E - Eni S.p.A. (E) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-02-16 14:18:09 ET
Eni S.p.A. (E) Q4 2023
Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call
February 16, 2024 8:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Claudio Descalzi - Chief Executive Officer
Francesco Gattei - Chief Financial Officer
Cristian Signoretto - Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Natural Resources
Guido Brusco - Chief Operating Officer, Natural Resources
Stefano Ballista - Chief Executive Officer, Eni Sustainable Mobility
Adriano Alfani - Chief Executive Officer, Versalis
Conference Call Participants
Biraj Borkhataria - Royal Bank of Canada
Oswald Clint - Bernstein
Alessandro Pozzi - Mediobanca
Matt Smith - Bank of America
Irene Himona - Societe Generale
Giacomo Romeo - Jefferies
Michele Vigna - Goldman Sachs
Josh Stone - UBS
Alejandro Vigil - Santander
Lydia Rainforth - Barclays Capital
Bertrand Hodee - Kepler Cheuvreux
Massimo Bonisoli - Equita
Presentation
Operator
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to Eni's 2023 Fourth Quarter Results Conference Call hosted by Mr. Claudio Descalzi, Chief Executive Officer. For the duration of the call, you will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions]
I am now handing you over to your hosts to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Claudio Descalzi
Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to our 2023 Full Year and Q4 Result presentation. 2023 was an excellent year for Eni. Our continuous focus has been on mitigating the impact of a market characterized by price and margin volatility, as well as a critical geopolitical contest. We maintain a direction aligned with our strategy and successfully achieved or beat our targets for the year while also improving the efficiency of our assets. This resulted in the second best financial performance by Eni in its current structure. Our aim was to capture strong results but also to foster our growth ambitions, meaning we also advanced our transition strategy very significantly. It has been a very active year, so now let's go through the highlights.
In the upstream, we brought on stream two important operated projects in line with our fast track model of phased development. Baleine Phase 1 started production at the end of August, less than 18 months from the FID. At the end of December, we announced the first production of gas into the Tango facility at our Congo LNG project, only 12 months after sanction. Key to our EMP strategy is fitting in new advantage resources from our industry-leading exploration. The highlight was Geng North, the largest commercial discovery in the industry last year. Indonesia will become an area of major focus for our upstream in the coming years, benefiting from a network of facilities with spare capacity that will help to fast-track future production at competitive costs.
But Indonesia was not a standalone success. In fact, our Nargis exploration well in Egypt, offshore was also a top five discovery. A distinctive feature of Eni strategy is our organic model, but also focus portfolio management plays a critical role as we shape our business. Undoubtedly, our highest profile deal was the purchase of Neptune, announced in June and completed at the end of January, a few months earlier than expected. I will update you a little more on that shortly. We are constantly looking high grade our portfolio also via divestment. And in the year, we announced the sale of noncore reproducing asset in Congo and Nigeria onshore, both of which were approaching completion. In December, we were delighted to announce the investment by Energy Infrastructure Partners into Plenitude, providing new and aligned capital to support its growth path, while also confirming and valorizing part of the value we have already created. The satellite model of which Plenitude is an example with its circa 10 EUR 10 billion of enterprise value is a key enabler for Eni to sustain growth and deliver shareholder value across the multiple energy vectors we are focused on....
Eni S.p.A. (E) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript