THG’s revenue for Q1 rose to Bt1.94 billion, up 3.6 per cent from Bt1.872 billion in the same period last year.

THG vice chairman Tanatip Suppradit said the company had been able to maintain its performance despite the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on the economy and international travel.

“Performance from January to February was satisfactory, but the performance in March dropped due to the Covid-19 outbreak,” he said.

He said factors boosting the company’s performance were an increase in revenue from new health centres at Thonburi Bamrungmuang Hospital and the opening of Thonburi Thungsong Hospital in Nakhon Si Thammarat.

“Revenue from other hospitals, such as Thonburi and Thonburi 2, was similar to the same period last year, while the net profit in this quarter reflected extra profit from investment in the Welly Hospital joint venture in China,” he said.

He expected the number of patients using services at hospitals to increase after the Covid-19 outbreak is resolved.

“The government’s move to ease lockdown measures will trigger positive economic sentiment and confidence among people, which will be reflected by increasing demand for our services in May,” he said.

He added that THG-operated hospitals have implemented Covid-19 preventive measures, including isolating patients with respiratory symptoms, sanitising equipment and surfaces, and banning reusable parking cards.

CPF, a leading agro-industrial and food conglomerate that operates in 17 countries and exports to more than 30 countries under its “Kitchen of the World” vision, reaped Bt138 billion in sales revenue in the first quarter, up by 10 per cent from the same period last year. Sales revenue from its overseas business in 16 countries, which accounted for 68 per cent of total revenue, rose by 12 per cent year on year, while operations in Thailand which constituted 32 per cent of total revenue witnessed a 6 per cent growth.

Prasit Boondoungprasert, chief executive officer of CPF, said the increase in net profit was because last year’s ASF outbreak had led to a significant drop in pork supplies and pushed up the average price of the commodity in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Also, in the first quarter, many of CPF’s businesses met expansion targets, and the company started realising revenue from Hylife Co Ltd, a pork business operator in Canada.

Prasit said that though the Covid-19 pandemic has led to an economic slowdown and drop in people’s purchasing power, CPF’s businesses have only suffered a mild impact as its products are essential for daily life.

He said safety measures have been strictly employed to cope with the outbreak, while employees have been assured of the best care.

CPF is also doing its bit to help by supplying food to 200 public hospitals under the Public Health Ministry, to the families of 20,000 medical personnel and to the 20,000 overseas returnees. The company also recently issued more than 1 million discount coupons to medical volunteers to ease their cost of living, while delivering 25 batches of food to slums in the Greater Bangkok and provinces in cooperation with the Agriculture Ministry.

CPF’s business plan has been reviewed in response to the Covid-19 outbreak to offer better marketing channels under the “new normal”, and expects the results for this year to exceed those of last year.

The company recognised foreign exchange losses of Bt623.03 million due to the Australian dollar weakening against the US dollar.

However, excluding the foreign exchange loss, the company’s profit in the first quarter of the year will be Bt1.983 billion, up Bt280.62 million, or 16.5 per cent, from the same period of the previous year of Bt1.703.23 billion

The company’s revenue from sales and service in the first quarter of this year was Bt2.207 billion, up Bt149 million or 7.2 per cent from the same period of the previous year of Bt2.058 billion.

The increase in revenue was due to subsidiary Hongsa Power, whose profit increased by 40 per cent, and the acquisition of Ratch Cogeneration on October 1 last year.

In his speech, Auttapol told the employees that PTT was facing challenges from the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak, which has severely affected most economies, including that of Thailand.

PTT is also experiencing an additional impact from the drop in global oil price, though the CEO believes the situation will improve in the second half.

He added that PTT has drawn up a plan to steer the organisation through this crisis by focusing on boosting its resilience and reform, as well as cutting down on unnecessary expenses and prioritising investment.

PTT will also continue to seek more business partners, both local and foreign, to build a new business model and new business ecosystem.

As per its filing to the Stock Exchange of Thailand on May 11, PTT and its subsidiaries reported earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) in the first quarter at Bt32.385 billion, marking a drop of 51.6 per cent from the last quarter of 2019.

