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

February 19, 2021

Unknown / Unmapped HU Energy Oil, Gas and Consumable Fuels earnings 66 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Robert Rethy

executive
#1

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to MOL's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Results Conference Call, or rather, Teams meeting. My name is Robert Rethy, and I'm heading Investor Relations and ESG at MOL Group. And it's also my pleasure to introduce the senior management team of MOL who is with us today for this meeting, including Mr. József Molnár, the Group Chief Executive Officer; József Simola, the Group Chief Financial Officer; Dr. Berislav Gaso, the Executive Vice President for Upstream; Gabie Szabó, the Executive Vice President of Downstream; and Péter Ratatics, the Executive Vice President of Consumer Services. As you probably got used to this by now, we are using this Microsoft Teams platform to conduct this meeting. And honestly, I don't think this is going to change in the future. The solution work quite well for us and hopefully for you as well. The presentation, as in the past, can be downloaded from our website, which is molgroup.info, but we're also sharing the slides during the meeting today. And again, as usual, after the brief presentation, there will be a Q&A. There actually, I propose to focus on last quarter or last year issues, perhaps the 2021 guidance, whereas reserving the more strategic questions for next week at the Capital Markets Day. Technically, to ask a question, we continue to suggest to use the Raise Your Hand functional activity in the Teams platform or perhaps using chat function. And always remember to stay muted, except, obviously, in the Q&A when asking a question. And before we start, the usual reminder about the disclaimer on Page 2 -- Slide 2, about the forward-looking statements. And with that, I ask József Simola to start the meeting with summarizing the last quarter's developments.

József Simola

executive
#2

Thank you, Robbie, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Well, I mean, I guess last year for us, as for pretty much everybody else, was the perfect storm of the last decades. But in this perfect storm, I think we clearly delivered solid business performance and very strong financial free cash flow generation performance. As expected, much lower EBITDA than originally guided, but we were able to overshoot the post-COVID guidance and counterbalance this with much lower CapEx spending, mostly as part of -- or as a result of internal measures, but also including some COVID-related delays, resulting in stronger-than-planned free cash flow generation for the group, including a positive free cash flow contribution from every business lines, each and every business lines. And actually, even during COVID continued retail growth in EBITDA and also retail being the largest free cash flow contribution business. Before we go to the financial part, let's go to Page 8 for a quick ESG review. I think, overall, positive trends and results and developments. Despite the COVID challenges, we reached actually a very good [ clean ] number last year. I think that actually here we may see some indirect positive COVID effect of as a result of [indiscernible] levels and also social distancing potentially. In terms of business continuity and health management during COVID, we actually started internal testing in the spring. We have the regime set up and we think it's working, and we have a solid business even for the coming period in terms of business continuity and protecting the health of our employees. And I think also the -- we received continued ESG recognition, the latest being the -- we are part again with Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the fifth year now and we are the only emerging European constituent in this index. Let's start the financial part on Page 10 with the EBITDA review. So the -- this is one sentence reflections and the deep dive is going to come from the businesses. The Upstream, essentially lower oil and gas prices and also some technical and accounting items Beri will lead you through -- resulted in a lower EBITDA. Downstream, super depressed refinery margins, other than a few months in a year, and lower volumes. And I think, some very strong counterbalancing coming from the petchem business. And as I said, in the consumer business, again, a record high EBITDA as a result of the continued EBITDA growth during the pandemic. Gas Midstream, a decent year overall, but a much weaker Q4 in the new gas here. And also, we had a major change in Q4, essentially ending the Serbian cross-border capacity bookings because the South Stream opened up and Serbia ended this contact. So all in all, just briefly on the Gas Midstream forward-looking guidance, generally, you should expect probably lower EBITDA in the range of 25%, 30% compared to the previous years. And last 5-year average was around $200 million. And the reasons for this, as I mentioned, the #1 is the ending of the Serbian transit contract at the end of the year. We also expect less or no access revenues from Ukrainian-related capacity bookings. And as we pointed out a couple of times that higher gas prices, because gas is used in energy in the transportation business, actually, will result in higher, i.e., compared to last year, normalized OpEx. So that's the EBITDA overview, and let's go to Page 11, CapEx. Total number is clearly, I mean, the largest item in overall CapEx spending, EUR 1.5 billion spending on ACG, and with this an overall higher CapEx spending, but as for the organic CapEx at EUR 1.4 billion for the year compared to EUR 2 billion and compared to the EUR 1.5 billion guidance, visibly lower, as I mentioned, mostly as a result of internal project cancellations and delays in the stay-in-business CapEx but also some COVID-related delays in the strategic project, largest being the polyol, and Gabriel will give you details about this. If you go to Page 13, free cash flow generation coming from the EBITDA and CapEx patterns, as I said, higher-than-planned overall free cash flow generation for the year and actually much higher than last year, i.e., 2020 versus 2019, positive contribution from all businesses. And as I said, retail actually being the largest contributor in the free cash flow generation, but we should not forget the Upstream business leader, which is actually similarly high number in a kind of very depressed price environment last year. Let's go to next page, Page 13, the kind of below EBITDA items. CCS modification, overall, EUR 195 million negative for the whole year, including actually a EUR 55 million negative in the fourth quarter. The reason for this that we had a rising price environment in the last quarter. But that should have resulted in a positive contribution, but that was counterbalanced essentially the usual technical CO2 offset, which is -- gives no change for the year. But this difference between IFRS and CCS will result actually a negative contribution in the last quarter, and also a negative contribution of some derivative items which are not part of the CCS methodology. DD&A, essentially 2 major impacts. The inclusion of ACG, $275 million for the whole year. And the impairment items were the new ones in Q4 are $19 million for Crosco impairment, mostly drilling rigs and an $80 million Upstream impairment related to goodwill related to unsuccessful exploration in Norway. Looking forward, the kind of run rate DD&A expected to be around $400 million per quarter including the ACG contribution, and at an annual level, $1.5 billion, $1.6 billion, again clean without special items and impairment run rate. Net financial dominated essentially by the FX loss. Practically the dollar and foreign exchange rate was unchanged year-on-year, but the forint weakened more than 10% to the euro on a year-on-year basis, resulting mostly unrealized FX loss in the balance sheet, and that's what drives actually that financial lines. Associate line, EUR 35 million positive in Q4, the largest contribution being a $23 million one-off gain from Baitex, coming actually a positive regulation change lowering essentially royalties and leading impairment reversal at Baitex. Cash expenses -- tax expenses, the cash part for the year EUR 102 million versus EUR 80 million last year. The reasons for the increase are the inclusion of the ACG and the other is that due to the lower spending in Norway, we had actually lower reclaim -- tax reclaims show up in the cash line, i.e. less tax reclaims in 2020 versus '19, leading to a higher cash tax number. And the deferred tax, $67 million income versus $83 million cost last 3 year, various technical reasons, but the main reason being that compared to the current very low refinery margins, we expect some normalization of the refinery margin and thus actually potentially utilize past tax losses in the future. The minority interest reflects as usual in our contribution. Now let's go to Page 14, the cash -- operating cash flows. Well, no surprise here. I mean working capital essentially being very close to 0, I guess, the -- we can see usual things during the year. And as I said, the operating cash flows clearly covered all our organic CapEx needs. And also, the next page, Page 15, balance sheet. Practically no change. And again no -- from last quarter, no surprise here. The ACG increased our indebtedness level during the year. But even with this, clearly very much within the comfort zone and we closed the year with a strong free cash flow generation. So that's the financial part, and I'd like to hand over to Gabriel to discuss with you the Downstream performance.

