MOL Polska, in line with its earlier announcements, still plans to ultimately achieve the position of the second largest player on the Polish retail market, but estimates that this goal cannot be achieved organically and will require the purchase of more than 100 more stations, according to MOL CEO Richard Austen.
“We continue to believe that it is realistic for MOL to become the second largest operator in the station market, but it will require the purchase of more than 100 additional stations, this goal cannot be achieved organically,” Austen said.
He stressed that it is impossible to set even an approximate timeframe for achieving this goal.
“Someone has to want to sell the stations first, and the list of potential counterparties is quite limited, and the offer has to be attractive to us in business terms. At the moment we are not in talks regarding further acquisitions, we are focusing on the process of rebranding the network we own,” added the CEO.
In his opinion, the Polish fuel market will grow by several per cent in 2024.
“I hope that the economy will rebound, and the more cash in the economy, the better for the fuel market. I expect the Polish fuel market to grow at a low single-digit rate over the next 2-3 years. In general, Poland should be a country where the decline in demand for traditional fuels due to the ongoing energy transition will be relatively late,” he assessed.
At the same time, he admitted that MOL is in no hurry to build charging stations for electric cars.
“In our region, this is not a profitable business for the time being, although we realise that this will eventually change. We currently have around 200 chargers across the MOL Group, and we want to increase this number to 500. Some of them will certainly be built in Poland, but it is difficult to say exactly how many. We will certainly be ready to build chargers on the Polish market when it makes good business sense to do so,” he concluded.
Hungary’s MOL is active in oil extraction and refining (it has production assets in eight countries and also owns four refineries and two petrochemical units). It has been listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange since 2004. It had USD 23.11 billion in consolidated revenues in 2022. After the acquisition of Lotos Group’s Polish network, MOL Polska had 481 stations at the end of 2023.
Source: MOL and ISBnews
