NTOIF - Neste Oyj (NTOIF) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-02-08 16:13:04 ET
Neste Oyj (NTOIF)
Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call
February 8, 2024 08:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Anssi Tammilehto - IR
Matti Lehmus - President and CEO
Martti Ala-Harkonen - CFO
Katja Wodjereck - EVP, Renewables Products
Markku Korvenranta - EVP, Oil Products
Conference Call Participants
Giacomo Romeo - Jefferies
Henri Patricot - UBS
Erwan Kerouredan - RBC
Sasikanth Chilukuru - Morgan Stanley
Kate Sullivan - Citi
Naisheng Cui - Barclays
Artem Beletski - SEB
Henry Tarr - Berenberg
Matt Lofting - JPMorgan
Paul Redman - BNP Paribas
Iiris Theman - Carnegie
Christopher Kuplent - Bank of America
Jason Gabelman - TD Cowen
Peter Low - Redburn Atlantic
Matthew Blair - TPH
Presentation
Anssi Tammilehto
Good afternoon and welcome all to this conference call to discuss Neste's Full Year 2023 Results published this morning. I'm Anssi Tammilehto, Head of Neste IR. Here with me on the call are President and CEO, Matti Lehmus; CFO, Martti Ala-Harkonen; and the business unit heads Katja Wodjereck of Renewables Products; Markku Korvenranta of Oil Products
We will be referring to the presentation that can be found on our website. And as always please pay attention to the disclaimer since we will be making forward-looking statements in this call.
With these remarks, I would like to hand over to our President and CEO, Matti Lehmus to start with the presentation. Matti please go ahead.
Matti Lehmus
Thank you, Anssi, and a very good afternoon also on my behalf, it's great to have you all participating in the call. And I am pleased to say that we were able to post strong results in the fourth quarter and in the full year 2023. And I'm also confident in our ability to build on our strengths also in the current more challenging market environment.
So, as mentioned, we are able to achieve strong results in all business units in the fourth quarter. In Renewable Products, our sales margin of $813 per tonne can be considered a very strong achievement in this market environment as we were able to optimize our end-to-end value chain.
In Oil Products, good operational performance and high utilization rates supported our performance and while refining margins were lower than in the previous quarter, we achieved a good total refining margin level of $18.90 per barrel in the fourth quarter.
The third element I'd like to highlight for the full year 2023 is the growth in our cash flow, reaching €750 million free cash flow in a year of significant CapEx. This was a good achievement, which reflects the focus we have put on optimizing the net working capital.
So, when looking at some of the key indicators for 2023, we can see that the comparable EBITDA is slightly lower than in the previous year, but still reached a strong level of €3.58 billion. The comparable ROACE decreased to 24% as assets increased due to the growth projects coming online, which level still clearly exceeds our target of minimum 15%.
And regarding dividends, we have today announced the Board proposal of €1.2 per share, in line with our new policy of paying a competitive and over time, growing dividend....
Neste Oyj (NTOIF) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript