MOL Magyar Olaj- és Gázipari Nyilvánosan Muködo Részvénytársaság (MOL) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to MOL's Q4 2025 Results Conference Call. My name is Marton Teremi, Head of Investor Relations. The top management representatives on today's call are Dr. Akos Szekely, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Zsombor Marton, Executive Vice President of Upstream; Mr. Gabriel Szabo, Executive Vice President of Downstream; Mr. Peter Ratatics, Executive Vice President of Consumer Services; and Mr. Jozsef Simola, Executive Vice President of Circular Economy Services. Before handing over, let me share some technical information. We continue to use Microsoft Teams as a platform to hold our conference call. The presentation can be downloaded from our website at molgroup.info. [Operator Instructions] I would also like to draw your attention to the cautionary statement on Slide #2. And now we can start the content part with Dr. Akos taking us through the highlights and financials of the fourth quarter.

Good morning, everyone. Let me first note that Mr. [indiscernible] is unavailable currently. So you'll have me as the speaker for the summary of our results and the group level highlights and as well for the financial insights. Looking at the annual results in light of our guidance, I'm glad to report that group's fourth quarter Clean CCS EBITDA was better than our expectation. And we closed the year at around USD 4 billion, exactly at $3.369 billion compared to our guidance of approximately $3 billion. The reasons for this overperformance were both external and internal. Let's start with the external one. The major external drivers defining our business evolved more favorably in the 2 final months of the year than we have had foreseen. Fuel demand and also spreads remained stronger than we had expected, which impacted downstream margin favorably and also the fuel retail market remained robust at the end of the year. With regards to the internal one, well, I'm really pleased that our internal performance during the year -- during the quarter was better. In Downstream, although the fire incident in Danube refinery resulted in a drop in our crude processing as expected, we have been quick and effective in adding half finished products to our system and thus maintain our wholesale fuel market position. In Upstream, on the other hand, we have been able to increase our production from an already high base and average above 99,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day during the fourth quarter. On the profit before tax line, please note that $1.3 billion, this is an unadjusted figure. Year-end noncash impairments classified as special items totaled $246 million, which explains the bulk of the difference to our guidance. Regarding CapEx spending, on a few projects, we are finishing up, most notably the refinery upgrade projects weighed on fourth quarter results more than we had expected and a few projects were started earlier with the highest spending that we have foreseen. Regarding the net debt, we are really glad to see that it is lower than half of our group EBITDA, and it is providing the group with ample liquidity. Regarding TRIR, the fourth quarter was in line with the guidance, but obviously could not make up for the deterioration earlier in the year. Let me proceed the most important developments in the quarter on the next slide. We delivered a strong result during the fourth quarter, reaching USD 877 million Clean CCS EBITDA, marking 29 -- almost 30% year-on-year increase. Upstream EBITDA benefited from increase in production volumes, offsetting some of the adverse effect of lower oil and natural gas price environment. Macro conditions were generally supportive of refinery margin and fuel retail margin, balancing some of the adverse effect of the continued weakness in petrochemical and the volume effect of the new refinery fire. We will dig deeper into the details on the results. Let me just provide an update on the most important events, while I would like to summarize in 5 points for you. First, we successfully held an Extraordinary General Meeting during November last year, which the group transition to a holding structure was approved by the shareholders. This is an important internal step in transforming the group legal structure to a more reasonable and flexible organizational setup. However, let me reiterate that this will have no bearing on economic value of more share, and the logic of the currently reported business segments will remain exactly the same. The second one regarding the CDU unit in Danube refinery, which was hit by the fire in October last year. The reconstruction work is progressing, and we confirm that the refinery will be back in full capacity by the third quarter of this year. Let me also remind you that there is an insurance coverage for the physical damage and also for the lost opportunity type of damage. Although there is no final agreement around the insurance, our working hypothesis still remain, and this is that it will cover both type of damages. And the current estimation for the reconstruction cost is around USD 50 million. The third important point is that we also agreed to buy photovoltaic park with a total of 304 megawatt capacity in Mesochort. This acquisition strengthens our ambition to enlarge the footprint in renewables and with an expected internal rate return, which we already discussed last time, approximately 10%, which reflects our smart transition approach. The fourth point is that we also announced that we signed a Heads of Agreement with Gazprom on the potential acquisition of NIS, the main oil and gas company in Serbia. A couple of things to mention. We are really aware that there have been a lot of comments in the media around the details of the transaction of the deal. Let me note that the negotiations are ongoing and such, we will be not able to comment anything further to the communication, which we released on the 19th of January this year. There is one piece of information that I would like to confirm. If the transaction goes ahead, we currently plan that 5% of NIS shares will be sold to the Serbian state from our shareholding. Other than that, we are working towards ensuring all regulatory and other approvals, necessary approvals will be available, which is really a crucial element of such of the deal to materialize given the sanction imposed on the seller and also to the target itself. We expect to sign the SPA by the end of March this year. And thereafter, we foresee a closing process that will be shorter than usual in deals with a similar size and complexity. And the fifth point, a few remarks regarding the halt of supplies through the Druzhba pipeline. As we announced earlier this week, there has been no crude oil deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline since 27th of January. Since then, we have been able to manage the situation by utilizing our own inventories and also by optimizing crude processing. However, the deliveries did not resume. Officially, we approached the authorities in Hungary and also in Slovakia to release strategic oil reserves. The authorities accepted our request and the utilization of the strategic reserves will start in the coming days. We currently have no indication about when and if at all deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline can resume. And I wouldn't like to speculate around that question. What we have done is to take steps for the scenario without Druzhba and take a measure to increase seaborne supplies to be secured through the Adriatic pipeline. The first set of shipments are set to arrive in the Croatian port of Omisalj in early March, and we expect them to arrive to our refineries 5 to 12 days later. Ideally, this schedule will ensure that the current capacity utilization of the refineries, although impaired because of the fire incidents at the Danube refinery can be maintained until the end of the April. Let me also note that this is clearly not without risks as the logistics system around this are untested at this scale. The bottleneck around seaborne transportation as well as the unseen utilization of the Adriatic pipeline are the main risk we see in this regard. In response to these uncertainties and the tapping of strategic reserves in Hungary and Slovakia in the next days, we have decided to halt