Phillips 66 (NYSE:PSX) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Mark Lashier: Hi, Neil. Good morning. This is Mark. When you think about the additional billion-dollar increments in EBITDA, that really comes from the enhanced business transformation work that we’re going to do as well as the additional synergies we intend to capture from the DCP roll-up, supplemented by the enhanced capability and value creation that we’re going to see out of the commercial organization. Regarding asset dispositions, this fundamentally is about creating focus and redeploying capital. We’re not going to comment on specific assets today, but we generally have some high-performing assets that may be more valuable to others and maybe more strategic to others and we are going to explore that. And if we can capture value greater than our whole value, we’ll do so. But the bottom line is this, that we’re committed to managing the portfolio to drive focus that’s consistent with our strategy and simplifying our business.

Neil Mehta: Okay. Alright, thank you. And then on the quarter itself, the Refining capture rates probably came in a little bit lower than street was expecting. Was that just timing effects with crude? Or is there anything else that we need to keep in mind as we think about what it all means for 4Q and 2024?

Kevin Mitchell: Yes, Neil. It’s Kevin. Let me just make a couple of comments on that. So we did have a few things moving around in the quarter that impacted capture to the negative. And so we saw regional price differentials that differed from the benchmark that we use in terms of the market crack. And so those worked against us that during the quarter, for example, the Chicago market, which became disconnected from the group, and we move product into that market. We also had an impact from the effect of inventory hedges in a rising price environment. So that crack component, this all showed up in the central corridor. We expect about $100 million to $150 million of that to come back in the fourth quarter as we see the physical gain on those barrels that offsets the paper loss that we took in the third quarter.

Neil Mehta: It’s very helpful. Thank you, Kevin.

Operator: Thank you, Neil. Roger Read from Wells Fargo Securities, please go ahead. Your line is open.

Roger Read: Yes, thank you. Good morning and appreciate the winding up of the changes here, improvements, I should say, overall. The question I have, to start with, you mentioned $3 billion of target disposition proceeds, but you’ve upped your overall EBITDA target. So I’m just curious, what EBITDA is associated with those ops, if any? And what does that imply about the sort of extra growth in the overall performance of your raised EBITDA target?

Kevin Mitchell: Yes. Roger, it’s Kevin. So just for clarity on that point, the growth that we laid out there, the incremental $1 billion is excluding the impact of dispositions. And so clearly, dispositions will reduce EBITDA. We’re not giving any guidance on that at this point in time. I mean, you can come up with an assumption on where you may think we will be selling assets and make a multiple assumption from that. But we’re not giving any specific guidance on the dispositions, other than we expect to realize in excess of $3 billion.

Roger Read: Okay. And I assume based on the idea that there is always a larger pool of assets that could be sold, that’s why it’s unclear right now what the net impact would be.

Kevin Mitchell: That’s right. We will do what makes the most sense for us.

Roger Read: Okay. And then a follow-up to Neil’s question on Refining margins, but maybe looking forward rather than back. The shift here, where diesel margins are well above gasoline, I think about generally a diesel yield improvement for you versus industry standards. Is that the right way to think about Q4 here? Or is there anything else that we should be paying attention to that would work against that?

Rich Harbison: Yes, Roger, this is Rich. As we’ve indicated over the years, our kit has shifted towards distillate production. There is nothing that’s changed on that, other than some of our flexibility to move back and forth between gasoline and distillate. So we still maintain a kit that is favorable to distillate margins in the market.

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