Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to MOL's Q4 2022 results conference call. My name is Zoltán Pandi, the Head of Investor Relations, and we have a strong lineup of management to discuss the recent events. Dr. György Bacsa, Executive Vice President for Group Strategic Operations and Corporate Development. József Simola, Group Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Zsombor Marton , Executive Vice President of Upstream. Mr. Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream. As well as Mr. Péter Ratatics, Executive Vice President of Consumer Services. Particularly pleased to introduce to you Mr. Zsombor Marton, who is on this call with us for the 1st of February. He has been appointed to lead MOL's exploration and production business as of 1st of February. Mr. Zsombor Marton has a long track record in oil and gas, covering exploration and production, downstream and finance.
Besides others leadership roles, he led MOL Hungary's exploration and production business between 2017 and 2021. 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. We'll be sharing the slides in Microsoft Teams too. After the presentation, we move to a Q&A session where you have a chance to ask questions by using raise hand function of Teams. 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 Q4 of 2022 period.
Good morning, everyone, welcome on our Q4. First, definitely the summary of the Q1 results, definitely to compare it to our updated guidance and the 2021 results. I would like to draw your attention that in 2021, all the figures included our U.K. operation. The updated guidance and the year-end results do not include the U.K. operation anymore. That's why if you compare our upstream production on it's also in the EBITDA level, you should also take it into consideration. All in all, strong financial delivery in Q4 again. Ahead of our targets, ahead of our updated guidance. The CCS EBITDA is at $4.7 billion. Strong internal performance, definitely, macro helped. Significant government take all in all the end results is outstanding.
Of course, the macro was not always positive if I will consider the government and regulatory impacts even on EBITDA level and on the EBITDA level as well. CapEx is in line with our past reports, we are lagging behind with the compared to the guidance. Definitely we are constantly getting this $1.5 billion CapEx annually to be spent. Upstream production is in line with the guidance. The TRIR target is missed. I will talk a little bit more later in this presentation. Just now, of course I don't want to avoid the Q&A part, the dividend proposals will be discussed on the Board of Directors meeting in March. Definitely, this presentation do not include any guidance about dividend or any discussion about dividend. Next slide, please. Here is the summary. In the presentation.
As usual, I will not read it out, there are some of the points I would like to highlight. Organic reserve replacement, 185%. Upstream presentation will give you details about it. We made all the preparations to increase our margin processing capacities because this is a must have process development, especially in respect of our Slovnaft refinery. Successful Arab Light testing completed already Q4. EBITDA level, Hungary is comparable to our Hungary EBITDA generation. To tell something about the negative sides which impacted our operation. Important development, however, on the regulatory side, there is no more price cap in Hungary. The bank to asset tax are increased, from 40% to 95%. All in all, there are positive but negative development as well.
But not only in Hungary, but of course Slovakia and Croatia are also in line with certain taxation, new taxation, extra taxation measures. The next slide, please. Here is definitely a sad news that we missed the tolerable limit, 1.2 in the TRIR. It is now 1.4, mainly because of the injuries in the Q3. I need to remind you that last year was a nasty maintenance-heavy period. We had two major turnaround or plant shutdown in the Italian refinery, for example. All in all, it was a very tense and heavy year. Unfortunately TRIR results are also showing that. The Q4, however, what it show some improvement. Going back to the historical trend or going back around the tolerable limit.
ESG rating, we retain all the ratings, so B ratings in the climate survey. We continue to do the ratings with the previous ratings we use, AGF's rating, AGF, CDP and Sustainalytics. Some of the guidance for 2023. Next slide, please. Due to the level of uncertainty at this stage, so in February, we are not ready to give an EBITDA guidance. I don't think that it has to be today. There is a wartime effect of macro effects, heavy regulatory impacts surrounding us. We would, at such early stage in the year, we would rather talk about the internal KPIs. Internal KPIs regarding oil and gas production, 90,000 barrel a day. Food processing, 12 million tons, terminal. The CapEx, again, $1.7 billion.
Of course, the net debt to EBITDA, we will keep under one. In the CapEx, we continue with the strategic projects. That's why we think that this high CapEx spending will be necessary for all our transformational and strategic projects. The TRIR, we also included the stretching. Not only the tolerable, but at the 1.1. I mean, taking into consideration this year results, it's a stretched target, and we definitely will increase the efforts on our HSE processes and practices. Now I would like to hand over to Mr. Simola.
Thank you, György, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. On page nine, I will start with the EBITDA summary. As you heard, I'm sure you saw, we had year-on-year a very strong business year with the EBITDA generation, including somewhat softer Q4 compared to the previous quarters. As usual, for Upstream, Downstream, and Consumer Services, you will hear the details from the business leaders. A couple of words on the gas business, with $163 million contribution. We really have all the expectations we had from this business a year ago. The underlying situation is essentially that Europe had a very turbulent year, as you know, in gas supply from Russia.
