Earnings call transcript: TotalEnergies Q3 2025 sees robust revenue and stock dip

TotalEnergies SE (TTE) reported its third-quarter earnings for 2025, meeting expectations on earnings per share (EPS) but surpassing revenue forecasts. The company reported an EPS of $1.77, aligning with analyst predictions, while revenue reached $43.84 billion, beating the forecasted $43.07 billion. Despite the financial performance, the stock experienced a pre-market decline of 2.43%, trading at $60.71.

Key Takeaways

• TotalEnergies reported an EPS of $1.77, matching forecasts.
• Revenue exceeded expectations, reaching $43.84 billion.
• Stock declined by 2.43% in pre-market trading.
• Cash flow increased by 7% from the previous quarter.
• Hydrocarbon production rose by over 4% year-on-year.

Company Performance

TotalEnergies demonstrated solid performance in Q3 2025 with significant growth in various areas. The company’s cash flow increased by 7% compared to the previous quarter, and adjusted net income rose by 11%. Hydrocarbon production saw a year-on-year increase of over 4%, highlighting the company’s strong operational capabilities amidst a challenging market environment.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $43.84 billion, surpassing the forecast of $43.07 billion.
• Earnings per share: $1.77, matching analyst expectations.
• Cash flow: Increased by 7% from Q2 2025.
• Return on equity: 14.2% over the past 12 months.

Earnings vs. Forecast

TotalEnergies met EPS expectations with $1.77, showing no surprise in earnings. However, the revenue surprise of 1.79% indicates better-than-anticipated sales performance. This revenue beat is a positive sign compared to previous quarters, suggesting effective execution of business strategies.

Market Reaction

Despite the strong financial results, TotalEnergies’ stock fell by 2.43% in pre-market trading, dropping to $60.71. This decline comes as the stock trades within its 52-week range of $52.78 to $65.76. The decline may reflect investor concerns over broader market trends or sector-specific challenges.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking forward, TotalEnergies anticipates upstream production to grow by 3% annually through 2030. The company aims for a 12% return on capital employed in integrated power by 2028. Strategic initiatives include continuing share buybacks and converting ADRs to ordinary shares, with a listing on the NYSE set for December 8th.

Executive Commentary

CEO Patrick Pouyanné emphasized the company’s strategic focus, stating, "We are in a delivery mode and that free cash flow will increase." He also highlighted the company’s production outlook, noting, "More than 95% of our production by 2030 is already either online or under construction."

Risks and Challenges

• Volatility in oil and gas prices could impact revenue.
• Geopolitical tensions may affect LNG market dynamics.
• Regulatory changes in key markets could present operational challenges.
• Supply chain disruptions may impact project timelines.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about potential French tax implications and the company’s AI investment strategy. Executives addressed exploration and production expansion and clarified LNG market dynamics and geopolitical challenges.

By maintaining a disciplined investment approach and focusing on high-margin, low-cost projects, TotalEnergies aims to navigate the current economic landscape effectively.

Full transcript - TotalEnergies SE ADR (TTE) Q3 2025:

Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to TotalEnergies’ third quarter 2025 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speech, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star and one on your telephone. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today on 30th October 2025. Thank you for holding. The conference will begin shortly. Right after this message, please clearly announce your first name, surname, and cite your company name.

SA.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to TotalEnergies’ third quarter 2025 results conference call. I now hand over to Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, and Jean-Pierre Sbraire, CFO, who will lead you through the call. Sir, please go ahead.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: Good afternoon. Good morning everyone. Before Jean-Pierre goes through the details of the third quarter results, I would like to make a few opening comments. Almost exactly one month ago we updated you with our strategy during our capital markets day in New York and we had four key consistency and resilience of our two pillar strategy, strong and secured production growth in our oil and gas business, accretive cash flow generation and capital discipline. I believe that this company has strong third quarter results. Again, Jean-Pierre will detail with you perfectly illustrates these key catalysts and highlights the value proposition of a consistent and profitable growth model. Strategy is clearly in motion and is translating into more cash flow even in a more challenging environment.

Indeed, despite oil pricing dropping by more than $10 per barrel year on year, the cash flow for the third quarter increased by 4% and adjusted net income for the third quarter held steadily. Why? Primarily for two reasons. First, the hydrocarbon production growth is a reality and is highly accretive. The new project barrels coming online such as Mero fields in Brazil, deepwater projects in the U.S., offshore Gulf for oil, Tura and Phoenix for gas have an average cash flow margin which is roughly twice higher than the base portfolio. They have contributed 170,000 barrels per day during the first nine months of 2025 compared to 2024. These new barrels have generated around $400 million of additional cash flow year on year.

Growth volume around $200 million and higher margin another $200 million and they contributed to absorb the equivalent of $6 per barrel of decrease in the Brent in terms of cash flow. I think the strong demonstration that our disciplined investment framework that includes strict sanctioning criteria, less than $20 per barrel technical cost of $30 per barrel breakeven for E&P projects is delivering its fruits and we expect, of course, that this cash flow tailoring from new high margin barrels will continue as we work our way through our deep project queue. As a reminder, starting from 2025, continuing in 2026, the company is growing upstream production by 3% per year for 2030.

What is the differentiation factor that stands out of our business model is clearly that more than 95% of this production by 2030 is already either online or under construction, and largely under lump sum EPC contracts, which significantly derisks the cost. Projects are in hand and we are executing them. Again, 2023 this year and this last quarter demonstrate that we are well in the delivery mode. Some people think we are borrowing, but we are borrowing for the good. Cash is growing. The second pillar of these good results has been the recovery of the downstream, which contributes to the company’s resiliency, with cash flow up by almost $500 million. It is true that the refining margin was better, which is also true, but we managed to capture them thanks to a good availability of our assets.

In particular, there were several turnarounds during the quarter, but they were executed in time, on schedule, and on budget. It allows us to reach our objective. Of course, Marketing and Services continue to deliver consistent results and demonstrate that the priority given to value-over-volume in this segment is the right approach. In addition to highlighting the strength of our consistent strategy, this third quarter demonstrates as well that we are delivering in the short term, specifically on the second half 2025 plan that we laid out during the July earnings call, which included four key elements. Again, the accretive production growth, giving more cash flows, a downward inflection in our net investments, coming back to the capital discipline, which decreased by $3.5 billion quarter over quarter, a reversal of the seasonal working capital, as we have released this quarter of $1.3 billion.

Lastly, all these elements improve the gearing that is now close to 17% compared to next to 18%. The end result is that during the third quarter, at $69 per barrel, the company generated excess free cash flow, with cash flow including working capital variation more than covering net investment, plus $4.5 billion of shareholder returns in the form of dividends and buyback. This leads me to shareholder returns. The company, of course, continues its strong track record of dividend growth. The Board of Directors decided to increase the third interim dividend by close to 8% in euro and more than 10% in dollars compared to 2024. On the buyback side, as announced on September 24, the Board of Directors authorized up to $1.5 billion of share buyback for the fourth quarter 2025 and therefore, assuming annual cash flow between $27.5 billion and $28 billion.

In particular, supported by the better refining margin that we observe currently, the 2025 payout ratio is expected to remain around 56%. Looking forward, we expect to maintain a strong momentum for the fourth quarter. Upstream production is anticipated to grow more than 4% year on year. Like this quarter, the net investments are expected to decrease quarter over quarter, in particular because we will deliver the disposal proceeds, $2 billion expected, and at the end the net of acquisitions will represent $1.5 billion of cash inflow in the balance sheet, with another anticipated positive contribution from the seasonal working capital. We anticipate to continue to strengthen the balance sheet with gearing forecasted February 30th to decline to 15% to 16% at year end. Last but not least, the Board of Directors has approved the roadmap to transform our ADRs into ordinary shares.

We’re happy to announce that we ordered today J.P. Morgan to launch the termination process of the ADR program, with the objective that ordinary shares are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange from December 8th. This is of course an important milestone for the company as it will allow for a single class of TotalEnergies shares to trade with extended hours. It will be essentially a continuous listing from Paris 9:00 A.M. to New York 4:00 P.M., 10:00 P.M. Paris time. We hope that these ordinary shares listing will be a clear catalyst for the stock in 2026 in both Paris and New York markets. We intend to market these ordinary shares on the U.S. market even more actively than today. I will now turn the call over to Jean-Pierre, who will go through the details of these first quarter financials.

Jean-Pierre Sbraire, CFO, TotalEnergies: Thank you, Patrick. I will start by commenting on the price environment in the third quarter versus the second quarter. Brent averaged $59 per barrel during the third quarter versus $68 per barrel in the second quarter, up 2% but down more than $10 per barrel compared to the third quarter. 2024 ETF averaged $11.3 per million versus $11.9 per MMBtu, down 5%, and the average LNG price decreased to $8.9 per million BTU versus $9.1 per million BTU, down 2%. On the other side, for refining, the European refining margin significantly improved to $63 per tonne compared to $35 per tonne during the second quarter, up close to 80%.

In this price environment, the company reported strong financial results with third quarter 2025 cash flow increasing by 7% compared to the second quarter, adjusted net income increasing by 11%, thanks to the continued positive impact of the new attractive upstream barriers and strong downstream results that reflect the company’s ability to capture higher refining margins in Europe. Overall profitability remains strong with return on equity for the 12 months ending September 30th at 14.2% and ROE close to 12.5%. Moving now to the business segments, starting with hydrocarbons on a year-on-year basis, first quarter hydrocarbons production exceeded expectations and increased by more than 4%, making it the company’s highest growth quarter so far this year. We anticipate that this trend will continue with fourth quarter hydrocarbon production expected to grow more than 4% compared to 4Q2024, notably benefiting from the restart of Ichthys LNG in Australia.

Turning to the quarterly results and starting with exploration and production, this segment generated during 3Q2025 an adjusted net income of $2.2 billion, up 10% quarter over quarter in a similar price environment and outpacing quarter over quarter E&P production growth of around 4%. Similarly, cash flow growth was strong at $4 billion, up 6% quarter over quarter. Importantly, our project portfolio is delivering new low-cost, low-emission oil and gas production that is accretive with an average upstream CFPO per barrel that is roughly two times the base portfolio. Regarding an E&P project, we are progressing on all fronts. On the project side, we achieved first oil at the Begonia and closed phase three offshore fields in Angola, and we sanctioned phase two of the redevelopment of the Ratawi oil field in Iraq, which is part of the GGIP projects.

As we have now launched all phases of DDIP, we are looking forward to the first oil for phase one of the redevelopment early 2026 at M&A. The company is consistently high grading its portfolio. During the last earnings call we mentioned that we are expecting several E&P divestments in the second half of the year. During the third quarter we divested two unconditional blocks in Vaca Muerta in Argentina, which closed this quarter, and three satellite fields on Ekofisk in Norway, out of our strict investment criteria, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter. Lastly, on exploration, we continue to reload the hopper to complement existing opportunities, and this quarter we announced new license awards in Algeria, in the Republic of the Congo, and in Liberia.

Moving to integrated LNG, third quarter LNG sales of 10.4 million tonnes were essentially flat quarter over quarter as third party purchases offset lower sales from equity production. Cash flow of $1.1 billion was in line with the second quarter in a stable price environment with an average energy price of around $9. Adjusted net operating income of $0.9 billion was down 18% quarter over quarter, primarily due to the planned turnarounds at Ichthys LNG in Australia that impacted production by around 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day for the quarter. On the price outlook forward, European gas prices continue to be sustained at around $11 per MMBtu for 1Q2025 and winter 2025-2026 due to anticipated winter demand.

Given the evolution of oil and gas prices in recent months and the lag effect on pricing formulas, the company anticipates an average energy selling price of around $8.50 per MMBtu for the first quarter 2025. On the adjustment of our LNG strategy, we are pleased to continue to grow our U.S. presence with the recent FID on Rio Grande LNG in 2024 in South Texas, and we enhanced resilience in our LNG and gas to power strategy by acquiring interest in shale gas assets from Continental Resources in the Anadarko Basin in the U.S. Turning to integrated power, net power generation increased 9% quarter over quarter to 12.6 TWh due to increased outputs from flexible generation capacity in Europe. The value of TotalEnergies’ unique integrated model is illustrated in the third quarter financials.

Total cash flow from operations was $0.6 billion, up 9% quarter over quarter and in line with annual guidance. To provide more granularity in the integrated power financial performance. This quarter we disclosed the split in cash flow between production assets, renewable and gas-fired power plants on one side and sales activity B2B, B2C, and trading on the other side, showing that each contributed equally this quarter during Q3, Q4. During the third quarter the company has executed well on the downside of the integrated power business model which contributes capital recycling and will generate a tailwind for free cash flow in the fourth quarter. The company signed an agreement for the sale of 50% of the 1.4 GW renewable portfolio in North America and closed the sale of 50% of a 270 megawatt renewable portfolio in France.

These deals have a combined cash impact of around $1.5 billion and in this deal TotalEnergies retains a 50% stake in the assets and will continue to be the operator after closing and to offset 100% of the electrons. This is in line with our business model. As an important reminder, our effective upstream growth is not the only contributor to the company’s resilience. Integrated power will take a key role in this too since it is a different city than growing cash flow stream that is outside of crude cycles and with strong demand fundamentals. Moving to downstream, as Patrick mentioned, during the third quarter downstream efficiently captured the high refining margins in Europe and contributed to the company resilient financials. Third quarter adjusted net operating income of $1.1 billion was up more than 30% quarter over quarter.

Cash flow of $1.7 billion was up 11% quarter over quarter thanks to good availability of assets that allowed us to successfully capture improved European margins. In terms of free cash flow, during the third quarter downstream cash flow from operating activities exceeded net investment by over $2.5 billion in refining. The European refining margin marker strengthened during the third quarter due to the tension on the diesel supply chain. In the context of low inventories, utilization was 84% which was towards the high end of the guidance range of 80 to 85% and it reflects efficient operations and planned turnarounds at Port Arthur in the U.S. and HTC in Korea. In marketing and services, results remain consistently strong with high margin activities offsetting lower volumes. Looking ahead, we anticipate refined utilization of 80 to 84% in the fourth quarter which accounts for scheduled turnarounds at Antwerp and Satorp.

Moving now to the company level and starting with working capital, as expected, we benefited from the working cap release during the third quarter, which was a $1.3 billion positive contribution to cash. Furthermore, for the fourth quarter, we anticipate another positive contribution on net investments. They meaningfully decreased to $3.1 billion in the first quarter, which includes $0.4 billion of divestment net of acquisitions in the fourth quarter. As mentioned by Patrick, disposals are estimated to total $2 billion, including the closing of Nigeria and Norway divestment for exploration and production, as well as spend down of renewable assets in North America and Greece for integrated power, and we reiterate full year 2025 net investment guidance of $17 to $17.5 billion.

Based on anticipated net investments and working cap, we expect gearing to decrease to 15 to 16% at year end compared to 17.3% at the end of the third quarter. With that, Patrick and I are now available to answer your question and the operator, so please open up the line for questions.

Conference Operator: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. We will now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Please kindly mute any audio sources before asking a question. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the hash key. Once again, please press 1 if you wish to ask a question. The first question is from Lydia Rainforth, Barclays. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good afternoon to both of you, and thank you for the presentation. Two questions, if I could. The first one, can I just get your clarification on where we are on the tax issues in France? I’ve seen headlines this morning about tax on share buybacks, what that actually means. The second one, I think, Patrick, this comes back to your point around the growth in production is obviously doing quite well, but also the growth in cash flow numbers. When you’re thinking about 2026, can you give us an indication as to how much more cash flow might grow than production for next year? Just remind us of that.

Thank you.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: Okay. Good morning. Good afternoon, Lydia. First, as you observe, there is quite a huge or quite a big fiscal creativity in the French Parliament these last days. Clearly, the full recipe will not work. We don’t know. Be careful not to overreact to the night news. There was a super tax on multinationals which is completely out of the rule of law. France has signed 125 fiscal agreements with many countries. The principle is no double taxation, and this is very anchored. As the government reminded the parliament, this is the right rule, so we will not be touched by that. There is also in the constitution some already decision, and when you want to tax above what is reasonable, then these types of taxations are not approved or are cancelled. Honestly, the political situation in France is not very stable.

There is a huge debate making a lot of noise. I trust that at the end of the day we’ll land to a reasonable avenue. As you all know as well, we, TotalEnergies, do not make a lot of benefit in France. I would say we’ll follow this debate. Again, I’m comfortable with the fact that at the end of the day, government will take the right decisions to maintain, in fact, which is fundamental, what we call the supply policy. If you want, before you redistribute in a country, you need to create wealth, you need to produce, you need to create results, revenues, and then you can speak about distribution, and we will come back to that. I understand that, and I think, by the way, that this situation in France is weighing on the share price of TotalEnergies.

I remind you as well that we are a global company and that, again, largely 90%, 95%, I think, of our cash flows and our results are not coming from our country where we have the headquarters. From this perspective, the profile of TotalEnergies is quite different from other French companies, and the market should integrate it for 2026. Honestly, Lydia, you are asking me a question to which I will answer more precisely in February. As we know, we have a meeting for annual results and what is the plan for 2026. As I told you in New York, we anticipate a growth of 3%, more than 3% for 2026. Again, for the cash flows, I don’t have all figures. Of course, it’s related to the new production coming on stream.

Part of the, I would say, new production of 2025, like the Brazilian production, will have the full effect in 2026. I anticipate another accretive effect on our accretive effect, the size of it. You have to be a little patient. Again, clearly we are in a delivery mode. We deliver the production growth more than 3, then this year probably will be next to 4. In fact, at the end of the year, other than 3, 3.5 to 4 for 2025 next year, at least 3. Let’s deliver the accretive cash. This is a roadmap, not only 2025, 2026 for the next five years. As we reminded you, and we, I think, gave you comfort during the New York presentation that we will deliver this $10 billion of additional free cash from all our segments in the next five years.

Perfect, thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question is Michele Delavina, Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Jean-Pierre Sbraire, CFO, TotalEnergies: Thank you and congratulations on the strong growth. Two questions, if I may. First, I was wondering if you feel like you’re able at the moment to capture the extraordinary refining margins we’re seeing, and how the improvements to your Port Arthur and Donges refineries are progressing. Secondly, I was just wondering what you’re seeing in terms of disruptions of the Russian volumes following the latest sanctions, and if you start to see an impact on the physical market through your trading and optimization divisions. Thank you.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: Thank you for this question, Michele. To be honest, when I read again our press release, I think we are a little bearish on the oil price and the refining margins. The refining margins as we captured since the beginning of October for the last month is around $75 per ton. When we guided you at above $50, I think we are a little shy. In fact, it’s fundamentally linked because we begin to see real impact in the market of these last Russian sanctions. I think the market is underestimating what it means when you have U.S. sanctions. Two large Russian companies, which are the core of trading Russian oil, by the way. When Europe said that we are targeting countries which are considered, I would say, dangerous, like India, Turkey, and China. If you trade oil or products from these countries, you could be under sanction.

The reaction today in the market, and I shared some views with some of my colleagues, including I was in Riyadh last two days. Clearly, today trading houses as well are more cautious. We see that everybody is taking these, including secondary sanctions, you know, which might become. I see some impact. I think the refining margins today is more around $100 per ton than the $75 on average. It is linked clearly to, in fact, this sanction will oblige to reroute some volumes and to find a way to bring, I would say, products and crude oil more expensively to the different locations of the planet. I think this is clear. That also could have an impact, by the way, on the oil price. I mean the crude oil price. We’ve seen a reaction. Whatever announced today is still $65.

$65 I think is a good assumption for this quarter. Maybe a little more. I would say more bullish. That’s what we wrote a few days ago because I begin to realize that these sanctions will have a real impact in this market. Most of the players are becoming, are taking them. You speak, which is good, by the way. TotalEnergies, you know, we stopped trading any Russian oil since the end of 2022 somewhere. We penalize ourselves compared to other practice. I think it was the right way to comply and to be strict on the Russian sanctions. Capturing the refining margins is for sure. The good news of third quarter is that we managed to do it. We had a turnaround on Port Harper, which is down. It’s fully back online now. Donges as well is running.

Not fully, not the last equipment we are waiting for by the end of the year, but it’s running. We deliver results. In the third quarter and fourth quarter, we have two turnarounds, one in Antwerp, one in Sator, which are two big machines in our results. I expect that this will be, I would say, compensated again by the other assets and by the fact that the margins are higher. I’m positive. When I gave you a guidance of $27.5 for $28, I was maybe too bearish by stating $27 in New York. It’s because as well I integrate these elements, which again, the duty and all the organization of refining chemicals are dedicated to capture these margins, which are good. This is where we are, and I’m bullish on that.

Jean-Pierre Sbraire, CFO, TotalEnergies: Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question is from Doug Leggate, Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Thank you.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: Good morning, Patrick and Jean-Pierre.

I wonder if I could start with your upstream margin. The volume guidance is again pretty strong for Q4, but I guess what we’re observing is that your upstream margin seems to be moving up as well as the volumes. I’m trying to understand what happens as the mix changes going forward. For example, Iraq never historically had great margins. How do you see the margin mix continuing as the growth trajectory sustains?

Over the next several years? That’s my first question.

My second question, if I may, is a quick one. Oil appears still to be in a very technical market. We all see the oversupply, but it seems to keep bouncing around that $60 level.

I guess my question is, if you.

Ended up with better cash flow than you thought when you reset the buyback, what would be the first call on cash?

Would it go to the balance sheet?

To continue the deleveraging, or would it go to the higher end of the buybacks? Thank you.

The second question is clear, it will go to the balance sheet. Thank you. The second answer I would say is clear, we go to balance sheet. We’ll go to the balance sheet. I observed that and I spent quite a lot of time with investors in the last month and clearly, or I would say long term investor day, branching branches is important for all of us. If you want to be, the best buyback policy would be to become, to become cyclical, you need to have a strong balance sheet. That’s a position I would take and keep. Consider the guidance we gave you. We gave you quite a good guidance and we told you $0.75 to $1.5 between $60 and $72 billion $80. I’m answering for 2026.

To be clear, if we continue and we see the plan to deliver more and more free cash on the roadmap to $10 billion, we might revisit this scheme. Today in 2026, if it’s coming, in your case, if we are above $16, 2026 or above $70, we will continue to deleverage upstream margins. No, Iraq is a good contract. I know it’s likely but it’s not at all the case, you know, as we always, I mean as I told you, we are far away from the historical service contract we have. When we came back in Iraq it was clear that either we had a good contract, a strong contract. It was a matter of risk and reward, you know, and risk and reward. In particular the Iraqi contract is quite reactive to the oil price. We capture some upside on it, which of course is important.

We benefit in Iraq from quite a low cost production. The break even is low and it will contribute. The Iraqi barrels, don’t make a mistake, are contributing to the increase, are accretive. Again, I can give you, but I think we gave you in the end in New York. In fact, the base barrels had an average around $19 to $20 per barrel. Today these new barrels are more between $30 and $40 per barrel. It’s why we have an attractive growth in upstream.

So.

I think you will continue to see again the free cash flow from upstream will move quicker than the growth of production.

That’s very helpful, thank you guys.

Conference Operator: The next question is Biraj Borkhataria, RBC. Please go ahead.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: Hi, thanks for taking my question. Firstly, nice to see that production growth being the accretion coming through that really is a differentiator. Two questions. The first one is on the divestments for the year. I know you mentioned Nigeria. In the $2 billion, I believe there were two deals that you’re planning to do, one of which wasn’t approved. Could you just outline whether the.

Jean-Pierre Sbraire, CFO, TotalEnergies: That sale was in.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: The $2 billion, or is that on top of the $2 billion? Secondly, recently you signed a letter with a number of other CEOs around European competitiveness. I was just wondering if you could.

Jean-Pierre Sbraire, CFO, TotalEnergies: Talk about whether that letter has actually.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: Catalyzed any kind of response on the policy front. Any color there would be helpful. Thank you. What is the second question? Sorry, I didn’t catch it. Okay, I understood. I know. Okay, I know, I know, I know. Okay, understood. You open competitiveness later. Okay. First on divestments, I will be very precise with you. The $2 billion. I will give you where it’s coming from. We intend to close and we have already closed some of them, but we are intending to close and all I think we have signed and we are in the process and it’s a matter of closure. The Bunga divestment in Nigeria, Norway, the satellite Eco fiscal renewable assets in the U.S., renewable assets which will be announced in Greece.

As well, we have another project where we will, but I cannot yet disclose to you guys, another $300 million which will be announced soon. So it’s a $2 billion that does not include, to be precise, SPDCV divestment, not only because we, but because we, in fact, we were not able to close. There were some conditions precedent on our side. We consider that it was not reasonable to close with, I would say, the supposed buyer. We are discussing today, we have advanced discussion with two additional, two new buyers which are, I think, serious ones. We will not be able to be clear to answer your question, to close it before this quarter. It’s for next year, by the way. It’s good because it’s part of the plan for next year.

From this perspective, you know, what we have observed is that divestments of E and P assets generally take time. It takes more time, even if we have demonstrated with our divestment in Argentina that we were able to sign and to close in the same quarter. Sometimes it’s going quicker. The plan is very clear and we have some interested buyers and serious buyers on it. We are working on this one. There are others, like I mentioned to you, other ideas for this year and next year that I mentioned in New York on which we work as well. On the European Competition letter, the answer, you probably follow that, some tweets or LinkedIn. European leaders are not really, I mean, are listening to our request.

They have been, I would say, we had some calls with some discussions with some European commissioners who took the letter C from 40 CEOs to say, look, so they understood, they think we are maybe asking them too much. I think it’s sort of a wake up call from these 40 CEOs. We, myself and the Siemens CEO, we are the spokesperson. Let’s be clear. We were just reflecting what people expressed during our meetings between French and German CEOs. I’ve seen that on some topics which are, I would say, giving some more polemics, there had been some calls that were not only from European CEOs but from U.S. Energy Secretary and Qatar Energy Minister to call to revisit some of this legislation which seems to be in fact against competitiveness and again for some of them putting at stake the security of supply of Europe.

I think this is something which is serious and we are European CEOs and we of course want to continue to contribute to Europe development and growth, but to do it, I think it’s also our job to speak up when we consider that conditions are changing and it might be difficult for us to contribute to European prosperity. It’s a moving, you know, it’s a continuous, would say fight, but let’s contribute to it. Thank you very much.

Conference Operator: The next question is from Martijn Rats, Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hi.

Hello.

I’ve got two FMA. First of all, what I thought has been really surprising this year is the strength of new LNG FIDs. Already a year, year and a half ago, many of us were writing reports about the surplus in the LNG market in the second half of the decade. Yet 2025 has been a near record year of new energy capacity to be commissioned and TotalEnergies still has a few projects it needs to decide on. I was wondering if you perhaps could share with us your thoughts on, despite the outlook, the number of new FIDs being as strong as they are, and also how it impacts your own decisions in terms of future LNG FIDs. The second one I wanted to ask is about the shares and the equivalence between sort of the Paris share and sort of U.S.

shares and consolidating this into one single class of shares. I was wondering if this could impact the execution of your buyback program in the sense that I was wondering if this is in place from December 8 onwards, as I now understand it, if some of the buyback program could be executed in sort of New York Stock Exchange listed shares. Of course, the context behind the question is then also if that could then be a way to avoid some of the proposals that have creatively been floated, as I think you put it, in French Parliament over the last couple of days.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: Okay, the second question on ADR, no, it does not impact at all the execution of the buyback program. I remind you that the ADR conversion is about around 9, 10% of our shares. Obviously, the buyback program will be executed on the Paris stock market, to be clear, and not on the New York listed because it would be strange for us to buy back from New York where we want, on the contrary, to give more life to this New York market. I prefer more activity and finding more. We will buy back shares in New York when we see we’ll have much more shares on this side of the Atlantic. I would say the first point, and honestly, no, it will not, by the way, it will not avoid in any way tax proposals. Again, the tax proposals are funny proposals.

There are some principles, you know, when President Hollande tried to impose, by the way, he tried to impose 3% tax, extra tax on dividends, which was canceled by the European Union and by the French Constitutional Court. All of us have the coupon money they took during three, four years. There are some principles. We are in a rule of law continent and a rule of law country. This is a reality. You must make a split between the political debates, which are quite vigorous, I would say, and eventually creative, and the reality of the rule of law. We know that there is some limit. When I see the figures, and I will tell you what I’m thinking, the higher it is, the better it is because then I’m sure it will not go through the system. That’s the reality.

In the French constitution, you cannot deprive people unreasonably to their profits and their results. Buybacks are not at all a profit, you know, buyback, it’s just a matter of distribution and by the way of investment in the company, we invest in the company. I’m ready again, I think it’s a topic on which I’m ready to continue to explain to Parliament members what are buybacks. I think we’ll again, don’t overreact to this type of news. I’m afraid we’ll have over news during the next 30 days coming from the Parliament. At the end of the day, I trust the government FIDs. Sorry, FIDs. I’m not sure, I mean there has been a lot of announcements, I’m not sure. How many FIDs exactly?

Because between the announcements, you have a flow of news of projects being revised because they get the permitting or they get the approval for non-FDA countries export from the U.S. administration. You have a new flow coming, then FID. I know train 4 and 5 in next decade. Yes, I know them. I know that one or two competitors are serious and are progressing because as I said in the year, all these projects need to find the financing, to find the financing. Again, an acceptable good financing, a good financing, not an expensive one. Otherwise, you destroy the value. On train 4, we managed to put in place a project financing of Rio Grande 4 around 6.5% which was good project financing, which helped the leverage on it. Other projects do not have the same godfathers, I would say, as Rio Grande and Rio Grande LNG.

