BP Hasn't Made Decision on Future Dividend Payouts

   By Ian Walker 
 

Oil giant BP PLC (BP.LN) said Wednesday that no decision has been made over future dividends and that the board will decide on any payout at the end of each quarter.

The London-based energy giant declared a maintained quarterly dividend of 10.25 cents a share on Tuesday alongside a loss in third quarter earnings. It also suspended the scrip dividend option which allows shareholders to take shares instead of cash.

On Tuesday BP reported a replacement-cost loss--a metric similar to the net income figure that U.S. oil companies report--of $351 million compared with a profit of $3.09 billion in the year-earlier period.

Stripping out the one-off items, BP's results exceeded analyst expectations, with the underlying replacement-cost profit at $2.25 billion, above a company-compiled consensus of 24 brokers' estimates forecasting $1.73 billion.

Still, the result was well below the same period last year, when its underlying replacement-cost profit was $3.84 billion for the three months ended Sept. 30, compared with a profit of $3.09 billion in the year-earlier period.

Sarah McFarlane and Giulia Petroni contributed to this article.

Write to Ian Walker at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 30, 2019 03:42 ET (07:42 GMT)

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