Polski Koncern Naftowy Orlen SA

WSE:PKN

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Edyta Olkowicz, executive]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to today's conference call, which we devoted to the financial results and performance of PKN ORLEN for 2022 the first quarter. My name is Edyta Olkowicz, and I'll be the Press Officer. I'll manage today's conference and moderate it.

Today's speakers include Mr. Jan Szewczak, CFO, at PKN ORLEN; and Mr. Armen Artwich, Management Board Member for Corporate Affairs.

I'll now give the floor over to our speakers.

[Jan Szewczak, executive]

Good afternoon. A very warm welcome. Traditionally, I will start today's conference call by summarizing PKN ORLEN's results for the first quarter 2022. And again, traditionally, I have to say that our performance half was very solid. And I'm very happy to report that to you today because the last quarter, the previous quarter, I would say that this was still an abnormal quarter to a certain extent because we did have certain COVID-related limitations at the beginning of the year. And obviously, since 24th of February this year, we have to face this horrible war in Ukraine and also a certain level of uncertainty in terms of how the situation will develop.

EBITDA. LIFO-based EBITDA in the first quarter came at PLN 2.8 billion. This is presented on Slide #3, in terms of the financial and operating results as well as our main indicators of our performance as well as key facts. Our LIFO-based EBITDA at nearly PLN 3 billion was achieved due to favorable macro situation. Higher volume of sales year-on-year, which is obvious because we do not have major limitations in terms of sales and COVID-related limitations as we did last year.

Model refining margin as well as more petrochem margin went up. However, we did have a major increase in the prices of natural gas and also CO2 emission allowances, which have persisted and still persists. It offsets our profitability to a certain extent. Had it not been for these factors, our performance would have been even better.

Due to the war in Ukraine, we managed to reduce the contribution of Russian oil in our oil throughput, and our crude throughput went up considerably by 31% year-on-year and this is a major performance indicator on our part. And the contribution of the share of Russian oil in our crude throughput is approximately up 30%, and we do have certain refineries that do not use Russian oil at all. We only focus on contract base purchases, and we do not buy any Russian oil on spot market. So as you can see, we are very much prepared and very well prepared to diversification effort, and we are not taken back by the development of the situation. And for the past 4 years, both Daniel Obajtek, President of the Management Board and also the Management Board or the members of it are really focused and obviously, committed to diversification of our business. We will definitely talk about it as we discuss our performance.

In terms of our macro situation and also lack of restrictions related to COVID in the first quarter of the year, our crude throughput went up by more than 31% and sales went up by 15% year-on-year. In the first quarter, we also reported something that is really worth mentioning. We had a record-breaking share of renewable energy resources in the production of our energy at 20% in the first quarter of the year. We generated PLN 1.8 billion in terms of cash flows on our operations -- from our operations, despite the considerable growth in our appetite for working capital and as well as the negative effect of our hedging transactions.

We spent -- again, despite war conditions and the situation of -- geopolitical situation, we spent PLN 3 billion on our CapEx projects. We will discuss our debt indicators at the end of the conference, but our debt went up by PLN 3 billion year-on-year to more than PLN 15 billion. However, which is very important, our debt covenant, net debt-to-EBITDA covenant is still at a very safe level of 0.73, which is way, way below the 2.5 covenant, which is adopted in our strategy.

We did expect that the interest rates will go up -- would go up and that credit costs and the costs of securing financing will go up. And we did prepare ourselves -- had prepared ourselves beforehand to that. What is the most important thing for our shareholders is the dividend payment, the Management Board of PKN ORLEN did recommend the payment of dividend for 2021 at PLN 3.5 per share. This is in line with our strategy and also consistent with our previous declarations and Mr. Obajtek -- Daniel Obajtek, our CEO did say before that and has been saying time and again that we will share our profits and our great performance effects with our shareholders.

In terms of the key facts or key events in the quarter, we need to stress that we have great progress in terms of our M&As, both in terms of the selections of our partners for the remedies and also the submission of documentation to the European Commission in terms of the acquisition of LOTOS.

