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

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to MOL's Q1 2025 Results Conference Call. My name is Marton Teremi, Head of Investor Relations. The managers representing MOL on today's call are Dr. György Bacsa, Executive Vice President, Group Strategic Operations and Corporate Development; Dr. Ákos Székely, Senior Vice President of Group Planning and Reporting; Mr. Zsombor Marton, Executive Vice President of Upstream; Mr. Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream; Mr. Péter Ratatics, Executive Vice President of Consumer Services; and Mr. Zsolt Petho, Chief -- CEO 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, and we will be sharing the slides in Teams too. [Operator Instructions] I'd also like to draw your attention to the cautionary statement on Slide #2. And now we can start the content part with Dr. György Bacsa taking us through the highlights of the quarter.

Good morning, everyone. Let me start how we performed during the first quarter of 2025 in light of our annual guidance. As you can read it on the title, 2025 guidance is on track so far. However, as the soft title is also self-explanatory, risks to meet guidance have already increased. So the first quarter of the year is not the high season for our industry. But when we look at the profit before tax and the EBITDA results, we have been able to achieve more than 1/4 of our annual guidance. So we are confident to say that we are in line with our plans. We are on track. So on all items, including the volumetric guidances, we met our targets, and the internal performance is solid. We would like to emphasize here 2 things. So besides as I mentioned that we are in line with our plans and we have good internal performance, however, the external environment became even more challenging, even more volatile, and the predictability of the future is less and less certain. So uncertainty has risen to a level that makes the external conditions for the rest of the year look materially more weaker than we anticipated when we set the annual guidance in the beginning of the year. So we still believe and we emphasize, and that's why we haven't changed our 2025 guidance. So we still believe that these annual guidance figures are achievable. So -- but we just wanted to reconfirm that the achievement of it is not within the usual -- business-as-usual comfort zone. So it's getting more and more challenging. So let's go to the next slide. So if we focus more closely on the results of the first quarter, here, we already mentioned that the profit before tax and the Clean CCS EBITDA have both increased visibly year-over-year. The profit before tax is up by 23%. The Clean CCS EBITDA is up by 16% year-on-year. The Upstream EBITDA grew by 15% year-on-year. The production remained at high levels, and the natural gas price increased. The Downstream is up by 2%, but the refinery margin dropped. Petchem margins are still very low. However, the utilization improved. The Consumer Services EBITDA is up by 10% year-on-year as a result of both fuel and nonfuel margin expansion. Circular Economy Services EBITDA amounted to $12 million, our underlying performance is, however, still in the negative territory. Some operational and other developments to be highlighted. In the E&P portfolio, we closed the acquisition of the Endrod and the facilities in the adjacent fields in the first quarter of this year. We had our AGM on 24th of April, where the general meeting approved HUF 275 dividend payment for year, approximately per share. Four mining concessions were awarded to MOL, 2 we won in a joint venture with Turkish Petroleum. We expect that our Upstream cooperation will extend in the future as well. So if we go to the TRIR and the ESG results, I also have to emphasize that we are still below the tolerable limit of 1.3. So the TRIR in the first quarter amounted at 1.22. It is a result of more disciplined and safety-conscious behavior at the workplaces. We launched several programs to increase the awareness of our employees to become more conscious and compliant with the internal disciplines. However, I have to also mention here that some unfortunate events happened in our operation, even in Hungary as well where there was a deliberate breach of the rules, and the fatality happened in the Danube refinery. It's a very sad, and we are very sorry for this loss. And I think that it just strengthened our commitment to the HSE awareness and the HSE disciplines. Regarding the sustainability report, we usually do not highlight that we issued another sustainability report or because we now consider the business as usual. However, this time, I have to mention that this report is the first one that we complied fully in compliance with the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting directive for the first time. It sets a very high bar for transparency and improved comparability across peers. The report includes a detailed climate transition plan, a double materiality assessment covering ESG impacts, risk and opportunities, and is supported by much stricter external assurances. So we would like to enhance our stakeholder confidence, but also -- we are also strengthening our full compliance with the regulatory framework that we are working with. Now I would like to give the floor to Dr. Ákos Székely.

