PSO's Six Monthly Profit Up by 37%

KARACHI– February 21, 2013:  The Board of Management of Pakistan State Oil (PSO) convened on Thursday at PSO House to review the company's performance over the first half of FY13 from July, 2012 to December, 2012. The meeting was chaired by Mr. Sohail W. Siddiqui-Chairman PSO and members in attendance were Dr. Mirza Ikhtiar Baig, Mr. Malik Naseem Hussain Lawbar, Mr. Wazir A. Khoja, Mr. Sarfraz Bugti, Mr. Muhammad Azam and Mr. Naeem Y. Mir-CEO&MD, PSO.

In the period under review, PSO’s revenues rose to Rs 630 billion as compared to Rs 576 billion in the corresponding period last year, representing a growth of 9.34%. After tax earnings also witnessed significant improvement and increased to Rs. 6.3 billion in 1HFY13 in comparison to Rs. 4.6 billion in FY12 representing a healthy increase of nearly 37%. Keeping in view the Company’s financial performance over the past six months, the Board announced a cash dividend of Rs. 2.5 per share and bonus shares equivalent to 20% of the shares held.

During the 1st half of FY13, industry’s volumes for Black Oil decreased by 5%, whereas, White Oil grew by 2% reflecting an increase in PMG consumption of 14% while a decline of 2% was recorded in HSD demand. In the period under review, PSO continued its domination of the market with its share in the Black Oil and White Oil segments standing at 74.7% and 56.5% respectively, thereby contributing to an overall market share of 64.6%. 

In the period under review, PSO, while living up to its commitment of responsibly fuelling the nation also played its due role as a responsible corporate citizen by continuing its efforts for social development across Pakistan. As part of these efforts, PSO has carried out the ground breaking ceremony for the PSO Street Support Program in Thatta. Under this CSR initiative, the national oil giant will develop two streets in low income areas of each province with state-of-the-art facilities and infrastructure in order to improve the lives of the inhabitants of these areas.

The Board, while appreciating the efforts of the Company management’s on behalf of the shareholders, expressed rising concern over the balance of receivables, including price differential claims, which stood at over Rs 139 billion as on December 31, 2012. They observed that the financial costs associated with servicing this debt coupled with continuously increasing receivables from the power sector continued to hurt the overall profitability of the company and directed efforts to be made to reduce the impact of the burdening financial costs through constant pursuit for recovery of receivables from the power sector entities as well as from the Government of Pakistan. The PSO management thanked the members of the BoM for their guidance and pledged to act on their instructions for the future benefit of the shareholders.