At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Petros Tzannetakis, Deputy Chief Executive Officer, and Ms. Mary Psyllaki, Investor Relations Officer. Mr. Tzannetakis, you may now proceed.
Hello to all of you. Good evening, good afternoon, good morning to some of you. We are here for the Q1 results. We have some new faces in the room, new as far as attending the conference call physically because they attended through Teams. We have our new General Manager of Supply and Trading, Spyridon Svoronos , and we have Mike Sachpazoglou, the Head of Risk as well amongst the other culprits who are here in most of the calls. Before starting talking about numbers and what happened, life never lets us stand still in Motor Oil. That's how it feels. After the accident we had in 2024 and most of 2025 and the end of 2024 were full with trying to come back on track and manage to come back with a new and larger crude unit.
The world changed again on us and since early March, we are all experiencing this situation. We must say that we are pleased with the reaction of the company, and its people, I would say very pleased. We had a stellar financial performance in the first quarter of 2026, driven by strong results across all our business activities. January and February delivered robust growth, supported by an improved year-on-year refining margin environment and full operational capacity. Note, we are talking now about the 220,000 barrels per day capacity. Then we came into March. It turned out to be an exceptional month, driven by favorable conditions in the refining market and considerable opportunities for refineries like Motor Oil due to our location, our configuration, our trading capabilities, and of course, the proven track record in adjusting to challenging conditions in order to capture market opportunities.
I'll come into it a bit later. Keep in mind, from running 75% Iraqi crude up until the end of February, suddenly, Iraqi crude, with the exception of a couple of cargos that were arriving at the refinery at the beginning of March went down to zero, particularly the one through the Straits of Hormuz. We had to adjust, which we did. Turning to slide five, we see revenues are up by 25% to EUR 3.4 billion. EBITDA more than doubled year-on-year, EUR 546 million, and net profit surged to EUR 332 million from EUR 85 million a year ago. The comparison is not so, let's say, meaningful because a year ago, the first quarter was obviously affected by the accident. Even if we compare with Q4, the numbers are particularly impressive.
Excluding a substantial inventory gain of EUR 165 million at the end of Q1, adjusted EBITDA and net income stood at EUR 381 million and EUR 203 million, up 77% and 113% year-on-year. Net debt, and we'll analyze it a bit more later on, declined by EUR 317 million, standing at below EUR 1.3 billion at the end of the quarter for the group. Again, a very impressive performance. Slide six, performance by segment. As previously communicated, we have revised our operating segment structure to reflect our evolving strategy. It's something that we had announced. We had discussed it with you in the different conferences. What we had said is from January 2026, the new segments, the way they sort of developed and evolved would be presented. The main change is introduction of the new Circular Economy Segment, and the other adjustments are minor classification of companies between the segments.
Fuels, which you can see you have the colors of the blue box in the page. Adjusted EBITDA went up to EUR 315 million, up from EUR 148 a year ago and EUR 277 in the last quarter. Higher sales, stronger margins. Consumer Services, which really is our retail business, adjusted EBITDA stood at EUR 28, slightly lower from the same period last year, but definitely much better QoQ. Electrification, which is the same segment as before, reached EUR 46 million, up 70% year-on-year on the back of improved performance in both MORE and nrg. Circular Economy EBITDA stood at EUR 10 million unchanged year-on-year. Clearly there is a time element there is a backlog in the results, and they always come up higher at the end of the year. Page eight. The main indicators.
Average Brent price rose by 7% year-on-year and 27% QoQ, driven by the recent conflict in Iran. While prices increased only marginally during January and February relative to Q4 2025, they surged in March. This sharp increase was fueled by concerns regarding oil and product supply disruptions from the Middle East following the effective closure of the Straits of Hormuz. The dollar changed marginally on a QoQ basis, but it depreciated materially compared to Q1 2025, weighing on our results. The scarcity of oil products on the Persian Gulf drove middle distillate cracks to multi-year highs, reaching levels not experienced since the nrg crisis of 2022. The crude differential for Basrah Medium, which represents a significant portion of our refinery's feedstock mix, widened QoQ in Q1.
However, this trend does not reflect real market dynamics, given that Basra was effectively unavailable following the outbreak of the conflict. Slide nine, Fuels marketing. Domestic consumption, Greece. Fuel consumption in Greece fell by 1% in the first quarter, civil market down 1.4%, while shipping aviation was up 2.8%. Sale volumes for automotive fuels were stable, whereas jet fuel sustained its strong growth momentum, with LPG, bunker fuel, and diesel recording minor growth during the first quarter. Slide 10, power and gas. Natural gas prices rose, driven by the recent conflict, though they remained lower year-over-year. The average TTF price stood at EUR 40 per megawatt hour in the first quarter, compared to 30 in Q4 and 47 in Q1 of 2025.
