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Equinor ASA (EQNR)

Q4 2010 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 9, 2011

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Transcript

Hilde Nafstad

Management

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Statoil Presentation both to the audience here at the Brewery in London and to the audience following the presentations on web or by phone. My name is Hilde Nafstad and I am the Head of Investor Relations. Please note the emergency exits on both sides of this room, one in the back of the room and one right behind me. Today’s event can be followed by webcast. The webcast and transcript of the event will both be made available later. Today’s program is split in two. First, Statoil’s Chief Executive Officer, Helge Lund and Chief Financial Officer, Torgrim Reitan will give a short Fourth Quarter and 2010 Earnings presentation. At 1:30, London Time, we will start our Strategy Update with our CEO, CFO and our Executive Vice President for Development and Production Norway, Øystein Michelsen. Each of the two blocks of presentations, first, the Fourth Quarter 2010 and then later the Strategy Update will be followed by a Q&A session. Our web audience should observe the phone number on the page where you’ve accessed the webcast. This is the number to use for the Q&A. The first Q&A session is devoted exclusively to questions related to the fourth quarter and to the full-year 2010. At 6:30 London Time, Statoil published results for the fourth quarter of 2010. We also published all the presentations you are going to see today. Go to our website statoil.com and follow the link from the front page if you want to open or download these now. Can I ask you both here in London and all who download presentations to carefully study the forward-looking statements at the end of the presentation. And now, it is my privilege to introduce our CEO and President, Helge Lund.

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you Hilde, and welcome to all of you. It’s good to be here. It’s also good to be finally able to talk about 2010, but maybe even more importantly to later talk about the future for Statoil. As Hilde said, the focus of this session is primarily fourth quarter and we look at our plans moving forward in the session later. 2010 has been a very active strategic year with good strategic progress for Statoil. And we have also been active in terms of portfolio management. We have matured our portfolio. Five new fields have been set in production, and we have sanctioned another nine projects. We are now also accessing high potential exploration acreage through now the nomination of Statoil by Sonangol as a partner and operator at several pre-salt opportunities in offshore Angola. We have also throughout 2010 been strengthening our unconventional US gas position by accessing yet another low breaking breakeven field or area in the US. I think also in terms of strategic significance, it is important that we through this year have been able to list successfully the Statoil Fuel and Retail and thereby clarified even further the strategic profile of Statoil as an technology driven upstream company. I think also that you have noted that we have been active with our international portfolio by the farm down to two industrial partners of 40% on the oil sands assets in Canada and also in our offshore asset in Brazil on Peregrino and created I think very good value for Statoil and our shareholders. As a consequence of the active management or the portfolio over the last few years, we are now improving on our reserve replacement ratio and for the year 2010, it is now up to 87% for the year in total. During…

Torgrim Reitan

CFO

Thank you, Helge. As many of you know, I took up the position as CFO only one month ago. And it’s good to finally get started in my new job. It’s a privilege to step up as a CFO in a company this financially solid and with clear growth opportunities. I do like details, but I am not going to go through all the numbers that you’ll find in the MD&A, I will go through the highlights and the key drivers of our results. Our quarterly result is strong. And as you know, we have large exposure to the changes in oil and gas prices. So the increasing prices have had a significant impact. But we cannot be fully satisfied, as we did not utilized the entire production capacity in the second half of the year. However, the increase in oil and gas prices more than out-weighted the negative impact from reduced volumes in the quarter. And we see an improvement both in reported and adjusted results, compared to the fourth quarter in 2009. The reported net income increased by 37% from fourth quarter of 2009 and the adjusted earnings increased by 19%. The main causes to the change in earnings is the following. The increase in oil and gas prices contributed positively by NOK 12 billion. The decrease in production caused reduction of NOK 4 billion. Exploration had a negative impact of NOK 1.6 billion while refining yielded better results compared to last year. The illustration behind me takes you from our reported net income to adjusted earnings after tax. The adjustments in the quarter amount to NOK 2 billion. The most important one is related to renegotiation of a regasification capacity at Cove Point. The length of that contract is halved and the commitment in the remaining period…

Hilde Nafstad

Management

Thank you. As Torgrim said we will now turn to the Q&A session. The session will last for approximately 15 minutes. Let me just repeat and emphasize that in this session only we’ll take questions related to 2010. You will have the opportunity to ask forward-looking questions in the next session. Please limit yourself to one question at a time. For the audience in the room, please give me a signal if you have a question. Microphones will be passed. For the audience on the phone, please listen to the operator’s instructions regarding asking questions which will come right now. Operator, can you please give us the procedure for questions?

