Earnings call transcript: MOL Group Q4 2025 sees strong EBITDA growth

MOL Group reported robust financial performance for the fourth quarter of 2025, with significant growth in Clean CCS EBITDA and a notable increase in net income, despite facing external challenges. The company’s strategic initiatives and operational efficiency contributed to these results. Trading at a P/E ratio of 9.57 with a market capitalization of $7.04 billion, the stock appears undervalued according to InvestingPro analysis, suggesting potential upside for investors. The stock has delivered strong momentum with a 25.5% return over the past six months.

Key Takeaways

• Clean CCS EBITDA for Q4 2025 rose by 29% year-on-year.
• The company reported a net income of $810 million for the full year.
• CapEx in Q4 was driven by growth and efficiency investments.
• MOL Group managed to mitigate the impact of external challenges, such as the Danube Refinery fire.
• Strategic projects like the Rijeka Refinery upgrade are expected to bolster future performance.

Company Performance

MOL Group’s performance in Q4 2025 was marked by a strong operational execution that overcame significant external headwinds. The company reported a Clean CCS EBITDA of $877 million for the quarter, a 29% increase from the previous year. This was supported by effective management of operational disruptions and strategic investments in growth and efficiency.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: Not explicitly detailed in the call summary.
• Clean CCS EBITDA: $3,369 million for the full year, exceeding the guidance of approximately $3,000 million.
• Net Income: $810 million for the full year.
• Operating Cash Flow (after working capital): $2,800 million in 2025.

Outlook & Guidance

MOL Group’s outlook remains positive, with strategic initiatives such as the Rijeka Refinery upgrade and the crude diversification program expected to enhance future performance. The company forecasts EPS of 1.9 USD for FY2026, indicating stable growth expectations. InvestingPro rates the company’s overall financial health as "GOOD" with a score of 2.9, and investors seeking deeper insights can access the comprehensive Pro Research Report, available for MOL Group and over 1,400 top US and global stocks.

Executive Commentary

Executives highlighted the company’s resilience in navigating operational challenges and emphasized the importance of strategic projects like the crude diversification program. They also noted the successful mitigation of the Danube Refinery fire’s impact on operations.

Risks and Challenges

• Crude supply disruptions: Ongoing issues with the Druzhba pipeline could affect operations.
• Refinery maintenance: Continued challenges in maintaining optimal refinery operations.
• Market volatility: Fluctuating commodity prices and geopolitical tensions may impact financial performance.

Q&A

Analysts inquired about the impact of the Danube Refinery fire and the company’s strategies for managing crude supply disruptions. Executives reassured stakeholders of their effective response strategies and ongoing investments in operational resilience.

Full transcript - MOL Magyar Olaj es Gazipari Nyrt (0RUK) Q4 2025:

Márton Teremy, Head of Investor Relations, MOL Group: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to MOL’s Q4 2025 results conference call. My name is Márton Teremy, 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 MOL Group. 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. And now, we can start the content part with Dr. Ákos Székely taking us through the highlights and financials of the fourth quarter.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group1: Good morning, everyone. Let me first note that Mr. Bacsa is unavailable currently, so you’ll have me as the speaker for the summary of our results, our 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 the group’s fourth quarter clean CCS EBITDA was better than our expectation. We closed the year at around $4 billion, exactly at $3,369 million, compared to our guidance of approximately $3 billion. The reasons for this overperformance were both external and internal. Let’s 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 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, well, I’m really pleased that our internal performance during the year, during 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, an average of 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, year and non-cash impairments classified as special items total at $246 million, which explain the bulk of the difference to our guidance. Regarding CapEx spending-

Márton Teremy, Head of Investor Relations, MOL Group: Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, please keep yourself muted. Thank you very much.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group1: On a few projects, 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 early on and with a higher spending than we have foreseen. Regarding the net debt, we are really glad to see that it’s 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 to the most important developments in the quarter on the next slide. We delivered a strong result during the fourth quarter, reaching $877 million clean CCS EBITDA, marking 29%, almost 30% year-on-year increase.