Reflecting tighter supply, European gas storage levels dropped to 28%, below the five-year average of 41%, with current levels at 37% relative to a 52% historical average. EUA prices fell from the high levels seen in Q4 amid EU discussions around the more lenient EUA policy. They remained above Q1 2025 levels, weighing on our results. Average price stood at EUR 78 per metric ton in the first quarter, down from EUR 82 in Q4 2025, up from EUR 75. Greece electricity production surged by over 20%, both sequentially and year-over-year, reaching 16.4 terawatt hours in Q1 2026. Last, the Greek wholesale electricity price fell by 28% year-on-year and 14% QoQ to an average of EUR 95 per megawatt hour. Increased generation from renewables alongside a record high contribution from hydro production helped contain prices. Let's go to slide 12.
Performance per segment. As mentioned earlier, our new segment structure directly reflects our evolving strategy. Fuel segment incorporates the refining business and alternative fuels like hydrogen, while Consumer Services include gas stations and related retail activities. The Electrification segment comprises the businesses of MORE, whereas the newly introduced Circular Economy segment includes Thalis, HELECTOR, LPC, and VERD. On slide 13, we see a little bit more analytical performance in the first quarter. Adjusted EBITDA stood at EUR 315 for the Fuel segment, up from EUR 148 a year ago. Reported EBITDA is significantly higher at EUR 470, reflecting a substantial inventory gain of EUR 155 million, driven by the surge in prices during March and by the fact that both us and HELLENiQ were keeping large inventories as per our obligation with the 90-day storage requirements. Large inventories, high prices, large inventory gain.
Brent prices increased from 84% in March compared to February, while gasoline rose by 52%, diesel by 86%, and jet fuel by 105%. I'm sorry. Operating at full capacity compared to restricted utilization last year, combined with solid revenues and exceptional margins versus a very weak refining margin environment in Q1 of 2025, drove this stellar performance in the Fuel segment. Sorry, I have a cough. Slide 14. A slide which we like a lot because it really shows you how we operate and what the mix between crude and other feedstock is. Clearly here you see in this little part of the graph how we moved between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026 in the mix between other feedstock and crude.
We are back into a very normal operation of 80% of our feedstock being crude and only 20% being other feedstock, a complete reversal to what we had a year ago. Total process volume increased by 19% to 3.4%, compared to Q1 last year, when operations ran at a very reduced capacity. Also, this reflects 220,000 barrels per day compared to the 200,000. Crude utilization averaged 216,000 barrels in the first quarter. The crude mix, which is the very important point that now you see. If you remember, it was one of the main questions asked in the results of the full year. What are we doing with the lack of crude coming out of the Straits of Hormuz? Really what we did is the picture you see in this graph.
It consisted of 60% from Iraq. Of course this means two months of the old pattern, January, February, one month, March, the new pattern, even though in the beginning of March we had a couple of cargos which had arrived from the Strait of Hormuz. Clearly if you do a weighted average of how it was, this is the weighted average, but if you separate it two months with 75% and one month with very little, clearly you can understand how we operated in March and since March. We can say here that something like eight to 10 different kinds of crude were tested and run during this period. That's why in the next quarters, clearly this graph will show a much lower percentage of the Iraqi crude. Moving to page 15, to slide 15. Production and yields.
Similar to process volumes, production increased by 19% year-on-year, with middle distillate yields rising to 50% in the first quarter compared to 40% a year ago and 49% in Q4 2025. As a reminder, the low jet yield last year is explained by the mode of operation of the refinery during the repair works of the CDU. Slide 16. Sales volumes increased by 24% in Q1, once again reflecting higher refinery utilization and healthy demand levels. Greece accounted for 32% of refining revenues on the top right, with civil at 25% and shipping aviation at 7%, approaching the historical averages following last year's anomalies. Slide 17. Driven obviously by the extraordinary middle distillate cracks and tight product inventories, the benchmark refining margin more than doubled year-over-year to $124 per metric ton in the first quarter.
Outperforming the market once more, our margin reached $188 per metric ton, representing a threefold increase year-over-year and nearly doubling on a sequential basis. Excluding the material inventory gain of $155, our operational margin stood at $138 per ton, more than doubling year-on-year and increasing by 20% sequentially. Slide 18. Consumer Services. Sales volumes are reported to be down by 20%. However, this is not indicative of the real performance because last year, and also in past years, our Fuels marketing company's materialized imports that were sold to third parties, so like wholesale, which was not the case in the current year. In the current year, really, what was sold was sold to our own network. As mentioned previously, demand was flattish in Greece, and we did expand our market share during the first quarter.
