Saudi Aramco earned a third more in the second quarter than it did a year earlier while producing roughly a quarter less. Results published Tuesday put adjusted net income at 33.4 billion dollars for the quarter and 67.2 billion for the half year, on total hydrocarbon production of 9.5 million barrels of oil equivalent a day, down from 12.6 million in the first quarter. The arithmetic behind that inversion is price: the company realized 108.10 dollars a barrel on its crude, against 76.90 in the first quarter and 66.70 a year earlier. The number that travels furthest inside the Kingdom, though, is the one that did not move. The base dividend for the quarter is 21.9 billion dollars, payable in the third quarter, on the same rhythm as every quarter before it.
The confirmed figures, from the company's own release and its Tadawul filing: revenue and other income of 139.1 billion dollars for the quarter, up from 108.6 billion a year earlier; half-year net income of 65.2 billion, up 34 percent; free cash flow of 12.3 billion for the quarter, after a 13.6 billion dollar working capital build; gearing of 6.2 percent at the end of June, up from 4.8 percent at the end of March; and supply reliability of 98.4 percent. Amin Nasser, the chief executive, said the company kept deliveries moving by "capitalizing on our diverse asset base and multi-decade planning," naming the East-West Pipeline, storage capacity and export terminals.
The Quarter Redundancy Became Revenue
For decades the pipeline across the peninsula to Yanbu and the tank farms behind it sat on the books as contingency, capacity carried at cost against a day the company planned for and did not want. This was the quarter that capacity earned its keep. A 98.4 percent supply reliability figure on sharply reduced volumes means customers who were promised cargoes received them, and in a market paying 108 dollars a barrel, the ability to deliver at all became the product. Companies that spent less on redundancy spent this quarter explaining force majeure clauses instead.
The payout ran ahead of the quarter's cash. Free cash flow of 12.3 billion dollars sits well short of the 21.9 billion base dividend, and gearing rose accordingly. Those numbers describe a choice rather than a squeeze. At 6.2 percent, Aramco remains among the least leveraged large companies in its industry, and it is spending that headroom deliberately to keep the dividend, most of which flows to the state and the Public Investment Fund, arriving on schedule. For the Kingdom's budget the payout functions as fiscal infrastructure. The balance sheet exists in part to defend it through quarters like this one, and the cost of that defense is now visible, as is the capacity to bear it.
Downstream met the same prices from the other side and still improved, with adjusted earnings of 6.2 billion dollars, up 25 percent on the first quarter, as refining and chemicals margins moved with crude. The capital program did not pause: the Zuluf crude increment and the Fadhili gas expansion are tracking toward completion across 2026 and 2027, the first phase of Jafurah is producing while the second advances, and the company agreed to sell its full stake in the PRefChem venture in Malaysia, continuing a pattern of releasing capital from mature overseas positions to fund the program at home.
The results supply the second half of an arithmetic GASTAT began last week. The statistics authority's flash estimate showed second-quarter output down 4.8 percent, nearly all of it oil volume. Aramco's accounts show what that volume was traded for: fewer barrels, each one funding more revenue, with the transfer to the state uninterrupted. The two releases together are the quarter's full ledger.
Three lines in the next set of results will show which way the trade is moving. Production, which the project pipeline is built to restore. Gearing, which keeps drifting upward if the payout continues to outrun free cash flow. And the realized price, which narrows if supply normalizes. The dividend has been the constant through four turbulent quarters; the interesting question is no longer whether it holds but what the company is willing to spend to keep it boring.