TheChek News Flow

Gapping down
In reaction to earnings/guidance:

Other news:

Gapping up
In reaction to earnings/guidance:

Other news:

Helium Disruption Spells Opportunity for Some Suppliers of the Gas

Scarcity of helium will mean better pricing

The Iran war has cut off about a third of the world’s supply of helium from Qatar. This has been a double-edged sword for helium-supplier stocks. Among them, there is at least one clear beneficiary.

Air Liquide AI -0.74%decrease; red down pointing triangle, Linde LIN -0.39%decrease; red down pointing triangle and Air Products and Chemicals APD 0.26%increase; green up pointing triangle are the three largest suppliers of the industrial gas, which is crucial for chip making. Air Liquide and Linde are headquartered in France and the U.K., respectively, while Air Products and Chemicals is based in the U.S.

The supply disruption’s impact on the companies depends on where they source the helium and how big their exposure is to the gas. Air Products and Chemicals’ shares rose 5.4% in March, while Linde and Air Liquide’s share prices fell 2.4% and 2.6%, respectively.

For Air Liquide, the disruption is a mixed bag because it depends so much on Qatar for its helium. The country accounts for as much as 75% of the company’s supply, compared with about 25% for its two competitors, according to a report from BMO Capital Markets. These two companies rely more on other sources such as the U.S. and Algeria.

Air Liquide subsidiary Airgas declared force majeure last month and told one customer that the company would only meet as much as half of its normal monthly helium demand, as The Wall Street Journal reported. The company also added a surcharge to its contracted price.

Air Products and Chemicals has the biggest potential to profit from rising helium prices. The gas accounts for 5% to 7% of the company’s revenue, compared with 1% to 2% exposure for Linde, according to BMO. Helium accounts for about 3% of Air Liquide’s revenue, according to Citi.

Air Products and Chemicals also has modestly higher exposure to spot markets, according to analysts at Citi. Spot helium prices have more than doubled since the war began, according to Phil Kornbluth, president of Kornbluth Helium Consulting.

The majority of helium is sold through long-term contracts, but companies with helium in storage might be able to profit from rising spot prices. Air Liquide has close to a year’s worth of supply in its German storage cavern, according to Citi. Linde and Air Products both have helium storage capacity in the U.S.

The longer the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted, the more bullish conditions will be for industrial-gas providers that can still source the helium. Industrial-gas suppliers are also relatively shielded from rising energy prices because these costs are typically passed through to end customers.

In particular, Air Products and Chemicals’ shares could have room to run further if the disruption continues. The company’s stock has underperformed its peers over the past year. Helium had been a drag on its earnings because the market was oversupplied before the Iran war disrupted Qatar supply. At an industry conference last month, Air Products and Chemicals Chief Executive Officer Eduardo Menezes said that the company has a better chance to renew contracts at better terms as a result of the Qatar supply disruption.

Even if the waterway reopens, it will take time for Qatar’s supply to return to normal because the Ras Laffan complex—where helium is produced—was damaged by Iranian strikes. Qatar has said that the damage cut its annual helium exports by 14% and that repairs could take as long as five years.

Plus, the helium supply chain typically involves long distances with transport often taking several weeks or more, according to BMO, implying that the market could stay tight for a while after helium production resumes in Qatar. Users of the gas, newly conscious of the supply risk, will be motivated to lock in long-term contracts.

A gas few thought about before the war is now front-of-mind in key industries. That could be to the lasting benefit of at least some of the companies that supply it.

Deal for Providence House in central London marks capital’s most expensive house sale

Property developer and Reform UK party treasurer Nick Candy has sold his Chelsea mansion for more than £275mn, according to people familiar with the matter.

The deal for Providence House marks London’s most expensive house sale and ranks among the most expensive in the world. The identity of the buyer is not publicly known, the people said.

When approached by the FT multiple times in recent weeks, Candy denied he was planning to sell the home and threatened legal action. He couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on Thursday.

UK Sotheby’s International Realty was involved with the transaction, according to people familiar with the matter. It declined to comment.

Located in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the Grade II-listed property had “never been marketed for sale”, said one agent, meaning prospective buyers had approached Candy.

“Any big buyer in the market over the past few years has knocked on his door and a range of figures has been quoted,” the agent said.

The home, whose sale was earlier reported by Bloomberg, was purchased by Nick’s brother Christian Candy in 2012 for about £75mn, when it was called Gordon House. He transferred the ownership to Nick two years later, according to court filings.

