were shut down twice by technical issues in one day, due to connectivity problems. Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing has suspended trading in derivatives for the afternoon on September 5, 2019. This is due to a bug that caused connectivity issues with the Hong Kong Futures Automatic Trading System. August 16, 2019: The longest trading outage in the history of the London Stock Exchange was caused by a software problem that delayed the start for nearly two hours. A technical problem with trade reporting caused the New York Stock Exchange of Intercontinental Exchange to suspend trading for a portion of April 25, 2018. This affected five stocks including Alphabet and Amazon. Singapore Exchange has suspended trading in securities for the second half of the day because duplicate confirmation messages were generated. A technical problem caused the NYSE to suspend trading on July 8, 2015. March 31, 2015: ICE’s NYSE Arca suffered a technical problem that caused some of the most popular Exchange-Traded Funds to be temporarily unavailable for trading. Some investors paid more for their stocks than they would have otherwise. A software bug caused connectivity problems to a data feed for the industry. May 18, 2012: Facebook’s $16 billion initial publicly offered on the Nasdaq market was marred with technical glitches, which resulted in an opening that was delayed and left many traders in the dark about the trades that had been completed for several hours. This led to significant losses at a number of firms. Bats Global Markets was forced to cancel their IPO after a series glitches due to a software bug. May 6, 2010: Uncertain market conditions coupled with an aggressive, massive sell order of a popular futures product triggered a “flash crash” that sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeting over 1,000 points and temporarily wiping out almost $1 trillion worth of market value. On August 2, 1994, a squirrel chewed a power cable in Trumbull (Connecticut), where Nasdaq's servers were located. The backup power system of the exchange failed to kick in and caused a half-hour outage. On December 9, 1987, a squirrel had chewed through the power cable of Turnbull. This set off a series of events which shut down Nasdaq trading for almost an hour and half. * LSEG pays news.
Petrobras cost-cutting could affect new wells in the Equatorial Margin Region
Petrobras' CEO stated on Friday that the company could reconsider some of its 15 planned wells in the "Equatorial Margin" because Brent oil prices will likely remain low for the next few years. Petrobras has cut its investment plans for the period 2026-2030 by $500 million up to $2.5 billion.
Magda Chambriard, Petrobras' Chief Executive Officer, said at a recent press conference that "we had a large number of wells in the Equatorial margin; some were prioritised, while others were, say, deprioritized based on the Brent crude oil price."
She did not specify how many wells would be examined. Petrobras is drilling in an environmentally sensitive region off the coast Amapa, known as Foz do Amazonas. Fernando Melgarejo, the Chief Financial Officer of Petrobras, told journalists that the company's cuts would also affect the extraordinary dividends paid to shareholders. He said the likelihood of distributing extra cash is low in the future. Chambriard stated that despite the cuts, Petrobras will maintain its oil production around 2.6 or 2.7 millions barrels per day up until 2034, after ramping it back up in 2027.
Petrobras' new business plan expects it to reach a peak oil production level in five years. Reporting by Fabio Téixeira and Marta Nogueira from Rio de Janeiro, writing by Andre Romani and editing by Kyrry Madry and Paul Simao
(source: Reuters)