Z has missed its first half prospectus forecast, from its listing last year, but has reaffirmed its financial guidance yesterday for its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and fair value (ebitdaf) to be in a range of between $220 million to $240 million, for its full year result.
Revenue for the six months to September slid 1% to $1.65 billion, ebitdaf fell from $101 million to $912 million and after tax profit plunged from $56 million to $22 million.
Z chief executive, Mike Bennetts said the 2015 first half financial year ''had been the most challenging in the company's history'', but operationally and at an underlying level the business had performed well.
''The company has weathered the costs of a period of severely depressed domestic refining margins, made top-up fee floor payments to the refinery of a net $2 million and had managed the consequences of an extended refinery outage and its aftermath,'' Mr Bennetts said.
Z's fuel profit margin per litre rose from 16.5c a year ago to 16.7c.
However, after deducting operating expenses, the net profit per litre fell from 4.2c to 3c, plus its refining profit margin plunged from $16 million to $7 million, including the fee floor payments to the refinery.
Craigs Investment Partners broker Peter McIntyre said the year would be a tale of two halves, with high expectations from investors that Z Energy will have a have a much better performance during its second half trading.
''Z Energy have got a lot of making up to do, but they seem confident they can do it,'' given no changes to its full-year guidance.
He said the performance of economies beyond Auckland and Christchurch may have had a negative impact for Z Energy's profit margins.
Forsyth Barr broker Andrew Rooney said Z's first half result looked worse than Forsyth Barr's forecast at first glance, but effectively all of the underperformance was due to realised $6 million loss and unrealised $10 million loss on foreign exchange, due to the weakening currency.
''Adjusting for that, Z Energy's result is largely in line with our forecast,'' Mr Rooney said.
The other ''key point'' was the unchanged ebitdaf guidance of up to $240 million, which after taking into account the foreign exchange losses indicated expectations of a ''very strong'' second half for the year, Mr Rooney said.
