Phillips 66 (PSX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. So why don't we get started? We're happy to introduce Mark Lashier, Chairman and CEO of Phillips 66. Mark's been in the role since July of '22. Prior to that, most recently, Mark ran the CPChem business and started his career, I think, with Phillips Petroleum in the late '80s. So Mark, thanks very much for joining us today.

Thanks, John. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. It's a great conference. It's great to be here with everyone. Phillips 66 is a leading diversified integrated downstream energy provider. We believe that we offer a differentiated and attractive investment opportunity. And it's because of the way we've got the differentiated assets integrated together. We've got Midstream, we've got Refining, we've got Chemicals, we've got Marketing and Specialties. And that portfolio of businesses really position us for value creation across the economic cycles. We've got very stable earnings from our Midstream and our Marketing and Specialties businesses that supports the more volatile business in Refining and Petrochemicals. And if you look across that business, we expect to grow our EBITDA from our base in 2022 by $4 billion to $14 billion by 2025. And most of those growth opportunities are outside of Refining. We've got a great Refining business. We are making it better every day but the growth is focused more on Midstream, Petrochemicals, Marketing and Specialties and is about -- 75% of that growth is in those other segments. And we have a compelling returns to shareholder story. We've been returning over 10% distribution yield and committed to returning more than half of our operating cash flow to shareholders as part of our disciplined capital approach. So that's who we are. That's why we're here today to make the case, to make sure that you know what we're all about and that you feel comfortable investing with us.

Great. Well, I think we'll dig in on almost everything you mentioned there. And so maybe we'll start with just sort of a high-level question. The company has gone through a fair amount of change with some inorganic growth on the Midstream side. You had the fold-in of DCP, the acquisition of Pinnacle and then recently announced a sale on the REX pipeline. How do you think about the optimal business mix for the company within your different segments? Would you like to still continue to be bigger in Midstream beyond what you've kind of told us about and is Refining the right size?

Over the last several years, John, we've really honed in our strategy to focus on what really drives value for us. And it's been a consistent strategy. And part of that strategy is around simplifying our business but we also look at assets that may come available in the marketplace, we analyze everything. We look at organic growth, we look at inorganic growth opportunities. And what really drove our DCP integration was to create this wellhead to market strategy. And that's created this backbone and we believe provides us with growth opportunities. And we intend to continue to execute on that strategy because of the growth. As I said, we've got a great Refining business that we tend to get better every day. We have a great Midstream business and the NGL portion of that Midstream business affords us growth opportunities. And if you look at the -- at just that DCP acquisition, we brought in-house an additional $1 billion of earnings through that acquisition. But on top of that, we've been basically capturing synergies. And we originally thought we'd get about $300 million of synergies from that acquisition. We're north of $400 million. So we'll have over $1.4 billion of additional mid-cycle earnings capability because of that acquisition. And that's afforded us to do other things. We recently acquired Pinnacle Midstream and that is a perfect bolt-on to our Midstream business. It increases our G&P assets and assets in the Permian Basin and it really is the kind of things that will help us to continue to provide immediate accretion in earnings. And it affords us some organic opportunities down the road as well. And so we're going to continue to look at growing that NGL wellhead to market position and we're going to look at accretive value-creating opportunities, whether they're organic or inorganic. And then in Chemicals, we continue to grow through CPChem. CPChem has been a great platform over the years. It's got major organic opportunities and we continue to execute those in partnerships that mitigate the risk but afford us to participate in the very good long-term growth fundamentals in petrochemicals. And then if you think about dispositions, when we laid out our strategic -- 6 strategic priorities in 2022, we enhanced those in 2023 last October and included some goals to do some asset dispositions, to monetize some assets that weren't key to our growth strategy, to our core strategy. And we've been doing that. We've been executing on some of those. We expect to generate more than $3 billion in proceeds as we go through those asset dispositions. We've got a lot of high-quality assets, generating good EBITDA that aren't critical to our core strategy. And if there's anyone out there that's interested in capturing the value from those above and beyond what we may be interested in capturing, we're in conversations with them. So there's -- there are more assets that we have than the $3 billion target but we're not in any hurry to sell any of those assets. We're only going to sell them if we're able to get a premium above what we view as the hold value to those assets. And we -- for instance, we just recently divested our 25% interest in the REX pipeline. And we did that for about a 10.2x. And so that's the kind of value that we want to capture. And while it was only coincidental to the Pinnacle acquisition, it did make a nice trade. We divested Midstream assets at a 10.2x and acquired Midstream assets at 5.4 -- about a 5.5x. So that was a pretty good trade. But I would say in the near term, we're probably going to be divesting more assets than we are acquiring but you can see how we're optimizing across our portfolio.

