By
Darya Rudz
October 26th, 2023
BP apparently saw significant growth across its top and bottom lines. The oil giant said its net debt in the fourth quarter was reduced from $30.6 billion to $21.4 billion.
British multinational oil giant BP plc (NYSE: BP) has recorded a major boom in its revenue and profit according to its published earnings report. Per the published performance report, BP said its replacement cost came in at $27.7 billion for 2022. The replacement cost is the company’s proxy for net profit which far surpassed the $12.8 billion recorded in the year-ago period.
The outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine almost a year ago sent the global energy market into tremendous distress. With demand for crude oil and gas products rising, oil giants including BP were positioned in an advantageous way to benefit from the chaos. This is what is reflected in its current revenue.
While the company slightly surpassed the $27.6 billion projected by analysts from Refinitiv, BP said the latest figure also outpaced the previous all-time record of $26.3 billion recorded back in 2008. The impressive annual performance from BP is a reflection of the great quarter in which it saw a total revenue of $4.8 billion.
“First of all, I hope you can see a company that is performing well, performing while transforming. We had our highest operations reliability in our history, we had the lowest production cost in 16 years so the business itself is running very well,” said BP CEO Bernard Looney, “Secondly, we’re leaning into our strategy today. We’re announcing up to $8 billion more investment into the energy transition this decade and up to $8 billion more into oil and gas in support of energy security and energy affordability this decade. And thirdly, it’s about making sure we return to our shareholders.”
The company’s performance can best be tagged as a showcase of its resilience and ability to stand strong in the face of crippling competition.
Other Key BP Profit and Performance Highlights
As it stands, BP apparently saw significant growth across its top and bottom lines. The oil giant said its net debt in the fourth quarter was reduced from $30.6 billion to $21.4 billion. According to the company’s shared updates, a share buyback program that is valued at $2.75 billion has been launched.
BP oil boosted its dividend by 10% to 6.61 cents per ordinary share. The company’s shares trading on the New York Stock Exchange is up by 2.18% in the Pre-Market to $35.60 at the time of writing.
The impressive earnings of the British energy company have confirmed a significant trend among other major oil production companies. BP plc’s top rivals Shell PLC (LON: SHEL) and Exxon Mobil Corp (NYSE: XOM) also reported massive profits of nearly $40 billion and $56 billion respectively.
With Refinitiv placing the combined revenue generated by all of the Western fossil fuel companies over the past year, it has topped $200 billion. As such, the confirmed bogus earnings from BP are evidence that the Russian-induced war is beneficial for the corporate oil entities.