Upstream EBITDA benefited from increased 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. Well, I would like to summarize in five points for you. First, we successfully held 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 a 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 around 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 photovoltaic park, with a total of, 304 MW capacity, in Mesochort. This acquisition strengthens our ambition to enlarge, the footprint in renewables and, we expected internal rate return, which we 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, transaction of the deal.

Let me note that, the negotiation are ongoing and such, we will be not able to comment anything further to the communication, which, we released on the nineteenth 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 other approvals, necessary approvals, will be available, which, is really a crucial element, of such 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 a similar size and complexity. And the fifth point, 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 a 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 5-12 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 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 the longer run, please also note that, there were several similar episodes around Druzhba deliveries stopping in the past four years. While there are numerous scenarios and there are even more risks, we have spent the past four years analyzing such scenarios and, prepared for such event.

Well, now, I would like to give you a short update on the sustainability. The first, more 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 make a return to an improving trend. In the longer run, we are, we are working on that. CDP, let’s also highlight that there was an improvement in the CDP score of MOL Group, and we improved by one notch in both of the topics. We are under review to be 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 2026.

First of all, 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 this transaction is not included in these figures. And the third point is that, finally, we assume that Urals blend, either via Druzhba pipeline or via Adriatic, will be accessible throughout the year. With these points in mind, the management forecasts 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, and also the environment in petrochemicals can be subdued this year.

We also see less supportive over a higher carbon price environment. The current rate of depreciation and assuming broadly flat exchange rates, $3 billion EBITDA translate 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 unit 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 95-97 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day on average, marking a further ambitious 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 burnt down distillation unit in Danube Refinery. Finally, we expect the case safety ratio to be 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 2024. Although the regulated fee levels decreased starting from first 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 in lower inventory elimination.

The next topic is the CapEx, which amounted to $840 million in the fourth quarter of last year and came in at $1,688 million for the full year. Organic CapEx was at $1,653 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 the 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 sustained type of investments. The Clean CCS EBITDA of $3.369 billion in the first nine 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 -$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 raised $690 million in fourth quarter, which is a notable increase year-over-year and also quarter-over-quarter. The internal makeup is quite interesting and important.

While the underlying level of DD&A remains in the range of $400 million-$450 million. However, on top of that, there were two impairments recognized in the fourth quarter as a special item. The first item is in customer services, $104 million of asset impairment was booked on the Polish operation. We reviewed our models and found that the long tail of our fewer 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, you know, self-explanatory, that the Forint showing appreciation, therefore, a financial line was really neutral to our results. Income from associates was $3 million, mainly driven by the results of Pearl stake, by 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.

I would like to explain this. Well, 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 via 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 products of roughly $50 million, and the correction on the solidity 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 2025. In the fourth quarter, working capital weighed on cash flow, even as inventory went lower due to the fire and trade payable build up as seasonally usual. The change in working capital supported the cash flow of the year so far, with the release of $180 million. And with that, operating cash flow reached $2.8 billion, more than $1 billion above the CapEx for the full years. And as a result of these positive changes, let’s see how it is translated into the balance sheet.

The net debt level improved by over $500 million compared to the end of 2024, 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 a necessary financial headroom, should a tight opportunity for acquisition to come, and we really hope that it will come soon. And now I would like to hand over to Gabriel to discuss the downstream performance.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Thank you very much, Ákos. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. As Ákos mentioned, you can imagine that we are having a quite challenging time, so downstream to ensure the feed to our refineries and to ensure fuel supply security in our core markets. But now let’s turn our focus on the quarter result of the last year. Within the reported period, we reached 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 impact in Europe drove fuel crack spread 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’s, around 600 KT’s, which 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 secure 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.

