MOL Hungarian Oil & Gas Plc Class A

MOL Hungarian Oil & Gas Plc Class A

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Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptFebruary 20, 2026

Márton Teremi

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to MOL's Q4 2025 results conference call. My name is Márton Teremi, Head of Investor Relations.

The top management representatives on today's call are: Dr. Ákos Székely, Chief Financial Officer; Mr.

Zsombor Marton, Executive Vice President of Upstream; Mr. Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream; Mr.

Péter Ratatics, Executive Vice President of Consumer Services; and Mr. József Simola, Executive Vice President of Circular Economy Services.

Before handing over, let me share some technical information. We continue to use Microsoft Teams as a platform to hold our conference call.

The presentation can be downloaded from our website at molgroup.info. You will have the chance to ask questions by using the raise your hand function of Teams.

Please keep yourself muted throughout the call, except when asking a question. I would also like to draw your attention to the cautionary statement on slide number 2.

Now we can start the content part with Dr. Ákos Székely taking us through the highlights and financials of the fourth quarter.

Ákos Székely

Good morning, everyone. Let me first note that Mr.

Bacsa is unavailable currently, you'll have me as the speaker for the summary of our results and the group-level highlights and as well for the financial insights. Looking at the annual results in light of our guidance, I'm glad to report that group's fourth quarter clean CCS EBITDA was better than our expectation, and we closed the year at around $4 billion, exactly at $3 billion 369 million compared to our guidance of approximately $3 billion.

The reasons for this overperformance were both external and internal. I'll start with the external one.

The major external drivers defining our business evolved more favorably in the two final months of the year than we have had foreseen. Fuel demand and also spreads remained stronger than we had expected, which impacted downstream margin favorably, and also the fuel retail market remained robust at the end of the year.

With regards to the internal one, while I'm really pleased that our internal performance during the year during the the quarter was better. In downstream, although the fire incident in Danube Refinery resulted in a drop in our crude processing as expected, we have been quick and effective in adding half-finished products to our system, and thus maintain our wholesale fuel market position.

In upstream, on the other hand, we have been able to increase our production from an already high base and average above 99,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day during the fourth quarter. On the profit before tax line, please note that $1.3 billion, this is an unadjusted figure.

Here non-cash impairments classified as special items totaled $246 million, which explained the bulk of the difference to our guidance. Regarding capex spending—

Márton Teremi

Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, please keep yourself muted. Thank you very much.

Ákos Székely

On a few project we are finishing up, most notably the Rijeka Refinery upgrade projects, weighed on fourth-quarter results more than we had expected, and a few projects were started earlier with higher spending that we have foreseen. Regarding the net debt, we are really glad to see that is lower than half of our group EBITDA, and it is providing the group with ample liquidity.

Regarding TRIR, the fourth quarter was in line with the guidance, but obviously could not make up for the deterioration earlier in the year. Let me proceed the most important developments in the quarter on the next slide.

We delivered strong result during the fourth quarter, reaching $877 million clean CCS EBITDA, marking 29, almost 30% year-on-year increase. Upstream EBITDA benefited from increasing production volumes, offsetting some of the adverse effect of a lower oil and natural gas price environment.

Macro conditions were generally supportive of refinery margin and fuel retail margin, balancing some of the adverse effect of the continued weakness in petrochemical and the volume effect of the Danube Refinery fire. We will dig deeper into the details on the result.

Let me just provide an update on the most important events while I would like to summarize in five points for you. First, we successfully had an extraordinary general meeting during November last year, which the group transition to a holding structure was approved by the shareholders.

This is an important internal step in transforming the group legal structure to more reasonable and flexible organizational setup. However, let me reiterate that this will have no bearing on economic value of MOL share, and the logic of the currently reported business segments will remain exactly the same.

The second one, regarding the CDU unit in Danube Refinery, which was hit by the fire in October last year, the reconstruction work is progressing, and we confirm that the refinery will be back in full capacity by the third quarter of this year. Let me also remind you that there is an insurance coverage for the physical damage and also for the lost opportunity type of damage.

Although there is no final agreement yet on the insurance, our working hypothesis still remain, and this is that it will cover both type of damages. The current estimation for the reconstruction cost is around $50 million.

The third important point is that we also agreed to buy a photovoltaic park with a total of 304-megawatt capacity in Mezőcsát. This acquisition strengthens our ambition to enlarge the footprint in renewables, and with an expected internal rate return, which you already discussed last time, approximately 10%, which reflects our smart transition approach.

The fourth point is that we also announce that we signed the heads of agreement with Gazprom on the potential acquisition of NIS, the main oil and gas company in Serbia. Couple of things to mention.

We are really aware that there have been a lot of comments in the media around the details of the deal. Let me know that the negotiation are ongoing, and such we will be not able to comment anything further to the communication which we released on the 19th of January this year.

There is one piece of information that I would like to confirm. If the transaction goes ahead, we currently plan that 5% of NIS shares will be sold to the Serbian state from our shareholding.

Other than that, we are working towards ensuring all regulatory and necessary approvals will be available, which is really a crucial element of the deal to materialize given the sanction imposed on the seller and also to the target itself. We expect to sign the SPA by the end of March this year, and thereafter we foresee a closing process that would be shorter than usual in deals with the similar size and complexity.

The fifth points, a few remarks regarding the halt of supplies through the Druzhba pipeline. As we announced earlier this week, there has been no crude oil deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline since 27th of January.

Since then, we have been able to manage the situation by utilizing our own inventories and also by optimizing crude processing. However, the deliveries did not resume.

Officially we approached the authorities in Hungary and also in Slovakia to release strategic oil reserves. The authorities accepted our request, and the utilization of the strategic reserves will start in the coming days.

We currently have no indication about when and if at all deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline can resume, and I wouldn't like to speculate around that question. What we have done is to take steps for the scenario without Druzhba and take a measure to increase seaborne supplies to be secured through the Adriatic pipeline.

The first such of shipments are set to arrive in the Croatian port of Omišalj in early March, and we expect them to arrive to our refineries 5 to 12 days later. Ideally this schedule will ensure that the current capacity utilization of the refineries, although impaired because of the fire incidents at the Danube Refinery, can be maintained until the end of the April.

Let me also note that this is clearly not without risks as the logistics system around this are untested at this scale. The bottlenecks around seaborne transportation as well as the unseen utilization of the Adriatic pipeline are the main risk we see in this regard.

In response to these uncertainties and the tapping of strategic reserves in Hungary and Slovakia in the next days, we have decided that to halt export and focus on the supply of these countries for now. In longer run, please also note that there were several similar episodes around Druzhba deliveries stopping in the past 4 years.

While there are numerous scenarios and there are even more risks, we have spent the past 4 years analyzing such scenarios and prepare for such event. Now I would like to give you a short update on the sustainability.

TRIR first. MOL safety ratio was around 1.3 in the fourth quarter, which improved the annual average of 1.4.

This is above our guidance of 1.3, but we can return to an improving trend in the longer run. We are working on that.

CDP, let also highlight that there was an improvement in the CDP score of MOL Group, and we improve by one notch in both of the topics. We are under review to B in climate change and water security categories.

We are really happy and we are really proud about that. Now couple of words about the outlook for '26.

It is important to note that there are important assumptions behind the guidance. First, the insurance shall cover the bulk of the damage in connection with the fire in Danube Refinery, both lost opportunity and physical damage.

The second point is, any potential financial operational consequence of NIS transaction is not included in these figures. The third point is that, finally, we assumed that Ural blend, either via Druzhba pipeline or via Adriatic, will be accessible throughout the year.

With these points in mind, the management foresees clean CCS EBITDA to come around $3 billion. This is slightly lower than in last year, mostly owing to the normalization in the macro environment impacting refinery margins, and also the environment in petrochemical can be subdued this year.

We also see less supportive overall hydrocarbon price environment. The current rate of depreciation and assuming broadly flat exchange rates, $3 billion EBITDA translates to roughly $1.5 billion of profit before tax.

The capex is seen around $1.7 billion as Rijeka Refinery upgrade is completed and the crude diversification program picks up, as well as the reconstruction of the damaged CDU units is underway. As for many years now, we plan to keep the group net debt below EBITDA.

On the more operational area or front, upstream production is to be between 95 and 97,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day on average, marking a further ambition target. Crude processing is expected to be around 10 million tons in Danube and Bratislava refineries.

The drop is clearly explained by the missing volume from the burned-down distillation unit in Duna Refinery. Finally, we expect to the key safety ratio being improved and being below 1.25 in this year.

With that, I would like to proceed with the discussion of quarterly financials. The clean CCS EBITDA amounted to $877 million in fourth quarter, and this is an increase of 15% compared to the same period last year.

As usual, the heads of key segment will present their respective areas. Let me focus on the segments that these are uncovered by my colleagues.

First, the Gas Midstream EBITDA came at $51 million, which is really a flat performance compared to the previous quarter, exactly the same figure, as well as the fourth quarter of '24. Although the regulated fee levels decreased starting from 1st of October, the good news was that the higher transmission demand kept results steady.

Regarding the Corporate and Other segment, costs were seasonally higher, mainly due to the technical effect of approving certain expenses before the close to the year. The third one is the intersegment elimination, which had a positive effect of $25 million, mainly due to the lower oil and gas prices, resulting a lower inventory elimination.

The last topic is the capex, which amounted to $840 million in the fourth quarter of last year, and came it at $1 billion 688 million for the full year. Organic capex was at $1 billion 653 million, which is a small increase year on year.

Growth and efficiency capex amounted to over $440 million in the last quarter, mainly as ongoing crude diversification project and the Rijeka Refinery investment was speeding up. Also important to mention that a new well drilled on our offshore platform near to the coast of Croatia, this also contributed to an increase, and these smaller-scale ongoing petrochemical investments as well.

Looking at full year, organic capex was roughly flat. However, the composition shifted notably towards the return-generating growth and efficiency from sustain type of investments.

