Rompetrol Rafinare (Petromidia Refinery), the main division of the Rompetrol Group concluded the first quarter with 254bn ROL ($7.7 million) losses, more than three times higher than in the same time last year, when its losses stood at 81bn ROL ($2.5 million). The losses are largely due to the financial activity of the company.
Operating-wise, Petromidia saw a slight rebound from last year, having made 22.5bn ROL ($0.7 million) profit, compared with the 53.5bn ROL ($1.6 million) losses in the first quarter last year.
EBITDA amounted to 380bn ROL ($11.5 million), one million dollars above the S&R budget forecasts for the first three months.
Petromidia's turnover, however, was below the S&R budget estimates, reaching 9,422bn ROL ($285.5 million) compared with $345.8 million as set in the budget for this period.
Sales kept up with inflation and went up 12.6% in ROL. The company's budget sees the refinery starting to turn a profit as of this month and conclude the year with $3 million profit.
Dinu Patriciu, Rompetrol Group chairman was unavailable for comment on the first quarter financials.
Petromidia sees a low refining business-related profit margin because of the low prices of the petroleum products on the market.
Things might change, though, once the state-owned oil company Petrom has been privatised, as this will result in the deregulation of the petroleum products market.
Group officials say upgrade, business consolidation and environmental protection projects remain this year's priorities as far as Petromidia is concerned.
The plans largely pursue product quality improvement in line with the latest EU standards in this regard, boosting the refinery's capacity from 3.5 million tonnes of crude to 4 million tonnes of crude a year and cutting production costs from $22 to $18 per tonne. This year's investments will amount to approximately $100 million and will be primarily directed to the development of operations on the Midia Navodari platform.
Petromidia was employing 1,500 people in the first quarter, out of the 2,100 employed a year ago.
Petromidia concluded 2003 with 10,888bn ROL losses under the Romanian Accounting Standards (RAS), but the results under the IAS showed it to have posted 2,655bn ROL net profit.
The difference between RAS and IAS came from the manner of registering the convertible bonds in which Petromidia's historical debts were turned into.
The differences between RAS and IAS for the first quarter are smaller, as the accounting records under IAS show a $1m lower loss than the RAS.
Petromidia started trading on the Bucharest Stock Exchange last month and has seen 20% of it shares change hands thus far.
vlad.nicolaescu@zf.ro
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