DINO

Welcome to HF Sinclair Corporation's First Quarter 2026 Conference Call and Webcast. Hosting the call today is Franklin Myers, who is serving as Chief Executive Officer of HF Sinclair. He is joined by Vivek Garg, Acting Chief Financial Officer, Steven Ledbetter, EVP of Commercial, Valerie Pompa, EVP of Operations, and Matt Joyce, SVP of Lubricants and Specialties. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star one on your touch tone phone. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing the pound key. If you should require an operator assistance, please press star zero. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up.

Additionally, we ask that you pick up your handset to allow for optimum sound quality. Please note that this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Craig Biery, Vice President, Investor Relations. Craig, you may begin.

Thank you, Matt. Good morning everyone welcome to HF Sinclair Corporation's first quarter 2026 earnings call. This morning, we issued a press release announcing results for the quarter ending March 31st, 2026. If you would like a copy of the earnings press release, you may find it on our website at hfsinclair.com. Before we proceed with remarks, please note the Safe Harbor disclosure statement in today's press release. In summary, it says statements made regarding management expectations, judgments, or predictions are forward-looking statements. These statements are intended to be covered under the Safe Harbor provisions of federal security laws. There are many factors that could cause results to differ from expectations, including those noted in our SEC filings. The call also may include discussion of non-GAAP measures. Please see the earnings press release for reconciliations to GAAP financial measures.

For any forward-looking non-GAAP measures, the company is unable to provide a reconciliation without unreasonable effort due to the unpredictability and uncertainty of certain items. Please note any time-sensitive information provided on today's call may no longer be accurate at the time of any webcast replay or rereading of the transcript. With that, I'll turn the call over to Franklin.

Okay. Thank you, Craig. Let me add my welcome to all those on this call to the HF Sinclair first quarter earnings in 2026. First, let me express my gratitude to the over 55,000 employees of the company for making the first quarter a good one. As most of you know, first quarters for HF Sinclair can sometimes be challenging due to weather, due to softness in economic conditions in our markets, and typically, we have turnaround activities at some of our assets. This quarter, our operations ran safely in compliance and reliably, which you'll hear more about in a minute. This reflects the continuing improvement in our operations and is a testament to the focus on excellence by our employees. Thank you, employees of HF Sinclair.

During the first quarter, our CEO and CFO both took leaves of absence as previously described in our annual report on Form 10-K. The board has the task of addressing the future leadership of the company and will do so with diligence and care. In the meantime, I will continue to serve as CEO and president until decisions in that regard are made. In deference to the ongoing board process, we will not address those events and that process today. The current executive leadership team and the other employees of the companies are committed to continuing the successful performance of the company, and it is performing at a very high level. Please keep in mind that much of the strategy of the company began in 2020, 2021 and 2022 with the acquisition of our Puget Sound Refinery and the merger with Sinclair.

My presence as CEO is to help maintain the focus and commitment to the strategy as set by the board. I'll remind you that I've been chairman through that entire time since 1919, and this is an ongoing process that we're pursuing with diligence. Our employees continue to work daily with a desire to operate at a high level to improve our company for the benefit of all constituencies. Before moving on to the reports of the others, we have to acknowledge the military conflict in the Middle East. Our thoughts and prayers go out to members of our armed forces involved as those innocent individuals caught up in harm's way. We continue to hope for a peaceful resolution.

The conflict, though, has created substantial and material disruption to the crude oil and other necessary products for the advancement of markets around the world. This disruption creates volatility in the markets we serve. The company remains focused on addressing any challenges we have to serve our customers. In that regard, we remain very nimble as we see events occur because we see volatility in the markets that we've got to address on a constant basis. It's one that's not without challenge, not without challenge within our industry or our company.

I believe our team is up to the challenge. I think that we will see and continue to see as others have, stress in the world as a result of this. We've got to just address it to make sure we do our part to try to resolve that stress. With that, I'll turn it over to Steve to take us through some of the commercial issues.

Thank you, Franklin. Thank you all for joining our call. During the first quarter, we delivered strong results across each of our business segments, supported by safe and reliable operations and good commercial optimization. With our continued operational focus, we recorded an excellent safety quarter with no tier 1 process safety events, despite the heavy turnaround load and harsh winter weather season. We are pleased with these results and remain committed to progressing our operational initiatives. Let me cover our business highlights.

