Lukoil, Russia's second-biggest oil producer, reported on Tuesday a profit of $792 million (46.6 billion rubles) for the fourth quarter-slightly higher than analyst expectations, but 15 percent lower compared to the third quarter.
A Reuters poll of analysts had expected Lukoil to book $765 million (45 billion rubles) for the last quarter of 2016, compared to a loss of $1.1 billion (65 billion rubles) reported for Q4 2015.
The fourth-quarter profit decline compared to the third quarter was the result of volatility in the exchange rates, the company said in its statement.
Lukoil's profit for the third quarter of 2016 had dropped 12.4 percent compared to the second quarter, as low oil prices and lower international trading volumes affected the company's sales and EBITDA.
For the full year 2016, profit dropped by 29 percent to $3.515 billion (206.8 billion rubles).
Lukoil's sales in the fourth quarter of 2016 went up by 7.0 percent compared to the third quarter, mostly driven by higher crude oil prices. The share of crude oil sales of total sales increased thanks to production growth and to higher international trading volumes, the Russian company noted.
Sales for the full-year 2016 dropped by 9.1 percent annually, on the back of lower crude oil prices during the whole year and decreased sales of crude oil and petroleum products, which fell 3.7 percent.
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Fourth-quarter EBITDA rose 10.5 percent over the third quarter, due to higher realized prices, growth of high-margin volumes in overall production, and crude oil export duty time lag effect, which were partially offset by the inventory build-up. Full-year 2016 EBITDA, on the other hand, fell 10.5 percent from 2015, on the back of lower volumes of compensation crude oil from the West Qurna-2 project due to the reimbursement of larger amount of historical costs in 2015.
Lukoil's Q4 production was 169.6 million barrels of liquid hydrocarbons, up 1.6 percent on the quarter, while 2016 full-year output dropped 8.4 percent to 686.3 million barrels, mainly due to lower volumes of compensation crude oil from the West Qurna-2 project.
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