While supply flows and routes in and towards Hungary were generally open throughout the year. That resulted in a much higher than planned cross-border capacity transmissions, and generally higher transmission volumes. In terms of expectations for this year, clearly we will go back to business as usual. The number could be smaller. Now whether this is going to happen this year or not, there is clearly a very high level of uncertainty. As for the C&O, you see, instead of the usual expense line, you see a positive contribution of $49 million. That's actually coming from a positive $102 million inter-segment number for Q4. The reason for this was a strong drop in the gas prices in Q4.
I also like to point out that the other leg of this elimination, or the negative leg, we will see in the downstream business, and Gabriel will cover the details on that. If you go to the next page 10, the CapEx business in Q4, a large but expected item, $459 million, that's coming from the closing of the LOTOS retail transaction in Q4. As for the yearly number, the $1.5 billion, I think it's somewhat lower than the guidance, which was somewhat below the $1.7 billion. I think generally the overall pattern of the year, including the very strong Q4 and a few million dollar lower spending, it's I think usual for us.
If you go to next page 11, the below EBITDA item, I like to point out that there were no special EBITDA items for this year. We will see the details for the other lines on the next page 12. CCS effect of the whole year is $101 million, from which a $100 million contribution coming from Q4, as a reason of the falling crude prices, and resulting in IFRS EBITDA being around $100 million lower than the CCS EBITDA. DD&A all in all, $1.26 billion, with $453 million for last quarter. Again, the usual Q4 seasonality shows up.
For the whole year number, I like to remind you that in H1, we had a sizable impairment reversal in Croatia. The 1.26 is probably at the lower end of the going rate, which we should generally expect for next year. Total financial gain in Q4 of $20 million and expense or loss for $206 million for the full year. In Q4, we saw a reversal of the Forint weakening compared to Euro, Dollar. There was a Forint strengthening in Q4, and that's the main driver beyond the positive. However, still for the whole year, there was a weakening plus the FX expense and other items resulting in this -$206 million financial expense.
Income from associates, again, the expected Q4, kind of seasonality. However, a much higher negative number, minus $107 million in Q4. Unusual. The reason for this is coming from our joint venture in Russia, the Baitex. As we communicated earlier, we brought down the net book value of this joint venture to zero in our book in Q4. And that was the largest contributor to this negative number. As for the income taxes, in line with the very good EBITDA results, and essentially a sizable increase in profit before tax in all major jurisdictions, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, and Azerbaijan, we see also a much higher numbers for the year. Page 13, the operating cash flow.
Essentially, if you take profit before tax and the usual adjustments of PD and the income tax paid and other, we see an operating cash flow before working capital of higher than $5 billion, which is a bit higher than the $4.7 billion CCS EBITDA. As in the previous quarter, the major item on this page in the working capital, which for the whole year it's still $1.5 billion build-up. It's important that the reverse of what you are expecting started in Q4. In this $1.5 billion actual number already contains $582 million decrease in Q4 in coming from the falling prices.
That leads us to an operating cash flow of around $3.6 billion, which of course very conveniently covers the $1.6 organic CapEx. On the last page, on the finance part is the balance sheet. Actually, I think the chart in the bottom left corners summarizes from cash point of view, of course, the story of the year. We had a simplified cash flow generation of $3.2 billion coming from the $4.7 EBITDA minus $1.5 organic CapEx. The aforementioned working capital build-up of a negative $1.5 billion. The mentioned M&A, mostly the LOTOS transaction, around $500 million.
The dividends paid in, declared in after the year of 2021, but cash went out in 2022, $600 million. Other items, all this actually leading to a net decrease of more than $700 million in net debt, ending close to $1.4 billion net debt for the year. That of course shows up in the net debt to EBITDA number of 0.3, and also in the gearing 13.6% for the end of last year. With this, I'd like to hand over to Gabriel to cover the Downstream business.
Thank you, József. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Let me sum up the Downstream performance in the last quarter of 2022, as well the whole year, 2022. Downstream reported CCS EBITDA of $384 million in last quarter, representing a 9% increase compared to the year 2021, and a drop of 48% compared to the Q3 of 2022. The composition of EBITDA in the last quarter of 2022 is very much different compared to the base year ago. While in 2021, almost one-third of the performance was driven on the petchem side, today we report loss of roughly $80 million on petchem side, and the majority of the performance is driven by R&M segment only.
