Writedowns, oil prices drive up Petrobras loss

RIO DE JANEIRO, March 22, 2016 – Petrobras reported its worst-ever quarterly results on Tuesday, posting a net loss of some USD 10.2 billion over Q4, 2015. The poor performance beat the company’s previous negative record, USD 7.35 billion in loses over the last quarter of 2014, by 48% and caught analysts by surprise.

Investors surveyed by Reuters had been expecting quarterly losses in the range of USD 2.68 billion. The quarterly performance turned Petrobras’ full-year 2015 results, positive through September, into a USD 9.6 billion loss.

 

The disappointing Q4, 2015 figures were compounded by substantial writedowns on assets. Petrobras wrote off USD 12.8 billion during the final quarter of last year, with oilfields accounting for 83% of the impairments, corresponding to more than a third of the company’s market capitalisation.

Petrobras’ Comperj refinery constituted the biggest non-oilfield writedown, as the company wrote off some billion 1.46 billion on the 165,000-barrel-per-day asset on account of delays, lack of financing and increasing costs.

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