Gabriel Szabó

executive
#3

Yes. Thank you very much, Jóska. So good morning. At the beginning, let me just repeat what József said. So in spite of all the challenges of last year as market collapse, keeping the operation changed as challenge of keeping our colleagues healthy, we managed to elevate the standards in availability, in process safety, and also we recorded less people injured. Turning to the Downstream financial performance itself in the last quarter, the Clean CCS EBITDA fell by 41% year-on-year, both weak margins and also sales volumes lower by 14% in RM segment are reflected in lower performance compared to last quarter 2019. While in petchem we are reporting a very solid market demand last year, driven mainly by packaging segments and also healthy integrated petchem margin, in RM, we are experiencing a general stock overhang, which was also further triggered by second wave of pandemic and resulted in weak refinery margins. Pressure on volumes drove the decision on lower refinery utilization, and we also cut back the third-party sales by 25%. As József mentioned, the polyol project, so the pandemic cost also a slowdown of our key investment project, polyol, where in spite of a serious infection level in the region, we manage together with the thyssenkrupp to keep the investment running and the mobilization high. So currently, we even exceeded 75% of completion. And of course, the slowdown will be reflected in the shifted completion of the project. So we assume it will be second half of 2022. And the longer implementation time and also COVID measures will be probably reflected also in the increase in investment cost, and now the -- our forecast is EUR 1.3 billion. Once we get to the next slide, please. So I already commented, big margins caused by eroded demand and hence oversupply, and this environment persists till today. Minor support of our margin was generated by slight euro discount, but this is still very, very behind the 5-years average. Petchem demand was very good and boosted the polymer prices. And this year, we experienced integrated petchem margin around EUR 600 per tonne. In the next slide, let me comment on the waterfall chart, where we can clearly see the negative impact of a $4 per barrel drop in our headline refinery margin. We see the 70 KTs lower R&M sales, which also had a negative impact, but multiplied by weak margins, it did not cause extreme drop in our EBITDA generation. Series of decisive actions in the -- mainly in the field of fixed costs, mainly maintenance, is positively reported in the EBITDA. Speaking about the whole year, what we see is the negative swing in refinery margins successfully counterbalanced by the extra effort put to sales margin in our core region. The petchem margin was slightly higher, the sales of polymer 13% above base. But the total EBITDA delivery was impacted by the loss in inventory after the crude oil price collapse, and it also caused the lower price level of value streams from steam crackers back to refinery. So by and large, from my perspective, within our 2020 performance, we clearly see the advantage of petchem integrated operation, but also the benefits of landlock market. So now let me ask Peter to comment on the Consumer Services segment.

