The latest Market Talks covering Energy and Utilities. Published exclusively on Dow Jones Newswires at 4:20 ET, 12:20 ET and 16:50 ET.

0219 GMT - Petronas' 2025-2027 activity outlook offers more clarity for Malaysia's oil and gas sector, RHB IB analyst Sean Lim says in a note. Petronas' guidance on reduced upstream activities reflect its spending slowdown, he notes. But Malaysian maintenance sectors like hook-up & commissioning and maintenance, construction & modification are expected to stay resilient, benefiting from Petronas' guidance on facility improvement projects, he reckons. Lim favors selective stock picking, focusing on floating, production, storage and offloading and maintenance-related companies for their attractive valuations. RHB maintains an overweight rating on Malaysia's integrated oil-and-gas sector, with Bumi Armada, Dayang Enterprise and Yinson as top picks. (yingxian.wong@wsj.com)

0142 GMT - Petronas' activity outlook for 2025-2027 is less bearish than initially expected, with no major capital expenditure cuts in 2025, says Maybank IB analyst Jeremie Yap in a note. Petronas guidance could lead to increased activity in fabrication of fixed structures, floating, production, storage and offloading, onshore plant turnarounds, hook-up and commissioning and maintenance, construction and modification, he notes. Companies such as Bumi Armada, Yinson, MISC, Dialog Group, Malaysia Marine & Heavy Engineering and Dayang Enterprise could benefit, he says. Yap expects a slight decline in sub-segments like offshore support vessels, jack-uprigs, mobile offshore production unit and pipe installation days. Velesto Energy may see lower utilization and daily charter rates, but this is likely priced in, he adds. (yingxian.wong@wsj.com)

0036 GMT - Origin Energy's tax guidance looks high compared to consensus estimates, Jarden says. Origin had previously signaled that FY 2025 tax would be significantly higher than the A$628 million paid in FY 2024. Origin earlier quantified that the annual tax bill would likely be around A$1.0 billion. Analyst Nik Burns says that's some A$324 million higher than consensus forecasts, and expects the market to revise projections for Origin's cash flow in FY 2025 as a result. Origin is down 4.5%. (david.winning@wsj.com; @dwinningWSJ)

2322 GMT - Beach Energy is approaching a time for deals, suggests Macquarie. Net debt fell to A$389 million in 2Q, from A$555 million in 1Q, and is set to improve again as management agree to the sale of a fifth liquefied natural gas swap cargo from the Waitsia project in Australia. Beach retains liquidity of some A$631 million. "We expect Beach will be seeking other acquisitions," Macquarie says. Scrip deals could now work, given Beach's share price is up more than 40% since its September low, the bank adds. (david.winning@wsj.com; @dwinningWSJ)

2303 GMT - Citi thinks Karoon Energy's shares could rise over the next 90 days as the company mulls a deal for the floating production storage and offloading vessel at the Bauna field in Brazil. Analyst James Byrne thinks a deal could boost Karoon's net present value and EPS. Eliminating the cost of leasing the vessel would more than offset any increase in depreciation and amortization, Citi says. That's because "the D&A would be spread over a longer period and with a higher resource base, seeing consensus EPS sharply higher in our view," Citi says. Also, the bank expects an update on the Neon deposit's resource. That would be positive as Karoon's stock doesn't appear to include any value for Neon, Citi says. Karoon ended Thursday at A$1.535. (david.winning@wsj.com; @dwinningWSJ)

1935 GMT - Blackstone and engineering company ABB both believe data center development will remain strong, even as DeepSeek's efficient AI model threatens energy demands, executives told analysts during earnings calls. Blackstone COO Jonathan Gray said the company's $80 billion data center lease portfolio could still see demand as lower AI costs bring in more usage and adoption. ABB CEO Morten Wierod said more energy efficiency could lower bottlenecks the company was facing as its data center business grew 15% in 2024. "The lower the cost of [AI], the wider the deployment," Wierod said. (katherine.hamilton@wsj.com)

1919 GMT - Oil futures make modest gains heading toward a weekend in which eyes will be on the possibility of the U.S. hitting Mexico and Canada with trade tariffs and the OPEC+ reaction to President Trump's bid to lower prices when the group meets onMonday. "While the market remains jittery amid uncertain geopolitics, especially due to U.S. policy risks, fundamentals should drive a moderating trend for oil prices," analysts at Citi Research say in a note. "President Trump's impact on oil markets is likely to be net bearish, driven by pro-U.S. fossil fuel policy, encouragement of OPEC+ to boost supply, and downside to oil demand due to tariff policy." WTI settles up 0.2% at $72.73 a barrel, andBrent rises 0.4% to $76.87. (anthony.harrup@wsj.com)

1913 GMT - Announced deals between U.S. oil-and-gas producers totalled $105 billion last year, according to Enverus, an energy-focused data-analytics company in Austin, Texas. It was the third highest total since Enverus began tracking such data, behind a record $192 billion in 2023 and $108 billion in 2014. The five largest deals announced last year included Ovintiv's sale of oil fields in Utah's Uinta Basin to FourPoint Resources, which is backed by private-equity firms Quantum Capital Group and Kayne Anderson. The $2 billion deal closed this month. Private-equity firms are "likely to accelerate buying activity to reload portfolios after multiple successful exits to public companies," said Andrew Dittmar, a director at Enverus. (luis.garcia@wsj.com; @lhvgarcia)

1724 GMT - Brookfield Infrastructure Partners isn't rattled by Chinese startup DeepSeek's development work. Roberto Marcogliese, head of the company's telecom business in North America, tells investors DeepSeek's training of a new large language model is effectively just a piece of the improvement puzzle. He argues BIP's longer-term positive outlook hasn't changed for data center demand growth. "We're actually very excited by the prospect of having a more cost-effective AI tool, which should accelerate innovation, increase overall demand for AI and their application and ultimately make the technology more widely accessible to everyone." BIP continues to expect strong data center growth. "The capital required to support digitalization is staggering and will continue to create demand for large-scale and flexible capital from infrastructure investors like us." (robb.stewart@wsj.com)

1350 GMT - Oil futures are steady with the market starting to wonder how OPEC and its allies may respond to President Trump's call for the group to help lower prices at their meeting next week. OPEC+ has several times extended 2.2 million barrels a day in voluntary output cuts to hold up prices, and is currently scheduled to start unwinding the cuts in April. Participants are also paying attention to commerce nominee Howard Lutnick's comments that crude suppliers Mexico and Canada could avoid threatened 25% import tariffs if they contain fentanyl and migrant flows into the U.S. WTI is up 0.4% at $72.91 a barrel, and Brent is up 0.5% at $76.93.(anthony.harrup@wsj.com)

1039 GMT - Tullow Oil's long-term outlook is positive as it includes potential inorganic growth and a focus on capital returns, PeelHunt analysts say in a note. The company plans to repay its 2025 notes at maturity using cash--around $220 million--and drawings from a facility of around $270 million. It will also refinance and simplify its capital structure during the remainder of 2025, the analysts say. "We anticipate the company's attentionwill turn to the 2026 notes, which are to be refinanced this year," Peel Hunt says. The brokerage rates the stock buy and lowers its target price to 50 pence from 75 pence. Shares are flat at 19.39 pence. (anthony.orunagoriainoff@dowjones.com)

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 31, 2025 04:20 ET (09:20 GMT)

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