Viva Energy has posted a rise of 10.3 per cent to $192.1 million in its half-year net profit, with a strong performance in its refinery business.
In its 2024 half-year results, the company’s refinery business reported growth of 390 per cent to $112.4 million, up from $22.9 million on year prior.
Despite the rise in net profit, the company has cut its dividend payouts by 21 per cent on the previous year to 6.7 cents per share.
Scott Wyatt, CEO and Managing Director of Viva Energy, said it was a strong performance with both fuel sales and EBITDA growing by 6 per cent and 25 per cent respectively.
“Cost of living pressures and illegal tobacco trade are having an impact on consumer demand within our convenience businesses, at the same time that wage and cost inflation are driving up the cost of doing business across all our business units.”
“In this context, our financial results for the first half demonstrate significant resilience and the benefits that come from diversity within our businesses.
Continued strength in our commercial businesses, and strong production performance at our Geelong refinery were key drivers of earnings growth.”
The convenience and mobility sector delivered EBITDA of $122.1 million, a 1.3 per cent decline on the previous corresponding period.
Convenience same-store sales declined ~ 5 per cent as lower same-store tobacco sales outweighed modest growth across other categories.
“We expect the consumer market to remain challenging through the remainder of 2024 but have made good progress integrating our retail businesses and will pursue cost and earnings improvements as a priority over the next 18 months,” said Wyatt.
Viva expects to convert 30 of its existing Express stores to the OTR offering over the next 12 months, with five to be converted by the end of 2024, as landlord consents and town planning are taking longer than expected.
“We remain focused on extending the leading OTR convenience offer across the Express network which will commence in scale from 2025.”
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