And maybe we can go through the reliability efforts you're making on the refining side. Something that's been an initiative of yours since you took over in '22. You communicated to shareholders at your Investor Day around then. How's progress on the reliability side and on the capture side as well? And what inning do you think you're in overall?

Absolutely. Rich Harbison's favorite saying is, we need to focus on the things that we could control. And that really is where we've refocused the entire refining organization, is to stop worrying about the world -- what the world thinks you should be doing and start focusing on the things that you can control, how we operate our assets, the safe, reliable operation of our assets to make sure that our crude units are available to run. And we have line of sight today on 98% availability from our crude units. And we've got we -- every day, we are doing things to enhance our reliability. And we've got programs in place, small investments to enhance that reliability. And we've run above the industry average utilization rate at about -- since -- I'm sorry, for about 5 quarters. And in 2023, we ran at 92% when the industry was running at about 90%. And so that's our highest average rate since 2019 and that's the result of everyday those refining employees coming in and thinking about what they can do to make those assets run better each and every day. And we've got the entire team focused on that. And then when you think about market capture, in 2022 and 2023, we made a series of small capital investments that allowed us to add over 3% to market capture. And then this year, we've got another set of projects in place that will grow that by another 2%. And so those -- that's real value that we're creating, both from a reliability perspective as well as a market capture perspective. And then last but not least, our refining system had a record clean product yield of 87% last year -- or in last quarter -- I'm sorry, fourth quarter of '23. And that's direct result of the enhancements that we put in place.

And another program you've laid out to investors and we appreciate that you've been very communicative in keeping us up to date on this is, is the cost save program. Maybe you can talk about what you've achieved on the cost side to date and what you've yet to achieve and how you plan to get there?

Absolutely. In late 2021, we conceived and embarked on a business transformation to drive costs out of the business, across the business. Now Refining is our largest business at that time, our greatest asset. So a lot of the effort has been in Refining. But in 2022, we laid out a goal to take $1 billion in costs out of our businesses. And we've blown through that. At the end of last year, we were at $1.25 billion and about $900 million of that was costs. About $300 million of that was in sustaining capital. And so we reset the target for ourselves. And now we're targeting $1.4 billion by the end of this year and we're well on our way, again, about $300 million of that is in sustaining capital efficiencies, $1.1 billion will be in bottom line cost savings. Majority of those cost reductions have come in refining, over $600 million. And that translates into a target of reducing our across-the-board refining cost per barrel by $1 per barrel. And you're seeing that in our results. You see it every quarter and we continue to pursue that. And it's not just about cost. It's about that mindset in our Refining organization I talked about earlier. That they are -- they're actually motivated by the fact that they're becoming a more competitive refiner. 5 or 6 years ago, the world was saying we don't need refining. There's no terminal value in our refining assets. And we've looked our refiners in the eyes and said, the world needs what you do but they need you to do it better every day. You got to be competitive. You got to lower the carbon footprint in what you're doing. And you can own your future if you do that. And so they've bought into it and they're delivering the results that you see. So we've been -- we continue to look for ways to lower costs in our logistics costs, our freight costs, our contracting costs. Across the board, we want to continue to lower costs and look for ways to enhance and capture margin.

And sticking with Refining, one key topic in the industry today is the start-up of TMX. Can you talk about the puts and takes to Phillips 66 on a net basis and you -- probably it's negative for the Gulf Coast and Midcon systems, is probably positive for the West Coast system. How should we think about the impact to PSX? And then how long do you think it will take before TMX fills up and differentials start widening out again?

Well, as many of you know, that Phillips 66 is the largest importer of Canadian crude. So we're right there on the front lines, understanding what's going on there and taking full advantage of what the market affords us. And certainly, yes, there are puts and takes around TMX as more volumes go over the Trans Mountain out to the West Coast. We see opportunities in our West Coast refining system to take advantage of that. But in the meantime, we still see opportunities for crude oil coming into -- to feeding the rest of our refining system from Canada. But certainly, in the near term, it's created some volatility. And there's opportunities for our traders to take advantage of that volatility but we believe that over time, it will settle out into something new. And we're still exporting Canadian crude from the Gulf Coast, though it's -- that's the first thing to get trimmed back and we're watching that. And it has tightened up those margins. But we've got great flexibility in our system and we've got value chain optimization and a commercial organization that can move the right barrels to the right refineries at the right time. And so we're going to take full advantage of whatever the market affords us. Again, we're going to focus on what we can control and then take full advantage of what the market affords us to take advantage of.

And then maybe we can drill in a little on a recent major project startup, which is Rodeo Renewed. It's starting up at somewhat of a challenging time in the RINs and LCFS markets. But operationally, how is the facility running today? Are you still tracking towards full 50 Kb/d run rates by the second quarter end? And then as you start to report quarters with Rodeo Renewed in the numbers, is there going to be a way to sort of parse out the [ RD ] Business from the Refining business?

Yes, John, the commissioning and start-up of the Rodeo Renewed asset is going quite well. The whole process, we have 2 hydrocrackers that we have to commission in addition to the 1 hydrotreater that we already had online, our Unit 250. And the way that we've approached this is, we've taken easier to process renewable feedstocks like soybean oil and commission those hydrocrackers. And now we've done that. Both hydrocrackers are online. But the real differentiating assets part of this conversion are the feed pretreating units. And we are now commissioning and bringing those feed pretreatment units online. And what that will afford us to do is then to convert to lower and lower carbon intensity feedstocks. And that's how you really make money in these assets. You get the lowest carbon intensity feedstocks at the best value and process them through the hydrocrackers. But not every renewable diesel, not every renewable fuel facility has the flexibility that we're going to have because of the front-end pretreating and that's what's key and we're commissioning that part of the assets today. So by the end of this month, we will have proven that we can run up to the 50,000 barrels a day and then we're going to be feathering in the harder-to-process feedstocks going into July and on into August. And so somewhere by the end of the year we'll have full operational capability of the lowest carbon intensity feedstocks in that facility. And we in addition to renewable diesel, we'll be producing 50,000 barrels of renewable fuels but we've got the ability to produce sustainable or actually renewable jet. So about 10,000 barrels a day of the facilities' production will go into renewable jet. You can take 10,000 barrels a day of renewable jet, add 10,000 barrels of traditional jet fuel to get 20,000 barrels a day of sustainable aviation fuel. And the economics are favorable. And when we conceived this project, we didn't have any value in the project for sustainable aviation fuel. And so where we are today, economically, yes, the credits are kind of compressed but feedstocks are lower than we anticipated as well. And so we still see good economic incentives to run and to run full.

And then moving on to a business that you know well, which is the Chemicals business. Ethane-based ethylene margins have recovered off of bottoms but still remain well below mid-cycle. What are your expectations for margins for the remainder of this year? And what do you think we need to see for margins to get back to mid-cycle?

Yes. We've seen margins in CPChem's business compress over the last couple of years, kind of hit bottom last year and they've been on a long sustained recovery. Now the beauty of CPChem is they were built for those difficult times. If you think about a mid-cycle perspective, they were generating about 50% of their mid-cycle earnings at the bottom of the trough and that's pretty good for a commodity petrochemical producer. And the strategy has always been to secure the lowest feedstock cost position possible, build at massive scale and market the products worldwide and that's what they've done. And so they've got a good, an incredible footprint on the U.S. Gulf Coast accessing low-cost ethane in the U.S. market and they've got a similar position in the Middle East, both in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, where they can access low-cost feedstock. So it gives them great resiliency. It gives them great market access around the world. So 95% of CPChem's feedstock is advantaged. So while others have had to rationalize and shutdown assets in Europe, CPChem has been able to run at 100%, 105% across the cycle. Now the challenge right now is that there's more polyethylene capacity than the current demand requires but current demand continues to improve. Demand globally is actually pretty good but there's still an overhang of polyethylene capacity that we're working through. And that's why you're seeing margins slowly improve. I think first quarter the IHS marker was about $0.165 a pound for polyethylene chain margins. Second quarter, it's moved up to $0.175 per pound. It was single digits last year. And so we are seeing that sustained improvement in margins and CPChem is definitely benefiting from that. And they've got 2 growth projects out there, one in the U.S. and one in Qatar, both in conjunction with QatarEnergy. And those projects are coming along well, be online late 2026. So we look forward to continued participation that the growth in the demand for commodity petrochemicals and plastics will provide CPChem.

