PBF Energy Inc. (NYSE:PBF) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Doug Leggate: Hey, good morning, everybody. Thanks, for taking my questions. Karen, these are both probably or maybe for you. Let me start with working capital. Even if we took turn of the J. Aron buyout earlier this year, you still had a net a fairly sizable net working capital impact for the whole year, that was negative. Is there, was that related to Matt’s comment about crude inventory building or is there something going on there that we should expect to reverse?

Karen B. Davis: No, Doug, I think the main impact there is the $900 million that we spent to reduce the environmental credit liabilities. That’s all within there and in quite outsized and one-time. So, I think you’ll see that less of an impact in working capital going forward.

Doug Leggate: Great stuff. So, it shouldn’t reverse, but it shouldn’t repeat either. Fair?

Karen B. Davis: Correct. Yeah. That’s the right way to think about it.

Doug Leggate: Okay. All right. Thank you. Matt, the East Coast, it’s a bit in the weeds, I guess, but the East Coast is where we saw your accounting miss this quarter relative to, your normal kind of capture rate, if you like, or at least how we think about your LP on that side of the business. What we’re trying to figure out if this is something to do with freight costs, crude or maybe the pool, as Dangote gets started. Is there anything going on that you can point to that says why the East Coast, with better throughput, why it did a little bit worse perhaps than you might have thought.

Matthew C. Lucey: No. Not in regards to refinery startups. Paul, would you make any comments on East Coast?

Paul Davis: No. I mean, I don’t, I didn’t see anything, out of the ordinary on the East Coast, to be honest, with you guys.

Matthew C. Lucey: You have, what we had over the quarter is crude differentials began to widen. That takes a while to get into the plant. So, you see the market indicators on the cost of crude. There’s a lag to that, and I expect, you’ll see the benefit in the first quarter, on that side of it. But another quite honestly, Doug, the freight realities of having to navigate around the Cape of Good Hope means more materials are on the water, which obviously increases demands on shipping, and freight rates have gone up as a result. I think the net result of that resides in a higher crack on the East Coast. So, I think it’s resilient to our markets, but there’s nothing extraordinary, on the East Coast that was negatively impacting us.

Doug Leggate: That’s great color. Thanks very much.

Operator: Your next question comes from Ryan Todd with Piper Sandler. Please proceed.

Ryan Todd: Thanks. Maybe, you mentioned a few things on SBR, but I guess, as you’re a little over six months, six, seven, eight months into operations there. Can you maybe talk about high level about what you learned so far? What’s gone well? What’s been challenging? How often do you expect to perform catalyst changes there and maybe how your feedstock mix has evolved over the last six to eight months of operation?

Matthew C. Lucey: I’ll make some high level comments, and I’ll ask Jim Fedena, who’s in charge of that operation, to make some comments. Directionally, I think it’s been an extraordinary experience so far in getting the plan up on time. Yes, there’s you’re always going to work out some gremlins coming out. I think we did that better than most. Our relationship with ENI, I think has been off to a terrific start. I was over with some of their executives back in December, indeed, they’re stateside. Some of their executives are stateside, and, we’re working with our team this week. So, the partnership, I think is going as well as we could expect. And I think our interests are very, very well aligned, and focused on maximizing all of SBR’s capabilities.

We still view it as absolutely a tier one asset in the right geographic location, which gives great options on feedstocks. And, disposing of products as opposed to being tied into California, we’ll have the wherewithal, to go wherever the market is best. And obviously, we get some benefits connected to Chalmette on the operating expense side. Jim, would you give any other particulars in terms of operations?

Jim Fedena: The only thing I’ll add from a catalyst change out perspective is on an annual basis, you change out the [GuardVet] (ph) catalyst. And about every 24 months or so, you change out the ISOM catalyst in the back end of the unit. Then other just more macro thing is, we look much less in regards to PBF is obviously, the market for RD, is down, as credits have come down. The supply of RD has reduced RINs and California credit prices as well have come down. And that’s not a surprise to us. We were expecting it. Indeed, I think that, will continue for a bit. And where it’s going to put pressure is on the more marginal players, where, what they ultimately do, that will certainly impact the market, but we’re clearly advantaged to those marginal players. And I think, the supply side will shuffle out here over ‘24.

Ryan Todd: Great. Thank you. That’s helpful. And then maybe, just shifting to the West Coast, not on renewal, but on the rest of the refining business, you’ve seen a big bounce in margins there over the last couple of weeks. Can you talk about what you’re seeing in terms of kind of overall supply demand dynamics and product market dynamics there on the West Coast within your operations. And then just to clarify, I think did you say in your opening comments that there is, you’re still going to be working your way through higher priced crude inventories there in California? Is that going to be a headwind to, kind of margin capture in the first quarter there?