Valero Energy Corporation (NYSE:VLO) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Nitin Kumar: Hi. Good morning all and thanks for taking my question. I just want to start with, can you comment on the recent EPA decision to deny RFS favors for small refiners? And how does that look for your ethanol business I think you mentioned volumes were flat, but can you talk a little bit about pricing for ethanol?

Richard Walsh: This is Rich Walsh. I can talk of, I guess, a little bit about the EPA decision. And then when it comes to pricing, I’ll hand it back off to Eric. I mean, we don’t have any small refinery exemptions in play. And so it’s a bit of a non-factor for us. I mean really not a lot more to share on it in that regard.

Eric Fisher: Yeah. And then as far as the commercial impact of that, it’s a bit — we see the same thing, but of a nonevent and we really don’t know the compliance posture of those small refiners. So it’s not — we don’t see a big impact to any of our businesses on the small refinery section.

Nitin Kumar: Sorry, what I was actually referring to is on your commercial side, whether you were seeing any improved demand for ethanol because those that don’t have the exemption. I guess I’ll ask a different question as well. Just on the sustaining CapEx, you mentioned $1.5 billion for this year. Are you seeing anything on the regulatory front that could increase that or increase the intensity of your sustaining CapEx in the future thinking of things like stringent particle emission standards or anything like that?

Lane Riggs: This is Lane. When you look at our history on our sustaining capital and some of these things, we were actually ahead of our competitors looking elective gas recovery and some of these other things. So with respect to regulatory capital, we’re in good shape, and we’re still willing to stick with our $1.5 billion of sustaining. On average, that doesn’t mean it can ebb and flow really with turnaround timing.

Nitin Kumar: Thank you

Operator: Thank you. The next question is coming from Neil Mehta of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Neil Mehta: Yeah. Good morning, team and Lane, Gary and Joe, if you’re on the line. Congratulations to each of you. And that’s kind of where I want to start. I mean, Lane, that over the last couple of years, the strategic vision has been very clear and consistent. We would just love your perspective as you step into this new role. What are the two or three things that you’re most focused on to take Valera to the next level?

Lane Riggs: Thanks, Neil. So I mean, Joe and I really — I worked with Joe on the strategy for the last nine years. Obviously, Jill and I go way back before that. So it’s not like I’ve been a part of the current strategy that’s been successful. I don’t think you should expect us to deviate substantially from where we’ve been strategically in terms of my areas of focus. I think the first area of focus is just making sure everybody understands exactly that, right? We are — we have a — we’ve been very successful in our execution, maintaining our operations excellence our ability to execute squarely and be great executor of the projects. And I want to make sure that, that continues. And I want to make sure that we stay disciplined, we stay predictable and those are all the things that I think I need to make sure that’s going on for the foreseeable future.

And a that, I’m going to let Joe keep working in this innovative project space look for our opportunities to spend some of our strategic capital and in some of these opportunities that are around our assets, whether Diamond Green or SaaS or some of the other things that we obviously have done been ahead of everybody else, and we think we can continue to be that company.

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