export and focus on the supply of these countries for now. In the longer run, please also note that there were several similar episodes around Druzhba deliveries stopping in the past 4 years. While there are numerous scenarios and there are even more risks, we have spent the past 4 years analyzing such scenarios and prepare for such event. Well, now I would like to give you a short update on the sustainability. TRIR first, MOL [indiscernible] was around 1.3 in the fourth quarter, which improved the annual average of 1.4. This is above our guidance of 1.3, but we can return to an improving trend in the longer run. We are working on that. CDP rate also highlight that there was an improvement in the CDP score of MOL Group, and we improved by one notch in both of the topics. We are under review to be in climate change and water security categories. We are really happy and we are really proud about that. And now a couple of words about the outlook for '26. First of all, it is important to note that there are important assumptions behind the guidance. First, the insurance covered the bulk of the damage in connection with the fire in Danube refinery, both lost opportunity and physical damage. The second point is any potential financial operational consequence of this transaction is not included in these figures. And the third point is that finally, we assume that Urals-Brent, either via Druzhba pipeline or via Adriatic will be accessible throughout the year. With this point in mind, the management foresees Clean CCS EBITDA to come around USD 3 billion. This is slightly lower than in last year, mostly owing to the normalization in the macro environment impacting refinery margins and also the environment in petrochemical can be subdued this year. We also see less supportive overall hydrocarbon price environment. The current rate of depreciation and assuming broadly flat exchange rates, $3 billion EBITDA translates to roughly $1.5 billion of profit before tax. The CapEx is seen around $1.7 billion as Refinery upgrade is completed and the crude diversification program picks up as well as the reconstruction of the Danish CDO Unit is under way. As for many years now, we plan to keep the group net debt below EBITDA. On the more operational area or front, upstream production is to be between 95,000 and 97,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day on average, making further ambition target. Crude processing is expected to be around 10 million tonnes in genuine Bratislava refineries. The drop is clearly explained by the missing volume from the [indiscernible] distillation unit in [indiscernible] Finally, we expect to the case safety ratio be improved and being below 1.25 in this year. And with that, I would like to proceed with the discussion of quarterly financials. The Clean CCS EBITDA amounted to $877 million in fourth quarter, and this is an increase of 15% compared to the same period last year. As usual, the heads of key segment will present their respective areas. Let me focus on the segments that these are uncovered by my colleagues. First, the gas midstream EBITDA came at $51 million, which is really a flat performance compared to the previous quarter, exactly the same period as well as the fourth quarter of '24. Although the regulated fee levels decreased starting from 1st of October, the good news was that the higher transmission demand kept results steady. Regarding the Corporate and Other segment, costs were seasonally higher, mainly due to the technical effect of improving certain expenses before the close of the year. And the third one is the intersegment elimination, which had a positive effect of USD 25 million, mainly due to the lower oil and gas prices resulting in lower inventory elimination. The next topic is the CapEx, which amounted to $840 million in the fourth quarter of last year and came in at $1.688 billion for the full year. Organic CapEx was at $1.653 billion, which is a small increase year-on-year. Growth and efficiency CapEx amounted to over $440 million in the last quarter, mainly as ongoing crude diversification project and the [indiscernible] refinery investment was speeding up. Also important to mention that the new well drilled on our offshore platform near to the coast of Croatia. This also contributed to an increase and the smaller scale ongoing petrochemical investments as well. Looking at full year, organic CapEx was roughly flat. However, the composition shifted notably towards the return-generating growth and efficiency from sustained type of investments. The Clean CCS EBITDA of $3.369 billion in the first 9 months of last year resulted a net income of $810 million. As usual, let's see the components of the bridge. The Clean CCS EBITDA showed a negative $144 million in last quarter, which was in line with the effect of decreasing oil price. Also the cleaning of CO2 cost caused a significant negative effect in line with the seasonality of the adjustment factor, which is usually happening each and every year. DD&A reached $690 million in fourth quarter, which is a notable increase year-on-year and also quarter-over-quarter. The internal makeup is quite interesting and important. While the underlying level of DD&A remains in the range of $400 million, $450 million; however, on top of that, there were 2 impairments recognized in the fourth quarter as a special item. The first item is in customer services, $104 million of asset impairment was booked on the Polish operation. We reviewed our models and found that the long tail of our few assets forecast is more optimistic than it would be justified by our updated outlook. The second one, in Upstream, the goodwill impairment of ACG field earnings by $135 million. Let me note that this is really purely technical accounting exercise, and this is due to the fact that the goodwill on upstream asset is not amortizable under IFRS rules. So this impairment was not due to a change in macro or field specific assumptions, but because of the fact that the depletion of the field triggered an impairment in goodwill. The next point is, which is quite self-explanatory that [ foreign ] showing appreciation, therefore, a financial line was really neutral to our results. Income from associates was $3 million, mainly driven by the results of Pearl stake while small ticket items for other joint ventures overall weigh on results. And finally, the tax expenses contributed to our results in the fourth quarter by USD 23 million, which is quite unusual. And also, I would like to explain to this. Well, this is due to the lower tax base, mainly due to the impairments I already mentioned to you, which led to a double benefit. The corporate income tax was lower by a decrease over $100 million could be booked to the deferred tax expenses. And also, let me note that even with this change to tax expenses, the effective tax rate for the whole year was around 30%, marking an increase from last year level of 26%. This is due to the extra taxes in Slovakia, special levy on companies manufacturing petroleum products of roughly $50 million and the correction on the consolidated tax of another $50 million. But also important to note that the cash tax level remained the same. Let's look at how the cash flow evolved during the quarter. Operating cash flow before working capital was about $2.6 billion in '25. In the fourth quarter, working capital weighed on cash flow even as inventory were over due to the fire and trade payable buildup as seasonally usual. The change in working capital supported the cash flow of the year so far with the release of $180 million. And with that, operating cash flow reached USD 2.8 billion, more than $1 billion above the CapEx for the full year. And as a result of these positive changes, let's see how it is translated into the balance sheet. The net debt level improved by over $500 million compared to the end of '24, thanks to the strong cash generation throughout the year. The net debt that closed the year under half of the EBITDA, translating to 10% gearing ratio. This is a very comfortable level and reflects the conscious approach of the management to strengthen the balance sheet in order to have a necessary financial headroom. Should the right opportunity for acquisition to come, and we really hope that it will come soon. And now I would like to hand over to Gabriel to discuss the downstream performance.