The clean CCS EBITDA of $3 billion 369 million in the first 9 months of last year resulted a net income of $810 million. As usual, let's see the components of the bridge.

The clean CCS EBITDA showed a negative $144 million in last quarter, which was in line with the effect of decreasing oil price. Also the cleaning of CO2 cost caused a significant negative effect in line with the seasonality of the adjustment factor, which is usually happening each and every year.

DD&A reached $690 million in fourth quarter, which is a notable increase year on year and also quarter over quarter. The internal makeup is quite interesting and important.

The underlying level of DD&A remains in the range of $400, $450 million. However, on top of that, there were two impairments recognized in the fourth quarter as special item.

The first item is in Consumer Services. $104 million of asset impairment was booked on the Polish operation.

We reviewed our models and found that the long tail of our fuel sales forecast is more optimistic than it would be justified by our updated outlook. The second one in Upstream, the goodwill impairment of ACG field earnings by $135 million.

Let me note that this is really purely technical accounting exercise, and this is due to the fact that the goodwill on upstream asset is not amortizable under IFRS rules. This impairment was not due to a change in macro or field-specific assumptions, but because of the fact that the depletion of the field triggered an impairment in goodwill.

The next point is, which is quite self-explanatory, that the forint showing appreciation, therefore, the financial line was really neutral to our results. Income from associates was $3 million, mainly driven by the results of Pearl stake, while small ticket items for other joint ventures overall weighed on results.

Finally, the tax expenses contributed to our results in the fourth quarter by $23 million, which is quite unusual, and also I would like to explain to this. This is due to the lower tax base, mainly due to the impairments I already mentioned to you, which led to a double benefit.

The corporate income tax was lower by a decrease, over $100 million could be booked to the deferred tax expenses. Also let me note that even with this change to tax expenses, the effective tax rate for the whole year was around 30%, marking an increase from last year level of 26%.

This is due to the extra taxes in Slovakia, special levy on companies manufacturing petroleum product of roughly $50 million, and a correction on the solidarity tax of another $50 million. Also important to note that the cash tax level remained the same.

Let's look at how the cash flow evolved during the quarter. Operating cash flow before working capital was about $2.6 billion in '25.

In the fourth quarter, working capital weighed on cash flow even as inventory were lower due to the fire, and trade payable built up seasonally usual. The change in working capital supported the cash flow of the year so far with a release of $180 million.

With that, operating cash flow reached $2.8 billion, more than a billion dollars above the capex for the full years. As a result of these positive changes, let's see how it has translated into the balance sheet.

The net debt level improved by over $500 million compared to the end of '24, thanks to the strong cash generation throughout the year. The net debt thus closed the year under half of the EBITDA, translating to 10% gearing ratio.

This is a very comfortable level and reflects the conscious approach of the management to strengthen the balance sheet in order to have necessary financial headroom, should a tight opportunity for acquisition to come, and we really hope that it will come soon. Now I would like to hand over to Gabriel to discuss the Downstream performance.

Gabriel Szabó

Thank you very much, Ákos. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

As Ákos mentioned, you can imagine that we are having quite challenging times at downstream to ensure the feed to our refineries and to ensure fuel supply security in our core markets. Now let's turn our focus on the fourth-quarter result of the last year.

Within the reported period, we reached a CCS EBITDA in the amount of $394 million, what is a 48% increase year on year. On the refining side, clean CCS EBITDA rose to $463 million, mostly due to the positive external environment that benefited margins.

Fuel demand remained broadly flat compared to the fourth quarter of 2024, but supply-side issues impacted in Europe drove fuel crack spreads significantly higher. Regarding volumes, crude processing showed a 21% year-on-year decrease due to the Danube Refinery fire, also mentioned by Ákos, where the missed process volumes were 600 kt, around 600 kt, what is in line with our earlier estimates.

On the sales side, however, the decrease was much lower, as we managed to ramp up production in other two refineries and secured semi-finished products for processing in Hungary. We thus successfully minimized the damage on our market position and also margins.

Turning to petrochemicals, the external environment is really negative, and the EBITDA reached $69 million of loss. Unfortunately, the market continues to remain weak, as I mentioned, with the impact of import pressure and high feedstock prices, which are not easing.

Now let's turn our focus on the external environment, the macro. Thank you.

The refining margin environment remained robust as European fuel crack spreads widened in October and November, as it is seen on the graph. The increase was driven by supply-side factors with the Russian export impacted by an export ban, as well as US sanctions on key Russian oil and gas producers, and longer than usual maintenance of the key refineries.

In December and also in January, this pressure eased somewhat, and refining margin showed normalization. For MOL, the widening of the Brent-Ural spread was also supportive.

However, let me remind you that the taxation regime in both Hungary and Slovakia limit this gain. Regarding petrochemicals, the margin continues to be in the sub-200 per ton area, and thus signals no easing of the already mentioned pressures.

On a positive note, the first on-spec polyol products have been produced and dispatched in our polyol plant in Tiszaújváros, although as valid for the petrochemical market, also in polyol market, the conditions are rather very challenging. What we are now doing, this is the bleeding process, and I assume that the first positive signals or impacts on the result will come at the end of this year.