And a side note, personally, for me, I do believe that in the face of the Russian aggression in Ukraine, I do believe this is the Polish most important thing to focus on in terms of our state's interests. Only a strong partner such as the combined multi-energy business can count as a player on this market in terms of the very difficult situation we had -- we have currently in terms of the prices of hydrocarbons and also the geopolitical situation. This is why the merger and the conditional approval from the Polish Antimonopoly Office is so important in terms of both LOTOS and PGNiG. These are the fundamental processes for Poland's energy security, but also for us to be sure and confident that we will keep one of the lowest prices of fuels in the European Union or in Europe in general -- across Europe in general. This is our guarantee that a strong partner can negotiate, can have a better playing field versus competitors in this market and we can negotiate better prices.

I did say -- I did mention diversification of our group sources, we'll discuss it later on. We launched Europe's largest venture capital. We have a number of CapEx projects underway. We have spent an enormous amount of money on that. We are talking about PLN 3 billion in spending on our CapEx project despite disruptions in certain supply chains, for instance, construction materials or steel, we have managed to go on consistently and proceed consistently with our CapEx projects. And we do believe that the amount we will report this year is going to be impressive. We are talking about more than PLN 15 billion.

We have been named again a Top Employer in Poland. Before I move on to more details, I'd like to -- on behalf of our CEO as well as all the Management Board members, I'd like to thank all the employees across the ORLEN Group and across PKN ORLEN not only to management board members, but to all of you. We are under a lot of pressure from independent or uncontrollable factors. We are under enormous pressure to make sure that the masses of Ukrainian refugees who came to Poland are cared for. And we, as PKN ORLEN also are devoting a lot of energy and also funds to that.

Moving on to Slide #5, macro environment. I'd like to mention that model refining margin in the first quarter went up by USD 0.5 per barrel, mainly -- it was driven mainly by higher margins on light and middle distillates, but -- which was offset by lower margins on heavy fuel oil. We are talking about higher crude throughput year-on-year, which affected higher costs of our own usage. The model margin went up 12% year-on-year due to higher margins on a number of petrochemical projects -- products.

We need to remember, however, that model margins are reference margins, certain calculations to a certain extent, which does not mean that we can equal it to real life margins or actual margins and our actual profits. These are just certain indicative results that we are taking into account to calculate those margins. A lower PLN versus U.S. dollar rate was also an important factor in terms of our macro situation.

Slide #6 presents fuel consumption in -- across our markets. And we have to say that we saw an increase in consumption year-on-year across all our markets, Poland, Lithuania and Czech Republic, which is also obviously due to the lifting of COVID-related restrictions as well as higher -- as well as more activity in terms of Pols traveling across the country. We rebounded from a very difficult situation in terms of our transport and logistics businesses. And this all obviously contributed to higher GDP indicator in Poland.

I do believe that the first quarter in terms of GDP growth in Poland will be a record-breaking quarter in the history of our country. Although we do not have results yet, in the first quarter, we saw an increase in revenues by 85% year-on-year up to PLN 45 billion. This is an impressive number or result on a European scale. This was due to higher quotations of refining and petrochemical products resulting from crude oil price increases by nearly 70%, but also this was due to higher sales volumes went going up 15% year-on-year.

Our LIFO-based EBITDA came in at nearly PLN 3 billion, more specifically, PLN 2.8 billion, which was up year-on-year by PLN 0.4 billion, which was due to the positive impact of higher margins, higher Brent euro differential, also due to the -- as I have mentioned before, the weakening of PLN versus U.S. dollar but also higher sales volumes, higher trade margins in wholesale or the usage of historical inventory layers across our company.

Those positive effects were partially offset or limited by the negative impact of the hedging transactions as well as the valuation of CO2 contracts as well as higher costs of our internal usage, higher fixed variable and headcount cost, NRV inventory valuation as well as a lack of positive effect from Baltic power consolidation in the first quarter 2020 -- versus the first quarter of 2021.

In terms of our LIFO effect, we are talking about PLN 2.2 billion, which includes or embraces the effect of revaluation of our derivatives and as well as CO2 contracts as well as PLN 1.1 billion in terms of the usage of inventory -- historical inventory layers. The positive effect that is the LIFO effect, as I said, was PLN 2.2 billion, which obviously drove up our EBITDA -- reported EBITDA, which is also something worth mentioning in such a very difficult economic conditions, but -- a situation but also geopolitical situation.

