BP (NYSE: BP) became the latest supermajor to book bumper earnings for 2021 on the back of rallying oil and gas prices, as it reported on Tuesday its highest annual net profit in eight years.
BP said today its underlying replacement cost profit-its proxy for net profit-jumped to $12.8 billion for 2021, compared to a loss of $5.7 billion for 2020.
That 2021 net profit was the strongest result that BP has delivered in eight years and was ahead of analyst expectations of $12.5 billion.
The UK supermajor booked a larger-than-expected profit for the fourth quarter too: at $4.1 billion, it was more than the $3.3 billion for the third quarter and way above the $115 million profit booked for the fourth quarter of 2020.
BP announced additional buybacks, aiming to execute a further $1.5 billion share buyback from 2021 surplus cash before announcing its first-quarter 2022 results.
"On average, based on bp's current forecasts, at around $60 per barrel Brent and subject to the board's discretion each quarter, bp expects to be able to deliver share buybacks of around $4.0 billion per annum and have capacity for an annual increase in the dividend per ordinary share of around 4% through 2025," the company said.
Capital expenditure in 2021 was $12.8 billion, while this year's capex is expected at $14-15 billion, with an expected range of $14-16 billion annually through 2025.
"We've made strong progress in our transformation to an integrated energy company: focusing and high grading our hydrocarbons business, growing in convenience and mobility and building with discipline a low carbon energy business - now with over 5GW in offshore wind projects - and significant opportunities in hydrogen," CEO Bernard Looney said.
In an update on the progress of its net-zero strategy, also published today, BP said it expects investment in transition growth businesses to?be over 40 percent of capex by 2025.
BP also announced more ambitious emission reduction targets, looking to cut operational emissions by 50 percent by 2030, compared with the previous goal of 30-35 percent reduction. BP now also aims for net-zero lifecycle emissions from the energy products it sells by 2050 or sooner, compared to the previous aim of a 50-percent reduction in their emissions intensity.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More
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