Saudi Aramco’s Profits Slip as Oil Prices Fall - The New York Times

Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, said on Sunday that its profit last year fell more than 20 percent, primarily because of lower oil prices.

Still, Aramco, the national oil producer of Saudi Arabia, remains one of the world’s most profitable companies, earning a net income of $88.2 billion in 2019. A year before, it earned $111.1 billion.

The announcement comes as 2020 is shaping up as a miserable year for the oil industry. Crude prices have nearly halved as demand plummeted because of the spreading coronavirus epidemic. A standoff between Saudi Arabia and Russia on production limits has worsened the situation. Lower prices will most likely put further pressure on Aramco’s performance this year.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, now sells for about $33.25 a barrel, and some analysts say they believe it will dip lower as Russia and members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries increase production while demand for oil sinks.

Saudi Aramco’s stock on Riyadh’s Tadawul exchange has been trading below 32 riyals (about $8.50) per share, the opening price in its initial public offering in December. On Sunday, the share price was about 28.70 riyals.

Aramco’s future results will probably continue to be heavily influenced by the policies of Saudi Arabia, its main owner. Having failed to agree with Russia on new production trims at a meeting on March 6 in Vienna, the Saudi government ordered Aramco to ramp up its sales and production. The company recently slashed the prices it was offering to customers for its crude in April.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, hopes to offset the drop in prices with a rise in exports. Low oil prices and the deteriorating global economy threaten to undermine the prince’s ambitious plan, known as Vision 2030, to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil.

Aramco said in its release that in response to price volatility it would most likely cut capital spending to between $25 billion and $30 billion for 2020 compared to $32.8 billion in 2019. At the same time, the company recently announced plans to increase production capacity by a million barrels a day to 13 million barrels a day as part of the saber-rattling with Russia. A production increase of that magnitude will most likely require large expenditures on drilling and other operations.

Aramco said the earnings decrease was primarily because of lower oil prices. It also produced less oil because of restrictions that were in effect with OPEC and Russia. The company said it had earned lower levels of profits in refining crude and making chemicals, and had taken a $1.6 billion write-down on Sadara Chemical, a $20 billion joint venture with Dow Chemical.

The statement noted that the company had rapidly restored production after aerial attacks on its facilities in September temporarily cut output by around half. In the release, the company’s chief executive, Amin H. Nasser, praised Aramco’s “agility and resilience.”

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2020-03-15 15:21:52Z
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Aramco Slashes Spending as Virus Erases Oil Demand Growth - Bloomberg

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Aramco Slashes Spending as Virus Erases Oil Demand Growth  BloombergView Full Coverage on Google News
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMib2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmJsb29tYmVyZy5jb20vbmV3cy9hcnRpY2xlcy8yMDIwLTAzLTE1L2FyYW1jby1wcm9maXQtZmFsbHMtMjEtb24tbG93ZXItb2lsLWN1dHMtMjAyMC1jYXBleC1ndWlkYW5jZdIBc2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmJsb29tYmVyZy5jb20vYW1wL25ld3MvYXJ0aWNsZXMvMjAyMC0wMy0xNS9hcmFtY28tcHJvZml0LWZhbGxzLTIxLW9uLWxvd2VyLW9pbC1jdXRzLTIwMjAtY2FwZXgtZ3VpZGFuY2U?oc=5

2020-03-15 13:41:53Z
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Brothers buy 17,000 bottles of hand-sanitizer before Amazon pulled sales - WFLA

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1. Brothers buy 17,000 bottles of hand-sanitizer before Amazon pulled sales  WFLA
2. Hixson man has nearly 18000 bottles of sanitizer he can't sell  WRCB Chattanooga
3. He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them  The New York Times
4. Chattanooga men stockpile hand sanitizer, cleaning supplies, according to New York Times  Tennessean
5. Antony Davies & James Harrigan: 'Price gouging' during crisis a good thing  TribLIVE
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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2020-03-15 11:50:00Z
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As virus roils markets, Trump again threatens Fed chairman - The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Saturday he had the power to fire or demote Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, adding new fuel to his long-running animus toward the central bank’s leader at a moment when the economy was at risk of edging into recession.

Trump told reporters that he wasn’t considering firing Powell, but reiterated his frustration with the chairman. The comments were particularly striking because they came as the coronavirus pandemic shook the global economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its worst week since October 2008. In just a few weeks, U.S. stocks have lost all the gains made during 2019.

