Dive Brief:
- BP’s recently appointed CEO Meg O’Neill outlined five priorities she has for the company during the company’s Q2 earnings presentation, including strengthening the balance sheet, simplifying the portfolio, investing with discipline, running assets safely and building a culture of faster, more effective decision making.
- As part of these priorities, BP is planning to sell U.S. renewable energy company Archaea Energy and make financial improvements to its TravelCenters of America travel stop business.
- While BP had not outlined O’Neill’s five priorities in earlier reports, the push to simplify and save money, as well as its portfolio review, have been ongoing for a while.
Dive Insight:
O’Neill said BP is going to take a hard look at all of its operations using data rather than sentiment or history related to individual operations.
“Going forward, every part of the company needs to earn its place, generating cash, improving returns, and strengthening the whole,” O’Neill, who took over the top role at the company in April, said during the presentation.
BP proved that recency won’t matter either, as it’s selling Archaea Energy, which it bought for $4.1 billion in 2022.
That may put pressure on TravelCenters of America, which BP bought in 2023 for $1.3 billion. O’Neill called out TA in the presentation, saying that while some business units are doing well, “there are also areas to improve, [including] reducing total cash cost relative to gross margin and targeted performance programmes in businesses like TravelCenters of America.”
BP has already held multiple rounds of layoffs, with the most recent coming this summer. It also sold 13 Thorntons stores to Giant Oil in March and agreed in July to divest its convenience retail and electric vehicle charging businesses in Austria to Swiss energy company Volenergy AG.
