Valero Energy Corporation (VLO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to the 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders of Valero Energy Corporation. We do not expect any technical difficulties today. However, in the event we lose audio or webcast connection and we are unable to provide any updates, please wait for 10 minutes for resolution. Please refer to the Investor Relations section of the company's website for updates. The polls are open. To vote, click on the vote here button at the bottom right corner of the webcast screen. The polls will remain open until the conclusion of the matters for stockholder consideration portion of the meeting. I will now turn the conference over to Valero's Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Joe Gorder. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. On behalf of the Valero team and the Board of Directors, I welcome you to the 40th Annual Meeting of Stockholders. We appreciate your attendance today. My name is Joe Gorder, and I serve as Valero's Chairman and CEO. I'll also serve as Chairman for this meeting. Despite the unusual circumstances and meeting format, I don't want to abandon one of our long-standing traditions at Valero, the tradition of opening our annual meeting with a prayer. Please let me introduce Homer Bhullar, our Vice President of Investor Relations, who will lead us today.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm blessed and truly privileged to work for a great company where God is welcomed into our workplace. Please bow your heads and join me in prayer. Dear God, our heavenly father, we come to you today to give thanks for your many blessings and ask for your wisdom and guidance as we conduct the business before us. We thank you for this beautiful day and for your glorious gift of life. We thank you for this company for blessing us with safe operations and for providing us the resources to serve our employees, customers and our communities. We thank you for our Board of Directors and their counsel, for our leadership team and their guidance, our coworkers, our business partners and all those whose livelihood is connected to this company. We thank you for our shareholders who have placed their confidence and trust in us to grow their resources. Now Lord, we ask you to bless those who are on the front lines working so hard to protect all of us in our communities during these difficult times. God bless them with skill, sympathy and resilience, and protect those who are particularly vulnerable, bringing them comfort and peace. Lord, we ask you to bless the leadership of our country and for your protective hand to be on the men and women who protect and serve in our military. Finally, Lord, please grant us the wisdom to conduct our business and to make decisions that are pleasing to you and that bring glory and honor to your holy name in which we pray, Amen.