Of course, I agree that we need to take that into consideration. You know, we have a strong policy, a clear view. We decided to transfer most of our exposure on the GKM, I would say, LNG spot market to the Brent formulas and we have been active. I think we are very right to do it. I’m more bullish on the oil price as I explained, but on this one by the end of the decade, we need to assess and to take into account that we postponed Cameron 24 because the CapEx was too high. It’s not the time to run again on Cameron 24. The other decision we have in our portfolio is path one.

Eugenia, you know that we are working on the CapEx to lower the CapEx and it’s clear that lowering the CapEx is of utmost importance in a market which could be from this perspective weaker when we launch a project. That’s a topic on which we will have to work and we have demonstrated already, but we know how to be disciplined in that market, giving priority to, I would say, first and second quartile projects in our portfolio and that’s an element which will have to be taken into consideration. By the way, we have announced that we’ll lift it. The fourth measure on Mozambique, there is a funny figure which is in some press news agencies which speak about $25 billion. We are not at all, and I want to be clear and strong on this news. I don’t know, people are playing games which is not acceptable.

They have access to, some people have relinquished a letter that I sent to the President of Mozambique. It’s clear, it’s written $20 billion in the letter, out of which $4.5 billion came from what we spent in the last four years. The budget when we left in 2021 was around, it was a group $15 billion, you add $4.5, you are down to $20, $20.5 billion. That’s the reality of this budget. By the way, this cost, very old cost, you know what we’ve done is that we spent, we’ve done all the detailed engineering and all the procurement has been done. Today, as soon as we fully re-mobilize everybody, we are purely in a construction mode and that’s why we said we are able to deliver the project by 2029.

I’ve discovered something, some people were surprised, but in fact we spent some money in order to, I would say, recapture part of the time which was under force measures. The budget is not a total $25 and I want to be strong. It’s $20, $20.5 billion as we will restart. Again, I can confirm it because we had long discussions of course with contractors. We have put all these figures together with them and including on the delivery in 2029, we have strong commitment so we have realigned the whole system in order to be able to execute properly this project. Wonderful, thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question is from Akim at HSBC. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. A couple of weeks ago at an industry conference you mentioned that the LNG market is getting more competitive and it’s harder to make money in trading. I guess that’s not exactly a secret, but I was wondering if you could provide any more color on this. I was wondering how much of the decline in LNG trading profits would you ascribe to heightened competition versus the more normalized conditions, you know, lower volatility, lower spreads, etc. I also wanted to come back to the EU sustainability rules. I suppose let’s see if the EU rules could be amended, but if they broadly stick, how would you ensure compliance with the CSDD rules in practice? Hypothetically, what would be your options if some LNG supply is deemed to be non-compliant, would you be able to redirect it? Thank you.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: Okay, first question. To be clear, I think we made a demonstration in New York. The message is not that we have a decline of energy trading. We told you that there are exceptional trading profits from 2021, 2022, 2023 and that we are back to a normal environment with lower volatility. By the way, the results of 2025 on integrated LNG are in line with 2024. I’m just saying that we don’t benefit from the growth on this part at this stage. Later we’ll have a growth of volume, but at this stage it is stable and in fact they are quite related to the results of 2019 before the big crisis. What is also true is that you have observed like me, there are more trading arrows which came to this LNG business because maybe they were considering we were making good money.

Today, answering your question, no, it’s just my view is that today we came back to, I would say, more standard revenues and I hope of course the main growth for LNG trading profits from TotalEnergies will come from the growth of volume of assets. We’ll have a volume impact on our trading business which will generate additional profits. We made a mistake when we planned 2025 because we were thinking that we could replicate the last quarter 2024 in full 2025, which is not the case. Again, that’s clear. The volatility in 2025 from the gas, you know the European gas price, it moved between $11 and $12 per million BTU. It’s not a big volatility. By the way, I’m not unhappy because $11 or $12 per million BTU from my Norwegian gas and my British gas and my Danish gas, it’s a very good price.

Maybe people, we should not give another way to the trading business. Trading business is adding value but the base business is in fact our upstream and our production. I prefer to gain $12 per million BTU of profits on my Norwegian gas and maybe a little lower volatility on the trading. Let’s be clear. We never, maybe because there were exceptional years, incredible years, 2022, 2023, again, 2021, you considered it was the new normal. We never said it was a new normal. We even told you be careful. There are exceptional results each time. Exceptional means exceptional. That’s what I want to comment and again I remind you and why I’m linking that to a growth volume. The trading within TotalEnergies is trading around assets. It’s an asset-based trading. It’s not. We don’t take, as you know, it’s not the case. That’s the base of what we do.

There are more competitors, but again, we have more assets than others. It will help our trading business. I think this is the idea, this is the fundamental idea of integration. It’s because we have more assets, more volumes, but we have more medium and long-term contracts with Asia. You know what we signed in the last year. These branch-related medium and long-term contracts offer some optionalities to our traders, and the optionalities that we introduce in these contracts have a value. This is why I’m linking that to my asset, to my business. This is the base of it. Some competitors do not have the same assets and contracts. About the competitive sustainability rules, the question is not to have LNG non-compliant. It does not mean the CS3D does not define compliance.

The CS3D is a matter of putting in place some rules, but you have to have a duty of vigilance on the supply chain. Some countries have been strong. I invite you to read the letter of the Secretary of Right and Minister Al Kaabi. If you didn’t read it, they sent a letter to the European leaders telling them if you keep that in place, we will not take the risk to deliver LNG to Europe. I would say if we don’t have LNG coming neither from the U.S. nor from Qatar, my European North Sea assets are taking a lot of value. I would say it’s now, I mean, it’s not a matter of compliance, a matter of legal reason because in fact, why do they complain?

In the CS3D, if you were found guilty by a judge, your penalty could be up to 5% of your worldwide turnover, which is just crazy. The sanction size is completely disproportionate to, in fact, a rule which is against, of course, the declaration. We are all here, we are for human rights. You can ask efforts to companies to control the supply chain, but we don’t control everything. If you transform supposed not enough vigilance into such a penalty risk, then it’s completely disproportionate. This is a call coming from these two countries. Again, I consider, to be honest, that when we produce LNG in the U.S., as we are the largest exporter of U.S. LNG, we are fully compliant with the duty of vigilance law with all that we produce in the U.S.

Thank you.

In Qatar as well, by the way.

Conference Operator: The next question is from Matt Lofting, J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to follow up on your earlier comments on the refining portfolio. 80% to 84% utilization in the fourth quarter looks towards the lower half of the historical range. Obviously from a near term perspective, planned turnarounds and maintenance need to be done and undertaken. When you look forward into 2026, how do you see the normalized throughput of the business now? Has there been any deterioration in that normalized level versus what you saw and how you saw it, say, two, three years ago?

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: Yes, I think so. The question maybe we are cautious again, we were cautious on the $50 per tonne. Maybe there at 84 is just as I told you. We have ANVIRP and SETO, which are two big machines. We have entered into a large plant turnaround so they execute. Of course, it has an impact on the global, I would say, delivery from your portfolio. Let’s say you can keep, if you take 82% this quarter, I think we were at 84%, maybe 82% is probably the mid average of the guidance, probably the right one to take into account. I told you that it will be more than compensated with capturing better margins on all the other assets for next year. We are more in the range of 84% to 86% I think for budget. Again, I didn’t begin to look to what more colleagues are planning.

I’m waiting to see. I think there are less turnarounds next year. We should have, from this perspective, it should be a better year as well. Again, as we mentioned to you, there were some, I would say, difficulties before the turnaround. On Port Harcourt, turnaround is done. We expect to have a better variability. On Donges, again, we intend to put into service the new unit which will enhance the margins on Donges by beginning of 2026. From this perspective, if the refining margins remain at quite a good level, we will be able to capture even more than this year. Thanks, Patrick.