Péter Ratatics

executive
#4

Thank you, Gabriel, and good morning to everyone. Obviously, I'm very happy to report that despite all these very crazy and external circumstances, what we faced in 2020, the Consumer Services reached our new all-time quarterly EBITDA, but not just quarterly, but obviously the entire year EBITDAs are a new record in our history. But in the fourth quarter, actually, the total EBITDA was $128 million. And with that, by the way, we now back on, I would say, original track. I don't know how long would I be capable to promise this, but we are now on track to deliver double-digit EBITDA growth. And actually, in this quarter, it was 23% compared to the last year same period. This was mainly driven by a very, very intensive, fuel margin optimization and management. We tried to not just manage the premium part and the premium penetration part, but also on the unit margin side. But a few words I will say in the second slide. But besides the intensive fuel margin management, obviously, the disciplined cost management was the other most important task of each and every operational part of the Consumer Services. Actually, we revised from the beginning of the pandemic the CapEx spending program. Obviously, one of the targets was to continue -- not to start, but continue the Fresh Corner rollout and also to execute all greenfield developments, what we committed but certain reprioritization and a few postponement happened. But as a result of the cautious CapEx spending, actually, the free cash flow generation capability of the segment growed and jumped actually to 28%. And all in all, actually, we reached the $380 million in 2020. And order the -- that exceeds the previous year's level. And Consumer Services become the largest free cash flow contributor to the group, at least for the last year or based on the last year. But let's turn the page to the fuel one to have a bit deeper insights. Let's start the negative one. We know that the -- since the beginning of the pandemic, the mobility restrictions in the entire region was quite severe. Country by country, the government regulations were quite different. However, generally we can say that it limited the movement capability and possibility of the citizens and also the businesses. That's clearly visible in our volume performance. You can see on the slide that more than 10% volume drop happened compared to the previous year same period. However, the positive news that on trend-wise, from the first quarter of last year till the end of the year, a constant but slower development happened. So all in all, I can say that the entire year was roughly on the same level, at least 10% -- a bit below than 10% from consumption decrease point of view. However, as it was part of the first reaction from our end, we tried to manage the fuel margin on the back of the dropping or decreasing consumption with an active price management. We got the hub from the low crude oil price. But on the other hand, equally, it was important to manage the premium penetration. And all in all, a significant increase happened last year, more than 20% higher year-on-year premium fuel consumption was delivered. And as a combined effect of those, actually the unit margin grew significantly. And with that, actually, we were not just capable to compensate, but actually we overcompensated the volume loss impact on the fuel margin. If you go to the next one, which is obviously the nonfuel part of the operation. And it's a bit of a mixed picture. Honestly, I'm very happy that we still were capable to deliver sales increase, even though it's just a very, very minor one, roughly 1% increase on the nonfuel sales. But since the biggest drop, the biggest impact of the pandemic was on the gastro, which is the highest unit margin segment, despite the margin generation, there's nonfuel margin generation, it just fell a bit compared to the last year period, actually. On year-on-year that's -- I mean, in the fourth quarter compared to the previous period, it was minus 2%. But what was, again, a management movement possibility here to focus much more on the OpEx management to compensate somehow the fall of the nonfuel margin. And the nonfuel margin OpEx ratio, which is a very important internal performance KPI for us. As a result of a significant OpEx drop, it was positively developed during the year. So we overcompensated with OpEx loss -- with OpEx decrease the nonfuel margin loss. Yes, probably just a few words about the outlook or even the current circumstances. The operation is stable, all sites are open. We are actively and continuously monitoring the health of our staff at the service station. We are testing them. We are educating them. I think we also got very positive feedbacks from our customers that they now see a significantly higher focus on the cleanliness and the hygienic effect. And by the way, I think this is a positive long-term impact of the COVID, that now we have completely new standard and also expectation from our customers towards [Technical Difficulty]. So this was from my end, and obviously, during the Q&A part, I'd be here to answer any particular question. Thank you. And now let's hand over to the Upstream part to Beri.

