Shares in Saudi oil giant Aramco have recovered to levels not seen since Saudi Arabia launched the oil price war in early March, becoming the first major oil firm to regain its market value since oil prices crashed, according to Bloomberg estimates.
Aramco’s stock gained 3.09 percent on Tuesday in Riyadh, but the proportion of its shares trading on the Saudi stock exchange, Tadawul, is much smaller than the volumes and shares of ExxonMobil that change hands every day on the New York Stock Exchange, for example.
The oil price crash in early March dragged down with it the share prices of all major oil companies in the world, as Saudi Arabia flooded the market with oil while the coronavirus pandemic was battering global oil demand.
Over the past week, shares in oil majors have been rising in lockstep with rising oil prices, as signs of demand recovery began to emerge not only from China but also from the United States.
Shares in Aramco are now above the levels just before its majority owner, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, waged an all-out price war with Russia to claim more market share. Aramco, which has been trading on a stock market since early December 2019, has a much smaller trading volume each day compared to the major international oil companies.
Aramco’s average daily traded volume of shares was around $35 million last week and US$100 million on Monday. To compare, shares in ExxonMobil traded on Monday were worth US$1.4 billion, according to Bloomberg estimates.
Earlier this month, Saudi Aramco reported a net income of US$16.66 billion for the first quarter of 2020, down from net earnings of US$22.2 billion for Q1 2019, due to the coronavirus pandemic and the oil price crash that Saudi Arabia itself helped to worsen with the oil price war in March.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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