MOL
Revenues, profits soar in 2022 / Charges for fuel price regs, taxes hit USD 1.6 bn / Plans to expand Adriatic pipeline
 The company plant in Tiszaujváros, Hungary (Photo: MOL) |
Net sales revenues at Hungary’s oil and gas group MOL (Budapest; https://molgroup.info/en) jumped 71% last year to USD 26.3 bn (EUR 25 bn) on the back of high refining contributions and surging oil and gas prices, which helped raise total full-year profit from continuing operations 36% to USD 1.8 bn.
The company said clean CCS EBITDA rose to USD 4.7 bn from the year-earlier USD 3.5 bn, and last year’s result would have been higher if not for USD 1.6 bn in costs for fuel price regulations and windfall taxes in Central and Eastern European countries, MOL’s core market.
But in Q4, the taxes, price caps, and other regulatory headwinds shaved 26% from its clean CCS EBITDA, leaving USD 1.07 bn. In Hungarian currency terms, quarterly net sales jumped 53% to HUF 2.6 tn (USD 7 bn) while income from continuing operations fell to a loss of HUF 46 bn from a profit of HUF 107 bn.
Downstream operations showed a full-year clean CCS EBITDA increase of 50% to USD 2.24 bn as the overall good performance of refining compensated for a Q4 EBITDA loss at the petrochemicals business. But quarterly clean CCS EBITDA for downstream units only improved 9% to USD 384 mn.
Total downstream product sales volume decreased 1% to 4.6 mn t in Q4, of which 280,000 t were petrochemical products compared with 349,000 t in the same quarter last year.
Related: MOL to implement, manage Hungary’s deposit-return system
Under the previous methodology, Q4 petrochemical margin shrank 33% to EUR 398/t. Based on the updated methodology, which now contains an energy cost component, the Q4 margin was EUR 138/t.
MOL executives announced plans to cooperate with Croatia to increase the capacity of the Adriatic pipeline to further diversify from Russian crude oil. The company said around USD 500-700 mn in spending for targeting crude blending, treatment, and refinery debottlenecking would be needed for “full diversification”. The company noted that the Adriatic pipeline would technically be capable of supplying some 80% of landlocked refineries’ crude intake.
The company said clean CCS EBITDA rose to USD 4.7 bn from the year-earlier USD 3.5 bn, and last year’s result would have been higher if not for USD 1.6 bn in costs for fuel price regulations and windfall taxes in Central and Eastern European countries, MOL’s core market.
But in Q4, the taxes, price caps, and other regulatory headwinds shaved 26% from its clean CCS EBITDA, leaving USD 1.07 bn. In Hungarian currency terms, quarterly net sales jumped 53% to HUF 2.6 tn (USD 7 bn) while income from continuing operations fell to a loss of HUF 46 bn from a profit of HUF 107 bn.
Downstream operations showed a full-year clean CCS EBITDA increase of 50% to USD 2.24 bn as the overall good performance of refining compensated for a Q4 EBITDA loss at the petrochemicals business. But quarterly clean CCS EBITDA for downstream units only improved 9% to USD 384 mn.
Total downstream product sales volume decreased 1% to 4.6 mn t in Q4, of which 280,000 t were petrochemical products compared with 349,000 t in the same quarter last year.
Related: MOL to implement, manage Hungary’s deposit-return system
Under the previous methodology, Q4 petrochemical margin shrank 33% to EUR 398/t. Based on the updated methodology, which now contains an energy cost component, the Q4 margin was EUR 138/t.
MOL executives announced plans to cooperate with Croatia to increase the capacity of the Adriatic pipeline to further diversify from Russian crude oil. The company said around USD 500-700 mn in spending for targeting crude blending, treatment, and refinery debottlenecking would be needed for “full diversification”. The company noted that the Adriatic pipeline would technically be capable of supplying some 80% of landlocked refineries’ crude intake.
28.02.2023 Plasteurope.com [252276-0]
Published on 28.02.2023
German version of this article...