Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Vasilios, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Tüpraş conference call and the live webcast to present and discuss the third quarter 2024 financial results. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Doğan Korkmaz, CFO, Mr. Levent Bayar, Investor Relations Executive Director. Mr. Bayar, you may now proceed.
Hi everyone. Good evening to all from Tüpraş Headquarters in Istanbul, and welcome to our teleconference. I'm Levent Bayar, Enterprise Risk and Investor Relations Executive Director. I'm here with Doğan Korkmaz, CFO, and team members from Tüpraş Investor Relations and Reporting Department. There has been an unfortunate event today at Izmit Refinery. We are pleased to inform you that the fire was extinguished in the afternoon, and we continue our operations as usual. Over the next hour, we will first go over our operational and financial results for the third quarter of 2024. Then, we will continue with the Q&A session. I'll draw your attention to our cautionary statement. During today's presentation, we will make forward-looking statements that refer to our estimates, plans, and expectations. Actual results and outcomes could differ materially. Please refer to our financial reports and material disclosures for more details.
These documents are available on our website. In the next two slides, we will provide you with a brief summary of the key highlights regarding the third quarter of 2024. Then, we will go into detail for each subject on the following slides. Now, let's take a look at Tüpraş highlights in detail for the third quarter of 2024. The top chart illustrates the progress of our capacity utilization compared to the third quarter since pre-COVID. In the third quarter of 2024, our capacity utilization rate reached 101%, the highest level since the third quarter of 2019. Our energy efficiency improved upon the completion of RUP maintenance in the second quarter that resulted in higher operational profitability despite the weaker cracks quarter on quarter. As you will see from the middle chart, we recorded all-time high domestic gasoline sales in this quarter.
Supported by the rising demand in Turkey, the share of domestic gasoline sales in our total sales nearly doubled compared to 2018. In the first nine months, gasoline-fueled car sales within the new passenger car sales reached 80%. Hence, gasoline demand increased by 21% in the first eight months on an annual basis. We expect this trend to persist as gasoline cars reach 32% of the total vehicle fleet compared to 22% five years ago. Now, let's take a look at the graph at the bottom, which displays the evolution of cash position throughout the third quarter. We actively managed and preserved our cash reserves, resulting in a cash position of $3 billion supported by solid EBITDA generation and diligent working capital management, reinforcing our financial strength.
We completed our second dividend payment of TRY 23 billion in September and October, bringing the total dividend payment to TRY 43 billion in 2024 with an 80% payout ratio, fortifying our position as one of the lead FX-based dividend players in Turkey. As you can see, our cash position remains impressively strong after the second dividend and Eurobond payment of $700 million. As a general strategy, we will continue to closely follow market conditions for potential issuance at attractive rates. We also want to inform you about the recent completion of the tender held by Istanbul Airport. We are proud to announce that our partnership with Istanbul Airport will continue further with the renewal of our right to sell 1.8 million tons of jet fuel per year to Istanbul Airport for a period of five years.
As you know, we cover this section in two main components: there's development in the global oil markets and developments in the Turkish market. Let's start with the global oil market. Year-to-date, global demand for middle distillate products fluctuated between 2023 and pre-COVID demand of 2019. During the third quarter, a global industrial slowdown, notably influenced by China, led to a slight decrease in demand compared to the previous year in July and August. However, in September, global demand exceeded both 2019 and 2023 levels, resulting in a gradual quarter-on-quarter increase. Gasoline demand remained steady, closely aligning with 2019 and 2023 levels. Nonetheless, the shift in passenger cars leads to an increased demand for the gasoline. Consequently, in the third quarter, gasoline demand surpassed both 2019 and 2023 levels. Global inventories hovered around five-year averages, slightly exceeding them in the third quarter due to high refinery capacity utilization.
In October, inventory levels dropped slightly. A trend expected to continue as capacity utilizations have been decreasing, starting from mid-September due to hurricanes in the U.S. and scheduled maintenances in the fourth quarter. These developments weighed on crack margins in the third quarter of 2024. Now, taking a look at the bottom row, Turkish market. Over the last 12 months, inflation is eased down to 49%. The policy interest rate has remained unchanged since March, yet by September, the gap between inflation and policy rate closed. The central bank's August inflation report maintains its forecast of 38% inflation rate by year-end. Regarding demand, Turkey's consumption of oil products is up by 4% annually. Notably, there has been a substantial increase in gasoline demand by 21% year-on-year during the first eight months, followed by a 7% increase in jet fuel demand.
