8th May 2015 06:23
LONDON (Alliance News) - BG Group PLC Friday said its earnings and revenue in the first quarter of 2015 were substantially hit by the fall in the oil price which caused a poor performance from its production and exploration division.
The FTSE-100 company, which is being acquired by Royal Dutch Shell PLC, said its pretax profit for the three months to end-March was USD708 million, down from USD1.89 billion a year earlier.
BG Group reported earnings before interest tax, depreciation and amortisation in the quarter of USD1.59 billion, down over 40% from the USD2.71 billion reported a year earlier, whilst earnings before interest and tax more than halving to USD945 million from USD1.97 billion.
That was after its upstream division experienced a 56% fall in Ebitda in the quarter to USD870 million from USD1.99 billion as the oil price hit results, lowering revenue in the division to USD2.01 billion from USD3.25 billion. The average oil price in the period dropped to USD52.16 per barrel compared with USD108.95 a barrel a year earlier.
The upstream division also saw earnings before interest and tax fall 80% to USD253 million from USD1.28 billion.
Overall earnings per share halved to 16.6 cents per share from 33.8 cents per share.
Production in the quarter rose by 1% to 638,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day as production from its Australian and Brazilian assets more than doubled from a year earlier, but this was partially offset by UK production falling.
By Joshua Warner; [email protected]; @JoshAlliance
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