Missing the mark: Petrobras's $3.16 billion third quarter profit was well below expectation
Petrobras profits shot falls short
Brazilian state oil company Petrobras said today its third-quarter net profit fell 22% from a year earlier on contributions made to the Petros pension fund and higher imports costs while oil output was little changed.
Petrobras posted a third-quarter net profit of 5.528 billion reais ($3.16 billion), down from 7.1 billion reais in the year-earlier period.
The result was below the 7.3 billion reais average forecast of six analysts surveyed by Reuters.
Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda), a measure of cash flow, rose to 13.06 billion reais from 12.9 billion reais a year earlier. Analysts had expected Ebitda of 14.4 billion reais.
Net revenues rose 3% to nearly 44.47 billion reais from a year earlier, Petrobras said in a statement.
The company's share price surged 25% in New York yesterday on the announcement of a huge light oil discovery in Brazil's Santos offshore basin but fell back today on profit-taking and as investors turned their attention to today's results.
Petrobras also said today that two of its big offshore production units were on schedule to begin output by mid-month after delays, but a third platform was delayed again till mid-December.
Exploration and production manager Francisco Nepomuceno told reporters the 180,000-barrel-per-day P-52 rig should come onstream on 15 November on the heavy oil Roncador field and the 100,000-barrels-per-day floating production, storage and offloading vessel Cidade Vitoria should start pumping crude on the light oil Golfinho field on 16 November.
But the 180,000 bpd P-54, also on the Roncador field, was now due to begin operating in the first two weeks of December. Previously the company had expected it to start producing in the first two weeks of November.
Petrobras did not provide explanations for the new delay, but Nepomuceno said earlier the previous delays were due to technical problems stemming from the complexity of the deep-sea projects.
The rigs are expected to reach full output within six to eight months after start-up.
Petrobras, which is now producing around 1.8 million bpd, has another three rigs with a total 460,000 bpd capacity scheduled to come on line next year, one in mid-2008 and two in the second half of the year.