This resulted mainly from the lower performance of petrochemical and refining businesses due to stock losses incurred in the first quarter from the sharp drop in crude oil price from US$67.3 per barrel at the end of the last quarter of last year to $23.4 per barrel in the first quarter of this year.

“We decided to further accelerate our cost reduction program,” CEO Christian Sewing said in remarks prepared for the lender’s annual general meeting next week. “It’s precisely because the transformation is essential for the future of our bank and we bear responsibility for a sustainable business model that we will, unfortunately, have to resume these personal discussions.”

Global banks put staff firings on hold as the outbreak spread in March to avoid adding to employee hardship. Deutsche Bank’s cuts are a key plank of its restructuring efforts, which include as many as 18,000 jobs — or 20% of its workforce — and a narrowing of the bank’s international ambitions unveiled by the CEO last year.

Investment banks such as Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Inc. and HSBC Holdings Plc have pledged to hold off on dismissals during the pandemic this year, reassuring employees about their income and health insurance as the economy reels from the spread of the deadly virus.

The German lender — which has been battling lower profitability for years — said at the end of March that it was freezing cuts to “avoid additional emotional distress in the current environment,” and pledged to keep the suspension in place until “a return to greater stability in the world around us.” The bank’s top bosses renounced a month’s pay as part of the announcement late on Tuesday.

Germany is gradually seeing a resumption of more normal life. On Wednesday the country said that it will reopen borders by June 15. Germany recorded a decline in the number of new coronavirus cases and the country’s infection rate dropped below a key threshold, as the country continues a gradual easing of restrictions on daily life.

While Deutsche Bank suspended its plans, other European banks haven’t interrupted redundancies central to their turnaround efforts. UniCredit reached an agreement with workers last month to cut 5,200 existing jobs in Italy through 2023. Germany’s Commerzbank is also continuing talks on reductions, Chief Financial Officer Bettina Orlopp told Bloomberg TV on Wednesday in Frankfurt.

Deutsche Bank is sticking to its financial targets for 2022, Sewing said. The lender also said last month that credit provisions will continue to rise this quarter after a surge during the first three months of the year, while revenue will grow less strongly than previously thought.

Sewing also hinted at deal-making to come, saying the bank’s global scale and relative strength “is something that will help us when consolidation in the European banking sector happens — as it inevitably will and must.”

Deutsche Bank’s two top executive bodies — the management board and the group of managers just below it — are forgoing a month’s pay, Sewing said, making them the latest senior bankers around Europe to take a cut as regulators urge restraint as they deal with the pandemic. Bloomberg previously reported Deutsche Bank was considering changes to top pay.

Germany’s largest lender is in the throes of a massive restructuring effort that aims to return it to profitability after five consecutive annual losses. As part of that plan, Sewing has vowed to also exit equities trading.

“We have to make our bank even more weatherproof – or, to be more precise, storm-proof,” Sewing said in the remarks ahead of next week’s AGM. “No one knows exactly what the second and third-round effects of this pandemic will be.”

The Frankfurt-based bank said on Wednesday that 185 million euros of its 326 million euros in credit provisions were directly related to the outbreak, while the crisis also caused a hit of 295 million euros in the value of customer derivatives. Commerzbank said credit provisions could reach 1.4 billion euros this year, making its goal of posting a profit “very ambitious.”

The outbreak has added urgency to a four-year turnaround effort by Chief Executive Officer Martin Zielke that has failed to restore robust profitability. While he cut soured loans, a pivot toward retail and corporate lending in Commerzbank’s home market is leaving it exposed to negative interest rates and business disruptions. Zielke is now working on his third round of cost cuts and hired McKinsey & Co. to review his business model, Bloomberg has reported.

“We’re looking into our costs again and we definitely want to increase our profitability target,” Chief Financial Officer Bettina Orlopp said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “Indeed, corona has added some new lights on it and we will incorporate that and we will update you in the summer.”

Bloomberg reported Tuesday that Commerzbank is considering deeper cuts to its vast branch network as the crisis forces more clients online, allowing Zielke to reverse course on a pledge that he would keep most branches. The CEO has come under pressure from his largest shareholders after his previous targets were widely seen as unambitious.

