MOSCOW (MRC) -- Hungarian oil and gas group MOL Plc's third-quarter net profit surged more than threefold from a year earlier as its downstream segment posted its best ever quarterly result on peaking refining and petrochemical margins and rising sales, said Reuters.
The company's so called clean EBITDA, or core earnings, jumped 21 percent to 198.7 billion forints exceeding analysts' median forecast of 189.7 billion in a poll by business website Portfolio. It was also above the 179.4 billion forints core earnings recorded in the second quarter.
MOL posted a net profit of 91.3 billion forints, compared to a profit of 28.5 billion forints in the same period of 2014. "We are more than confident of reaching our USD2.2 bln EBITDA target set for this year," MOL Chairman and Chief Executive Zsolt Hernadi said in the report.
In the third quarter, similarly to the second quarter, the downstream business remained the main contributor to MOL's results, adding 147 billion forints to EBITDA alone on high refining margins.
MOL said its sales volumes increased as well, with motor fuel consumption growth exceeding the usual seasonal highs. However, exploration and production disappointed due to lower oil prices, and a decrease in overall production.
MOL said it was going to book for asset impairment in the fourth quarter of 2015 for the Akri-Bijeel block in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, where it cut back investments in September after well test results showed a reduced geological potential for the block. The total book value of the Akri-Bijeel fixed assets amounts to USD440mn, it said.
The company said it was also doing year-end tests of the value of all of its upstream assets and "given the likely downward revision of our oil price assumptions, this process may result in further asset impairments in Q4 2015."
MOL's upstream chief stepped down in September.
MOL operates refineries in Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia. It also has exploration and production assets in the North Sea and countries including Pakistan, Iraq, and Russia. MOL Petrochemicals includes TVK, which became a fully owned company by the Hungarian major on 30 March after acquiring the 0.9% it still did not own.
mrcplsat.com