Berislav Gaso

executive
#5

Peter, thank you very much, and good morning on my side. Let me introduce the Q4 Upstream results to you, somewhat complicated from an accounting point of view in Q4, but we'll come to that in a second. I think number one is a Q3 EBITDA from $212 million down to $181 million; sounds pretty much counterintuitive given that we have had rising prices, both oil and gas, but that, again, is largely driven through very, very technical ACG accounting items that I will explain in a second in the presentation. 2020, altogether, pretty much as you've heard from many others today, very tough year, 34% down on EBITDA for the Upstream division. But I think we're still proud that we delivered $360 million free cash flow in such a challenging oil price environment. And if you move on to the next page, that translates into $9 on every barrel oil equivalent that we have lifted in a $42 average Brent price and the EUR 10 per megawatt external macro environment. From a cash flow generation perspective, not bad at all, the performance in 2020. Let's move on to the Upstream quarter-by-quarter and full year comparisons. I think probably number one that I would say is, and we marked in red, the ACG-related accounting adjustments here. The proper like-for-like comparison would be for you to take the EUR 199 million EBITDA in Q3 and compare it against EUR 270 million EBITDA in Q4. So -- and if you look at the decomposition in the bridge, you can clearly see the effect of higher prices, somewhat offset by lower volumes. Again, that's also largely entitlement-driven in ACG. And then you will come up with the EUR 270 million. Now what these true up or accounting adjustments do -- and I will not explain the details, Robbie is at your disposal to walk you through all the complications of how this works. I think on a simple note, saying when you -- when we have a rising price environment, you can expect negative adjustments. That's how the PSA works. And we have falling prices out there in the macro, you can expect a positive adjustments. But again, for the details, you need to talk to Robbie. Out of the EUR 37 million that you see as a negative effect now in Q4, you should also note that EUR 24 million will be reversed in the next -- EUR 24 million, EUR 25 million will already be reversed in the next quarter. But again, reach out to Robbie for the details on that. In terms of full year comparison, which is the bottom part of that page, you can clearly see the effect of lower gas and oil prices, EUR 478 million in EBITDA, offset by stronger volumes, largely due to early contribution of ACG. And then we faced somewhat higher cost. That's logical on the wings of also higher volumes and higher production. If we move to the next page, strong Q4 production of north of 125,000 barrels per day. If you take the full year 2020 production performance, we came just -- we came in just above 120,000 barrels per day for the full year. That's clearly at the very high end of our guidance that we have given -- that we have given a year ago. I would probably only note that you can see in this quarter-by-quarter chart here now that the ACG net entitlement allocation was 25,000 in Q4. So again, that's 5,000 barrels lower than in Q3. And the reason, again, is that the amount of entitlement that you get is, of course, a function of higher or lower oil price. So again, the moment price moves up, your entitlement goes down and vice versa, okay? The 5,000 barrel decrease was partly offset by U.K. and CEE, that's plus 3,000 together, as you can see on quarter-by-quarter. And now if you look ahead or if you look into January, in January we see 119,000 barrels per day. And again, the decline versus Q4 is predominantly related to the net entitlement allocation of the ACG field, which will be around 20,000 for the first quarter in 2021. Now that leads me to full year production guidance for this year. And I see our guidance at around EUR 110 million, which at first sight may seem conservative to you, but there's clearly 2 reasons for that. One is we are now beyond the point of peak production in the U.K. Our U.K. assets have had front-loaded production profiles, and we expect -- yes, we expect a significant decline to come also from our U.K. assets, roughly 4,000 is what that contributes. And the rest, basically -- the rest will come from decline in CEE. And on top of that, we don't have any major projects coming in this year. So that's why we believe EUR 110 million is the right number as a production guidance for 2021. Next page is business as usual. I'm not going to spend too much time explaining that. Very competitive unit OpEx, pretty much costs under control. This is what we've been doing now for years, not only quarters. So let's move to the next page. Finally, I would say something about reserves. So 2019 year-end reserves stood at 270 million barrels. That's now up to 364 million. Pretty much close to a number or close to the number that we guided at the time of the announcement of our ACG deal. Our 2 key reserves life stands now at around 9 years. And apart from the ACG contribution, there were also net upward revisions, I think a total of EUR 60 million, particularly on some of the Hungarian fields that added as well reserves. So organic reserve replacement was around 50% last year. And then with the inorganic, it's, of course, significant or north of 312. And with that, I would now hand over to József Molnár, who will briefly present an outlook to you for 2021.

