OREANDA-NEWS. BASF announces preliminary, non-audited figures for 2015. As forecast by BASF, sales and income from operations (EBIT) before special items for the full year 2015 are slightly[1] below the level of the previous year. Sales decline by 5% to EUR 70.4 billion (2014: EUR 74.3 billion).

EBIT before special items in 2015 is expected to be EUR 6.7 billion (2014: EUR 7.4 billion). The decrease in sales is primarily due to the divestiture of the natural gas trading and storage activities. The decline in EBIT before special items is due in particular to significantly lower earnings in the Oil & Gas and Chemicals segments in the fourth quarter of 2015 compared with the same period of 2014. In the Chemicals segment, this is mainly due to lower margins in the Petrochemicals division.

For the full year 2015, EBIT of BASF Group is expected to be EUR 6.2 billion. This significant decline compared with the level of the previous year (2014: EUR 7.6 billion) is mainly due to impairments in the Oil & Gas segment. The company had previously expected only slightly lower EBIT in the full year 2015. The reason for the impairments in the Oil & Gas segment is the strong decline in oil and gas prices in the past months.

BASF anticipates that prices for oil and gas will remain at a low level in 2016. The assumptions for oil and gas prices have also been reduced for subsequent years. This results in impairments of around EUR 600 million in the Oil & Gas segment. This amount, which does not affect cash flow, is reported as a special item and reduces EBIT in the Oil & Gas segment in the fourth quarter of 2015.

On February 26, 2016, BASF will publish its Consolidated Financial Statements for 2015 and will comment on the figures at its Annual Press Conference.