6th Mar 2019 08:17
LONDON (Alliance News) - Vivo Energy PLC on Wednesday reported a rise in profit for 2018, on growth in revenue and volumes over the period.
Vivo is a downstream petroleum company which sells Royal Dutch Shell PLC branded-fuels and lubricants.
For the year, Vivo reported a pretax profit of USD229.4 million, up 9% from USD210.8 million the year before, on revenue that grew by 13% to USD7.55 billion from USD6.69 billion, driven by higher volumes and crude oil prices.
Total volumes were up 4.0% in 2018 to 9.35 billion litres from 9.03 billion litres the prior year, leading to a 2.0% rise in gross profit to USD624 million, as higher volumes more than offset lower cash unit margin of USD73 per thousand litres.
Volume growth was driven by a strong performance in Vivo's Commercial and Retail businesses, despite industry supply shortages in the third quarter of 2018.
Vivo Energy declared a final dividend of 1.3 US cents per share, bringing the total payout to 1.9 cents.
Looking ahead, Vivo Energy said it expects to deliver low- to mid- double-digit percentage volume growth for 2019, as well as a dollar gross cash unit margin in the high 60s per thousand litres.
On Friday, last week Vivo Energy completed its acquisition of Engen Holdings (Pty) Ltd's operations in a number of African countries.
In December 2017, Vivo agreed to buy the operations of Engen in ten African nations: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Reunion, Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Then, in September, Vivo and Engen confirmed they had restructured the deal, worth USD204 million, to initially complete with all but the DRC operations in March, after it received regulatory approval for all operations except for the DRC.
"This has been a remarkable year for Vivo Energy and we are pleased to have met our objectives for the period and delivered a strong first set of results as a public company," said Chief Executive Officer Christian Chammas.
"Looking forward we continue to see significant growth opportunities across our portfolio as we continue to enhance our position in our fast-growing markets across Africa," Chammas added.
Shares in Vivo Energy were down 0.5% at 132.96 pence in London, while its Johannesburg shares were untraded at ZAR24.75 on Wednesday.
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