EBITDA stood at EUR 38 from EUR 29 in Q1 2025. Excluding, of course, the inventory gain of about EUR 10 million, adjusted EBITDA softened slightly year-on-year, but recorded a substantial improvement compared to Q4 2025. Slide 19, Electrification on the top, Circular Economy at the bottom. EBITDA reached EUR 46 million, substantially ahead of the EUR 27 million reported in Q1 2025. Following a period of lower wind resource in last year, favorable wind conditions in the current quarter drove capacity factors to 31%, up from 22%. Against this backdrop, current quarter MORE delivered a strong EBITDA EUR 42 compared to EUR 30 million a year ago. At the end of March, our operational installed capacity reached 847, up from 839 in the prior year, and currently we are already operating at a higher level, which I will visit a bit later.
nrg's performance also advanced on the back of improved margins, offsetting a lower market share year-on-year. The company turned around its profitability to post an EBITDA of EUR 4.5 million, compared to EUR 2 million loss in Q1 2025. Circular Economy, for the first time, as we said before, EBITDA reached EUR 10 million, remaining flat year-on-year, reflecting the inherent seasonality of this business. Revenues and profitability are skewed towards the second half of the year. Furthermore, the segment maintains a robust financial footing, with net cash standing at EUR 18 at the end of the quarter. Group P&L on slide 21. EBITDA rose to EUR 546 compared to EUR 202 in the first quarter of last year, driven by elevated production, revenue growth, stronger refining margin environment, particularly during March.
Net income after tax and minorities stood at EUR 332, up from EUR 85 a year ago, having been marginally impacted by higher net financing costs. This increase was primarily due to EUR 29 million derivative loss versus EUR 5 million a year ago, arising from hedging arrangements for the two cargos currently blocked in the Persian Gulf. Excluding the impact of derivatives, net financial costs would have been EUR 5 million lower year-on-year. We note, however, that the negative derivatives results have been fully reversed as of today. Slide 22, balance sheet. Here we come to the good news of net debt. Cash flow was exceptional, driven by strong profitability, absence of extraordinary taxes paid last year, efficiency of management of our working capital during a challenging period of supply uncertainty and rising prices.
Operating cash flow reached EUR 435 million, free cash flow stood at EUR 378 million, representing a significant turnaround from the substantial outflows recorded in the prior year. Consequentially, as a result of strong cash flow generation, net debt fell by EUR 317 million during the quarter, standing at EUR 1.3 billion, just under EUR 1.3 billion as of end of March 26, compared to EUR 1.6 billion at the end of 2025. Slide 24. I don't want to linger much on it, but I like the numbers, so I want to mention it. Net debt at the company level from EUR 237 million down to EUR 18 million, with a significant change in the cash position. CapEx on slide 25 stood at EUR 42 million and EUR 70 million, respectively for the company and the group. Although our current guidance remains high, it reflects the seasonal phasing of our spending, which is usually back-loaded towards the second half of the year.
Moving forward, we intend to reevaluate our investment program over the coming months and provide an updated guidance as appropriate. We thought it was a bit early to do this at this point of time. Slide 26. Debt maturity profile. Company and group bank debt reached EUR 1.2 billion and EUR 2.5 billion respectively at the end of March. Last 12 months net debt to EBITDA ratio was down to a very low of 0.02x at the company and under one, 0.9x for the group. To come to an end so that you can have time for questions. The outlook. Crude availability remains uncompromised. We are running by securing the crudes roughly for the month ahead, four to five weeks, roughly four weeks these days. Demonstrating our operational flexibility, as we said before, we have procured and received 8- 10 different crudes during the second quarter.
Although feedstock procurement costs have clearly risen, the positive impact of elevated product cracks continues to outpace these costs, driving sustained outperformance in our refining margins. We reaffirm our previous guidance from late March, noting that since March, our refining margins have on average sustained or exceeded the historic levels of 2022. We enjoy a constructive refining backdrop, with margins underpinned by tight product balances amid resilient demand and ongoing supply disruptions. We also note that even following an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Supply chain normalization will be a gradual process, and refining as well as gas infrastructures will take time to resume full operations. In the renewables, during Q2, we added 72 MW of battery storage and 22.5 MW of wind capacity, bringing our total operating capacity to 941 MW. Performance continues to be positive QoQ.