“I have the right to do that or the right to remove him as chairman,” Trump said Saturday at a news conference called to provide an update on the administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak. “He has, so far, made a lot of bad decisions, in my opinion.”

No Fed chairman has ever been removed by a president. The law creating the Fed says its officials and those of other independent agencies can be “removed for cause” by a president. While that issue has never arisen in regard to a Fed official, the courts ruled decades ago that “for cause” meant more than a policy disagreement.

Powell announced earlier this month a half-point interest rate cut that shrank the Fed’s key rate to a range of just 1% to 1.25%. It marked the first time the central bank has cut rates between scheduled policy meetings since the 2008 financial crisis. And it’s the steepest rate cut the Fed has made since then.

Yet, the president continued to complain that he was “not happy with the Fed” because it was “following” and “we should be leading.” The president pointed to lower interest rates set by the central banks in Japan and Germany as proof that Powell had not been aggressive enough in bolstering the U.S. economy. Economists, however, say the lower rates reflect the weaker economic outlooks than the U.S. economy.

Trump said he’s made no decision, but suggested he could simply remove him as chairman. Powell’s four-year term ends in February 2022, and his term as a member of the Board of Governors expires January 2028.

“I have the right to also take him and put him in a regular position and put somebody else in charge. And I haven’t made any decisions on that,” the president said.

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2020-03-15 08:54:25Z
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Trump touts ‘biggest stock market rise in history yesterday’, but some investors think worst isn’t over amid coronavirus panic - MarketWatch

“ ‘BIGGEST STOCK MARKET RISE IN HISTORY YESTERDAY!’ ”

— President Donald Trump

That is Trump on Saturday morning, referencing the Friday surge by the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +9.36%, the S&P 500 index SPX, +9.28% and the Nasdaq Composite COMP, +9.34%, which constituted the major equity benchmarks’ biggest daily percentage gains since 2008.

Friday’s Dow gain was the largest ever on a points basis, much as Thursday, Monday and Wednesday, respectively, had delivered the blue-chip index’s largest, second largest and third largest one-day point declines.

But Friday’s rally in U.S. stocks that Trump tweeted about only recovered most of the losses suffered a day earlier, when the market saw its worst day on a percentage-loss basis since the Black Monday crash of 1987. The Dow is down about 20% from its record high. That puts it in a bear market.

“ ‘[W]e can all agree that panic infiltrated various aspects of our lives the last few days.’ ”

— Frank Cappelleri, Instinet

Friday’s gains followed a week of unrivaled volatility across markets that elicited numerous references to the financial crisis 12 years ago and the 1987 crash, except in some ways this crisis has felt more intense and unsettling to market participants.

“Investor psychology only is clear in hindsight, but we can all agree that panic infiltrated various aspects of our lives the last few days,” wrote Frank Cappelleri, executive director of Instinet, in a research note to clients on Friday.

Indeed, all three stock indexes tumbled into bear-market territory from record heights at their fastest clips in history.

Check out the Trump tweet here:

The catalyst presumably has been COVID-19, the infectious disease that was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December and has rapidly spread to more than 100 countries, infected 147,000 and claimed 5,500 lives so far, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Friday’s rally came after Trump declared a national emergency, opening up access to $50 billion in funding for states and localities to combat the coronavirus pandemic, while saying that the country was ramping up testing and expanding the ability of hospitals and doctors to provide treatments for the pandemic disease.

Focusing on Friday’s burst higher for risk assets, however, might be a mistake against the backdrop of the week’s turbulent nature. The Dow, for example, registered swings of at least 1,000 points in the week’s five consecutive sessions. Put another way, the Dow booked moves of roughly 5% or better for every trading session of the entire week.

Date	Dow’s point change from March 9-13	Dow’s % change
March 13	1,985	9.36
March 12	-2,352.60	-9.99
March 11	-1,464.94	-5.86
March 10	-1,167.14	4.89
March 9	-2,013	-7.79

Amid those monster moves the blue-chip index saw a swift end put to the longest-running bull market in history, which, perhaps ironically, turned 11 on Monday and was effectively dead by Wednesday, as the World Health Organization elevated to pandemic status the outbreak of the disease spread by the novel coronavirus SARS COV-2.

And one measure of implied volatility on Wall Street, the Cboe Volatility Index VIX, -23.37%, saw an intraday reading on Friday that was its highest since 2008 — a period that saw it register its record level of around 80. The index, known colloquially as the “fear gauge,” has a historic average reading of 19 or 20.