In refining, we completed two turnarounds at our Puget Sound and Woods Cross refineries. Despite the heavy turnaround and harsh winter weather we faced, we were pleased with our reliability performance, running crude charge at the upper end of our guided runs, coming in at 613,000 barrels per day. We do not have any planned turnaround scheduled until the El Dorado turnaround commences towards the back end of the third quarter. We are encouraged by the refining margin strength in our regions and believe that we are well-positioned to capture the current market conditions as we head into summer driving season. Our focus remains on our strategic initiatives and improving throughput, capture, and operating expenses. In our marketing segment, we're making great progress with the integration of our previously announced Green Trail Fuels JV.

We believe this joint venture will allow us to accelerate growth of the Sinclair brand and expand our footprint while growing the earnings of this business with exposure to other high-value adjacent revenue streams. We added 25 branded sites in the quarter, with more than 100 sites with contracts signed and expected to come online over the next six to 12 months. We still expect to grow our number of branded sites by approximately 10% annually. In our renewables segment, we were very pleased with our team's ability to optimize our business, both commercially and operationally, in order to capture the favorable market conditions in the period and deliver strong financial performance.

Strong delivery of our feedstock strategy, molecule high grading, and operational excellence have set our business up well to capture favorable market conditions. We remain optimistic that the LCFS, D4 RINs, and producers' tax credits will continue to support the renewable diesel margins. In our lubricants segment, we have experienced unprecedented cost inflation across our product portfolio, both in magnitude and the rate at which it occurred. In response, the team moved quickly to implement multiple pricing actions aimed at recovering these higher costs in an efficient and disciplined manner. We've seen early progress from these initiatives and fully expect to continue pursuing additional price recovery actions throughout the second quarter as elevated cost pressures persist. Despite the volatility in the broader global supply environment, our supply chain currently remains secure. We have been able to source the necessary feedstocks to supply our customers at historical rates.

During the quarter, we returned $167 million in cash to shareholders, consisting of $91 million in regular dividends and $76 million in share repurchases. Since the Sinclair acquisition in March 2022, we have returned over $4.9 billion in cash to shareholders and have reduced our share count by over 66 million shares. Today, we also announced that our board of directors declared a regular quarterly dividend of $0.50 per share, payable on June 2nd, 2026 to holders of record on May 11th, 2026. On the strategic front, we continue to advance the evaluation and planning of our multi-phased project to leverage our advantage, logistics, and production positions in the Rockies to meet the growing needs of Western markets.

At the end of our Q4 PSR turnaround, we successfully brought on another project enabling flexibility to swing approximately 7,000 barrels per day between diesel and jet, depending on the market environment. This is paying off given the current market conditions. We continue to advance the El Dorado vacuum distillation project to provide improved reliability and yield while allowing up to an incremental 10,000 barrels per day of heavy crude into the mix. This project is expected to come online as part of the fall turnaround. In closing, our strategic priorities have not changed. We will continue to work towards improved safety, reliability, and cost efficiencies in refining and renewables and unlocking our integrated value chain while growing our marketing, midstream, and lubricant segments.

We expect the current favorable market environment to continue into the summer driving season, and we believe our diversified portfolio of assets is well-positioned to generate strong cash flows. With that, let me turn the call over to Vivek.

Thank you, Steve. Good morning everyone. I'm Vivek Garg, Acting Chief Financial Officer, and I'm pleased to be on the call with you today. Let's begin by reviewing HF Sinclair's financial highlights. Today, we reported first quarter net income attributable to HF Sinclair shareholders of $648 million or $3.56 per diluted share. These results reflect special items that collectively increased net income by $521 million. Excluding these items, adjusted net income for the first quarter was $127 million or $0.69 per diluted share compared to adjusted net loss of $50 million on -$0.27 per diluted share for the same period in 2025. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $426 million compared to $201 million in the first quarter of 2025.

In our refining segment, excluding the lower of cost or market inventory valuation adjustment benefit of $604 million, first quarter Adjusted EBITDA was $55 million compared to -$8 million in the first quarter of 2025. This increase was principally driven by higher adjusted refinery gross margins in the West region and increased refined product sales volume, which were partially offset by lower adjusted refinery gross margins in the MidCon. Small refinery RINs waiver granted by the EPA in the fourth quarter of 2025 increased adjusted refinery gross margin by $21 million in the first quarter of 2026.