My last slide, please. Thank you very much.

Looking at the quarter-over-quarter figures, there is no surprise there in light of my earlier comments. The external environment and also our internal sales performance was the main contributor to better results, while the petrochemical margin contribution was flat.

The volume dynamics weighed on EBITDA year on year. Looking at the whole year and full-year dynamics, the price and margin effect was broadly neutral, as you can see.

What we see that there is a volume contribution. This is because last year we operated Rijeka Refinery throughout the whole year, while back in 2024, the Rijeka Refinery was in the first 3 months in the economic shutdown.

This would be from my side. I expect then few questions.

Now I would like to hand over to Péter to continue with the Consumer Services. Thank you.

Péter Ratatics

Thank you, Gabriel. Good morning to everyone.

The Consumer Services delivered $205 million of EBITDA in the fourth quarter of 2025, which marks roughly 32% increase year on year. However, let me note that the strengthening of the Hungarian forint and the euro against the USD year on year had a significant positive effect on results, and so did the consolidation effect of the merger of the fleet companies, too.

These factors all together explain more than half of the year-on-year EBITDA increase. If we exclude those and looking just at the underlying organic growth in profits, then we achieved 10 to 15% growth rate year on year, which was supported by expansion in fuel, as well as the non-fuel margins, as I will present it on the next slides.

First let's cover the fuel volumes, where we rose by 1% year on year, and the consequence of the extra liters came from the Serbian operation during the period when sanctions were effective, which hit very severely the NIS operation, and we were the beneficiary of this operation. That's accounted for most of the incremental change in the fourth quarter.

Regarding the margins, the increase continues to be driven by the Croatian legislative change, where the margin regulation were lifted during the summertime, so that obviously affected the fourth quarter. Also in Romania, where the shift or the transition from the wholesale margin to the retail margin were significant, and that also positively impacted the Romanian retail operation.

With the longer-term positive trend of higher margin premium fuel products also gained a bit of a share, and that's also supported the results. If you turn the page to the non-fuel part of our business, then you can see that the development in the non-fuel part is practically just continued.

We don't really see any changes in the general trends. The 5, 6% organic growth shows that our non-fuel activity is maturing.

Also you can see that the sales and the margin growth pace is practically equalizing. That means that really our operation, from all the hidden benefits what we were able to unlock, it's practically there.

We are growing together with the sales in terms of margin. That's already healthy part of our business.

Based on this, we got the encouragement to open more and more standalone stores. We operated eight such selling points, new selling points, throughout Budapest and Prague.

The first year's experience are generally encouraging, we plan to continue with this. With that, thank you very much for your attention, and let me pass the floor to Zsombor and the Upstream.

Thank you.

Zsombor Marton

Good morning, everyone. The Upstream EBITDA amounted $247 million in the fourth quarter and marking a 13% decrease quarter on quarter.

Although we succeeded in raising production volumes, you heard also before the price environment has an adverse impact. The key oil and gas benchmarks fell over 8% compared to the third quarter.

Despite a seasonal pickup in capex in the fourth quarter, primarily due to the started offshore development campaign in Croatia, despite of this, the simplified free cash flow remained robust at $700 million for the full year. If we move on, let's have a quick look at the unit economics, and you can see multiple trends from the chart.

The normalization of hydrocarbon prices from '22 is very evident, and '25 is also even fourth quarter fitted well in that trend. Compared to the rate of this decrease Brent, the resilience of our price realization also shown $63 per barrel of oil equivalent realized as revenue in '25.

Cash flow realization, as you can see, we are holding above our strategic threshold of $20 even in '25 on an annual basis despite of the seasonally higher capex spending. If we move to the waterfall charts, let's discuss the quarter-on-quarter dynamics.

You can see the volume effect was notably positive due to the higher production and the technical effect of more ACG cargoes also supported our results. On the other hand, as we mentioned already, the lower price environment had a negative effect, as well as higher lifting costs contributing negatively, provisions also on other items also contributing negatively to the results.

Overall year on year, it was a price effect that dominated the change as Brent and TTF fell by 15% and 31% respectively. Despite higher entitlement production levels this year, volume contribution was overall negative due to the ACG cargo effect.

Let's see a bit production in detail in the next slide. The final quarter brought further successes in enhancing our production for the third consecutive year above our base.

We reached 99,000 barrels of oil equivalent on average in the third on the fourth quarter. This was mostly due to new interest and new assets in Hungary, which we put into production, as well as Croatia for the second consecutive quarter rebounded back above 20,000 on domestic production, adding barrels significantly in CEE.

Also we are ramping up of our natural gas processing in Iraq on the Pearl project, and international assets are contributing very well. We comfortably met our production guidance for '25, especially for the fourth quarter performance.

With regards to expectations for '26, we believe we can still increase the production to an average 95, 97,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day with the three assumptions. First, we can really maintain the success of Hungary and Croatia flattening the decrease in production on mature set of fields, both on the exploration side adding extra barrels and having some new ventures there plus the production optimization.

