Pakistan State Oil Company (PSO) has released its financial result for the year ended June 30, 2015 (FY15), posting a sharp decline of over 63 percent in profit after tax profitability to Rs6.9 billion as compared to a net profit of Rs21.8 billion a year earlier. This decline is attributable to: 1) inventory losses on account of sharp fall in crude prices, 2) increase in financial cost due to prevailing circular debt crisis and 3) lower receipt of interest from power sector.
Along with the result the Company also announced a final dividend of Rs4 per share in addition to already paid interim dividend of Rs6 per share, taking the full year payout to 100 percent.
In FY15, PSO continued to dominate the market with its share in the black and white oil segments at 66.6 and 49.8 percent respectively, thereby enjoying to overall market share of 56.8 percent.
The company’s sale volume of motor gasoline grew by 18.5pc in FY15 as compared to the last year due to upsurge in its demand in view of falling petrol prices and shortage of CNG. Additionally, high-speed diesel (HSD) sales also witnessed an increase of a little less than one percent.
The management has attributed decline in profit to a sharp decline of 46 percent in the OPEC basket price of crude oil, from US$ 109 per barrel in July 2014 to US$ 59 in June 2015.
This significant decline in crude oil prices together with drop in black oil volumes by 12 percent resulted in a 21 percent reduction in the sales turnover to Rs1.114 trillion forFY15 as compared to Rs1.410 trillion for FY14.