Slovnaft Group results in accordance with the industry trend

Higher sales of fuels and polymers with an overall positive impact on the Slovnaft Group results amounted to 1.5 billion SKK and a growing petrochemistry performance resulted in a good and sustainable performance of the Group also in Q3 2007. Thus, the Group results were in accordance with the industry trend.

The operational profit of the Slovnaft Group was 2.3 billion SKK in the third quarter, what represents a decrease by 28 % in comparison with the same period of the last year. Besides the higher sales, the results were positively influenced also by higher polymer prices amounted to 914 million SKK. On the other hand, these positive influences were partially absorbed by a stronger crown that strengthened by 17.7 % against USD and by 11.3 % against EUR in Q3 2007, with a total impact of 1.5 billion SKK. Therefore, the Slovnaft Group has even more focused on improving the efficiency of the key internal processes.

“In Q3 2007, Slovnaft continued in supplying its key markets, including the domestic, with high quality fuels and thus contributed to a strong growth of the Slovak economy. High operating reliability, complex and modern technologies, continual increase of the key processes efficiency and growing share of petrochemical activities on the Group’s results were transformed to a sound Group performance”, commented the Q3 2007 results Slovnaft CEO Oszkár Világi.

Thanks to the continuing dynamic growth of the economy and the increasing consumption, domestic sales of oil products increased by 4.5 % in Q1-3 2007 compared to Q-3 2006; what means an increase by 40.6 kt in case of diesel fuel and by 32.8 kt in case of gasoline. The sales volumes to the export markets increased by almost 1 %, in spite of the high initial values from the previous year. The share of export reaches about three quarters of the total production. Inter-annually, mainly the sales to the Polish, Austrian and Hungarian markets increased what fully compensated the decrease of the sales in the Czech and German markets.

In comparison with Q1-3 2006, the volume of the polymers sales increased by almost 23 kt, mainly resulting from a higher utilization of the PP3 unit production capacity.

Within the retail sales, the increasing interest of drivers in diesel fuel and LPG continued also in Q1-3 2007. In the mentioned period, Slovnaft increased the efficiency of the sales within its petrol station network by 17 % in comparison with Q1-3 2006. As of the end of September, the company operated 209 petrol stations in the SR.

From January to September 2007, the refinery processed 4,412 kt of crude oil, what is almost the same volume as in 2006. In the first three quarters, Slovnaft produced 33.5 kt more petrols and 67.2 kt more diesel, mainly thanks to a better utilization of the cracking capacities. Slovnaft thus continues proving its leading position in the crude oil processing efficiency in Europe. In Q1-3 2007, Slovnaft produced solely diesel fuel with low sulphur contents, almost 60 % of that represented diesel fuel with FAME bio-component, while it was only 29.2 % in the same period of 2006. The company produced also bio-petrol with ETBE component in the evaluated period that was not produced in the first to third quarter 2006.