Thank you very much, Homer. We'll follow the posted agenda for the meeting, and we'll conduct the meeting in accordance with the rules of conduct that are posted on meeting's website. To begin, in light of public health concerns regarding the COVID-19 outbreak, we're holding our meeting in a virtual format. You'll be able to participate in today's meeting by voting and by submitting written questions through our virtual annual meeting portal. We extend our thoughts to those who have been impacted by COVID-19, and we extend our gratitude to all the health care workers, essential services workers and public health officials who are working so hard to protect all of us and our communities during these difficult times. We now invite you to vote or submit your questions using the Ask a Question tool on the meeting's website. We'll address as many of your questions as possible in the Q&A session that will take place immediately following the inspector's report of the preliminary voting results. Now it's my pleasure to introduce Valero's directors. Each of them is participating with me today. They are: Paulett Eberhart. Paulett is Chair and CEO of HMS Ventures, a company involved with technology services and the acquisition and management of real estate. Kim Greene. Kim is Chair, CEO and President of Southern Company Gas, a subsidiary of the Southern Company. Debbie Majoras. Debbie is Chief Legal Officer and Secretary of the Procter & Gamble Company. Debbie serves as Chair of our Nominating Governance and Public Policy Committee. Eric Mullins. Eric is the Managing Director and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Lime Rock Resources, a company that acquires, operates and improves oil and gas properties. Don Nickles. Don is a retired U.S. Senator from Oklahoma. He currently serves as Chairman and CEO of the Nickles Group, a Washington-based consulting and business venture firm. Phil Pfeiffer. Phil is Of Counsel for the San Antonio Office of Norton Rose Fulbright law firm, where he was partner-in-charge for 25 years and led the office's labor and employment practice. Bob Profusek. Bob is a partner of the Jones Day law firm in New York and heads the firm's global mergers and acquisitions practice. Bob serves as our Lead Director. Steve Waters, Steve is Managing Partner of Compass Partners Capital and Compass partners Advisers and is the former Chief Executive of the Compass Partners European Equity Fund. Randy Weisenburger. Randy is the managing member of the Mile 26 Capital Investment Fund and former Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Omnicom Group Inc. Randy serves as Chair of our Audit Committee. And Ray Wilkins. Ray is the retired CEO of Diversified Businesses at AT&T. Ray serves as Chair of our Compensation Committee. Also with me today for Valero's executive Officers, they are: Lane Riggs, President and Chief Operating Officer; Jason Fraser, Executive Vice President and General Counsel; Gary Simmons, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer; and Donna Titzman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The executive officers will be available with me to answer your questions during the Q&A session. Also present today is Steve Gilbert, Valero's Corporate Secretary. Steve will serve as Secretary for today's meeting. Also, we have Molly Barnes from Valero's Corporate Law Department. Molly has been appointed inspector on all matters to be voted on today. And finally, also with us today is Jason Harris, lead audit partner of KPMG LLP, Valero's independent auditor. I'd now like to take the opportunity to give you a brief company update. We're in the unusual position of having just held our first quarter earnings call yesterday morning, where we discussed the company, our business and the markets in a fair amount of detail. If you haven't already listened to it and would like to learn more about this meeting, I would encourage you to go to the Investor Relations section of Valero's website and listen to the replay of this call. Before I get into the update, I've been asked to read a few sentences about forward-looking statements. The portions of the following update that state management's expectations or predictions are forward-looking statements intended to be covered by the safe harbor provisions under federal securities laws. There are many factors that could cause actual results to differ from our expectations, including those we've disclosed in our filings with the SEC. Now let's begin. At a time like this, with the United States and many countries around the world fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainty about the future, our focus is clearly forward and not on the rearview mirror. But I would be remiss if I didn't share a few 2019 accomplishments that you, as the owners of this company, should be proud of. Operationally, 2019 was a great year for our safety performance, setting records for process safety and refinery employee safety. Safe and environmentally responsible operations facilitate excellent mechanical availability, and we had another outstanding year on this metric, with 97% availability. As is our way, our team continues to demonstrate our commitment to helping others. Our financial support of charities was strong as was our giving a personal time. And our company continues to contribute to our local economies with good paying jobs that we provide. Finally, we continue to honor our commitment to our stockholders, operating the business profitably and by providing excellent returns through the payment of the dividend and share repurchases. So 2019 is history, but it's history that we should all be proud of. Now looking ahead, we see a very challenging environment for our business in the near term. So let me provide you some insight into how we're progressing in the current environment. You've heard me say many times that safety is our #1 priority, and this is especially true today. As a refiner, Valero is classified by our country as critical infrastructure. Our refineries need to operate and to operate the vast majority of our teammates in the plants need to be on site. We've implemented the recommendations of the CDC related to social distancing and aggressive personal hygiene, along with many others. In