Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to MOL's First Quarter 2024 Results Conference. My name is Márton Teremi, head of investor relations, and as usual we have a strong.
This meeting is being recorded.
Dr. György Bacsa, EVP for, Group Strategic Operations and Corporate Development; Dr. Ákos Székely, SVP of Group Planning and Reporting; Mr. Zsombor Marton, EVP of Upstream; Mr. Gabriel Szabó, EVP of Downstream; Mr. Péter Ratatics, EVP of Consumer Services; and Mr. Zsolt Pethő, head of Circular Economy Services. We continue to use Microsoft Teams as a platform to hold our conference call. The presentation can be downloaded from our website at molgroup.info, and we will be sharing the slides in Teams too. After the pre-presentation, we will move to a Q&A session, where you will have the chance to ask questions by using the Raise Your Hand function of tools. Please keep yourself muted throughout the call except when asking a question. Before we start, I would like to draw your attention to the cautionary statement on slide number two.
Now let me hand over to György Bacsa, who will take us through the highlights of the first quarter.
Thank you, Márton, and welcome, everyone. Good morning. So regarding the 2024 guidance, as the title is saying, first of all, we reiterate the full set of our 2024 guidance, but we shall note that the risks to the downside are higher. Of course, these are only the first quarter results. It's always affected by a certain level of seasonality, as business is usual in our industry. But for the coming quarters, we also have to mention that we are still looking forward to a series of turnarounds, normal turnarounds, both in Hungary and Slovakia in the second and the third quarter. Just the first quarter is, we still think that it's within the range of our guidance. Pro rata is a little bit lower than usually, it's expected, but we are at the bottom part of the range. Oil prices were unchanged compared to fourth quarter.
Gas prices are still falling, so that, that is the pressure. There is a double effect, a positive and a negative effect, on our upstream revenue. Refining margins still continued to stay strong, and petchem margins slowly showing signs of recovery. Volumes in the downstream segment were, however, negatively affected by the unplanned shutdown in the first quarter. So if you're going to the next page. So as you can see, that definitely, compared to the first quarter or the first half of 2023, to, today in 2024, the macro environment is less supportive to our core traditional industries. However, but in the regulatory environment, there are already some easements that we can, already reflect in our, reports. Profit before tax is down almost 30% year-over-year. EBITDA is flat compared to first quarter, last year, but, down compared to last quarter of, last year.
So operative cash flow of this is $280 million due to significant working capital build. The lower EBITDA is also affected, not only, as I mentioned, that in certain segments the volume decreases and the gas price falls, but also the foreign devaluation, a certain decrease in the foreign-dollar exchange rate as well. Turning to segment performance, upstream EBITDA was $262 million U.S. dollars, driven mainly by the change in the hydrocarbon price environment, most notably the fall in the natural gas prices. In downstream, the margins, both in refining and petrochemicals, showed some strength. However, several turnarounds had a negative impact on volumes, so clean CCS EBITDA came 2% weaker than in first quarter 2023. Consumer Services EBITDA was $144 million. However, positively affected is mainly one of the factors: remedy sales, booked in this year, and gross in non-fuel sales.
The circular economy services, on the flip side, was also impacted by one of the accounting effects, that, in a magnitude of $30 million, and that's why it became negative in the first quarter. Let me also note that, we still are paying extra government tax again, which had a material impact on our results. In first quarter, its EBITDA effect, the group level, was $172 million, out of which $168 million related to Hungary. $110 million was the revenue-based tax we booked the full year in the fourth quarter. $27 million was the CO2 tax, and $27 million was the windfall tax. Some operational updates. In March, we published our new update to our strategy.
We also received a BBB- investment grade from Scope Rating, and the AGM was also end of April, where the base dividend of HUF 150, circa HUF 150, and the circa HUF 100 extra special dividend was also approved to be paid, as usual, over the summer. If you go to the next page. Some updates relating to our ESG performance. Total recordable injury rate, which is our main safety indicator, it's deteriorated again. Now it's 1.39 in first quarter. The increase is mainly due to the previously mentioned lot of maintenance and turnaround jobs, which increased compared to usual levels. But to mitigate it and to moderate this TRIR increase and to keep up with our guidance, we already take corrective actions. I'll just remind that our target is 1.3.