“Customer behavior, especially the German one, is really changing,” Orlopp said. “We’re thoroughly analyzing the situation and also the impact on our business model and we will adapt to it.”

Risk provisions for the full year could rise to between 1 billion euros and 1.4 billion euros, the bank said. Orlopp said that prediction was based on the assumption of a u-shaped economic recovery, with no second lockdown.

All European banks have reported higher credit provisions this earnings season though the increases have generally been much lower than the ones by peers in the U.S. European regulators have given lenders the leeway to take a longer-term view when forecasting how much of their loans may go bad, allowing the firms to consider the eventual recovery from the pandemic-induced slump.

In the neighboring Netherlands, ABN Amro Bank also on Wednesday reported credit provisions of 1.1 billion euros and said the figure could rise to 2.5 billion euros for the full year. Like Commerzbank, ABN Amro is still part-owned by its government after a bailout in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, underscoring just how slow European lenders have been to rebound.

Commerzbank fell 2.8% at 9:04 a.m. in Frankfurt, bringing losses this year to 43%. ABN Amro slumped 4.4% in Amsterdam and is down 61% so far in 2020.

Commerzbank on Monday scrapped its plan to sell its Polish subsidiary mBank SA after it was unable to get a good price for it. Zielke had planned to sell the unit to fund a restructuring of Commerzbank’s domestic operations. He later said a better-than-expected capital cushion had reduced the rationale for the deal.

Commerzbank lowered the full-year target for its common equity Tier 1 ratio — a key measure of capital strength — to at least 12.5%, citing lower regulatory requirements. The metric stood at 13.2% at the end of the first quarter.

More details from Commerzbank’s first-quarter earnings:

– 1Q revenue EU1.85 billion, estimate EU1.97 billion.

– 1Q loss EU295 million, estimate loss EU217.9 million.

– 1Q operating loss EU277 million, estimate loss EU169.5 million.

– 1Q pretax loss EU233 million, estimate loss EU157.7 million.

– 1Q common equity Tier 1 ratio 13.2% vs. 12.7% y/y.

Shell tore up the industry’s financial playbook when oil’s collapse forced it to slash payouts. For decades, Big Oil had used its hefty balance sheet to borrow money when needed and keep investors sweet until the next upward cycle. But 2020’s unprecedented market rout has seen several large players — Exxon Mobil and Equinor as well as Shell — freeze or reduce dividends.

When “our outlook stabilizes and our balance sheet is in the right position, then we should be in a very strong position to increase shareholder distributions,” Chief Financial Officer Jessica Uhl said Wednesday on an investor call, citing the potential for both dividends and share buybacks.

The Anglo-Dutch company’s shareholder returns had looked unaffordable even before the coronavirus pandemic hit. The company said in January it had slowed the pace of its buyback program and was unlikely to hit its $25 billion target this year. In March, it announced the cancellation of the next tranche of purchases as the severity of the outbreak became clear.

Shell has had to pull on “financial levers” harder than it would have liked, Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden said Wednesday on the call. Cutting the dividend doesn’t give the company more money to spend, but means it no longer needs to borrow to finance the payout, he said.

Chayatan Phromsorn, the deputy director of the Office of Transport and Traffic Policy and Planning (OTP), said that Thai Airways’ plan for a turnaround had no clear direction and too many risks in it.

The government also called for an action plan with clarity, which was required for the survival of the airline.

The OTP is expected to reveal a recovery plan for Thai Airways this week, which will show the new direction for the national airline.

Transport Minister Saksayam Chidchob has tasked OTP with studying the effects of the Covid-19 crisis and thoroughly make a plan for the expense and public debt management.

He said the plan had to be clear and complete so that it would not become a burden for the government or the people because 23 risk factors found in the previous plan were not supposed to be there.

Thai Airways must study how other airlines are solving their problems and if it cannot solve the problem, the public will face difficulty as the airline is subsidised by taxpayers’ money.

The SET-listed private power producer booked core profit from operations, excluding extra items, in the January-March period at Bt1.158 billion, with Bt682 million attributable to major shareholders, up 54 per cent from the previous year as revenue grew to Bt11.223 billion.