the office environment, our facilities and at our headquarters, we've encouraged work from home where possible. And we've expanded our employee leave programs and have not laid off or furloughed any of our employees. We have built a great team and we intend to protect it. We have also developed a return-to-work strategy that we'll begin implementing soon. Despite these extraordinary challenges, we're blessed to be able to continue to provide significant financial support to our community partners and the organizations on the front lines that help people most in need in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, through the innovation and efforts of our ethanol operations, we began production of hand sanitizer for distribution to hospitals, emergency responders and other organizations. So we are actively engaged in providing solutions. Now Valero entered this economic downturn in a position of strength, and our team has been thorough, decisive and swift in our operational and financial response to the current environment. The ensuing collapse of economic activity due to stay-at-home orders and travel restrictions has driven down demand for our products, particularly gasoline and jet fuel. With the significant falloff in demand, we've adjusted the throughput rates and have idled gasoline-producing units at our refineries to more closely match product supply and demand. Doing so enables us to better manage our inventories and reduces the possibility that our supply chain will become physically infeasible. We also temporarily idled a number of our ethanol plants and reduced the amount of corn feedstock processed at the remaining plants to address the decreased demand for ethanol. Despite these cuts, we remain positioned to increase throughputs and restart units as demand increases. And financially, we remain well capitalized. We started the year with a solid cash balance. Due to uncertainty in the markets and the attractive rates available to us, we thought it'd be prudent to strengthen our financial position further. We entered into a new $875 million revolving credit facility, which remains undrawn, and we raised $1.5 billion of debt for additional liquidity. We also temporarily suspended our share buybacks in mid-March. And finally, we decided to defer approximately $400 million in capital projects for the year, including the Port Arthur coker and the Pembroke Cogen projects, and we deferred approximately $100 million in tax payments that were due in the first quarter. So we've taken the actions necessary to protect our business, which are consistent with the capital allocation framework that we've had in place for several years. Speaking of the capital allocation framework, there has been no change. We continue to prioritize our investment-grade credit rating and other nondiscretionary uses of capital, including sustaining capital expenditures and our dividend. Notwithstanding project deferrals this year, we continue to invest for earnings growth and are making progress on strategic projects under development. The Diamond Pipeline expansion and the Diamond Green Diesel project should be completed in 2021. And the Diamond Green Diesel joint venture continues to make progress on the advanced engineering review of a potential new renewable diesel plant at our Port Arthur, Texas facility. And last week, our Board of Directors approved a quarterly dividend of $0.98 per share, further demonstrating our sound financial position and commitment to return cash to our investors. The actions that we've taken demonstrate that we continue to prioritize our nondiscretionary capital expenditures and dividend, and you should continue to expect incremental discretionary cash flow to compete with other discretionary uses, primarily organic growth capital and buybacks. Our framework has served us well, and we'll continue to adhere to it in the future. And despite the challenges we're facing, our strategy remains intact. The health, safety and well-being of our employees and the communities where we operate remains our top priority. Our long-standing commitment to operational excellence, prudent management of operations, laser focus on operating cost and advantaged footprint with the flexibility to process a wide range of feedstocks has allowed us to weather this global shutdown. We continue to invest in high-return projects that enable us to control cost and optimize our operations, and in doing so, provide earnings growth. And our commitment to delivering strong shareholder returns remains unchanged and is clearly demonstrated in our results. And while a tremendous amount of uncertainty remains in the near term, our operational and financial flexibility allow us to navigate through today's challenging macro environment and positions us well as our country and the world return to a more normal way of life. Well, that concludes our business update. I would now like to turn to the formal business of the day. I've been instructed that the meeting is duly convened, and a quorum is present. At this time, I will call the formal meeting to order. The polls are open and will remain open until all items of business have been presented. Preliminary vote results will be reported after the items have been presented and the polls have closed. You may vote your shares by clicking on the vote here button on your screen. If you've already voted, you don't need to vote your shares again during this meeting unless you want to change your vote. I will now present the 4 agenda items for consideration by the stockholders at this meeting. The first item on today's agenda is to elect directors to serve a 1-year term expiring at the 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. The 11 nominees for Director are: Paulett Eberhart, Kim Greene, Debbie Majoras, Eric D. Mullins, Don Nickles, Phil Pfeiffer, Bob Profusek, Steve Waters, Randy Weisenburger, Ray Wilkins and myself, Joe Gorder. The second agenda item is to ratify the appointment of KPMG LLP as Valero's independent auditor for 2020. The third item is an advisory vote to approve the 2019 compensation of named executive officers. The fourth item is a vote to approve the 2020 Omnibus Stock Incentive Plan. I will now pause a moment for final voting. [Voting]

