Latest news with #StephanJansma
CNA
3 days ago
- Business
- CNA
Trafigura posts slight rise in first-half net profit, lower revenues
LONDON : Global commodity trading house Trafigura reported on Thursday that its net profit rose slightly on the year to about $1.52 billion in the first half of its 2025 financial year, while its revenues fell on lower average commodity prices. The unlisted company's net profit was up 3 per cent from the first half of 2024, stabilising after a sharp drop in its 2024 full-year results, when the company discovered a $1.1 billion fraud in Mongolia and as major trading houses adjusted to an end to a record earnings period over 2022-2023. The first half of its 2025 financial year, the six months to March 31, also coincided with a power transition at the Swiss-based trading house, with Richard Holtum taking over from Jeremy Weir as group CEO on January 1. It also comes as commodity players grapple with global markets thrown into turmoil this year by heightened trade and geopolitical tensions. "Increased volatility may not necessarily translate into physical trading opportunities, as current market movements are driven more by policy-focused decisions rather than traditional supply-demand disruptions, Trafigura Chief Financial Officer Stephan Jansma said, adding that he anticipated turbulence would continue in the second half of the year. Group revenues for the period fell by 4 per cent to $119.2 billion, because of lower commodity prices on average, the firm said in its results statement. Trafigura, alongside rival traders including Vitol and Gunvor, reaped lower profits in 2024 as their boom period in 2022-2023, driven by the post-pandemic recovery and commodity price shocks in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, came to an end. Trafigura's full-year net profit for 2024 was $2.8 billion, down from a record $7.4 billion in 2023. OIL AND GAS VOLUMES UP, METALS DOWN Trafigura's first-half traded oil and gas volumes were unchanged on the year at around 7.2 million barrels per day. Traded volumes of metals fell. Trafigura traded 9.9 million metric tons of non-ferrous metals, down from 10.4 million a year earlier, as it said it was focusing more on "profitable tonnages." Bulk minerals volumes fell to 43.4 million tons, from 54.7 million in the first half of 2024.
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Commodity Traders Still Rake In Billions as Profit Bonanza Wanes
(Bloomberg) — The world's largest commodity traders are still making historically elevated profits, even as less-volatile markets mean their earnings have retreated from the bonanza that followed Russia's full invasion of Ukraine. Gold-Rush Fever Returns to Historic New Zealand Mining Town Why Did the Government Declare War on My Adorable Tiny Truck? How SUVs Are Making Traffic Worse Trump Slashed International Aid. Geneva Is Feeling the Impact. These US Bridges Face High Risk of Catastrophic Ship Strikes At the FT Commodities Global Summit in Lausanne this week, executives at the largest trading houses and their bankers indicated both on stage and privately that although earnings for 2024 and the first quarter of 2025 would be lower than the boom years of 2022-2023, they remained higher than almost any other time in history. The trading houses are some of the world's largest companies measured by annual turnover, but most are privately owned by founders and employees, and many don't report their results publicly. The industry has enjoyed an enormous windfall since the invasion of Ukraine and the energy crisis that followed it, with combined profits of more than $50 billion in 2022 and 2023 at the four leading privately-owned energy traders — Vitol Group, Trafigura Group, Mercuria Energy Group Ltd. and Gunvor Group. Commodity traders thrive on volatility and high prices, and both have retreated from the extremes of 2022. But the industry is still benefitting from disruptions to trade flows ranging from tariffs and sanctions to the crisis in the Red Sea, while the biggest players are also beginning to reap the rewards of billions of dollars invested in assets and diversification into new markets, helping to cushion the decline in trading profits. Vitol's profit for 2024 was lower than the previous year's level of $13.2 billion, but not drastically so, according to people briefed on the results, who asked not to be identified because the information is not public. Trafigura, which saw annual earnings peak above $7 billion in 2022-2023, is on track for net profit for the half year ending in March that's roughly in line with the past two reporting periods, when it posted half-year profits of $1.5 billion and $1.3 billion, other people familiar with the matter said. The people cautioned that the company's accounts have not yet been finalized and things could yet change. At the conference this week, Trafigura Chief Financial Officer Stephan Jansma said that the company's financial performance had 'reached a new cruising altitude.' 'That cruising altitude is significantly less than the two years which were very high profitability, but also it's significantly higher than the profitability we had before the Covid period,' he said. Mercuria sees its earnings stabilizing at an annual rate of about $1.5 billion to $2 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company made $2.1 billion in its financial year ending September 2024, Bloomberg has reported previously. That is lower than record profits of $3 billion in 2022, but far higher than any annual profit before then. Until 2021, Mercuria had never made more than $1 billion in a year. Mercuria, Trafigura and Vitol all declined to comment. Gunvor took some losses in the oil market last year — including a bullish play in the North Sea crude market that went wrong — but will still report the fourth or fifth best result in its history for 2024, Chief Executive Officer Torbjörn Törnqvist said in an interview. Vitol expects that margins and profitability are resetting at a higher level than before the pandemic, but below the recent boom, CEO Russell Hardy said at the conference. Despite the torrent of news, commodity markets have become 'more bounded,' he said. 'The world is changing,' Hardy said. 'The rhetoric — sanctions, tariffs, et cetera — is higher, but the reality is the volatility is lower.' The trading companies are handing a significant chunk of their giant profits to their own shareholders, while also investing in assets like power plants and oil refineries, and diversifying into new markets like metals. 'We're now looking at five to 10 projects where the size of the ticket would be half a billion dollars or more,' Mercuria CEO Marco Dunand told the conference. 'And that's something we certainly could not afford to do without this extra profit.' —With assistance from Alfred Cang. Business Schools Are Back Israel Aims to Be the World's Arms Dealer Google Is Searching for an Answer to ChatGPT Trump's IRS Cuts Are Tempting Taxpayers to Cheat A New 'China Shock' Is Destroying Jobs Around the World ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Sign in to access your portfolio