Thank you very much, Akos. So good morning, ladies and gentlemen. So as Akos mentioned, you can imagine that we are having quite challenging times in downstream to ensure the feed to our refineries and to ensure supply security in our core markets. But now let's turn our focus on the quarter result of the last year. So within the reported period, we reached CCS EBITDA in the amount of $394 million, what is a 48% increase year-on-year. On the refining side, Clean CCS EBITDA rose to $463 million, mostly due to the positive external environment that benefited margins. Fuel demand remained broadly flat compared to the fourth quarter of 2024, but supply side issues impacting Europe drove fuel crack spreads significantly higher. Regarding volumes, crude processing showed a 21% year-on-year decrease due to the Danube refinery fire also mentioned by Akos, where the missed process volumes were 600 kt, around 600 kt, what is in line with our earlier estimates. On the sales side, however, the decrease was much lower as we managed to ramp up production in other 2 refineries and secured semi-finished products for processing in Hungary. We thus successfully minimized the damage on our market position and also margins. Turning to petrochemicals. The external environment is really negative and the EBITDA reached $69 million of loss. Unfortunately, the market continues to remain weak, as I mentioned, with the impact of import pressure and high feedstock prices, which are not easing. Now let's turn our focus on the external environment, the macro. So the refining margin environment remained robust as European fuel crack spreads widened in October and November, as it is seen on the graph. The increase was driven by supply side factors with the Russian export impacted by an export ban as well as U.S. sanctions on key Russian oil and gas producers and longer than usual maintenance of the key refineries. In December and also in January, this pressure is somewhat and refining margin showed normalization. For MOL, the widening of the Brent-Ural spread was also supportive. However, let me remind you that the taxation regime in both Hungary and Slovakia limit these gains. Regarding petrochemicals, the margin continues to be in the sub 200 per tonne area and thus signals no easing of the already mentioned pressures. On a positive note, the first on-spec polyol products have been dispatched produced and dispatched in our poly oil plant in Tiszaujvaros although as valid for the petrochemical market, so also in polyol market, the conditions are rather very challenging. And what we are now doing, this is the breeding process. And I assume that the first positive signals or impact on the result will come at the end of this year. And my last slide, please. Yes, thank you very much. So looking at the quarter-over-quarter figures, there is no surprise there in light of my earlier comments. The external environment and also our internal sales performance was the main contributor to better results, while the petrochemical margin contribution was flat. The volume dynamics weighed on EBITDA year-on-year. Looking at the whole year and the full year dynamics, the price and margin effect was broadly neutral. As you can see, what we see there, there is a volume contribution. This is because last year, we operated Rijeka refinery throughout the whole year, while in -- back in 2024, the Rijeka refinery was the first 3 months in the economic shutdown. So this would be from my side. I expect then a few questions. But now I would like to hand over to Peter to continue with the Consumer Services. Thank you.