Crude oil charge averaged 613,000 barrels per day for the first quarter compared to 606,000 barrels per day for the first quarter of 2025. In our renewables segment, excluding the lower of cost or market inventory valuation adjustment benefit of $68 million, we reported Adjusted EBITDA of $133 million for the first quarter compared to negative $17 million for the first quarter of 2025. This increase was principally driven by increased sales volume and higher adjusted renewable gross margins in the first quarter of 2026 as a result of the narrowing of BOHO spread, higher RINs prices, and the recognition of significantly more producers tax credit benefits compared to the first quarter of 2025.

First quarter results included prior year production tax credit benefits of $49 million that were recognized following the February 2026 proposed ruling by the United States Department of the Treasury and IRS. Total sales volumes were 52 million gallons for the first quarter of 2026 as compared to 44 million gallons for the first quarter of 2025. Our Marketing segment reported an EBITDA of $28 million for the first quarter compared to $27 million for the first quarter of 2025. Total branded fuel sales volume were 325 million gallons for the first quarter of 2026 compared to 294 million gallons for the first quarter of 2025. Our Lubricants and Specialties segment reported Adjusted EBITDA of $103 million for the first quarter compared to Adjusted EBITDA of $85 million for the first quarter of 2025.

The increase was primarily driven by a large FIFO benefit in the first quarter of 2026 as compared to the first quarter of 2025, partially offset by the dislocation between rising feedstock costs and product sales price increases. During the first quarter of 2026, we recognized a FIFO benefit of $53 million compared to $8 million in the first quarter of 2025. Our midstream segment reported Adjusted EBITDA of $111 million in the first quarter compared to $119 million in the same period of last year. This decrease was primarily driven by marginally higher operating costs resulting from a fuel contamination incident at one of our product terminals in Colorado in the first quarter of 2026.

Net cash provided by operations totaled $457 million in the first quarter, which included $119 million of turnaround spend. HF Sinclair's capital expenditures totaled $102 million for the first quarter. As of March 31st, 2026, HF Sinclair's total liquidity stood at approximately $3.15 billion, which includes a cash balance of approximately $1.15 billion and our undrawn $2 billion unsecured credit facility. As of March 31st, we had $2.8 billion debt outstanding with a debt-to-cap ratio of 22% and net debt-to-cap ratio of 13%. Now let's go through some guidance items. With respect to capital spending for the full year of 2026, there's been no change.

For the second quarter of 2026, we expect to run between 600,000 to 630,000 barrels per day of crude oil in our refining segment, which reflects planned maintenance activities at Parco and Navajo and unplanned maintenance at El Dorado in the period. We are now ready to take questions from the audience. Matt, if you could switch over, please.

Your first question is from Matthew Blair with TPH. Matthew, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning everyone. Your renewables results were quite strong, even excluding the PTC benefit that rolled through. Could you talk about some of the drivers in Q1 that helped pushed up profitability? Then for the second quarter, what do you think is a good target for utilization, and would you expect, you know, even stronger margins just given that some of the indicators have really moved up in the second quarter? Thank you.

Hey Matt, this is Steve. I'll take that one. We were quite pleased with the performance of our RD business. As we've been on this journey to make this business come into profitability, we've said we need it in poor market conditions to get it to break even or slightly positive. We achieved that coming out of 2025, now the market has turned in our favor. I will tell you, though, that is not all market-driven, as we've taken a very hard line and look at our feedstock strategy, that's getting much closer direct to sources near our facilities and making sure that we're prompt and hedging without anything out into the future. From a feedstock strategy, that's working very well.

I'll tell you the market placement strategy we've had is working, where we're finding other markets to take products to and not be completely dependent on the California market. We're finding ways to leverage our integrated value chain, both in the Pacific Northwest as well as putting product up into Canada. The last one is really OpEx discipline, and that is ensuring that we've taken structural costs out. We have more of that to do, and we're seeing the results there. Optimizing our catalyst to ensure that it performs on the longer runs, and we're getting the yields out of it. All of that combined with the overall market favorability, as you know, changed in 2026 to where we are structurally more balanced with domestic Feedstock and domestic demand. I would say other helps to that is that just the distillate macro in general has found increased value in both the regular ULSD and CARB market. We're pleased with what we're doing. There's more to do there. I think your second question was around our utilization in Q2. We're not gonna guide specifics, but we do believe that we will optimize particular co-located kits to the best value, and we see that being north of 70% utilization net of all the planned events that we have. We're pretty excited about what our renewables business looks like now as well as for the rest of the year.