Our financial results in the first quarter came in at minus PLN 0.1 billion as a result of the surplus of negative foreign exchange differences as well as interest costs as a positive net impact of settlement and valuation of our net derivative financial instruments. Net results, which obviously is of interest to all of you, is more than PLN 2.8 billion in such difficult circumstances, as I said before, nearly PLN 3 billion in our net result, this is something that deserves our attention, and your attention.

Slide #9 presents the breakdown of LIFO-based EBITDA by segment. Of course, you have all the information given on this slide, but I'll summarize it. The refining segment is nearly PLN 900 million going up year-on-year, mainly due to the positive impact of higher sales volumes, but also due to higher margins as well as the usage of historical inventory layers, but we need to remember that we also had a negative macro effect due to the hedging and also valuation of CO2 contracts. These are obviously the factors that are totally outside of our control.

The petchem segment came in at almost PLN 0.5 billion, going down due to the negative macro impact resulting from valuation of CO2 contracts, which was offset by the positive impact of higher sales volumes as well as higher margins. The Energy segment came in at PLN 1 million, going down by PLN 255 million year-on-year due to the negative macro impact resulting from valuation of CO2 contracts. Again, this factor comes up time and again because it had a major negative effect on our EBITDA.

Retail came in at PLN 585 million. In terms of upstream, it was at PLN 162 going up by PLN 148 million due to the more, obviously, positive macro impact. And corporate functions, we had higher costs by PLN 26 million, which was mainly due to the donations we made in the first quarter of 2022, obviously, to help Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees who came into Poland fleeing the war in their country.

I would like to move on -- so I'd like to give the floor over to Mr. Armen Artwich, Management Board Member for Corporate Affairs to discuss our operations.

[Armen Artwich, executive]

Moving on to a more detailed discussion of our performance across segments, starting from the refining segment. Refining segment, in terms of LIFO-based EBITDA came in at PLN 900 million, which, as my colleague has just mentioned, was due to our -- first of all, macro effect, which was negative year-on-year due to hedging and also valuation of the CO2 contracts, lower margins on heavy fuel oils -- oil as well as higher cost of internal usage, which was due to higher crude prices. Those effects were partially offset by the positive impact of higher Brent euro differential, higher cracks on light and middle distillates as well as the weakening of PLN versus U.S. dollar.

In the first quarter, we saw higher sales volumes going up by 17% year-on-year, especially in terms of the higher sales of gasoline, diesel, LPG, jet aviation fuel as well as heavy fuel oil.

On Slide #10, you will see a chart which shows a bar that says others. Others include mainly -- others include PLN 400 million higher trade margins, the same contribution from the usage of historical inventory layers, minus PLN 0.2 billion in terms of NRV, valuation as well as higher fixed and overhead costs down by PLN 0.1 billion.

Moving on to the operational data of our Refining segment. We need to say that in the first quarter of the year, we saw a crude oil throughput at 8.2 million, going up year-on-year by 1.9 million tonnes. At PKN ORLEN, at Plock, we saw a higher throughput by 1.1 million tonnes year-on-year and fuel yield by -- going up by 4 percentage points due to low base from the previous year and also certain maintenance shutdowns, especially in terms of hydrocracking, hydrogen unit, CDU units as well as some technical issues with the olefins unit and works related to the preparation of planned shutdowns for the second quarter.

At ORLEN Unipetrol, we saw a throughput going up by 0.1 million tonnes due to the improvement of macroeconomic and market situation despite the traditional start of a regular cyclical maintenance shutdown at Kralupy -- the Kralupy Refinery. At ORLEN Lietuva, we saw an increase in crude throughput by 0.8 million tonne due to the improvement in macroeconomic and market situation.

Lower fuel yield going down by 3 percentage points year-on-year was due to lower share of sweet crude oils in the throughput structure. Sales volumes amount to 5.9 million tonnes of our refining products, which was up by -- as much as 17% year-on-year, and this applies to all our markets.

Moving on to the Petchem segment, Slide #12. Our Petrochemical segment came in at PLN 451 million in terms of our LIFO-based EBITDA, going down by 40% versus the previous year, which was due to, first of all, the negative macro impact, which was driven by the valuation of CO2 contracts, partially limited by the positive impact on olefins, PTA, PVC and fertilizer margins.

