National Refinery Limited - Earnings expectation HY’09

National Refinery Limited - Earnings expectation HY'09   National Refinery Limited (NRL) is expected to declare its financial result for HY'09 on February 14, 2009. We expect the company to post net income of Rs.548 million (EPS: Rs.6.86) during this period as compared to Rs.1.97 billion (EPS: Rs.24.73) in HY'08, depicting a decrease of 72.3% on y-o-y basis. The decline is primarily due to inventory losses given to the fall in crude oil prices. Our full years earnings expectation for the stock is profit after tax of Rs.2.69 billion (EPS: Rs.33.63) as compared to Rs.6.0 billion (EPS: Rs.75.10) in FY'08, showing a decline of 55.2%. We do not expect the company to declare any interim cash dividend; however our final per share cash dividend expectation (to be declared at the end of the year) is of Rs.13.50 for FY'09 (similar to the payout ratio for FY05).