Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's conference and presentation which will be devoted to the performance of Orlen Konrad Wlodarczyk's group after the Q3 of 2024, to be presented by Ireneusz Fafara, CEO, and Magdalena Bartoś, VP and CFO. Before we move on to presenting the Orlen Konrad Wlodarczyk's performance and to a Q&A session, let us first see a short video.
Zwycięzcą się nie rodzisz, tylko się nim stajesz.
You are not born as a winner.
W sporcie i w życiu.
You become a winner in life, as well as in sports. Sports is the school of life. That's why Orlen supports sports for the youngsters all around Poland.
Panie Prezesie, zapraszam.
The floor is yours, Ireneusz Fafara.
Dobry wieczór Państwu.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Sport to szkoła życia.
Sports is the school of life, as you have just heard. It teaches us how to face challenges, how to overcome hurdles, and especially unexpected situations. This is what actually happened to us these days, because traditionally we would meet at the Warsaw Stock Exchange, but unfortunately we were not able to, due to the stock exchange's different plans. This is why we decided to face this challenge and to take a different path, think out of the box. To invite you that evening, and I'm very happy to see so many of you and a great turnout, and to meet at the edifice of the National Museum in Warsaw, to emphasize how proud we are of the fact that the management of the museum actually invited us.
We're very happy to be here and proud to be in this imposing edifice to present you the program, which you have just seen, the highlights of which you have just seen. Sports at Orlen, sports is the school of life. Because in addition to our financial performance, which we are proud of, we are also very happy about this program and very proud of it, because it actually exceeded our expectations. We received 2.5 million applications from sports associations from all around Poland. We are changing Orlen in terms of the finances and also in terms of our social and community outreach. This is the program that is one example of this initiative. Orlen has always been present at great sports events: World Cup, European Championships, cameras, spotlights, sometimes winners, sometimes losers. We decided to change it a little bit.
We want to be present when there are no cameras, when there is no spotlight, only the events that actually bring together proud parents. We want to support small and medium-sized sports clubs all around Poland. We want to support those who want to spread their wings, to grow their passions, because passion is the most important thing in life. The passion to overcome those hurdles, to overcome pain, to overcome challenges in everyday life, and obviously healthy championship, healthy competition. As I said, the program exceeded our expectations, and it actually attracted great interest. Therefore, we want to increase its scope more than PLN 10 million, which we initially planned. We'll move on to the discussion of this program later on. Let us now focus on the investments and capex spending in the past quarter.
First of all, the most important from the perspective of our future is the fact that we are launching a program modernizing the transmission networks in the northern part of Poland. This is a long-term program, investment program, which will be devoted to intelligent, smart power networks in this part of Poland. We received financing of 3.5 billion PLN from the European Investment Bank, but the scope of this program will be larger in terms of the financial scope, because we will add our own funds as well. We are consistently growing the new energy area to normalize the balance, the production and processing of hydrocarbons with our flagship investment, Baltic Power. We are now launching the projects, and we are proceeding as planned.
Works on the onshore power stations have exceeded in terms of the progress, have exceeded 50%, and the surfacing port at Łeba started to work offshore as well. These works are also proceeding as planned. In the beginning of 2025, we will launch the installation of monopoles, that is, the equipment that will be used to support our offshore projects, and the Gdynia port received or welcomed a ship that will be used for that purpose. In addition to those projects, we are also expanding our fuel station network with the sales of HVO 100, launched in the alternative fuel launched in Germany and also in the Czech Republic. We are finishing the HVO investment project at Płock. We are focusing on renewable energy sources and also alternative fuels. Hydrogen as well.
We are launching the—we have launched the geohydrogen initiative. We will be cooperating with the leading research institutes in Poland, and we also secured an EU grant that will be used to produce, manufacture hydrogen-powered vehicles for the city of Warsaw, and they'll be used at the Chopin Airport in Warsaw. In terms of safety and security, we are talking about the energy security in terms of the supply of hydrocarbons in Poland. We are looking at the winter. Winter is coming, so we are focusing on the security of energy supplies. We are focusing on gas fuel, but obviously we need to remember that this is transitional fuel still. We are not sure what the transitional period will be, actually. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk actually mentioned it just recently. We are focusing on gas.
