Record total sales volumes of 22.04 billion litres headlined the 2021 full year financials reported on this week by Ampol.
It follows the extensive rebranding of 880 stores across its network with increases of +1.9. per cent in transactions, +1.1 per cent in fuel volume sold and +1.8 per cent in premium petrol volumes.
Ampol saw resilient diesel demand higher than industry share. It attributed this to its leading card offer and more than 80,000 B2B customers.
Strong performance at the Lytton Refinery and record international earnings also helped contribute to the company delivering the highest Group earnings since the FY 2018.
Replacement Cost Operating Profit (RCOP) EBIT increased by 57 per cent to $631 million delivered against the COVID-19 backdrop.
“Ampol’s strong financial results and record fuel sales reflect the ability of our people to thrive under challenging conditions and demonstrates how our business and earnings can respond to the market recovery,” Matt Halliday, Ampol Managing Director and CEO said in a statement.
“Throughout the year, we focused on managing what we can control. The safety and wellbeing of our people has been paramount during this time, and I am pleased that during a period of ongoing disruption and uncertainty, we have achieved industry top quartile performance for personal safety,” he said.
According to Halliday, customers responded well to the successful return of the iconic Australian Ampol brand, with rebranded sites outperforming Ampol’s control sites across key performance indicators.
“As we look ahead, we have a clear strategy to maximise the value of our existing businesses during the energy transition and to diversify and grow our international earnings through the Z Energy acquisition while we prepare for a low carbon future,” he said.
While the Z Energy acquisition continued to progress, Ampol would look to commence a rollout of company branded EV fast chargers to over 100 locations for 2022-23.
Small scale trials for energy retailing in select markets to test Ampol’s value proposition were also on the table.
Hydrogen was anticipated as a solution for long haul and heavy duty road transport with the economic proposition improved with the increased scale-up of hydrogen supply chain and lower electricity costs.
A successful execution of the strategy to diversify and grow international earnings saw Fuels and Infrastructure International RCOP EBIT grow to a record $110.9 million, up 31 per cent on the prior year.
The Gull business in New Zealand and Trading and Shipping International drove the growth in earnings.
The Fuels and Infrastructure result includes $6.9 million spend to establish the Future Energy team, mostly incurred since launching the Future Energy and Decarbonisation strategies in May 2021, as well as $44.7 million of foreign exchange gains compared with a $29.9 million gain in FY 2020.
Total Australian sales volumes were 13.05 billion litres in FY 2021, 3.9 per cent lower than the 13.58 billion litres in FY 2020.
According to Ampol this reflected the full-year impact of COVID-19 on jet volumes, the impact of rolling lockdowns on Australian retail market demand in the second half, as well as competitor supply chain decisions earlier in the year that adversely impacted net buy/sell volumes.
Despite a decline in Australian sales volumes Ampol managed to offset the category with growth in international sales to 8.99 billion litres, with total sales volumes for the Group reaching a record of 22.04 billion litres.
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