Gunvor reports lower profit, LNG volumes

Geneva-based energy and LNG trader Gunvor reported a lower net profit and LNG volumes in the first half of this year.

The firm led by Torbjörn Törnqvist generated a net profit of $803 million during the January-June period, the company’s second highest first half profit and down by 37.7 percent compared to $841 million in the same period last year.

Gunvor reported a record net profit of $2.36 billion in 2022.

Revenue in the first half was $61 billion, down from $89 billion in the same period last year.

Gunvor attributed the the decrease mainly due to lower volumes and softer commodity prices with Brent crude oil and TTF natural gas down 24 percent and 56 percent, respectively, compared to the last year.

Total volumes traded in the first half of this year reached 85 million metric tonnes (MmT), 14 percent percent lower than 99 MmT in the same period last year, mostly due to lower natural gas and LNG volumes handled, but already trending higher than in the second half of the last year, Gunvor said.

“The share of transitional energy in volumes traded decreased to 33 percent in H1 2023 due to the lower volumes of natural gas and LNG (FY 2022: 39 percent),” the trader said.

The group said it intends to increase volumes in 2023 relative to the temporal low-point
in 2022 through business growth.

“This will likely accelerate toward the back-end of the year as it takes time to source profitable new business in a fairly balanced market that is awash with liquidity,” it said.

LNG business

Gunvor did not provide details regarding LNG volumes in the first half of this year. This was also the case with 2020, 2021, and 2022.

According to the company’s website, Gunvor delivered 4 million tonnes in 2016, 7 million tonnes in 2017, 11 million tonnes in 2018, and 16 million tonnes in 2019.

Gunvor said the energy business “remained strong with the LNG desk benefitting further from the recent exceptional price environment, market dislocations and Gunvor’s in-house LNG shipping capabilities, while oil and oil products trading continued its solid performance albeit lower than 2022 due to reduced price volatility.”

The firm said that LNG trading continued its “strong” performance thanks to its profitable book of long-term contracts that, together with Gunvor’s fleet of LNG vessels, offered “good” arbitrage opportunities.

US LNG firm Tellurian, the developer of the Driftwood LNG export project in Louisiana, recently said that its LNG supply deal with Gunvor was terminated.

Priot to that, US shale gas producer Chesapeake Energy signed a heads of agreement with Gunvor to supply the latter with liquefied natural gas from a liquefaction plant in the US.

As per vessels, Clearlake Shipping, a subsidiary of Gunvor, signed a charter deal in July for four more newbuild LNG carriers with Denmark’s Celsius Tankers, a unit of Celsius Shipping.

This deal boosts the total to nine 180,000-cbm LNG carriers that Celsius chartered to Gunvor’s unit following a deal for four vessels announced in October 2021.

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