According to the preliminary results for 2025 released by OMV Petrom last week, the Company has recorded sales revenue growth of 2% YoY, an EBITDA decline of 22% YoY, and a net income to majority of RON 3.06bn, a decline of 27% YoY.
Starting off with the revenue, the Company recorded sales revenue of RON 36.6bn, an increase of 2% YoY. The main driver of this growth has been the higher natural gas and electricity sales volumes, with the Gas & Power segment recording a 37% increase YoY to RON 12.3bn. This, in turn, has been driven by the larger total gas sales volumes, which grew by 12% YoY to 48.3 TWh, as a result of a strong increase in sales to end users and wholesale markets. One other factor that benefited this was the power market deregulation in July 2025, which materially improved the market access and volumes. Brazi Power Plant also maintained high availability, altogether leading to the strongest growth driver in the Company.
Besides this, higher electricity sales were recorded YoY, with the OPCOM base-load electricity price at an average of RON 546/MWh in 2025, a 6% increase YoY. On the other hand, revenue growth was tempered by lower petroleum product sales volumes in the Refining & Marketing segment, which declined by 7% YoY to RON 24.2bn. The main reasons for this decline are the lower total refined product sales volumes, which were down 5% YoY, a planned refinery shutdown in Q2 2025, as well as lower exports and commercial (non-retail) sales. Furthermore, in the Exploration & Production segment, lower oil & gas prices were also recorded. On average, the Brent oil price was down 14% YoY to USD 69.1bbl during 2025, while the average realised crude price was 16% YoY. While this is mostly an intra-group category, lower prices directly translate to reduced external revenue contribution and downstream transfer pricing support.
Moving on to OPEX, it amounted to RON 9.74bn, growing at a slight 0.3% YoY. Within OPEX, selling, distribution and administrative (SG&A) expenses recorded the largest absolute growth, increasing by 9% YoY to RON 3.3bn, as a result of several factors. Firstly, with the higher gas & power revenue, there was also higher trading activity, consumer servicing, as well as balancing and ancillary services, especially after the market deregulation in July 2025. Furthermore, more transactions were recorded, with higher logistics, IT, billing, and risk management costs. In other words, this is a volume-linked cost increase, not a measure of inefficiency.
Secondly, Romania continued to experience elevated wage inflation and a tight labour market for technical and trading roles, thus increasing SG&A costs, despite a headcount reduction. Lastly, the Company has ongoing operations in placing new filling stations, e-mobility network rollout is ongoing, as well as several non-fuel retail initiatives, which all recorded increases.
For other OPEX categories, production and operating expenses declined by 4% YoY to RON 4.97bn, due to lower activity levels, cost discipline, as well as the FX effect, i.e. the weaker USD vs RON lowered USD-denominated costs in RON terms. One other noteworthy expense category is the exploration expenses, which halved (-51% YoY) to RON 62m, due to fewer exploration wells drilled, and a shift towards development of projects such as Neptun Deep, rather than frontier exploration.
In terms of EBITDA, it amounted to RON 7.04bn, decreasing by 22% YoY. OMV Petrom does not report EBITDA numbers directly, but these can be calculated from the report. What they do report is the Clean CCS (current cost of supply) op. result, which removes special items (basically non-recurring, non-operational items), as well as the inventory holding effects (basically, whether prices of raw commodities change or not, the numbers for the inventory are reported at current cost, not historical cost). This metric is a better gauge of the “underlying” operating performance of the Group, and is also the one used for comparisons across periods and in comparisons against peers.
During 2025, the Group’s clean CCS op. result amounted to RON 5.17bn, declining by 10% YoY, and implying a clean CCS op. result margin of 14.1%, a 1.9 p.p. decline YoY. The decline was driven by the decrease in the Exploration & Production, driven by lower Brent oil prices & realized crude prices, a 4% drop in hydrocarbon production, and a 9% increase in unit production costs, among others. The Refining and Marketing segment did not contribute negatively to the result, while the Gas & Power segment recorded a slight increase, although not enough to offset this decline.
In terms of the net financial result, it was positive at RON 793m, growing by over 460% YoY, mainly as a result of higher interest income (RON 1.42bn, +70% YoY), which came due to the positive outcome of litigation, while at the same time, interest expense declined by 10% YoY to RON 627m.
Lastly, the reported net income to majority amounted to RON 3.06bn, declining by 27% YoY, and implying a net income to majority margin of 8.4%, a decline of 3.4 p.p. YoY. However, if we look at the clean CCS net income to majority, it amounted to RON 5.06bn, an increase of 3% YoY. The reported net income to majority fell due to several factors. Firstly, a strong deterioration in the reported op. result (RON 4.86bn declined to RON 2.76bn), due to heavy Exploration & Production impairments, license-extension related accounting effects, and higher inventory holding losses. Secondly, one-off special items, in the amount of RON 1.39bn, which refer to impairment of other financial assets related to abandonment obligations, both of which were front-loaded into 2025. However, the decline was offset by the positive net financial result.
On the other hand, clean CCS net income to majority grew as a large improvement in net fin. result and lower effective tax rate (15% in 2025, -1 p.p. YoY) more than offset the decline in clean CCS operating result. As the clean CCS net income excludes asset impairments, abandonments-related write-down, and inventory holding losses, the clean CCS net income was not affected by them.
In other words, the clean CCS net income can tell us that the core operations earned slightly less, but the balance sheet strength, the Group’s cash position, and higher financial income more than compensated for this decrease.
OMV Petrom key financials (9M 2025 vs. 9M 2024, RONm)
Source: OMV Petrom, InterCapital Research