Oil refining company Neste suffered a significant decline in sales of traditional petroleum products last year due to the pandemic, but sales of renewable products rose.
On Friday the partly state-owned energy firm reported a decline in fourth quarter profits. However, the slump was not as bad as analysts had expected, according to a Reuters poll.
Nevertheless, its share price fell due to downbeat forecasts.
Neste's renewables unit generated 94 percent of the group's profits last year, but on Friday the company said it expected its first-quarter sales margin to decline.
This is partly due to a limited supply of waste and residue that it uses as raw materials.
Neste's comparable operating profit in the October-December period plunged by more than half to 380 million euros, compared to 781 million a year earlier. Renewable products accounted for 338 million euros of the profit.
Full-year comparable operating profit fell from two billion euros to 1.4 billion euros.
CEO: Renewable products "very resilient"
"Despite the challenges and disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020 was a success for Neste in many ways," CEO Peter Vanacker said in a press release.
"Renewable products proved to be very resilient with increased sales volumes and strong sales margins. Oil products suffered from a historically weak refining market caused by the global Covid-19 related demand destruction and oversupply. This development accelerated the need to improve the long-term competitiveness of our refining business, and restructuring measures, including the closure of the Naantali refinery, were decided upon," he added.
The company announced it would shut down the plant near Turku last November.
Fourth-quarter net sales dropped to three billion euros from more than four billion a year earlier. The firm blamed lower crude oil prices and lower sales volumes of petroleum products.
For the full year, net sales fell by almost one third to 11.8 billion euros compared to 15.8 billion in 2019.
The state owns about 45 percent of the company's shares, down from just over half in 2018. In early 2019, the government sold off about 100 million euros worth of shares, shifting the money into a newly established parastatal tasked with improving and expanding the country's rail network.
That year, Neste was the biggest single generator of tax revenue, paying 224 million euros into state coffers.