Shell PLC

Welcome to Shell's fourth quarter 2022 financial results announcement. Shell's CEO Wael Sawan and CFO Sinead Gorman will present the results, then host a Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1. If you wish to be removed from the queue, please press star 2. We will now begin the presentation.

Hi, I'm Wiles Hawan, and I'm pleased to present to you for the first time a Shell CEO. Today, alongside Sinead, we'll be presenting Shell's fourth quarter and full year results. I'd like to start by thanking Ben for his leadership over the last nine years and for building the strong foundations that I now inherit. We have a world-class organization with exceptional people, a leading portfolio, and the right strategy, all of which I believe position us very well for the future. 2022 was a year in which energy security was front and center. The world mobilized. We saw policy progress with Fit for 55 in Europe and the introduction of the Inflation Reduction Act in the US. This is evidence of moving from ambition into action. Despite this progress, the energy system still faces huge challenges, and it continues to need bold, decisive actions by companies, governments, and society at large. The world requires a secure supply of affordable energy and at the same time needs this energy to be increasingly low carbon to make the transition to a net zero emissions energy system. In short, the world needs a balanced energy transition. Moving too fast by dismantling the current energy system before the new system is ready could worsen the situation. But moving too slowly could waste precious time and lose the momentum to build necessary solutions for low carbon energy at scale. However, this transition will not be linear and will play out with different solutions needed at different times in different places across the world. We at Shell will do our part. We will invest with discipline where we have differentiated capabilities. We aim to deliver the oil and gas that the world sorely needs today, while also leveraging our unparalleled customer reach to develop the scalable and profitable low-carbon products that are urgently needed. Shell, under my leadership, will work to be the trusted partner of choice as the world's energy systems transition for our customers, governments, and investors. By doing so, we aim to deliver competitive returns and create significant shareholder value over the coming years. Now let's look at our Q4 and four-year results and financial framework. And for that, let me hand over to Sinead.

Thank you, Wael. By continuing to provide the energy our customers need, we have again produced strong results. Our safety performance was impressive. We made good progress in both personal and process safety year on year. We also made good progress on carbon. By the end of 2022, we were more than halfway towards achieving our target reduction of 50% by 2030 for scope one and two emissions. Moving to our financial performance. Our adjusted earnings for the fourth quarter were $9.8 billion, with strong contributions from our integrated gas business. And we generated $22.4 billion of cash flow from operations, including a positive inflow of $10.4 billion of working capital. These strong quarterly results helped us to achieve our highest ever full year results with adjusted earnings of some $40 billion, more than double those of last year and around $17 billion higher than in 2014 when Brent prices were similar. We delivered a full year cash flow from operations of over $68 billion and our organic free cash flow was around $48 billion. In 2022, our financials were impacted by additional taxes of around $2.3 billion. Of this, around $1.5 billion related to the EU solidarity contributions in the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, with cash outflows expected in 2023 and 2024. For the UK energy's profit levy, the impact is some $900 million. And now, on to our financial framework. Our strong performance over the year has allowed us to enhance our distributions to shareholders. Our total shareholder distributions for the year were around $26 billion, in excess of 35% of our 2022 cash flow from operations. And today we have announced a new $4 billion share buyback program, which we expect to complete by the time of our Q1 results announcement. As planned, we have also increased our dividend per share by 15% in the fourth quarter. Demonstrating discipline, our total cash capital expenditure for 2022 was $25 billion. And our outlook for 2023 is to maintain the $23 to $27 billion range, absorbing inflation. Our AA credit metrics ambition remains. We intend to continue to reduce our net debt as part of a robust financial framework. Finally, we will continue to target shareholder distributions of at least 20% to 30% of our cash flow from operations. And now I'll hand back to Wael.