By Robert Harvey
LONDON (Reuters) – Global commodity trading house Trafigura reported on Thursday that its net profit rose slightly on the year to about $1.52 billion in the first half of its 2025 financial year, while its revenues fell on lower average commodity prices.
The unlisted company’s net profit was up 3% from the first half of 2024, stabilising after a sharp drop in its 2024 full-year results, when the company discovered a $1.1 billion fraud in Mongolia and as major trading houses adjusted to an end to a record earnings period over 2022-2023.
The first half of its 2025 financial year, the six months to March 31, also coincided with a power transition at the Swiss-based trading house, with Richard Holtum taking over from Jeremy Weir as group CEO on January 1.
It also comes as commodity players grapple with global markets thrown into turmoil this year by heightened trade and geopolitical tensions.
“Increased volatility may not necessarily translate into physical trading opportunities, as current market movements are driven more by policy-focused decisions rather than traditional supply-demand disruptions, Trafigura Chief Financial Officer Stephan Jansma said, adding that he anticipated turbulence would continue in the second half of the year.
Group revenues for the period fell by 4% to $119.2 billion, because of lower commodity prices on average, the firm said in its results statement.
Trafigura, alongside rival traders including Vitol and Gunvor, reaped lower profits in 2024 as their boom period in 2022-2023, driven by the post-pandemic recovery and commodity price shocks in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, came to an end.
Trafigura’s full-year net profit for 2024 was $2.8 billion, down from a record $7.4 billion in 2023.
OIL AND GAS VOLUMES UP, METALS DOWN
Trafigura’s first-half traded oil and gas volumes were unchanged on the year at around 7.2 million barrels per day.
Traded volumes of metals fell. Trafigura traded 9.9 million metric tons of non-ferrous metals, down from 10.4 million a year earlier, as it said it was focusing more on “profitable tonnages.”
Bulk minerals volumes fell to 43.4 million tons, from 54.7 million in the first half of 2024.
Trafigura will pay dividends totalling $1.537 billion for the period, which it said were mostly in relation to share redemptions.
(Reporting by Robert Harvey; Editing by Jamie Freed)
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