Thank you, György. Let's start with the EBITDA evolution of MOL's first quarter results. As usual, the drivers of key segments will be covered in detail by the head of each segment. Let me comment on 3 areas that they won't cover. First, the Gas Midstream results, while we see real quite robust performance at USD 67 million, but we were lower than a year ago. Demand in the market remains strong, and the transmission volumes were up both on the domestic and export markets. However, lower regulated price level we faced and clearly, the OpEx inflation represented a pressure on EBITDA. The Corporate and Other segment and the Intersegment elimination are aggregated on the chart, but let me talk about them separately. Corporate and Other segment amounted to USD 44 million of negative Clean EBITDA, in other words, OpEx, which means a slight improvement of roughly $4 million compared to a year ago. The improvement was due to a different timing of certain corporate expenditures. Therefore, I would consider it as a temporary saving. While on an underlying level, corporate expenses continue to be under inflation pressure as well. The Intersegment elimination had a positive contribution to EBITDA of USD 22 million due to the intersegmental transfers taking place at lower oil and gas prices, which more than offset the effect of build of own produced crude oil inventory during the quarter. Let's talk about the CapEx. The CapEx amounted to USD 190 million in the first quarter of '25, mainly due to the lower sustained type of CapEx. While Q1 usually seasonally the lowest among 4 quarters, organic CapEx is lower by 49% year-on-year. Let me first note that we have changed the methodology, how we categorize organic CapEx, as presented at the top right chart. We previously used a much more narrow definition, so-called transformational CapEx that included the top few projects. Starting from this quarter, having more clearance and transparency, we employ a so-called growth and efficiency CapEx definition. This is also more in line with our strategy. All investment spending that directly contributes to the growth of business or the efficiency of our operation, as well as crude diversification are considered in the future in this category. All other CapEx, which aim at maintaining the current level of production is to be categorized as sustained CapEx. One note, let me comment on the development of organic CapEx. Well, the decrease was predominantly driven by much less turnarounds in Downstream than the last year, bringing sustained type CapEx over by roughly USD 70 million year-on-year. Growth and efficiency CapEx was also lower as some of the turnarounds allow for efficiency enhancements projects to be accelerated last year, but also because simply the scheduling of key ongoing project is set for later during the year. Also, I just would like to draw your attention that some of the larger ticket transformational CapEx items were completed in 2024. I just would like to mention 2 important ones, the polyol and the infrastructure behind, and also the deposit refund system in the Circular Economy segment. While inorganic CapEx, already mentioned by György, the Endrod acquisition was closed in the first quarter and makes up the most of the USD 29 million you might see in the chart. Well, the Clean CCS EBITDA of USD 833 million in the first quarter of '25 translated to a net income of USD 393 million. Regarding the components of the bridge, let me talk about the course of next 2 slides. The Clean CCS effect marked a small negative figure of USD 13 million in the first quarter. Oil price remained volatile and overall led to a negative CCS adjustment, which was partially mitigated by the effect of cleaning of the CO2 cost. DD&A came at USD 337 million, while no surprise in the first quarter of '25, 16% up year-on-year, while DD&A has been on an increasing trend due to the higher amortizable asset base for the group, affecting all segments to some degree. Also, the net financial gain was USD 23 million. This is no surprise for us, while the HUF strengthened 2% against the euro and 6% against U.S. dollars. Therefore, it is kind of as expected result. Income from associates amounted to USD 40 million, mainly driven by the one-off item resulting from the divestment of more stake in ENEOS. We already announced in November. However, it was closed in January, and also the contribution from Pearl operation and the positive effect of U.S. dollar strength and [indiscernible] production Upstream asset. And lastly, income tax was at USD 134 million in the first quarter, with an effective rate marking at 25%, which can be considered as a long-run average for the group. This figure includes tax in Slovakia, [indiscernible] starting from this year, which is around $15 million impact during the quarter. Otherwise, nothing usual to be discussed or to be addressed. Let me turn how the cash flow evolved during the quarter. The net working capital weigh on cash flow with the build of the USD 237 million in the first quarter, while this is mostly due to the seasonality, inventory started to be stocked in the beginning of the year. This is usually happening due to the fact that the driving season is ahead of us, and also the usual maintenance period over the summer. At the same time, sales was also relatively strong, especially in Downstream, and also the invoices for CapEx-related spending in Q4, which is usually the strongest in terms of CapEx, were settled in the first quarter, contributing to a working capital build. Overall, operating cash flow reached USD 470 million, covering organic CapEx of $160 million and roughly half of the upcoming dividend payment. Finally, let's look at the debt position of the group. In nominal terms, the debt level has been rather stable in the past several quarters, with the total nominal amount hovering around USD 2 billion. This is also true for the first quarter of '25, with the higher EBITDA lowering to the net debt of EBITDA ratio of 0.64. Again, there is some seasonality to this development as payment upcoming in the middle of the year. While I just would like to mention the income taxes payment and also the dividend, which obviously the weigh on cash flows. Overall, we expect to remain comfortable with the 1 net debt-to-EBITDA ratio level threshold guidance as it provides sufficient headroom for the group. And after summarizing the financials, I would like to hand over to Gabriel to discuss the Downstream performance.

