Four Galp workers in dark overalls and white hard hats walk towards the columns and stacks of the Sines refinery

Business 27 October 2026

Galp's record €682m quarter shrinks to €201m under IFRS

Galp's adjusted (RCA) net income rose 68% in the third quarter to €682 million on strong refining and Brazilian output. Its IFRS profit fell 24% to €201 million after €453 million of special items, mostly mark-to-market losses on unsettled derivatives.

Galp has two profit numbers for its third quarter, and they are a long way apart. The one the company leads with is adjusted net income, which it calls RCA: €682 million for July to September, up 68% from €407 million a year earlier and the best quarter on its books. The other is profit under international accounting standards (IFRS), the figure that goes into the statutory accounts: €201 million, down 24% from €264 million.

Both sit in the third-quarter results Galp published on 26 October, and the gap has a fairly specific cause.

Where the missing €481 million went

The adjusted figure strips out two things. One is the inventory effect, the swing in the value of the oil Galp holds as the barrel price moves (minus €29 million this time). The other is what it calls special items, which came to minus €453 million this quarter.

Almost all of that is derivatives that have not yet settled. Galp hedges commodity prices, and those contracts have to be marked to market at the end of every quarter. With oil and gas expensive and jumpy, the revaluation produced a paper loss. No cash has left the building. But it isn’t a number you can wave away either, because nobody knows what those contracts are worth until the day they close.

Over nine months the pattern holds. Adjusted net income is €1,494 million, up 54%. Under IFRS it is €852 million, down 9%, with €658 million lost to derivative revaluation alone.

The bit that really did go well

The underlying business sped up. Adjusted Ebitda hit €1,522 million, up 67%. Oil and gas output rose 14% to 131,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day as the Bacalhau floating platform in Brazil’s pre-salt ramped up. Refining at Sines caught very high international margins, and the industrial and midstream unit made €639 million of Ebitda against €315 million a year ago. Retail grew 24%, and renewables, helped by wind farms bought in Spain, went from €16 million to €48 million.

That is why Galp raised its full-year guidance again. It now expects adjusted Ebitda of around €5 billion, up from about €4 billion, assuming Brent averages $90 and a refining margin near $25 a barrel, close to double the $13 it had pencilled in.

This is the same Galp that, on the same day, walked away from merger talks with Spain’s Moeve. Its two co-CEOs say in the report that the strategy is unchanged. Net debt stands at €1.4 billion, and the €253 million interim dividend has already been paid.

By Beatriz Mota

Image: Galp (multimedia library)

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