Strategy update: Shell's 2019 Management Day

Shell presented an eagerly anticipated strategy update at its June 2019 Management Day. Investors had been seeking greater clarity on the story beyond 2020. The company delivered, providing detailed guidance to 2025 and a better sense of longer-term direction. The overarching message was that Shell is continuing the journey that it embarked upon in 2017 – building a company to “thrive in the energy transition” while delivering a “world class investment case”. Cash flow and shareholder distributions remain paramount. Long-term strategy is all about resilience. Energy transition loomed large throughout the day. While there was less focus on carbon framework specifics than there had been at MD17, we got a better feel for the potential implications. From our vantage point, Shell's upstream arm increasingly looks like a low growth cash-machine, as the rest of the company morphs into a giant energy trading and marketing business, weighted to low carbon.