So, 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 is somewhat, and refining margins show normalization. For MOL, the widening of the Brent-Urals spread was also a supportive. However, let me remind you that the taxation regime in both Hungary and Slovakia limit these gains. 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, so also in polyol market, the conditions are rather very challenging. And what we are now doing, this is the ramping process, and I assume that the first positive signals or impacts on the result will come at the end of this year. And my last slide, please. Yeah, thank you very much. So 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 the full year dynamics, the price and margin effect was broadly neutral as you can see. What we see there, 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 three months in the economic shutdown. This would be from my side. I expect then few questions, but now I would like to hand over to Peter to continue with the consumer services. Thank you.

Péter Ratatics, Executive Vice President of Consumer Services, MOL Group: Thank you, Gabriel. Good morning to everyone. So the consumer services delivered $205 million of EBITDA in the fourth quarter of 2025, which marks a 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. Now, these factors altogether 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%-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, and 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. And 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. So if we 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. They are growing together with the sales in terms of margin, and that’s a very healthy part of our business. And based on this, we got the encouragement to open more and more standalone stores. We operated eight such selling points, new selling points, through Budapest and Prague, and the first year’s experience are generally encouraging, so we plan to continue with this. With that, thank you very much for your attention, and let me pass the floor to Zsombor in the upstream.

Thank you.

Zsombor Marton, Executive Vice President of Upstream, MOL Group: Good morning, everyone. The upstream EBITDA amounted to $247 million in the fourth quarter, marking a 13% decrease quarter-over-quarter. Although we succeeded in re-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 the seasonal pickup in CapEx in the fourth quarter, primarily due to the start of Adriatic Offshore development campaign in Croatia, despite 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. You can see multiple trends from the chart.

Normalization of hydrocarbon prices from 2022 is very evident, and 2025 is also even the fourth quarter fitted well in that trend. Compared to the rate of this decreased Brent, the resilience of our price realization also shown $63 per barrel of oil equivalent realized as revenue in 2025. The cash flow realization, as you can see, we are holding above our strategic threshold of $20, even in 2025 on an annual basis, despite the seasonally higher CapEx spending. If you move to the waterfall charts, let’s discuss the quarter-over-quarter dynamics. You can see the volume effect was notably positive due to the higher production, and the technical effect of more ACG cargos 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. So overall, year-on-year, it was a price effect that dominated the change, as Brent and TTF fell by 15% and 31% respectively. And despite higher entitlement production levels, this year volume contribution was overall negative due to the ACG cargo effect. So 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, our rebounds back above 20,000 on domestic production, adding barrels significantly in C. Also, we are ramping up our natural gas processing in Iraq on the Pearl project, and the 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-over-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.

So if you see the group, 11% increase, out of that $0.50 is related to ethics, 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 the offshore development program in Croatia, which will also continue in 2026. With regards to outlook, let me highlight that we have struck also partnership in 2025. 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 a joint venture in Hungary and won two licenses in the exploration bid round. Seismic already finished, and we are drilling next year. Now, we have joined forces with Turkish Petroleum and the Spanish Repsol to bid successfully for an offshore block in Libya, just recently announced. In 2026, one of our key priorities 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, Executive Vice President of Circular Economy Services, MOL Group: Thank you, Zsombor. Let me give you a quick overview for circular economy waste management business. Q4 EBITDA is at $28 million compared to -$48 million year-on-year basis. Partially, this is from longer-term positive trends, clearly including the impact of efficiency improvement actions, but dominant is 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. 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, a bit 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 two 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 Teremy, Head of Investor Relations, MOL Group: Thank you very much. So, that completes 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. Okay, Anna, please go ahead.

Anna, Analyst/Investor: Thank you very much for the presentation. I have a couple of questions, probably starting with the deal around Serbian asset. I think in the, 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? And 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 the crude supplies and the increased cost for you in first quarter. Like, do you expect OpEx to go materially higher given no pipeline supplies?

And, 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.