Visitors to the house have said it has a private cinema with a “Candy bar” pick ’n’ mix, an underground swimming pool and orangery, as well as a panic room.

There have been a handful of sales at the top end of London’s market in recent years, including the Holme in Regent’s Park, which sold for £139mn in 2024, and the 45-room mansion at 2-8a Rutland Gate, which sold for more than £200mn in 2020. The latter was the city’s priciest residential sale of all time, according to LonRes, which tracks the UK capital’s prime housing market.

More may be in the offing. Shipping magnate John Fredriksen’s Chelsea mansion has been on the market since last summer with a price of about £275mn being discussed, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Candy brothers were principal figures behind luxury Knightsbridge apartment block One Hyde Park, which has been a magnet for oligarchs, pop stars and other super-rich buyers.

A former donor to the Conservatives, Nick Candy last year took up a senior post in Nigel Farage’s Reform party, promising to transform its finances and woo significant donors.

He has spearheaded fundraising dinners that have attracted former Conservative donors, and was present at a December meeting at US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida between Farage and entrepreneur Elon Musk.

It was reported last year that Candy and his wife Holly Valance were getting divorced.

The leasehold to Providence House is owned by Providence House LLP, which is owned by Nick Candy, according to Land Registry and Companies House records. A mortgage owed to First Abu Dhabi Bank had been taken out against the property, the documents show.

Another property owned by Candy is on the market with an asking price of £175mn. The five-bedroom, eight-bathroom duplex penthouse in One Hyde Park features “uninterrupted views over Hyde Park”, wraparound terraces and Jacuzzi-style jet pools, according to its listing.

The apartment has an outstanding mortgage owed to the Bank of Singapore, according to filings. The accounts for another company tied to Nick Candy suggest the mortgage originally stood at more than £80mn.

Oil traders that normally thrive on volatility caught out by scale of crisis as energy shock unfurled

The world’s biggest energy traders struggled to capitalise on the market turbulence in the early days of the Iran war, as they grappled with fuel tankers set ablaze, missile attacks at oil terminals and vessels stuck in the Gulf. 

While wars and big swings in energy prices typically result in bumper profits for energy traders, some were caught on the wrong foot when the Iran war broke out on February 28, with short positions in certain energy markets that had long been seen as oversupplied. 

Energy trader Vitol was among those to face setbacks, as it had more than 10 cargoes stuck in the Gulf at the time the war started. Trafigura had 10 ships inside the Gulf, which were all leased to other companies and which were not carrying its commodities, while Glencore had one.

Mercuria and Trafigura both nursed losses in the early days of the war, although some of these have since been reversed, according to market participants. Vitol, Mercuria and Trafigura all declined to comment.

The chaos at the start of the war, when it was unclear whether Gulf oil supplies would manage to keep flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, had left everyone unsure of their position, said one trading executive.

Vitol, the world’s largest independent trader, has been particularly exposed because it moves a lot of oil in the Middle East. After Iran in effect shut off Hormuz passage, two vessels carrying Vitol cargoes of naphtha that were trapped in the Gulf were set ablaze by Iran on March 12, killing one crew member, the company has said.

For its remaining vessels stuck in the Gulf, the cost of insuring and operating the vessels has skyrocketed as the conflict continues. Insurance costs for ships in the Gulf, which are set weekly, have risen more than sixfold since the war began.

Vitol also had to relocate staff from Bahrain, and deal with disruptions at the oil-exporting port of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates, where it owns a refinery and storage facilities. 

Oil infrastructure at Fujairah has been struck a number of times by Iranian attacks, although Vitol’s infrastructure has not been directly affected.

Even as the Iran war has triggered a huge surge in energy prices and high volatility — normally conditions in which trading houses thrive — many initially struggled to handle the huge disruption. 

At Vitol, the pain of the physical disruption and stranded cargoes was compounded by losses on certain derivatives trades, according to people familiar with the matter.

While market rumours of billions of dollars in losses at the top trading houses have been circulating, people close to the companies said they were not true, or that the scale of any losses had been grossly exaggerated.

Several junior derivatives traders recently left Vitol, according to people familiar with the matter, but it was not clear if this was the result of any wrong-way bets on the market. Traders often move in the spring after bonus season.

“In the current environment it is extremely difficult — it is a complex and delicate task” to deliver the cargoes where they needed to go, said Jean-François Lambert, head of Lambert Commodities.