József Molnár

executive
#6

Thank you, Beri. As my colleagues explained, 2020 was very unusual and very difficult year. We look with optimism into 2021 and we certainly expect some normalization in the external environment from a low base. This normalization will help us improving our results. Admittedly, we use relatively conservative macro assumption when setting our guidance, but we prefer to be on the safe side, and we want to demonstrate we have a fully funded business even with conservative assumptions. Our around EUR 2.3 billion EBITDA guidance for 2021 reflects the midpoint of the 40-60 barrel Brent oil price, EUR 12 to EUR 18 per megawatt European gas price, 3 to 4 barrel refinery margin and EUR 300 to EUR 400 per tonne petchem margin assumption. You may note that 3 of these 4 drivers are right now above these ranges, but the refinery margins are still substantially below and plenty of uncertainties remain. CapEx will also have to normalize after a year of restraint. So we plan to spend around USD 1.7 billion to USD 1.9 billion organic CapEx in 2021. This still means our simplified free cash flow will again be comfortably positive, and with the rising EBITDA, leverage will likely decrease. In Downstream, executing our strategic project, the polyol project and the delayed coker in Rijeka remains a priority, along with strong focus on efficiency improvement. In Consumer Services, we expect another record-breaking year, driven by recovering fuel volumes and renewed growth in nonfuel revenues. In Upstream, our production will likely decline somewhat, but we will push hard to maximize the value of our assets through efficient operation. Something about the special INA case. I can confirm MOL has been in direct negotiation with the Croatian government over a possible repurchase by the government of Croatia of MOL shares in INA. We made it clear already several times before, but I would like to stress it again that while MOL is not against the renationalization of INA, such a transaction can only take place at a price level that would compensate MOL for its investment in Croatia. Frankly, I can say at this moment, the price consideration of parties are quite distant from each other. Lacking an agreement on repurchase of shares, MOL continues to be fully committed to managing INA according to the best commercial interest of the company. Thank you very much for your attention, and now we are ready to take your questions.

Robert Rethy

executive
#7

Thank you very much. And now if you want to ask a question, then please indicate it through the Raise Your Hand functionality in Teams, and then we can go one by one. So I can see the first question coming from Piotr Dzieciolowski from Citi.

Piotr Dzieciolowski

analyst
#8

Congrats on the good results. I have 2 questions. When you think about selling INA to Croatian government, what -- how should we think about the price? What you will be looking at? Do you look at the past investments, do you look at the kind of multiple of the run rate business, how it looks now? And so can you give a little bit more clarity on this? And can you say what is your thinking about the dividends. You say in the presentation that you can fund it, but then at what point we -- the market could think about the special top-ups that you distributed in the past?

József Molnár

executive
#9

As I mentioned in my presentation -- József Molnar speaking, sorry. As I mentioned in my presentation, the price considerations of the parties are far from each other. At this moment, we do not want to disclose more about the confidential negotiation. If we reach a status then, how to say, we are close to the agreement or close to the, how to say, publication obligation, we will disclose it. But today, this is what we could tell.

József Simola

executive
#10

I mean as for the dividend, there will be 2 touch points. One is actually, as Robert mentioned, the Capital Markets Day, where we want to address the kind of capital allocation outlook, including dividends as a general topic for the coming years. And the other is, we very much expect the kind of standard, pre-COVID timing in terms of the corporate events, so Board of Directors meeting in the first half of March, making a proposal about the [ dividend ] for last year. And I think this will be the time when you will hear about the actual dividend proposal for last year.

Robert Rethy

executive
#11

And next question from Tamas Pletser from Erste.

Tamas Pletser

analyst
#12

I got 3 questions. First of all, you mentioned in the presentation this contract with Serbia on the transmission of gas. Can you just elaborate a little bit on this, how this -- or when this missing contract will affect your results? Is it already in effect? Or what's the size of this potential revenue loss? That would be my first question. And my second one, I think Berislav Gaso mentioned the target for 2021 for production. Can you just repeat that one, please? And finally, on the petchem margins, in your outlook, you mentioned that you expect lower contribution from petchem in 2021 than in 2020. I wonder what are the reasons here. And how do you see the current petchem environment? What I see here that the margins are pretty high at the moment. So it doesn't somehow come together with your view of a lower contribution for petrochemicals in 2021.

József Simola

executive
#13

I mean on the gas part, I mean, as most of you is probably aware that historically, Hungary played an important part of the natural gas kind of supply of Serbia as kind of a transit corridor, but that no -- kind of essentially basically changed with the opening up of South Stream. And again, probably saw the news beginning of last year, end of this year. And essentially, that meant that the original contract, which I think goes back to the big decades where the oil and gas transportation company was part of this construction, because of the physical streams are changing, this actually was canceled by the Serbian party. That was a significant source of revenue. And in terms of the numbers, I indicated the guidance, the 25%, 30% lower. But I think the significant part of this, I would say, depending on the other factors, the majority of this 25%, 30% is coming from this change, which actually was very much to be expected at the time when the kind of South Stream was decided and was started to be built.

Tamas Pletser

analyst
#14

Okay. But is it already affecting you? So this revenue is already missing. So that was one reason of the four -- of the Q4 [ product ]...

