The company raised its quarterly dividend to $0.60 per ADS, up 5.3% from $0.585 per ADS, perhaps to help soothe investors who have to deal with some less-than-lovely numbers.
BP’s warned at the end of the second quarter that further international sanctions against Russia could have a material effect on the company’s “relationship and investment in Rosneft, our business and strategic objectives in Russia, and our financial position and results of operations.” That prediction certainly came true as far as results of operations are concerned. Third-quarter replacement cost profit totaled $110 million, down from $1.02 billion sequentially and down from $808 million year-over-year. Rosneft’s production was reasonably flat sequentially and up about 67,000 barrels a day of oil equivalent to 1.002 billion barrels a day. BP owns 19.75% of Rosneft.
Underlying replacement cost profit (comparable to adjusted net profit) totaled $3.04 billion, down from $3.69 billion in the year-ago quarter and $3.64 billion in the second quarter of this year.
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Liquids production dropped from 716,000 barrels a day in the third quarter of 2013 to 605,000 barrels a day this year. The realized price per barrel of liquids dropped from $100.66 in the year-ago quarter to $91.42. The realized price for natural gas rose from $5.01 per thousand cubic feet to $5.40.
Total production on a barrels of oil equivalent basis totaled 2.15 million barrels a day in the third quarter, slightly higher than the 2.11 million barrels a day produced in the second quarter, and down from 2.21 million in the year-ago quarter. BP said that it expects fourth-quarter reported production to be lower, depending on weather and the closing of its Alaska asset sale to Hilcorp.
Sales of refined products (BP’s downstream business) fell from 3.05 million barrels a day a year ago to 2.96 million barrels this year. The company blamed a “significantly weaker refining margins” that were partially offset by increased production at its Whiting, Ind., plant. BP said it expects fourth-quarter production to be lower due to seasonal considerations and “to negatively impact margins in both the fuels and petrochemicals business.”
The company has divested about $4 billion in assets on its way to a total divestment of $10 billion by the end of next year. BP said earlier this year that it plans to use the after-tax proceeds from these divestments “predominantly for shareholder distributions, with a bias toward share buybacks.”
The consensus estimates for 2014 call for earnings per ADS of $4.30 on revenues of $383.08 billion. With crude oil prices hovering around $80 a barrel for West Texas Intermediate, and Brent only about $5 or $6 higher, that looks optimistic.
BP’s ADS were down fractionally in premarket trading, at $41.94 in a 52-week range of $39.45 to $53.48. Thomson Reuters had a consensus analyst price target of around $50.60 before the report.
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