We increased the production of gas in the region itself, continent itself, by 50%. We are still contracting and receiving the supplies of LNG at Świnoujście. We also finalized the agreement with KN Energies in Lithuania. We will be focusing on a small-scale energy transmission and transshipment station, which will be used to receive and transport LNG around Poland. We are keeping the right track in terms of the construction of CCGT plants in Ostrołęka and Grudziądz. We have signed a long-term contract for the supply for Zielona Góra unit, and obviously we will have great contracts signed also with our customers in Slovakia. Another pillar, people. Last quarter, the Q3 of the year had not only a financial dimension, but also the people dimension, the community dimension.
We have launched a number of community outreach projects, and we do believe that this is very close to our hearts. I'm telling this, I'm saying this on purpose, because it will be close to the society, to the community, and their needs, and this is important to us. This is not important for the business or for our business partners, for Orlen as a company, but to people in general. Our foundations and on their websites will be keeping you up to date, any of you who are interested, about the funds and the spending for these purposes, because we cannot keep any secrets here. We have mentioned the sports program, but we have another program that we are very proud of, that is Orlen We Are Together, which is focusing on the fire service and fire personnel.
After discussions with this community, we listened to the voices of this community, and the program was devoted not only to the purchase of the equipment for firefighters, but also the education in order to develop their experience and hard skills, but also soft skills, especially in terms of psychological well-being of the firefighters. We have launched the We Are Together program with the spending of PLN 35 million on the victims of disastrous floods in Poland. We will be involved in the reconstruction and revival of those areas, and if need be, and I do believe there will be a need to increase this program, we will do so. The Baltic Sea and the Pomorze Pomarańskie region are becoming one of the key areas of our activity. This is why we launched the Baltic Biodiversity Grant program.
We are communicating with schools, universities, research programs, and also local government units in order to support biodiversity and diverse forms of life in the Baltic Sea and the Baltic ecosystem, in order to also increase the awareness, social awareness of this. The grant can be applied for even up to PLN 0.5 million, and if the quality of the projects that we will be receiving, we will obviously, we can obviously increase the scope of this program. We have launched the next edition of the Bonafide program to support the best students all around the world, the best universities, and I do hope, we do hope that the graduates of this program will join Orlen and Orlen Group companies in the future.
Thank you for listening to my introduction, and now Magdalena Bartoś, the CFO of Orlen Group, is invited to take over the floor to discuss the financial muscle of the group.
Thank you very much for this introduction. Good evening to all of you. I will walk you through our financial performance. First of all, we will summarize the group's financial performance, and then we'll move on to the details by segment. I will spill the beans here, because I know that Ireneusz will come back to summarize today's conference. Let us start with the summary of the financial performance of the Q3 of the year by saying that these are solid operational results in very challenging and deteriorating macroeconomic conditions. We posted a drop in revenue from sales, mainly due to falling refining margins, but also lower revenue in the gas segment.
What was important to us most of all is the fact that despite those drops and declines in terms of revenues from sales, our live-hour-based EBITDA net of one-offs is at PLN 8.1 billion, which is down only half a billion year on year, which in this very difficult, more difficult macroeconomic environment makes us very proud. We are also proud of our operating cash flows from operations, because we generated higher cash flow from operations, supported or less penalized, so to speak, by the gas charge, the gas levy, obligatory gas charge. We did not have any write-offs for this purpose, but we also improved the management of our working capital, generating higher cash flows. The group maintains a very solid bottom line in terms of our balance sheet with a low debt level.
