BP Earnings Hampered by Low Prices; Dividend Unchanged

BP PLC (NYSE: BP) reported second-quarter 2016 results before markets opened Tuesday. For the quarter, the oil and gas supermajor posted adjusted diluted earnings per American depositary share (ADS) of $0.23 on revenues of $47.28 billion. In the same period a year ago, the company reported earnings per ADS of $0.43 on revenues of $63.21 billion. Analysts estimated a net loss per ADS of $0.28 on revenues of $50.22 billion. One ADS is equal to six ordinary shares.

The company took a $5.23 billion charge in the second quarter related to the Gulf of Mexico well explosion in 2010. To date BP has paid out $61.6 billion in pretax charges related to the disaster. BP now believes that it has resolved all claims related to the disaster that claimed the lives of 11 workers and dumped millions of barrels of crude oil into the sea.

BP’s adjusted replacement cost profit (essentially the company’s adjusted net income/loss) in the first quarter totaled $720 million, compared with $1.31 billion in the year-ago quarter. Unadjusted, the replacement cost loss totaled $2.25 billion, or $0.72 per ADS, compared with a net loss of $6.23 billion and a net loss per ADS of $2.05 in the second quarter of 2015.

The company said that lower profits were mainly due to the impact of lower oil and gas prices in the quarter. Quarterly production averaged 2.09 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, down 1% year over year. Third-quarter production is forecast to be lower sequentially due to turnaround and maintenance and an outage at a gas processing plant in the Gulf of Mexico.

[nativounit]

BP’s price realizations for liquids rose from $26.97 a barrel in the first quarter to $44.99. In the year-ago quarter the price realization was $56.69 a barrel. Natural gas averaged $2.66 per thousand cubic feet in the second quarter, down from $2.84 in the first quarter and $3.80 in the second quarter of 2015.

Downstream (refining) pretax profits fell from $1.63 billion a year ago to $1.41 billion. In its outlook statement BP said it expects turnaround activity to remain high in the third quarter and that “industry refining margins will continue to be under significant pressure.”

CEO Bob Dudley said:

We are very pleased to have finally drawn a line under the material liabilities for Deepwater Horizon. We will always be mindful of what we have learned from that tragic accident. … As we look forward we expect the external environment to remain challenging, but we have a strong pipeline of new projects which will add 500,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day of new production capacity by the end of next year.

The company also announced Tuesday its regular quarterly dividend of $0.60 per ADS, a dividend yield of 6.69% at Monday’s closing price.

BP’s ADSs closed down 2.7% on Monday, at $34.90 in a 52-week range of $27.01 to $38.06. They traded down another 2.1% in Tuesday’s premarket session at $34.16. Thomson Reuters had a consensus analyst price target of $37.46 before Tuesday’s report.

[wallst_email_signup]