József Simola

executive
#15

I mean I think it is a small impact on Q4. But as of Q1 or as of today, it's definitely impacting us. The 25%, 30% less already valid for this year.

Berislav Gaso

executive
#16

Okay. On the production guidance, maybe just to repeat again. Last year, we came in slightly above 120,000. In January now, we see 119,000 barrels per day. Yes, that's the corresponding slide. And in January, already the ACG contribution is 20,000 in entitlement, instead of 25,000. That is still somewhat compensate that Jan to Q4 change, still somewhat compensated by higher U.K., higher CEE. What we will see though, out through 2021 is the decline of our U.K. production of around 4,000 barrels, okay, from the 119,000. And then the rest is probably coming from -- or very likely to come from managed decline in CEE gases. That's why we feel it's prudent to guide you at 110,000 for the full year in 2021. Yes. And the last thing I said, there's no major development project that's coming onstream this year.

Gabriel Szabó

executive
#17

Yes, Gabriel Szabó speaking. So in terms of the petchem margin, you asked, so as I mentioned in my part, currently, the petchem margin is around EUR 600 per tonne. The other -- all year expectation is that the margin will get back to around EUR 300, EUR 400 per tonne. Of course, you can ask why the margin is currently so high. So there are several drivers behind. So one of the drivers is that there is still a strong demand for polymers. But the main trigger for this high petchem margin is that there are limited imports to Europe. So there are logistics constraints currently, and we see it reflected in this rather high margin. This year compared to the last year, we are going to have a turnaround. So last year, there were just minor ones. But from the coming weeks, we are going to have a turnaround both in Hungary and Slovakia. So all of those will affect the total EBITDA -- petchem EBITDA contribution for this year.

Robert Rethy

executive
#18

And then next question from Kian Huat from CSAM.

Kian Huat

analyst
#19

This is Kian Huat here. Congratulations on your result. I've got 2 questions over here. You mentioned in your PPT that you expect the CapEx to recover in 2021, still below where you initially guided pre-COVID for 2020. So can you please give us a sense of how this new CapEx guidance is going to be allocated among the different projects and the different segments? That's number one. Number two, I think we noticed that since the early -- since early part of January, the company seems to have stopped your share buyback program. So are you able to also provide an update on that part since, based on your disclosure, I believe you probably have bought somewhere slightly above 10 million shares, whereas your mandate allows you to purchase more than 40 million shares.

József Simola

executive
#20

Robbie, can you go for the CapEx allocation and then I do the purchase?

Robert Rethy

executive
#21

Yes. So CapEx, basically -- I mean, what you see is still lower than previous, like pre-COVID normal. I think that's pretty much reflecting what we want to address more like at the Capital Markets Day in the coming days, that savings on the business-as-usual or sustained CapEx, that we definitely want to bring down or already brought down and that should stay with us, this discipline, including like the complex maintenance spendings. So I think that we roughly, I think, the stay-in-business part of the CapEx will be around $1.1 billion. I mean that is distributed similarly as before between the various segments. And the rest shall go towards the transformational projects, where basically we have still 2 major big tickets -- big ticket projects ongoing, the polyol and the delayed coker as well as a couple of smaller things. So I think that's pretty much the CapEx, and share buyback is yours, Jóska.

József Simola

executive
#22

Yes. Thank you, Robbie. So the current number is around 1.3% of the shares. And I just like to recap what we already shared and emphasized, that the 5% there is no legal or moral obligation to reach this. And the decisions will be essentially kind of made based on the share price environment. And at the kind of kicking off of the program, we emphasize that this is an optional in terms of not necessarily reaching the 5%. And in a certain sense, as opportunistic, taking advantage of the -- I mean, that time, much lower share price than today. But along this note, I think, disclosing any more details of this, frankly speaking, would be a bit of counterproductive in terms of the overall objective of the program. So the program will remain open for the 12 months from the original decision, the 5% -- up to 5% target remains. But there may or may not be additional purchases in the remaining period of time.

Robert Rethy

executive
#23

And next from Henri Patricot, please, UBS.

Henri Patricot

analyst
#24

Three questions, please. The first one, I was interested to hear about the latest trends that you're seeing in terms of transport fuel demand in your main markets at the moment. And then a couple of questions around the 2021 guidance. Firstly, on Consumer Services, you mentioned that you expect some growth this year. But then when I look at the EBITDA [ breakout ], I don't see [ either ] Consumer Services in there. So is it the case that it just offsets the weaker Gas Midstream contribution for this year? And then on the Downstream side of things, can you perhaps quantify the impact of the expected maintenance for this year? Just maybe some guidance from the utilization rate in refining and lost production in petchem.