We had to ease on this target because to the stretch, too much stretch in this targeting was not so easy to level, so we are focusing on a gradual improvement in our TLRI performance. We received our 2024 ratings EcoVadis as well. We are in the top 5% of companies rated by EcoVadis, and we improved by 5 points. So now we are overall score of 78. So let me now give the floor to Dr. Ákos Székely, SVP of Group Planning and Reporting, to continue with the financials.
Thank you, György , and good morning to everyone. Let me first start with an overview of Group EBITDA performance in the first quarter of 2024. The headline message would be: No material change versus 2023 first quarter and business as usual. Clean CCS EBITDA increased by 1% year-on-year to $780 million, and the segment breakdown was broadly similar to the first quarter of last year. The details come at the LEP's presentation. Let me here just really highlight the most important effect. Upstream, the lower gas prices had material negative impact on the results. Downstream, as György said, the margins were stronger, both in petchem and refinery, and on the other hand, we faced several plant and downstream turnarounds during the quarter.
Consumer services EBITDA increase supported by non-fuel margin growth, and yes, there was a positive impact of remedy handover of fuel stations in Hungary, which accounts roughly $45 million year-on-year. Gas midstream, we are really pleased to see that same strong performance happened as at last year same period. And also the gas generation was high, both in the range of $79 million. There is passive demand for the cross-border capacities, which remains strong despite the mild weather. Also important to mention that strong management focus on OPEX, which led to really a limited cost increase. New segment, circular economy services, posted an EBITDA of -$10 million. Let me remark here that the segment's still in a startup mode, and eventually a proportion of revenue is based on acquisitions.
Some of those acquirers made in 2023 were reversed due to the slower than and expected ramp-up in EPR registration. This led to a run-off effect of $30 million. We already mentioned during earlier calls that the profitability and risk management is expected to be volatile in the first years, and we consider it as also normal, normal business. Let me continue with the CAPEX. The total CAPEX amounted to $320 million in the first quarter. And, yes, this is a slowdown compared to Q4, but this is also business as usual, as Q4 is seasonally the strongest in the CAPEX spending. However, good news is that the realization in the first quarter of 2024 is better by 62% year-over-year. The organic CAPEX spending is, the increase is mainly driven by downstream.
Spending on transformational projects was $50 million higher year-over-year, mainly driven by the Polyol Complex, where the mechanical completion was reached. The sustained type of CAPEX was higher, which accounts for $70 million due to the turnarounds in major downstream facilities. The clean CCS EBITDA of $780 million in Q1 translated to a net income of $265 million, and let's see the details in the next two slides. The CCS modification was quite limited, practically zero, accounts for $7 million, which is driven by the fact of the relatively stable crude prices. D&A this is practically at the same level as it used to be year before. Well, there is a slight increase compared to 2023, which is explained by waste management CAPEX spending, and also network additions in consumer services.
The financial expenses was $43 million, which is purely explained by the forint weakening 6% against the U.S. dollar and 3% against the euro quarter-on-quarter. Income from SCS came at $5 million, driven mainly by the contribution from ERP. Income tax was lower by $33 million quarter-on-quarter, and this is mainly due to the lower deferred tax expenses, and this is also followed by normal seasonality. The intersegment EBITDA was not material. We have already discussed relatively stable crude prices explained that, and the volume and the price effect of gas and the crude offset each other. Therefore, there is practically no intersegment EBITDA elimination. Corporate and other, we can see that well, compared to the previous quarter, there is a change, and this is explained by the fact that circular economy became independent segment.
Therefore, we are going to report under operator-level the pure corporate-level activities. Let me turn to the operating cash flow item. I think it's quite visible on the chart that there is only one item which stands out, and this is the changes in the net working capital, which amounted to $349 million, so $350 million. Well, this is coming from the usual seasonality beginning of the year. As we discussed, the capital expenditure of Q4 is the strongest. Therefore, those activities are being paid during Q1, which explains lower payables in the balance sheet with an amount of $200 million. Apart from that, there is an increase in inventories. Yes, we are preparing ourselves for the season as well as for the shutdowns to come.