BGrim chief executive officer Preeyanart Soontornwata said the result demonstrated the company’s robustness especially at the time of economic downturn aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fuelling BGrim’s first-quarter performance was the 944 megawatt (MW) incremental production capacity rendered over the past one-year circle by four projects which were brought on stream, and the acquisition of two co-generation ventures — the SPP1 in 2019 and the 123-MW Ang Thong Power Plant in March this year.

BGrim said power sales in the first quarter remained strong, thanks to the diverse industry clientele with rising energy demand from the packaging group (up 15.1per cent), electronics sector (up 13.2 per cent), household electrical appliances (up 8 per cent), tyres (up 3.2 per cent).

There were also new industrial customers which signed up for 26MW in the past 12 months.

Meanwhile, the margin of EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) rose to the highest level of 29.2 per cent in the first quarter due to the improvement of the gas turbine power generator and the realisation of BGrim’s solar energy ventures in Vietnam which offered the highest EBITDA yield, the company said.

Net profit was at Bt159 million, Bt81 million of which was attributable to major shareholders – mainly from unrealised loss primarily from the foreign exchange which was a non-cash item amounting to Bt886 million, calculated from US dollar debt and the depreciation of the baht against US dollar.

In the wake of the Covic-19 pandemic, BGrim currently has over Bt21 billion in cash, which allows it to deal with the effects from the protracted Covid-19 crisis. At the same time, the company has also received additional working capital facilities of Bt4 billion to a total Bt9 billion from financial institutions to enhance liquidity.

BGrim has set up a team to closely monitor and respond to government policies related to the crisis.

BGrim said it has provided medical and social assistance, worth not less than Bt50 million, as well as putting in place various measures to take care of the safety of employees while maintaining the company’s service quality without any layoffs.

BGrim said most of its revenue comes from long-term power purchase agreements with government agencies which are not directly affected by the Covid-19 situation.

There are still new customers coming in for the rest of the year, totalling 30MW in power purchase, the company said.

In addition, the on-going proactive cost control is expected to save Bt34 million from the extension of the lifespan of some components. The improving efficiency of gas turbines of various projects in 2019 and 2020 is expected to cut natural gas cost by not less than Bt50 million per year.

The company has under construction the 39MW Ray Power’s solar project in Cambodia, the 13MW Lakchai floating solar farm and the Bowin Wind Farm 1 and two projects slated to start commercial operation between the fourth quarter of 2020 and first quarter of 2021.

Of these, 50,000 masks will be given to KCMH medical staff, while the remaining 50,000 will be distributed to other hospitals in need to reduce the risk of transmission and protect frontline workers against Covid-19, Sitamon Ratanavadi said on behalf of Gulf chief executive officer  Sarath Ratanavadi,

“Gulf Group remains committed to supporting medical workers. Thus far, Gulf Group has helped various sectors improve their readiness in coping with Covid-19 and has also helped ease the difficulties of people affected by the crisis,” Sitamon said.

“There are lessons to be learned from the many countries around the world that have lifted lockdown restrictions and experienced a rise in cases. Therefore, as the government has considered easing the lockdown, coupled with the upcoming rainy season and the beginning of the school term, citizens like us must still maintain discipline and avoid complacency to keep the situation under control in the long term so that healthcare workers will not have to work too hard. Gulf group would therefore like to ask for everyone’s cooperation in demonstrating social responsibility by taking care of their health and strictly following disease prevention and control measures,” said, Boonchai Thirati, executive director of Gulf Energy.

Professor Suttipong Wacharasindhu, dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, highlighted, “The KN95 mask is like our medical personnel’s weapon, since it not only protects us against Covid-19 but also prevents the transmission of other contagious respiratory diseases. So, even though the overall number of infections is lower, we should not drop our guard. We still have to protect against these diseases. The hospital would like to thank Gulf Group for donating these masks which will be helpful for all healthcare workers.”

Associate professor Chanchai Sittipunt, associate dean for Planning and Development, Chulalongkorn University, added, “The Covid-19 crisis has taught us how to deal with the situation and protect ourselves in advance. In the future, there will be new situations like this. We need to be cautious and protect ourselves from the beginning in case there is a new disease, not Covid-19, in the future. We are entering a new era of the “new normal”, which is a good lesson for people to give more importance to health and hygiene.”