BP p.l.c. 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Welcome everyone to BP's second quarter 2026 financial results call. I'm joined by Meg O'Neill, Chief Executive Officer, and Kate Thomson, Chief Financial Officer. We'll be focusing today's call on the second quarter performance and the contents of the video that I hope many of you will have seen by now. Before we start with questions, though, let me hand over to Meg for a few opening remarks.

Meg. Thanks, Greg, and thank you to everyone joining the call.

I hope everyone will have seen our results today and the video Kate and I recorded. As such, I'll keep my opening remarks brief so we can get to questions. 2Q was another good quarter financially as we continue to build momentum. Strong earnings and good cash conversion supported us with the further strengthening of the balance sheet. Net debt was down $3 billion quarter-on-quarter, and financial obligations are now down around $7 billion since first quarter. You will have seen our outlook for the further significant progress we expect through the end of the year. We have also continued to take deliberate steps to simplify BP and our portfolio, including the announcements on the North Sea and Archaea Energy, and the completion of the Gelsenkirchen transaction. There are areas where our performance fell short.

Operationally, our plants didn't run as well as we expect. I want us focused on driving consistent operational performance. It is the foundation for everything we do, and we know we need to improve. We have more to do to turn cost reductions into bottom-line earnings improvement. BP has strong assets, deep capability, and real growth potential. My focus is on turning that potential into stronger performance and greater shareholder value. That means continuing to strengthen the balance sheet, simplifying and high-grading the portfolio, investing with discipline, taking cost out of the system, and driving much sharper accountability across the company. I call this getting BP Fit to Grow, where every part of BP needs to earn its place, generating cash, improving returns, and strengthening the whole.

I believe BP can and will be a world-class integrated oil and gas company with advantaged upstream positions, a resilient downstream business, and distinctive trading capability. That is what my leadership team and I are focused on, moving at pace, making the tough decisions, and building a more focused, competitive BP that delivers stronger outcomes. Back to you, Greg. Thanks, Meg.

As everyone knows, as per customary practice, I'm going to ask everybody to poll for one question please per person, so that everyone gets a chance to ask. If we have the time, we can come back to a follow-up question, we are going to aim to wrap up the call in 45 minutes. On that note, I'm going to take the first question from Biraj Borkhataria at RBC.

Sure. Thanks, Biraj. Look, I think it's prudent for us not to try to label ourselves as a super major, in fact, that's one of the things that I'm trying to reinforce with the comments around weight class. You look at our numbers, we produce about 2.2 million barrels oil equivalent a day. Our refining capacity is about 1.5 million barrels a day. Sizable on both fronts. The reality is, we need to make sure we're competing with players at our size, we need to make sure in each part of the business, upstream, downstream, trading, that we are competing to win. We want to be in the best basins, we can't be in every basin. We need to make sure we're focused, that we're making good decisions, that we're selective in our choices.

For me, that's what it means when I say that we need to be getting fit, we need to be competing in our weight class.

Thanks, Biraj. We're going to take the next question from Fergus Neve at Rothschild.

Thanks. Yeah, thanks, Fergus. BPX is really an important part of BP Group.