Petronas Dagangan aims to sustain financial results

Petronas Dagangan Bhd (PDB) aims to maintain its low number of days of inventory at 30 per cent to enable it to sustain its fourth quarter and full-year financial results, says Chief Executive Officer Mohd Ibrahimnuddin Mohd Yunus.

Mohd Ibrahimnuddin noted that by maintaining a low number of inventory days, PDB could optimise its inventory management and the same time turn around its inventory to ensure PBD can maintain a good level of profit and margins.

"We have also put in measures such as operating expenses (opex) reduction, and this is basically our optimisation of our opex.

"We need to ensure that we spend on the right thing and at the right time, which will also contribute to the group's performance, for the (fourth) quarter and the year as a whole," he told reporters on the sidelines of the prize presentation for the "Swipe and Drive Further" campaign.

PBD's pre-tax profit for the third quarter ended Sept 30, 2015 jumped to RM297.679 million from RM223.629 million a year ago, while for the nine-month period, it chalked up a pre-tax profit of RM955.502 million versus RM697.553 million registered a year ago.

The three-month campaign, which ended on Sept 15, was in collaboration with Bank Islam Malaysia Bhd.

He said the company will continue to maintain the efficiency of its supply and distribution system as part of strategies to maintain the results.

"The oil prices are very volatile, they fell from more than US$100 per barrel to slightly above US$40, but again, moving forward we will focus on the strategies and take into cognisance that price movements would have an effect on us, therefore we have to be able to manage the volatility," he added.

There are 1,000 Petronas stations and 750 Kedai Mesra nationwide, offering the added convenience of shopping, dining, banking and other services.