PetroChina Profit Plunges to Record Low on Oil Price Rout

Bloomberg

PetroChina Co., the country’s biggest oil and gas producer, posted its worst quarterly profit as a plunge in crude prices punished revenue.

Net income dropped to 5.2 billion yuan ($818 million), or 0.03 yuan a share, from 27.9 billion yuan, or 0.15 yuan, a year earlier, the Beijing-based company said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange on Thursday. That compared with the 10.9 billion yuan average of four analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

“It’s a pretty weak performance across all segments,” Neil Beveridge, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., said by phone from Hong Kong. “PetroChina is struggling in the low crude environment and needs to find a way to stop the bleeding.”

Sales dropped 29 percent to 427 billion yuan in the third quarter. The company’s realized crude price fell 49 percent to $51.16 a barrel in the first nine months, according to the statement, while oil and gas output rose 3.6 percent to 1.1 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

The shares closed 2 percent higher to HK$6.19 in Hong Kong before the statement was released.