I'd like to draw attention to the fact that we also had solid capex in the Q3 . We invested PLN 6.8 billion versus PLN 7.9 billion last year. This is a testament. This is proof that the discipline of spending, discipline of costs is very important to us, and that our commitment to rationalize our spending and costs is something that is very serious for us, and we take it very seriously. Let us now move on to a closer look at our macro environment. We will focus on the macro environment quite a bit today, because you can see the main macro factors and drivers here. Looking at the slide, you can see that this is a very different macroeconomic environment than before.
This is what we called a normalization of our macro environment, but especially in our refining muscle, the Q3 of this year is much more than normalization. Please look at the first chart. The refining margin in the Q3 this year reached $8 per barrel, going down 65% year on year. The macro environment, especially in the Q3 and also in the Q2 of this previous year, were supported to a great extent and supported our performance to a great extent, especially with very strong model refining margins. Today, those margins are much lower, and this is normal. This is a normal level. This is why we call it normalization. But if we compare the results and performance, especially of the refining business year on year, we need to remember about this effect.
The price of Brent crude oil also fell in the Q3 of 2024, and the market in general, not only Orlen, looks at it as very weak, very much weaker demand, very sluggish demand for crude oil, but also the oversupply in the market due to high production. The falling prices of CO2 and the normalization of market expectations allowed us to keep our electricity prices at a lower level year on year. However, the rising demand for gas, which is a seasonal effect, because we are now looking at a winter season, winter months of the year, but this is also supported by limitations and restrictions of production across Europe. We will talk about it when we discuss our upstream segment. This is the main reason why those prices, those figures went up year on year and quarter on quarter.
Moving on to our discussion in more detail by segment, but before we do that, let us look at a comparison of EBITDA quarter on quarter and contribution by segment. Looking at the upper bar chart is the contribution of our segments, and let us repeat one more time. All our segments, with the exception of the PetCam segment, reported very solid performance in the Q3 of the year. What we also see in this upper chart is the role of diversification. We are well diversified as a group. We have solid, robust results delivered by all the different areas of our market, and this supports our energy market, and this supports our performance here.
Looking at the lower bar chart, especially on the right-hand side of it, we are comparing our EBITDA performance after the Q3 of the year, PLN 8.1 billion versus PLN 8.6 billion last year. You can see that these figures are quite comparable, very similar, but it is driven by a mix of macro environment factors and drivers and regulatory drivers, and you can see it in more detail on the next slides. Let us start with the refining segment. It shows a great variation year on year. The main message here that I want to communicate with you is the fact that we are reporting very solid operational results of our assets. The utilization of our refineries is pretty high, is very high, both in Poland and in Lithuania. In the Q3 , our refineries reported 100% of utilization in terms of their capacity.
In the Czech Republic, it was a little bit lower due to a maintenance shutdown due to an explosion at Litvinov. I do believe that we have communicated this, and you can remember it very clearly. Our macro environment was way weaker than before. This is reflected by the falling refining margins down by 65%, and it also is reflected in our performance, $2.7 billion as a negative impact on the refining segment. This is due to a weaker macroeconomic environment. The volumes went down in terms of sales by 5%, which was due to a very high sales base from last year. You might remember that August and September and also October 2023 saw a special moment, especially in the Polish market, where we saw non-standard levels of both demand and prices. I will come back to it later on.
Both wholesale and retail sales were very high, so today we are reporting a normalized level. On the other hand, we had a positive effect of trade margins. Last year, they were very low. Right now, we have rebuilt them, restored them to normal levels. This allowed us to mitigate some of the negative effects, especially relating to the macroeconomic environment. The petrochemical segment, this is a segment where the macro environment remains very challenging. Despite the positive impact of the volumes and also the prices in terms of main refining products, those effects cannot mitigate and offset the very challenging market environment. This market environment, this market reality is very difficult to level. We are talking about the market in terms of a sluggish demand in Europe, all across Europe due to the condition of European economies, and this is the effect that drives down the demand.
