BP - Earnings Call - Q4 2024 (Q&A)

Transcript

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Welcome, everybody, to BP's Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results Call. We'll be focusing today's call on the fourth quarter and 2024 performance and the contents of the video that I hope many of you will have seen by now. I also understand there is significant interest in our capital markets update in a couple of weeks' time. However, I'm sure you'll also appreciate that we can't comment on any issues relating to that today, so please focus your questions accordingly. With that, let me hand over to Murray.

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

Thanks, Craig, and thanks everyone for joining Kate and I on the call today. When I look back at 2024, we've achieved a lot. We've made significant strategic progress, taking decisive action in reshaping our portfolio and laying the foundations for growth, including 10 new FIDs, including Kaskida and Tangguh, new access in Iraq and India, divesting tail assets in Trinidad, exiting the Empire Wind in the U.S. offshore, decapitalizing our offshore wind business by agreeing to form a joint venture, JERA Nex bp, focusing our EV charging business and our hydrogen pipeline, acquiring full ownership of bp bioenergy and Lightsource bp, and recently announcing our intention to sell the Gelsenkirchen Refinery. In two weeks' time, we will build on the actions taken in the last 12 months and provide a comprehensive update at our capital markets event. It will be a fundamental reset of our strategy.

It will demonstrate our focus on actions to drive performance, and it will enable us to grow cash flow and returns and shareholder value. With that said, let me focus on today and briefly recap our highlights for this year. Many of our businesses performed well during 2024. Upstream production was around 2.36 million barrels per day, up 2% this year, with plant reliability above 95%. It was a good year for trading, and its track record for delivering an average 4% uplift to Group ROACE now extends to the past five years, despite the lack of volatility, but we have had a difficult year in refining, with a Whiting outage in 1Q and the challenging margin and environment, and we were also impacted by the weaker biofuels margins and trucking recession impact on TA.

We remained firmly focused on taking action to improve our performance across refining and on the work to integrate our recently acquired businesses into BP, driving the synergies and underlying performance that we expect. Finally, on distributions, we grew our dividend per share by 10% and announced $7 billion of share buybacks, including a $1.75 billion announced today. With that summary, let's go to Q&A. Over to you to get us started, Craig.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Murray. Given my earlier remarks, I'm going to ask you to each limit yourselves to one question so we can let everyone get a chance. We'll look to close the call by 1:45 P.M. time. There's obviously plenty of time in two weeks' time for more questions. And of course, the IR team is available to follow up. So with that, let's get started. I think we will take the first question from Josh Stone at UBS, please. Josh.

Josh Stone (Executive Director and Analyst)

Yeah, hi, Craig, and good afternoon. With my one question, I'll focus on the refining and trading performance this quarter. It was another weak quarter, but you talk about improvement plans. I just want to get a sense of how confident are you the issues you experienced in 2024 are now in the rearview mirror, and what more can be done to improve the profitability of that division? And maybe if you can give any early insights of how trading has performed during the first quarter, given we're almost halfway through. Thanks.

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

Great. Thanks, Josh. Thanks for the question. You're right. It was a challenging year for refining. The industry in the basins in which we were operating were probably bottom of cycle for margin and pricing. So I think that's an industry-wide issue that we're a part of as well. But of course, we had the outage in Q1 in Whiting as well, an electrical fault that tripped the plant. In Q4 itself, reliability was fine across the portfolio. We, of course, had a massive turnaround at Whiting. It was a huge program. We replaced the coker tops, which is an incredible effort by the teams. And so that obviously dramatically impacted the results in Q4. As we look forward, we are confident that we will continue to improve the business.

Gordon can talk about this in a few weeks' time when we talk through what we're doing to improve the refining business. We're focused on four things. First of all, getting plant reliability back to that 96%, making sure that we don't have material trips. Turnarounds are going well. Maintenance is going well, but we have to stick to it and make sure we hit that 96%. And Gordon and the team are laser-beam focused on that. Out of that then comes the ability to commercially optimize. When you have outages, you can't commercially optimize. So we think between getting back to 96% and steady operations, that then lets us start to optimize and earn more money. The third thing I'd say is there's a strong cost agenda across all of C&P, and that will really start to take root in refining in 2025.