Sounds good. Could you also address the lubricants market going forward? Are you seeing global supply reductions as a result of the Iran war? You know, looks like some of the pricing indicators have started to move up, and maybe you could just talk a little bit about, you know, your ability to capture potentially higher margins in lubricants going forward.

Yeah. Hey. Hey, Matt, it's Matt Joyce. I'll take that one. We are seeing a really great market move right now as we have experienced this rapid and sharp cost increase throughout the back end of the first quarter. We do see that being a protracted movement into the second and third quarter. Based on our locations where we produce and how we source our raw materials, we have been able to secure all of the needed raw material supply for the balance of the year.

We're able to be supplying our customers at the rates that they're requesting of us, and we have seen some growing demand that we anticipate will be with us through the second and third quarters at least of the year as this crisis prolongs itself and until the straits open up. We feel that we're in a really good position to take advantage of those. We've also implemented multiple pricing actions to offset those higher raw material costs and work to capture that on the bottom line. We'll look to see that come into place later this year as well.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Manav Gupta with UBS. Manav, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Good morning. My question is specifically for Steven Ledbetter. Steve, you have been working very hard for some time at DINO, bringing about change, and we see that in the midstream results, we see that in the lube's results. I'm just trying to understand with this management shakeup, has anything changed from your end? Is the strategy the same you're following? How are you going about building those two businesses as you were before the management shakeup took place?

Thanks, Manav. We're not going to comment necessarily on management change, but I think your point is a good one, and that is to reinforce the fact that the executive team that was here to build the strategy is still here and is executing diligently upon that. That includes making sure that we're improving and focusing on our reliability and our safety performance, as well as leveraging the integrated value chain and growing those various segments. You specifically asked about midstream. Midstream, we feel, is a key linchpin to unlock that integrated value chain, and we're putting more value and molecules on our kit to supply our refineries as well as take products to our regions.

We've talked about our multi-phase project to really unlock our Go West strategy. We think that's just the tip of the, you know, tip of the spear here. I'll maybe ask Matt to talk a little bit about what we're doing from a lubes perspective specifically.

Yeah, Manav, as you know, we've continued to high grade the molecules that we have on hand. We're moving into more specialized finished lubricants and specialties applications. We continue to execute on our plan of tucking in those opportunities for acquisition like you've seen with Industrial Oils Unlimited over the past several months. We're gonna look for those opportunities going forward and continue to refine the business and be that value-added supplier to our customers that deliver something that's distinct and sticky as far as a value proposition is concerned.

Manav, let me add one thing. This is Franklin. Part of the reason I'm here is to give the executive team the confidence to continue with the plan and making sure that they have the tools and the resources to continue with the actions that Steve and Matt mentioned. There is no letup on the focus of what we're trying to do here.

Perfect. My quick follow-up is a little bit on the refining macro. You saw some of the global majors report today morning and with not such good earnings on international assets and then guiding down volumes on international assets. That's a function of crude availability. When we come to somebody like a DINO, I'm assuming you are not fighting those issues. The crude availability is not an issue for you, so you can run hard into the second and the third quarter. If you could talk a little bit also about your strategic asset, Puget Sound, because a lot of shortages are happening in California. How can you use that asset to supply to the market in California? Look, your pipeline or the competitor pipelines will take time, but in the near term, you can get to California through Puget Sound.

If you could talk about some of those dynamics.

Okay, thanks, Manav. The from a global perspective and a crude supply element, we don't face those challenges. As you know, you know, the U.S. refinery complex is probably the most advantaged globally with the most secure crude supply outlets, and we're connected to multiple hubs and run various different grades of crude from Canada to the North Slope, to many different types of domestic light sweet crudes at Cushing. We gather and buy our own crude in the Southwest and use that both at our Artesia refinery and move some of that up into the MidCon to run at our El Dorado refinery. From a crude supply perspective, some of the challenges that our competitors are facing, we do not face. Just from a supply. Does it impact the overall price of the crude as it looks to compete to different markets?

