By Ron Bousso and Shadia Nasralla
LONDON (Reuters) -BP’s fourth-quarter profit sank to $115 million, missing analysts’ forecasts, pummelled by continued weak energy demand due to the coronavirus epidemic and weak trading results.
On annual basis, BP sunk to a loss of $5.7 billion, its first in a decade after it wrote down the value of oil and gas assets by $6.5 billion as a result of sharply lowering its long-term energy prices.
Its fourth-quarter underlying replacement cost profit, the company’s definition of net income, reached $115 million, beating the $360 million loss seen in a company-provided survey of analysts.
That compared with a $86 million profit in the third quarter and a profit of $2.6 billion a year earlier.
(Reporting by Ron Bousso and Shadia Nasralla; editing by Kirsten Donovan and Jason Neely)