And last, we will have a year of much lower complexity TARs in 2025 and 2024. That should all take us back to profitability. And I think we feel confident in that. And again, in two weeks' time, Gordon can take you through those plans. On trading, it was an average year, a 4% year. Despite the lack of volatility on the oil and refined products side, I think you'll have seen some of that reported out of competitors about how far down they were. So the teams did well to make sure that we continue to hit that track record that we've had over the past five years. Now, looking forward, refining margins started the year very bad in January. They're starting to uptick now as we move into TAR season globally. I think the RMMs are up a bit, and we're starting to see some volatility.

So I think that's probably all I'll say, Josh, but we're laser-beam focused on it. We know we need to do better, and we will. Thanks for the question.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Josh.

Josh Stone (Executive Director and Analyst)

Thanks for coming, Murray. Thanks.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

We'll turn next to Peter Low at Redburn. Peter.

Peter Low (Analyst)

Hi, thanks. Yeah, I'd say the question on some of your recent upstream announcements. So your deal with ONGC and then also the redevelopment of Kirkuk. Can you perhaps talk a bit more about what you found attractive about those opportunities and then potentially the sort of returns you might see for those sorts of technical service contract type agreements? Thanks.

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

Yep. Great, Peter. Thanks for the questions. Look, we've established a pretty strong track record in the Middle East and Far East of being able to help operators with late-life developments. So as water starts to come into developments, as you have to develop tricky reservoirs, we've built a very, very strong reputation. Started in Alaska, moved to Samotlor, Rumaila is a good example of it, etc. So we have a very strong track record in this, and that's what's enabling us to take advantage of these opportunities for direct access, like in India and like in Iraq. In ONGC, it's a services contract. We're very pleased with it. We don't deploy cost or capital. Instead, we provide people and advice to drive stronger performance inside that business.

I can't really talk about what the commercial returns are, but they're quite attractive for India, and they're quite attractive for us. We found a nice middle ground where both sides actually can do very well for each other if we can start to drive that production higher. And we believe, based on all the due diligence we've done, that we can certainly help India with that. And then on Kirkuk, we're in the final throes of the negotiations now. Five domes of oil, 20 billion barrels yet to produce, a competitive PSA agreement, competitive internationally. And of course, it's because of our track record inside the nation that we're able to help them there. So that will give you more on Kirkuk once we've finished off the negotiations and announced it. Let's see when the teams can get to completion on that.

But we feel very excited about that, and it will be internationally competitive. And we look forward to telling you more about that. Hopefully, at Capital Markets Day, we can update you more on that.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Peter. We'll take the next question from Biraj Borkhataria at RBC. Biraj.

Biraj Borkhataria (Analyst)

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Firstly, thank you for the breakdown on the operating cost side. It's good to see the sort of internal lens versus what we see. Just thinking about your strategy, it looks like you're going to be including a more capital-light approach and more JVs and things like that, like the JERA deal. As it relates to your cost reduction targets, are you able to say the sort of quantum of cost that will come off your balance sheet as part of the transactions that have already been agreed? Just so I can get a sense of the magnitude of that. Thank you.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Kate.

Kate Thomson (CFO)

Yeah, hi, Biraj. And thank you for the comment with regard to our cost disclosure. We have tried to help people by giving, I think, quite a lot more granularity and specificity than we have done previously. So I'm pleased that that has worked for you so far. So let's see. With regards to the capital-light approach on renewables, I think for capital, let's leave that to Capital Markets Day. We'll update you comprehensively with regard to capital right across the portfolio at that point. And with regard to cash costs, so we have already been successful in reducing some of our cash costs through focusing our portfolio, which we've talked about on previous quarterly results calls. It's part and parcel of the $750 million of structural reductions that we've delivered this year, which is great progress. And beyond that, we will just update you as we go.

We will try and be as specific as we can quarter on quarter on the areas where we are delivering cost reductions and point out where they're coming from with regard to third-party supply chain or focusing the portfolio, so we will make sure we give you enough granularity on that going forward too.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Biraj. We'll take the next.

