Slovenia's Petrol Q1 net profit rises 20% y/y

LJUBLJANA (Slovenia), May 22 (SeeNews) – Slovenian energy group Petrol [LJE:PETG] said on Friday its consolidated net profit rose 20% year-on-year to 21.8 million euro ($23.8 million) in the first quarter of 2020.

The Petrol Group sales revenue, however, fell 15% on the year to 916 million euro in January-March, due to lower prices and a drop in the sale of petroleum products amid the Covid-19 pandemic, it said in a bourse filing.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) rose by an annual 26% to 46.5 million euro in the first three months of 2020, owing to an 8.6 million euro positive effect from the value of derivatives used to balance out petroleum-product price quotes, the company said.

"This was the result of the fact that at the beginning of the year diesel price quotes for the coming months were twice as high as at the end of March 2020. Excluding this effect would mean that EBITDA for the period from January to March 2020 would have totalled EUR 37.9 million, up 2 percent year-on-year," it added.

Some 47% of the EBITDA was generated by petroleum products sales, 21% came from merchandise sales and related services, 18% was generated by energy and environmental solutions, 12% came from the sale of other energy products (natural gas, electricity, LPG), while sales of renewable energy accounted for the remaining 2%.

The energy group booked an adjusted gross profit of 105.3 million euro in January-March, unchanged from a year earlier.

In January-March, Petrol Group sold 743,000 tonnes of oil products, down 18% compared to a year earlier.

At the end of March, Petrol operated an overall 509 service stations, including 318 in Slovenia, 109 in Croatia, 42 in Bosnia, 15 in Serbia, 15 in Montenegro and 10 in Kosovo.

Petrol's shares traded at 301 euro by 12:43 CET on Friday on the Ljubljana Stock Exchange, unchanged from Thursday's close.

($ = 0.917058 euro)

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