Therefore, there is an increase in volume, which explains up to $50 million, and also the value, the higher product quotation and the weaker forint explains an additional $100 million. Finally, a few thoughts about the evaluation of the net debt. The nominal net debt is practically unchanged in Q1, at $2 billion. The net debt to EBITDA ratio shows a slight deterioration, and derived at 0.64 x EBITDA, and this is due to the slight over-denominator of FX terms, which explains roughly $50 million out of it. Overall, we are really comfortable with our net debt to EBITDA threshold guidance, and it definitely provides us sufficient headroom for the group. Now I would like to hand over to Gabriel to discuss the downstream performance.
Thank you very much, Ákos. Good morning to everyone. So let me present the first quarter 2024 downstream results. If we get to the first slide, thank you very much. So in the reported period, downstream delivered $293 million EBITDA compared to the base, as you can see, it's rather flattish, and compared to the last quarter of the last year, it's by 1/3 lower. Besides the macro environment, which I mentioned, which I will mention later, the basic internal driver behind this is a lower utilization of our assets than planned. It was triggered by a few unplanned events of the key facilities. Hence, we were forced to cut back the processing, and we satisfied the market opportunities from the third party, as also you can see on the chart, and not from our own production.
In terms of the fuel market demand, it's still relatively healthy with few differences. So while in Hungary, it's a few percentage points lower than base in Slovakia for a few percentage points higher. In Croatia, we see a double-digit increase compared to the last year. With reference to our major projects, investment projects, the polyol is going through the hot commissioning, and we are testing the product parameters at the Halfton pilot plant there at the DCU. We see some risk potentially causing further delay of the projects. So currently, we are trying to analyze those, clarify with the contractor, and understand those. Today, I'm sorry, but I can't share any info that what is the expected delay there. If we get to the macro next slide, please. Thank you.
So, in terms of the macro environment, we see stronger refining margin in the first quarter 2024, supported by lower CO2 price and also lower energy cost. The Group brand refinery margins, because of it, average about $10 per barrel. You might also observe that there is, for the first time, not presented European Euro quotations. So as I mentioned during our last three sessions, actually, from the last summer on, there is no liquidity, transparency of this benchmark, and these quotations are not trustworthy proxies of the evolution of our cost to the Euro blend. So we keep the DAP India quotation as the right benchmark. And once this is adjusted by logistic cost, I believe these are the reliable reflection of the market conditions.
In the petrochemical segment, in petchem margin, we see some recovery there, but it stays rather very fragile, and I have to say that we do not see any positive signs of the plastic market recovery in Europe. Also in spite of this better margin, you learn that in petchem, we were negative because due to the unplanned shutdowns, we were not able to fully cover the operational cost of our production. For the future outlook, so many refineries in the regions are in the turnaround: Czech Republic, Serbia, and also Slovenia this week. We are running just at the highest speed, and we will be running just one of our distillations in Slovenia for another two months as we are going through the major turnaround, which will be then followed by the turnarounds in Százhalombatta and also MPC. But as, Mr.
Bacsa said at the very beginning, so in spite of this turnaround year, we keep the 20 million tons feed for this year. Finally, my last graph with the impacts of the different factors to our performance and comparison year-on-year. So the positive impact of the refining margins were eliminated by narrower Brent euro spread, and finally, it's having a slight negative effect. The effect of the petchem margin was notably positive year-on-year in line with the growth of the unit margin, but the impact of volumes, compared to the base was negative. In the category others, there is some of the government outtakes. So, as it was mentioned by Mr. Bacsa, in case of downstream segment, it's $26 million of the CO2 tax, and the whole year revenue tax for downstream is $68 million.
This negative impact was counterbalanced mainly by the positive result of the trading, gas trading. My general conclusion or evaluation of the reported period is that in spite of this, more than $90 million extra taxes and some missed opportunities due to the unplanned operational issues, there is a good performance driven by refining while petchem is still in loss. With this, I will pass the word to Peter. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Gabriel. Good morning to all. Consumer services at BDA, as it was mentioned already, finished in the first at the end of first quarter at $144 million, which results in a 13% year-on-year increase. Behind this performance, actually, we have several factors. The first one, which is, I mean, a long-lasting tendency continued, so the trajectory is still very good on the non-fuel margin. We continue to show strength and contribute the $21 million altogether, on EBITDA terms year-over-year. And that was supported both by the organic and also the inorganic factors since the Slovenian transaction was closed in the middle of last year. So the first half of this year, actually, we will continue without base in the numbers. So that's a clear growth. Higher fuel sales was the other factor.
Altogether, $8 million we collected on EBITDA terms year-over-year. And that was driven by growth in fuel volumes, and also from both inorganic and organic, mainly actually in Croatia. The organic performance was very, very strong. Higher OPEX, though, counterbalanced a bit the good top-line performance. The magnitude of $30 million was the cost of the operation of a larger network altogether, so that's also a part of the inorganic acquisition gain. And this time, actually, the one-off effect I would highlight as well because altogether it's $90 million. However, that consists practically of two very large components.
However, that two components have completely different kind of impact because the first one is the revenue-based tax, which is a cost, which is a negative, altogether $27 million we paid in in the first quarter, while the positive one, as a one-off, is the handover of the remedy station, which contributed altogether $45 million, in the year-over-year results. If we turn the page to the fuel, then just very briefly, as I already mentioned, the 6% increase on the volumes. But what is very important and I would highlight this time is the fuel throughput per site, where the growth rate was 5% year-over-year. That practically means that the healthiness of the network or the quality of the network after the inorganic acquisition and also the remedy package handovers, now it's very visible on the throughput per site number.
Regarding the margins, however, we registered a 2% year-over-year decrease in unit fuel margins. That is despite the share of the positive trend towards the more premium liters what we saw over this period. And if we turn to the last page, and that would be my last one, the usual non-fuel, I mean, very good trend, very good numbers, as I said, and the dynamics in the non-fuel sales remain very strong, with 21% growth in the non-fuel margin compared to the same period last year. And 40% of this increase was due to the inorganic effect, but also, the organic factors continue to contribute significantly to this result. And the share of the non-fuel in the total margin split grew to close to 37%, and that's practically, if we compare it with the last year's same period, then 3 percentage points higher.
We are also glad to see that the average basket size has also grown significantly, indicating that the customers like the products we offer, and we are able to attract to them more and more products in every transaction, what they are continuing with us. We are continuing further this road, and we plan to continue the rollout of the Fresh Corners in the network. Also, we still believe that a significant contribution can come from the integration of the inorganic acquisitions, mainly the Polish and also the Slovenian one. I truly believe that once we will finish and the VI changes, and parallel with that, we intensify the marketing activities on the market, then the brand awareness, especially in Poland, will increase further.
More and more people will try our services and products, and the likability of the whole network will increase, and that will bring additional turnovers, additional customer transactions. That was very much supported by all the digital capabilities what we introduced in all the countries. Thanks very much, and with that, I will hand over the word to Zsombor to discuss the upstream performance.
So good morning, everyone. Let me start with the upstream performance in the first quarter, where our EBITDA stood at $262 million. This is 30% less than Q4 and 8% less than last year first quarter. This is largely impacted by the gas prices, which were 24% down compared to the previous quarter, and resulting therefore at like a 10% less average realized hydrocarbon prices. On the extra government takes, which had also an effect on our revenue on our performance because the revenue-based extra tax in Hungary, which was like $15 million this quarter. But also, let me give you a bit of clarification because the base periods were also affected by special levies. Just to remember, on the first quarter in 2023, it was impacted already by $128 million. That was extra mining royalty in Hungary, and the regulated gas price cap in Croatia.
In Q4 last year, we booked also a reversal of our crude royalty penalties as a positive impact supporting our results by $64 million. So if we move on to the next slide, you can see that these effects are also visible when you think of the new price realization. The falling TTF led to lower free cash flow by having an absolute $190 million cash flow performance of the division in the first quarter. Despite these circumstances, we were still able to keep the unit free cash flow above the long-term strategic guidance which we gave already, which is $20 per unit. We delivered $24 unit cash flow last quarter. If you move to the next slide, there is nothing extraordinary. You can get the waterfalls and the breakdown of our EBITDA quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year.
You can see that there are largely external factors having an effect and impact on our results. The extra royalty had a significant impact in the base periods, which I already told, and this is dominating the price component by more than $100 million having that last year. The hydrocarbon prices, especially the gas prices, have a negative impact both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. Then the other factor you can see on the chart is actually the revenue-based tax in the first quarter of 2024, again, $15 million. If we move to the next slide, which I would like to spend a bit of more time to give you a snapshot about our internal production performance. Despite the nature of our more and mostly mature assets, we were able to increase our production level quarter-on-quarter, which is a very strong performance.