Biraj Borkhataria (Analyst)

Thank you.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. We'll take the next question from Doug Leggate at Wolfe. Doug.

Doug Leggate (Managing Director)

Good morning, everyone. Or good afternoon over there. Thanks for taking my question. I guess it's a question for Kate. Kate, I wonder if you could just help us with the continued commentary around the $40 breakeven to help us benchmark the expectations for what you announced later this month. And what I'm trying to understand specifically is you had this $900-something million, $917 million one-off cost, I think it was, this quarter. And I'm trying to understand what that was, how that influences your view of where the run rate breakeven is currently, excuse me, and whether the financing charges below the operating line are included in that definition. So just help us benchmark the starting point ahead of the Capital Markets Day. Thanks.

Kate Thomson (CFO)

Yeah, thanks, Doug. With regard to the balance point, we'll update the financial frame in totality in two weeks' time. The $40 balance point is important to us internally as we think about our dividend. It's a key part of ensuring that it's resilient through the cycle. In terms of the one-offs, so there were a couple of one-offs that we called out specifically in oil and gas. I don't recognize the 900. I recognize about a 400 that we highlighted in the OPO segment. There was 300 in there, which was associated with hedging and income from a sale of royalties, and about 100 in the Gas and Low Carbon. Really trying to be transparent and helping you as we move towards the first quarter, I wanted to demonstrate there were a few things in our fourth quarter results that are unlikely to be repeated in the first quarter.

But I'm happy that we sweep up after the call if you have a different number in your head.

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

Yeah, Doug, the financing costs are inside the balance point, including the hybrid and interest expense. So that's all part of the balance point.

Doug Leggate (Managing Director)

Thank you, guys. The 917 remeasurement of joint venture step acquisition is what I'm referring to.

Kate Thomson (CFO)

Oh, thank you. So.

Doug Leggate (Managing Director)

But I'll.

Kate Thomson (CFO)

Yeah, I can tackle that one very quickly. So the transactions that we had with regard to the acquisition of bp bioenergy and Lightsource bp were both step transactions, as we already own significant percentages of the equity in those organizations. It's just an accounting term. The 917 were both arising with regard to Lightsource bp. It's just a remeasurement of the existing equity we held in Lightsource bp and a remeasurement of the assets that we hold for sale in regard to Lightsource bp. So it's a technical accounting, non-cash.

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

Non-cash, yeah. Thanks, Kate.

Doug Leggate (Managing Director)

Awesome. All right, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Doug. We'll take the next question from Al Syme at Citi. Al.

Al Syme (Managing Director and Analyst)

It was not to front-run the strategy update, but you've put the words fundamental reset out there in today's press release, so can I ask what's going on in the last few months in the environment and in your discussions with the board to change the emphasis from the prior wording that you used, which I think was mid-strategy update?

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

Yep, thanks, Al. Nice to hear your voice. All I'd say is if you look back at the degree of activity we've had over the past 12 months, it's pretty significant. We have sanctioned 10 new projects, stopped 30 projects across the business. We've accessed new countries. We've completely decapitalized renewables. So it's a sizable shift in the portfolio that we have moving forward. And given the degree of that change, it's now time to reset the strategy and plot a new beginning for us. So it's just we've done an awful lot over the past 12 months, and this is the right time now to share that with you, the community. And I'm excited to be sharing it with you in a couple of weeks' time. It's going to be great.

Al Syme (Managing Director and Analyst)

So it's not the externalities of the microenvironment, Murray?

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

No, no.

Al Syme (Managing Director and Analyst)

No. Okay, thank you.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Al. We'll take the next question from Irene Himona at Bernstein. Irene.

Irene Himona (Managing Director)

Thank you. Good afternoon. I had a question on your transition engine, EBITDA. I presume this is the last time we will get EBITDA given you're retiring the metric. But I wanted to focus on bioenergy. It seems adjusted to the same definition that has remained flat at around $700 million a year. Can you give us a sense within that of the split between biofuels and biogas? The question is really about Archaea. Can we assume that Archaea has improved within that total since we know that biofuels margins were particularly weak? I mean, liquid biofuels. Thank you.

