Rubis (BYNN.F) Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Rubis Third Quarter 2025 Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to your host, Marc Jacquot, Managing Partner and Group CFO, to begin today's conference. Please go ahead.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for joining us today for Rubis' Q3 and 9 months 2025 trading update. I am Marc Jacquot, Managing Partner and Chief Financial Officer of Rubis, and I'm joined today by Clemence Mignot-Dupeyrot, Head of Investor Relations. Together, we'll walk you through Rubis' financial performance for the third quarter of 2025. I am on Slide 2. This third quarter was another one of robust operational performance delivered in a period of lower oil prices and adverse euro-USD environment. Before diving into the details, it's important to remind that revenue trends are not a meaningful indicator of Rubis' performance, as they primarily reflect movement in oil prices with no direct impact on our margins. What truly matters is our ability to manage inventories efficiently and capture value growth through disciplined pricing. And once again, this quarter, the group's solid operational execution more than offset the unfavorable impact of the weak U.S. dollar. From an operational standpoint, the Energy Distribution business delivered strong growth in both volumes and unit margins across all products. Volumes were up 6%, with overall unit margin increasing by 3%, leading to total margin increasing by 9% year-on-year. Let me highlight a few key drivers behind the solid performance, namely bitumen, Haiti and Europe. First, bitumen. Bitumen volumes were up 17% year-on-year. As in the previous quarter, this growth was driven by strong demand in Nigeria, where bitumen is increasingly preferred to concrete for road construction and by the consolidation of our operations in Angola. Gross margin increased by 33% year-on-year, supported by volume growth and a more favorable normalized pricing context in Nigeria. The second one is Haiti. Activity in Haiti continued to recover across both retail and C&I segments. An additional supply cost was integrated into the pricing formula, leading to higher return margins. On the C&I side, the initiatives we implemented to strengthen our supply mechanism and better manage risk have proven effective in supporting margins. And the third one is Europe. Our LPG operations in Europe were particularly dynamic this quarter when compared to last year with strong autogas demand in France and higher unit margins all across European markets. In renewable electricity production, our development is accelerating in line with our plans with the secure portfolio increasing by 25% compared to September 2024. During the quarter, we commissioned an additional 26 megawatts of capacity. Overall, those results confirm the strength of our diversified business model and position us well to deliver our 2025 objectives. Clemence, over to you for more details on the activity.

Thanks, Marc, and hi, everyone. Let's move on to Slide 3. As you can see on this slide, for the retail and marketing part of our business, volume increased by 6% and gross margin by 9%. Looking at the global picture product-by-product, starting with LPG, volume were up 3% and gross margin up 6%. As previously mentioned, activity was particularly strong in France in autogas, and that's also the case for Spain. In Switzerland, small bulk demand remained very dynamic in a favorable pricing environment. South Africa was also very strong on an upward trend, supported by a cold winter. Margins were stable there. On the fuel side, volumes were up 6% and gross margin up 7%. First, the retail activity. It was broadly stable in the Caribbean with variations from one country to another, all of them offsetting each other. In Africa, volume growth was really strong in Uganda, Rwanda and Zambia, where we rebranded a few service stations. On the margin side, you might remember that Kenya benefited from a second pricing adjustment for the pricing formula mid-July, and we fully benefited from it. In the C&I segment, volumes grew by 17% and margins by 26%, mainly driven by Barbados, where we signed a major contract to supply the island's power generation company. Haiti also contributed significantly. Marc already went through this. Demand was also quite strong in Guyana and Suriname this quarter. On the aviation side, volumes declined by 8%, but margins increased by 8% also. As we already mentioned last quarter, this is the result of a selective approach in Kenya where the management decided not to bid on certain airline tenders, which were not profitable enough. Activity in the Caribbean on the aviation side was still very dynamic. Bitumen, Marc already went through it, volumes up 17% and margins up 33%. Turning now to Support and Services. Revenue was down 17% to EUR 215 million over the quarter. This is mainly due to the earnings profile of the SARA refinery, which generated some margin volatility as is usually the case in Q3. Trading for third parties on the other hand, was quite dynamic in the Caribbean in Q3 '25. And in Africa, we had a few vessels under dry dock maintenance, which led to a lower bitumen shipping activity. For Photosol, the secured portfolio now reaches 1.3 gigawatts, up 25% compared to September '24, supported by the 26 megawatts, which were commissioned in Q3, as Marc mentioned before. Revenue amounted to EUR 21 million, up 19% from EUR 17 million in Q3 last year, and this is in line with the evolution of the assets in operation. In terms of development, the total development pipeline, meaning excluding the secured portfolio now stands at 5.8 gigawatts, of which around [ 15% ] related to projects outside of France.

