Chevron Corporation has announced a $26 billion return to investors for fiscal year 2023. This is true even if the business said that its reported earnings were lower than they were the previous year.
The PUNCH reported Chairman and CEO of Chevron, Mike Wirth, was cited as saying, “In 2023, we returned more cash to shareholders and produced more oil and natural gas than any year in the company’s history.
“Cash returned to shareholders totaled over $26 billion for the year, 18% higher than last year’s record total,” stated Wirth.
According to Chevron’s fourth-quarter 2023 results, which were made public on Friday, the company’s yearly global net oil-equivalent output rose to more than 3.1 million barrels per day, driven by 14 per cent growth in the United States.
The company stated in the report that its “published earnings declined compared to last year primarily due to lower upstream realizations, losses from decommissioning obligations for previously sold assets in the U.S., Gulf of Mexico, higher U.S. upstream impairment charges, primarily in California, and lower margins on refined product sales.”
The $21.4 billion in reported earnings for 2023 represents a $14 billion decrease from the $35.5 billion realized in 2022.
Chevron reported $200 billion in total revenues and other income for the year that ended in 2023 in its financial review. This represents a decrease of 18.4% from the $246 billion generated in the preceding year, 2022.
Chevron Corporation reported $2.3 billion in earnings for the fourth quarter of 2023 as opposed to $6.4 billion in the same period in 2022.
The report added that foreign currency effects decreased earnings by $479m.
The corporation also recorded adjusted earnings of $6.5bn in fourth quarter 2023 compared to adjusted earnings of $7.9bn in fourth quarter 2022.
However, the report announced that the company returned a record $26.3bn of cash to shareholders during 2023, including dividends of $11.3bn (3 per cent higher than 2022) and share repurchases of $14.9bn (32 percent higher than last year).
“The company’s Board of Directors declared an 8 per cent increase in the quarterly dividend to one dollar $1.63 per share, payable March 11, 2024, to all holders of common stock.”