Thank you, Gabriel. Good morning to everyone. So the Consumer Services delivered $205 million of EBITDA in the fourth quarter of 2025, which marks a roughly 32% increase year-on-year. However, let me note that the strengthening of the Hungarian Forint and the Euro against the USD year-on-year had a significant positive effect on results. And so did the consolidation effect of the merger of the fleet companies too. These factors altogether explained more than half of the year-on-year EBITDA increase. If we exclude those and looking just at the underlying organic growth in profits, then we achieved 10% to 15% growth rate year-on-year, which was supported by expansion in fuel as well as the non-fuel margins, as I will present it on the next slide. First, let's cover the fuel volumes, where we rose by 1% year-on-year and the consequence of the extra letters came from the Serbian operation during the period when sanctions were effective, which hit very severely, the operation, and we were the beneficiary of this operation, and that's accounted for most of the incremental change in the fourth quarter. Regarding the margins, the increase continues to be driven by the creation, legislative change where the margin regulation were lifted during the summertime, so that obviously affected the fourth quarter. And also in Romania, where the shift to the transition from the wholesale margin to the retail margin were significant and that also positively impacted the Romania retail operation with a longer term positive trend of higher margin premium fuel products also gained a bit of a share, and that's also supported the results. So if we turn the page to the nonfuel part of our business, then you can see that the development in the nonfuel part is practically just continued. We don't really see any changes in the general trends the 5%, 6% organic growth shows that our nonfuel activity is maturing. Also, you can see that the sales and margin growth pace is actively equalizing. That means that really our operation from all the hidden benefits what we were able to unlock, it's practically there. They are growing together with the EBITDA sales in terms of margin. And that's a very healthy part of our business. And based on this, we got the encouragement to open more and more stand-alone stores. We operated 8 such selling points, new selling points through Budapest and Prague and the first year's experience are generally encouraging. So we plan to continue with this. With that, thank you very much for your attention, and let me pass the floor to Zsombor in the Upstream.

