OSLO (Reuters) -Equinor reported a bigger-than-expected decline of 9.9% in third-quarter profits on Wednesday as oil and gas prices fell from a year ago, and maintained its outlook for production growth.
The Norwegian energy group's adjusted earnings before tax for July-September fell to $6.21 billion from $6.89 billion a year earlier, slightly lagging the $6.31 billion predicted in a poll of 21 analysts compiled by Equinor.
The company maintained a projection that its oil and gas output will grow
by 4% this year compared to 2024 and kept its forecast for capital expenditure in 2025 of $13 billion.
"High performing fields and new fields coming on stream on the Norwegian continental shelf, drive production growth," CEO Anders Opedal said in a statement.
In February, Equinor followed rivals such as Shell and BP in promising higher oil and gas output while scaling back investment in renewables, citing challenging market conditions for the green energy transition.
Equinor lowered its quarterly guidance for its Midstream, Marketing and Processing segment, home to its energy trading activities, to an average adjusted operating income of around $400 million, from a previous $400 million-$800 million range.
"This is due to changing market conditions and earlier divestment of certain assets," the company said in its report.
The MMP unit posted earnings of $299 million, down from $545 million a year ago and short of analyst expectations of $307 million.
Equinor in the third quarter pumped 2.13 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed), in line with expectations in the analyst poll for 2.1 million boed, and up from 1.98 million boed a year earlier.
The company in 2022 overtook Russia's Gazprom as Europe's biggest supplier of natural gas when Moscow's invasion of Ukraine upended decades-long energy ties.
Equinor's share price has declined by 9% so far this year, lagging an 18% rise in the broader European energy stock index.
(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis and Nora Buli, editing by Terje Solsvik)