It certainly does. We've been successful in ensuring that we have a proper approach to buying that crude and that the cracks are supportive to whatever inflationary pressures are associated with the global dynamics. We don't feel concerned about that, relatively speaking to some of the other global issues and are in a good spot to go take advantage of our position. As far as Puget goes, as you mentioned, you know, the West Coast has, and PADD 5 particularly, has been considerably tight. It's getting tighter. We, we talked about our project to go get there, and as you mentioned, it's a few years out. You've seen imports reduce as Asian producers have had to curtail runs, and so that just continues to tighten the market.

Our approach to get to California, we put in a flexibility project last year that allows us to produce and swell the gasoline pool to either make CARB or sell high-valued unfinished components, which to this point has been more profitable. We're moving alkylate out of Puget into the gasoline pool in California as just one element. Further, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we put a project in to swing diesel to jet depending on the market environment, and that's paying off greatly, not only to the West Coast, but also into markets in Latin America. We see the West Coast as a real good opportunity. It's tightened up, and we look forward to taking further advantage of that as we develop some of these projects.

Manav, part of your question was you said run the assets hard. I wanna make sure that you understand that we're gonna run reliably and not push our assets. That's more important to us to make sure we're up as opposed to you trying to unduly stress our assets to increase volumes.

No, my point was. Some of your peers globally are being forced to run assets at 40% and 50% because of crude availability. That was my question.

Yeah, that is not the case.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs. Neil, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. I just want to build on Manav's question around crude and specifically around two grades. Brent/WTI has seen enormous volatility here, just how are you guys thinking about the setup for that spread in particular? WCS, the outlook, as we think about the second quarter, but also the balance of the year. Franklin, I had a management question for you as a follow-up.

All right. This is Steve. I'll take the first one. Franklin will take the hard one. Okay. TI, what we've seen is, yeah, the spread is widening given the geopolitical elements. Q1, we saw, you know, quite a bit higher than $5, we think that that, you know, will probably continue to be the case. The curve on TI basically remains very steeply backwardated. As things change through this geopolitical event, that curve moves, it flattens out. We're in a position to take, to, you know, not have an issue as far as the spread goes from a Brent/WTI. I think the backwardation is something that we're watching very closely.

As you know, we pay a role in steep backwardation, and that will impact our laid-in crude, but we're managing that carefully to go get into the right markets to ensure we can get the margin coverage for that increased cost. You asked about WCS. I think WCS has been a bit wider. You know, some of the pipes coming out of Canada have shown some apportionment, and I think ultimately egress will become a problem. I think some of that is also competing with the Venezuelan crude that is now on the market, and that will keep some of the width there. We see that, you know, from a Q1 to Q2, we're looking at a 14-ish dollar spread.

Remember, we're connected with pipe space right out of Hardisty all the way into our assets in the MidCon, and we take advantage of that. It'll depend on, you know, what happens longer term. As you've seen, probably as recently as last night, a presidential permit signed, there are multiple projects being contemplated to bring additional crude out of Canada, either for domestic use or export. As that happens, that could force some pressure on the differentials longer term. There's a lot of time between now and then, and many things can happen on what project goes or what doesn't.

We're evaluating all of them, and I think we're in a really good position to go take advantage of our heavy oil value chain at multiple sites.

That's really clear. Thanks.

You got a question for me?

Yeah. Yeah. It's just.

You have a question?

Yeah. Yes, sir. My, my follow-up is just on just how you're thinking about the process by which identifying the permanent CEO and CFO. I know there's sensitivity around this, and we don't wanna litigate the past, but just, you know, how is the board approaching this? What are the characteristics you're looking for in a long-term leader? Are you looking internal? Are you looking external? Just anything you can provide the market would be great.

I appreciate your question. We're not gonna get into that. We do have a process ongoing. When we're in a position to share that, we will. Let me just make a comment quickly on our board. We have a very experienced, very high-functioning board that, and I've been in communication with them, you know, regularly about this very question. When we've got something, we'll tell you. In the meantime, let me assure you, and some of you don't know my background, I spent 21 years in the C-suite at two different S&P 500 companies at all different levels. I'm not, I'm not a paper CEO with this group. They know I'm here every day making sure it's going forward.