Good morning, everyone. So the Upstream EBITDA amounted $247 million in the fourth quarter and marking a 13% decrease quarter-on-quarter. Although we succeeded in raising production volumes, you heard also before the price environment has an adverse impact, the key oil and gas benchmarks fell over 8% compared to the third quarter. And despite a seasonal pickup in CapEx in the fourth quarter, primarily due to the started Adriatic offshore development campaign in Croatia, despite of this, the simplified free cash flow remained robust at $700 million for the full year. If we move on, let's have a quick look at the unit economy mix, and you can see multiple trends from the chart. So the normalization of hydrocarbon prices from '22 is very evident and the '25 is also even the fourth quarter fitted well in that trend. And compared to the rate of this decreased brand, the resilience of our price realization also shown $63 per barrel of oil equivalent realized as revenue in '25 and the cash flow realization, as you can see, we are holding above our strategic threshold of $20 even in '25 on an annual basis despite of the seasonally higher CapEx spending. If you move to the waterfall charts, let's discuss the quarter-on-quarter dynamics, you can see the volume effect was notably positive due to the higher production and the technical effect of more ACG cargoes also supported our results. On the other hand, as we mentioned already, the lower price environment had a negative effect as well as higher lifting costs contributing negatively provisions also on other items also contributing negatively to the results. So overall, year-on-year, it was a price effect that dominated the change as Brent and TTF are by 15% and 31%, respectively. And despite higher entitlement production levels, this year's volume contribution was overall negative due to the ACG cargo effect. So let's see a bit production in detail in the next slide. The final quarter brought further successes in enhancing our production for the third consecutive year above our base. We reached 99,000 barrels of oil equivalent on average in the third -- on the fourth quarter. This was mostly due to new interest and new assets in Hungary, which we put into production as well as Croatia for the second consecutive quarter, rebounded back above 20,000 on domestic production, adding barrels significantly in CEE. And also, we are ramping up our natural gas processing in Iraq on the Pearl project and the international assets are contributing very well. So we comfortably met our production guidance for '25, especially for the fourth quarter performance. So with regards to expectations for '26, we believe we can still increase the production to an average 95,000, 97,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day with 3 assumptions. First, we can really maintain the success of Hungary and Croatia, flattening the decrease in production on mature set of fields, both on the exploration side, adding extra barrels and having some new ventures there, plus the production optimization. On the international side, we have organic expansion in Kazakhstan and Iraq that is remaining on track. And last, we expect that in case of the rest of the international portfolio, we can also stabilize the yields. So finally, a few comments on the evolution of unit OpEx and the CapEx. So the fourth quarter OpEx rose by 16% year-on-year. You can see in previous quarters, deterioration is mostly due to changes in exchange rates and most of these costs are denominated in local currencies. So if you see the group 11% increase, out of that $0.5 is related to FX and the rest is the increment. With regards to CapEx, the fourth quarter is always the heaviest. But this time spending also, as I mentioned, accelerated more than usual in the final quarter. Several drilling programs started as well as then the offshore development program in Croatia, which will also continue in '26. With regards to outlook, let me highlight that we have struck also partnership in '25. We have agreed on MOUs with the largest E&P company, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kazakhstan and now recently Libya. We already translated some of these partnerships into more specific tangible cooperation on exploration. We have signed the PSA with SOCAR on the exploration production development of Shamakhi-Gobustan area that's onshore and MOL is operating with 65% stake. With TPAO and the MOL formed the joint venture in Hungary and won 2 licenses in the exploration bid round, seismic already finished, and we are drilling next year. We have joined forces with Turkish Petroleum and the Spanish Repsol to bid successfully for an offshore block in Libya just recently announced. So in '26, one of our key priorities to work towards the success of these exploration programs. with our partners and also further diversify our portfolio. And with that, I give the word to Jozsef.

Thank you Zsombor, and let me give you a quick overview of our secular economy base management business. Q4 EBITDA is at $28 million compared to minus $48 million year-on-year basis. Partially, this is from longer-term positive trends, clearly, including the impact of efficiency improvement actions but dominantly still seasonally driven positive factors such as increased material sales and decreased collective volumes and costs. The full year EBITDA number at minus 34%, still negative, already shows a visible improvement over the previous year. And this is clearly a trend we expect and target to continue as a further result of the internal improvement actions. As for last year, a major achievement was the full rollout of the nationwide DRS system. At the end of the year, a bit more than 5,300 locations, and we completed the year with an average return rate close to 90%, which is one of the highest in Europe. With this, I think the rollout is completed. We have to work on the optimization but this is clearly a big achievement in less than 2 years. Preparations for a large CapEx item, WTE plant, waste-to-energy plant, which is necessary for reaching the EU targets are underway and the final investment decision for this is expected during this year. And with this, I'd like to hand back to Marton to conclude our presentation.

Thank you very much. So that completes the formal part of our presentation. We'd like to now open the floor for the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Okay. Anna, please go ahead.

I have a couple of questions, probably starting with the deal around Serbian assets. I think in your disclosure, you were also considering selling a 5% stake to ADNOC. Is it going on top of the 5% stake to the Serbian government? Or is it out of the question now? And also related to the deal, do you expect that you will need to invest some sizable CapEx to realize synergies or if you can comment on potential synergies? That would be very helpful. And the second question around crude supplies and the increased cost for you in first quarter? Like do you expect the OpEx to go materially higher given new pipeline supplies. And if you can comment on the total utilization rates for the first quarter, given both Danube fire and the absence of the Russian volumes.

Thank you very much, Anna, for the question. Well, with regards to ADNOC, yes, we are playing to involve ADNOC and as we already kind of communicated and also confirmed earlier, we are in a discussion with ADNOC to have a possible joint the deal. Well, I think this is quite important because this is really beneficial for more group first because ADNOC really a strong financial investor, but also beside that, can bring considerable benefits as one of the largest global players in crude or production and trading. And also, I think it's important to mention that has easy considerable expertise in operating downstream assets as well. So yes, we plan to sell 5% to the and Serbian state. This is one point. And after that, we would like to create a deal having an involvement of ADNOC. With regards to the CapEx, I think, unfortunately, at the moment, I'm unable to comment on that. This is an ongoing M&A process. Therefore, I think as we already discussed, well, we signed the heads of agreement. And by the end of March, we expect to sign the SPA and after that, there will be a closing. But I think quite important to mention that even though being in mind these 2 parties involvement, we would like to be in control, and we would like to influence the operation of NIS after having a positive and successful closing of the deal.

Thank you, and for the second question, please Gabriel?