But also, we are talking about some certain structural problems of the petrochemical business across Europe, where European production, especially based on crude oil, based on assets such as ours, is no longer competitive compared to less costly production in other parts of the world. So Europe has been receiving, seeing an influx of a lot of products based on cheaper production. This is not Orlen's problem. This is something that is a structural problem of the global supply and demand balance. Let us now move on to the next segment, the energy segment. Let me go back to what Ireneusz has said, presented our investments, new energy investments. Energy for us is not a segment that allows us to diversify our operating results. It's a segment where we see the role of the future potential impact in terms of decarbonization of our group and our assets.
In this context, this is a very important segment for us. What we see in the performance after the Q3 , we see two elements of this process: the regulatory elements and the changes related to the charges and the compensation relating to maximum tariffs and the support for retail customers. On the other hand, we see a seasonal effect because we are presenting the results after summer months, which obviously is a period of weaker performance. I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that we are communicating for the first time ever a breakdown of our operational results by source. The highest contribution here came from distribution of electricity, and this is great news actually, because this is the business within our energy segment that allows us to achieve great stability in terms of the profit and also cash flows.
The next source, which is very important for us, are heat power sources. The performance is a bit lower, obviously, but this comes as no surprise because we are talking about summer months. Another contributing area is generation and the production on our gas-fired sources and renewable energy sources. Our investments in renewable energy sources, both in terms of capital investments and also organic investments, increase the contribution of this type of energy up to 77%. This is a major contribution. One more element I'd like to discuss at this point, more of a bookkeeping, accounting nature, is the valuation of derivatives, hedging derivatives for our Baltic Power Investments project. This is a long-term financial instrument, which will secure the variability of costs related to the loan devoted to this investment.
This is valued for each reporting period, and the valuation was positive last year, more than $200 million. This year, however, it's negative, down at minus $270 million. We're working on it. We want to present such valuations that are on the positive side. The last commentary for me, from me, the sales of electricity, it had a negative contribution to our performance in the energy segment, but this is due to the fact that we were supporting retail customers here, and the maximum tariffs for retail sales do not actually cover all our costs. So we are reporting a loss here.
The next segment is retail, and this is the segment where we are consistently increasing and expanding our network, mainly due to the launch of new fuel stations in Hungary and in Austria, translating into higher sales, up by 8%, and we are also expanding our fuel station network in Poland. We are also expanding our non-fuel sales network. We are talking about 2,700 outlets and also the alternative fuel network, 131 alternative fuel stations up. The main contribution here in terms of the operating performance of the retail segment was the normalization of fuel margins. I have already mentioned it when I was talking about the refining segment. The fact that we maintain low margins in the Q3 of 2023 means that we cannot compare these results, and the same applies to our retail segment. In the Q3 of 2023, fuel margins were very low.
It was a non-standard, unusual situation. Right now, they have normalized. This performance also shows the great effects, the success of our summer holiday promotion. We have discussed it, and we have communicated those results to you. They exceeded our expectations, and they were a sign that our clients actually trust us, and we are very proud of this fact and of our performance in this area, in this segment, in this period. Moving on to our upstream segment, we have two things to communicate here. We have increased the scale of our operations in the upstream segment, going up by 22% in terms of our hydrocarbon productions. We have purchased two new production sources on the Norwegian continental shelf.
We also launched the planned maintenance shutdowns on the Norwegian continental shelf in September 13 of our sources were shut down for maintenance purposes, and this is why our average production per day was down year on year. But this is, as I said, a planned effect, and the effect that will be offset in the months to come. The most important impact here are not volumes yet, but a less tightened environment we operate in. Last year, we had to pay the so-called obligatory gas levy or charge. In the Q3 of 2024, we did not have such write-offs, and we have charged it entirely to the first half of the year. Therefore, we cannot compare the performance between those two periods. Moving on to our next segment, the gas segment, let me remind you at this point that we're talking about storage, trade, and distribution of gas.
