BP Profit Climbs 32% as Company Suspends Buybacks

(Credit: BP)

BP posted quarterly profit in line with analyst expectations on Tuesday and suspended its share buyback programme as it wrote down around $4 billion in its renewables and biogas businesses.

BP, whose new CEO Meg O'Neill will start in April, said it would allocate the excess cash to invest in oil and gas opportunities. It repurchased shares worth $750 million over the last three months.

BP reported higher-than-expected profits at its gas and low-carbon units as well as profits mostly in line with expectations at its oil production and operations unit and at its customers and products unit.

This brought its fourth-quarter underlying replacement cost profit, or adjusted net income, to $1.54 billion, up around 32% on last year and in line with expectations.

BP Returns to Oil And Gas

A year ago under then-CEO Murray Auchincloss, BP announced a strategy reset back to hydrocarbons, saying the move would improve profitability after an ill-fated foray into renewables by his predecessor Bernard Looney.

Auchincloss exited abruptly in December, leaving trading chief Carol Howle in charge on an interim basis until O'Neill takes the helm as BP's fourth CEO in less than three years.

BP had previously flagged up to $5 billion in impairments and, on Tuesday, listed its solar unit Lightsouce bp, U.S. biogas unit Archaea and offshore wind businesses as the main reasons. BP bought Archaea in 2022 for $4.1 billion.

Providing an update on its Brazilian Bumerangue discovery, which it has hailed as its biggest in 25 years, BP said it estimates the field to hold 8 billion barrels of liquids in place, split equally between oil and condensate, a low-density hydrocarbon liquid. It said it plans to drill appraisal wells around the end of the year.

(Reuters - Reporting by Stephanie Kelly and Shadia Nasralla; Editing by Joe Bavier)