Yes. Thank you very much, Anna, for your question. So I have to add here that we are getting the first experience regarding the full run on the seaborne crude. And definitely, I will share more about the data and the values when we will evaluate the first quarter of this year. But what we see currently is that there are definitely higher logistic cost for the seaborne transit, which we already raised several times. And the whole performance is very much dependent on the processing level and product slates. And of course, that will depend very much on the crudes we can procure and we will process. Regarding the processing rates, so the January was run as planned. So of course, there were limits in [indiscernible] because of AV3, but the slow graft was in the optimal run rate, I would say. And we believe that we will resume this operation from April on. So we will get back to normal, but fed on the seaborne crude from April on. Thank you.

If I may, just one quick additional question on this measure from Hungarian government related to the gas price freeze in January. Do you expect a material impact on MOL?

Thank you for the question. No, we do not see that it has any sizable impact on MOL results.

Giuseppe, please go ahead.

The first one is on the insurance. You've been very clear around it, but we were wondering if you could give us some color on the timing for the expected payments and also how you're going to book them in the income statement, especially if you're going to split the property damage part and the business interruption part. And then secondly, on the CDU works in the Croatian refinery, what's the production uplift that you expect throughout 2026? And do you think you will need to deploy more CapEx in Croatia?

Well, with regards to reinsurance, a couple of things. Well, at the moment, we see that we are in the discussion with the insurance companies. And according to our plans, there will be no issue in accepting our claim. And with regards to the timing, well, as we have the plant reconstructed, this is a time when we can calculate the overall profit loss. And well, this is the normal way of calculating it. And as already disclosed by Q3 2026, we see that the plant is going to get back to the normal operation. Therefore, this is the time when we can rely on closing the discussion with the insurance company. And with regards to the payment, well, according to our expectation now by the end of this year, it's going to be closed and paid. And the payment will also impact the cash flow and the P&L positively. And well, I think important to mention that the payment depends on the actual lost opportunity. Therefore, also we need to wait until everything is closed and the plant is going to get back to the operation.

Yes. Giuseppe, regarding your second question, DCU project. So I'm glad to share with you that the unit is completed. So the core unit and also all the associated infrastructure, and we successfully finished the cold commissioning phase. Now we entered the final stage, which is the hot commissioning. This will take several months after which the unit will move into trial operation. I'm rather positive that the ramp-up is expected to begin in March. And I believe that in the second half of this year, we will see a positive results of this investment.

Oleg, please go ahead with your question.

And let me start with a follow-up on a previous question regarding the seaborne supply, just to make sure that we understood correctly, this guidance for the full year EBITDA of USD 3 billion, it is based on a normal on a 100% supply of pipeline crude, if you can confirm that. Otherwise, if you would fully operate on a seaborne crude oil, would it be fair to assume that the $3 billion guidance would be materially impacted? And then the next question on the refineries. How long can you -- or can the 2 refineries run at full capacity based on the company's own and the strategic reserves of crude oil? And then on the strategic reserves, what is the average cost per barrel of the crude that you will be getting from these reserves? And finally, on dividends, how should we think about the last year's dividend? Because on one hand, you had a very good year in terms of cash flow generation and assuming the same payout, basically, that would support an increase of dividend. But on the other hand, you are faced with the higher oil supply risk. So when you put everything together, would it be fair to still assume an increase of dividend justified by the cash flow generation? Or how should we think about that?

Thank you, Oleg. So I will start with the seaborne part. So there are several questions there. So yes. So let me start with the state reserve and the run rate, which we are now -- with which we are now operating the plants. So we ask both governments in Hungary and Slovakia to release 250 kt of crude oil. This crude oil should be sufficient for this transition period until we get the full supply from the CEE. Currently, the refineries are -- their run is refineries are optimized to supply the core markets. So as Akos mentioned, we stopped the export. So now we focus on the security of supply in other domestic countries, it mean Hungary and Slovakia. As I mentioned to Anna from April on, we resumed the operation with the full run or the optimized run based on the economics of the refining. Regarding that how -- what is the crude oil reserves or what is the time span for that? So as you might know, in EU, we have the guidance to keep the stock reserves for 90 days. So it's also valid for Hungary and Slovakia. So in terms of this, I believe we have sufficient crude and products to ensure stable supply to our markets.

And on the cost may be...

So -- in terms of the cost for -- excuse me, I missed the question. Oleg, can you please repeat your question?

Yes. My question was what is the average cost per barrel of the crude that you'll be getting from strategic reserves just to have the right projections?

It's borrowing. So we will then return barrel to barrel or ton to ton. So we will not give it back in money, but also we will return all the stock reserves in crude oil back.