Another measure of market fear, CNN’s Fear/Greed Index, hit 2 on a scale of 100, its lowest reading in its history, with lower readings indicating more extreme fear.

The week also was marked by a seizing up of the $15 trillion Treasury market, which resulted in the Federal Reserve’s intervening. The central bank took steps to stem what it described a “unusual disruptions” in the market for U.S. government debt by injecting some $1.5 trillion into Wall Street’s key funding markets.

The rate-setting body at the Fed, the Federal Open Market Committee, is now expected to cut the federal funds rates by a full percentage point on Wednesday, March 18, at the conclusion of its two-day policy meeting. That on the heels of an emergency half-percentage-point rate cut on March 3. That first intermeeting interest-rate cut in 12 years put the target rate in a range between 1% and 1.25%.

Further action is expected from monetary-policy makers and elsewhere in government as the world attempts to curtail the substantial economic damage already being done by the coronavirus pandemic

Read: Fed seen cutting interest rates to 0% soon in bid to help weather coronavirus storm

Friday’s gains, while, of course, preferable to the opposite by anyone not betting against the market, are seen by some market experts as potentially more indicative of a still-lurking bear than an all-clear signal.

Market Extra:Wall Street fears ‘flashbacks to 2008’ with forced selling in $9 trillion U.S. corporate bond market

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2020-03-14 19:15:46Z
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White House now says pilot of coronavirus screening site will roll out Monday for Bay Area - TechCrunch

After President Trump announced that the government was working with Google to build a coronavirus screening site that was at the core of the administration testing process, Google quickly corrected this and said that it was actually Verily, Alphabet’s health division, that was working on this and that the site wasn’t ready for a nationwide rollout yet.

Today, Vice President Pence provided a bit more detail, tough he didn’t removes all of the confusion around this. A pilot of this screening site will launch for the Bay Area on Monday, March 16, he said, and direct people to local drive-through testing sites if necessary.

He reiterated that the government is working with Google on this (though my guess is that the VP, just like most people, isn’t all that clear on the complicated company structure that is Alphabet) .

“I know Google issued a statement that they are planning to launch a website,” Pence said. “I think they gave a date of Monday, March 16th and we’re working literally around the clock and I know that our whole team is working on the public and private partnership. Couldn’t be more grateful to all at the hard-working people at Google who are helping to put this website together.” He added that the White House will have more to share about this tomorrow, Sunday, at 5pm ET.

Debbie Birx, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, noted that this is not just a simple “checkbox website” but that it actually goes through “critical symptoms and that’s why we’re giving ourselves the weekend to get it put up.”

Separately, the White House also told us that the administration is indeed working with Google to develop this site and most of this lines up with the statement we received from Verily yesterday. Hopefully, we’ll know more details after tomorrow’s briefing.

Our earlier coverage:

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2020-03-14 18:05:10Z
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Apple closes all stores outside China over coronavirus - CBS News

Apple CEO Tim Cook announced Monday that the company is closing all of its stores outside China for two weeks amid the coronavirus pandemic. Stores in China will now reopen.

"In our workplaces and communities, we must do all we can to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Apple will be temporarily closing all stores outside of Greater China until March 27 and committing $15M to help with worldwide recovery," Cook said on Twitter. 

China has over 80,000 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus. More than 50,000 of those cases have since recovered, according to Johns Hopkins University. 

Coronavirus: The Race To Respond ›

More in Coronavirus: The Race To Respond

While the number of cases inside China has begun to plateau, cases outside of China have started to spike. Europe is now considered the "epicenter" of the coronavirus pandemic, and reported cases in the United States are expected to rise in the coming weeks.  

In a press release announcing the closures, Cook said all hourly workers "will continue to receive pay in alignment with business as usual operations." 

He also said it is matching employee donations to the global COVID-19 response fund "two-to-one." According to the press release, committed donations by the company had already reached $15 million worldwide. 

All Apple stores in China closed on February 1 in response to its outbreak. The company said in its press releasee that as of Friday, all stores in Greater China have reopened. 

"What we've learned together has helped us all develop the best practices that are assisting enormously in our global response," reads the press release. 

"There is no mistaking the challenge of this moment... We do not yet know with certainty when the greatest risk will be behind us."

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2020-03-14 16:43:13Z
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