ข่าวแจ้งตลาดหลักทรัพย์
) MD&A Quater 1/2009
Project has been achieved the Major Provisional Acceptance conforming the
major condition under term loan agreement. Currently, the PQI project has been
producing saleable products that meet the government specification sold to the
market. In late May 2009, the Company will conduct the final performance test
run according to the EPC contract before handover the Project from the
contractor to the Company.
4.2 Foreign Exchange
Another factor which may have impact on the Company's performance is the
foreign exchange volatility (mostly Baht/USD). The Company pays for the
feedstock in US dollar term and sells its product on US dollar-linked basis,
and subsequently records transactions as trade payable and trade receivable
respectively. Since the Company's assets are greater than liabilities', the
appreciation of Thai Baht will cause the shrink in net assets value, Baht
margin value, and vise versa. However, being aware of that risk, the Company
has been managing to mitigate the risk by utilizing some market financial
instrument. In addition, as completion of the loan refinancing on July 2,
2008, the Company has performed Cross Currency Swap (CCS) from Thai baht loan
to Dollar link amounted USD 200 million following the policy to leverage the
differences of US dollar liabilities balancing with revenue (natural Hedge) to
protect the business from impact of the exchange rate fluctuations. Therefore,
when the Baht depreciates, the Company will record loss from exchange rate and
realize the increase revenue in the term of baht. But in the other hand, when
the Baht appreciates, the revenue in the term of baht will be reduced however
the Company will realize gain from the exchange rate. The referred CCS
contracts affected from January 5, 2009 to June 30, 2013.
4.3 Gross Refining Margin Hedging (GRM Hedging)
Although the Company has fully adopted PQI project to add long term business
value, the situation of oil price likely to continually fluctuate according to
fundamental factors both demand and supply as well as speculating of which
directly affects gross refining margin. Being realized such risk, the Price
Risk Management Committee (PRMC) consisted of high-level executives and
related divisions, was set up in 2006. PRMC is responsible in officiate
prescribed hedging policy and objective as well as closely monitor the oil
price market situation to minimize impact on business operations by utilizing
some hedging instruments to determine the appropriate and level satisfied
margin between product and crude in advance and/or inventory price management.
As of March 31, 2009, the Company has outstanding hedging forward contracts of
11.3 million barrel, for the period of April to December 2009.