And Oleg, with regards to your questions regarding the dividend, well as usual, this time of the year, what we disclose is that there is a normal schedule of committees and decisions. Well, as usual, we plan to have the Annual General Meeting or assembly in April. Therefore, mid of March, we are going to have the Board of Directors meeting, and this is the forum when this is going to be discussed and finally decided. How I covered in my presentation? Well, first of all, we were really pleased to see that last year, we generated positive cash flow, and this is -- you can see be translated into the strengthening balance sheet. And also what we have discussed is that while the strong balance sheet also serve as a good basis for M&A transactions. And with regards to the dividend, what I can share that please have a look at the previous year's dividend. And while this is at the moment, what we can disclose.

And the last question from Piotr.

I have a couple of questions. So firstly, I wanted to clarify your $3 billion EBITDA guidance. What does it assume in terms of crude oil shipment to your refineries? Does it assume that you, through the whole year, will get the seaborne crude? And what's the type, how much different this type of crude is versus the previous one? Essentially, I'm trying to get like is the $3 billion carrying the cost of the new supply route and a different blend and you accommodate all of it or not? So that would be the first question. Second question, I wanted to ask you why you took the impairment on the Polish consumer services stations. What was the reason? I thought looking at your and the ORLEN results, they are very, very good in the Poland fuel stations. So that's the second question. And the third question I have on the NIS acquisition. There were -- I've seen a number of different headlines quoting a different price. So can you clarify what the price for the stake you -- roughly in the broad -- in the bracket or what kind of a range we are discussing, so you could maybe have a bit of a view on the total multiple that you're going to pay. These are my 3 questions.

Okay. Let me start answering the first is the NIS and after that the Polish one. Well, with regards to NIS, well, I already mentioned and also we communicated that this is an ongoing M&A process. Therefore, we are unable to comment on the pricing until the due diligence and the negotiations are ongoing. And what we expect is that by the end of March, there will be an SPA signed, and this is the time when we are going to have a full picture. On the other hand, this is also true that this M&A is one of the most documented openly documented M&As. Therefore, there are so many information flying around in the media. But also please just understand that we are unable to comment at this stage. With regard to the Polish impairment, impairment on our Polish assets, I think there are 2 different things. One is that what is the overall situation in Poland and how we see the market developing. And this is probably the area Peter knows much better than myself. On the other hand, this is also true that there are certain rules in IFRS when we need to run impairment tests, and this is in the normal accounting cycle of each and every year. And as I said, at the end of the last year, we run also this impairment test. And based on the calculation, we reviewed our models, and we found that our figures are actually based on the more optimistic forecast. Therefore, this had to be adjusted to the more realistic outlook. And with regard to the outlook, I think, well, yes, this $3 billion is lower than the consensus would show. And I think there are a couple of points probably need to discuss. Refining area, I think we do expect having a normalization in the refining environment. Let me just underline that last year refining margin of $7.6 per barrel was how we see is really a temporary and positive figure. And on the long term, I think we much better accept having a normalization and getting back to the normal range. And also, I think quite important to mention that the full-scale launch of DCU in Rijeka will be in the second part of the year. And with regards to -- with regards to the supply, also, I would like to mention that we are assuming that the [ Brent-Ural ] either via Druzhba pipeline or via the Adriatic will be accessible for us throughout the year. With regards to the petchem while we do not see a really good reason why the picture is going to be better than last year. And on Upstream, even though we are calculating with a really strong and very healthy production, generally, we think that the hydrocarbon price level are going to be lower than last year. And finally, in Customer Services, I think operation-wise, absolutely, we do not see difficulties in this regard, but also fair to mention that in dollar terms, the customer services performance was supported by the devaluation of dollar against the local currencies. So these are the key pillars why we believe that there is an explainable deviation versus the consensus.

That was very clear. Just a small clarification on this guidance. What type of organic activities we should assume as a step-up year-on-year '26 versus '25? So [ Rijeka ] I think polyol was also ramping up. So can you take us through your thinking around what is new on your asset side that will start to contribute more than it was last year?

Yes. So if I may comment on the side. So as you properly mentioned that this is the DCU, I think it will be in the second half of this year than at the end of the year. The polyol beside of it, we expect in third quarter this year to resume the operation with AV-3 and also as last summer, I mentioned, we launched our Tomorrow downstream program. So there is some efficiency improvement there for this year as well to ensure a total uplift of EBITDA by $500 million till the end of '27. So this would be from the downstream side, what I see.

Okay. And I see Mr. Tamas Pletser also like to ask a question.

I have a couple of questions mainly on the supply situation, what you are experiencing right now. First of all, you mentioned you asked for the Hungarian strategic reserves. Have you done a similar move in Slovakia? And if you have done so, what is the volume you may receive from the Slovak strategic reserves? That would be my first question. Second, you mentioned that you have to give this crude oil back to the Hungarian authorities. And somewhere I read in the Hungarian newspapers that the deadline would be the end of this year. Do you see this deadline to be feasible to do that? And also maybe a third question, what type of crude do you have to give back? Because I presume that now the strategic reserves are primarily in REBCO type of crude. And if you don't get the similar quality, would you use that kind of quality to replace the current reserves? And finally, a question regarding your capacity utilization of your refineries. I think Mr. Hernadi a year ago had an interview when he was explaining that if you more cannot access to the Russian crude from the East and the supply should be on the Adriatic side, this should lead to a decline in the refinery utilization as long as you don't finish those decoupling projects like the mixing facility and the storage facilities in the area of the Danube refinery, which is, as far as I know, is expected in the first half of 2027. So could you confirm this information? Do you see that the -- if you have to get the supply only via the Adriatic, you have to cut the cap utilization of the Slovnaft refinery and Danube refinery.