The first thing I'd like to discuss here is the fact that we are reporting an increase in sales volumes, going up by 10% year on year, mainly in terms of our industrial customers. This is in line with our performance overall. Industrial customers increase their consumption of gas due to falling margins and falling prices on the back of normalization of margins in the market. An increase in sales volumes in terms of gas distribution is also due to higher sales of gas to retail customers as well. We are expecting those trends to continue, where trade margins in the gas segment will normalize, will continue to normalize due to lower volatility of this segment, lower variability of prices, and this will also support our increases in sales volumes of gas in the quarters to come. The next slide comes back to what Ireneusz has said.
In the last months, we worked very intensively on the strengthening of our bottom line in our balance sheet in order to secure such financing sources that will be well-diversified, liquid, cost-attractive, that will build our strength and the stability of our balance sheet. This is a responsible long-term prospect for the years to come for our group, and this will be our priority. We have two things, two good news here. We closed two major transactions over the past several weeks. Ireneusz has mentioned one of them, the loan agreement with the European Investment Bank, which will be devoted to the modernization of and upgrade of our electricity distribution network. The financing, which we secured, makes us very happy because it comes from a bank that is one of the most important players, partners in terms of European transformation.
This financing is a long-term mechanism for 15 years, and it will be available for the coming three years, broken down into three parts, tranches, and we will be consistently using this financing in order to invest in the electricity distribution network, Energa Operator, and to include and connect new customers. The second agreement is the revolving credit limit agreement, and this will secure very flexible support for our bottom line and the balance sheet. This is the so-called financing cushion. We usually do not actually realize the financing based on such agreements, but we keep it in store, so to speak, in order to make sure that we have the backup if needed. We have closed a transaction here that we are very happy about. This includes 16 Polish and foreign banks, which supported the Orlen Group with their capital sources.
We are talking about €2 billion in two currencies for five years. As I said, this is a very flexible financial instrument. This gives us a safety cushion and will ensure that we have the stability in terms of how we manage our financing muscles. Our debt levels is something that I'd like to mention at this point. Orlen is now one of the groups, one of the companies, not only in Poland, but in general in the oil and gas utility sector, that has one of the lowest levels of debts. This is a great foundation for us to deliver our strategy and to deliver our CapEx plans. This is something that we'll communicate shortly to you, but you have to keep it in mind. You have to keep it in the back of your head that our net debt is very low.
Let us look at the outlook then. We do not take a long-term approach here. Usually, we are talking about short-term outlook, usually during our conference calls, but we have a number of comments here. Our market environment, which currently is easier for our customers than for us, will actually support the economic revival in the region in the future. Compared to our assumptions from the previous quarter, we drove down our assumptions for the price of crude oil. We do not see any signs of revival in terms of demand, and the market does not see any signs of higher demand. So we're expecting those prices to actually go down even more. We also drove down our expectations in terms of the refining margin. The second and the Q3 of 2023 saw very high levels of refining margins.
They started to normalize, and falling down, we are expecting this level that we see today, which is at about $8 per barrel, will actually be maintained until the end of the year, especially in the eve of the winter season. The demand for, especially diesel oil, we expect that those margins will remain rather stable. However, we expect that the quarter will be more challenging than last year, especially due to the fact that the prices will also stabilize in terms of margins and prices in the gas sector, in the gas segment. This can have an impact on our performance. However, we expect comparable results for the retail segment and for the energy segment. We need to remember about the impact of regulations, especially in the energy segment, but we do believe that the performance will be comparable.
In the refining segment, we expect better results. Last year, in October, being one of the key months of the year, we saw very high margins. We are expecting normalization of the margins in the Q4 of this year. This will support the performance of the refining segment, and we are also expecting better performance in the upstream segment due to the loosening of the macro environment. To summarize our outlook for the months to come, we looked at the consensus of the analysts, and we see that the consensus is quite similar to our expectations. This is why we feel quite comfortable with this consensus in the public sphere. Thank you very much for your attention, Irek. The floor is yours again.
Thank you, Magdalena. To było dosyć skomplikowane, tak? It was quite complicated, right? The results this quarter were quite different than before.