This was largely driven not only by the CEE, where in Hungary, we were able to stop the decline and also started up new discoveries in Tura, which is a joint venture with OGD Hungary, giving us a 500-barrel net more share oil production already. But also, our international assets contributed heavily to this performance. In Kazakhstan, after the first gas, we were able to keep the field in operation despite the heavy flooding in the region. In Kurdistan, despite the export pipelines still shutting, we were still able to increase our domestic production, having a positive impact on our overall results. Mid-April, we also started up the ACE platform in Azerbaijan with the first valve already delivering to the ACG performance. And all these effects were contributing to a year-on-year, quarter-on-quarter increase on the production performance.
You can see that going forward, the April production level decreased compared to Q1 by about 1,500 barrels. This is a mix of planned and unplanned events, largely due to a terrorist drone attack in Khor Mor field in the Pearl operations in Kurdistan in April. For that, for one week, the field was in shutdown, but now it's back on production on the original normal levels. And also in April, we had a planned turnaround and shutdown of the ACG field, an annual shutdown, which had a planned cut on our production performance. Still, we believe that we can reach the annual guidance of the 90,000 barrel oil equivalent per day for 2024. And again, despite all of this strong production, the pressure on the gas prices really limited our earning potential for the quarter.
If we move on to the next slide, actually my last slide, finally, let's look at the evolution of our cost structure, CAPEX and OPEX. The unit OPEX was flat year-over-year and decreased quarter-on-quarter, driven actually by three factors: lower electricity prices in Central Eastern Europe, higher production leading to unit savings, and our asset composition shifting towards low-cost assets, and a very strong cost deficit came on our operation spending. With regard to the CAPEX, there is a 7% decrease, largely due to suspending OPEX projects in Shaikan because of the shutting of the export line. And lastly, let me again note that we expanded our own foreign exploration portfolio in Croatia by entering into a joint venture with Vermilion and dealing foreign exploration investments in Croatia in 2024.
This is in line with our strategy to create value through partnerships in the CEE region. With that, let me pass the word to Zsolt to discuss the Circular Economy Services division.
Thank you very much, Zsombor, and good morning, everybody. This is the first time that Circular Economy Services is being presented as a separate segment. Mr. Székely already mentioned, I think, that the main highlight of the first quarter is the one-off accounting correction with $30 million as an effect from last year. The result for this is that the Extended Producer Responsibility fees, or so-called EPR fees, are not paid as we expected. So many, many companies haven't registered into the system and haven't paid this amount of money. The whole concession and the new waste management model we started in the middle of last year is not only new for us, but it's new for all the participants, including the producers and companies or authorities. So together with the responsible authorities, we are doing our best to make those registrations happen.
If the companies feel registered, they have to pay the full amount of money from 1st of July 2023. We are very confident that this money will come and we can invoice it, and they will pay the amount which they are responsible to pay. Excluding this one-off effect, the EBITDA was $20 million, which is absolutely in line with the previous quarters and in line with our expectations. I would like to rather highlight that in the first quarter, we already started the development programs. More than 2,400 so-called reverse vending machines are already in the shops and the supermarkets waiting for the startup of the deposit refund system from 1st of July, and we are still continuously installing those machines. We started separate kitchen waste collection. We increased the textile waste collection and also opened our first waste yard in Esztergom.
But also, I think it's really important that from 1st of July, we now have a joint venture company, 50/50 joint venture company with the municipality of Budapest. And it's called MOHU Budapest . The company is called MOHU Budapest for the waste management operation, which represents 1/5 of the country population and 1/4 of the waste volume, now is managed by a company which is partly operated by us. And I would like to highlight that we are now owners of crucial assets like the only incinerator in Hungary and the biggest landfilling sites in Hungary. So we have ownership on those assets and control of those assets. And I really hope that in the long term, we ensure the most important region of waste management will be operated by the group. Thank you very much.
Hey, that completes the formal part of our presentation. I would like to now open the floor for the Q&A session. Please indicate if you'd like to ask a question by raising your hand button. Tamás, please share. Please go ahead.