Thank you very much, Ákos. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. So let me present the results of Downstream. Maybe get to the first slide, please. Thank you very much. So in the first quarter, we delivered a flattish result compared to base. But once we take into consideration a negative macro environment, so in terms of refining margin, the macro was weaker by $6 per barrel in terms of petchem, more than EUR 60 per tonne. So the delivery of -- this flattish delivery, which I mentioned, was really a good performance. In terms of processing, we kept all our refining and petchem assets running compared to the base when we had some difficulties last year in January, February, and then in March, several of our production units went to the turnaround there. The sales performance was really good this year, although the growth of the fuel demand seems to stall or there is even a slight decrease in some markets, as you can read in Slovakia and Croatia, mainly in diesel, but also in our core markets as Austria or Slovenia. The petchem industry is still at the bottom of the cycle, where the weak demand coupled with the relatively high energy prices, did not support any bounce back from the low-margin area, and this is also reflected still in the negative result. So now let me turn your focus to the macro environment. As I mentioned, there is a material decrease year-on-year in both refining and petchem. Refining margin stabilized around $4 per barrel in the last 8, 9 months, and the prospect of global economy does not support any significant change there. The Brent euro spread is also stabilized, or where we do not see a shift towards higher discounts, even though there were some sanctions for the shadow fleet for the Russian crude there, but they are not really reflected in the higher discounts. Regarding petrochemical, there is no improvement during the reported period, the margins were still weak at the beginning of the year. Currently, though we see some improvement both in refining and petchem, thanks to the lower gas prices. And on my last slide, we see the comparison quarter-to-quarter. The negative impact of macro environment compared to basis clearly seen in both refining and petrochemicals. So, in refining, we see more than $200 million negative impact and in petchem, $41 million. In large extent, it was compensated by really excellent sales performance, thanks to the high utilization of our assets, hence, our own product availability. In the category other, we can see the extraordinary impact of lower taxation, where there was accounted a $68 million revenue tax last year. So, all in all, in spite of the negative macro environment, I believe a very solid performance of the Downstream. And with this, let me invite Péter to present the Consumer Services result. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Gabriel, and good morning to everyone. Consumer Services recorded a quarter of a healthy looking 10% growth in the beginning of 2025. However, the drivers of growth are different from earlier periods as the fuel side of the business also showed strength while nonfuel margins continue to rise. I will discuss the drivers of these changes on the next slides in more details. So, let me just mention here 2 more technical elements impacting our results. Regarding the OpEx, it is evident that we continue to be under pressure from wage and also the general inflationary environment, which negative effect we could mitigate to $4 million by a conscious approach of productivity efforts and the cost consciousness. But let me also note here several one-off items that altogether impacted year-on-year the results dynamically. And most of these one-off items impacted the base for the last year first quarter and this year first quarter is more closer to the real sustained business operation. So, in the base period of the first quarter last year, we closed the sale of several fuel stations, recording gains amounting to $56 million. You may remember that was the Hungarian and Slovakian service station handover to Orlen as part of the Polish acquisition. Also, in the base period, we booked $27 million of revenue-based extra tax in Hungary, which ceased to exist this year. So that was a negative