PBF Energy Inc. (NYSE:PBF) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Unidentified Analyst: A couple of questions. First, I think on — go back to the . Can you maybe discuss about the division of labor between the 2 partners? You say definitive way each partner is going to be in charge of something or that this is going to run differently. And also that what the PBF accounting-wise, is going to consolidate the result and have a minority interest or that you guys are going to use equity accounting here? The second question is, when I’m looking at the fourth quarter result, I’m not sure why kind of on the margin capture is so bad. I mean, Gulf Coast, at least the margin capture that maybe is because of the high sulfide or low sulfide diesel defense but I’m not sure why canine margin capture so bad. And also in the mid-con to let even taking into consideration of the downtime, it seems like the utilization is really low Yes, is the January that you’re running at, say, 20,000, 30,000 barrels a day that low.

Matt Lucey: All right. Well, you just book the record.

Tom Nimbley: Let me handle the question on…

Unidentified Analyst: I try to maintain my reputation.

Tom Nimbley: It’s stellar, by the way. The — let me just deal with the West Coast on capture rate. The fact is that 2 things happened and on the West Coast that we rather important and impacted the West Coast. One is the fact that cracks actually came off rather substantially in the month of December. But more importantly, particularly in Northern California but even throughout California. Natural gas pricing rooted in the month of December and in fact, continue to be elevated in the month of January is only now correct. So we had very high operating costs and Martin has much more than we would expect to have going forward or have had in the past, totally associated with an elevated natural gas pricing. So there’s a real explanation for why the capture rate was what it was in the West Coast.

By the way, capture rate in Chalmette is lower than what we perhaps would normally see but that’s because we took downtime in October which is the strongest month of the quarter. And Toledo was impacted by some downtime even in advance of the ban on at Christmas time. Go ahead, Matt.

Matt Lucey: In regards to the JV and the division of labor, as you referred to it, the joint venture will be its own platform, PBF and Chalmette refinery will be the operator of the equipment. But the St. Bernard renewable effort will have its own team, a dedicated team in executing the business of the renewable diesel business here. And we currently have a general manager in place as we’ve been developing and working on sort of standing up the business for some time. But both parties will contribute members to the team and both parties will rely on each other’s expertise to provide services. And so we’ve got semblance of the early part of the management team but that will be augmented with expertise from any which we’re looking forward to.

So it’s — partnerships can be structured in different ways. This partnership is set up as its own company. We’ll have a board with 2 different partners that have board seats on it, PBF and Eni. And we’ll have a management team responsible for executing the business. And that will include people from PBF. It will include people from Eni, it’ll include people that have been hired specifically for the role outside of both organizations. We’ve already identified specific roles that specific partners can add. And so it’s been very constructive up until this point. In regards to the forensic accounting, I’ll give that to Karen.

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