Industries Qatar reports net profit of $357mln in Q1

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Doha, Qatar: Industries Qatar (IQ), yesterday reported a net profit of QR1.3bn for the three-month period ended 31 March 2024, representing a moderate uptick of 10% compared to 1Q-23.

Global macroeconomic environment although eased somewhat during 1Q-24 but remained challenging as experienced mostly throughout 2023. While sluggish economic growth forecasts, tightened monetary policies in key markets with high interest rates, inflationary fears have acted as constraints on demand, geo-political instability including the ongoing Red Sea conflicts, export restrictions on certain commodities, lower production in some of the production facilities have affected the supply-chain and consequently broadly offset the demand-supply effects.

Uncertainty surrounding the petrochemical markets continued to persist in 1Q-2024 as there have been no real demand stimuli’s for the petrochemical segment. The macro-economic outlook of the segment during 1Q-24 was markedly impacted by several factors including stable crude prices, regional geo-political uncertainty, weaker demand in key markets driven by higher interest rate environment and structural capacity additions. As a result, average product prices for key petrochemical products remained relatively depressed versus last year, and last quarter.

Macro-economic environment for the fertilizer segment achieved stability after reaching its historical peak during 1H-22.

Restoration of supplies, return of production of European production facilities were aiding prices to adjust towards their long-term trends, while recent stoppages in some of the Asian producers due to facility shutdowns and improved farmer affordability have aided the fertilizer prices stabilize over the last few quarters. The recent demand from Indian Sub-Continent also assisted the fertilizer segment to a greater extent. On an overall basis, nitrogen fertilizer prices have marginally declined versus 1Q-23 amid normalization of supply.

Macro-economic outlook for the steel segment remained somewhat challenging with an ailing property sector in larger economies like China amid hawkish monetary policy albeit higher interest rate environment, limited domestic demand. Industries Qatar will host an Earnings call with investors to discuss the latest results, business outlook and other matters on Monday, 5 May 2024 at 1:30 pm Doha time.

The IR presentation that accompanies the conference call will be posted on the ‘financial information’ page within the Investor Relations section at IQ’s website.