Let's take a look at the cracks for the third quarter of 2024 in comparison to the last five years and five-year average on this page. In the third quarter, diesel cracks averaged at $15.7 per barrel, lower year-on-year due to the high base of the last year. Elevated inventory levels and global slowdown in industrial activity, which has been significantly influenced by the economic slowdown in China, created a downward pressure on diesel cracks. Jet fuel cracks averaged at $13.5 per barrel in the third quarter. As the diesel cracks declined, swing cuts are directed to produce more jet fuel, thus elevating the inventory levels and lowering cracks. Gasoline cracks averaged at $14.1 per barrel in the third quarter, lower year-on-year due to the high comparative base of the last year. High capacity utilization increased the inventory levels, suppressing the gasoline cracks during the third quarter.
HSFO cracks averaged around -$12.5 per barrel in the third quarter, higher quarter-on-quarter due to the developments weighing on crack margins in the third quarter by low exports resulting from maintenances and low fuel oil stocks. In October, there is a gradual improvement in both mid-distillate and gasoline cracks due to decreasing inventory levels and capacity utilization rates resulting from the maintenance activities that will be conducted in the last quarter. Moving over to the crude price differentials. Differentials continue to tighten in the third quarter, parallel to the second quarter. Despite the broader spread presented by Basra Heavy, our product mix did experience the effects relative to the third quarter of the previous year. However, towards the end of the third quarter, we see a slight widening of the differentials, resulting from two main reasons.
One is the increased naphtha supply, and second is the expectation of Opet to ease the cut decisions by the end of the year. Still, potential developments regarding regional conflicts, decision of oil producers, macro indicators, and their influence on demand outlook will play a crucial role in terms of market conditions. Now, let's take a look at Tüpraş operations, starting with the production volume. Our production in the third quarter of 2024 was 7.3 million tons upon the completion of routine maintenance. For the crude distillation, we attained a capacity utilization rate of 91.8%, and the utilization rate for processing other feedstocks stood at 9.6%, resulting in a system-wide rate of 101.4% during the third quarter of 2024, highest since the third quarter of 2019. Moving over to the sales. Let's start with the chart on the left-hand side.
In the third quarter, our domestic and international sales were respectively 6.9 million tons and 1.2 million tons, summing up to 8.1 million tons in total. Our domestic sales is slightly above last year by 3%, as the decrease in diesel sales was fully offset by an 18% rise in gasoline sales. We recorded all-time high domestic sales in gasoline in the third quarter of this year. Our exports decreased by 27% year-on-year as we prioritized our domestic sales, especially in gasoline, to capture the rising domestic demand. Now, let's move on to the electricity operations. This slide summarizes electricity production and sales activities of Entek and Tüpraş in the third quarter of 2024. In the third quarter, 59% of the electricity generated was from hydropower, 26% was from wind power, and the rest was CCGT and solar power.
Out of the 375 gigawatt-hours of zero-carbon electricity, almost 26% was sold to the feed-in tariff mechanism. The rest were sold to the spot market. Now, let's move to the financials. Now, taking a look at the P&L items in detail for the third quarter of 2024. Within the IAS 29 standards, all financials that are provided in this presentation and in our quarterly financials reports are calculated with inflationary adjustments. Additionally, the financial figures for 2023's third quarter have been scaled up by a factor of 1.49 in accordance with September 2024 CPI in order to reflect the purchasing power of the current quarter. Our revenues came in at TRY 196 billion, equivalent to almost $5.9 billion in the third quarter, down by 33% to last year due to weakening crack margins. Cost of goods sold stood at TRY 177 billion, affected by narrower differentials.
Our gross profit was TRY 19 billion, mainly with the weak crack margins and narrow differentials. Operational expenses were down by 5% due to the scaled-up figure of last year. Loss from other operations is affected by the FX gain/ loss from trade payables. Last year's Turkish lira depreciated by approximately 46% in the first nine months, resulting in the FX loss of trade payables. This year's depreciation is much less, creating a positive impact on this item. Income and loss from equity pickup was recorded at TRY 477 million, coming dominantly from Opet. In the third quarter of 2024, we recorded a financial income of TRY 2.5 billion, originating from net interest income. The monetary loss of TRY 3 billion primarily stems from adjustments for inflation on retained earnings.
