Imperial Q4 profit beats street estimates

31/01/2011 00:00 AST

Imperial Oil (TSX:IMO), one of the country’s largest refiners and producers of oil and gas, handily beat street expectations for its fourth quarter results, sending its shares to the highest in more than a year on Monday.

The Calgary-based company said its fourth-quarter profits jumped 50 per cent, thanks to better refining margins and higher oil prices, to $799 million or 94 cents per share in the final three months of 2010, up from $534 million or 62 cents a share in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Full-year profits of $2.2 billion or $2.59 a share jumped 40 per cent from $1.6 billion or $1.84 a share a year earlier.

“Strong operating performance in all business segments allowed us to capture the higher crude oil realizations in the upstream and improved margins in petroleum product markets,” CEO Bruce March said in a statement.

The stronger earnings result came on top of a 66 per cent jump in capital spending to $4 billion, from $2.4 billion a year ago. Most of the increase was allocated to the Kearl oilsands mine, the company said. Higher earnings were partially offset by a stronger Canadian dollar, the company said in a news release prior to the opening of markets.

The results blew away analyst expectations, who had been expecting adjusted earnings of about 65 cents a share, according to Bloomberg data.

In a research note UBS analyst George Toriola said his estimate of 77 cents a share was the highest of the bunch. “Strong downstream sales and margins were drivers of the beat versus our numbers,” he wrote.

Imperial’s shares jumped $1.86 or more than four per cent to a fresh 52-week high on Monday, to $44.56. The stock has gained almost 17 per cent since hitting a year low of $36.95 in the first week of December.

The Calgary Herald