Eneos forecasts 68% fall in FY22/23 profit with no inventory gain

TOKYO : Japan’s oil and metals giant Eneos Holdings Inc on Friday forecast a 68 per cent fall in net profit for the year ahead after booking a record profit of 537 billion yen ($4.2 billion) on the back of higher prices of oil and copper.

“Stronger prices of natural resources, healthy performance in electric materials business and cost-cutting efforts contributed to a record profit,” President Takeshi Saito told a news conference.

But net profit for the year to next March is predicted to drop to 170 billion yen as a hefty gain on its oil inventory and a one-off gain from selling its non-core asset last year will disappear, the company said.

The forecast came below analysts’ mean estimates of 192 billion yen, according to Refinitiv.

Earlier this week, its smaller rival Idemitsu Kosan Co also warned a 41 per cent drop in net profit this year after posting a record profit for the year just ended.

Eneos also set a new target of cutting scope 1 and 2 carbon dioxide emissions by 46 per cent by 2030 on 2013 levels and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. Scope 1 refers to emissions from a company’s direct operations and scope 2 are emissions from the power a company uses for its operations.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said this week that Japan will phase out Russian oil imports after agreeing on a ban with other Group of Seven (G7) nations to counter Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Eneos, Japan’s biggest refiner, received its last oil cargo from Russia in April and it is buying alternative supplies from the Middle East and other areas, Saito said.

“We used to have term contracts to get around four cargoes of Russian crude a month … but we had decided to suspend these procurements, before the government’s decision, considering reputation risk among other factors,” Saito said.

Russian crude accounted for less than 5 per cent of its total imports, he added.

($1 = 128.9300 yen)