The Colombian state oil company earned US$4.86 billion last year. The coup will also affect its 2024 dividend distribution, announced its president, Ricardo Roa.
The Colombian oil company Ecopetrol announced its results this Friday and they are sweet and sour. Immediately, it has cut its net attributable profit in 2023 by 42.9% compared to 2022, closing the fiscal year with profits above 19 trillion Colombian pesos (just over US$ 48,609 million).
Although the president of Ecopetrol, Ricardo Roa, has highlighted that the company has closed the year with "solid results", with the second best net profit in its history, this is the first time since 2020 that the Colombian state oil company cuts your profits.
Sales contracted 10.3% in 2023 compared to 2022, leaving the oil company with a turnover of 143 billion Colombian pesos (US$ 36,494 million) compared to more than 159.4 billion pesos US$ 40,677 million) from the previous year.
The drop in turnover is due, as the company explained in its results report, to the lower weighted average sales price of crude oil and products, due to a lower Brent reference price and a deterioration in differentials versus Brent, mainly refined products.
However, the president of the company also assured that the Colombian State has received the highest transfers in its history due to the greater impact of the tax reform, despite the drop in profits.
EBITDA FALLS 19.3% YEAR-YEAR
Regarding only the fourth quarter, Ecopetrol earned 12.3% less than in the same period of 2022. Thus, the turnover for the last quarter of 2023 stood at 34.8 billion Colombian pesos (US$ 8,873 million).
Sales in Colombia, which represented 45% of the total, showed a decrease of 2.2% compared to the fourth quarter of 2022, while international sales showed an increase of 24.1%.
For its part, the costs associated with sales were 1.4% lower than those recorded in the previous year, remaining at 88.1 billion Colombian pesos (US$ 22,486 million).
For its part, the gross operating result (Ebitda) fell to 60.7 billion Colombian pesos (US$ 15,482 million), a reduction of 19.3% in interannual terms. The Ebitda margin was 42.4%, which is 4.8 percentage points less than in 2022.
The operating result was 27.6% lower than that recorded by Ecopetrol in 2022, remaining slightly above the 43.7 trillion Colombian pesos (US$ 11,145 million) at the end of the 2023 fiscal year.
LESS DIVIDENDS
Ecopetrol's lower profits in the 2023 fiscal year will have an impact on the dividends that the oil company will distribute in 2024, according to Roa.
At the conference where the results were presented, Roa explained that the dividend proposal is pending approval by Ecopetrol's board of directors, to later be transferred to the general meeting of shareholders to be held on March 22.
However, it has already announced that the distribution of dividends will be lower in 2024, after the 2023 fiscal year in which high payment figures were reached.
"Logically," he responded to the possibility of some impact on dividends.
The group has made investments during 2023 for a total amount of 27.2 trillion Colombian pesos (US$ 6,937 million), a growth of 14.6% compared to the figure allocated to this item in 2022. The amount is within Ecopetrol's target range for last year, which was between 25.3 billion and 29.8 billion Colombian pesos (between US$ 7,535 million and US$ 7,599 million).
Of the total investments, 63% of the total was concentrated in Colombia, followed by the United States and Brazil with 31%. The remaining 6% was distributed in countries such as Chile, Peru, Argentina or Bolivia, among others.