Sales of own production decreased significantly, which was mostly in line with the delayed start-up of Danube Refinery following the heavy Q3-Q4 maintenance. At the same time, the annual financial derivative was very strong despite government intervention, as Clean CCS EBITDA exceeded $2.2 billion in 2022, representing a 50% uplift against 2021. Regional fuel markets continued to decelerate. On the one side, we still see an increase on annual consumption level around 4% compared to 2021, but the fuel demand decreased in both Hungary and Slovakia by roughly 4% in Q4, year-over-year. On the next slides, let me describe the macro development. I believe all of you are in picture in terms of the Brent-Ural spread.
It went around $25 in the last quarter, but it started widening again at the end of the year, and today still about $30 per barrel. I mentioned that the petrochemical performance was loss-making last quarter. Let me explain it with the help of the revisited petrochemical margin. We have implemented an important methodology change. Methodology change, sorry. The new approach is more consistent with underlying EBITDA generation since it not only captures the product spreads, but it now also reflects changes of the energy cost component. This is also more consistent with our refinery margin. As you may remember, we did some changes last year, which also reflects market developments net of energy and CO2 cost.
I believe presenting this updated headline petrochemical margin also explained better why Q4 EBITDA dropped below break-even levels, being exposed to high energy cost on the one side and sluggish demand environment at the same time. On the other side, the high CO₂ cost. I believe that this revisited or new petchem margin calculation will help all of us to better understand the performance and to forecast the performance of the petrochemical segment. Let's get to my final slide, discussing the evolution of the CCS EBITDA in Q4. We clearly see the impact of factors I mentioned before. On the one side, this is the petchem price and margin and also the strong R&M performance. I would like discussing R&M, I would like to highlight two factors.
On one end, as presented on the sales volume side, we had a period of reduced utilization in Danube Refinery. Following that, we completed the scheduled turnaround in November, and we were unable to ramp up processing in line with our original plans, so we missed with this around 20% of the distillation capacity in Q4 compared to our plans. In addition, there are also items that drove the $109 million negative impact next to our usual price and volume effect. What we did, we had to impair the gas inventory in Croatia in line with the introduction of the regulated gas price scheme that was introduced as of Q4 2022.
Furthermore, there were losses recorded mostly connected to gas that we purchased from upstream as gas prices fell during the period on which we have no CCS adjustment. This is a negative in downstream, but neutral on group, as Mr. Simola, our CFO, mentioned before, and it's also mentioned in the last bullet point of the slide 9. It's eliminated on the intersegment line. Additionally, payroll expenses grew and were mostly driven by year-end provisioning. So approaching the results from another aspect, the price regulation and windfall tax. As Mr. Bacsa said, there was a phase out of the price cap in Hungary, which is, I believe, significant positive development operationally since the market-based pricing prevails again, allowing imports flow to the country.
On the financial side, however, the overall picture is mixed since Brent-Ural taxation was introduced at the level of 95%. With this, I would like to hand over to Péter Ratatics and Consumer Services. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Gabriel, good morning from my side as well. Let me start first with the Q4 results. Altogether, the EBITDA decreased 23% compared to the last year's same period. Actually we finished that quarter at $89 million. Obviously the biggest impact was the price cap throughout the whole year, that was also valid in the Q4 as well. However, at the very end of December, as it was already mentioned, the Hungarian price cap regulation were lifted, still the Croatian margin regulation is in force and also in several other countries the total prices are under pressure.
Altogether, the price caps, the former regulation cost us $50 million negative impact on the Q4. Throughout the whole year, obviously it was significantly higher. Next to the price cap, the other impact, the other negative impact is the retail special tax at the moment here in Hungary. Next to that, the OpEx increase throughout the whole year was significant. In the Q4, also, we have roughly $38 million additional burden, mainly due to the increasing salaries and also the increasing utility cost and the increasing transactional costs on, for example, bank charges.
On the other hand, we also continued the good performance of the non-fuel in the Q4, both on sales side and on margin side. If I have a bit broader outlook or overview on the entire year, then probably with a with a quantitative sentence, I can say that that was a perfect storm in the life of the Consumer Services so far at least during the past five, six years. I think we positively performed in all of the previous difficulties and crisis like during the COVID, but our weak spot is now seemingly the government regulation in our operation.
I can say that the business operation is fairly resistant against the high total price environment on the fuel side, but the government takes and the different and increasing OpEx pressure is something what caused us a difficult year. All in all, the good news, I think, MOL Polska, the starting of the operation in December, in the Q1 in December, actually, the reported EBITDA from Poland, from the newly acquired network side was $6.9 million. All in all, the entire year, from free cash flow point of view, on the consumer side, we were able to contribute at least some free cash to the group operation.