Zsombor Marton, Executive Vice President of Upstream, MOL Group: Thank you very much, Anna, for the question. Well, 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 deal. Well, I think this is 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. Also, I think it’s important to mention that, as a-

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group1: ... we really considerable expertise in operating downstream assets as well. So yes we plan to sell 5% to the Serbian state. This is one point, and 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.

But I think quite important to mention that, even though, being in mind this, these two parties’ involvement, we would like to be in control, and we would like to influence the operation of of NIS after having a positive and successful closing of the deal.

Márton Teremy, Head of Investor Relations, MOL Group: Thank you. The second question, please, Gabriel Szabó.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Yes. Yes, thank you very much, Anna, for your question. So I have to admit that we are getting the first experience regarding the full run on the seaborne route. And, definitely, I will share more about the data and the values when we will evaluate the first quarter of this year. But what we see currently is that there are, definitely higher logistic cost for the seaborne transit, which we already raised several times. And, the whole, performance is very much dependent on the processing level and product slates, and of course, that it depend very much on the routes we can procure, and we will, process.

Regarding the processing rates, so the January was run as planned, so, of course, there were limits in Százhalombatta, but 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. So we will get back to normal, but fed on the seaborne crude from April on. Thank you.

Anna, Analyst/Investor: 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 a material impact on MOL? Thank you.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group1: Thank you for the question. No, we do not see that it has any sizable impact on the MOL results.

Anna, Analyst/Investor: Thank you.

Márton Teremy, Head of Investor Relations, MOL Group: Thank you very much. Giuseppe, please go ahead.

Giuseppe, Analyst/Investor: 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 gonna book them in the income statement, especially if you’re gonna split the property damage part and the business interruption part. And then secondly, on the CDU works in the Croatian refinery, what’s the production uplift that you expect throughout 2026? And do you think you will need to deploy more CapEx there in Croatia? Thank you.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group1: Well, with regards to the insurance, a couple of things. Well, at the moment, we see that we are in the discussion with the insurance companies, and according to our plans, there will be no issue in accepting our claim. And, well, 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, you know, the normal way of calculating it.

And, 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. And with regards to the payment, well, according to our expectation now, by the end of this year, it’s going to be closed and paid, and the payment will also impact the cash flow and the PNL positively. And, well, 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, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Yeah, Giuseppe, Giuseppe, so regarding your second question, the CU project, so I’m glad to share with you that the unit is completed, so 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 expecting to begin in March, and I believe that in the second half of this year, we will see a positive results of this investment.

Oleg, Analyst/Investor: Okay, perfect. Thank you.

Márton Teremy, Head of Investor Relations, MOL Group: Thank you very much. Oleg, please go ahead with your question.

Oleg, Analyst/Investor: Yes. Good morning, and thank you for the presentation. I have a few questions, 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 a 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? The next question on the refineries: How long can you, or can the two refineries run at full capacity based on the company’s own and the strategic reserves of crude oil?

And then, on the strategic reserves, what is the average cost per barrel of the crude that you’ll be getting from these reserves? And finally, on dividends, how should we think about 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 the higher oil supply risks. So when you put everything together, would it be fair to still assume an increase of dividend justified by the cash flow generation, or how should we think about that? Thank you.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Thank you, Oleg. So I will start with the seaborne part. So, there were several questions there. So, yeah, so let me start with the state reserve and the run rate, which we are now operating the plants. So, we asked both governments in Hungary and Slovakia to release 250 Ks of crude oil. This crude oil should be sufficient for this transition period till we get the full supply from the sea. Currently, the refineries are, their run is optimized to supply the core markets. So as Ákos mentioned, we stopped the export, so now we focus on the security of supply in our domestic countries, I mean Hungary and Slovakia.

As I mentioned to Anna, from April on, we resumed the operation with the full run, or the optimized run, based on the economics of the refining. Regarding that, what is the crude oil reserves or what is the time span for that? As you might know, in the EU, we have the guidance to keep the stock reserves for 90 days, so it’s also valid for Hungary and Slovakia. In terms of this, I believe we have sufficient crude and products to ensure a stable supply to our markets.