There were a lot of things happening on the markets and also in the macro environment in general. Magdalena has discussed it quite efficiently in terms of our performance after the Q3 . I'd like to now focus on two issues that actually evoke a lot of emotion. I'd like this emotion to subside. I'd like to explain our approach to two issues. First of all, write-offs and to our net financial performance. Write-offs or write-downs are a normal practice in gas and oil companies such as Orlen. We can break them down into three categories. First of all, the write-downs that are actually a natural part of the business in a company such as Orlen in order to update the value of assets. Secondly, we have non-standard write-offs and write-downs, but this obviously happens as well.
This is the write-downs and the write-offs that reflect the negative investment decisions, which cannot be foreseen when they were taken. But those decisions are taken in accordance with our internal procedures and based on reliable expectations for the future. Thirdly, we have certain write-downs, which is a very painful thing for us, that were due to major blatant mistakes in terms of how you take business decisions, how you manage your company, how you generate losses due to bad decisions, and sometimes even due to certain measures taken not in accordance with the law. As a result, this year, we had to report a write-down of PLN 16 billion on this account. This is a scary amount. OTS, as you might remember, the write-down was at PLN 1.6 billion.
By the way, in 2018, in the period 2018-23, Orlen has signed around 1,000 transactions for the purchase of crude oil for the amount of over PLN 100 billion and has never, ever paid any advance payments on this account. OTS signed four transactions, paid the money in advance four times, and lost all that money. This cannot be explained. The only explanation here is bad management. The second thing I'd like to share with you today is net results. EBITDA for us and for the analysts, EBITDA is the best factor to take into account how a company is managed. However, net result, profit or loss, is usually very visible and is usually very much emphasized. I would like you to compare our net result after nine months of the previous year and after the nine months of this year to date, net of one-off events.
If you look at the blue-colored chart, you can see 20 million PLN for last year. But this also includes the impact of the acquisition of PG&IG. So all the contracts concluded by PG&IG, this is a purely accounting mechanism here. The freeze of energy prices plus 4 billion PLN, this is something that Orlen has no influence on. The taxpayers, the state paid 4 billion PLN on this account. We pay taxes of 2 billion PLN here. Net of those one-offs, the actually adjusted net profit for 2023 nine months was at 12. Not 20. We are now reporting a very different level of our net profit, the net result. We need to remember about the effect of the acquisition. Also, we need to remember that we had a special tax adopted late last year.
We need to add everything that we need to do this year. So write-downs, impairment write-downs for Oliphant 3 and Orlen Litowa. We need to remember about that because we had to reduce our net profit because of those events. We also remember about taxes. As you can see, if we apply the same methodology to those results, then the adjusted net profit this year for the nine months to date was at PLN 14 billion. We are functioning in a reality based on a simplified image of the reality. Last year and previous years, the years of COVID, the year of Ukraine versus Russia war were unexpected, were non-standard. All global companies reported unusual profits. Even this was reflected later on in the European Union by introducing a special tax on non-standard profits. This has come to an end. The situation is now back to normal.
As Magda said, the refining margin is currently at $8 per barrel, as in the pre-war era. So today, we have to focus on our hard work to improve our customer service, to make sure that our gas deliveries are on time. The same applies to electricity deliveries. We need to take care about the utilization of our capacity on a full scale. Hard work every single day. This is something that we need to focus on. I do believe that our performance after nine months proves that we are able to work hard, we as Orlen and its employees. Thank you very much.
Dziękujemy bardzo za prezentację. Zapraszamy Państwa za chwilkę do zadawania pytań. W pierwszej kolejności oddamy głos. Thank you very much for the presentation and discussion of the performance. We'll now move on to the Q&A session.
First of all, we will give the floor over to the participants in the room, but you can also ask questions online. I'll now introduce myself, Brelek Deneber. Please go ahead. Please take the microphone first and be heard. Introduce yourself to the editorial team first.
These include shareholders of Orlen and of Energa. Do not represent any press. I represent minority shareholders of Energa Group. You have mentioned during the general meeting already at Płock, which I also attended, that after the listing case, you will see to the execution of the judgment. Seven months have passed. We know nothing as shareholders, minority shareholders of the Energa Group, of any actions taken by Orlen. This is yet another thing which you inherited from your predecessors, but you need to see to it anyway to execute the judgment, for instance, by listing Energa again or through delisting it.