I don't know that that reassures you, but the strategy we put in, we're executing on, and there's no letup. The process will go forward, and we will find an excellent leader for this company in due course. We're not gonna dawdle on it. We are looking at it very seriously.

Okay. All right. Thanks, Franklin.

Your next question comes from the line of Joe Laetsch with Morgan Stanley. Joe, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning team and thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to go back to the macro, and just given where product prices are today, can you talk a bit about the demand trends that you're seeing within your system? Are you seeing any signs of demand destruction on gasoline or diesel? Maybe stepping back and more broadly, how are you viewing the balances today from both the supply and demand perspective in the MidCon and the Rockies?

I'll take that one. Joe, this is Steve. As far as demand goes, what we saw in the U.S. just for the quarter, you know what, U.S. demand was down in gas around 2%, but distillate was up around four. In our regions that we operate in, a bit more favorable, gas was slightly up and diesel was also up. I'll tell you that given the prices, one thing that we're watching, I think you're intimating, is price elasticity. If you look at through our service centers, we're down year-over-year same store sales around 2%, but that's against a backdrop that you'll see in some of the consultants' reports in OPIS down about 4.5%. Our portfolio high grading is working. We're outperforming that.

We have started to see some cuts in terms of travel, particularly as jet continues to price up. As you know, the global dimension is heavy distillate supply shortage. They were low, both diesel and jet, and they're getting lower. Most of the disruption in the Middle East, they're very much heavy distillate producers. On the backdrop, that paints a favorable margin picture, but it also creates some concern on what permanent demand destruction may actually happen. We're watching that very closely. It's still a bit too early to tell, but we are seeing some slight consumer softness as we head into the driving season as people are gonna go make those decisions. And we'll just to see how that plays out.

I do believe a prompt resolution is going to be more beneficial for the global energy complex than a lingering one. As far as it goes with regards to the MidCon, as you know, in Q1, we had Winter Storm Fern, which somewhat put a pin in the demand bubble and created a massive supply glut. Prices were quite low, which led to us rationalizing crude runs and economic sparing in the MidCon. As it got toward the latter half or latter part of March and what we're seeing in Q2, that inventory picture's really tightening up. I think U.S. exports of clean product hit a record.

There's products moving into the Gulf to go back supply where they can't get the supply and their current inventory stocks are very low. Rockies is a little bit of a different story. It's relatively balanced to tight. I will tell you that we have you know, a light planned maintenance schedule across the complex in the U.S. between Q2 and Q3, so any major disruption will further create a whipsaw in terms of total product supply and demand imbalances. It's a pretty tight situation, but we look forward to the strength of the MidCon and the Rockies and our regions for the balance of the year.

Thanks, Steve. That's helpful. Following up on your comments on marketing, that segment continues to string together some pretty nice quarters. Could you just talk about some of the outperformance during 1Q and how you see the segment shaping up for the rest of the year here?

Yeah. You know, our marketing business is, as we've talked about, one of the untapped values of the Sinclair acquisition has been really leveraging that brand and the strength. We had another good quarter in Q1. You know, $28 million+ of the EBITDA. We brought on another new set of sites. This is the value associated with that brand is by getting the full share of what the brand should command. We're growing volume. We saw our volume grow year-over-year 10%+, which is good. We're seeing that. We've talked about high grading the portfolio. We're beating the same store sales versus what the market has.

We're taking the portfolio approach of getting to the right areas and maybe culling some of the assets that maybe don't fit with our overall brand premise moving forward. There's growth in our license business as well. DINO has a significant pull on it, and we've yet to go fully develop that. Our Green Trail JV is just the first step of where we think that's truly going to accelerate our growth in the brand, but also the adjacencies of the higher valued revenue streams we're excited about. You know, it's really just blocking and tackling and being very purposeful about where we're strategically placing our bets, and we see more upside as we move forward, and our business is becoming a material business to the company.

Everybody loves the green dinosaur. It's a great brand. You need to join in.

Definitely agreed. Thanks for the time. Appreciate it.

