Petrobras profits $2.67 billion, highest value since 2011

Petrobras closed out the second quarter this year with a net profit of $2.67 billion, up 45 percent from the first quarter, when earnings totaled $1.85 billion. The figure is the highest since 2011. In the second quarter last year, Brazil’s state-controlled oil giant profited $84 million.

The firm thus closes the first half-year at $4.52 billion. The positive outcome is reported to have chiefly come as a result of “the increase in international oil quotas, couples with the depreciation of the real compared to the dollar.”

In the same period, Petrobras’s net indebtedness dropped 13% from December 2017, going down to $73.66 billion, the lowest level since 2012.

Cash inflow

The operating cash flow and the incoming $5 billion after the divestment in the first six months of the year were named as the main factors for the reduction in the company’s net debt, whose total now corresponds to 3.23 times the interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, compared to 2017’s 3.67.

Petrobras’s performance retained its positive trend from previous quarters, with operational earnings 18 percent higher than the first half-year of 2017, reaching $9.16 billion, with lower general and administrative expenditures and less spending with idle machinery.

The company’s total oil and gas output added up to 2.7 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in the first six months of the year.