As far as I remember, Orlen's strategy actually included the acquisition of Energa and delisting it from the stock exchange. Let me now actually read out a question. The appeal court passed a judgment on the delisting case, citing conscious actions taken by Orlen against minority shareholders and determined the amount of those losses that were due to Orlen. Do you intend to apologize to the minority shareholders or to offer any compensation to them after seven months after this judgment has been passed? I am actually one of the first brokers in this country. I have been involved in the Warsaw Stock Exchange from the very beginning of it. Orlen is the largest listed company in Poland, and it should give the best, greatest example here in terms of corporate governance and also the treatment of the shareholders.
We do believe that the bad times are gone, and I do believe that we will never go back to that. All right, but what is the question actually? Nie słychać Pana w ogóle. Panie Prezesie, Cezary Waczków, akcjonariusz spółki Energa. Cezary Waczkus, Energa shareholder. Przeczytam, a w zasadzie zacytuję. I will now cite what you said during the general meeting. Rzeczywiście musimy się zmierzyć z szeregiem. We need to face a number of inefficient, unlawful, or wrong decisions and actions taken, and Energa is one of them. All I can say is we are waiting for the judgment of the court and a written justification, which will be the basis for us to act swiftly as a management board in order to propose certain regulatory measures, compensation for the minority shareholders. I will not come back to the judgment and the justification. The question is short.
More than half a year has passed. What's next? What will happen next to the shareholders? What can we await from you after the seven months? I am in touch with the Association of Private Investors of Energa. Only three weeks ago, I met them in Gdańsk, and I communicated to them that even today we closed a tender to select a law firm. We selected a law firm that will support us here as a legal expert. We are now valuating reliably the value of Energa shares, and we will communicate all the effects of the legal advisors here on an ongoing basis to you. You are spending a lot of money on the law firm, but I believe that the valuation of the assets is something that is known to you.
Somebody has actually made that valuation, so I do believe that you are in the wrong here. The second question: will the loan from European Investment Bank at 3.5 billion PLN be devoted to Energa operators as well? No, I'm not in the wrong here. We are actually trying to take the most prudent measures here. We are not a state-owned company. We are a listed company, a public company, with the state holding of 49%, but not a state-owned company. I'm sorry, I cannot hear your question. The speaker is not using his microphone. Bardzo. Ja z całym szacunkiem dla tego spotkania. With all due respect, because this issue is very difficult. We would not like this issue to dominate our conference today, please. Without diminishing its importance, obviously. This is not a conference devoted to Energa.
Let me tell you once again, we are working on the resolution of this issue in terms of Energa's past. We have closed the tender for the law firm. We are in close contact with the Association of Energa shareholders. If you have any more questions about that, I can stay with you after the conference and talk to you, but this is not the place to dwell on it any longer. I will not answer any questions regarding Energa from now on. Przeznaczony na modernizację sieci. In terms of your question about the loan from EIB, this loan will be devoted to our distribution network, electricity distribution network, and Orlen, the energy distribution network is the area of Energa operator. Do you have any other questions in terms of our financial and operating performance? I cannot hear the question, unfortunately. The answer is the Orlen Group.
Andrzej Kublik, Gestalt Borczak. I would like to find out about the net result for the Q3 because you showed the net result for the three quarters year to date. And also, if you could tell us a little bit more about the problems in Lithuania. What is the problem in terms of the investment and the progress of this investment? What is the completion date planned now, if you have any completion dates, and what the costs are? Because we saw a contract, a lump sum contract preliminarily. What is the total cost then? And one more thing, what is the progress of work in terms of negotiations with Orlen Synthes Green Energy? It was supposed to be closed by the end of September. I'm not sure if it did, if it did close.