Thank you. That concludes the voting. I now declare the polls closed. I will now ask the inspector, Ms. Barnes, to give the preliminary voting results.

Thank you, Mr. Gorder. The inspector reports that each of the 11 nominees for director has received a majority of the votes cast and each is therefore elected as director to serve for a 1-year term expiring at the 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. With respect to the proposal to ratify the appointment of KPMG LLP as Valero's independent auditor for 2020, the proposal received the affirmative vote of a majority of the shares present or represented by proxy and entitled to vote, and it is therefore approved. With respect to the proposal for the advisory vote to approve executive compensation, the proposal received the affirmative vote of a majority of the shares present or represented by proxy and entitled to vote, and it is therefore approved. With respect to approval of the 2020 Omnibus Stock Incentive Plan, the proposal received the affirmative vote of a majority of the shares present or represented by proxy and entitled to vote, and it is therefore approved. Valero will disclose the final voting results for today's meeting in a Form 8-K to be filed with the SEC within 4 days of this meeting.

Thank you, Ms. Barnes. That concludes the formal business for today's meeting, and the formal meeting is now adjourned. At this time, we'll address the questions that you submitted in accordance with the procedures that we posted. We have a question here and it's related to the dividend. It really says that several companies have temporarily suspended their dividend during the COVID-19 pandemic. Is that something that Valero may consider doing as the pandemic continues? And we got the same question yesterday on our earnings call. Let us kind of walk through what we shared then. I'll begin and then we'll let Donna provide some additional color. But we take a long-term view to running our business. And our view is that the challenges that we're facing today, specifically it relates to COVID-19, are short-term in nature and not a fundamental change to the longer-term outlook for our products. And we're already seeing some improvement in demand, and this is going to continue as people return to more normal activities. So let's talk a little bit about how we're managing the business, and I'll begin by referring you to the capital allocation framework, which we really consistently adhere to for many years now. Within that framework, we consider the use of cash for sustaining CapEx, turnarounds in the dividend to be nondiscretionary. Discretionary uses of cash for acquisitions, growth projects and share repurchases will continue to compete for the cash that's left over. Now if you are concerned about this, think about the actions that we've taken to date and how it relates to the framework that I just described. In light of the current market challenges, we have reduced our discretionary capital spending and our share buybacks. And we aren't considering any acquisitions until we see any kind of improvement out there. Now we also have a very capable, proactive Board of Directors and they declared a dividend last Friday. That, I think, gives you some indication that they share the same confidence in our business, in our team that I have. So in my view, we have a very long way to go before we feel the need to take any action on the dividend. Donna, anything you'd like to add?

Sure. So I'll just say we started the year with an extremely healthy balance sheet and a healthy amount of liquidity. And as Joe indicated on his opening remarks, we've added to that liquidity here in April with a new revolver and additional debt offering. So we have -- we're very, very comfortable with our liquidity today, and it's more than sufficient to get us through this short-term area of challenges.

Okay. And then as far as market improvements and so on, Gary and Lane talked a little bit about this on yesterday's call. And it depends where you are in the country, kind of what you're experiencing. And if you're in the Northeast or in some of the areas where the virus has hit much harder, I think you're seeing a very different situation than we're seeing here in the South. And Gary, you've seen our wholesale demand for product move up here over the last several weeks.

Yes. So we probably bottomed out around 55% of our normal demand. Our last 7-day average has been 64% of normal. And yesterday, we moved about 76% of normal product demand through our system. So we're seeing a pretty significant improvement in demand.

So generally, we realize that the recovery is going to be gradual and it will be faster in some places than others. But we're generally encouraged that what we're dealing with, again, is same stuff with our view and it's somewhat short term in nature. So I hope that provides you some comfort around the dividend. Now I don't see any other questions. So what we'd like to do is thank you and conclude the question-and-answer session. And on behalf of Valero's directors, officers and employees, I want to thank you for being with us today. There being no further matters to consider, the Annual Meeting of Stockholders is now concluded. Please stay safe, and have a great afternoon.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines at this time, and have a great day.