On the international side, we have organic expansion in Kazakhstan and Iraq that is remaining on track. Last, we expect that in case of the rest of the international portfolio, we can also stabilize the yields.

Finally, a few comments on the evolution of unit opex and the capex. The fourth quarter opex rose by 16% year on year.

You can see in previous quarters deterioration is mostly due to changes in exchange rates, and most of these costs are denominated in local currencies. If you see the group 11% increase, out of that, half a dollar is related to FX, and the rest is the increment.

With regards to capex, the fourth quarter is always the heaviest, but this time spending also, as I mentioned, accelerated more than usual in the final quarter. Several drilling programs started, as well as then the offshore development program in Croatia, which will also continue in '26.

With regards to outlook, let me highlight that we have struck also partnership in '25. We had agreed on MOUs with the largest E&P companies, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kazakhstan, and now recently Libya.

We already translated some of these partnerships into more specific, tangible cooperation on exploration. We have signed the PSA with SOCAR on the exploration, production, development of Shamakhi-Gobustan area that's onshore, and MOL is operating with 65% stake.

With TPAO and MOL formed the joint venture in Hungary and won two licenses in the exploration bid round. Seismic already finished, and we are drilling next year.

We have joined forces with Turkish Petroleum and the Spanish Repsol to bid successfully for an offshore block in Libya, just recently announced. In '26, one of our key priority is to work towards the success of these exploration programs with our partners and also further diversify our portfolio.

With that, I give the word to József.

József Simola

Thank you, Zsombor. Let me give you a quick overview of our Circular Economy waste management business.

Q4 EBITDA is at $28 million compared to -$48 million a year-on-year basis. Partially this is from longer-term positive trends, clearly including the impact of efficiency improvement actions, but dominant with still seasonally driven positive factors such as increased material sales and decreased collected volumes and costs.

The full-year EBITDA number at -$34 million, still negative, already shows a visible improvement over the previous year, and this is clearly a trend we expect and target to continue as a further result of the internal improvement actions. As for last year, a major achievement was the full rollout of the nationwide DRS system.

At the end of the year with more than 5,300 locations, and we completed the year with an average return rate close to 90%, which is one of the highest in Europe. With this, I think the rollout is completed.

We have to work on the optimization, but this is clearly a big achievement in less than 2 years. Preparations for a large capex item, WTE plant, a waste-to-energy plant, which is necessary for reaching the EU targets, are underway, and final investment decision for this is expected during this year.

With this, I'd like to hand back to Márton to conclude our presentation.

Márton Teremi

Thank you very much. That concludes the formal part of our presentation.

We'd like to now open the floor for the Q&A session. Please indicate if you'd like to ask a question by using the raise your hand function of Teams.

Anna, please go ahead.

Anna Kishmariya

Thank you very much for the presentation. I have a couple of questions, probably starting with the deal around Serbian asset.

I think in your disclosure, you were also considering selling 5% stake to ADNOC. Is it going on top of the 5% stake to the Serbian government, or is it out of the question now?

Also related to the deal, do you expect that you will need to invest some sizable capex to realize synergies, or if you can comment on potential synergies, that would be very helpful. The second question around crude supplies and the increased cost for you in first quarter, do you expect opex to go materially higher given no pipeline supplies?

If you can comment on the total utilization rates for the first quarter, given both Danube fire and absence of the Russian volumes. Thank you.

Ákos Székely

Thank you very much, Anna, for the question. With regards to ADNOC, yes, we are planning to involve ADNOC, and as we already kind of communicated and also confirmed earlier, we are in the discussion with ADNOC to have a possible joint the deal.

I think this quite important because this is really beneficial for MOL Group. First because ADNOC is really a strong financial investor, but also beside that, can bring considerable benefits as one of the largest global players in crude oil production and trading, and also I think it's important to mention that has a really considerable expertise in operating downstream assets as well.

Yes, we plan to sell 5% to the Serbian state. This is one point.

After that, we would like to create a deal having an involvement of ADNOC. With regards to the capex, I think unfortunately at the moment, I'm unable to comment to that.

This is an ongoing M&A process, therefore, I think as we already discussed, well, we signed the heads of agreement, and by the end of March, we expect to sign the SPA, and after that, there will be a closing. I think quite important to mention that even though being in mind this two two parties involvement, we would like to be in control, and we would like to influence the operation of NIS after having a positive and successful closing of the deal.

Márton Teremi

Thank you. To the second question, please, Gabriel.

Gabriel Szabó

Yes, thank you very much, Anna, for your question. I have to admit that we are getting the first experience regarding the full run on the seaborne crude, and definitely I will share more about the data and the values when we will evaluate the first quarter of this year.

What we see currently is that there are definitely higher logistic costs for the seaborne transit, which we already raised several times. The whole performance is very much dependent on the processing level and product slates.

Of course, that it depend very much on the crudes we can procure and we will process. Regarding the processing rates, the January was run as planned, of course that there were limits in Százhalombatta because of AV3, but the Slovnaft was in the optimal run rate, I would say, and we believe that we will resume this operation from April on.

