Williams CEO Alan Armstrong to step down after 14 years at the helm
May 5 (Reuters) - Williams Companies (WMB.N), opens new tab said on Monday CEO Alan Armstrong will step down after more than 14 years at the helm of the U.S. pipeline operator.
Armstrong, who joined Williams nearly 40 years ago, would be succeeded by insider Chad Zamarin, effective July 1. Zamarin, who joined the company in 2017, is currently the executive vice president of corporate strategic development.
Make sense of the latest ESG trends affecting companies and governments with the Reuters Sustainable Switch newsletter. Sign up here.
Williams on Monday also beat quarterly earnings estimates and raised its annual profit forecast, as it banked on rising demand for natural gas, driven by a surge in electricity consumption by homes, businesses, crypto-mining, and an artificial intelligence-led boom in data centers.
"Williams is well positioned to benefit from the coming wave of natural gas demand from the power generation market and LNG exports, while continuing to deliver on traditional market needs," Armstrong said.
The firm raised its 2025 adjusted core profit to be between $7.5 billion and $7.9 billion compared to its prior outlook range of $7.45 billion to $7.85 billion.
Its first-quarter results were boosted by higher service revenues from expansion projects and acquisitions.
In January, the U.S. energy regulator reinstated the certificate for Williams' Transcontinental gas pipeline, allowing it to go ahead with expansion of the project, after a U.S. court voided the initial approval in 2023.
Total revenue rose nearly 10% to $3.05 billion during the quarter ended March 31, while service revenues climbed to $2 billion from $1.91 billion a year ago.
At Transco, average daily transportation volumes rose to 15.9 million dekatherms (MMdth) of natural gas per day in the first quarter from 14.6 MMdth per day of natural gas a year ago.
The company posted an adjusted profit of 60 cents per share for the quarter ended March 31, compared with average analysts' estimate of 56 cents per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
15 minutes ago
- Reuters
Spain's Sanchez seeks support from regions to triple housing budget
MADRID, June 4 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Wednesday sent a letter to leaders of Spain's regions seeking support to triple investment in social housing to around 7 billion euros ($8.00 billion) over the next four years. Spain needs to increase its social housing stock, currently equivalent to around 3% of all homes, to bring it closer to the European average of 8% in order to alleviate a shortage as buying and renting prices reach record highs. Ahead of a meeting on Friday between Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and regional leaders, he offered to invest 4 billion euros, up from the current 1.7 billion allocated over the last three years, to build more homes and plug a housing deficit estimated at 450,000 by the Bank of Spain. Regional governments, which are mostly controlled by the conservative People's Party (PP), would provide the remaining 2.7 billion euros. That would mean Spain's regions have to agree to increasing their contribution to the housing budget to 40% from the current 25%. The government also wants regions to commit to maintaining social housing under state ownership and prohibiting their sale, government sources said. In the past, Spain built thousands of homes with public funds that later passed into private ownership. Government sources did not provide details about how the increase in housing budget would be funded or whether it would need parliamentary approval. Sanchez's minority coalition government is trying to pass new taxes in Congress to discourage owners from renting homes to tourists and foreigners from buying. The government will also propose creating a new database from all national and regional registers, with the aim of better monitoring rental and housing prices, as well as tourist rentals and available land to build on, the sources said. ($1 = 0.8754 euros)
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
India's Vedanta says Trump's tariffs damaging, seeks import curbs
June 4 (Reuters) - Indian metals-to-oil conglomerate Vedanta ( opens new tab said on Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump's doubling of aluminium tariffs to 50% poses a threat to the Indian industry already struggling with surging imports. Trump's latest round of tariffs on aluminium and steel, which took effect on Wednesday, have unsettled the global markets. "The 50% tariff announced by Trump is damaging to the Indian aluminium industry, which is already under pressure from surging imports that threaten to create surplus and risk to domestic market access," a Vedanta spokesperson told Reuters. The miner, which is the country's largest aluminium producer, urged the Indian government to implement tariffs to protect against imports. "..There should be duty guard-rails for the aluminium industry as well which has so far invested more than $20 billion to set up the current domestic primary aluminium capacity," the spokesperson said. India's cumulative aluminum exports fell 19% to 2.24 million metric tons in the fiscal year ended March 2025, according to government data. Separately, the country's federal steel minister said earlier this week that the impact of Trump's steel tariffs would be minor on the local industry, as India, the world's second-largest crude steel producer, does not export to the U.S. in significant quantities. In April, India imposed a 12% temporary tariff on some steel imports, locally known as a safeguard duty, to curb a surge in cheap shipments primarily from China.
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
LinkedIn CEO to take over Office, more AI duties in Microsoft executive shuffle
SAN FRANCISCO, June 4 (Reuters) - The CEO of LinkedIn will take additional responsibility for Microsoft's Office products, while an executive responsible for one of the company's leading business-to-business artificial intelligence products will start reporting to head of the company's Windows unit, according to a memo from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella viewed by Reuters. Ryan Roslansky, who oversees the business-focused social network owned by Microsoft, will remain CEO of LinkedIn but also oversee products such as Word and Excel and also "Copilot," Microsoft's leading AI product, within the company's productivity software suite, the memo said. Roslansky will report to Rajesh Jha, who oversees Microsoft Windows and Teams, among other duties. The memo said existing Office leaders Sumit Chauhan and Gaurav Sareen will report to Jha as well. Also moving to report to Jha will be Charles Lamanna, who leads "Copilot" for business and industrial users, the memo said.
