Holly Energy Partners, L.P. (NYSE:HEP) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Mike Jennings: Yeah. Jason, I will start with the Renewables question. And that we referenced a catalyst change at the Parco plant in the month of October and that was very much a planned and scheduled catalyst outage. We do think we have our hands around the operation of these units and they are a little different than normal distillate hydrotreating units. But our experience to date has been pretty good relative to catalyst life and catalyst activity. So we, as I referenced, did have some start-up related issues in 3Q, but not a lot of catalyst problem. As to the lubes, Tim, you can speak to that?

Tim Go: Sure, Jason. Yeah. The whole lubes impact associated in the third quarter was due to FIFO, higher priced feedstocks that we ran. It was unfavorable $47 million in the third quarter, so really nothing to see here. Even without the FIFO impact, we still would have delivered record first quarter and second quarter earnings and so we are very pleased with the business there. We know FIFO will even out over time as it unwinds and so we are still on pace for above mid-cycle performance here in 2022. We are still expecting lubes EBITDA of something in the $300 million range for 2022 even when you take into consideration all the FIFO.

Jason Gabelman: Great. Thanks.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Neil Mehta from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Neil Mehta: Yeah. Good morning, team. Hey. The first question just on the mid-cycle adjusted EBITDA. You have come out with this $2.6 billion number and $1.5 billion of free cash flow in the business is, obviously, trending very well relative to that. So, just curious as you think about the different move — different parts of that adjusted EBITDA equation, what — where do you see biases to the upside or downside?

Mike Jennings: Yeah. Neil, good morning. Look, the environment that we are currently operating in is, obviously, a little foreign to us and the earnings and cash generation is extraordinary. Whether to immediately impute a change in mid-cycle economics, really hard to say, we believe there’s a supply shortfall in domestic Refining capacity. So what does that suggest? I mean that suggests more opportunity in the refining EBITDA number. We were just on the heels of having completed our first $100 million of Sinclair related synergies, that being seven months after closing the deal. There’s probably a little more to go on that front as well yet unquantified. But I would say that those are the two real levers in terms of taking mid-cycle EBITDA higher and we have chosen not to do that yet just to try to absorb what the current industry structure is.

It obviously doesn’t affect what’s important, and that’s our cash distribution back to shareholders. But whether we adjust this higher here in terms of our slide deck and our expectations, we are going to watch it a bit with a focus on principally Refining.

Neil Mehta: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And then the follow-up is just around the M&A strategy. Both Puget and Sinclair were well timed in retrospect and you have been able to capture a lot of that upside. Do you see additional assets potentially coming into the market and is Holly proven to be a logical consolidator of bolt-on assets?