We will get back to normal, but fed on the seaborne crude from April on. Thank you.

Anna Kishmariya

Thank you very much. If I may, just one quick additional question on this measure from Hungarian government related to the gas price freeze in January.

Do you expect material impact on MOL? Thank you.

Ákos Székely

Thank you for the question. No, we do not see that it has any sizable impact on MOL results.

Anna Kishmariya

Thank you.

Márton Teremi

Thank you very much. Giuseppe, please go ahead.

Giuseppe Tieri

Hi. Thanks for the presentation and for taking our questions.

The first one is on the insurance. You've been very clear around it, but we were wondering if you could give us some color on the timing for the expected payments and also how you're going to book them in the income statement, especially if you're going to split the property damage part and the business interruption part.

Then, secondly, on the CDU works in the Croatian refinery, what's the production uplift that you expect throughout 2026? Do you think you will need to deploy more capex there in Croatia?

Thank you.

Ákos Székely

With regards to the insurance, couple of things. At the moment, we see that we are in the discussion with the insurance companies, and according to our plans, that will be no issue in accepting our claim.

With regards to the timing, well, as we have the plant reconstructed, this is the time when we can calculate the overall profit lost, and well, this is the normal way of calculating it. As we already disclosed, by Q3 2026, we see that the plant is going to get back to the normal operation.

Therefore, this is the time when we can rely on closing the discussion with the insurance company. With regards to the payments, well, according to our expectation now, by the end of this year, it's going to be closed and paid.

The payment will also impact the cash flow and the P&L positively. I think important to mention that the payment depends on the actual lost opportunity, therefore, also we need to wait until everything is closed and the plant is going to get back to the operation.

Gabriel Szabó

Giuseppe, regarding your second question, DCU project, I'm glad to share with you that the unit is completed, the core unit and also all the associated infrastructure, and we successfully finished the cold commissioning phase. Now we entered the final stage, which is the hot commissioning.

This will take several months, after which the unit will move into trial operation. I'm rather positive that the ramp-up is expected to begin in March, and I believe that in the second half of this year, we will see a positive results of this investment.

Giuseppe Tieri

Perfect. Thank you.

Márton Teremi

Thank you very much. Oleg, please go ahead with your question.

Oleg Galbur

Yes, good morning and thank you for the presentation. I have a few questions, and let me start with a follow-up on a previous question regarding the seaborne supply.

Just to make sure that we understood correctly, this guidance for the full-year EBITDA of $3 billion, it is based on normal or on a 100% supply of pipeline crude, if you can confirm that. Otherwise, if you would fully operate on a seaborne crude oil, would it be fair to assume that the $3 billion guidance would be materially impacted?

Then the next question on the refineries: How long can the two refineries run at full capacity based on the company's own and the strategic reserves of crude oil? Then on the strategic reserves, what is the average cost per barrel of the crude that you'll be getting from these reserves?

Finally, on dividends, how should we think about the last year's dividend? Because on one hand, you had a very good year in terms of cash flow generation and assuming the same payout basically that would support an increase of dividend, but on the other hand, you are faced with higher oil supply risks.

When you put everything together, would it be fair to still assume an increased of dividend justified by the cash flow generation, or how should we think about that? Thank you.

Gabriel Szabó

Thank you, Oleg. I will start with the seaborne part.

There were several questions there. Let me start with the state reserve and the run rate with which we are now operating the plants.

We asked both governments in Hungary and Slovakia to release 250 kt of crude oil. This crude oil should be sufficient for this transition period till we get the full supply from the sea.

Currently their run is optimized to supply the core markets. As Ákos mentioned, we stopped the exports, now we focus on the security of supply in our domestic countries, it mean Hungary and Slovakia.

As I mentioned to Anna, from April on, we resume the operation with the full run, or the optimized run based on the economics of the refining. Regarding what is the crude oil reserves or what is the time span for that, so as you might know, in EU, we have the guidance to keep the stock reserves for 90 days.

It's also valid for Hungary and Slovakia. In terms of this, I believe we have sufficient crude and products to ensure stable supply to our markets.

Oleg Galbur

On the cost, maybe?

Gabriel Szabó

Excuse me, I missed the question. Oleg, can you please repeat your question?

Oleg Galbur

My question was what is the average cost per barrel of the crude that you'll be getting from strategic reserves, just to have

Gabriel Szabó

ideas for our

Oleg Galbur

projections.

Gabriel Szabó

It's a borrowing, we will then return barrel to barrel or ton to ton.

Oleg Galbur

Okay. I see.

Gabriel Szabó

We will not give it back in money, but also we will return all these stock reserves in crude oil back.

Oleg Galbur

Understood.

Gabriel Szabó

Thank you very much. Thank you.

Ákos Székely

Oleg, with regards to your questions regarding the dividend, well, as usual this time of the year, what we disclose is that there is a normal schedule of committees and decisions. As usual, we plan to have the annual general meeting or assembly in April, therefore, middle of March, we are going to have the Board of Directors meeting, and this is the forum when this going to be discussed and finally decided.

