MOSCOW: Russia's state-controlled energy giant Rosneft said Wednesday its annual net profit for 2014 was down by nearly 10 percent after Russia's economy took a battering from plunging oil prices and Western sanctions over Ukraine.
Rosneft said its net profit last year was 350 billion rubles ($5.63 billion according to the current exchange rate), a decline of 9.8 percent from its 2013 net profit of 388 billion rubles.
In the fourth quarter of last year, profits were 89 billion rubles, down 33.58 percent from 134 billion rubles in the same period of 2013.
The result was actually better than expected, as analysts had predicted Rosneft's 2014 profits would be around 331 billion rubles, Interfax news agency reported.
Rosneft is blacklisted by the United States and the European Union as part of sanctions against Moscow for its role in the Ukraine crisis.
The energy giant acknowledged that its ruble-denominated debt was "heavily impacted by the negative effect of a ruble depreciation against the foreign currency."
Its debt in rubles rose by 31.4 percent in 2014 to 2.5 trillion rubles.
Rosneft said the figures for 2014 as a whole were "strong results."
Rosneft president Igor Sechin was quoted as saying that Rosneft "retains a strong liquidity position", while referring to the "ongoing crisis in oil markets."
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