effect in the first quarter last year, but it's more positive for this year. And finally, there was a merger of our fleet management arm. We acquired the Mercarius fleet operating companies here in Hungary. And in the base, obviously, there were no numbers. So that's why throughout the whole year this year, we will put the acquisition impact into the one-off column, and we will report it latter this year. So, all in all, the one-off effects altogether had $21 million of negative impact for our first quarter EBITDA this year compared to the last year first quarter EBITDA. And now if we turn the page to the fuel, I will explain more deeper the volume and the throughput, where I still see that we were able to maintain a relative stability. So, on the throughput per site, the performance is on the same level on the par level to the base period. However, on the margin side, we were able to manage better. Actually, there were 2 countries that allowed for beneficial unit margin development in the first quarter, Romania and Croatia, namely. In Romania, the wholesale market changed significantly since the earlier Ukrainian additional demand was normalized and the Romanian market itself was long on fuel products that helped us to source in on a cheaper price, and the retail margin expanded. While in Croatia, we have our margin regulation by the government. But also, they recognized a significant cost improvement, mainly on the minimum wage increases, and that's why they allowed a larger or higher unit margin realization. Moreover, as we have been mentioning from time to time, the premium fuel share has been also increasing gradually over the past several years, and that's part of our long-term strategy to focus more on the premium customers, premium products, and also the value what can come out from these products. Now we can turn to the last slide from my division, which is the nonfuel business performance. Nonfuel turnover and the margin evolved in the first quarter. Overall, we see that the dynamics is still positive but slowed compared to the earlier period, in line with the slowdown of the consumption and the transaction numbers. However, still, it's a positive. So, the turnover grew by 3% across the network and the margin grew or rose still rapidly by 6% in total. However, if you take out the handover of those stations, what I already mentioned, the site-by-site or the site comparison actually grew by 8%, which we still consider as a very healthy organic growth. And with that, I will hand over the word to József Molnár. Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. So the Upstream EBITDA performance amounted to $317 million in the first quarter of '25, up both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. And looking at the price environment, oil and especially the gas prices evolved favorably during the quarter, which overall had a notable positive impact on our financials. There were a few technical factors that contributed to results in the first quarter, and let me get those out of the way right now. So firstly, there was a recategorization of oilfield services companies to Upstream from the Corporate segment starting from 1st of January. This had a positive EBITDA effect of $7 million. Secondly, the Endrod acquisition financially contributing to results since 1st of January supported our EBITDA to a magnitude of $4 million. And thirdly, there was only 1 ACG cargo delivered in the first quarter of '25 instead of the usual 2 cargoes, and that also weighed on our results. Moving on to the development of the unit profit and free cash flow realization. There is a visible improvement in the first quarter. Better cash flow realization is partly due to gas prices rising more than oil prices, and partly also because of the lower amount of organic investments during the quarter. And let me also note that while we have comfortably met our $20 per barrel minimum unit free cash flow we set out in our strategy, the current price trends can pose really a risk to that target. Now we move to the changes quarter-on-quarter, the EBITDA, and year-on-year. The components of the change mostly reflect my earlier messages, but let's go one by one. So, on the quarter-on-quarter view, there is a positive