The Polish oil and gas giant Orlen saw its net profit for the first three quarters of this year fall by 17.03 zlotys (€4 billion) after the company earned just 3.01 billion zlotys. As the largest company in Central and Eastern Europe, the poor results are weighing on the stock and the Polish stock exchange, with the stock itself losing 23 percent of its value year to date.
“The destruction of Orlen is in full swing,” stated the former president of the group, currently Law and Justice (PiS) MEP Daniel Obajtek.
When publishing the consolidated periodic report, Orlen announced that “after taking into account the income tax in the amount of 4.6 billion zlotys, the Orlen Group’s net profit for nine months of 2024 amounted to just over 3 billion zlotys and was lower by some 17 billion zlotys year-over-year.”
The Orlen Group’s sales revenue for the third quarter of this year amounted to 67,936 billion zlotys and was lower by 11,521 billion zlotys year-on-year. The company noted that the decline in sales revenue concerned the refining, energy and gas segments “and was partially mitigated” by the increase in revenue in petrochemicals, retail, and mining.
Referring to the profit or loss account for the third quarter of this year, Orlen calculated that “after taking into account tax charges in the amount of 1.787 billion zlotys, the Orlen Group’s net result amounted to 188 million zlotys and was lower by 4.368 billion zlotys year-on-year.”
In a press release, the company noted that the Orlen Group ended the third quarter of this year “with a very good EBITDA LIFO operating profit, despite a significant deterioration in the macroeconomic environment, including a 65% year-over-year drop in the refining margin.”
At the same time, the concern noted that during the 9 months of this year, the Orlen Group allocated 22.1 billion zlotys for investments supporting the modernization of assets, energy transformation, and increasing Poland’s energy security.
“In the past quarter, we launched the largest-ever investment program to modernize the power grid in northern Poland. We also completed a significant portion of the work to connect the Baltic Power farm to the mainland,” said Orlen CEO Ireneusz Fąfara, as quoted in a press release issued by the company.
Fąfara also mentioned that regardless of current implementations, the process of performing tests and write-offs was continued “to authenticate the value of the Orlen Group.” Incidentally, he decided to attack the previous management team.
“They revealed multi-billion losses resulting from the poor quality of management in previous years,” he stated. “Despite unfavorable macroeconomic conditions, we achieved financial results comparable to last year.
Obajtek responded to the results, stating, “The numbers speak for themselves.”
In another post, he wrote: “Only the retail result is almost twice as high, which means the plundering of Poles continues!!! No wonder they organize the results conference in the evening so that the topic can quickly die down. Soon, out of shame before the tragic results, they will probably organize it at 11:00 p.m.”
He also mocked the media response to the poor results, writing: “Media reaction? Mostly neutral headlines, or in smiling Poland: terrible results, but nothing happened.”
