BP (BP/ LN) - Q2 2026 (USD): Revenue 69.1bln (exp. 67.7bln) Operating Cash Flow 10.86bln (exp. 10.09bln), Adj. Net Income 5.73bln (exp. 5.01bln)
FY Guidance:
- Expects upstream production between 2,180 and 2,270 mboepd.
- Expects continued progress in growing cash flows in the customer business.
- Expects throughput between 1,360 and 1,410 mbpd.
CEO:
- "We also took steps to simplify and strengthen bp. In recent weeks, we sold our Gelsenkirchen refinery, agreed to sell our retail business in Austria and announced our intention to sell our North Sea business in the UK. Today, we are announcing our intention to sell Archaea, our biogas business in the US."
- "But there are areas where our performance fell short. Operationally, our plants didn't run as well as they did last quarter - upstream plant reliability was 92.4%, compared to 95.7%, and production was down and our refineries processed less crude. This was due, in part, to planned maintenance and the conflict in the Middle East, but this is a reminder that we have more to do to deliver consistent operational performance."
Beats on all three headline lines at an integrated major follow a well-worn pattern: the initial read-through runs through buyback capacity and gearing, with cash flow the figure that anchors both, since adjusted earnings at the integrateds are heavily sensitive to downstream and trading mark-to-marks that the market routinely discounts. The more durable driver in past episodes of this kind has been the disposal programme rather than the print itself; serial asset sales of this sort, refineries, retail networks, legacy basin stakes, have historically been read as portfolio simplification in service of the balance sheet and distributions, and the pace of completion and price achieved matters more to the multiple than the announcement count. The counterweight here is operational: the chief executive's own flagging of lower plant reliability and reduced throughput, attributed partly to maintenance and Middle East disruption, fits the recurring pattern where an earnings beat built on price and mix is partially discounted when uptime and volumes move the wrong way, because reliability shortfalls tend to carry into subsequent quarters. Worth watching is whether guidance ranges imply the production and throughput slippage is contained, and any update on disposal proceeds against stated divestment targets. Peers in the integrated peer set typically trade as a group on results days of this kind, with the relative move driven by distribution and gearing comparisons rather than the headline beat.