price effect, but negative volume effect due to lower production and the ACG cargo. Exploration expenses turned lower as a result of the beginning-of-the-year scheduling, while lifting costs are materially lower than in the fourth quarter due to a one-off revision of certain OpEx items. The other component also driven by one-off effects, most notably the field abandonment provisions in the base period, amounting to $7 million, and then again, the Endrod acquisition EBITDA of $4 million. Year-on-year, the reasons behind the positive price effect and the negative volume effect are the same as in the quarter-on-quarter. Lifting costs were higher by $8 million, in line with the higher maintenance and energy cost of production. Regarding other factors, the base period was affected by higher impairments on the Shaikan assets as well as the revenue-based tax of $15 million last year. So now we move to the production levels. The first quarter production levels was at 93,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which is really at the midpoint of our annual guidance of 92,000 to 94,000. And looking at individual assets, production in Hungary decreased somewhat, mainly due to temporary outages. But also let me note that 2 assets have been added to our portfolio in Hungary. The Som-8 well started operation and already contributed to production in the first quarter. This Somogysámson field and the first well there is currently producing 1,400 barrels of oil, and we expect to spud the second well in the field already in May. The other asset is the acquisition of the previously mentioned Endrod fields, which will also add extra barrels starting from the second quarter. And we will also start drilling the first shallow gas prospect in this area as well before the year-end. In Croatia, we have been facing stronger natural decline in production levels than anticipated. However, the production in the international portfolio remained stable compared to the previous quarter. In the Kurdistan region of Iraq at Shaikan, the maintenance works ended and the production levels returned to the normal. In Azerbaijan, the ACG production continues to be driven by natural decline and the economics of the entitlement share. This time, higher oil prices resulted in lower entitlement share. In Pakistan, the production remained constrained due to logistic bottlenecks at the transmission system operator. And just a reflection on the current conflict between Pakistan and India, our sites are far from the Kashmir area, that is in the center of the latest violence. And for now, we don't see that there is a material risk of the Kashmir conflict impacting most Pakistan operations, but we are following the situation closely and reanalyzing the risk factors more frequently. I also would like to highlight that there were technical issues in Kazakhstan, due to which we had to shut down 2 wells temporarily, that resulted in the lower production levels in the first quarter. The situation was mitigated by the end of the quarter, and now we are also producing with the previous 5 wells. Going forward, we remain confident that the annual production will be between our guidance of 92,000 to 94,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by the year-end. And finally, let us look at the evolution of the unit OpEx and the CapEx. Looking at the OpEx, as we discussed during the previous call, there was a CapEx OpEx revision in the fourth quarter of '24, which also impacted the first quarter of '25 marginally. The underlying trends, if we are looking at pro forma figures, then the OpEx inflation has been mitigated and we have just a circa 1% to 2% year-over-year increment. Regarding the CapEx, '25 started slower than '24, resulting in a year-over-year decrease of 16%. The ACG offshore platform investment in Azerbaijan in the base period and less front-loaded work schedules both contributed to the decrease of our CapEx. Regarding our sustainability-led investments, let me highlight that we have also made a good progress with the geothermal investment in Croatia because we started to drill, spudded the first well in the Lešcan block. And with that, I would like to give the floor to Zsolt to discuss the Circular Economy Services financials.