Your next question comes from the line of Phillip Jungwirth with BMO. Phillip, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning. I did want to ask about the Bridger Pipeline expansion, which you referenced earlier with the approval news yesterday. This goes right down to Guernsey. Assuming this gets built, how far would you expect this to change feedstock sourcing for your refineries or impact crude diffs? Separately, just anything to note on market impact from the Double H conversion from crude to NGLs that follows a similar route?

Yeah, I'll talk a little bit about the Bridger Pipeline. Of course, bringing more crude into Guernsey will allow some more flexibility into the hub. Whether it goes or not or the level and we don't know. We're not gonna speculate on that necessarily, but one thing that we've been focused on in terms of our crude slate flexibility is widening the crude basket, which allows us to go take advantage of dislocated crudes when they present themselves. As you know, we're connected to the hub that connects some of our Rockies kit as well down to the MidCon. To the extent that we see market opportunity, yeah, we'll evaluate.

Whether we participate or not, we think we're in a good position because of the flexibility that we put into place to widen our crude basket as well as our connectivity. Your other question was on? Sorry, could you repeat that one?

The Double H conversion, from crude to NGLs.

Yeah. I don't know that it has a relevant impact on our specific crude supply set. Does it do something to the overall market differentials? We'll just have to see when we contemplate some of these other projects coming online. I don't think it's a material impact to us either way.

Okay, great. Then you did repurchase some shares in the quarter. Just how are you thinking about capital returns going forward, until you have more permanent leadership in place and should we just stick with the historical framework? Just how tactical do you plan to be just given the strength in the equities here in the second quarter?

Yeah, that's a good question, Phil. Thank you. I'll take that. This is Vivek. In terms of our share repurchases, we'll continue to execute on our capital allocation strategy. We'll opportunistically repurchase shares under our 2024 share repurchase program. We don't typically guide on the pace or the amount of buybacks, but as we've always shared with everyone that, you know, we'll continue to execute on our capital allocation strategy, which is driven by free cash flow, capital returns, and balanced capital allocation.

Thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of Doug Leggate with Wolfe Research. Doug, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning everyone. Thanks for taking my question. Two things, guys, if you don't mind. First of all, SREs, there's the new RVO is, I think, gonna be confirmed here in the next several weeks. Just wanna get your perspective as to, given where RINs are currently, what that might mean for you guys, if there's some way to quantify that, and expectations of duration, at least through the Trump administration, if that's possible. My follow-up is really on product swings. I think in your backyard, gasoline has started to get, you know, the whole slate appears to be getting better. Jet fuel's obviously been extraordinary. What kind of flex do you have to move towards, you know, where the advantage products might be today?

What, you know, what does that look like for you guys in terms of incremental yield?

All right, Doug, this is Steve. I'll take that one. From an SRE perspective, as you mentioned, the RVO being finalized, what are, what is our viewpoint? I mean, you've seen the RIN and the RVO run to unprecedented records this year. We believe that the RVO is becoming an extreme burden. It's now projected to be $50 billion a year or equivalent of $0.30 per gallon. Don't know that the latest RVO is helpful to energy costs for either the industry or the consumer. You know, what that valuation really looks like for us, we're not gonna guide. You know, we believe in the SRE, the SRE was contemplated as part of the original RFS for a reason. That's to help the smaller refineries who are disproportionately advantaged here.

You know, we believe in that program. We're not gonna speculate. You know, we have petitions out currently for five of our refineries that we think qualify under the contemplated plan. We're not gonna talk about value necessarily, but we do believe that it could be a material relief to the burden that we're facing. How long this thing goes and the duration, you know, there's considerable fight going on associated with the validity, legitimacy, the frame and the shape of the program moving forward, but we're actively involved. Our interest will be measured, and our interest will be part of the discussion and the solution moving forward. That's generally our thinking on the RVO.

Again, the SRE piece is something we believe in, and we will continue to advance and go after that under the current framework of the program. As far as product swings go, yeah, I think you're right. You know, we mentioned the PSR project to be able to move and swing between distillate and jet. Both of those products are quite good. The difference between jet and market versus distillate on the West Coast, those are somewhat at parity. Jet has been very strong. We have the ability to swing anywhere from 10% between gas and distillate across the entire fleet, and we're in a max distillate mode now.

