Europe's oil majors will strike a sober note in their fourth-quarter results and investors will focus on companies' plans to maintain cherished dividends and their strategies to cope with the oil prices collapse that caught many unawares.
Having sold around $120 billion in assets in recent years to boost balance sheets and keep up dividend payouts, companies are expected to increase borrowing and further cut costs as they come to terms with oil prices that have more than halved since June to around $50 a barrel.
For the last quarter of 2014, earnings per share (EPS) for European integrated oil companies, including Royal Dutch Shell , BP, France's Total, Italy's Eni and Spain's Repsol, are expected to fall on average by around 24 percent, according to Barclays analysts.
As investors come to terms with a roughly 20 percent drop in oil companies' shares since last June, according to Reuters data, the focus will turn to how boards plan to adjust to the new environment.
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