Thank you, Tamas, for your questions. So all of those are somehow connected. So first part is that whether there was a release of state reserve in Slovakia. So as I mentioned, similarly to Hungary also in Slovakia in the very same volume, so 250 kt. Crude, which is REBCO or [indiscernible] compatible, so very close because we have to ensure that there are 90 days of reserves -- of strategic reserves there. And it's somehow connected to your last part of your question that having the different crudes, there will be different yields. You are very right. So we have to find the proper mix or blend, as we mentioned it several times. And this is the goal. So how to find the most optimal blend. As you might see in the news that once the Druzhba is interrupted, then we are allowed to import also Russian crude via sea. So this is also another option there. Regarding when we have to return the crude, frankly, I would ask my guys to come back with the answer for Hungary. I was just day before yesterday discussing this question with the solar government, and I precisely know that in Slovakia, it's 30th of September, so end of September. I do not know the precise date I have to admit for Hungary. So have I answered all your questions?

Yes. That's probably only one. I mean, if you have to give back the crude oil, does it have to be the same quality what you received from the strategic reserves?

So I mean, the basic guidance is to keep the 90 days. Yes. So I believe this is the result of the formula. And then, of course, we have to fill in all the variables in the formula to achieve the 90 days. So you are right that ideally, it would be REBCO. But there are also other crudes very similar to REBCO, for example, [indiscernible]. So I believe we will find the proper crude base. Thank you very much for the question.

Yes. And just one more follow-up here, if I may. Can you confirm that those investments, what you do to process seaborne crude. So those investments will be ready by the first half of 2027. I think that was the last time the date you mentioned.

Yes. So we are trying to do our best because definitely, it's also a limiting factor. Yes. On the other side, I have to admit that majority of our engineering resources in-house and also procured -- are asked to deal with -- we are asked to deal with the AV3. So this was the first priority so far, but we are progressing with the diversification project. And I truly believe that we can reach the deadline you mentioned.

Okay. Chris, go ahead with the very last question.

My question would be just a follow-up on that diversification project. Would you mind just giving a little bit more color about that? And how is it going to improve your situation regarding this -- the procurement of crude oil?

Yes. So it's rather a really difficult topic. But what is now driven our procurement, this is -- firstly, this is the sanction regime. So we definitely have to comply with all the sanctions regime. Then this is the physical availability of the crudes. Then what is technically processable to achieve the highest yield possible. And then what is the logistical sequence of those seaborne crudes coming to the [indiscernible]. And what is the sequence how we put them to the pipe because a few crudes cannot be paired to each other. So we have to find out the proper blend. And the last point is, of course, the economical view on this. The diversification project, crude diversification projects will enable that there will be much more options and we won't be limited as much as we are today. So there are really limits there, what kind of crude we can process, what should be the sequence of those crude coming to our storage tanks, how we blend it. So there are a lot of limits there. I believe that after successfully accomplishing this diversification project where one part goes or the big part goes to the blending facility. So we will be able to blend the proper mix to be fed to our distillation units.

So it's not about increasing the throughput of those pipelines, it is rather just diversifying or just enabling?

No. I mean the pipeline constraints is on the JANAF side. So what we are pushing to do test. So seemingly, we agreed that there will be some test done. So far, the test or we do not have a proof that the capacity is sufficient. On the other side, now having AV3 run, so there is definitely some capacity or some room to work with. But the full capacity was never tested properly. 2 separate issues, yes. So one is on our side. So the technological limits there and bottlenecks, which -- where we invested 500 million there, and we believe to accomplish it in 2027. The other side is the JANAF limits where we also see some risk associated to the capacity there.

Okay. So in really pessimistic scenario, if Druzhba somehow does not restart its operations, do you see -- I mean, how high would you see the capacity utilization at your main refineries in Slovakia in Hungary?

Well, so until Q3, there is no AV3 run. So there is no need to source the distillation unit there, which gives us some room in the capacity of JANAF capacity. On the other side, now there is a sequence of cargoes coming. So let's see how JANAF is dealing with this one. So we have to get some real experience. For me, it's really hard to answer your question as I'm not operating this part of the pipeline.

Thank you very much for your participation on today's call. Please reach out to Investor Relations if you have anything to follow up is, and goodbye. Have a nice day. Thank you.