Saudi Arabia’s state-owned enterprise Aramco announced a $121 billion of profit in 2023, a 25% drop from $161 billion in 2022.
The oil giant stated that the decline in 2023 was due to lower crude oil prices and volume sold, while refining and chemicals margins also declined during the year as well.
The total revenue of Aramco fell 17% to $440.88 billion in 2023, down from $535.19 billion in 2022. Meanwhile, free cash flow dropped to $101.2 billion, from $148.5 billion in a year prior.
Despite declining earnings last year and economic headwinds, Saudi’s Aramco increased its mega dividend payout, raising its base dividend for the fourth quarter by 4% to $20.3 billion dollars, while also lifting the company’s performance-linked dividend by 9% to $10.8 billion. This resulted in a total dividend payment of $31 billion to the Saudi’s government and shareholders.