Let's go to the next slide, where I can also highlight what's probably the positive news that the fuel consumption, the fuel sales, from quantity point of view, significantly increased and still increasing. Practically all of our countries, the performance were positive, not just in the Q4 compared to the previous or the last year Q4, but also in each and every quarter of the year. Primary Hungary, the increase was 36% on year-on-year basis in the Q4, but also in Slovakia, up to 16% we increased the sales. That also helped our fuel throughput site performance. I think that the biggest task is to keep the market share, what we increased significantly during the last year.
The biggest increase was in Hungary, where the market share increase was 10 percentage points, but also in Slovakia and in Croatia, we were able to acquire, acquired and gained additional market share. The biggest task for this year, for 2023, will be to keep as much as we can from this increased market share. Yeah, we will continue the reconstruction of the Polish network. Recently, we opened the first MOL branded network. That's an addition because it was a newly built. From now on, actually, we will also continue the rebranding of the service stations. If you turn the page to the non-fuel side, I mentioned that we continued the good performance on this segment of the business operation.
I think this is, this is seemingly the most resistant part of the business operation. Both from sales and margin point of view, the increase was continuous. On a constant currency, the sales increase was 19%, while the margin increase over passing the sales increase. Actually, it was 31% on constant basis. Yeah, as it was already mentioned, the FX and the different volatility of the different currencies in this region overall negatively hit the operation or the business result of the consumer services. All in all, throughout the entire year, $44 million is the difference between the constant FX and the reported FX, unfortunately, on the negative side. I believe that it will be better in this year.
A few positive things again, on the back of the significant fuel transactions and the increasing market shares, we also focus very much on the loyalization and activization of the loyal customers. The yearly active customer number reached three million, which is a very large number, I think, and it's still increasing. Also, we continued the digitalization of the customer experience throughout the whole network. Actually, the downloaded application reached 1.7, almost 1.8 million downloaded application versus the target, which was 1.3. Seemingly the acceptance and the likability of our new loyalty platform is very promising. That's a good news because just in a few days time, we will introduce the same reward-based loyalty platform in Slovakia and Czech Republic.
That will be the platform from what actually we expect that we can keep relatively high number of the market share. Last but not least, on the last slide, again, a bit of an outlook from my end. As I said, the last year, 2022, was sort of a perfect storm around us in the Consumer Services. Still, I can say that I'm happy and positive because probably that was the lowest point. That's a low base for us for this year. I really believe that sooner or later in all countries, the regulatory environment will go back to the normal competitive market operation.
That will also help us to go back to the normal growth path, what we originally set. I still have a confidence that by 2025, we would be able to overpass the $700 million in CCS EBITDA plan, what we set for us in the Consumer Services. With the acquisition what we made and also with the consolidation what we see on the market, we will have good opportunity to grow further. Thanks very much for your attention and I will hand over the word to Zsombor.
Thank you, Péter. I'm very glad to be here, good morning to everybody. I'm also very glad to present you the strong results of upstream for the Q4 and for the year 2022. As for the Q4, we almost reached half a billion EBITDA, which is 8% higher than last year's same period. This time we're also ex U.K., because we successfully closed the divestment. The realized prices were also decreasing, also the Brent around $98, and then also the TTF gas month ahead was $213 per barrel. All these diminishing prices were resulting still higher than $100 total realized hydrocarbon prices, which actually helped us to reach this quarterly EBITDA for the upstream segment.
For the annual result, the EBITDA is $2.2 billion. Still the EBIT excluding special items is $1.6 billion. The decreasing, let's say, quarterly EBITDA from the Q3 is resulted by newly introduced regulatory change, which significantly influenced our performance. It was in Croatia, price cap for the gas EUR 41 per megawatt hour, and as well as the Hungarian royalty. They both combined impacted our results only on the Q4, $150 million. For the full year, it's about $270 million. If we go further on, it's just a reminder slide that despite of the Q4, lower price environment, for the year we still have a very healthy unit EBITDA and unit cash flow.
For the barrel, it's the $58 per barrel, and for the total year, it results $1.84 billion cash flow generation for the upstream segment. If we go for the EBITDA bridge, you will see again it's no U.K. on the page because we closed the deal. For the quarterly results, you see that we still enjoyed very good volume and internal performance on the production, which affected slightly positive for the EBITDA contribution. However, you see a more than 30 barrel down in the realized hydrocarbon prices, and that's both competitive price decrease and also the Croatian gas regulation on the price cap which was introduced.
For the full year EBITDA, it's still very positive on the high price impact on the Brent, more than $50 uplift for the year and two and a half times more increase on the oil gas prices. Regarding the volumes, for the full year, it's much more smaller negative impact than it would have been as we do a do nothing scenario. This minus 400 is a result of the natural field decline. On the production side, I will talk a little bit more in detail on the next slide. The production performance of the group is very stable. You see that still on the Q4, we remained over 90,000 barrels, 90.9 thousand barrels for the group.