Conference Operator: The next question is from Jeanine Wai, Bernstein. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon. My first question is on marketing, if I may, because your unit margins were up this quarter, and I wonder if you can talk around the drivers of that margin improvement, whether it is structural or temporary. My second question, I noted this quarter you signed some partnerships on the deployment of AI and a global data platform. I obviously don’t have the context of your ongoing digitalization effort. I wanted to ask whether it is correct to look at these partnerships perhaps as an effort to speed up and widen the digitalization you have been working on for a number of years. Thank you.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: Yeah, I take the second question first as we told you. Yeah, we have and I think it will be a topic on which we could focus more on what we are doing. In fact, since 2020 we put in place a digital factory in a bottom up approach with 300, I would say, data experts or data scientists and to very high level a good team. What we observe is that if we want to deploy these new technologies which are speeding up on a worldwide basis, going from the bottom up to scale up is difficult. We decided that it’s time now to have a broad effort, a worldwide effort on organizing all these data because there are plenty of data on platforms in refineries, but all that is not connected.

If you want to really, for example, enhance your linear program in refineries, the best would be to have access to all these data to develop new tools in order to enhance another additional % of, I would say, use of the refinery and better margins. We have engaged with two large programs which are quite an investment. An investment on the platform with Amazon, which is, I don’t remember them now with Amazon, in order to inmate, in order to connect all these physical data to, I would say, a large database, all physically. It will take two years and a half, three years to deploy because we need to go on all the sites, we know where the data is, but we need to connect them and then they will be available.

We have also engaged in a very large worldwide program on the ENP site with Cognite which is in advance, I would say, from digitalization. We have made some different pilots with them. Now we are all convinced. Another big program to equip.

To.

Deploy these Cognite software, which obviously will help us to really accelerate the use of AI. For me, 2025 will be the year where we have really decided to scale and to go from a scale and to take some large worldwide program to give us the capacity to take the most of these new AI tools. It will take a few years to install all of that. If we want to be efficient, and I’m sure, and you know, it’s not cost cutting in our case, it’s more additional revenues. If I can, with advanced process control tools, thanks to AI, produce 1% more of all my oil fields and my refineries, I can tell you it’s quite a lot of free cash. It’s worth making the investments. This is what we have done on marketing. I think there are different drivers.

Fundamentally, the strategy which is put in place in marketing is value over volume, which means not chasing the additional growth, even if it’s difficult for marketers. You know, they love to show you more tons. What we discovered is that it’s quite mature markets. They are mature markets, you know, whatever in European market is mature, the lubricant market is mature. It’s very difficult to gain market share. The only way to do it is to do it at the expense of margins. What we have decided is to enter into a policy which is a bit higher margins and not less volumes, but not to sacrifice, I would say, the margins at the expense of the volume. This is why, by the way, if you observe our results, we have sold our network in Germany and Netherlands and half of Belgium.

There is not much impact, in fact, because we have managed to absorb it, I would say. It’s also because fundamentally in marketing we have decided to divest or to stop, not divest, but to stop a business which was very low margin, which was, I would say, sharing some logistics assets which were creating a lot of pass-through volumes but with a minimum margin. This has been reduced because it was not really adding money. It was quite losing a lot of people, structurally. Your answer to your question is that structurally we are in a mode to enhance the margin on marketing and services. That’s where we are, and this will continue. I hope I’m clear. Thank you, Patrick.

Conference Operator: The next question is from Christopher Coupland, Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks for taking my questions.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: Patrick.

I wonder whether we could talk about another area of French creativity. There is an idea floating around that we should remunerate electricity or wholesale power prices differently. What can you tell us is current appetite for signing new PPAs? How has that market evolved considering that rather interesting regulatory backdrop? You’ve recently signed a project deal with RWE in France, but also have some considerable CapEx left to go in Germany on the offshore wind front. Maybe you can put things into context and give us the risk reward behind taking that regulatory risk. You’ve mentioned it already. I just wondered whether you could give us an update on how quickly we should expect news from Mozambique on the ground now that the force majeure has been lifted.

Thank you, Mozambique. As you know, we have lifted the mask force majeure. We are now expecting the government to approve our new plan and budget, and we are mobilizing the contractors in order to be able to execute the project within this schedule with a timetable of 2029, and that’s where we are. I think we are moving on the first question. It’s a complex question because I’m not sure to have fully understood. Let me be clear. I’m not in favor of regulations and regulatory approach. We are more merchant people, we like the market. For us, that means that signing PPAs is the best way to commercialize, I would say, our assets. We know that we need in Europe, you need to sign when you develop. I think you were referring to offshore wind.

We signed a contract in France at $65 or $66 per megawatt hour, which is a contract, by the way, where the price can be adapted if the CapEx are higher. The CapEx risk is in fact covered because we could. Not only have we given the price, but the CapEx is linked to the price, so that’s a protection. It’s also partly inflated through the OpEx.

So.

At this level, honestly, we can develop an offshore wind project in Europe because it is projects where, in fact, the connection is developed and paid by the DSO, not by us. We are only in charge of the plant itself. Again, we follow that. I think today, you know, you have many creativity there again, in different circles, all that we are in a European market. European market, unique European market, which are fundamentally driven by some market rules, in fact. When I discuss with European authorities, I see little appetite from the Commission to put into. I would say even in some countries like Germany, who believe in the market, to change the rule of these, I would say, electricity market. That’s a debate.

By the way, in France, the same people who were complaining about the famous system of nuclear commercialization, which was called ARENH two years ago, now are complaining of the new system. People will never be happy. What they want is electricity for free. That’s difficult at the end. We need to invest. If everything is too much regulated, it will be against investment. Europe desperately needs to invest more in renewable gas, fiber plants, grids, if we want to ensure security of supply. The reality, so you can have good both. I think I would say, I trust there again the political leaders which are spending a lot of time on this energy story to take the right decision and not to be complacent. Okay, thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question is from Lucas Herrmann, BNP. Please go ahead.

Yeah, Patrick, thanks very much. Another slightly generic question, but I just wanted to ask for your sort of thoughts on the one part of the complex which is really having a difficult time: chemicals. To the extent to which, when you talk within, when you look at the industry, look at where margins are, you’re starting to see better signs of movement to try and restructure not necessarily your own business, but business across the industry, so that we might actually move to a place where profits start to improve. If you could give us some indication of the extent to which the associates line within.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: The profits.

Within the refining and chemicals business, what proportion of profit actually comes from chemicals? Now, given just how difficult the environment is. Thanks very much.

Okay. No, I’m not a chemical company. We are a refining and petrochemical company and we make crack, ethylene, and polyethylene. You know, basics. Sorry, Patrick, that’s what I’m referring to. No, but just to tell you the truth is that, you know, the situation. The situation is that in fact in terms of cracking capacity, ethylene capacity, China in the last five years went from 50 million tons of cracker to 100 million tons of cracker. They are in fact almost self-sufficient. If they were moving from a large importing country to almost self-sufficient, even exporting, that changed the world pattern. By the way, Chinese companies also suffer from the situation, but other places suffer from the situation. For me, I always been very clear with you. If you want to invest in petrochemicals, you have the fundamental matter, fundamental competitive factor is feedstock.

