Hellenic Petroleum, Greece's biggest refiner, posted a higher than expected fourth-quarter profit on Thursday, helped by rising oil prices and widening refining margins.
Hellenic, which runs refiners and gas stations across the Balkans, had a net income of 50 million euros ($68.78 million) compared with a 11 million euro loss in the same period in 2009. This was above analysts' estimate of 44.8 million in a Reuters poll.
The company is cutting costs and investing heavily in refinery upgrades to boost its future earnings, in the face of Greece's austerity-fuelled recession. "We achieved good results, mainly due to a better refining environment, increasing oil prices, the more favourable dollar-euro exchange rate and a significant contribution from our transformation initiatives," said Hellenic's chief executive John Costopoulos in a statement.
Full-year profit dropped 9.5 percent to 180 million euros as a drop in fuel consumption outweighed wider refining margins.
Hellenic will distribute a dividend of 45 euro cents a share on 2010 earnings, the same as in the previous year.
Stripping out the effect of oil prices on the company's inventories and other one-off items, adjusted "clean" operating profit (EBITDA) in the fourth quarter almost doubled to 86 million euros, broadly in line with analysts' average forecast of 84.3 million.