Frances Total posts 1Q gain of 18 percent

Frances Total posts 1Q gain of 18 percent

French oil company Total SA, the world’s fourth-largest oil and gas company, said its first-quarter profit rose 18 percent thanks to higher commodity prices.

Excluding an after-tax inventory effect, adjusted net income increased 9 percent to 3.25 billion euros ($4.87 billion). The company’s exploration and production business accounted for 85 percent of overall operating profit.

The results were only slightly above market expectations, said Jason Kenney, an oil analyst at ING in Edinburgh, Scotland. “It’s a safe set of results but it’s lacking the ‘Wow!’ factor that they market was looking for,” he said.

Total’s biggest competitors, including Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips in the U.S., and BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC in Europe, have all posted sharply higher quarterly profits in recent weeks.

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