Oleg, Analyst/Investor: On the cost, maybe,

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Yeah. So, in terms of the cost for? Excuse me, I missed the question. Oleg, can you please repeat your question?

Oleg, Analyst/Investor: Yeah, my question was, what is the average cost per barrel of the crude that you’ll be getting from strategic reserves, just, you know, to have-

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Ah, yes.

Oleg, Analyst/Investor: - projections?

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: It’s a borrowing, so we will then return barrel to barrel or ton to ton.

Oleg, Analyst/Investor: Ah, okay. I see. Mm-hmm.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Yeah. So we will not give it back in money, but also we will return all the stock reserves in crude oil back.

Oleg, Analyst/Investor: Understood.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group1: ... 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. Well, as usual, we plan to have the annual general meeting or assembly in April. Therefore, mid of March, we are going to have the board of directors meeting, and this is the forum when this is going to be discussed and finally decided. How I covered in my presentation, well, first of all, we were really pleased to see that last year we generated positive cash flow, and this is, you can see we translated into the strengthening balance sheet.

What we have discussed is that the stronger balance sheet also serves as a good basis for M&A transactions. With regards to the dividend, what I can share is that, please have a look at the previous year’s dividend. This is at the moment what we can disclose.

Anna, Analyst/Investor: Thank you.

Márton Teremy, Head of Investor Relations, MOL Group: Okay, and the last question from, Piotr. Please go ahead.

Piotr, Analyst/Investor: Hi, yes, good morning, everybody, and thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions. So 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 what’s the type? How much different this type of crude is versus the previous one? Essentially, I’m trying to get like is the $3 billion cutting the cost of the new supply route and a different blend, and you accommodate all of it or not? So 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 underlying results, they are very, very good in the Poland, Poland fuel stations. 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, you, roughly in the broad, in the brackets, or what kind of a range we are discussing, so we 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.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group1: Okay. Let me start answering the first is the NIS, and after that, the Polish one. But with regards to NIS, well, as 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. And what we expect is that by the end of March, there will be an SPA signed, and this is a 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 Polish 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, you know, 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 last year, we run 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 temporary and positive, positive figure. On the long term, I think we much better, much better accept having a normalization and getting back to the normal range. 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, I would like to mention that we are assuming that the Urals blend, either via Druzhba pipeline or via the Adriatic, will be accessible for us throughout the year. With regards to the path cam, well, we do not see a really good reason why the picture is going to be better than last year. 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.

And finally, in customer services, I think operation-wise, absolutely, we do not see difficulties in this regard, but also fair to mention that, in dollar terms, the customer services performance was supported by the devaluation of dollar against the local currencies. So these are the key pillars, why we believe that, you know, there is an explainable deviation versus the consensus.

Piotr, Analyst/Investor: So 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 2026 versus 2025? So Rijeka upgrade, I think polyol was also ramping up. So 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, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Yeah, so 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. And also, as last summer I mentioned, we launched our Tomorrow Downstream program, so there is some efficiency improvement there for this year as well, to ensure a total uplift of EBITDA by $500 million till the end of 2027. So this would be from the downstream side, what I see.

Piotr, Analyst/Investor: Okay, perfect. Thank you very much.

Márton Teremy, Head of Investor Relations, MOL Group: Okay, and I see, Mr. Tamás Pletser is also like to ask a question. Please go ahead, Tamás.

Tamás Pletser, Analyst/Investor: Yeah. Yes, thank you very much. Good morning. I got a couple questions, mainly on the supply situation, what you are experiencing right now. First of all, 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 I-- 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, in Rebco type of crude, and if you don’t get a similar quality, would you use that kind of a quality to replace the current, you know, reserves? And finally, a question regarding your capacity utilization of your refineries. I think Mr.