However he added that the volatility would also present a “fantastic opportunity” for trading houses. “Probably 2026 will be a very good year from a profitability perspective,” he said.

Previous periods of high volatility have resulted in bumper profits for trading houses. Vitol, Trafigura, Mercuria and Gunvor all reported huge profits for 2022 and 2023, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine sparked an energy crisis.

However, the current crisis is quite different. The challenge of simply securing cargoes has also become significant, as the vast disruption resulting from the war leaves traders unsure whether cargoes they have bought and hedged will arrive or not.

The wild swings in commodity prices and the closure of Hormuz have prompted trading houses to secure additional lines of credit, which they can use to cover their margins. 

Vitol and Trafigura have both secured additional $3bn credit facilities, while Gunvor has secured $1.5bn. 

The work at Antelope Reef, which could give Beijing another runway and more missile facilities, caught some analysts by surprise

After a hiatus of nearly a decade, China is jump-starting its island-building campaign in the South China Sea—and turning a once-obscure reef into what could be its largest military base in the disputed waters.

The construction at Antelope Reef could give Beijing another runway, more missile facilities and additional surveillance installations, analysts say, and serve as a backup to its existing military footprint in the region. And because it is relatively close to the Chinese mainland, it also offers Beijing a chance to increase civilian infrastructure, bolstering its argument that the area is part of China.

The status of the South China Sea has long been disputed between China and countries in the region. Beijing’s island-building campaign has strengthened its hold on the waterway and given it control of a thoroughfare that would be vital in any conflict over Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims. The U.S., meanwhile, has supported other countries such as the Philippines in pushing back against the Chinese claims.

The work at Antelope Reef, which according to satellite imagery includes jetties, a helipad, gray-roofed structures and a new coastline that looks suitable to be a runway, caught some analysts by surprise. Antelope Reef is in the Paracel Islands, an archipelago in the northern part of the South China Sea that is firmly controlled by China, though Vietnam and Taiwan also have claims there.

Recent flashpoints have been around Scarborough Shoal in the east and in the more-disputed Spratly Islands further south. Vietnam has embarked on an island-building campaign of its own in the Spratlys, and has been rapidly catching up to China in creating new land.

“This is the first time in a long time that they have reopened this basket of being able to build islands extremely large and extremely quickly,” Harrison Prétat, deputy director at the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said of the work at Antelope Reef.

“This could be a response to show Vietnam and maybe show others that China’s not going to be outdone, and they’re not going to sit by while someone else builds up their own outposts,” Prétat added, though he noted other factors are probably also at play.

A CSIS analysis of satellite imagery determined that the area of reclaimed land at Antelope Reef was roughly 1,490 acres so far, already about the same size as Mischief Reef in the Spratlys, which is China’s largest outpost and measures some 1,504 acres. China’s largest island in the Paracels, Woody Island, which hosts an air and naval base and a town that administers the region, measures 890 acres, according to CSIS.

Vietnam’s foreign ministry has protested the work at Antelope Reef, saying any foreign activities in the Paracels without Vietnamese permission are illegal.

Chinese officials have called the Paracels their inherent territory. “Necessary construction on our own territory is aimed at improving living and working conditions on the islands and growing the local economy,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said.

There has been no international ruling on which country has sovereignty over the Paracels. A 2016 ruling from a tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, however, effectively invalidated the basis for China’s historic maritime claims to most of the South China Sea, its so-called nine-dash line.

The work at Antelope may not be a strategic game-changer because China already has a steady grip on the Paracels. But it could still pose a problem for the U.S. and allies if there is a conflict over Taiwan.

A dredged lagoon at Antelope Reef could host navy vessels, including submarines, and perhaps even China’s new aircraft carriers and coastguard ships, said Collin Koh, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. If fighting erupts over Taiwan, military bases in the Paracels will be more useful to China than outposts in the Spratlys, which are farther south from the mainland and could be cut off, he said.

“If we are talking about a scenario where China might be preparing for potential, real high-intensity operations, then the Paracels buildup makes sense,” he said.

The U.S. has long opposed China’s construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea. It is “something I think all of us that care about international laws should be concerned about,” Adm. Daryl Caudle, the Navy’s chief of naval operations, told reporters during a recent visit to Australia. “It doesn’t follow the rules of the sea.”