Having said that, we also believe that our value chain will allow us to run heavier oil and it'll take care of our retail asphalt business, which enhances our overall margin production. We're going and trying to ensure that we're at the top end of those yield curves and running as much premium as we can. We have the ability to go flex. Right now it's a max distillate mode, but we are watching it very carefully.

Right. Thank you, guys.

Your next question comes from the line of Jason Gabelman with TD Cowen. Jason, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hey, thanks for taking my questions. Franklin, you mentioned running your refineries responsibly, which is prudent given the margin environment. In the past, DINO has talked about unlocking capacity within the system that would be worth an additional refinery in terms of size. Is that still an aspiration for the company, or is the 600,000 barrel a day to 630 range kind of the upper end of where you expect to run?

We have had recent and active conversations of reinvestment into some of our assets to try to increase the throughput over time, not immediately. It, it is something where Let's think about the sustainability of DINO. We have to look at these assets and understand what our markets demand today, but what they will demand in the future. As we look at that, and we have free cash flow, some goes back to the shareholders, but some will need to be reinvest, not just for maintenance, but for improving the complex of our assets. Yes, the board will take that up. In fact, it's an item we're gonna take up here as we look at the long-term planning.

Great. Yeah

I don't wanna be held to a volume of where we get to. You know, that's gonna depend on a lot of planning. There is opportunity, we believe, to increase.

Yeah, maybe just.

Okay.

Quick follow-on to that.

Okay.

From an overall value, we launched, you know, a few business improvement programs. We've said our key imperatives are to improve reliability and our EHSS performance. We're seeing that quarter-over-quarter, so we're starting to see the green shoots, as well as unlocking the value of the integrated value chain, and we're starting to see that. Some of the projects that we've invested in, we talked about the PSR project, we talked about the Vac Tower project at El Dorado. Both of those are going to improve our yield as well as capture in terms of generating more value for the same throughput that we're putting through our KIS. Crude flexibility, all of those things that we've talked about in the past in terms of optimization, we believe there's value to be had there, and we're seeing some benefits start to show up as a result.

Great. My, my follow-up is just on M&A or A&D, I should say. The renewable segment certainly had a strong quarter. The margin environment is more constructive. You've seen peers sell down stakes of their renewable diesel businesses. Is that something that you could see doing in the future? Then, I guess more broadly, just M&A comments on the refining landscape would be welcomed as well. Thanks.

Sure. Let me handle that one. Number one, as a management team and as a board, we're charged with looking at the allocation of capital to the assets that we have and trying to determine which ones pay back the best and lean into those and the ones that are more mature, take cash flow and lean into opportunities. Then C, opportunistically. You've seen in our past, and thank you for this, it gives me a good segue into what I was gonna say to wrap up. Going back in time when we did the acquisitions of PSR and Sinclair, we subsequently did the reacquisition of our midstream business. They're collectively working together, as Steve has talked about, the entire value chain.

When doing that, if you think about what the company has done and grade our report card, we've distributed $4.9 billion, and our market cap today is $12 billion, so think about the ratio of that in four years. In addition to that, our share price has gone from 30 to 60 something. You look at a rate of return on a company compared to most any other investment you have, not in our complex, but broadly in the midcap space or the energy space, we compare favorably with what we've given back. What's happened? What's happened is we've leaned into marketing, which Steve has indicated as we've been growing, and it adds to the value proposition of what we've had.

We've waited out on the renewable space for the weak players to die during weak markets, that's what you do in a capitalistic market. You let the weak hands die, you let the strong ones survive. We're not gonna be, you know, knee-jerk just because we had one good quarter and say, "Let's go run and do something." We've waited through the hard times. Let's go harvest these good times. In midstream, we felt like we needed opportunity to manage midstream more tighter. We've talked about some initiatives. There's some others going on. We're gonna look at that. We've done acquisitions in both marketing and in lubes. We're gonna lean into where we see opportunity and value with our free cash flow. We see bright days ahead for the Sinclair franchise.

When I say love the green dinosaur, you know, it's an affinity brand that people can come to really enjoy, and it's one that our employees are proud to wear on their shirts and uniforms every day. Thank you for this question, giving me a chance to talk about the successes of our company and how we're gonna move forward in the future with this. Craig, do we have anything else?

We do not. I think that concludes our call for today.

Thank you all for being part of our call.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.