As a conclusion of this, we have recorded 11.5 billion TRY of profit before tax in the third quarter of 2024. Below PBT, we have recorded 3.6 billion TRY tax expense as the revaluation of the deferred tax creates a negative impact on the tax line item. As a result, we have recorded 7.7 billion TRY in net income in the third quarter. Our reported EBITDA materialized at 15.1 billion TRY. We recorded 2.2 billion TRY positive inventory effect. With our hedging methodology, we continue to mitigate the pricing risk for the two-thirds of our crude oil inventory, which enables us to protect against the volatility in Brent prices. Our EBITDA CCS was materialized at 13 billion TRY. 718 million TRY of this EBITDA was recorded from our electricity production company, Entek. Now, let us take a look at the profit before tax breakdown.
As you can see from the waterfall chart, the dominant negative impact comes from crack margins due to the material drop from the last year's high base in the third quarter. TRY 3.6 billion negative impact comes from narrow differentials compared to last year. The strong positive effect of FX offset at lower inventory gains of this year's third quarter and stood at TRY 3.2 billion combined. The net interest income has a positive impact on our financial results for this quarter as it was realized at TRY 3 billion higher. TRY 4.2 billion comes from the change in monetary loss item as monetary loss is lower this quarter based on the decreased gap between inflation and policy rate. All in all, 2024's third quarter profit before tax is materialized at TRY 11.5 billion. Now, let us take a look at the financial highlights.
In 2024's third quarter, we have recorded 15.1 billion TL of EBITDA, decreasing from 49.6 billion TL in the third quarter of 2023. This change is attributable to weaker crack margins, tightened differentials, and scaling up with a factor of 4.49 of the third quarter 2023 financials. Accordingly, we recorded 7.7 billion TL net profit in the third quarter of 2024. Cash and cash equivalents and financial liabilities at the end of the quarter stood at 103 billion TL and 45 billion TL respectively. We ended the quarter with 58 billion TL of net cash, preserving our strong cash position. On the 18th of October, we paid down our mature 2017 Eurobond of $700 million. With ongoing deleveraging, our net debt to EBITDA materialized at negative 0.8 as of the end of third quarter.
Our working capital management remained negative as a result of our ongoing effective cash cycle management. Now, taking a look at the maintenance calendar for the rest of 2024, we operated with 101.4% utilization rate in the third quarter. In the third quarter, we operated with materially higher capacity utilization as routine maintenance was completed within the first half. On this slide, we have our unchanged expectations for 2024. Looking into the details, we kept Tüpraş crack margin expectation as $12 per barrel. Nine months' Tüpraş crack margin was $11.7 per barrel. With the gradual uplift in cracks and differentials, we expect to end the year in line with our target. Regarding production and sales figures, there is no change in our expectations as well. We still expect approximately 26 million tons of production and approximately 30 million tons of sales.
We expect capacity utilization to be within a range of 85%-90%. Our consolidated CapEx target for 2024 is kept at $400 million. On this slide, we would like to sum up some key figures for the third quarter and compare them with our 2024 guidance. We had a weighted average crack margin of $11.7 per barrel in the first nine months of 2024, which is only slightly below our full-year guidance of $12 per barrel. Our capacity utilization rate was 92.3% in the first nine months, which is slightly above our guidance range of 85%-90%. In the nine months, we produced 20 million tons and sold 23 million tons. We have spent $261 million in the first nine months of the year in terms of CapEx. This slide concludes our presentation, and we can now proceed with the Q&A session.
The first question comes from the line of Kis-Maria Anna with UBS. Please go ahead.
Good day. Thank you for the presentation and the results. I have several questions, if I may, starting with utilization rates. After the maintenance, would you expect to sustain above your usual utilization rates going forward in the fourth quarter and late in the year, or in the third quarter it was standout given the seasonally stronger third quarter? That would be the first one. Then the second one regarding your contract on jet fuel, if you can share some details regarding how would the price setting happen, how often will you review the prices for the contract, and how will it work? That would be the second question.
Thank you for your questions. This is Levent speaking.
In terms of the utilization going forward, obviously, if you look at the trend after each and every big maintenance in our conversion units, especially with the changes of the catalysts, there has been quite a pickup every time we had the maintenance for some time, but then obviously it starts to come down a bit. But that's not the only differentiator in our capacity utilization. As you would guess, we have other maintenance activities or other plannings for each and every year. Hence, we're providing you with the capacity utilization targets for every year at the beginning of that year. We will do the same at the beginning of next year, but we don't necessarily expect any major changes in our overall capacity utilization success, let me put it that way.
