Stable might sound boring, but there wasn’t much excitement in Oil and Gas Development Company’s (PSX: OGDCL) financial performance for the nine-month period. While the oil and gas giant announced earnings growth of 17 percent, year-on-year, the firm’s bottom-line stood up by 19 percent, year-on-year in 9MFY18.

Higher top-line and lower operating costs resulted in higher gross profit for the company and improvement in gross margins. The growth in revenues came from rupee depreciation for dollar linked sales along with higher crude oil prices. On the average, net realized price of crude oil during the period was $51.63 per barrel, up by round 18 percent, year-on-year. Whereas, the average net realized gas price was up by 9 percent, year-on-year to Rs254.76 per million cubic feet. On the production front, things have not been very robust; oil production during the period under review declined by 5.6 percent year-on-year, while the gas production was down by around 3 percent, year-on-year in 9MFY18.

Increase in the share of profit from the associates due to higher income from Mari Petroleum was a positive for OGDC’s earnings. However, OGDC booked lower other income in 9MFY18 due to maturity of high yield PIBs, which lowered the growth in the bottom-line. Though this has improved the company’s cash position and the firm announced a cash dividend of Rs2.75per share in addition to interim dividend of Rs4.75 already announced.

Exploration and prospecting expenditure for OGDC were higher particularly in 3QFY18, which was primarily due to dry wells in the latest quarter. Overall, the company’s exploratory efforts yielded four oil and gas discoveries in 9MFY18. OGDCL spud eight exploratory wells, and drilling and testing of eleven ongoing wells pertaining to the previous fiscal year was completed.