Yep. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. I got a couple of questions. First of all, you mentioned this new benchmark on the Brent-Urals differential. How does it relate to your realized Urals price, this Indian benchmark you mentioned before? I know that you said that the last conference call that you paid the Brent-Urals tax based on the realized Urals price. So basically, my question is, how does this realized Urals price relate to the Indian benchmark? Is it far away? Do you get cheaper the Russian crude compared to this? So that would be my first question. And the second question would be regarding your polyol ramp-up. How do you plan this kind of production increase in the new polyol factory you have? And how does the current profitability of polyol look like?
Finally, on one issue, I heard yesterday when the Chinese president was visiting Hungary that they might be involved in the pipeline building projects in Hungary. I know that you have a partnership with the Serbian company to build a crude pipeline between Hungary and Serbia. So what does it mean that how the Chinese would be involved over here? Or do you have any ideas on this? Thank you.
Thank you, Tamás. Thank you very much for the question. So the first one, so to provide you some help, as I mentioned, I would calculate the DAP India and adjust it by the logistics cost. So this is roughly the benchmark for the price for which we are getting the crude delivered to our border, Slovak-Ukrainian and Hungarian-Ukrainian border. I can't disclose further details on this, but I believe this helps your calculations. But in terms of the polyol, what I said, the mechanical completion is ready. So the plant is there. Now we are starting it up. We are testing the parameters of the final products and the pilot or testing plant there, half-ton pilot plant there. And I believe this year, we will be very much working on the startup of the plant.
So this year, I would not count with the positive impact to our EBITDA with the polyol plant. And also, it's a good point what you mentioned, what's about the profitability. Of course, that there are several factors. So there is the official quotations, and there are either premium or discounts. But I will leave it for our further discussions. Once we are ready, once the plant is running, which will take time, then we can discuss how we will attract our customers. So there is a high interest from the European customers for this uptake. So they are rather happy that there is a new player at the markets. But this is our policy, how we will attract those customers with the quality products.
In terms of the last point, yeah, it was several times mentioned even in the media that there is an interest to build up this crude pipeline from Hungary to Serbia. Currently, our engineers and also the Serbian engineers, they are working on the details of the design there. This is the case. My guys, also with the help of some external engineers, they are putting together the feasibility and the technical design of this connection.
Okay. Thanks very much. Just one follow-up on the Urals Brent question. You mean logistics? You mean the logistics to India? So that's a kind of a.
Right. Right.
Okay. You might get it because you don't have to pay that logistics. That might be kind of more favorable to you. Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you. Anna Kishmariya, please go ahead.
Thanks, and thank you for the presentation. I have two questions, actually. So regarding the working capital built this quarter, would you expect some reversal to happen over the course of the year? And another question regarding the media we saw this potential Hungarian government looking again for retail regulation. There were this two-week period when the company can adjust the pricing. But what is the update? Should we expect some possible interventions? And do you have any updates on that side?
Let me take the first question regarding the working capital. As we explained, there are basically three factors behind. One is the course of normal business. We are finishing really larger projects in Q4. Therefore, we are paying out the vendors in Q1. This is the usual pattern. In this sense, yes, obviously, it will not happen again in Q2. With regards to the level of inventory, we are preparing ourselves for having a higher level of inventory because the turnaround season is coming. This only accounts for $50 million in the first quarter of 2024. The larger part, which is roughly $150 million, it's purely depending on the quotation. I think the answer is that yes, there is no further build of working capital given by the CAPEX project. With regards to the quotation, I think this is not in our hand.
It's going to happen according to the volatility of the Brent price. Okay. Regarding the government regulatory issues, I think the minister's announcement was clear that practically, after this two-weeks period, their political goal was achieved. Currently, they don't plan any additional steps. They continue to monitor the prices in the region, so including Hungary and the surrounding countries. So for the time being, I just can reconfirm that we don't expect any kind of regulatory interventions or interferences. There is this monitoring system in the statistics office that practically is based on voluntary data submission and Eurostat data submission.
