Hascol Petroleum (HASCOL) led the volumes growth chart with 13.3 percent increase. Shell Pakistan (SHEL) remained the major laggard with decline in sales by 41.2 percent on year-on-year basis.
On a sequential basis, petroleum product sales declined by 1.9 percent on month-on-month basis, however Attock Petroleum (APL) and Pakistan State Oil (PSO) posted improvements of 7.9 percent and 0.5 percent on MoM basis, respectively.
In December 2017, volumetric growth in MS clocked-in at 11.8 percent YoY and 6.4 percent MoM, indicating rising consumption of fuel across the country. HASCOL shined brighter-than-others with YoY/MoM increase of 39.5 percent/5.5 percent in volumes followed by Byco Petroleum (BYCO) with YoY/MoM increase of 86.1 percent/16.4 percent and PSO with YoY/MoM 12.4 percent/6.6 percent increase in the listed OMC sector.
"During the first half of FY18, MS sales improved by 13.0 percent on YoY to 3,744,000 tons where we believe that year-end FY18 numbers are likely to remain near 7.5-7.6 million tons, up 15.0 percent", he said.
HSD segment continued to post increase on a YoY basis with overall volumes for December 2017 clocking-in at 759,000 tons (up 9.0 percent). PSO led the charts with increase of 26.2 percent followed by BYCO (36.6 percent) and HASCOL (20.3 percent).
"On a sequential basis however, volumes declined by 10.9 percent on MoM and we attribute this decline to seasonality as sales during the month of November over 2008-2017 have averaged at 707,000 tons compared to average December sales of 598,000 tons during the same period. In the first half of FY18, HASCOL outperformed the industry with incremental market share increase of 4.6ppt YoY, while PSO lost 1.5ppt YoY in market share.
FO sales (down 44.6 percent on YoY in December 2017) have dropped dramatically due to low utilization of FO based power plants. PSO's FO sales clocked-in at 291,000 tons during the month, down 47.0 percent YoY.
"We believe that focus of local OMCs will shift to white oil products and LNG (in the case of PSO) to curb declining FO sales. In this backdrop, we highlight those companies with lower share in FO segment and potential for market share expansion (in white oil products) such as HASCOL (only 9.1 percent market share) will potentially remain in focus", he said.