And then maybe moving to the M&S business. This is a business that's exceeded your prior guidance around mid-cycle levels for a couple of years now. What have been the key drivers of that performance? And then you recently announced a divestiture out of the international part of the segment. Can you talk about that business? And what was noncore about it? And how you feel about the remainder within that international piece?

Absolutely. Our Marketing and Specialties business is really a high-return, low-capital business. We -- I think 2023 return on capital employed was 32% in that business. And we actually have a fairly small footprint at the retail end of that. A lot of our business is wholesale but the retail end is incredibly successful. That's what you see driving those results. And the strategy there has been to participate in retail outlets in very specific locations where we can get a competitive advantage. And we do it very well on the West Coast and in the Midcontinent, where we can pull through our own proprietary refined products, our clean products and capture the retail value. And we do it through joint ventures. Typically, we'll have a partner that knows a great deal about operating convenience stores and how to get the most value out of everything from chewing gum, to milk, to whatever they happen to be selling and having the right locations and so on. And so it's been a great partnership, delivering great value. And on the West Coast, it's actually enabled our last mile strategy around renewable diesel. So we can take renewable diesel from our Rodeo Renewable Energy Complex and take it out to retail customers out in our 76 stations. And we've also acquired some truck fleet loading assets. So we make sure that we can capture the full value and all of the -- and all benefits of producing renewable diesel in that marketplace. And so we're really -- we really do believe in that strategy and are looking for opportunities to continue to employ that strategy. Now you step back and look at the jet business in Austria and Germany, incredible business. It's got, year after year, it's the most highly rated marketing outlets in Germany and Austria. And it's great location, great inside sales. These are almost like neighborhood grocery stores. And so why would you want to sell that? Well, we don't have the same kind of pull-through opportunities there that we have here. There are opportunities that people see on the ground there to go ahead and deploy electric charging stations, which isn't our core competence. We can do it but it's got a significant capital appetite. And so there's a lot of attractiveness to local operators to these assets. And so we're engaging with potential buyers to monetize these assets. We're not going to give them away. It generates about $350 million per year of EBITDA. And we want to get really good value for that EBITDA, so we can redeploy those proceeds for other strategic priorities.

And then maybe we can move on to the balance sheet and capital allocation. Working capital has been a key driver of leverage. Now drifting above the 25% to 30% target range. What should we expect in terms of a pathway for leverage to get back to the top end of that range? And what's your expectation for when you might get back into that range? And could those efforts to kind of move leverage down impact 2025 returns at all?

Yes. We continue to have the same target, the same goal, 25% to 30% but we're comfortable where it is today because we've got the strong balance sheet, the strong cash flow from our diversified portfolio. And we talked about how we're growing EBITDA, we're growing cash flow. So we could -- one part of the story is, we can grow a little bit into a better ratio. But that first quarter inventory build was typical for us. And we had commercial opportunities and we had some operational-driven inventory. And so those over the year will see some cash flow back from that. And while we're above that 25% to 30% target range, we are very comfortable because we see the earnings growth potential and we don't see any threat to our balance sheet. And we've also been leaning into our share repurchases. And it's because, again, we have line of sight on our earnings potential. We completely believe that we'll be growing and we have line of sight on growing the earnings capability at mid-cycle conditions by $4 billion out in 2025. And we're doing things today that will continue to enhance that profitable growth in a positive way. And so if we believe in those earnings, we should be repurchasing shares because the intrinsic value of the shares is out there and still well above where we are today. And so we're comfortable with the balance sheet where we are. But having said that, as we complete some of our divestiture opportunities, we can use some of those proceeds to bolster the balance sheet further as well as repurchase shares and other strategic opportunities.

