Oil & Gas
The Hour Before Dawn
Looking through the darkness. The refining sector
has underperformed European energy YTD on an all too
obvious deterioration in subsector fundamentals; poor
Q2 numbers are imminent and Q3 has started just as
weakly. However, looking into 2010 we see reasons to
believe that Q2/Q3 2009 is as bad as it gets. It is not yet
time to upgrade the refining sector, but we see limited
sector downside and are upgrading Saras to Overweight
and OMV to Equal-weight.
New capacity is capitulating. Consensus points to
overwhelming new capacity additions. In practice,
rational behavior is prevailing, and 41% of planned 2010
new capacity has been cancelled in the last 12 months.
Closures will accelerate the margin recovery.
Refineries are already being shut down and we expect
more to follow suit. A shut down of just 700kb/d capacity
in Europe (just under 5 average sized refineries, out of
117) would drive utilisations back to ‘normal’ levels.
Lowering 2009 EPS but raising margin forecasts.
We are lowering our 2009 EPS forecasts by an average
of 60% to reflect the weak Q2 and Q3 to date, but are
raising our 2010 forecasts by an average of 9% (ex
Petroplus), driven primarily by a 15% increase in our
2010 benchmark refining margin forecast.
Upgrading Saras to Overweight and OMV to
Equal-weight: We are upgrading Saras to Overweight
from Underweight .