In the first quarter, we also saw higher sales volumes in the Petchem segment going up by 10% year-on-year, of which we saw higher sales of olefins and polyolefins, PVC and PTA, offset by lower sales of fertilizers. You will see also the Others bar on this chart and Others include mainly PLN 0.2 billion going up year-on-year in terms of higher trade margins.

In terms of our other petrochemical data. We saw higher usage of our capacities in -- across all our petchem installations, except for the gas meter and also the refinery and petrochem. Olefins at Plock unit reported an increase resulted from the processing limitations in the -- versus the first quarter of 2021 as well as preparations for the regular maintenance shutdowns in the second quarter. So this is the base effect, so to speak. The BOP installation at Plock, we had no maintenance shutdowns in the previous quarter last year, and we had no production limitations resulting from the olefins installation shutdown. Metathesis unit at Plock, we adjusted our utilization to the demand for propylene.

In terms of the Fertilizers unit Wloclawek, we saw -- we had a shutdown of this particular unit in the first quarter of the year. And the same applies to Wloclawek in PTA. The PTA unit at Wloclawek reported a full utilization ratio. The olefins unit at Unipetrol, we saw stable work of this -- performance of this installation, combined with -- versus the work disruptions in the previous year. So this is a base effect again.

In terms of sales, we saw an increase by 10% year-on-year, going up by PLN 1.5 million, of which we reported higher sales of mainly PTA and PVC as well as soda lye in Poland, going up by 12% and also in Lithuania going up by 18% as well as in Czech Republic going up by 6% due to improving operational parameters of PET -- of PE3 installation year-on-year.

Moving on to the Energy segment, we saw higher volumes as well as higher margins on electricity. And the segment reported more than PLN 1 billion of LIFO-based EBITDA. And what needs to be pointed out here, we saw a record-breaking result of Grupa ENERGA at PLN 1.1 billion versus last year. We need to stress that this result was going down by PLN 0.2 million or 20%, which was due to settlement of CO2 contracts, which is partially compensated by an increase in the margin on electricity sales as well as lower level of power grid losses at ENERGA Group as well as higher prices of green certificates.

We saw an increase in production and distribution of electricity especially in ENERGA Group, which was combined by lower electricity sales by CCGT Plock and CCGT at Wloclawek due to a lower load as a result of high quotations of gas as well as CO2 emission allowances.

The Others bar again, on Slide #14, which we are currently discussing, this includes mainly minus PLN 0.2 billion year-on-year, which was due to the lack of the positive effect related to the change of the ownership structure of Baltic Power versus the first quarter of 2021.

Talking about operational data in the Energy segment, we need to mention that we produce 3 terawatts hour of electricity in the first quarter. Our electricity production increased by 11% year-on-year, which was due to higher demand from PSE as well as from -- this resulted from concluded contracts. We had good weather conditions, and we had higher capacity of wind farms, which resulted in higher production, water and wind power.

Our electricity sales volumes went up by 3% year-on-year, which was due to higher sales in the wholesale market. Especially, we need to mention that we sold electricity surplus from our wind farms from local market.

Distribution of electricity went up by 9% year-on-year due to 6.3 terawatt hours of electricity due to higher activity in the distribution grid network of ENERGA Group as well as higher number of energy connection points going up by 1%. CO2 emissions of this particular segment amounted to 2.2 -- 2.5 million tonnes.

Moving on to our retail segment. The retail segment saw higher sales volumes combined with higher sales of gasoline as well as higher costs at this particular business. Retail's EBITDA came in at PLN 585 million, going up by 7% year-on-year due to higher sales volumes as well as higher nonfuel margins. Fuel higher sales volumes when going up by 13%, especially in terms of gasoline, diesel and LPG.

Our nonfuel margin went up in Poland, whereas in the Czech Republic, Germany and Lithuania, it stayed more or less flat. Fuel margins, however, went down in Poland year-on-year, whereas in Germany, the Czech Republic and Lithuania, it went up.

The others more on this particular segment, Slide #16. It includes mainly PLN 100 million effect year-on-year of higher cost of fuel stations operations.

I'd like to mention at this point that our fuel and nonfuel sales in Poland in total, in retail, contributed only to -- in terms of 10% of our profit of the total profit Mr. Szewczak has mentioned before.

Moving on to operational data for retail. It needs to be stressed that at the end of the quarter, the first quarter of the year, we saw -- in total, we saw 2,878 service stations going up in Poland and the Czech Republic and Lithuania as well as in Germany. 80% of our fuel service stations has a Stop Cafe locations, and we also opened some new ones. At the end of the year, we had -- at the end of the quarter, we had 2,300 nonfuel locations going up year-on-year.

Sales volumes went up by 13% year-on-year, mainly due to higher sales in Poland going up by as much as 22%. Our market share went up in Slovakia, but went down across other markets -- in our other markets. We are also focusing on alternative fuel points. At the end of the quarter, we had 516 such points across all our markets. And this means that we -- the increase was at 291 year-on-year, of which in Poland by 270, in the Czech Republic by 17, and Germany by 4.

We have opened some new EV charging stations. We also have 2 hydrogen stations in Germany as well as a number of CNG stations in the Czech Republic.

Moving on to upstream. In upstream, we saw a major positive macro effect, and we saw PLN 162 million in terms of LIFO-based EBITDA, more than tenfold year-on-year, which was due to higher prices of all hydrocarbons and the positive macro and margin effect, which was partially offset by the negative impact of hedging year-on-year, as we have mentioned before.

The average production was at 16.2% -- 6,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which was comparable year-on-year. We saw higher production in Canada going up by 600 barrels of equivalent per day and which was offset by the decreasing volumes in Poland going down by the very same number.

Our sales went up by 3%. What is worth mentioning here is that we saw higher crude oil sales as well as the condensate, but this was offset by the lower sales of gas.

Moving on to the operational data of the Upstream segment. We have -- in terms of our reserves, we have, as you can see on this slide, 16,200 barrels equivalents per day. This was our average production in the quarter. Our spending in upstream is also shown on this slide. 15% of CapEx was in -- was devoted to Poland and the rest in Canada. In the Upstream segment, we are focusing on the most promising projects. And on this slide, Slide #19, you will see detailed information on our operational data in upstream, especially Miocen, Edge, Sieraków and Plotki projects as well as in Poland as well as -- in Poland as well as Kakwa, Ferrier and Lochend in Canada.

I will now give the floor over back to Mr. Jan Szewczak, who will discuss our financial standing, starting from cash flows.

[Jan Szewczak, executive]

Moving on or going back actually to our financial performance, we will first focus on cash flow data. We need to remember that our demand for working capital went up. But we need to remember that despite the very ambitious CapEx program, we are talking about spending at around PLN 3 billion, which is a lot. And we also have high demand for working capital. We are talking about PLN 4.5 billion. We still managed to report such great performance despite those crazy prices of -- for instance, natural gas.

We still managed to keep our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio at a very safe level compared to the maximum covenant of 2.5, which was assumed in our strategy, which is also important in the first quarter of the year. We secured additional short-term financing from Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego and Bank Pekao BP both are Polish banks. We are talking about PLN 5 billion, and we will use these funds for the ongoing -- to secure ongoing operations of our company.

What is also important is that we generated -- in terms of cash flow from operations, we had PLN 1.8 billion, mainly due to lower or negative demand for working capital, which is at minus PLN 4.5 billion, as I said before as well as the settlement of deposits securing hedging instruments. We are talking about an effect of minus PLN 1.8 billion.

Two additional points -- additional piece of information in terms of our exposure to derivatives and derivative instruments. Since we had such crazy increases in changes in prices in both natural gas for instance, but also CO2 emission allowances, which was due to manipulations -- price manipulations, even before the outbreak of war in Ukraine and also after the 24th of September (sic) [ February ] due to the war, we decided that we need to reduce our exposure to derivative instruments in order to reduce our exposure to liquidity -- to the liquidity problems in our company as well as the uncertainty in terms of how the situation in Europe develops.

So we reduced our CO2 portfolio by around 70% by closing certain positions with the profit of nearly EUR 20 per tonne, starting from the opening of those accounts in 2019, until the closing of these accounts. So we reported a profit across the 6 quarters of those -- of that time. So we had a profit, and we are talking about the real profit, not those profits reported on paper, but the actual profits. And this is why we decided to take such action, closing those accounts as well as the negative settlement of hedging instruments on crude oil.

We managed to compensate it by the positive physical effect in terms of the purchases of crude oil. We still see the professionality of management here because we have such volatile market. We have such an uncertain geopolitical situation and the energy security across Europe. But we still see that we are able to, first of all, generate a very robust performance in terms of financial performance across the group, and you see this performance in our financial results. And we still can pay out dividend to our shareholders. But at the same time, we still focus on -- and remain committed to a very acceptable level, a safe level in terms of fuel prices paid by Pols. We need to remember that -- or not only Pols, obviously. But we need to remember that whenever you go to Western Europe, you will see much higher prices compared to Poland. This is very, very important to us to stress because there's a lot of fake news activity, there's a lot of this information in the country, but the truth is -- the core truth is that the prices of fuels in Poland are among the lowest in Europe.

And as Mr. Artwich has said before, the contribution of our retail segment and the trade in the fuels, not only fuels but also nonfuel products. So this is an additional element we need to take in account. This only accounts for 10% on -- in our performance. So this is a relatively low share.

In terms of our debt. As I said before, in the first quarter, our debt went up by more than PLN 3 billion by -- to more than PLN 15 billion, but this was mainly due to investments that we had at PLN 4.7 billion combined with positive cash flows from operations at PLN 1.8 billion. This means that all these costs or the spending does not go down the drain. What this means that the spending has a tangible effect. And we are talking about the spending at a very high level for only a couple of past years. It was not like that all the time. And we need to remember that we had obligatory reserves in the balance sheet at the end of the first quarter of the year, which amounted to PLN 7.2 billion combined by the very safe component, as I said before.

We have well-diversified sources of financing. You will see that the average maturity is 2025, which is a lot time for us. Both Fitch and Moody's ratings -- investment ratings are very positive, at a very good level. So this all means that this is a proof of our financial strength on the one hand, but also the perspectives and the prospects that we have in terms of our operations in the future. And I do believe that this also is a sign of our -- of the knowledge that we have that the rating agencies see that the transaction -- M&A transactions and the merger with LOTOS and PGNiG, the rating agencies see that this will strengthen our position. We will have a lot of more opportunities in terms of our expansion in terms of retail, for instance, and as well as our power in terms of our operational performance.

Moving on to the growth projects, investment projects, as I said, in the refinery, we had a Visbreaking installation, and we also had HFA in -- at Plock. We also had the olefins unit at Plock. The project was very important as well. And also, you need to remember about the hydrotreated vegetable oils unit at Plock as well as the extension of our fertilizer production unit at Plock and Anwil -- at Anwil.

In terms of our Energy segment, we need to remember that we focus on the monetization of our current assets and connection of our new clients at ENERGA Group as well as the development of annual transformer station and the power plant at Plock.

In retail, we opened 2 new service stations. We closed down 8 stations. We opened 2 -- 10 new points in terms of our nonfuel sales, and we opened 8 new alternate fuel points.

Slide #25 presents our macro environment, and this will be taken over by Mr. Artwich again to discuss it.

[Armen Artwich, executive]

Our current macro environment is very dynamic and volatile. Our model margins are going up considerably. However, this is not a good measure of our profits because as my colleague has just mentioned, we are talking about model mix of our products. This is different from the real profits because it does not take into account all the factors, the real factors and actuals and does not include higher prices and increases of CO2 emission allowances, gas and crude.

In the second quarter of the year, we see an increase in crude prices going up by 3%, which is obviously due to the very difficult situation, geopolitical situation. We see certain plans of releasing reserves -- strategic reserves in the U.S.A. and also by other countries as well. And we also have certain concerns related to higher incidence rates of, again, COVID-19 in China.

Our diesel cracks went up by 2x, and the same applies to our other margins. As a result, our model refining margin went up by 3%. Our model petrochemical margin goes up by nearly 300 tonnes -- EUR 300 per tonne, mainly due to higher prices of polymers and NAFTA as well as BGL

In 2022, we expect to see higher prices of crude assuming that we will have the release of strategic reserves, as I have mentioned, and the situation in China as well will contribute to it. We also expect that the model petrochemical margin will go up year-on-year. We expect to see high Brent and euro differential because of the lack of demand for euro oil on the spot market in Europe.