On one hand, I think we are very happy that there is now a little bit of discipline in terms of data presentation since in the last couple of months, some private and other organizational or practically media actors, they started interpreting and collecting data in a very unstructured manner and not well-proven sources of dataset. And they made immediate consequences and statements how they see the price developments in the region and in the country. So I think a more reliable data presentation is better for everyone. And practically, it avoids or prevents so many unnecessary discussions, debates, or disputes that whether the data is wrong or the interpretation is better.
Thank you very much. And one follow-up, if I may, regarding the Slovakia tax. Is there any updates on how the audit proceeds? Any news on that side?
Thank you very much for the question. Well, the AGM of MOL Plc you already had, and also the group figure already been presented. Therefore, the 2023 audit process for the group can be considered closed. On the other hand, according to the normal internal schedule, MOL subsidiaries have a different timetable. Those deadlines are driven by the local deadlines. Well, in terms of Slovakia, the deadlines for annual report and also the tax filing is 30th of June. So it's going to happen in the second quarter. And as a matter of fact, this is an ongoing professional matter. Therefore, we wouldn't like to comment that. But eventually, it's going to happen in Q2.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ilya Kiselev, please go ahead.
Yes. Hello. Thank you very much. I'm looking at the market data in your release. It seems that in your key markets, there has been quite stagnant diesel demand, but gasoline was very solid. Two questions from you on that. First of all, does it mean that stronger gasoline demand means that you export less and basically also book land premium on those volumes if you see stronger gasoline demand? And secondly, what is driving this exactly? I mean, why is diesel so weak? Is it because of the weak industrial activity or is it because of the changes in the structure of the vehicle fleet in your markets? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you. So, I don't know, Peter, would you answer or I start and please then add if there is anything? So, very good observation. So, that we see the slowdown of the economy is mainly presented in weaker diesel as the base on the other side. Very good observation that the gasoline market, mainly because of the hybrid, where beside the battery, the engine is a gasoline type of engine there. And this is basically driving the higher demand for the gasoline. So, this is my understanding. But please, Peter, as you are there directly at the customer service station, probably you have more insight to this.
Yeah. Thank you, Gabriel. But actually, you said the relevant part. So country by country, the fleet structure can be a bit different, but I wouldn't say that it's largely different. Obviously, diesel is more exposed to the GDP and the general kind of economic directions. And I mean, country by country, we see the consumption difference coming from the price level. And for example, in Croatia, recently, the significantly higher consumption was due to the neighboring country's price level, meaning that in Serbia, the prices are much higher thanks to the or due to the significantly higher excise duty. And that's why actually the traffic routes, mainly the logistical traffic routes, were changed and more volumes and more traffics channelized through Croatia. So these kind of differences can happen on the markets country by country.
All in all, in the general kind of Central-Eastern European region, we don't really see a significant problem on the consumption.
Thank you very much.
Oleg Galbur, please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Thank you for the presentation. Two short questions from my side. The first one, you have reiterated your guidance for the full-year throughput of 12 million tons. But it would be also helpful to hear which quarters will be more impacted by the plant maintenance shutdowns. So if you can say a few words about that. And the second question is for Péter. You mentioned that the non-fuel margin, if I wrote it down correctly, had contributed $21 million to EBITDA growth year-over-year. If that is the case, and I'm looking at a $17 million year-over-year increase of EBITDA, does it mean that the fuel margin had a negative contribution, or am I looking at wrong numbers? Thank you.
Thank you very much. Yeah. Go on. Go on, Peter. No, go on.
Yeah. Thank you. Sorry. So actually, on slide 20, I think you will find these numbers. You will be able to read out that yes, the non-fuel margin contribution compared to the last year, same period, was $21 million additional. While the fuel volume and margin altogether, so combined effect of that on the fuel side, was $8 million. That was the question. Sorry.
Yes. That was the question. Thank you.
Okay. So to help with the feed and the processing, I would use the kind of even distribution. As I said, the Slovnaft is now at half speed. So the crude processing is roughly 8,500 tons a day. Then we go down with the Százhalombatta, where the crude processing of the distillation is 10,000. So I would go with the even distribution. So I wouldn't do any differences throughout the year as the last season is impacted by lower demand.
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay. Thank you very much. If there are no further questions, let me thank you for your attending the call. MOL Investor Relations, of course, will be at your disposal in case of any follow-up. Thank you very much, and goodbye.