At the end, it results for the full fiscal year, 93,000 barrels. Even there is an increase from Q3 to Q4, which is actually driven by higher gas production in the Central Eastern Europe, both Hungary and Croatia, and also the recent Vecsés discovery is already in production. It is producing now 900 barrels compared to the initial rate of 600. For the 2023 as an outlook, you see that we had a very good January result. We have a big trust that we'll be able to deliver 90,000 barrel production in average for 2023.
the next three to five years, we expect positive contribution from our international assets on ACG in Azerbaijan, from the Shaikan asset in Kurdistan, and also the first gas from Kazakhstan is coming online in next couple of years. We move on to the unit OpEx. Despite of the very high cost pressure and inflation environment, we were able to keep very strong cost discipline and only had a 4% upwards. Still we are under six barrels. I also need to say that the strong dollar helped us slightly as well as the divestment in U.K. which favorably impacted around $1 on our income tax figures. On the project side, we are in line with the base.
Our spending is around on the base level of 2021. However, the composition is slightly different. Our exploration spend is down from 20% share to, like, 15, and we have more spend on the development side, largely contributing on Shaikan and the Croatian Adriatic offshore campaign. I'd like to close the presentation with a very positive news on the reserves. It has already been mentioned in the summary as well. We had a very good year. We booked PERN after the arbitration is closed, and we had also positive development in the CE, driven largely by Hungary. Our net increase in revisions were 60 million barrels, and we're calculating 33 million as our annual production to end up with a 185% reserve replacement ratio.
That results us and brings to a reserve to production ratio, the reserves life of 10.5 years. At this time, I would like to thank your attention and give back the word to Zoltán for the Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you. The formal part of the presentation is over. We open up for the Q&A. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please use the Raise Hand function of Microsoft Teams. I think we have a question from Jonathan Lamb, Wood. Jonathan, please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for the presentation. I wanted to ask a question about income tax. In the Q4, you had a very high level of income tax. I understand there's all kinds of taxes going on at the moment. Does that reflect simply a catching up from previous quarters, or is there something else happening there? What can we expect from tax in the coming quarters?
Hi, John, this is József Simola. The Q4 number includes $521 million contribution, tax contribution from the EU solidarity contribution. I think the other lines are probably normal or in the range what you would expect. In terms of any tax guidance for next year, I wish I would have one, but as you kind of, see, it's a very fluid and volatile situation, taxation and all decisions in our industry right now.
Would that solidarity tax, that's for previous quarters as well, right? It wasn't it for the second half of the year? Is that's dollar or is it HUF?
Is it, we speak in dollars?
Yeah.
I mean, generally, most of the taxes as discussed in the previous quarters are already reflected in the EBITDA number. In addition to this, it's only in Q4, and again, the EU solidarity contribution impact, it shows up in the kind of taxation or income tax numbers.
Okay. One follow-up, if I can, if I may. There's a number of things going on in. The underlying numbers seemed weaker than what I expected, despite high refining margins. I understand that there were lower volumes because of maintenance. Is there, is there tax and thing issues in refining there in the EBITDA?
Yes. Compared to Q3, I reported that the impact of governmental measures resulted in the $0.40 million take.
Part of bigger price of it was the price cap, which is roughly $150, and I reported in Q3 the Ural-Brent tax around $90 million. For Q4, it's around $210 million.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. The next questions come from Tamás Pletser, Erste.
Yes, good morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions. I'm interested in two areas, basically. I mean, the first issue is regarding your purchase of Russian crude. I read some articles that the Argus, which is the main data provider, in the future may not provide data for the Urals prices. I mean, what kind of price agreement do you have with the Russians? What reference do you use when you buy Russian crude from Russian partners? How do you calculate the tax? Are the tax based on the realized crude purchase price from Russia, or is it based on some, let's say, benchmarks?
That would be my first area of questions. Second, topic I'm very much interested in, how do you see now the situation with the Slovnaft refinery, especially after February 5th, when the EU sanctions stepped in? Will you be able to get non-Russian crude to this refinery? What do you expect about the agreements with the Croats regarding the further supply of this refinery? I'm particularly interested in whether you can export any products now to Ukraine after this regulation came into the picture. Thank you very much.
Yes. Thank you, Tamás. Thank you very much for the question. The first part of the question was regarding the REBCO prices. Both the other contracts are based on the official publication of the Brent-Urals spread. I do not have the information you just mentioned, that there won't be any kind of this by Argus. I don't know. The other is that, yes, in terms of the extra 90% of the Brent-Urals taxation, this is based on the realized price. The third part of your question, that we assume that this year in Slovnaft we will process roughly 30%-35% of alternative crude. This will turn from 5th of December this year, and for the next year it will be around 60%.
