St1 NORDIC OY COMPANY RELEASE, 31 AUGUST 2018 AT 1PM EET
St1 NORDIC OY, INTERIM REPORT JANUARY–JUNE 2018
Consolidated key figures
| 1 January – 30 June 2018 | 1 January – 30 June 2017 | 2017 | 2017 Pro forma | |||
| unaudited | ||||||
| Net sales, MEUR | 3,844.4 | 2,412.6 | 5,099.8 | 6,540.7 | ||
| Operating profit/loss, MEUR | 65.0 | 59.4 | 176.6 | 263.1 | ||
| Operating profit as % of net sales | 1.7 | 2.5 | 3.5 | 4.0 | ||
| Profit/loss for the financial period, MEUR | 57.2 | 48.2 | 372.8 | 209.1 | ||
| Return on equity, % | 14.4 | 22.6 | 23.4* | |||
| Equity ratio | 40.2 | 34.3 | 42.7 | |||
| *) excluding merger gain as per the income statement The St1 Nordic group combined all areas of St1’s business for the first time as of the beginning of 2018, including the oil refinery business, which was previously run by St1 Group. The sister groups merged on 31 December 2017. Net sales for the first six months of the year were consequently EUR 1,431.8 million up on the old St1 Nordic group’s net sales for the first half of the previous year. The Group’s operating profit was EUR 65.0 million, up by EUR 5.6 million from the corresponding period of the previous year. Earnings after tax amounted to EUR 57.2 million, when earnings between January and June 2017 amounted to EUR 48.2 million. St1 Nordic and St1 Group pro forma earnings during January to June 2017 amounted to EUR 64.4 million. Earnings during the first six months of the year were affected by increasing competition especially in the Norwegian and Finnish Retail markets. The oil refinery business and changes in the value of stocks may cause significant fluctuations in the Group’s earnings in the future. The Group’s equity amounted to EUR 792.6 million at the end of June. The company spent EUR 40.0 million on buying back its own Class B shares and paid out EUR 8.4 million in dividends. Cash flow from operating activities amounted to EUR 60.9 million. Investments during the first six months of the year amounted to EUR 58.4 million in total. The biggest investments were the start of the construction of a new hydrogen manufacturing unit at the Gothenburg oil refinery and works on a geothermal heat plant in Otaniemi. | ||||||
Henrikki Talvitie, CEO of St1 Nordic Oy: We are pleased with St1 Nordic’s new group structure, which brings all our energy operations under one roof. After the merger of St1 Group’s oil refinery business in Gothenburg and St1 Nordic at the end of last year, we are now an even stronger and more unified Nordic energy company than before. We will continue to develop more and more efficient operating models across the Nordic countries in order to be able to respond to different kinds of market situations. To further this goal, we will be restructuring our organisation and dividing it into Nordic areas of responsibility during 2018. We will focus our investments carefully in order to generate growth both in the corner stones of the Group and in our renewable energy projects.
St1 Refinery AB is in the process of building a new hydrogen manufacturing unit for the Group’s oil refinery in Gothenburg. The unit is expected to be ready in early 2019, and its value is EUR 40 million. The new unit will create a solid foundation for our future investments in renewable diesel.
St1 Renewable Energy Oy has launched a project aimed at piloting the production of advanced ethanol from cassava waste in Thailand. The goal is to follow the pilot phase up with the building of our first commercial production unit. The amount of cassava waste generated by Thailand’s largest starch production plants is great enough to warrant the construction of units producing 10–30 million litres of ethanol per year.
St1 Deep Heat Oy successfully completed the water stimulation phase of its geothermal pilot in Otaniemi, Espoo in July. The stimulation was designed to open closed rock fractures and to study flow conditions by pumping water into an existing 6.4 km-deep well. The current analysis phase will take between five and seven months, after which a decision will be taken on the future of the project. If successful, a geothermal heat plant in Otaniemi could supply enough emission-free energy to cover as much as 10% of Espoo’s district heating demand.
St1 Nordic’s associated company, TuuliWatti Oy, has started construction on a new wind farm in Viinamäki, Ii. The project consists of five 4.2-MW wind turbines, and it is the first Nordic wind power investment of this scale to be implemented without society’s contribution. TuuliWatti has also adopted a new strategy and expanded its business into life-cycle services for wind power generation.
The entire Group is committed to continuously improving our customers’ experience by bringing out new products and services, such as St1 Finance Oy’s increasingly sophisticated credit card and payment system services. St1’s mobile refuelling concept was expanded from Finland to Sweden, creating a steady increase in customer numbers. We are also expanding our marine fuels business in Norway. A contract we signed in November 2017 on the acquisition of the Norwegian Statoil Fuel and Retail Marine AS was approved by the competition regulator in June, and the deal is expected to be completed during the last quarter of this year.
After I took over as St1 Nordic’s CEO in June, we have continued to offer a range of energy solutions to our customers and to invest in the development of domestic renewable fuels and sources of energy to replace fossil fuel imports in line with our vision. What that means for us today is electricity from wind, heat from the ground and ethanol from waste. Our research and development projects give us the pleasure of building the future together with our customers, partners and employees.
Unaudited financial information: Consolidated income statement: 1 January 2018 – 30 June 2018, 1 January 2017 – 30 June 2017, 1 January 2017 – 31 December 2017 Consolidated balance sheet: 30 June 2018, 31 December 2017 Consolidated cash flow statement: 1 January 2018 – 30 June 2018, 1 January 2017 – 31 December 2017
St1 Nordic Oy will publish its financial statements release on 29 March 2019 and its Annual Report on 30 April 2019.
For more information, please contact:
Kati Ylä-Autio, CFO +358 10 557 5263
Henrikki Talvitie, CEO +358 10 557 11
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