INSTANT VIEW: Shell Q1 profits beat forecast on record oil

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L) reported a 12 percent rise in its first quarter current cost of supply net income on Tuesday, helped by record oil prices.

KEY POINTS

* Excluding non-operating items, which amounted to a net charge of $77 million, the CCS result, which strips out the impact of changes in the value of fuel inventories, was $7.85 billion.

* A Reuters poll of 11 analysts gave an average forecast of $6.84 billion for Shell's first quarter CCS earnings, excluding non-ops.

COMMENTS:

ALEXANDRE WEINBERG, PETERCAM

"Very strong figures. It's 16 percent above consensus which doesn't happen very often for such a large company so really very strong. When you look at the main sources of outperformance it's exploration and production, gas and power, oil sands.

"It seems the market has underestimated the impact of higher hydrocarbons in the upstream and production was also better than expected.

"In LNG -- also very high prices, this was quite positive and shows that the demand for LNG is huge with Asia trying to attract as many LNG cargoes as possible."