I see. Can you or do you, or are you able to export, you know, crude products...
Sorry, yes.
from Russian crude to Ukraine? Yeah.
Yes. there is an exemption that we can, but it's not as easy because there are some logistics constraints. The market or our market pattern was set in the way that we exported the majority of our products to Western Europe. The only Eastern country I believe was Romania so far. it's a real logistics optimization issue.
Okay. Okay, thanks very much. Just to clarify, you said that you use 30%-35% of alternative supply now to Slovnaft. Is this going to remain until the December 5th when, you know, this derogation would keep you to supply that? Is this the right thinking?
Yes. Yes, you are right.
Okay. Okay, great. Thanks very much. One more thing which came to my mind.
Sorry, it's some disclaimer. My basic learning from last year was that it's really hard to forecast, or it's easy to forecast, but the real life changed really very significantly. There are some learnings from last year that there are several changes in the governmental measures, in the market supply, which can then shift this 30%-35% to different number. I would say my forecast and my plan is 30%-35% for the next year.
Does it also mean that the agreement, what you have with Janaf, that crude which comes from the sea, is it mainly coming now to the Slovnaft refinery, not to the Danube like previously?
The 30%-35% of alternative crude definitely currently is coming from the Adriatic pipeline, from the Adriatic Sea. Yes, you are right.
Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
We have another question coming in from Oleg Galbur, Raiffeisen. Oleg, please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, thank you for the presentation. I have a few questions, let me start with the one on the working capital. You had a quite a high buildup of working capital last year, with a large part already being released in the Q4. I was wondering, taking into consideration the price development, but also probably other moving parts, how much of the last year's increase in working capital would you see being released this year? Also on the cash flow components, can you maybe say a few words about the expected cash outflows for windfall or solidarity tax payments this year? I refer to the taxes which were calculated already for 2022, including this $520 million of solidarity tax.
I guess on a small part, if any of this was already paid in 2022, the large chunk should come next year. On the retail segment, how realistic is to or would it be to keep the fuel throughput per filling station at the last year's level, especially in Hungary, where the filling stations benefited in a way from the fuel price gap by attracting higher traffic? Last but not least, we noticed that you skipped the 2023 guidance for EBITDA and free cash flow generation. Any particular reason for that? Thank you.
As for the working capital, I mean, one major change.
What happened this year that, generally because of the war situation, rather than, try to minimize actually inventory level, we pretty much in the mood of trying to maximize, inventory levels. Essentially make sure that, in a case of a potential disruption, we have, kind of, maximized our reserves. That's actually as I see, no, it's not expected to change in the coming months. And that means that generally on the volume side, of the working capital, we don't really expect any change. Of course, there can be a pattern of turnarounds and other things, but I would not expect going back to the pre-war level, in terms of volumes. And the other factor, the price level, again, we will see.
A further price decrease would be a reduction and increase would of course mean an increase in the working capital. As for the tax payments and tax payments in. I mean, as you just mentioned, we don't give an EBITDA guidance. It is connected to a couple of steps. We don't give a guidance or kind of income related taxes for 2023. As for the $521 million, most of it, actually the vast majority of it is expected to be paid in 2023 in cash.
The second question was the fuel throughput, if I remember well, for Hungary.
Yes.
How realistic that would be to keep it on the level as it was last year? It's not realistic to keep it on that level. A lot happened last year. A lot of cross-border fuel tourism as well. Obviously, some level of fuel sales decrease would happen on the Hungarian network. In general, in the regional sales and the regional market share. Excuse me.
No, it wasn't me. It was someone else.
Oh. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. In general, I would say that in Hungary, the sales, the fuel sales, will decrease, but the market share ambition is very high from our end to keep as high as it possible.
Thank you.
The final one, as I mentioned, at this point, we are not able to give you. Sorry, someone is talking. Just to answer your last question on like that, the EBITDA guidance we didn't include in this presentation. Of course, you could see that trends are quite similar end of last year and a few on this year. However, to give you a full year guidance in such a turbulent market environment so early stage of the year, it would not be, how to say, well-founded enough. We have a such wide range of drivers that we need to take into consideration, and these drivers are not pointing to the same direction.
As I mentioned you that the wartime, is also giving a lot of risk, infrastructure or supply risk, also risk of, government or regulatory risk. There's also. Of course, it gives a driver on the prices and the margins as, of course, as you could have experienced. There's also negative drivers that it could also turn economies to a downturn as well. Let us that in February we don't give a ridiculously wide range. Trends are continuous, as you could see. We give you the patterns and the internal, the internal KPIs. Of course, without EBITDA, we can't give you free cash flow guidance either. If you free cash flow guidance, you could calculate an artificial EBITDA guidance how to feel. It was handy then.