Net result for three months of 2024 is close to $200 million, down year on year where we reported $3 billion. But if we go through the same exercise that Irek has mentioned in terms of comparability, then our net result will be at around $2.5 billion, $500 million lower year on year, which is due to the macro environment and especially lower performance in the refining segment. The progress of the investment is delayed and will remain delayed. The costs have increased significantly. We are now negotiating with our partner, and we are also in the process of internal discussions in terms of the future of this project. In terms of your question about Synthes, we wanted to sign the close of the process by the end of September, but this was wishful thinking maybe.
But we have annexed the agreement, and we are now analyzing the financial aspects of our cooperation. Zapraszamy do kolejnych pytań. Are there any more questions? Rafał Zasuń, portal wysokienapięcie.pl, dzień dobry. Wysokienapięcie.pl representative, what questions? Do tam jest mowa o. First question about the last slide. It showed a lower spread between the gas purchase and the gas sold in Poland. Where does it come from? The shrinking of the spread. The second question is on the second phase of the Baltic offshore project. Kiedy i czy w ogóle będziecie Państwo rozpocząć poszukiwanie partnerów? Will you start looking for the partners for this second phase? Have you already started yet? Ja odpowiem na pytanie dotyczące segmentu. I'll answer the question about the gas segment and the progress of contracting process. We usually contract volumes with our clients one year ahead or even for a longer period.
If we have high volatility of gas prices in a market, this is a very difficult situation. It's a different situation for us. When the volatility of gas prices is lower, our spreads flatten out or are flattening out, and this is something that we see in the Q3 and in the next quarter as well. It will be similar. In terms of the second phase of the Baltic project, we're still focusing on the first phase actually, but our plans for next year include the process of looking for partners for this project. We are currently in the process of negotiations with potential candidates, but they're still very informal. Are we talking about the first half of the year or the second half of the year?
It will be rather, we will see it rather in the second half of the year because in the first half of the year we want to launch successfully launch the construction of the farm.
No nie wierzę, nie ma pytań? Are there any more questions?
Agnieszka Stachurska, Petronews. I'd like to ask about Olefin's three projects. You mentioned recently that you only have two variants to choose between. So do you know when the final variant or option will be selected? We know when we should select and decide on the final version before the adoption of the strategy and before the communication of the strategy. The strategy is supposed to be communicated on December the 10th, so this is our deadline here.
Nie ma pytań? Do we have any more questions? Please raise your hands if you have any.
Julia Cydejko, Political Insight. What are your preparations in terms of sanctions to be imposed on the Russian LPG? How do you see that the situation in the year to come?
We actually mentioned it at the beginning of the conference call. We are looking very carefully at the situation in the LPG market. What will happen if the sanctions are actually introduced? We are in close contacts with the suppliers, with the ministry, and we believe that this change will have no major impact on the market. It might happen, it might increase prices slightly, but our contracts, the contracts we have signed and the contracts of other operators in the market are such that we should not see any problems in terms of availability of LPG in the market. I emphasize that if we are talking about any price increase, according to our analyses it is simply minimal. The increase, as I said, will be very slight according to our analysis.
To może na chwilę oddamy głos internautom. Mamy kilka pytań. We have received a number of questions from online viewers on dividend and dividend policy. Let me paraphrase these in one. Do you intend to maintain your dividend policy? Taką polityką wydatkowania zaprezentowaną przez Panią Prezes można liczyć na specjalną dywidendę. And can we actually count on some special dividends?
We do intend to maintain our dividend policy. We will discuss it in the strategy and present it in the strategy. Pacta sunt servanda. If you promise something to your shareholders, you should actually stick to your words. You should actually keep your word. Być może to ta późna godzina. It's the late hour. The presentation was exhaustive, but it seems that we have no more questions.
Na pytanie, na które nie udało się odpowiedzieć. We've reached the end of this conference and this Q&A. If you have any more questions, any other questions which we have not replied to, we have not answered, we will answer them in written form. Thank you very much for the turnout, and you can stay in the museum actually and the society if you want. Thank you very much. Goodbye.