Shell 1st qtr results

Royal Dutch Shell a global group of energy and petrochemical companies.  I have a holding in my income portfolio (epic code: RDSB)

Announced 1st quarter results today - in summary: 

Sales were $112.8bn a 6% decline.

Earnings, on a CCS basis, were $8.0bn compared with $7.7bn for 2012, excluding identified items the comparatives were $7.5bn compared with $7.3bn an increase of 3%. Reported earnings were $8.2bn compared to $8.7bn LY a decline of 4.6%.

Basic CCS EPS was $1.26 compared to $1.17 LY, although reported EPS was $1.29 compared to $1.4 LY.

Dividends are $0.45 a 4.7% increase on LY, although as usual UK holders will have to wait until 10 June to know what the sterling equivalent is.

Production output was similar to LY at 3,559 boe/d compared to 3,552, although gas production was up by 3% and oil production down by 2%.

Free cash flow was $4bn compared to $8.9bn LY, last year benefited from a rather large sale of capital assets.

Gearing was a low 10.1% compared to 11.9% LY.

CCS is current cost of supply, used by commodity companies in an attempt to normalise the effect of fluctuating commodity prices from one period to the next.

In a separate unexpected announcement the company mentioned that Peter Voser, the CEO since July 2009, has elected to retire from the Company in the first half of 2014.

Comparisons with Exxon (XOM) and Chevron's (CVX) Qtr 1 results

This shows the increase or decrease compared to the prior year:

	RDSB	XOM	CVX
Sales	-6%	-12.3%	-6.4%
Net Income	-4.6%	+1%	-4.6%
EPS	-8%	+6%	-2.8%
Dividend	+4.7%	+21%	+11.1%
Production	Same	-3.5%	+0.8%