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BP is committed to “fundamentally reset” its strategy and improve its performance, because the major in difficulty declared a sharp drop in profits for the last quarter of last year.
Tuesday, the group declared underlying profits of $ 1.17 billion during the period, about half of the total for the previous quarter and significantly lower than 2.99 billion dollars it made in the last three months of 2023.
BP carried out $ 8.9 billion in underlying profit for the year, compared to $ 13.8 billion in 2023, the worst annual result since it lost $ 5.7 billion in 2020, L ‘Year of the cocovio pandemic.
The pressure on BP intensified this week after emerging that the American activist investor Elliott Management had built participation in the company.
Although the size of Elliott’s participation is not clear, another BP shareholder said that the group’s ownership meant that the change to the major oil in London was now inevitable.
CEO Murray Auchincloss was confronted with calls to establish a new strategy after several quarters of disappointing results, concerns concerning the aggressive thrust of the group in renewable energies and a course of action which has lagged behind the competitors last year lessons.
In a Tuesday press release, Auchincloss has undertaken to increase “cash flow and yields” and said that it would reveal “a new management for BP” during a day of investors on February 26.
“We have reshaped our portfolio – sanction new major projects and concentrate our investment with a low carbon content – and we have made high progress in cost reduction,” he said.
He added that the company planned to “fundamentally reset our strategy and cause new performance improvements to the service of cash flows and increasing yields”.
Investors pushed BP to move away from its strategy under the head of the previous management Bernard Looney to gradually reduce its oil production and stimulate green energy.
Under Auchincloss, the group has already reduced its renewable projects and has transformed its offshore wind projects into a distinct joint venture.
But the biggest problem for BP in the past year has been her refining activity, because the margin she made on each barrel fell to $ 17.70, against an average of $ 25.80 in 2023.
Its refining and negotiation activities went from a profit before $ 3.8 billion in 2023 to a loss before tax of $ 67 million last year. BP has since put its gelsenkirchen refinery in Germany on sale.
Analysts have hypothesized that BP will have to reduce its shareholders’ yields while trying to increase its growth and repay the debt. But in the fourth quarter, BP held its dividend and promised an additional $ 1.75 billion in share buybacks.