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

Yep. Great, Irene. Thanks. Our Archaea continues to improve, yes. Last year, we got nine out of the 15 plants online we wanted to. Three more are now online and functioning. We have three still flowing to midstream, but not yet able to declare startup. We've established 12 new plants this year, which obviously flow through earnings from 2024 into 2025. Certainly, we're seeing improvement in our Archaea as we move forward. As you rightly point out, bioenergy is challenging, or sorry, biofuels are rightfully challenging, especially in Europe. It's quite challenging. We don't see a lot of performance momentum inside biofuels in Europe. That's why we're being very, very careful with sanctioning any new plants. You may have seen a recycling in Australia as well. But we're pleased with progress on our Archaea. We're not quite where we want to be.

We're probably 12 months behind progress on our Archaea because we had to take our time to make the designs work. We had to take our time to get the permitting right. We had to take our time to get the hookups to the midstream providers right, so we've had to take a bit more time than we originally wanted to, and that's on us, but with 13 plants up now, I think the closest competition is two or three a year right now, so we feel like we're in a good competitive position. Prices and demand remain very strong for it as well, and we'll look forward to continuing growth out of our Archaea moving forward, and Carol will give you an update on that in a couple of weeks' time, Irene. Thank you.

Irene Himona (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Irene. We're going to take the next question from Lydia Rainforth at Barclays. Lydia. Do we have you, Lydia? Okay.

Lydia Rainforth (Managing Director)

Yeah, thank you.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Sorry, go ahead, yeah.

Lydia Rainforth (Managing Director)

Thanks. And just thanks, Kate. And just on the cost space, if I can come back to that and [inaudible] words on it, it's actually a really helpful disclosure. You do talk, Kate, about the idea of the kind of strong cost margin ratio. I'm just wondering, is there any way you can sort of talk us through what you actually mean by that, how you measure it, and how that might have changed over the last couple of years? Because I think that cost base and it generating EBITDA is actually quite an important part for you.

Kate Thomson (CFO)

Yeah, thanks, Lydia. So as we've said in the disclosures, quite a lot of this variable cost, actually a huge part of it, relates to our trading business. And as you would imagine, it's a very, very margin-focused business. So the analysis of that is just part of the way they work. We pay very close attention to the gross margin that we're generating on trading. If I look at what's gone on in the last few years, so there's been about a 45% increase in shipping costs in trading, although freight rates are up. And then the other component part, which you'll be familiar with, is the scale of increase in our LNG portfolio. That's grown by over 50%. That's what's driving our cost base inside that part of the base.

In terms of variable costs, though, I think it's really important to understand that these are directly related to the delivery of margin. While we need to make sure that they are being efficiently managed, which we do, it would be crazy to put a target on those in terms of a reduction. I don't want to turn around to Carol and say, "Please, could you reduce your shipping costs?" That wouldn't be a great decision point in terms of driving value and returns as far as we're concerned. That's how we think about it. That's why we've provided the level of granularity that we have, and we will continue to provide with regard to our cost base.

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

In a couple of weeks' time, Carol will be talking about the trading business again, Lydia. She'll unpack some of this as well, and I think you'll find that there's a fixed margin that we have across our business that's driven by this portfolio of shipping oil, of shipping diesel, bunkering, and the LNG expansion, so more details to come in a couple of weeks' time, and Carol will be happy to answer more detailed questions on that then.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Lydia. We'll take the next question from Lucas Herrmann at BNP Paribas Exane. Lucas, sorry.

Lucas Herrmann (Managing Director)

Yeah, thanks very much, Craig. Hopefully, you can hear me. And Murray, I hope the op went well and that you're well. Very brief one. LNG and volumes this year, how much of an increment do you expect to receive from Beach, from Tortue, potentially attaining volumes from Venture? Can you just give us an idea of the tons of increase that you're budgeting for? That's it. Thank you.