Either you are ethane, cheap LPGs in the U.S. or in the Middle East, or you will face difficulties. That’s the situation. We know that all naphtha crackers in Europe are facing competition, which is super difficult, either from the U.S. crackers or from Middle East. By the way, TotalEnergies, since I’m CEO, we have invested in two crackers, one in Port Arthur with Borealis, one with Amiral in Saudi Arabia. I’m consistent with that. I think fundamentally, and we are shutting down some crackers like the one we have just decided in France. That’s my view to come back on the proportion. I don’t know, it’s not big, it’s not good, it’s not big. I have no miracle recipe compared to my competitors on this one. Again, it’s not a major part of our downstream results and cash flow.

Most is coming from refining and trading rather more than chemicals. Again, it’s part of the integration. When the margins are good, we are happy to capture them. Again, fundamentals, let’s invest in the U.S. and in the Middle East. That’s all.

Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question is from Peter Lowe, Rothschild & Co, Redburn. Please go ahead.

Hi.

Thanks.

The first was just on integrated power.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: The ROCE has been below 10% for a few quarters now.

How confident are you of hitting your 12% target? What are the steps to.

Get it up to that level over the coming years?

Perhaps just a follow up.

On the kind of proposed EU ban.

On Russian LNG imports from 2027.

I think you said in the past you’d expect you’d be able to divert your Yamal cargoes to alternative markets outside of the EU. Is that still the base case and what you expect to happen? Thank you. First question. I think Stephane Michel in New York gave you some answers to that. You know, we never told you it’s 12% tomorrow. We told you it’s a five-year plan going, by the way, from 10 to 11, from 11 to 12. Part of it, as I told you, is that today we have a sort of burden on our capital employed because we have, I mean, quite a large pipeline of projects which are, of course, non-productive, I would say, capital employed assets which will be because we continue to grow.

We have growth to 20% per year and we will execute, which will, of course, as we don’t intend to make large M&A on this part, which will transform, I would say, non-productive assets into productive assets. Part of it is there. Then the second part, the other percent, would come from rationalization, better use of the assets, industrializations, and this is what we are doing. We also, I think, frame in New York a clear roadmap by concentrating most of the investments of integrated power on some major markets, the oil and gas countries which are in E&P. The rest we are clear, but where we don’t see potential to contribute above 12%, there is no future for them in the portfolio. I mean, that’s, I would say, in a way, what we told you. It is a recipe to go to 12%.

Honestly, today we are a little lower than 10%, but we will recover from it. Don’t forget that there is a contribution from farm-downs; they will come in fourth quarter. All that will give you colors. I would say, therefore, we will raise at 10% and it’s a five-year journey. I’m happy with the development of this business. The next target is to be, for me, net cash positive. As soon as we are net cash positive, I’m sure that the valuation of this part of the business will be better because when I will tell you this business is contributing to your dividend, it’s a way to have a better leverage on this business. We plan 2028; if we can do 2027, we are working on that. EU ban on Russian energy.

Honestly, there has been a new regulation which needs to have some clarification because there is some language there we need to understand what it means exactly. Like, by the way, when EU banned oil in 2022, 2023, it was exact situation. There was a regulation and the LNG regulation is a copy-paste of the old one. There was what they call FAQ where you need to have answers to clarify what is the real scope of ban. For sure the ban is not going any more ocean LNG in Europe, but we want to be sure that the ban is not larger than that. Before I answer your question, and otherwise yes, in this case we have a commitment. If there is no further, I would say, done, I cannot use the force majeure to cancel the contract.

If I don’t have force majeure, I am committed to offtake some cargoes. We are looking to that precisely today. All lawyers are working, to be honest. We have, which because of course for us, the rule is to be sanction compliant, to be clear. Our lawyers are working on it. It’s a fresh regulation. I don’t have the full clarity, and I don’t want to make my answer longer because I could say something which could become wrong if the lawyers, and again, you have to be. We are always at the Executive Committee on the cautiousness side, I would say from this perspective. I’m waiting to see their reports and to understand exactly the scope of the new EU regulation.

Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question is from Paul Chang, Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Hi.

Thank you. Good morning or good afternoon. Patrick and Jean-Pierre Sbraire. Two questions. Want to go back. Patrick, in your answer to the question of adoption of AI, you say that is fairly sizable investment. Can you quantify how big is the investment over the next couple years and whether you have sufficient talent within your organization to really adopt or that you need to go out to hire? At this point, seems like it’s pretty difficult to get good talent in the AI adoption area. What is your target in or what you aim to get from AI over the next, say, 25 years? The second question is on Iraq. Oh, okay.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: Move on with your second question. Sorry. Okay. Sorry.

Patrick, second question is Iraq. Can you tell us how’s the situation on the ground? I suppose that the security is good enough for you to deploy your people. Why, what is the bottleneck or the barrier for Iraq to significantly increase their production at this point? You and some of your peers are now rushing in and signing contracts. If you’re saying that those contracts, the terms are good, is there a concern that Iraq could turn into a major production growth area, which in turn is going to depress oil prices over the next several years? Just want to hear how you think about that. Thank you.

Okay, first question. AI, the program I mentioned, both represent more than €300 million or $350 million, I would say worldwide. It’s quite an investment for these data platforms at the worldwide level. First comment. Second comment. In terms of people, we have some assistance come from the Emerson guys, Aspentech, or from Cognite. Remember that we have 300 digital factory with 300 people. Of course, we are using part of these people to help to deploy the program. They are there, they are valuable, they know about it. We have built these competencies in the last five years. The third answer is that there is a nice country in order to get access to good, high competencies with not so high cost, which is called India. It’s also a way for us to, in fact, grow in the digital.

For us, we are looking today to, we need to grow, I would say, our technical competencies and in terms of people to have more resources in the side of electricity, of power, and in the area of digital. Today, we are seriously thinking to enhance or to grow our presence there. We are discussing about competent center in India. It’s part, by the way, of our way as well to contribute to the, I would say, cash saving program that we mentioned. This is where I am. I know it’s a point, but in fact what I’ve observed is that we have been able to attract people in this field with a reasonable price because we offer them some real, I would say, use case. We are very interesting use case in the field of energy. You can use AI in many areas. It’s good.

Iraq, on the ground, it’s okay. Otherwise, we just signed the full EPC contract. If we were to doubt, we would not have done it honestly. In the Basra area, the situation is good. I can speak only for the areas where we are. We have deliberately located our teams in the south of the country, in the Basra area, because it’s a more, I would say, united area, unified area. In Iraq, there are other areas that I would be more careful, to be clear. In our area, we are fine. The barrier partly is still security because you cannot, what I say for Basra is maybe not true for the whole country, to be honest. It’s not true. Second, in fact, you need investment and investment, and you know the issue for Iraq. Again, I’m happy to have been the big company which came back first.

You know, we went there in 2021, we finalized the contract in 2023. We are FID all the phases in 2025 and we produce in 2028, 2029. The cycle is eight years. I think we are maybe a little slow. I’m not sure because I can tell you all that is in fact from my point of view as a CEO, quite a remarkable journey in a new country. I’m very happy with all the work the teams have done. I contributed myself by supporting them many times there. When people think today that yes, there is a potential in Iraq, it’s clear, but it will not depress oil prices before many years. It’s good for the country and again the country and I know what will happen if there are more companies to come. The temptation will be to decrease the margins and then again it will not work.

That’s the history. I hope the country has taken some lessons of what happened from 2010 to 2020. If we don’t have the right reward for the risk we take, there is no investment. That’s a question of capital allocation. Yes, and that’s why, by the way, to answer your question, to be clear, if we decided to move to come back in Iraq in 2021, but we see quite a long first quarter and in my plan, in my view, Iraq will be a growth area for TotalEnergies beyond 2030 and we work on other projects. That’s what I’m thinking. I don’t see an impact on the short term or short medium term, but potential is.