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions)

Hilde Nafstad

Management

All right. Do we have any questions from the audience? Yes, we have one over here. Paul Spedding – HSBC: Paul Spedding from HSBC. I wonder if you could give us an indication as to how your production ended the year, because clearly Q4 was impacted by various unusual outages. And I was just hoping to get a better picture for what the quarter could have looked like if things have gone more willing to plan.

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

We had in the third quarter results we gave an updated guiding on 1.9 million barrels a day. And that was taken into account. The knowledge we had at that point in time as such, we ended slightly below that number for the year-end. And that was related to operational issues in the partner operated – part of the portfolio Angola and Azerbaijan. And we also had some issues related to gas processing on the Kollsnes. And we had (inaudible) issues as well in which we put out there on the news. So I think if you add those you have the main contributors to the production in the fourth quarter.

Hilde Nafstad

Management

Another question. Yes. Brendan Warn – Jefferies International: Thank you. Its Brendan Warn from Jefferies. Just on CapEx, an backward looking question in terms of can you give us any clarity or breakdown on the CapEx in terms of what was spent on new developments versus the same business and also split from Norwegian Continental Shelf and International and just whether any of the under spend in ‘08 and ‘09 has led to some of the production issues?

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Investments for 2010 is broadly split equally between Norwegian Continental Shelf and Internationally. And generally we spent around 10% in related to (inaudible) activities, refinery upgrades and new energy. So there you have the broad split. I would say if you look into the international investments, those are heavily tilted into growth prospects. When we look in Norwegian investments, a significant part is used to grow that part of the business investing in new projects, but also a significant part to improve the valuation and improve the performance of the already existing productions. And we would talk more about this in the afternoon session. In terms of the second part of your question, there is no relationship between the slightly lower CapEx and the production shortfall in the fourth quarter. That is also you have to be very specific points that Torgrim already mentioned.

Hilde Nafstad

Management

Okay, can we have the next question from the audience? John Olaisen – Carnegie: This is John Olaisen from Carnegie. A question on the production permit on Ormen Lange. You didn’t get an extension or expansion of production license for that field in 2010. Could you elaborate a little bit on why is that dispute on the optimal production with the reservoir characteristics or etcetera, or why didn’t you get the production permits on that?

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Well the explanations are seldom given for that. So we have to take what we get and but we do not anticipate any general change when it comes to policies related to production permits.

Hilde Nafstad

Management

Next question. John Olaisen – Carnegie: But if I may just a follow-up on that one, for next year it seems like Troll, the biggest gas field in Norway is experiencing the same issue. Is that a reservoir issue or it’s just – what’s the real reason behind that, it was just like an black box for us.

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Well again they do not normally give explanations for production permits but it’s true that for the next year we have a lower production permit for the next gas field than we have had in the past and that is also partly explaining which we will cover later today a lower production in 2011.

Hilde Nafstad

Management

Are there any more questions here in London. If not, yes we have one over here. Trond Omdal – Arctic Securities: Trond Omdal from Arctic Securities This year you cut CapEx by close to 10% while since for instance one of your competitors, shell maintained their CapEx and they have been rewarded both by the market and also stronger production performance. Is it related to that they have a stronger balance sheet difference in macro view or the opportunities that has led due to that and, you think still it was a good choice to cut that CapEx?

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Well as you have seen in the last few years we have given our size and the quality of our portfolio we have quite high CapEx level, and we will discuss the CapEx level moving forward. We are actually pretty proud of the fact that we were able through the financial crisis to handle the balance sheet in a way that protected the majority of our investment program both in Norway and Internationally. And it’s not decisive strategy to cut back on CapEx. It’s more of timing issues and when we have been able to mature the different prospects.

Hilde Nafstad

Management

Any further questions in London? Operator, do we have any questions on the phone lines?

Operator

Operator

There are no questions on the phone line.

Hilde Nafstad

Management

All right. Then I think we will close this morning’s session – or this first session. We will now take a break and then we will continue at 1:30 for the capital markets update. So please get back promptly. Thank you very much.