Thank you, Clemence. And moving on Slide 4. To conclude, the third quarter was operationally slightly better than we anticipated. As expected, our results were impacted negatively by euro-U.S. dollar translation effects, around EUR 7 million versus last year and EUR 14 million versus our guidance in terms of gross margin. Despite this, the group demonstrated its ability to deliver strong results in the face of currency and market headwinds. Our multi-country, multiproduct model continues to prove its strength and resilience, consistently driving performance across all our businesses. With solid execution, robust fundamentals and a clear strategic road map, we are confident that this positive momentum will continue through the final quarter. We, therefore, reaffirm our full year EBITDA guidance expected to range between EUR 710 million and EUR 760 million. We thank you for your attention, and Clemence and I are now happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions]

We have a first question from Emmanuel Matot at ODDO BHF, who is asking exposure to Jamaica and the situation in that country following the hurricane. Second question is about the impact of the crew in Madagascar on our business.

Thank you, Emmanuel, for your question. So let's start with Jamaica. First of all, we have 78 people working in Jamaica, and we are happy to share with you that all of them are sound and safe. As a reminder, Jamaica retail and marketing represented 5% of total group EBITDA in 2024. We have there 49 service stations. And as of yesterday, 75% of them were operational. 4 sites were partially operational, and 8 sites were not operational. They were flooded or under the mud. [indiscernible] and our headquarter are back in operations, loadings resumed within 1 day and product was delivered to our retail sites and our strategic customers. So what we can say is that in Jamaica, we continue to assess the situation. Of course, rebuilding our service station will take some time. Our teams are fully mobilized to ensure the continuity of operation and the service of our customers. And we are covered by insurance for that type of claim with some deductibles that we need to evaluate more precisely. Now talking about Madagascar. You know the political context in Madagascar was pretty tense with movement initiated by the generation bid, [indiscernible] water and power cuts, inflation, unemployment and [indiscernible] the protest [indiscernible] place end of September and early October, but we can say that they have now calm down after the President was [ instituted ] and the new temporary transition military government is being put in place. The new government approved the 2026 budget with no negative impact identified for operations in the country. Also during the protest, no loss was incurred. We took all the measures needed to ensure the safety of our employees and infrastructure when event occurred. The only impact we see so far is the shortfall related to a few days of closures of some of our operations, but it is in some very specific zones and the impact is quite limited. Of course, we will monitor closely the evolution of the political situation there.

[Operator Instructions]

We have another online question from Emmanuel Matot, who is asking, why not tighten your EBITDA 2025 guidance? Is the upper end of the guidance still achievable despite the weakening of the dollar?

Emmanuel, our Q3 is indeed a very strong one, and we are confident in reaching our guidance. Keep in mind that about 2/3 of our business is exposed to U.S. dollar directly or indirectly and the translation effect has an impact on our EBITDA. And we monitor this evolution precisely. And that's why we consider that it was not relevant to update the 2025 guidance that we keep as it is.

We have a question from Nicolas Royot, Portzamparc, who is asking, could you please provide an update on the Creil solar site and its commissioning date? Will it be done all at once or gradually? The answer to this question, Nicolas, is it is done gradually by tranches. Already some tranches were commissioned since February 2025. We have around half of the Creil plant, which is in operation. Another question from Jean-Luc Romain at CIC Market Solutions. Congratulations on Haiti improvements compared to pretravel usual business and margin, how much would your profits need to increase to go back to usual levels?

Jean-Luc, thank you for your congratulations. But -- Haiti the positive effect we have related to Haiti compared to last quarter was amounting, I would say, to EUR 5 million over the quarter. We still have a long path to go back to the initial performance because the situation in the country is still very trouble, but we are learning how to navigate in this environment. But as long as the security situation remains the same, we will not be back to the level of 5 years ago, I would say.

[Operator Instructions]

It seems that you have no further questions. So we thank you for your attention. And...

We will be on the road today -- tomorrow in Paris with Bernstein, and we remain available by phone or e-mail to organize any type of meeting. Thanks a lot.

Thank you.