Thank you very much, József Molnár, and good morning, everybody. Circular Economy Services reached $12 million EBITDA in the first quarter of 2025. I can state that there are one-off items, positive one-off items, in this quarter. So, without those one-off items, it's close to 0. But I would like to emphasize again as several times previously that as we are in a start-up mode, there is high volatility and low predictability of the financials, just as shown this quarter, for example, as one-off items can influence the finance result very much such just like external environment like euro-HUF exchange rate or the product prices. On the other hand, compared to the base, it's a promising result for the first quarter. We already see benefits of our cost decreasing efforts and also some positive income on the previous investments. And talking about investments, I would like to inform you that we started the permitting process of a waste-to-energy plant. That's the official name, which is an incinerator, practically. And with this permitting process, we already announced that it will be in Százhalombatta, maximizing the synergies and supply steam and electricity to our own refinery. And thank you very much. With that, I would like to give back the word to Marton.

Thank you very much, gentlemen. So that completes the formal part of our presentation. We would like to now open the floor for the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] Hey, Anna, please go ahead.

I have several questions. First, on the Upstream regarding the recent licenses awarded, what potential contribution to the production would you expect from those? The second one would be on new Slovakia tax. Should we expect the USD 15 million as the normalized level, quarter-to-quarter? So -- or it will be volatile? And then for the petchem margin, given that we see a rebound quarter-to-date, would you expect that petchem's EBITDA could return to black in second quarter?

Thank you very much. I would like to invite Zsombor to answer first question -- to answer the first question.

So the recent 4 licenses, which MOL was awarded 2 licenses out of the 4 together with Turkish Petroleum and 2 other licenses, MOL won alone. These are exploration licenses where we will start seismic acquisition probably already this year, and we would expect production only from '27 earliest. And this is similar to other MOL-operated fields, but it is too early yet to say.

The next question is about the Slovakian taxation. Just to give you a couple of information regarding information. This is so-called special regulated areas that has been extended to manufacturing petroleum products. So Slovakia is affected by this regulation as of 1st of January. The special levy is based on profit before tax, and there is a taxation rate of 2.5% per month, so 30% per annum. However, there is an adjustment multiplier behind to be applied well based on the regulated activity. Therefore, at the moment, we calculate that, yes, how you indicated that this is a normalized level quarter-to-quarter. Altogether, yearly, at the moment, we expect having roughly $50 million to $60 million for the entire year.

Thank you. And I would like to ask Gabriel to answer the other one.

Thank you very much. Yes. So as we can see in the graph, so there is positive trend in terms of the petchem margin recorded in April. So it was just below EUR 300 actually. But today, I'm just checking the figure. This is around EUR 265. So the positive trend in the margin, petchem margin, is a reflection of the decreased gas prices. So to answer your question in one sentence is that for May, I still would not expect a positive result as one of our crackers in Tiszaújváros went to the turnaround there. So we will not process the max capacity. But let's see. So I hope that in 3 months when we meet, I can expect that it can be around 0, the result. Thank you very much.

Oleg Galbur, please go ahead.

I have several questions, and I'll take them segment by segment. So starting with the Upstream. The question is regarding your full year guidance of 92 to 94 KBOE per day production. I wonder where do you see the highest risk of either coming on the lower end of production or the upside risk coming to the highest end of -- or the high end of production? That would be my first question. In the Downstream, you had quite a good utilization in the first quarter. Could you please remind us what are the planned maintenance for the rest of the year? And what level of capacity utilization would you expect for the remaining few quarters in comparison to 2024? In Consumer Services, you mentioned there are some one-off costs, which would be booked through the rest of the year. Could you please quantify those on a quarterly basis or what is the remaining part for the 3 quarters of the year? And one clarification, if I understood correctly, you said that the expected effective income tax should come at the level of 25% this year, and that would be the run rate in the long term. Is that correct?

Jó-Molnár, please go ahead with the Upstream question first.

Okay. So regarding our target, we see Central Eastern Europe, Hungarian and Croatian assets are as they are mature assets that maybe higher watering out can affect a downside risk to our operations as always. And higher upside could be also in both of these countries where if there is exploration success, and we are targeting always very quick gas to market and oil to market. So the target is to have the first gas first oil as quick as possible for the exploration targets, and that brings our upside to the portfolio.

Thank you, Gabriel, if you could go with the Downstream question.

Yes. Thank you very much. So this year, excuse me, we do not expect a heavy turnaround year. So last year, there was a really major turnaround in Slovnaft when the plant was down for roughly 2 months. This year, we expect the mentioned steam cracker shutdown for 1 month. And then we expect another turnaround in Százhalombatta where we put the alkylation, the desulfurization FCC into the turnaround. In terms of the total processing, so the guidance is still valid. We presented 12 million tonnes. So I would keep myself to this guidance. Thank you.

