MUZAFFARABAD (Kashmir English): Aramco announced on Tuesday that its 2025 dividends will drop by nearly 30 per cent to $85.4 billion, citing lower sales, higher costs, and reduced performance-linked payouts compared to 2024.
The Saudi oil giant Aramco announced its future plan to pay $85.4 billion in total dividends during 2025 which represents a 30 per cent reduction from its 2024 distribution of $124.25 billion. The company faces payment drops following its declining sales and rising operational expenses.
Aramco paid out $97.78 billion in dividends during 2023 although earnings experienced pressure because of the historically high profits of 2022 that resulted from elevated energy costs following Russia’s territorial aggression against Ukraine. The 25 per cent decline in profits for 2023 required the company to implement cost-cutting procedures.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman uses Aramco as the cornerstone of his Vision 2030 economic reforms thus the company manages oil production rates to improve market prices. The company made a production decrease of 500,000 barrels per day in April 2023 under supply management terms with OPEC+ members. Additional cuts totaling one million barrels per day were implemented in June 2023 and are set to keep running until March 2024.
Last year Aramco paid out $43.1 billion through its performance-based dividend supplement to base dividends following the 2023 introduction of this program. Performance-linked dividends for the first quarter of 2025 will plummet to $200 million while maintaining $10.8 billion per quarter distribution in 2024.
During 2024 Aramco achieved net profits amounting to $106.2 billion while profits in 2023 were reported at $121.3 billion. The company reported decreased revenue from sales together with rising operational costs and reduced finance-related income to explain its earnings decrease. The decline in income tax and zakat payments reduced some impact on its earnings as reported in its stock exchange filing.
What is Aramco?
The national oil firm of Saudi Arabia is Saudi Aramco, occasionally referred to as the Saudi Arabian Oil firm or just Aramco. It is a petroleum and natural gas corporation that is mostly owned by the state. Its headquarters are in Dhahran, and in 2024, it had ranked fourth globally in terms of revenue.