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

Yep, great. Thanks. [inaudible], thank you for the kind wishes. I'm feeling great, Lucas. It's nice to be back in the office. Tortue and Beach are about three million tons per annum added, assuming a full year of flow. Venture, I'm just going to not comment as the arbitration continues. Let's see how that arbitration goes. Hopefully, we see a ruling in the back half of the year on that, and then we start to see flow. But I think between Tortue and Beach, we've got three MTPA that'll come through.

Lucas Herrmann (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Lucas. Moving on to Matt Lofting at J.P. Morgan. Matt.

Matt Lofting (Executive Director and Analyst)

Hi, all. Thanks for taking the questions too, if I could, please. First, just on costs, I think you showed in slide 12 about $5 billion of structural cost reduction over the last few years. If I understood right, I think that includes divestments. I wondered if you could break down how much of that five is divestments versus underlying, given that BP's divested about $20 billion of assets over the course of that period. And then second, I just wanted to ask you about Russia and sort of Rosneft, given debate over recent days and weeks around Russia, Ukraine, and sort of ceasefire scenarios, etc. Could you see a sort of a feasible scenario, and could it be sort of palatable for BP at board level around the case for reconsolidating the Rosneft shares in the future onto the balance sheet?

I just wondered how you sort of see that today. Thank you.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Okay, Matt, you've broken the rule already, but we're going to take that one. I'm going to let Murray answer the question on Russia, but maybe first, Kate, on your cost question.

Kate Thomson (CFO)

Yeah, so we're not planning on breaking this down by portfolio movement, Matt. We're very clear that it does include portfolio, but we're trying to give you as much granularity as we can. But I think we need to draw the line in some areas. Where it's a very big portfolio impact, of course, we'll try and call it out and help you with regard to understanding the underlying cost base going forward.

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

Lots of ins and outs in there as well. And then on Russia, look, our principal focus right now is on divesting the stake. There are more than a dozen countries that have sanctions on the entity. So we think the best focus that we can possibly have is on continuing to divest this. And we'll update the market as we go along on that. Thanks for the question.

Matt Lofting (Executive Director and Analyst)

Super. Thanks, all.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Matt. We're going to just move to a quick question from Ahmed Ben Salem from Oddo, who's online. Ahmed's question is, how do you see the impact of US tariffs on Canadian crude on Whiting's refining margins?

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

Yep, thanks, Ahmed. Pretty difficult to predict is my answer. We have the ability to flow volume south to north in the United States if we need to. Obviously, the Canadian producers have optionality to flow some product to the West Coast and overseas as well. Upon announcement of the tariffs, the WTI/WCS spread opened up quite a bit, probably absorbing half of that tariff. So I think it's a very, very dynamic scenario, and it's very difficult to predict what will happen to margins on the northern tier. And so we'll just have to watch and see how the market turns out on this one. I don't think it's straightforward because there are so many different flows that get impacted with Mexican flows, with Southern U.S. to Northern U.S. flows, with Canadian flows.

I have studied it heavily with the teams, and I'm afraid I find it very, very difficult to predict what will happen. But we will update you in due course as we learn about it. Thanks for the question.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Okay, thanks, Ahmed. We're going to turn to Chris Kuplent at Bank of America. Chris.

Chris Kuplent (Head of European Energy Research)

Thank you very much. And it's, of course, dangerous to allow breaking the precedent. So let me try. And this could be a very short answer, but you may have your reasons for not publishing what the surplus cash flow is on a quarterly basis. But maybe you can just yes or no confirm that for the full year, it was somewhere around $4 billion. And if I may, I just wanted to get an explanation how you feel about the value equation from issuing more hybrid bonds in November, which I guess will push up your cash outflows in the cash flow statement, which I make out at around an 8% cost of that carrying value. So I just wanted to understand how attractive you think that is, issuing, continuing to issue hybrid bonds to lower your net debt. Thank you.

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

Great. Why don't we just, we're going to go back to focusing on one question. So, Kate, why don't you tackle the hybrid question? And Chris, we can follow up with you offline on the other question.