Hernádi, a year ago, had an interview where he was explaining that if you cannot access 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? Yeah. Thank you.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Thank you, Tamas, for your questions. All of those are somehow connected. First part is that whether there was a release of state reserve in Slovakia. As I mentioned, similarly to Hungary, also in Slovakia, in the very same volume, 250 KT. Crude, which is Repko or Adel compatible, so very close, because we have to ensure that there are 90 days of reserves, of strategic reserves there. It’s somehow connected to your last part of your question, that having the different crudes, there will be different yields. You are very right. We have to find the proper mix or blend, as we mentioned it several times, and this is the goal, yeah? How to find the most optimal blend. As you might...

Seeing the news that once the Druzhba is interrupted, then we are allowed to import also Russian crude via sea. So 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 thirtieth of September, so end of September. I do not know the precise date, I have to admit, for Hungary. So have I answered all your questions?

Tamás Pletser, Analyst/Investor: Yeah, that’s probably only one. I mean, if you have to give back the crude oil, does it have to be the same quality what you received from the strategic reserves?

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: I mean, the basic guidance is to keep the 90 days. Yeah, so 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. So you are right that ideally it would be a Rebco, but there are also other crudes very similar to Rebcos, for example, CPC. So I believe we will find the proper crude grade.

Tamás Pletser, Analyst/Investor: Mm-hmm.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Thank you very much for the question.

Tamás Pletser, Analyst/Investor: Yeah, and just one more follow-up here, if I may. Can you confirm that those investments, what you do, to, you know, you process seaborne crude, so those investments will be ready by the first half of 2027? I think that was the last time, the date you mentioned.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Yes. So, we are trying to do our best, because definitely it’s also a limiting factor. Yeah, on the other hand, I have to admit that majority of our engineering resources in-house and also procured are asked to deal with the AV3 or were asked to deal with the AV3. So there, this was the first priority so far, but we are progressing with the diversification project, and I truly believe that we can reach the deadline you mentioned.

Tamás Pletser, Analyst/Investor: Okay, good. Thanks, thanks very much, and wish you the best of luck.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Thank you very much.

Márton Teremy, Head of Investor Relations, MOL Group: Okay, Chris, go ahead with the very last question.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group0: Thanks. Good morning, everyone. The 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 this, the procurement of crude oil?

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Yeah. So, it’s rather a really difficult topic, but what is now driving our procurement, this is firstly, this is the sanction regime, so 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, and 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, so we have to find out the proper blend. And the last point is, of course, the economical view on this. The diversification project, 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 one part goes, or the big part goes to the blending facility, we will be able to blend the proper mix to be fed to our distillation units.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group0: So it’s not about increasing the throughput of those pipelines, it’s rather just diversifying or just enabling the-

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: No, I mean, the pipeline constraints is on the other side, so-

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group0: Mm-hmm

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: ... what we are pushing to do tests. So seemingly we agreed that there will be some tests done. So far, the test, or we do not have a proof that the capacity is sufficient. On the other side now, having AV3 run, so there is definitely some capacity or some room to work with, but, the full capacity was never tested properly.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group0: Okay, so you can-

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: So there are two separate issues, yes? One is on our side, so the technological limits there and bottlenecks, which 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 associated to the capacity there.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group0: Okay. So in a really pessimistic scenario, if Druzhba somehow does not restart its operations, do you see... I mean, how high would you see the capacity utilization at your main refineries in Slovakia and in Hungary?

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Well, so till Q3-

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group0: Mm-hmm

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: ... till Q3, there is no AV3 run, so though there is no need to source the distillation unit there, which gives us some room.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group0: Okay

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: ... for the capacity of JANAF capacity. On the other side, now there is a sequence of, of cargoes coming, so let’s see how JANAF is dealing with this one. So we have to get some real experience. You know, for me, it’s really hard to answer your question. It’s not that I’m not operating this part of the pipeline.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group0: Sure. Okay, thank you.

Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream, MOL Group: Thank you.

Márton Teremy, Head of Investor Relations, MOL Group: 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.

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