Calumet Specialty Products Partners, L.P. (NASDAQ:CLMT) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jason Gabelman: Yes. Understood. Appreciate the color, guys.

Operator: And our next question will be a follow-up from Roger Read with Wells Fargo.

Roger Read: And maybe just turn off of MRL a little bit here and talk about the other core parts of the business. Obviously, the weather issues had an impact. So Q2 sounds like that’s pretty well worked out of the system by the time we get to Q3. But I was just curious, as you look at the overall sort of supply demand that’s been in here, we’ve had a lot of supply chain issues throughout the industry. Just how things are shaking out and how should we think about a normal market because it’s been, what, 3 years since we’ve seen a normal market, I think?

Scott Obermeier: So Roger, this is Scott. I think of a few comments here. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said it feels like we’re more of a normal market now after a couple of highly volatile years, and we agree with that assessment. We feel like our business right now is about as normalized as what has been over the past few years. As we look at sort of what I would say, Roger, is additional context here, sort of the headline summary of our view of the market right now, we do see some moderating demand and some of the normalizing margins going on at that macro level. But we remain bullish overall with our business. We’ve got, as you know, Roger, a diverse portfolio of specialty products, a great base of customers and our unique integrated business model that continues to be strengthened.

Just some final color commentary, Roger. As we look at the business through, I’ll say, 3 lenses: our Performance Brands business, our SPS fuels business and the SPS Specialties business. On the Performance Brand we’ve been commenting for the past couple of years, where we felt like a normal market would be for the business, and we’re in it now. The demand on the retail side is a little soft, but as mentioned in the call, our Industrial business is very strong right now. Margins are, I’ll say, normalized within the business, and so we’ve got a pretty good outlook going forward on the Performance Brands piece. On the Fuels piece, Roger, overall, tough second quarter is fuel cracks. The 211 came down $9, although was that spiked back up here as we start Q3.

But overall, I think, the inventory is relatively short, and we’ve got constructive outlook within the Fuels business moving forward. And the last piece, I would just say, on the Specialty SPS. This business, we see continuing to perform very well. We’ve done a lot of work over the past few years to really strengthen the foundation and optimize business, and so we feel really good about where we’re at. Yes, the margins are normalizing a little bit, but we’re still talking $75, $80 a barrel type of margins, when I think 3, 4, 5 years ago, that number was more in the 30s. So feel really good about where we’re at with our Specialty business.

Roger Read: Okay. I guess, I was a little surprised to hear Industrial demand is strong and retail demand is soft. It seems like all the other data points we see at a macro level would imply the opposite of that, but good to hear. One other question to follow-up on. The base oil markets were pretty oversupplied roughly, call it, 2015 to at least 2020, that seems to have improved. I was just curious, as you think about group 1, 2 and 3 on the base oil front, have we seen demand increase? Or are we seeing supply go down? Just kind of what’s helped out on that side of the margin ledger.