Trafigura Pays Record Dividend as Profit Soars Over $4B

Trafigura Group made a record payout to its top traders and executives as the commodity trading giant reaped profits of over $4 billion in the first half of its financial year.

Trafigura, the first major commodity trader to report earnings since the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz upended energy markets, said that much of its profit haul came before the start of the war. Still, the results highlight how trading houses like Trafigura are some of the biggest winners from the upheavals hitting commodity markets caused by everything from war to the artificial-intelligence boom. 

“The foundations for this performance were laid early in the financial year,” said Chief Executive Officer Richard Holtum. “When supply chains are under strain, our teams work harder and move faster to identify solutions and manage increased risks.”

Holtum, who took over as Trafigura’s third-ever CEO last year, has been seeking to simplify operations following high-profile fraud cases against the company and a period of growth that saw its equity double from 2020 levels. Alongside a leadership transition, Trafigura has created a division to manage its growing base of industrial assets and is pushing into new markets like precious metals.

Trafigura’s profit more than doubled in the six months through March to $4.09 billion — the third-best half yearly performance in its history, surpassed only by the trading bonanza that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It paid just over $3 billion in dividends for the half year, more than the whole of the previous year and its largest half-yearly payout on record. The dividends go to Trafigura’s employee share scheme, which buys back shares at the end of the financial year.

The bumper profits come at an opportune time for Trafigura, one of the biggest traders of energy and metals, which is owned entirely by a group of over 1,400 employees. The departure of many of its top executives had left the company facing a hefty bill to buy back their shares, an obligation which had prompted it to defer some of the buybacks due in recent years. 

In markets, Trafigura Chief Economist Saad Rahim warned that the oil market is at a “critical juncture,” citing dwindling buffer stocks and the loss of around 1.1 billion barrels of supply. The commodities trader reported that oil, gas and LNG volumes increased to 8.7 million barrels a day, while metals volumes held steady at 9.9 million tons, supported by strong demand for refined products and concentrates.

The total assets on Trafigura’s balance sheet rose 40% to $111 billion, as soaring commodity prices and longer journeys for oil and gas cargoes due to the Hormuz disruption increased the value of the cargoes held by the trader. Group equity rose 8% to $17.5 billion.

Chief Financial Officer Stephan Jansma said that the company had worked to ensure it had sufficient liquidity to ride out the surge in prices caused by the war, after spikes in 2022 put huge strains on the trading industry.

“From a liquidity perspective, we’ve learned a lot since 2022,” he said. Trafigura agreed a $3 billion “contingent liquidity” facility with banks in March, which it said it had not yet needed to draw on. 

“We wanted to show the market that Trafigura always has access to liquidity, we are open for business. Secondly we also wanted to give the same signal internally to our traders,” Jansma said. “We want to show our traders as well - go ahead fulfill the requirements you see with your customers, even if that requires more liquidity.”

Over the past year, Trafigura has been making deals to exit some assets such as selling its stake in renewables venture Nala to co-investor IFM, as well as US zinc mining and smelting assets to Korea Zinc.

It is also in discussions to sell other assets, including a port in Brazil and a potential deal with Rubis SCA for its fuels business Puma Energy.