I think I will stop here, so that will give you time to ask questions. Thank you for listening. Sorry, excuse me for coughing.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin the question and answer session. Anyone who is wishing to ask a question may press star followed by one on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue then you may press star and two. Please use your handset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes from the line of Fani Tzioukalia with Euroxx Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Hello, thank you for taking my questions. Couple of questions on my end, if I may. First of all, how would you see working capital evolution in the second quarter, given the blockage in the Strait of Hormuz? Potentially, how would you see demand for refined products evolving in the second and third quarter? Two other questions which I can proceed with later. Thank you.
Hello, Fani. Good to hear you. We are pretty comfortable with the working capital. We don't see any particular significant change, even though don't forget that we paid for the two cargos that are in the Strait of Hormuz at the beginning of April, the very beginning of April. While we do not have them, and probably we will not have them before the end of June. In the second quarter. This theoretical dent of $200 million, roughly, which is crude paid. Not sitting in payables, but the product, the crude not being refined, so moving to receivables or profits. Because we are running both May and hopefully June will be strong, so we believe the cash flow will be good and the working capital will be healthy. Sorry, what was the second part of your question?
How would you see demand, yeah, for refined products in the second and third quarter? I have two others later.
Yes. Demand up to now we see it being good, strong. There is no reduction in our monthly sales. We are also optimistic about the demand in Greece with the driving season coming into effect. We also believe the tourist season should be good. Talking to hoteliers and to people in the tourist industry in general, maybe there have been delays in the bookings. Rumor says that the bookings are there and you already start seeing a lot of tourists in Athens. Jet fuel demand is there. We feel it's good. What we can say is for the second quarter and a little bit the third quarter. I don't think we can go any further and guess anything further than that.
Okay. Regarding renewables, we saw some healthy margins in the first quarter, in terms of load factors, I mean. Is it something that we should expect also in the second quarter, and potentially would we see any further renewables capacity additions within the year? Apart from the batteries that we saw already.
Yeah.
Thank you.
As far as the wind situation and the performance, yes, April was good, and May. Not as strong as January, but it was definitely better than last year. The year is running higher than last year. As far as new capacity, alas, Mrs. Tzioukalia, there isn't any new capacity being added to our operating capacity for this year.
Okay, brilliant.
Yes, I think Romania, probably. I think Romania. I think Romania will be added, but I'm not sure, so I can always come back to you on that.
Of course. Just a small one. I'm sorry to keep you. In terms of just a few words on the Circular Economy now that there's a segmental reporting, and maybe a few words on the QoQ performance. I understand there is some seasonality in the fourth quarter. If we consider QoQ performance, as I said, with Q4 of 2025 and one Q 2026, although it was flat on year-on-year basis.
Yeah.
That's all on my end. Thank you so much.
Yes. The seasonality is more with the way income flows and EBITDA is created because of the nature of the projects with municipalities and local authorities, and the way the projects progress. Otherwise, both companies, which soon are going to be one, are performing well, and there is a gradual growth in their profitability year-on-year.
Brilliant. Thank you.
Thank you, Fani.
That's all on my end.
As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Ricardo Rezende with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thanks for taking my question. Petros, I have one question on the crude sourcing. You've been very fast to reduce your exposure to the Iraqi crude. As you mentioned, you're trying 8 - 10 different types of crude since these whole geopolitical tensions have started. If we imagine there might be some resolution or if this trade reopens, would you consider going back to how you were operating that before, or should we expect Motor Oil to run with a more diversified crude slate going forward? Just on your second point about the demand in Greece, you're talking about the driving season and the summer season as well.
When you think about the ongoing or current price environment and how strong demand is, do you think we might continue to see very strong demand pace, or do you think that at some point, when would you expect some sort of normalization on the demand front? Thank you.
Difficult questions, Ricardo. I have Mr. Svoronos here. It's more of a feeling, and it's an evolving strategy rather than we just press the button and change. This global problem that happened forced us to test things that we didn't even know we are being called to test them. Suddenly running I think three or four cargos from the U.S., which we have already bought and refined. Running North Sea oil, we have not tried before. Running Egyptian oil, running the mix of all these. Running new types of Libyan crude. This started being interesting. I think that we will probably shift a little bit, but we are not in a position to tell you by how much, because it depends on the end result. We really run the crudes to have the most profitable operation.
