据今日油价1月29日报道，2020年石油巨头们几乎“遗忘了”上涨的石油基准价格和反弹的股价。在欧佩克+和大型制药公司的帮助下，世界上最大的石油公司开始有了点脚踏实地的感觉。本周，大型石油公司将开始公布第四季度和2020年度业绩。
预计2020年是资产减记的一年。
如果2020年必须由大型石油公司来命名，那么它很可能被命名为减记之年。由于新冠肺炎疫情带来的历史性需求的下降，大型石油公司出现了亏损，它们减记了价值数百亿美元的资产。仅英国石油公司一家就计算了高达175亿美元的资产减记。就连埃克森美孚也在去年11月表示，将在第四季报告中计入170 - 200亿美元的减记。
但这些减记已经被市场考虑在内，因此，所以无论主要石油公司报告什么，都不会对它们的股价产生太大的负面影响。顺便说一下，由于疫苗的推进和欧佩克+的持续削减，这些库存公司的业务恢复得很好，但至少在一段时间内，它们可能再也不会成为热门股票。
除了减记外，2020年的另一个主题是欧洲大型石油公司转向可再生能源。所有的石油巨头，甚至是埃克森美孚，都有中长期减排目标。然而，在这些目标上，有些公司比其他公司更雄心勃勃，这实际上就是承诺不再做石油巨头。当这些计划最初浮出水面时，股东们反应十分谨慎。当首席执行官伯纳德 鲁尼宣布其2050年净零计划时，英国石油的股价下跌。然而，英国石油和其他超级石油巨头可能指望的是一类新投资者:ESG群体。
2020年是成本削减的一年。
由于2020年石油价格在疫情的重压下下跌，大型石油公司采取了削减成本和调整支出的措施来应对危机。支出计划很谨慎，而且在世界经济恢复到某种表面正常水平之前可能会一直如此。不过，如果布伦特原油价格突破每桶50美元，一些超级石油巨头可能仍会提出一些出人意料的计划。
彭博社的凯文 克劳利（Kevin Crowley）和劳拉 赫斯特（Laura Hurst）在最近一篇关于第四季度石油巨额收益和对未来预期的文章中写道，投资者可能会密切关注本财报季的成本更新和支出计划。彭博社文章援引摩根士丹利分析师的话称，投资者还将把现金流视为反映股价表现的公司健康状况一个单一指标。
2020年是转型年。
减排计划将成为人们关注的焦点，因为现在全球似乎都开始寻求减少碳足迹，各行各业都在关注减排计划。向新的业务领域分散投资，越环保越好。如果操作得当，可能会进一步提振股价。
与此同时，油气生产和加工等关键业务领域的资产精简和无机增长也将非常重要。毕竟,并不是所有的石油大股东都是ESG，尽管专门为向污染大企业施压而成立的维权组织有所抬头，但仍有许多人是石油大股东，因为他们相信石油和天然气在未来几十年内将继续是我们在地球上生活的必需品。
王佳晶 是摘译自 今日油价
原文如下：
Can Big Oil Surprise This Earnings Season?
Rising oil benchmarks and rebounding share prices: two things Big Oil majors had all but forgotten last year. Yet helped by OPEC+ and Big Pharma, the world’s largest oil companies are beginning to remember what it felt like to have some ground under their feet. This week Big Oil begins reporting fourth-quarter and full-year 2020 results. Here’s what we can reasonably expect.
The Year of Writedowns
If 2020 had to be named by Big Oil, it might well be named The Year of the Writedowns. Big Oil wrote down tens of billions of dollars worth of assets as they become unprofitable amid the historical demand slump that the coronavirus pandemic brought about. BP alone calculated its writedowns at up to $17.5 billion. Even Exxon, which resisted writedowns until the last possible moment, said last November it would book writedowns of between $17 and $20 billion in its fourth-quarter report.
But these writedowns have already been factored in by the market, so whatever the majors report, it shouldn’t have too big a negative effect on their share prices. These, by the way, have been recovering nicely on Covid-19 vaccine developments and continuing OPEC+ cuts, but they are still not the go-to stocks they once were. And they may never again become go-to stocks, at least for a while.
Besides writedowns, the other theme of 2020 was the pivot of European Big Oil towards renewable energy. All Big Oil majors—again, even Exxon—have emission cutting targets for the medium and long term. Yet some are more ambitious than others in these targets and are practically pledging to stop being Big Oil. When these plans were first floated, shareholders reacted warily: BP’s stock price dropped when CEO Bernard Looney announced his net-zero plans for 2050. Yet BP and its fellow supermajors may well be banking on a new breed of investors: the ESG crowd, who will want to hear more about these net-zero plans.
The Second Cost Cut Era
As oil prices tanked last year under the weight of the pandemic, Big Oil took to cost cuts and spending revisions to respond to the crisis. Spending plans are still cautious and likely to remain so until the world returns to some semblance of normality, which banks expect to happen later this year. Yet some supermajors may still surprise with plans for this year if they feel bold enough with Brent above $50 a barrel.
Investors are likely to watch cost updates and spending plans closely this reporting season as they have “largely given up on rewarding companies for boosting output, expanding underground reserves or timely project construction,” Bloomberg’s Kevin Crowley and Laura Hurst wrote in a recent piece on Big Oil Q4 earnings and what to expect from it. Investors will also watch cash flows as the one single indicator for the companies health as reflected in stock price performance, according to Morgan Stanley analysts cited in the Bloomberg article.
A Complete Makeover
Emission-cutting plans will be in the spotlight this earnings season, as they are in every industry now that the world seems set on a quest to reduce its carbon footprint. Diversification into new business areas—the greener the better—could boost stock prices further if done right.
At the same time, asset streamlining and inorganic growth in Big Oil’s key business areas pf oil and gas production and processing will also be important. After all, not all Big Oil shareholders are the ESG type, and despite the rise of activist groups set up specifically to pressure big polluters into a cleaner direction, there are many who hold Big Oil because they believe oil and gas will continue to be essential for our life on the planet for decades to come.