How I covered in my presentation, well, first of all, we were really pleased to see that the last year we generated positive cash flow, and this is you can see be translated into the strengthening balance sheet. Also what we have discussed is that, well, the strong balance sheet is also serve as a good basis for M&A transactions.

With regards to the dividend, what I can share that please have a look at the previous years' dividend, and well, this is at the moment what we can disclose.

Oleg Galbur

Thank you.

Márton Teremi

The last question from Piotr, please go ahead.

Piotr Dzieciolowski

Hi, yes, good morning, everybody, and thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions.

Firstly, I wanted to clarify your $3 billion EBITDA guidance. What does it assume in terms of crude oil shipment to your refineries?

Does it assume that you through the whole year will get the seaborne crude, and how much different this type of crude is versus the previous one? Essentially I'm trying to get is the $3 billion covering the cost of the new supply route and a different blend and you accommodate all of it, or not?

That would be the first question. Second question, I wanted to ask you why you took the impairment on the Polish Consumer Services stations.

What was the reason? I thought looking at your and the Orlen results, they are very, very good in the Poland fuel stations, so that's the second question.

The third question I have on the NIS acquisition. I've seen a number of different headlines quoting a different price, can you clarify what the price for the stake in the brackets or what kind of range we are discussing, you could maybe have a bit of a view on the total multiple that you're going to pay.

These are my three questions. Thank you.

Ákos Székely

Let me start answering the first is the NIS and after that the Polish one. With regards to NIS, well, how I already mentioned and also we communicated that this is an ongoing M&A process, therefore, we are unable to comment on the pricing until the due diligence and the negotiations are ongoing.

What we expect is that by the end of March, there will be an SPA signed, and this is the time when we are going to have a full picture. On the other hand, this is also true that this M&A is one of the most documented, openly documented M&As, therefore, there are so many information flying around in the media, but also please just understand that we are unable to comment at this stage.

With regard to the impairment on our Polish assets, I think there are two different things. One is that what is the overall situation in Poland and how we see the market developing, and this is probably the area Péter knows much better than myself.

On the other hand, this is also true that there are certain rules in IFRS when we need to run impairment tests, and this is in the normal accounting cycle of each and every year. As I said, at the end of the last year, we ran also this impairment test, and based on the calculation, we reviewed our models and we found that our figures are actually based on the more optimistic forecast, therefore, this had to be adjusted to the more realistic outlook.

With regard to the outlook, I think, well, yes, this $3 billion is lower than the consensus would show, and I think there are a couple of points probably need to discuss. The refining area, I think we do expect having a normalization in the refining environment.

Let me just underline that last year refining margin of $7.6 per barrel was how we see is really a temporary and positive figure, and on the long term, I think we much better accept having a normalization and getting back to the normal range. Also I think quite important to mention that the full-scale launch of DCU in Rijeka will be in the second part of the year.

With regards to the supply, also I would like to mention that we are assuming that the Ural blend, either via Druzhba pipeline or via the Adriatic, will be accessible for us throughout the year. With regards to the petchem, well, we do not see a really good reason why the picture is going to be better than last year, and on upstream, even though we are calculating with a really strong and very healthy production, generally we think that the hydrocarbon price level are going to be lower than last year.

Finally, in Consumer Services, I think operation-wise, absolutely we do not see difficulties in this regard, but also fair to mention that in dollar terms, the Consumer Services performance was supported by the devaluation of dollar against the local currencies. These are the key pillars why we believe that there is an explainable deviation versus the consensus.

Piotr Dzieciolowski

Good. Thank you very much.

That was very clear. Just a small clarification on this guidance.

What type of organic activities we should assume as a step-up year on year '26 versus '25? Rijeka upgrade, I think polyol was also ramping up, can you take us through kind of your thinking around what is new on your asset side that will start contribute more than it was last year?

Gabriel Szabó

If I may comment the downstream side, so as you properly mentioned that this is the DCU, I think it will be in the second half of this year, then at the end of the year, the polyol. Beside of it, we expecting third quarter this year to resume the operation with AV3.

Also, as last summer I mentioned, we launched our Tomorrow Downstream program, there is some efficiency improvement there for this year as well to ensure a total uplift of EBITDA by 500 till the end of '27. This would be from the downstream side what I see.

Piotr Dzieciolowski

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Márton Teremi

I see Mr. Tamás Pletser is also like to ask a question.

Please go ahead, Tamás.

Tamás Pletser

Yes, thank you very much. Good morning.

I have a couple of questions mainly on the supply situation what you are experiencing right now. You mentioned you asked for the Hungarian strategic reserves.

Have you done a similar move in Slovakia? If you have done so, what is the volume you may receive from the Slovak strategic reserves?

That would be my first question. Second, you mentioned that you have to give this crude oil back to the Hungarian authorities, and somewhere I read in the Hungarian newspapers that the deadline would be the end of this year.

Do you see this deadline to be feasible to do that? Also maybe a third question: What type of crude do you have to give back?

Because I presume that now the strategic reserves are primarily in REBCO type of crude, and if you don't get a similar quality, would you use that kind of quality to replace the current reserves? Finally, a question regarding your capacity utilization of your refineries.

