BP Shares Rose 1% in Premarket Trading

BP Shares Rose 1% in Premarket Trading. Oil giant BP Plc boosted share buybacks after surging oil and gas prices lifted profit to the highest in eight years.The London-based company followed its Big Oil peers Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Shell Plc, all of which are pouring money back to investors after years of paltry returns. BP will repurchase another $1.5 billion of shares using surplus 2021 cash flow before it announces first-quarter results later this year.

“We’ve strengthened the balance sheet and grown returns,” Chief Executive Officer Bernard Looney said in a statement on Tuesday. “We’ve made strong progress in our transformation to an integrated energy company.”

Oil giant BP reported a profit of $12.8 billion in 2021, the highest in eight years, as natural gas and oil prices soared and the global economy recovered from the pandemic slump.

BP's underlying replacement cost profit, the company's definition of net earnings, reached $4.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, exceeding analysts' expectations for a $3.93 billion profit.

That compares with $3.32 billion in profit in the third quarter and $115 million a year earlier.

For the year, BP reported a profit of $12.85 billion, compared with a loss of $5.7 billion in 2020, which came after BP wrote off the value of its oil and gas assets by $6.5 billion amid a slump in energy demand due to the pandemic.