Thank you. And Péter, if you could go ahead with the question.

Yes, the one-off items. So as I mentioned, the sale of -- or the income behind the sale of the service stations in Hungary and Slovakia that was just impacting the first quarter, just as the revenue base tax last year, that was also impacting the first quarter. And the only one-off items, what you can count through the whole year and every quarter is the acquisition impact of the fleet operation company. And the quarterly EBITDA impact of that would be around $13 million.

13, 1-3?

Yes, correct.

And finally, the clarification about the effective tax rate. Yes, well, I think, yes, you're right. This is around 25%. Well, obviously, this was delayed due to several factors such as the internal makeup of the taxation and while quarter-by-quarter it's different, but I think you can calculate with the 25%. At the moment, this is the figure which we're foreseeing as a good estimation.

Tamas Pletser, please go ahead.

Two questions from my side, both actually concerning the Downstream operations. First of all, on the petchem margin upside, do you see this upside in the second quarter solely due to the lower gas prices? Or do you see any demand impact? And also kind of a follow-up on here. What is the ramp-up, or how does the ramp-up of your polyol unit looks like? And what are the first results over here? And my second question is a little bit the reconciliation of the first quarter Downstream profit. Is it only the volumes and the revenue-based tax, which explained the upside of your results? Because basically, the margins were suggesting slightly lower picture for this quarter. And I was surprised why your Downstream was so strong in this quarter.

Yes. Thank you, Tamas. So regarding polyol, so we are at the end of hot commissioning. So still, there are a few months to -- for the performance guarantee measures period. So out of -- 3 out of 4 process units are running on spec. We also sold first propylene glycol and polyol molecules. So of course, that we can then, and probably that would be also a question when we can expect a positive result of the polyol. So as mentioned last time, it's coming next year. Yes, so we are -- there is a steady progress. So step by step, we are doing all the commissioning and start-up works there. In terms of the results, why it's so good, yes. So as I mentioned, this is a higher processing. So on the first slide, you had a chance to see that the market was mainly covered or in a higher extent covered from our own production. So on the graph, as I remember, there was plus 1 million covered from our own production, which, of course, has its significant positive impact on the EBITDA. And I would also stress an extra effort which our sales guys put to this performance.

Jonathan, please go ahead.

I have a few questions about Downstream. First on fuel retail. Could you tell us what's the like average market fuel margin, which the network generates if we exclude the revenue taxation just across the markets? And is it fair to say that, that margin has increased versus where it was like maybe 5 years ago? This is my first question. Secondly, I think you mentioned during the presentation that there was some tightness in the Romanian market fuel supply, which has affected your previous quarters and then that has reversed. Could you please elaborate like on the mechanics of that, how it works, why Ukraine is affecting this? And generally speaking, my last question is about how you think about impact on Downstream fuel markets and petchem maybe if there's a ceasefire and peace in Ukraine. Would there be any huge impact on your operations?

Yes. Thank you. So I will try to answer the first and the last question, and I will pass over to Péter to this Romanian question. So in terms of the margin, I would not go to such a detail. I'm sorry, but I would not disclose the margins, and there are sensitive data there. Regarding your last question, so everybody hopes for a ceasefire. And definitely, it would have for me the positive impact, which will be reflected mainly in the general social emotion of the society that the war is over. And then I believe that the rebound or rebuilding the whole Ukrainian economy it can have a positive impact to our business as well. And Péter, would you please answer the question related to Romania?

Yes, I will try, but would you be so kind to repeat the question because the line was a bit broken.

Yes. Sorry. So I think you mentioned during the presentation that in some of the previous periods, there was some tightness in fuel supply mainly due to Ukraine. And I didn't quite understand how the mechanics of that worked and then you said that, that has reversed. So could you please elaborate on that?