And then on the asset sales side, we talked about the international marketing piece. What are some other things that could be sort of candidates for the sale program? And could there be a bigger business and maybe increasing the $3 billion target, something like Chemicals could ever be on the table?

I think that -- you saw that we sold the 25% of our REX interest. We sold that for about a 10.2x and we're able to use those proceeds in a very wise way. We've got lot of high-value assets out there that are noncore, much more than the $3 billion. But again, we're going to be very pragmatic about how we go about selling these assets. We're looking for the right buyers that can afford to pay us a premium. We don't -- as far as the Chemicals business, you heard me talk about the incredible advantages that we've built into CPChem and it is a deep part of the franchise and a good value creation. Its return on capital employed approaches 20% over the cycle. And so we -- and it's got direct integration with our Midstream and our Midstream growth aspirations. So Chemicals would be one that would be hard to give up. But having said that, there are other assets that generate good value today that aren't part of our core strategy and that we're having ongoing conversations on multiple fronts. We're not going to talk about specifics but we will say that we do have line of sight to clear that, that $3 billion hurdle and then we'll talk about what might be next after that. And in addition to those asset sales, we're committed to returning 50% of our operating cash flow to shareholders and we're committed to a sustainable growing competitive dividend as well. And so all of those things make us a more robust, very attractive investment opportunity.

We have a little under 5 minutes. Do we have any questions from the audience?

Can you please just talk a little more about broader macro on refining, by market, if you don't mind? It's been a bit weaker than I think most -- I don't know most but than we've might have thought over this period of time, a couple of strong years. But just kind of curious what you're seeing on the supply-demand side or anything?

We are coming off a couple of really robust strong years. I mean we came out of COVID. We came roaring back. We were getting dragged into the White House and the Senate chambers to talk about pain at the pump. I would say that this year, yes, we're seeing a little more lackluster margins in the second quarter. We're not really seeing things pick up like a lot of us expected to. Year-over-year, demand is down a little bit. It's -- I think it is up second quarter versus first quarter. Diesel is struggling a bit. And I think what we believe that we're seeing is a little bit of impact on almost like a bifurcated economy. I think most people in this room feel pretty good about the economy. We feel pretty good about what's going on. But I think that there -- if you're out there more in a working class at the lower end of the economy, you're having to make choices every day about how to meet your mortgage, how to pay higher insurance costs, how to keep food on the table in a much higher cost environment. And we're also seeing a lot of the cash infusions that came out through COVID and through stimulus packages, I think those dollars are being drained out of people's accounts and so they're having to make tougher choices. So part of the economy still can afford to go on great vacations. So jet fuel demand is strong and getting stronger. But diesel demand is an indication that maybe manufacturing is slowing down. Transport of goods, import of goods is slowing down. And that gasoline demand hasn't hit its normal driving season stride yet, so people are driving a bit less. And I think that we're still headed for a soft landing but the lower end of the economy is getting squeezed. And frankly, the Fed action to slow down the economy, that's who's going to feel that pressure. And honestly, as we move towards more expensive energy sources, that's the part of the economy that gets squeezed as well. And so hopefully, we move through that and reverse and that part of the economy can pick up as well as the higher end of the economy.

Are you seeing any evidence of run cuts in Asia, Europe or even here in the U.S.?

I think we're hearing about run cuts in Asia as well as Europe. U.S. has a cost advantage. And so there's little incentive to cut back in the U.S. when you've got a cost advantage over much of the rest of the world. And certainly, you've got somewhat of a logistics advantage today going into Europe versus parts of the world that have to go through the Red Sea or the Suez Canal. Same thing for polyethylene. I think that the U.S. producers going into Europe have a bit of advantage versus even Middle East producers. So there's a lot of unique things going on in the world right now that can be a headwind or can be a tailwind depending on where you sit.

Great. Well, Mark, I think we're under 1 minute. So we're pretty much out of time but I really appreciate your time today. Thanks for coming and have a great rest of your day.

You bet. Thanks a lot, John.