Thank you. Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question is from Henry Patrico, UBS. Please go ahead.

Yes. Hello everyone. Thank you for taking my question. Just two on the topic of exploration, I think you have a new Head of Exploration since the start of the month.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: I was wondering if we should.

Expect any changes in your approach to exploration. Also, on the topic, can you give us an update on the latest plans for exploration in Namibia and South Africa in the next few months? Thank you.

Okay. Exploration, you know, I’ve been consistent since I became CEO. I think there is one thing we did not change, which is a budget for exploration. It was $800 million to $1 billion. I put it as a sort of rule of the game when I became CEO because strongly I think it was. It’s not because you spend more, you find more. At a certain point, you need to be efficient and oblige your exploration team to take Sochi. I’m happy, by the way. By the way, Kevin has led this team during the last 10 years. He became Exploration Manager or the President almost the same time. He has, I would say, developed some ideas. Ten years is a long cycle in exploration.

When he told us one year ago that he aspired to do something else, it was fine for us because we thought it was the right time to renew. In fact, having the focal approach because again, exploration is a different business. Again, it’s not a matter of dollars, a matter of ideas, of way to approach. I’m very happy to have welcomed in the company Nicola Mavela, who is coming from a successful exploration company. He has, of course, himself been educated in different environments. So probably new ideas he will have. I told him that he’s free to do and to lead the team. It’s not a one, you know, it’s a team building quite a lot of people. You need to take the risk to explore, you need to build some consensus.

You can drive your people in different, I would say, directions in terms of concepts and being creative. I think it’s very good. I hope and I’m convinced that Nicola will be able to have the same success that we had with Kevin in the last 10 years. It’s not a matter of money, it’s a matter of ideas and then to make choices. By the way, you notice that in the last quarter we have been active on taking some licenses back in Nigeria, which has been unexplored for more than 10 years. It’s a pity. It’s probably the most Niger Delta. It’s probably the most prolific delta in Africa. No licenses were awarded. We are happy to have the first ones to IOCs. We went as well to a country like Liberia, it’s a new one. Congo is more mature.

Between, we managed to get a license on which our explorers were excited. I hope they were fine. We’d have a nice gift for Christmas. We’ll see. We will continue to explore in other countries. Exploration. I heard during that Maroucho that it seems that some companies are rediscovering exploration. For TotalEnergies, we never give up on exploration. I always considered as part of the value creation and again a lesson to my colleagues, not because you spend more, but you will find more. We spend more evidence, you take more risk, and if you take more risk, you have more disappointing wells. It’s a question of finding the right metrics. I think it’s good for an IOC, a major like us, when we can raise 20, 25 wells per year. That’s good, that’s enough to find some nice wells.

Namibia, South Africa, you know, Namibia, that we have some exploration to continue to do and we look to priorities also to develop business, and South Africa, you follow like Vision News, there is a legal context which seems to be more complex than in other countries. Each time we want to do it, we need to go to court. It’s a little difficult. We want. I think that the South African government has made some public statements that they want to find a way to go to ease the exploration. We hope they will manage because of course for us it’s important. We cannot explore, we cannot spend money in a geography if we have to face permanently courts and the permitting become really complex because it’s not only of drilling one or two of the exploration well, then it will be to develop and we explore to develop.

We don’t expect just to find oil. We need honestly on the South Africa side, I hope the government will take the right decision as soon as possible.

Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question is from Jason Gableman, TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hey, thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask firstly on CapEx trajectory, and it looks like organic CapEx has been a bit volatile the past few quarters. I’m wondering what’s driving that quarter-to-quarter volatility. We’ve seen some other peers that have more stable CapEx that kind of peaks in 4Q. Wondering moving forward, is this level that you’re at now a better go-forward pace to consider, or should we expect more volatility quarter to quarter? My second one is just on the ramp up in production next year. You’ve previously guided to a reduction in reinvestment rates in 2027, which I suppose implies higher cash flow ramping at some point next year along with new production coming online. How should we think about that production and cash flow ramp next year and into 2027, is it back half weighted?

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: Is it 4Q weighted?

Just looking for kind of the arc of that growth.

Thanks Jason. You are very quarterly driven in your questions, but my commitment to you, the commitment of the company is annual budget of CapEx and by the way, it’s an annual budget of net CapEx. You know, it’s organic CapEx plus acquisition, minus sales, minus divestments. I think we have a long track record of being in compliance with our budget. Annual budget of CapEx. I think since I’ve been CEO, I think 10 years in a row, you don’t see that we have not respected the CapEx budget, the annual CapEx budget and again what we told you today and what we said at the beginning of the year, it will be $17, $17.5 billion. I can tell you we’ll land in $17, $17.5 billion. As we told you that the net acquisition is expected to be at $1.5 billion.

You can calculate yourself the organic CapEx for time. The first fourth quarter. I don’t follow honestly the stability of the organic CapEx quarter to quarter. It depends on, you know, some projects when you put into production as we have done this year, all Mero in Brazil, Tyra in Denmark, Ballymore in the U.S. or Ballymore or Jack. Yeah, Ballymore. That means that this quarter there was a lot of CapEx, is decreasing because you have put into production and some of your CapEx. Some of our projects are ramping up. I’m not at all. I have no KPIs to have a stable quarterly organic CapEx. To be honest, at the end of the day my KPI is to be sure that we are within the annual budget and if we can be a little lower, I’m happy but not so much.

I’m not happy because sometimes it means that some projects are late. I prefer to really be in our budget. First point. Sorry to disappoint but it’s not a major issue. I’m not in a, I mean to be clear, we are not in a company with short cycle CapEx permanently where you can maybe make more, less volatility. The second one, I think it’s the same answer to that. Lydia, if I remember the first big of the first question I had. You have to wait for 2026. Let’s keep. You have to be a little patient until February. We’ll give you more color. It’s clear that again we gave you a point. I think in the chart of 2027 when we speak about reinvestment rate. We told you that in 2017. Yes, I remember. The reinvestment rate will go down from 70% to something like 50%.

It was a chart which was in the New York Stock Exchange package and side deck.

Sorry.

That’s reality. It’s coming from both. It’s coming from, on one side, higher cash flows because we are delivering along the three years. The figure 27 means by end of 2027, so it’s a three-year decrease. It’s not beginning or don’t know which quarter, and it’s an annual one. It’s the end, to be clear. That doesn’t mean that all, it just means that it’s an average of the year 2027. It’s coming as well from the discipline of the CapEx because we have your guidance. It’s $16 billion, so both will contribute to this reinvestment rate, which is lower by 20%. If you have 20%, if you are lowering reinvestment rate, it’s good, and it’s consistent with a free cash flow per share increase that we have announced.

That’s a way to explain why we will be able to increase the free cash flow per share, because we have more cash and less CapEx. That’s where we want to embark all of investors who trust TotalEnergies. Thanks. I think it was the last question. Yeah.

Conference Operator: There are no more questions registered at this time.

Jean-Pierre Sbraire, CFO, TotalEnergies: Okay.

Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO, TotalEnergies: Thank you to all of you for your attendance. I hope that all the analysis you’ve done will be reflected in the stock price. It was not the case this morning. Again, we are delivering. This is a message we are delivering. We have a consistent strategy. We are just executing and we deliver, and frankly, the Board of Directors and myself, as you, we are quite pleased with the results of this quarter because that demonstrates, and again, that’s all what we explain to you quarter and year after year, is on the delivery mode and that free cash flow will increase. Thank you for your attendance.

Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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