In terms of our contract with Istanbul Airport, it's not that different to what we had in the initial five-year period since the opening of the airport, but unfortunately, we won't be able to provide you with the trade terms of the deal.
Sure. Thank you very much. A very short one, maybe more of clarification and a check rather than a question. Can you please provide the respective crack margin for the third quarter of the previous year if there were any changes due to IAS 29 accounting?
Hey, Anna, we don't have that number with us. It was never calculated due to the change from net refining margin to the Tüpraş crack margin.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Sure.
The next question comes from the line of Giuseppe Villari with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, and thank you for taking my question.
I have two, if I may. The first one is about the maintenance on the Izmit refinery. It was originally expected for the fourth quarter of 2024, and we already have a sense for when this is going to happen, more or less. And then the second question about the refining supply, what's the outlook on that? Thank you.
Thank you for your questions. The reason why we have postponed our maintenance in Izmit refinery was due to, obviously, our expectations on the commercial front. And together with our planning activities, we found the current state of the unit, I mean, quite able to move on further down into the middle of next year. And together with that, we were planning to start producing sustainable aviation fuel through co-processing in our units and make it available in the Turkish domestic market on a blended basis.
Now that we have, I mean, realized that the regulatory requirements within the country will not start until the end of next year, we consider, obviously, exporting SAF-blended jet fuel to international markets rather than providing it to the domestic market. Therefore, it has not been an urgency to start providing that to our local customers, obviously, the biggest one being Turkish Airlines and airports in Turkey as of the 1st of January. Therefore, we were able to postpone that maintenance as the production of the blended SAF will be mainly exported as a start. In terms of refining supply environment going forward, obviously, geopolitical uncertainties are likely to continue in the near term. Obviously, U.S. elections today, the conflict between Israel and Iran, and the issue with the Ukraine war are still significant issues that we need to follow.
Slowdown in the economies and the demand of refineries in these geographies are equally important. New capacities are coming online this year and next. So the flow of crude will definitely change. There have been already major changes in the trade routes when it comes to crude because of the issues in Suez and ships going around the Cape. Nevertheless, looking at our own crude diet, I mean, we've been very successful in supplying ourselves with the necessary grades. One thing to mention here, local production in Turkey is on the rise for some time now. Although it's not a substantial part of our diet, having an increase there helps with, obviously, the supply security. But all in all, we're not expecting any major disruptions in our overall supply. If anything, it would be on the positive side if the Turkish pipeline is open going forward.
Great. That's clear.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to management for any closing comments. Thank you.
Thank you once again for joining us this evening for the third quarter call of 2024. Before we conclude, I'd like to share a few closing remarks. At around 1:30 P.M. today at noon, a fire occurred at our isomerization unit in Izmit Refinery. The fire was successfully extinguished in a short time thanks to our teams. 12 of our colleagues sustained minor injuries and have been taken to the hospital for assessments, and all have been discharged from the hospital as of this evening. We are also pleased to report that this unfortunate event will not have any important impact on our operational and financial performance. It has been a successful quarter with solid EBITDA generation and a strong financial position.
We have achieved the highest capacity utilization since the third quarter of 2019 upon the completion of the successful RUP maintenance. Our sales were strong, highlighted by the highest domestic gasoline sales, demonstrating our ability to meet domestic demand fully and capitalize on favorable market conditions. Consequently, our cash position remains strong, and we have successfully completed our second dividend of TRY 23 billion in September and October, bringing this year's total dividend to TRY 43 billion. By aligning with our targeted average payout ratio of 80%, we aim to provide sustained value for our investors. On a global scale, geopolitical uncertainties will likely continue to impact the macro environment. The U.S. elections happening today, ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran, and the unresolved Russia-Ukraine war are significant international issues.
Despite the slowdown in the Chinese economy, global oil demand remains strong, so has the domestic demand, with higher crack spreads in the last quarter. Opet production cut decisions are now expected to be eased by January, a month later than anticipated, offering wider differentials. Nevertheless, with these developments and completed maintenances, we're well positioned to capture ongoing margin recovery in the upcoming quarter. I appreciate your time and trust in our company. Thank you all for listening to us today and wish you a great day ahead.