Equinor’s biggest loss of all time in 2020 – E24

Equinor will present quarterly figures and preliminary figures for 2020 on Wednesday.

The result for 2020 was the largest loss in history (profit after tax), after the crown crisis, the failure of demand and the fall in oil prices.

However, Equinor’s adjusted figures remain positive. These eliminate the one-off effects and, according to the company, should give a better picture of the underlying transactions than the bottom line.

– Our results are affected by market turmoil throughout the year, says Equinor CEO Anders Opedal.

The loss of time in 2020

If you look at last year as a whole, Equinor generated an after-tax profit (bottom line) of minus $ 5.5 billion (about 46.5 billion crowns).

That’s the biggest loss in Equinor’s results so far. The company has only been in the red for three individual years since its listing in 2001.

By comparison, the after-tax profit in 2015 was minus $ 5.2 billion, and in 2016 the company lost $ 2.92 billion in bottom line results.

Equinor’s adjusted profit before tax was $ 3.9 billion for all of 2020, down from $ 13.48 billion a year earlier.

Last year, revenue was $ 45.75 billion, down from $ 62.91 billion the year before.

Oil prices fell dramatically in the wake of the crown crisis. The company received an average of $ 37.4 per barrel for its Norwegian oil production last year, up from $ 57.4 per barrel the previous year.

So it was in the fourth quarter

In the fourth quarter, the company posted an adjusted profit before tax of $ 756 million in the fourth quarter, compared to $ 3.55 billion in the same period last year.

In advance, an average of 23 analysts had expected an adjusted result of 764 million dollars, according to figures collected by Equinor itself.

After taxes, the adjusted result is minus $ 554 million.

The final result at least in the quarter

Revenue in the fourth quarter was $ 11.87 billion and after-tax profit (bottom line) was minus $ 2.42 billion. This is the weakest quarter since 2016.

In the fourth quarter of 2019, the turnover was $ 14.3 billion and the after-tax profit was less than $ 236 million.

This is the first quarterly report presented after Anders Opedal succeeded Eldar Sætre as CEO of Equinor.

Lower production and prices

The company produced 2,043 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in the fourth quarter of 2020. In the same quarter of the previous year, the company produced 2,198 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Equinor received $ 42.1 a barrel for its Norwegian production and $ 41.3 a barrel for its international production in the fourth quarter.

A year earlier, Equinor received an average of $ 59.3 per barrel for its Norwegian and $ 52.8 per barrel for its international oil production.

The company received $ 5.04 per MMBtu for its gas sales in Europe in the fourth quarter, while it earned $ 5.31 per MMBtu in the same quarter last year.