Kate Thomson (CFO)

Yeah, so you'll have heard me say in previous calls, Chris, that I do think they're an important part of our capital structure. We're not seeking to build towers here. Just to be super clear, what we did in the fourth quarter, which others also did, by the way, is take advantage of a really strong environment. The senior sub spreads were at an all-time low, and so we were able to issue hybrids in advance of our coming maturities in this year and in next year, and it's really just a value play, right? The hybrid market can fluctuate. We wanted to make sure that when it was in a particularly strong moment, that we took absolute best advantage of that. That's all that's going on with hybrids.

I remind you that about half of our hybrids are fixed cost, and also that the payments with regard to it are fully tax-deductible. So, yeah, I mean, they're not the cheapest, but it's an important part of our capital structure. And we will continue to look very carefully and select maturities as and when the value feels right for us.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Kate. Thank you, Chris. We're going to turn to Roger Read in the U.S. at Wells Fargo. Roger.

Roger Read (Analyst)

Yeah, good morning, or good afternoon to you. But let me ask a U.S. question. BPX, just kind of an update on performance and how you're thinking about any particular increase in activity in any of the gas areas.

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

Great. Hey, Roger, nice to hear your voice. We continue to admire what BPX is doing. They continue to perform very well. We've got our third central gathering facility up online and full now in the Permian, and we're looking forward to getting the last one up around the middle of this year. I think the most interesting bit we're seeing right now are these re-fracs inside the Eagle Ford, where the re-fracs and downspacing are actually creating more flow than the original motherbores. So there's something about a recharging reservoir going on there that we didn't really predict in shale. And that's a very interesting opportunity as the returns are triple-digit plus on that space. On the gas side, we're contemplating increasing rigs right now. Gas pricing is very, very solid as we look at the second half of 2025 and into early 2026.

And so Gordon and Kate and I are debating, should we be doing that? What head strategy would we have around it? And how many rigs should we grow? But with the prices that we're seeing now on the forward markets, the returns inside the gas now beat the returns inside the oil basins. So that'll be something that we're thinking about, and we'll look forward to more questions in that space in a couple of weeks' time where you can ask Gordon about that stuff as well. Thanks, Roger.

Chris Kuplent (Head of European Energy Research)

Thanks.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Roger. We'll turn to Alejandro Vigil at Santander next, please. Alejandro.

Alejandro Vigil (Analyst)

Yes, thank you for taking my question. My question is basically about slide number 16 of the presentation where you are talking about building momentum into 2025, and you saw this chart with a significant increase in year-on-year in EBITDA. Which are the moving parts of this increase? I imagine there are some consolidation portfolio, etc. And I'm making this question also in the context of looking at consensus number $37 billion for this year. Looks like there is a big gap between consensus and this slide number 16. You can elaborate on this, please.

Kate Thomson (CFO)

Yeah, thank you, Alejandro. Yeah, so if you think about 2024 EBITDA, so we printed $38 billion for 2024. If you were to adjust that for 2023 prices, if you think back, I think it was 2Q earlier this last year when we talked about the impact of price on our $46 billion-$49 billion EBITDA target. If you adjust our 2024 EBITDA back for 2023 prices, and if you think about 2023, although the commodities move around, taken as a basket, it's broadly comparable to our planning assumptions.

Then if you use rules of thumb and you adjust for the fact that Whiting will be back up and operating well this year, you adjust for portfolio and you adjust for typical underlying growth that we expect to deliver year on year, you get to a number that's just under our target of 46-49, which is what we've said today. To be clear, we've said for a while now that our focus is very much shifting to cash. In two weeks' time, we'll update you fully in terms of targets, metrics, and financial frame, and that will help put the retiring of this target into context for you.

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

I think on 2024 versus 2025, obviously we've got the absence of the Whiting outage. Depending on the margin, that's worth quite a bit of money. Then we have the 3%-4% underlying growth that I've been talking about, quarter in and quarter out that we see year on year across the business. For 2024 versus 2025, that comes broadly across cost. So continued cost improvement based on the great start we've done this year, along with improvements in things like cash draw, TA doing better, European convenience doing better, Australian convenience doing better, and continued improved performance inside the upstream, along with, as I said, in the refining coverage, less complicated TARs. So it's a lot of small things that add up to that 3%-4% improvement in underlying plus the recovery from the Whiting outage in 2024.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Okay, thanks, Alejandro. We will turn to Michele Della Vigna, please, at Goldman Sachs. Michele.

