PSO’s Stellar Performance Praised at ISE

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan State Oil’s (PSO) CEO Mr. Amjad Parvez Janjua and CFO Mr. Sohail Butt addressed The Islamabad Stock Exchange on Thursday and highlighted the stellar performance achieved by the Company during FY2014.

Speaking at the occasion, Mr. Janjua said that PSO closed FY2014 with flying colours. He stated that it was a momentous year in PSO’s operating history when the Company recorded all time high sales revenue, operating profit, after tax earnings and market capitalization.

Consequently, the company made highest ever contribution to the government exchequer in the form of duties and taxes. During the year, the Company earned a profit after tax of Rs 21.8 billion against 12.6 billion last year and crossed Rs 100 billion mark of market capitalization to be one of the few ‘large cap’ companies on the Stock Exchanges of Pakistan. Mr. Janjua added that the Company is now on Forbes 2000 list of world’s biggest publicly traded companies.

PSO Chief highlighted that the Company crossed Rs 1.4 trillion mark in sales revenue and retained leadership in oil market of Pakistan with 73% share in Black Oil and 53% share in White Oil. Elaborating on the business model followed by the Company in FY2014, the MD PSO stated that based on detailed due diligence, PSO had devised and implemented a strategy to pursue profitable growth while rationalizing its product portfolio. Accordingly, the Company merged critical aspects of both internal financial review and external market reconnaissance to strike an effective balance between volumetric sales and profitability, whereby offers of sales incentives viz-a-viz discounts were limited and focused on robustness of business cases. This smart selling approach to achieve the objectives of market leadership and sales volume enhancement, with due consideration to bottom-line and liquidity position, enabled the Company to achieve profitable growth during the year.

PSO DMD (Finance & IT) Mr. Sohail Butt in his presentation stated that the Company achieved all time high performance benchmarks without any increase in margins during the year. He stated that gross profit increased due to marketing performance, smart selling and profitable growth initiatives as well as cost efficiency achieved by the Company. He highlighted that marketing, distribution and administrative expenses merely increased by 3% against an average increase of 14% during the last 3 years and against inflation of 8.5% during the year. Besides, the effective mark-up rate was brought down from 11% to 8.5%, and against increase of average short term borrowings of 50%, the mark-up cost only increased by 26%.

Mr. Butt further stated that the normal profit after tax excluding IPP interest income and other extraordinary items increased by 31% on Year on Year (YoY) basis whereas last year it was negative 7% on YoY basis. He added that the Company’s market capitalization increased by 34% to Rs. 106 billion as on 30^th June 2014. PSO ended with the highest ever net profit of Rs 21.8 billion with unprecedented YoY growth of 73%. Consequently, the Company made highest ever contribution to the Government exchequer in the form of taxes, duties and levies of Rs 289 billion during FY2014. PSO’s outlook was upgraded by PACRA from ‘Stable’ to ‘Positive’ with AA+ and A1+ long and short term credit ratings.

Based on PSO’s extraordinary performance, the investment analysts have highly rated the Company. Majority of the analysts have given “Buy” or “Outperform” recommendations for PSO. He added that PSO stock offers an attractive investment opportunity.