Gabriel Szabó

executive
#25

Yes. So if I may -- Gabriel Szabó speaking. So in terms of the fuel demand. So as you can see from 2020 figures, the -- we were behind the demand, around 50% behind 2019, so behind base. And what we see currently that still we are around this 50%. So what we assume that the refinery margins will not recover to pre-pandemic level. And yes, well, the -- still -- we see the overhang of inventories and the demand is still behind, and it will be resulted in the rather weak refinery margin. Our assumption is around $3, $4 per barrel. Currently, it's around $2. Yes, Robbie?

Robert Rethy

executive
#26

That's fine. I think in transport fuel demand, not much change in trends compared to the last few months of last year. No visible recovery yet from the second wave or now what is turning into a third wave, I think. And I think there was another one on the impact of the maintenance.

Gabriel Szabó

executive
#27

Yes, the impact of the maintenance. So frankly, I do not know the number by heart, but let me give a few minutes, and I will come back then with the answer.

Robert Rethy

executive
#28

Yes, but with maintenance in general, Henri, I mean, because these are things we know in advance. We are preparing well in advance. So yes, there will be volumes fallout, but that should not have a very significant impact on EBITDA as long as things are going as planned. And in terms of the plans, as Gabriel mentioned, I mean right now Rijeka is still down. And maybe start later, probably towards the end of the quarter. Then immediately, we will be doing -- starting some maintenance in Bratislava level at the end -- starting from the end of Q1, and continuing MET next quarter and also shutdowns in the Hungarian refinery. But as you know very well, our turnaround activities are a little bit different from, I don't know, some Western European sites. So we don't have like full site shutdowns or turnarounds, server units are under maintenance, and these are on a rotating basis will be happening this year. Certainly, heavier maintenance than last year. Last year, we hardly had anything.

Gabriel Szabó

executive
#29

So I cross checked, its -- yes, thank you very much, Robbie, for supporting me to answering the question. It's around 300 KTs, in general, the processing -- global processing because of the maintenance this year. Thank you very much for the question.

Robert Rethy

executive
#30

And I think the third one was the EBITDA [ page ], and then, yes, you're right, Henri. So the internal -- from 2020 to 2021, basically, the internal performance is basically roughly 0. So yes, definitely growth in consumer business. And even some growth in Downstream from internal performance, hopefully, some growth in higher volumes, but as József mentioned, headwind in Gas Midstream, and probably also some costs because of activity-related costs are coming -- probably coming back. So net-net and also lower -- somewhat lower volumes in Upstream. So net-net, it's going to be probably close to 0 on the internal. And I think I see Alex Burgansky still waiting for the opportunity to ask a question. Alex, go ahead, please.

Alexander Burgansky

analyst
#31

So can I just -- I have 3 questions, actually. So the first one, just a follow-up on the previous -- on the demand for fuel oils in your main geographies. You disclosed some of the market data in your Excel spreadsheet, but it is -- it comes with a lag. So we only have the third quarter numbers there. So I was wondering if you could maybe be a little bit more specific in terms of what you see on main products like diesel, gasoline and jet fuel in your main markets in the fourth quarter and maybe now. So I don't know if you can give us some numbers. So that's the first question. Then secondly, on the Upstream, so I appreciate the information about the EBITDA bridge that you've shown on Slide 27. But if you focus on operating profit, then there was a loss of $73 million in the fourth quarter. And I understand that $37 million of that came from the accounting tweak. But even adjusting for that, there is a loss of $36 million. So I was wondering if you could maybe share with us your views of how to think about operating profitability, so not on the EBITDA level, but on the operating profit level for the Upstream business, the oil price was around $45 per barrel. And there was an operating loss. So is there a breakeven oil price that you have in mind so that there could be an update in profits, and what that level is? So that's the second question. And the third question that there was also a mention of the receivables impairments in the KRI. Can you maybe provide more detail what that impairment was and how big and why?

Gabriel Szabó

executive
#32

Yes. Thank you very much, Alex. Gabriel Szabó speaking. Thank you very much for the questions. So I will try to answer the first one in terms of the fuel. So I mentioned the figures for the last year and even from January. Of course that we would like to optimize the run of our refineries, what Robbie mentioned. So currently, the Rijeka refinery is the economic shutdown, but we are going to restart it from the beginning of March. And we try to optimize the run also with the third-party sales. So you saw in the last quarter last year that we cut back the third-party sale by 95%. So this is the way how we are doing it. We assumed from March on the partial recovery of the demand. So we assume that, of course, in March, April, the agriculture season will start up and also the construction in general in the region will ramp up. So for that reason, we believe that the refinery margin, our headline margin, will increase from current $2 to $3, $4.

Robert Rethy

executive
#33

And Alex, with regard to Q4 demand in individual products, I will get back to you. But I mean, jet fuel, no surprise and no change, unfortunately. I mean you can see airlines stats. It's in line. I mean we are not really selling jet fuel too much. I mean ups and downs here and there depending how certain airlines are operating their fleet. And diesel, gasoline, for exact numbers, we will get back to you.