Michele Della Vigna (Managing Director)

Thank you. And very much looking forward to the CMD. Just one modeling question from my side. We've seen two items before below EBIT, which were larger than expected, the net interest cost and the minorities. I was just wondering if you could perhaps guide us on whether we should assume this is a new ongoing run rate or if there was any one-off impact in the quarter? Thank you.

Kate Thomson (CFO)

Yeah, thanks, Michele. In terms of net interest, that was up quarter on quarter really just because our gross debt had grown. We took advantage this year in terms of markets and issued a fair amount of debt without actually buying back any more of our maturities. That's something that we'll continue to address as we have done previously based on value. And in terms of the cash, it's a very minimal cost of carry right now given the forward curves as well. So that's all that's going on in net interest.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Okay, thank you.

Michele Della Vigna (Managing Director)

And then for the minorities.

Kate Thomson (CFO)

So there's a movement in that really just related to the change in the hybrids in the fourth quarter.

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

You would probably expect both to reverse over time.

Michele Della Vigna (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

You probably expect both to reverse over time as you decrease your hybrids again and as you pay off your debt.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Kate. Thank you, Michele. We'll turn to Paul Cheng in the U.S. at Scotia. Paul.

Paul Cheng (Managing Director)

Thank you. Good morning or good afternoon, your time. Kate, can I go back into the 2025 EBITDA? You're saying that just for the pricing, it will be slightly below the low end of the range. So compared to the midpoint, that's probably they call it $2 billion less. Can you tell us that compared to the initial expectation, which area that are seeing the miss and what's causing those? Thank you.

Kate Thomson (CFO)

Yeah, thank you. So I think the two areas I would highlight, we've talked before about bio margins in Europe being suppressed due to two reasons. One, the Nordic countries rolling back their voluntary mandates to the EU mandated levels and also a level of oversupply from Asia. The other area I would call out is TravelCenters of America where it's been slightly slower than we expected in terms of recovery from the trucking recession. We see green shoots. It's starting to improve. I think we're probably a year further out in terms of seeing full recovery. That's more likely to come through in 2026 now.

Paul Cheng (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Paul. And it looks like just now the last question is from Giacomo Romeo at Jefferies. Giacomo.

Giacomo Romeo (Analyst)

Yes, thank you. Just a quick one more on the modeling side. Your lease is obviously going up as you've guided and just trying to get a better sense of where we should expect lease payments to move to in going forward in Q4. They were still relatively in line with the previous quarters, just trying to understand whether that should go up and by to what extent into next year.

Kate Thomson (CFO)

Yeah, I'll take that. The leases were pretty flat quarter-on-quarter, but we did add to our lease liabilities in the fourth quarter with the completion of Bunge. They've got about 300,000 hectares of land leased. So you will expect a small increase with regard to that. And then there was an extension of a lease that trading used in the U.S., but for commercial reasons, I wouldn't go into that. So 4Q versus 3Q, pretty flat, but you'll see a little bit of tick up with regard to the Bunge leases.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Super. Thanks, Kate. We're going to let Biraj sneak in with the last question. Biraj, you've come back on. Over to you, please.

Biraj Borkhataria (Analyst)

Hi, there. Sorry. I assumed someone was going to ask this, but as I'm the last one, I might as well. Given the news yesterday around your new shareholders, any comments you can make about any engagements you've had with Elliott? Thank you.

Murray Auchincloss (CEO)

Look, Biraj, it's market speculation right now, and we don't comment on market speculation. Thanks for the question.

Biraj Borkhataria (Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

Craig Marshall (SVP and Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks for the question, Biraj. Okay, I am going to—there's no more questions online, so we are going to close the call on that note. So that's the last question. We'll close the call on behalf of Murray, Kate, myself, and also members of the leadership team who will join us on February the 26th. We look forward to seeing many of you in London, and of course, those of you who will be joining the event by webcast, so look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks, and thank you for listening into today's call.