Although work at Antelope Reef appears to have started before the Trump administration’s military action in Venezuela and Iran, analysts said Beijing will likely benefit from Washington’s attention being elsewhere. A recent threat assessment from the U.S. intelligence community also dialed back the view that China could invade Taiwan by next year.

“Beijing probably saw that the administration’s focus is not particularly on the South China Sea,” Prétat said. “It’s kind of up in the air—how hawkish are they on China, or how hawkish is the president on China?”

The work at Antelope Reef, which could give Beijing another runway and more missile facilities, caught some analysts by surprise

After a hiatus of nearly a decade, China is jump-starting its island-building campaign in the South China Sea—and turning a once-obscure reef into what could be its largest military base in the disputed waters.

The construction at Antelope Reef could give Beijing another runway, more missile facilities and additional surveillance installations, analysts say, and serve as a backup to its existing military footprint in the region. And because it is relatively close to the Chinese mainland, it also offers Beijing a chance to increase civilian infrastructure, bolstering its argument that the area is part of China.

The status of the South China Sea has long been disputed between China and countries in the region. Beijing’s island-building campaign has strengthened its hold on the waterway and given it control of a thoroughfare that would be vital in any conflict over Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims. The U.S., meanwhile, has supported other countries such as the Philippines in pushing back against the Chinese claims.

The work at Antelope Reef, which according to satellite imagery includes jetties, a helipad, gray-roofed structures and a new coastline that looks suitable to be a runway, caught some analysts by surprise. Antelope Reef is in the Paracel Islands, an archipelago in the northern part of the South China Sea that is firmly controlled by China, though Vietnam and Taiwan also have claims there.

Recent flashpoints have been around Scarborough Shoal in the east and in the more-disputed Spratly Islands further south. Vietnam has embarked on an island-building campaign of its own in the Spratlys, and has been rapidly catching up to China in creating new land.

“This is the first time in a long time that they have reopened this basket of being able to build islands extremely large and extremely quickly,” Harrison Prétat, deputy director at the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said of the work at Antelope Reef.

“This could be a response to show Vietnam and maybe show others that China’s not going to be outdone, and they’re not going to sit by while someone else builds up their own outposts,” Prétat added, though he noted other factors are probably also at play.

A CSIS analysis of satellite imagery determined that the area of reclaimed land at Antelope Reef was roughly 1,490 acres so far, already about the same size as Mischief Reef in the Spratlys, which is China’s largest outpost and measures some 1,504 acres. China’s largest island in the Paracels, Woody Island, which hosts an air and naval base and a town that administers the region, measures 890 acres, according to CSIS.

Vietnam’s foreign ministry has protested the work at Antelope Reef, saying any foreign activities in the Paracels without Vietnamese permission are illegal.

Chinese officials have called the Paracels their inherent territory. “Necessary construction on our own territory is aimed at improving living and working conditions on the islands and growing the local economy,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said.

There has been no international ruling on which country has sovereignty over the Paracels. A 2016 ruling from a tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, however, effectively invalidated the basis for China’s historic maritime claims to most of the South China Sea, its so-called nine-dash line.

The work at Antelope may not be a strategic game-changer because China already has a steady grip on the Paracels. But it could still pose a problem for the U.S. and allies if there is a conflict over Taiwan.

A dredged lagoon at Antelope Reef could host navy vessels, including submarines, and perhaps even China’s new aircraft carriers and coastguard ships, said Collin Koh, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. If fighting erupts over Taiwan, military bases in the Paracels will be more useful to China than outposts in the Spratlys, which are farther south from the mainland and could be cut off, he said.

“If we are talking about a scenario where China might be preparing for potential, real high-intensity operations, then the Paracels buildup makes sense,” he said.

The U.S. has long opposed China’s construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea. It is “something I think all of us that care about international laws should be concerned about,” Adm. Daryl Caudle, the Navy’s chief of naval operations, told reporters during a recent visit to Australia. “It doesn’t follow the rules of the sea.”

Although work at Antelope Reef appears to have started before the Trump administration’s military action in Venezuela and Iran, analysts said Beijing will likely benefit from Washington’s attention being elsewhere. A recent threat assessment from the U.S. intelligence community also dialed back the view that China could invade Taiwan by next year.

“Beijing probably saw that the administration’s focus is not particularly on the South China Sea,” Prétat said. “It’s kind of up in the air—how hawkish are they on China, or how hawkish is the president on China?”