Understood. Thank you very much.
We have a question coming in from Piotr Dzieciolowski, Citi. Piotr, please unmute yourself and go ahead.
Hi. Can you hear me? Good morning, everybody. I have a couple of questions. The first one regarding your recent takeover of Alteo. Can you please elaborate what you bought and what are your ambitions regarding the renewables going forward? What kind of investment CapEx do you foresee in this field? Second, on the solidarity tax, do I understand this is a one-off tax or that's a recurring element? What's the basis how you calculate it in your case? The third question, the final one, would be on the petrochemical EBITDA. It kind of was below zero in the Q4.
How do you see this development like, is the current decline of the gas prices enough to bring it to the positive territory or, you could struggle for medium-term in this sub-segment?
For the first one, the renewable, we started renewable investment right after the announcement of the 2016 strategy. So far, we organically built up already a portfolio of renewable power, also bio investments, also in circular economy investments. If we continue now with 2 threads. One is that the circular investments will mainly focus on the waste concession-related investments and also anything which is adding up capacities to use waste as a feedstock or any kind of production. Already the CapEx includes the first wave of circular economy investments. The renewable one, the Alteo is a platform for us, so we acquire and we are acquiring. Since the deal is not completed yet, it will.
We expect to complete it by the end of March. The mandatory takeover will be over. We can financially close the deal with the majority shareholder and the minor shareholders. Thereafter, it will stay listed. Alteo will be a listed company because, for the time being, we consider as a kind of platform which is, which has its own strategy. We join, of course, the Alteo story in this case, but it's not integrated fully into the MOL story yet. We will continue on our organic investment. We will use Alteo platform to go further.
For the Solidarity Tax, as discussed, the kind of number in Q4 is $521 million.
Given the uncertainty and the scope is in the EU countries where we operate and such tax was issued. Because there's a high level of uncertainty given the kind of technicalities of this calculation and also potential legal questions surrounding the validity of this tax. The level of disclosure we can make at this point of time, including that, we clearly cannot give you any details or guidance for 20 23.
Is it, presented based on revenues? Is it, based on your gas option or like, what's the basis of it? Like, how did you come up with a $520 million? As you said, is it a recurring, we should have another half a billion or whatever the number is in 2023 numbers?
No. As I said, this is coming from more than one country. In countries where we potentially may be subject of this tax, and this is current or current best estimate for the total number. As I said, beyond this, we don't feel comfortable given all the uncertainties, again, in terms of the quantity, i.e., the calculation and the potential legality of the tax. We don't feel comfortable sharing any more details at this point of time.
Understand. Thank you.
Just the tax regimes, the new extra limit taxes that they introduced, are anything but not stable. They even change it even after introducing many countries several times throughout the year. It's a constantly, how to say, moving target for us. Let us then give you learned of last year uncertainty that we cannot give you detail. This is the best estimate on the magnitude of the impact. You could say that these extra taxes are anything but not stable.
Whether it's a one-time, how it is calculated, whether it will be changed in this year when they realize that it's not so effective or not enough, or whether they roll out because it's slowing down the economy, all aspects are, very down to the
Understand. Thank you. On this petrochemicals, how do you see the, kind of your, loss, going into the 2023? Is the recovery on the way?
Yeah. As, probably you saw or realized that the difference between the old and the new integrated petchem margin, was around 220, so 200, sorry, 220 EUR per ton. Currently this difference between the old and new is around EUR 150-160. With this, I believe we can cover the fixed cost. In January, end of January, we saw the significant demand drop or the deceleration of the demand in general. Beside of the cost, we also have to take into consideration the revenue side once calculating the profitability. What we see that in February it recovered. It's a mixed picture.
While in January the demand was rather very low and the petchem margin was also low, mainly pushed by the sales price of the final product. In February we see some recovery.
Okay. Understand. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We have a next question from Anna Kishmariya, UBS.
Good day. Thank you for taking my question. I actually have two. One also on government take, but, in this time a fuel price cap. We saw that Hungarian government abolish price cap, replace it with higher taxes on Urals-Brent spread. My question is, to what extent the fuel price cap in other countries will affect the business in Q1 2023? Another one is the outlook for OpEx. This year you managed to maintain OpEx at a relatively low level despite the inflation. Do you expect a higher increase in OpEx coming this year? Thank you.
Just for the first part that in Hungary, the price cap was phased out. The price cap was a fixed price with maximum price, both for retail and wholesale, so it was a wholesale price cap as well. It started as a retail price regulation, but ended up a combined one or universal one in that one. They have eliminated both elements. The Urals spread taxation was yes, in quite short period of time, increased. That one was introduced even earlier, but with a lower tax rate. Of course, it's affecting all Urals import only. The price regulation in other countries are different nature. Most of them are margin regulation and only retail price regulations.