Gabriel Szabó

executive
#34

Just to conclude what Robbie said. Our Downstream is not really exposed to the jet fuel. So -- yes, but what we see that the recovery is still not there. But the exposure of MOL is not really high towards the jet fuel.

Berislav Gaso

executive
#35

Alex, thanks for the question on EBIT in Q4. Robbie, you will need to help me with the DD&A items that hit us specifically in Q4. I think outlook on operating profitability of the division, I'm less worried. But Robbie, if you could help with the detail, somewhat specifically happened in Q4.

Robert Rethy

executive
#36

I think, in general, 2 things to consider Alex, that in Q4, in terms of DD&A one-off, there was, I think, EUR 18 million only. So it was not a big thing, but there was an impairment. And I think the other thing is the ACG DD&A, which again, I would suggest we take it offline, but the DD&A [ degrees ] ACGs is very high for -- again, for some technical reason because we are depreciating the assets according to 1P, and then it depends what is booked as 1P reserves, so not too big basis is depreciation. But again, happy to discuss this separately.

Alexander Burgansky

analyst
#37

But does that mean that that will continue into the future years and so in the following periods at an oil price of, let's say, $45, $50 per barrel you would be expected to report an operating loss in the Upstream?

Robert Rethy

executive
#38

I think if there is no -- I mean, the ACG will change from -- I mean, as we advance and also as we book probably additional -- I mean, as we migrate from probable to proof. So that can change a lot. But as long as the current run rate of depreciation for ESG continues, I think, the EBIT breakeven -- I think, it's going to be a little lower than 40 [Technical Difficulty]. And I think there was a third question on the receivables impairment.

József Simola

executive
#39

Yes. I mean I can go for that. It's right. It's a bit of a -- it's Egypt and Shaikan but it's the bit of a technical thing because there is this 180-day rule, which actually those places doesn't mean that it's really bad after 180 days. So the chance is that we will have a kind of a reversal of this sometime. It's actually quite high. So Egypt, Shaikan, but as I said, more a technical item.

Alexander Burgansky

analyst
#40

What was the amount?

Robert Rethy

executive
#41

With Q4, it was Kurdistan and the Shaikan thing, and it was around $10 million P&L impact. Egypt happened in the third quarter, actually, similar -- rough magnitude was similar. And -- but the good news in Kurdistan is that there's already an agreement in place with the regional government that when oil price stays about USD 50, then they will gradually start repaying the debt or the outstanding receivables to the IOCs. And as we stand now with USD 65 oil price, then hopefully, this is going to be relatively fast. It's not a huge amount of receivables. There were 3 or 4 months then they didn't -- they couldn't pay actually, under extreme stress, but this is going to be resolved relatively soon. It's just accounting-wise, we have to impair as per our accounting policies. And I think there is one more -- and the last one from Tomasz Krukowski from Santander.

Tomasz Krukowski

analyst
#42

Just one. Could you please comment on the sustainability of your marketing margin in the Downstream and also of the fuel retail margins, because those are the elements which clearly allowed to offset declines in volumes last year? How do you expect those 2 things to behave while the volumes recover?

Gabriel Szabó

executive
#43

Yes. I mean, shortly -- Gabriel Szabó speaking, a very good question. So shortly, I believe that the sales margin are sustainable in this region. So we see the benefits of the landlock region and landlock markets.

Robert Rethy

executive
#44

Thanks for the question from retail side as well. I do expect that a minor decrease on the unit margin would happen. However, the volume growth will significantly overcompensate that. So obviously, we're viewing that fall back to the previous level of the unit margin. And actually, the -- one of the answer -- one reason for that, that now we have a significantly higher premium penetration and the premium sales are significantly improving from merchandising and marketing point of view as well. And that gives us a quite high confidence that the unit margins will stay on a high level.

József Simola

executive
#45

And just a general comment to the topic, that we should not forget that the crude prices are actually the most important driver for end-user prices. And of course, there is a natural hedge in this process. If crude prices are being low, then end-user prices are low. And of course, there is overall sensitivity for the other parts is kind of lower. On the other side, if crude prices get higher, of course, that's good for the Upstream business. So I think this overall price dynamic -- end-user price dynamic and margin dynamic, there is also the crude price factor, which I think it's -- in terms of the hedge impact, is -- at the end of the day, is beneficial for us.

Robert Rethy

executive
#46

Thank you very much. Thanks. And again, thanks for everyone for joining this call. If any questions we couldn't answer today, please just reach out to Investor Relations. Also, I will reach out to those of you who still want an answer. And I hope many of you will be joining us next week, next Wednesday on our Capital Markets Day, online Capital Markets Day. Thanks again, see you in 3 months' time. And well, for the quarterly call, hopefully, a few days' time, and have a nice day. Bye-bye.

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