Yes. Well, it's actually the -- last year, throughout last year, and even before that, we experienced quite a high demand from Ukraine. And the majority supply route to the Ukrainian demand was through on the Romanian market. And actually, that demand decreased. That's why actually the additional volumes and the supply channels, which were built up during the past period that still exists and that stayed in Romania. And that's why actually Romania is now quite long with fuel products. So it means that there is an oversupply at the current moment on the Romanian market. All the refineries are working. The sea supply is also working. And that's why the retail -- Romanian local retail players, just like we, can purchase and can supply our network on a cheaper price parity, which means that the retail unit margins are enlarged in the past first quarter, and that's what we see even currently. I hope it answers the question.

Yes.

Thank you and Giuseppe, please go ahead.

We have 2, if we may. First one is on guidance. You said that, of course, now with the higher uncertainty around the macro environment and the geopolitical situation, there is more risks. But we were wondering on a segment-by-segment basis, where do you see the higher downside or upside risk? And then regarding Circular Economy Services, if you could tell us what the adjusted EBITDA would be for this quarter? And then like we appreciate that it's on start-up mode, but if you could give us more color on profitability for 2025 and maybe on next year as well.

Thank you, Giuseppe. Regarding the guidance, what I want to emphasize that our guidance is maintained. So definitely, it also means that the downside risk is not outweighing the upside potential. So we still consider it as a conservative and achievable guidance. However, the risk and uncertainties increased on, I would say, on all aspects. One on the economy side. So regarding the demand side, whether there is a recovery in most of our consumer demand industrial markets in Europe, including German economy, including chemicals, including automotive, and so on, and construction. The other one is, of course, you see also considering the macro or the economic figures, the hydrocarbon prices. So you could see volatility both in crude and gas pricing, driven by supply-demand issues, but also driven by political arrangements or the well-known global quartile arrangements in these ones, which is definitely driving our Upstream results and could affect our Upstream results. I think this is something which is the usual macro volatility in all segments. And I also would like to emphasize the regulatory uncertainties around us. So definitely, that's what we highlighted. So EU regulatory, U.S. regulatory, local fiscal issues, and so on. And so this is something that we are closely monitoring. We don't say that it's already affecting or amending our goals. We just would like to highlight that in the beginning of the year, we haven't anticipated all of these. We could have hoped of some smoother or faster positive development. But all in all, we would like to emphasize that all guidance in all the segments are still solid and achievable.

Thank you. And György, please go ahead with the answers to the CES question.

Yes. Okay. So without the one-off item, the EBITDA is minus USD 3 million. And I wouldn't go into any prediction as, first of all, I have and I hope that I have impact on the internal issues on cost reduction and doing smart investments. But there is also another part where we are continuously and very diligently lobbying for the government on the regulatory fees. So that's how it will go and how successful we will be, that's even less predictable than all the other factors.

Thank you very much. Mihály Gajda, please go ahead with your question.

Can you hear me well?

Yes.

I just have 2 small questions on your Turkish operations, actually. I just wanted to ask if you can give us an update on the reopening of the ITP and also on potential changes in the remuneration of the local oil sales given discussions between the federal Iraqi government and the KRG.

So the export pipeline between Turkey and Iraq has been closed more than 2 years now. So our general answer is that we are following this situation closely, and we just do recognize that the sites have come closer together right now, but it can change any time. And there is still not a definite conclusion what we can make about the future. I think we are also closely monitoring the situation. Currently, domestic sales is ongoing, and this is not affecting our production operations; however, resulting in slightly lower margins for the sales.

You mean slightly lower margins recently or since the closing of the ITP?

So -- after like 2 months in '23 March when the pipeline was closed, domestic sales started. And for now 2 years, it is continuously ongoing.

I can see that there is a question on the Teams chat from Michael, would that -- would Jo Bach's previous answer comply with to your question? Would that be okay? Okay. Let's hope so. I mean it was a question about the guidance, and Mr. Bacsa answered it quite adequately. So with that, we would like to close the session. Thank you very much for your attendance. And please do reach out to Investor Relations if you have anything to follow up with. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.