We expect to see that -- to see the petrochemical margin will be supported. We expect that the gas prices to double due to the Russian invasion in Ukraine and also certain developments we see on the market. For instance, in terms of how Gazprom decided to act. We expect to see an increase in electricity prices, mainly due to geopolitical situation obviously as well as higher CO2 emission rates.

The prospects for growth across all our markets are quite optimistic. We expect fuel consumption to go up as well as demand for petrochemical products. We need to remember about the anti-inflation shield in Poland, introduced by the Polish government in order to have the situation on control. We are talking about the reduction of excise tax on fuels, exemption from retail sales tax as well as a reduction of VAT on fuels.

This will be all from our side. I'll now ask you to move on to the Q&A session.

[Edyta Olkowicz, executive]

We have received your questions to our mail box. We have a question from Mr. representing Daily. You have just taken over additional service stations in Slovakia. What are your plans for expansion in retail?

[Armen Artwich, executive]

We are consistently moving on with our strategy, PKN ORLEN strategy by 2030. And you see the dynamic effects, the dynamic expansion of our service station network, not only in Poland, but in the region, you'll see those effects in our financial performance, we have just discussed. For instance, our retail network in Germany, in the first quarter of the year, accounted for 40% of our EBITDA in terms of our Retail segment, which was quite comparable to the performance of the Polish Retail segment, which came in at 44%. So this acquisition and M&A transactions are all meant to complement or expand our service stations network in order to build a strong multi-utility group based on world diversified sources. And this strategy brings fruit, as you can see during today's conference when we discussed our performance.

We need to remember the remedies, the remedies, which we will implement. It will bring us a great number of new service stations in the region. We also reported acquisitions in Slovakia recently. We are talking about 25 new locations in Slovakia and as a result of which we will have 47 locations in this market. And PKN ORLEN will strengthen its position among market leaders in terms of retail sales in Slovakia. Those locations will be around the country, around Slovakia, including Bratislava and Košice. And all in all, in the CEE region, we will expect to see at least 3,500 of our locations and the share of our foreign locations will go up from the 37% we see today to 45%.

[Edyta Olkowicz, executive]

Another question from Mr. representing Daily. What are your investment plans related to zero emission energy and as well as renewable energy resources. Do you have any shift of mind in terms of your approach to these sources of energy and a view to -- in view of the Russian aggression on Ukraine.

[Armen Artwich, executive]

Actually, the Russian aggression on Ukraine actually strengthened our position that our strategy, the strategy adopted by PKN ORLEN was a good one. This is a good direction to go. And we are bent on following that particular strategy in terms of a focus on renewable energy sources. As you know, we invest in offshore and onshore power sources, photovoltaics. And we intend to keep it that way.

Among other things, we want to take part in new -- we want to apply for new licenses for offshore units, projects in the Baltic Sea, with a great potential in terms of energy production. We are also focusing on onshore wind farms, which will be located near our refinery in in Lithuania. The total capacity of those farms is around 57 megawatts. And together with PGNiG, Polish Gas and Oil Company, we also established a company that will invest in biomethane. This is a very promising direction to go for the future. Biomethane is produced in biogas production units and agricultural units. And when it is purified from nitrogen compounds and other pollutants, it can be introduced as an alternative to natural gas, and it will be distributed to end users. And this is one of our very important pillars of our strategy until 2023 at PKN ORLEN.

In the context of the current situation, geopolitical situation, we are convinced that this will also improve our energy security in terms of Poland energy security. We are also focusing on the development of modern state-of-the-art energy sources. We reported record-breaking amount of energy, the volumes of energy produced from renewable energy sources, mainly wind and water. We are talking about 0.6 terra watt hour of pure energy. This is the highest record-breaking achievement from the very -- in the very history of our company going up year-on-year by 36%.

And how did we get there? Mainly based on very -- to the point investment decisions in terms of location, a siting of new wind farms. These were well diagnosed and very promising locations with great wind conditions.

Major point here to mention in terms of our development and growth in the Energy segment, we are talking about nuclear energy as well. We do believe that nuclear energy will be a great addition to our energy mix, Poland's energy mix. As you know, ORLEN's Synthos green energy was established and was cleared by the Polish Antimonopoly Office. This company will be responsible for the preparation and commercialization of NMRs and SMRs in Poland, that is micro and small nuclear reactors. We are keeping our fingers crossed, and we are betting on it. And we do believe that the first such location will be -- or first such installation will be seen in Poland.

