Source: courtesy of BP plc
For the full year, BP reported earnings per ADS of $3.96 on revenues of $358.68 billion, compared with earnings per ADS of $4.26 on revenues of $396.22 billion in 2013. Analysts were looking for earnings per ADS of $3.70 on revenues of $373.06 billion.
On an unadjusted basis BP posted a loss of $969 million in the fourth quarter ($0.32 per ADS) and a profit of $12.14 billion for the year ($2.36 per ADS). The fourth-quarter loss was attributed primarily to impairments to the company’s upstream assets “reflecting the impact of the lower near-term price environment” and revisions to reserves among other factors. BP took a non-operating impairment charge of $5.56 billion in the fourth quarter and $6.3 billion for the year related to the company’s upstream assets, mainly in the North Sea and Angola.
Charges related to the Gulf of Mexico disaster that killed 11 workers and dumped millions of barrels of crude into the sea totaled $477 million for the quarter and $819 million for the year. To date BP has paid out $43.5 billion in costs and claims for the spill.
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The company’s reserves replacement ratio for the year was 62%, which does not include the impact of acquisitions and disposals. Capital spending for the quarter totaled $6.7 billion and $23.8 billion for the year. BP expects capital spending to reach $20 billion in 2015.
The company raised its quarterly dividend to $0.60 per ADS in the third quarter, and will pay that dividend again in the fourth quarter.
The company divested about $4.7 billion in assets during 2014, on its way to a total divestment of $10 billion by the end of next year. BP said last year that it plans to use the after-tax proceeds from these divestments “predominantly for shareholder distributions, with a bias toward share buybacks.”
For the quarter, production on a barrels of oil equivalent basis fell from 3.23 million barrels a day to 3.21 million barrels a day. For the full year, production dropped from 3.23 million barrels a day to 3.15 million barrels.
Liquids production dropped from 1.2 million barrels a day in the fourth quarter of 2013 to 1.15 million barrels a day in 2014. The realized price per barrel of liquids dropped from $98.26 in the year-ago quarter to $69.03. The realized price for natural gas rose from $5.49 per thousand cubic feet to $5.54.
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Sales of refined products (BP’s downstream business) fell from 2.97 million barrels a day in the 2013 fourth quarter to 2.87 million barrels in the fourth quarter of 2014. BP’s adjusted downstream profits rose from just $70 million in the year-ago quarter to $1.21 billion. For the full year, downstream profits rose from $3.63 billion to $4.44 billion.
In its outlook statements for 2015, BP said reported production is expected to be essentially flat with 2014 production. First-quarter production is expected to be higher sequentially due to more favorable contract entitlements.
The downstream outlook calls for a “weaker refining environment” as crude differentials narrow in these days of low crude prices.
The consensus estimates for the first quarter of 2015 call for earnings per ADS of $0.37. For the full fiscal year, analysts are estimating earnings per ADS of $2.09 on revenues of $255.4 billion.
BP has cut its capex estimate for 2015 from a range of $24 billion to $26 billion to an estimate of $20 billion and still faces an overhang of a potential $13.7 billion in penalties for the Gulf of Mexico disaster. The remarkable thing about BP is that it has managed to survive this long. When the court puts a final number to the penalties the company must pay for the massive spill, the worst of the financial damage to BP will be over. That is when we will find out if the company will survive for the long term.
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BP’s ADSs traded up about 2% in Tuesday’s premarket, at $40.67 in a 52-week range of $34.88 to $53.48. Thomson Reuters had a consensus analyst price target of around $43.50 before the report.
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