This is going to also be a function of the cracks on the products. The run that we currently have is lighter than it used to be before and gives a higher percentage of jet and diesel. If the cracks on these products continue being high, not as high as they are now, but higher than they were before, yes, then we will shift to a slightly different diet of crudes. The answer is yes. Probably, we will change a little bit, and we will shift to a slightly different diet. To what extent? We don't know. That's the first question. The second, we didn't see any demand destruction, nor a demand drop. What we saw is a drop in the demand or in the sales for the high octane products.
The Shell V-Power gasoline and the Action Diesel, the Shell V-Power diesel, because clearly, with such high prices, even if a Greek consumer Greeks love their cars, as you know, and Italians the same. They like putting in their car the Shell V-Power diesel or the Shell V-Power gasoline. Maybe this time because the price is higher than EUR 2, they will fill half of the tank and put the cheaper fuel, the normal fuel for the remaining. If prices stay as high, I think this pattern of less of the Shell V-Power products and more of the normal products will be what we will see. As far as the demand per se, as long as the tourist season is strong and people drive their cars, we see a normalization.
Don't forget that this has to do with the nature of our network, the network of Shell and AVIN, which have been doing relatively well. AVIN has been growing. Shell has been optimizing its station network. They have been expanding on islands, and they've been expanding in areas where they are not particularly strong. Keep in mind that we never stopped optimizing our network. We never put our pencils down and said, "We'll stop." We continued optimizing. In a way, we reap the benefits of that. Sorry, long answer, but difficult question.
No, that was very clear. Thank you and looking forward to see you soon.
Yes. Soon. Yes. Mary just slipped a little note about Romania that I mentioned before. There is 48 MW of solar in Romania, co-located with a battery of 10 MW, and they should be electrified. We expect them to be electrified in June, July.
The next question comes from the line of Anna Kishmariya with UBS. Please go ahead.
Good day. Congratulations with strong results, and thank you for taking my questions.
Thank you.
A couple from my side. First, to follow up regarding the crude basket. Can you comment around the premia that you're paying on actual physical markets? Because currently very hard to understand with all the quotations that we see on the screens. What is the actual physical market looking at, and what is your blended premium or discount that you currently operate at? Second question would be around the JV with GEK TERNA. Is there any update that you would want to share regarding the timing of the completion? When should we expect that? Final follow-up regarding the Circular Economy. Thank you very much for separating this segment. What is your outlook for the growth and EBITDA performance, maybe this or in the medium term, if you can comment on the segment specifically? Thank you.
The premia had risen significantly at the beginning of the crisis. They have gradually started falling, and now they are considerably lower. I don't have off the top of my head because it's a moving thing. Clearly, they are lower than the crazy numbers we were reading in the press a month ago. Don't forget that the premia, at the end of the day, the level of the premia also defines or not defines, influences the final price of the product. The margin number, the number that you have in the margin, is the delta between the price of the jet or the diesel or the gasoline, and the landed price of the crude. They've started falling. On GEK TERNA, we are moving ahead. I don't have a specific date to give.
I'm just saying we're moving ahead, and I think we had said until the end of the year, we should be completed, more or less. Let's say, hopefully, we are moving with that target. With the Circular Economy, we don't give guidance, you know that, not even on this one. It is gradually growing because it's a growing business in Greece, and so we expect a smooth increase in the EBITDA generation. Not something phenomenal, but a steady, let's say, increase.
Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Tzannetakis for any closing comments. Thank you.
Thank you very much for listening in. There were a lot of questions, but it was few.
There are more questions.
Huh?
There are more questions.
Excuse me for the interruption. We do have one last question.
Yes, please.
Comes from Dayo Lawal with Hartree Partners. Please go ahead.
Hello, can you hear me? Thank you for taking my question. I guess the clarification I'm looking for is regarding your capital allocation plans, right? If you look at your net debt at the end of Q1, based on the reports, it will be less than 1x by the end of 2026, right? Just trying to get a clarification on what you intend to do with all the cash that you'll be generating.
Yes. Good question, difficult answer. Timing is important in the answer to this question because when we did the business plan at the end of the year, we were more conservative, much more conservative because we always like being conservative, for the projected near future. I'm not in a position at this point of time to give you a full answer because we haven't changed the business plan or the way we look going forward. I guess we will have to see how the first six months go and start building the plan towards the third to fourth quarter. There isn't any change, there isn't anything new. I can't enlighten you at this point of time.
Much.
The next question comes from the line of Luca Orsini with Orsa. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, Petros.
Hello, Luca.
Hello. I just have one question. It's again on your debt. Do you plan to issue more bonds, or do you think that you can finance yourself better in a different way?
Luca, that's a very good and a very, not difficult question, but a question that has taken a lot of our brain power. Because of regulations, I'm not allowed to give a concrete answer to your question.