[Edyta Olkowicz, executive]

Mr. Andrea Ratajczyk from Gazeta Polska Codziennie Daily asks about the dividend payment. And this whether despite the very dynamic macro, you will keep or maintain your dividend policy?

[Jan Szewczak, executive]

As I said before, we, as a Management Board recommended a payout of dividends at PLN 3.5 per share. This is in line with our dividend policy and with our strategy. And this is also signed at our financial situation, a position is very robust. And also, the fact that we are able to share our record-breaking performance, record-breaking profits with our shareholders without neglecting our growth projects and investments as well as our expansion also in retail, which we have mentioned. Obviously, the decision -- the final decision will be taken by the annual meeting of shareholders, which will probably take place at the end of May.

[Edyta Olkowicz, executive]

We have a couple of questions about diversification of crude sources. Gazeta Polska Codziennie Daily again, Mr. Andrea Ratajczyk asks about it, but also Mr. what steps have you taken in order to ensure security of crude supplies?

[Jan Szewczak, executive]

It's not that the problem of diversification was just born on or just appeared on the -- on February 24, as some people may think. For the past 4 years, the Management Board led by our CEO, Daniel Obajtek, attached a great weight to diversification. We did not wait for the war. We knew that we have to take steps to prepare ourselves to such developments. And we were right, as you saw over the past couple of months. So we have tested it or had tested it actually in practice before the war because we had processed more than 100 grades of -- different grades of crude in addition to the very traditional euro crude. And we also have to remember that we supply fuel not only to Poland, but also to other countries in the region.

And our predecessors, we need to say that left us in the wild, so to speak. This was a virgin territory for us because in 2013, the Plock refinery, nearly 100 of our crude throughput came from -- it was about the crude that came from Russia. And in the past couple of years, we, as I said before, managed to drive down this level by a lot to less than 50% and even to 30% across the whole, so to speak, ORLEN system.

We need to remember that our -- the steps that we took while implementing or in the context of the remedies that we need to implement on acquisition of LOTOS, our negotiators rose to the occasion, and at the very last -- or at the 11th hour, so to speak, they managed to reach an agreement with world's largest petrochemical company, Saudi Aramco from Saudi Arabia. And in addition to securing such a major technological partner, a partner with huge resources in terms of their financing -- financial base. Of course, we're talking about minority interest in terms of our refinery and that.

But in addition to that, we also secured a declaration that we will be able to buy around 20 million tonnes of crude from that direction. And only now, can you appreciate how far-sided this decision was and how to deploying this decision was in the context of today's development in Ukraine. And since February 24, we practically have had no spot purchases of euro crude from the East. And we can clearly state that for our refineries, we have secured more than 30 tankers of alternative crude grades from alternative directions. And we can see that our preventive measures were to the point and right on time. So we reacted at -- we reacted to the point in the context of this very dynamic situation.

So Poland, as a country, and PKN ORLEN, as the leading company in the CEE region, a major state-owned company in Poland was very consistent, very -- but not only consistent, but also very focused in terms of our diversification efforts. We wish that other companies in the region had the situation under control such as we do. We do believe that we are well prepared to move away from the imports of feedstocks from the East in terms of both imports and also processing. These are major technological -- obviously, technological challenges. We need to adjust our installations to the processing of other grades of crude. But we have prepared ourselves to that. We have tested it during, for instance, this crisis that we had with unpure crude that we received. We did have -- managed to have that situation under control back then. And we do believe that these were the preventive measures that we have taken before, and we see clearly that we are faring well because of that.

We ensure stability for our clients. We ensure stability in the market in terms of supply chains. And we do believe that those processes should be well coordinated at the level of the European Union, should be better coordinated because the fact that we are faring so well in the face of such major and unexpected problem that we have geopolitically. We wish that other EU member states behaved just as we did. And we, by we, I mean, both Poland and PKN ORLEN as a company. Thank you very much.

[Edyta Olkowicz, executive]

Other questions will be answered by our press office. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your participation in today's conference call conference call, which was devoted to our performance in the first quarter of 2022. Thank you to our speakers, and thank you for listening and see you next time.