Hungarian oil and petrochemical company MOL (Budapest; https://molgroup.info/en) said earnings jumped in the third quarter, an increase that has triggered an upgrade in its forecast for the full year. Clean CCS EBITDA in Q3 rose 15% to just over USD 1 bn (EUR 866m) from USD 839m in July-September, the company said, citing increases in all operations and support from the macroeconomic environment and a “strong internal performance”.

For the nine months through September, the company reported a 68% surge of Clean CCS EBITDA to almost USD 2.59 bn from around USD 1.6 bn for the same period last year. “Our very strong year-to-date 2021 delivery allows us to further upgrade our annual EBITDA guidance, which is expected to reach or even exceed USD 3.2 bn,” MOL Chairman and CEO Zsolt Hernádi said. “At the same time, soaring commodity prices and the implications of the coronavirus pandemic pose a significant risk to the economy and generate a very volatile operational environment.”

While overall earnings showed strength, the company reported a 2% quarterly decline in downstream Clean CCS EBITDA from USD 447m to USD 436m. Earnings under those criteria for petrochemical operations fell to nearly USD 194m from USD 328m in the previous quarter, but the third-quarter result was the second-best since at least the final three months of 2019.

July-September volume sales of petrochemical products eased to 367,000 t from 379,000 t in the previous quarter, the company said. Petrochemical margins dropped to EUR 663/t from a record EUR 949/t in Q2 but doubled from the year-earlier period.

MOL added that the construction of its Hungarian polyol plant project in Tiszaújváros has progressed well and exceeded 89% of completion at the end of the third quarter (see Plasteurope.com of 10.03.2021).