I think Mr. Hernádi a year ago had an interview when he was explaining that if MOL cannot access to the Russian crude from the east, and the supply should be on the Adriatic side, this should lead to a decline in the refinery utilization as long as you don't finish those decoupling projects like the mixing facility and the storage facilities in the area of the Danube Refinery, which is, as far as I know, is expected in the first half of 2027.

Could you confirm this information? Do you see that if you have to get the supply only via the Adria, you have to cut the capacity utilization of the Slovnaft refinery and Danube Refinery?

Thank you.

Gabriel Szabó

Thank you, Tamás, for your question. All of those are somehow connected.

First part is that whether there was a release of state reserve in Slovakia, so as I mentioned, similarly to Hungary, also in Slovakia, in the very same volume, 250 kt crude, which is a REBCO or able-compatible, very close, because we have to ensure that there are 90 days of strategic reserves there. It's somehow connected to your last part of your question that having a different crude, there will be different yields.

You are very right, we have to find the proper mix or blend, as we mentioned it several times. This is the goal, yeah, how to find the most optimal blend.

As you might seen in the news that once the Druzhba is interrupted, then we are allowed to import also Russian crude via sea. This is also another option there.

Regarding when we have to return the crude, frankly, I would ask my guys to come back with the answer for Hungary. I was just day before yesterday discussing this question with the Slovak government, and I precisely know that in Slovakia it's 30th of September, end of September.

I do not know the precise date, I have to admit, for Hungary. Have I answered all your questions?

Tamás Pletser

That's probably only one. If you have to give back the crude oil, does it have to be the same quality what you receive from the strategic reserves?

Gabriel Szabó

The basic guidance is to keep the 90 days. I believe this is the result of the formula, and then of course we have to fill in all the variables in the formula to achieve these 90 days.

You are right that ideally it would be a REBCO, but there are also other crudes very similar to REBCO as for example CPC, I believe we will find the proper crude grade. Thank you very much for the question.

Tamás Pletser

Just one more follow-up here, if I may. Can you confirm that those investments what you do to process seaborne crude, those investments will be ready by the first half of 2027?

I think that was the date you mentioned.

Gabriel Szabó

Yes, we are trying to do our best because definitely it's also a limiting factor. On the other side, I have to admit that majority of our engineering resources in-house and also procured were asked to deal with the AV3, so that this was the first priority so far, but we are progressing with the diversification project, and I truly believe that we can reach that deadline you mentioned.

Tamás Pletser

Okay. Good.

Thanks very much and wish you good luck.

Gabriel Szabó

Thank you very much.

Márton Teremi

Krzysztof, go ahead with the very last question.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone.

My question will be just a follow-up on that diversification project. Would you mind just giving a little bit more color about that and how is it going to improve your situation regarding the procurement of crude oil?

Gabriel Szabó

It's rather a really difficult topic, but what is now driven our procurement, firstly this is the sanction regime, we definitely have to comply with all the sanctions regime. Then this is the physical availability of the crudes.

Then what is technically processable to achieve the highest yield possible. Then what is the logistical sequence of those seaborne crudes coming to the Omišalj and what is the sequence how we put them to the pipe because few crudes cannot be paired to each other, we have to find out the proper blend.

The last point is, of course, the economical view on this. Crude diversification projects will enable that there will be much more options and we won't be limited as much as we are today.

There are really limits there, what kind of crude we can process, what should be the sequence of those crude coming to our storage tanks, how we blend it. There are a lot of limits there.

I believe that after successfully accomplishing this diversification project, where the big part goes to the blending facility, we will be able to blend the proper mix to be fed to our distillation units.

It's not about increasing the throughput of those pipelines, it's rather just diversifying or just enabling the access to more streams?

Gabriel Szabó

No, the pipeline constraints is on the JANAF side, what we are pushing to do tests, seemingly we agree that there will be some tests done. Far we do not have a proof that the capacity is sufficient.

On the other side, now having AV3 run, there is definitely some capacity or some room to work with. The full capacity was never tested properly.

Two separate issues, yeah. One is on our side, the technological limits there and bottlenecks, where we invest 500 million there, and we believe to accomplish it in 2027.

The other side is the JANAF limits where we also see some risk, bottlenecks associated to the capacity there.

Okay. In really pessimistic scenario, if Druzhba somehow does not restart its operations, how high would you see the capacity utilization at your main refineries in Slovakia and in Hungary?

Gabriel Szabó

Till Q3, till Q3 there is no AV3 run, though though there is no need to to source the distillation unit there, which gives us some room for the in the capacity of JANAF capacity. On the other side, now there is a sequence of of cargoes coming, let's see how JANAF is dealing with this one.

We have to get some experience, real experience. For me, it's really hard to answer your question as no that I'm I'm not operating this part of the pipeline.

Sure. Thank you.

Gabriel Szabó

Thank you.

Márton Teremi

Thank you very much for your participation on today's call. Please reach out to Investor Relations if you have anything to follow up with, and goodbye, have a nice day.