Ampol made $857.2 million on a replacement cost basis in the six months to 30 June, up 376 per cent on the same half last year, and almost all of the increase came from what it costs to bring refined fuel into Australia. Statutory net profit was $1,363.4 million, against a $25.3 million loss a year earlier. The company told the ASX on Monday it will pay shareholders $441 million.
The number that moved is the Lytton Refiner Margin. Ampol defines it as the gap between the cost of importing a standard basket of refined products into eastern Australia and the cost of the crude oil needed to make that basket. It averaged US$28.26 a barrel in the half, against US$7.44 in the first half of 2025. In Australian cents per litre, the measure that lands on a bowser, it went from 7.36 to 25.20.
That margin is set by the import parity price, which is the price Australian motorists and freight operators pay whether or not the fuel was refined here. Ampol's own monthly chart puts the margin at US$8.13 a barrel in January and US$56.14 in April, at the height of the disruption to oil flows. It was US$28.72 in June and US$27.11 in July.
Sales volumes went the other way. Ampol sold 12.30 billion litres of fuel in the half, down from 12.45 billion litres. Volumes fell while profit rose, so the result came from price rather than demand.
The filing shows where customers went. Volumes through U-GO, Ampol's price conscious brand, rose 64 per cent, and the company added 13 U-GO sites to take the network to 47. Premium fuel fell to 54.9 per cent of retail volume, down 1.5 percentage points, while total retail fuel volume rose 2.4 per cent to 1,778 million litres. Motorists bought more from Ampol and bought cheaper while doing it.
The interim dividend is 185 cents a share, fully franked, which the company puts at 51 per cent of first half replacement cost profit. The payment releases $189 million of franking credits. Group replacement cost earnings before interest and tax were $1,391.7 million, up 245 per cent, and the Lytton refinery alone turned a $162.9 million loss into $567.1 million of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation.
Ampol received no money under the Fuel Security Services Payment in either half. The FSSP tops up an Australian refiner when its margin falls below a floor, currently set at 10 Australian cents a litre, and Lytton's margin was more than twice that for most of the period. The company told investors it expects the second phase of the Commonwealth's FSSP review in the coming months, and lists it among the things that would give the refinery long term support.
Public money did reach the balance sheet by another route. Of Ampol's $3.52 billion in net borrowings at 30 June, $148 million relates to the Australian and New Zealand government fuel security programs. Under the Australian arrangement, disclosed to the ASX on 30 July, Ampol bought about 250 million litres of additional refined fuel to lift national inventories with assistance from Export Finance Australia. Z Energy secured about 90 million litres of diesel for New Zealand.
Managing director Matt Halliday said the half was defined by the disruption. "The first half of 2026 was marked by the Middle East conflict and the consequential impact on the flow of oil," he said, describing the company's focus as securing fuel for customers.
In New Zealand, where Ampol owns Z Energy, replacement cost earnings before interest and tax fell 19 per cent to $103.8 million. The company attributes that to being slower to pass rising input costs through to pump prices, which is the same lag working against it that worked for it in Australia.
The refinery is now down for planned work. Ampol began a turnaround and inspection of the fluidised catalytic cracking unit at Lytton on 30 July, with restart expected in October, and says it has supply arrangements in place for the period. Net capital expenditure for 2026 is guided at about $600 million. The second half started with the July margin still near US$27 a barrel, so the question for the December half is whether the import price that produced this result holds while the refinery that captured it is offline.