They have nothing to do with the crude supply or crude import. We don't see a kind of trade-off in that sense in other countries. The question is always that how long they keep the margin regulation or what is the calculation base of the margin regulation. What is the formula they are using as long as they are introduced? It's it was a different price regulation that was in place in Hungary, more a fixed price and more universal regulation. That, it's over. I think it's it's to a certain extent, in terms of government, this Urals spread taxation is that we are having for this year in lieu of price regulation.
From countries point of view, actually, we have a regulated market environment in Serbia, in Croatia, and also in Slovenia. Out of the three countries, actually, the kind of most negative result or effect on our results is in Croatia. That's margin regulation, which combines the wholesale and the retail margin. Actually, the government on a weekly or bi-weekly basis set the price at the maximum total price what the retailers can put on to the outlet programs. That also should cover the wholesale or the import cost as well. In Slovenia, we have a reimbursement regime that the prices are regulated. However, the government reimburses some of the negative effect of this.
In Serbia, actually, though we have a regulated price environment, that's practically quite close to the other markets unit margin environment. The effectivity is not that negative at the moment. Thank you.
I mean, on the OpEx, I can make, I think, just a general comment that we see probably kind of opposite forces in this field. Clearly, the dollar and euro real and visible inflation, which was not part of our life in the last couple of years, will have an increasing impact on the OpEx level for us as for any other companies. I think on the other side, the forint weakening, which happened last year, and we have a sizable part of our operating expenses in forint, that's something pointing in the other direction.
It's clearly, I think, the overall question of the recession and the visible decrease in government CapEx and investment gives us a high level of bargaining power with a certain group of our suppliers. All in all, I think the question is clearly on the table in different way as like a year before. At this point of time, we see indicators on both directions. Generally, I think our internal targets is keep OpEx flat in dollar-euro term. There will be clearly exceptions from this general rule.
Thank you very much.
We also have a question from Kian Hua at CSA Asset Management.
Hi. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Sorry, can you hear me?
Yes. Yes, we can.
Yes. I've got a couple of questions here. First of all, regarding the 95% tax on the Brent-Urals spread. It was mentioned earlier that this is based on the realized price. Can I confirm that the 95% would be the difference between the realized and Urals? That's my first question. The second question would be, where is this tax showing up in the financial statement? Is it built into the EBITDA? Or is this showing up under the corporate tax line? That'll be my second question. I would also like to have a bit more information on the impairment in Russia. After the impairment, what would be the status of the assets in Russia, and what are the assumptions behind the assets going forward?
My last question would be, I think the presentation did mention that the intersegment transfer this time around turned positive because of rapidly falling gas price in Q4. Can you please, you know, explain a bit more about how this falling gas price lead to a positive transfer? Maybe, if you can, if you can point out, you know, how the dynamics between the selling price and the transfer price takes place, that would be, that would be helpful. Thank you.
In terms of the Brent-Urals spread you asked, we measured or we calculate the 95% of the actual realized price. For the price we bought the petcoke quote. In terms of the last part of your question regarding this transfer pricing. Downstream is buying the natural gas on the market price from the Upstream, which means the TTF month plus one. We have an inventory, average inventory of natural gas in the last quarter around 80 million tons, which is 850 megawatts. When the price dropped from roughly 100, in average 160 to 80 is causing this revaluation of the price and causing a negative effect on the Downstream EBITDA.
It compensated on the other side, on the upstream, market price revenue.
I see.
For the Buytex, I mean, just a bit background that, I mean, I'm sure as you're aware that, because of the sanctions situation, and the kind of, I would say, sanction war-driven regulation in the EU and in Russia, we are in a situation that we cannot and don't want to put in any additional funding into the company. For all practical terms, it's impossible to get out any dollars or rubles from this company. From financial point of view, we are cut off from this sub-subsidiary. On the other side, the subsidiary kept on operating in ruble terms locally, I would say in a normal way.
Now given the uncertainty, given the current situation, what I described, and the uncertainties, we felt that's the best actually to bring down the book value of this investment to zero. That doesn't change any kind of legal title or anything to this investment. Frankly speaking, we had to see how and how quickly the whole situation develops regarding the war between Russia and Ukraine.
I see. Thank you. Regarding the line which you booked, the 95% tax, would you be able to share on that?
That's in the EBITDA, essentially.
I see. Sure. Thank you very much.
Thanks, indeed. I think that actually completes the Q&A. If Piotr, Jonathan, you still have a raised hand, that's probably from the previous cycle. If there are no further questions, that completes our Q4 call. Thanks very much for joining, and if there are any follow-ups, the IR team remains at your disposal. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.