WARSAW: Poland's biggest gas distributor, PGNiG, beat fourth-quarter net profit forecasts as the lower cost of gas imports outweighed impairments.
Shares in the state-controlled company jumped more than 5 percent in early Thursday trading, after it posted a quarterly net profit of 688 million zlotys ($184 million).
Analysts had on average expected a profit of 72 million zlotys after a 161 million net loss in the same period the year before, according to a Reuters poll.
Forecasts ranged from a 258 million loss to a 399 million zlotys profit due to different approaches to calculating the price PGNiG pays for the gas it imports.
"PGNiG beat expectations mainly due to lower costs of gas purchases and an improved result in the distribution segment," Andrzej Kubacki, equity analyst at ING Securities, said.
The group's fourth-quarter operating profit (EBIT) rose eight-fold to 759 million zlotys. The result would have been larger if not for impairments, which according to company estimates curbed EBIT by around 627 million zlotys.
Fourth-quarter sales at PGNiG rose by one fourth to 11.5 billion zlotys, beating market expectations of 10.2 billion.
PGNiG relies on deliveries from Russia's Gazprom for most of the gas it sells in Poland, where annual gas consumption stands at around 16 billion cubic metres.
In September last year PGNiG said it started to report deliveries from Gazprom at levels as much as 45 percent lower than its daily orders. This resulted in gas price discounts from Gazprom.
The group, which is under pressure to help reduce the country's energy reliance on Russia, said in 2014 its imports from the east fell by 0.6 billion cubic metres to 8.1 billion due to lower supplies from Gazprom.
PGNiG's own gas output stood at 4.5 billion cubic metres and the company plans to maintain that volume in 2015. The company also said in planned to pay out a dividend of 0.16 zlotys per share from its 2014 profit
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