PBF Energy - Q3 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the PBF Energy third quarter 2023 earnings conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open to your questions following management's prepared remarks. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Colin Murray of Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Colin Murray (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Deb. Good morning, and welcome to today's call. With me today are Matt Lucey, our President and CEO; Karen Davis, our CFO; Tom Nimbley, our Executive Chairman, and several other members of our management team. Copies of today's earnings release and our 10-Q filing, including supplemental information, are available on our website. Before getting started, I'd like to direct your attention to the Safe Harbor statement contained in today's press release. Statements in our press release and those made on this call that express the company's or management's expectations or predictions of the future 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 describe in our filings with the SEC. Consistent with our prior periods, we'll discuss our results today, excluding special items.

In today's press release, we describe the non-cash special items included in our quarterly results. The cumulative impact of these special items in decreased third-quarter net income by an after-tax amount of $65 million, or $0.50 a share, primarily related to a change in the fair value of the contingent consideration associated with the Martinez acquisition, loss on extinguishment of debt, and exit costs associated with the early termination of the inventory intermediation agreement. Also included in today's press release is further guidance information related to our expectations for the remainder of 2023 operations. For any questions on these items or follow-up questions, please contact investor relations after the call. For reconciliations of any non-GAAP measures mentioned on today's call, please refer to the supplemental tables provided in today's press release. I'll now turn the call over to Matt Lucey.

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining the call. Today, PBF reported another quarter of strong results, our third strongest quarter, in our history, I believe, driven by robust refined product markets that dominated most of the quarter. Our refineries ran reasonably well, with no major planned outages at any of our facilities during the quarter. Now that we're in the shoulder season, we've seen gasoline cracks come off, but as expected, diesel margins have remained robust as inventories are tight. Despite the recent pullback in gasoline, we expect that prices will stabilize and compound cracks, on average, will remain above previous mid-cycle levels as they are today. The pricing environment will continue to remain volatile. However, PBF is well-positioned to respond to these market conditions with our high-complexity, high-conversion refining footprint.

With respect to capital allocation, our core principle is to create a competition for capital in which capital flows to its highest and best use. As we've stated previously, our first priority was to strengthen and simplify our balance sheet. We operate in a cyclical business, and a strong balance sheet is imperative in managing the inevitable market cycles. At this point, we have an investment-grade balance sheet that ranks among the strongest in our peer group. With balance sheets substantially behind us, PBF will continue to weigh investments in growth against returning capital to shareholders and our allocation of excess cash. A year ago, we reinstated our dividend. This week, our board approved a $0.05 per share increase in the quarterly dividend to $0.25 per share. Going forward, further potential dividend increases will be evaluated on an annual basis.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, we announced a $500 million share buyback program and then increased the authorization to $1 billion in May. From inception of the buyback program in December through today, we have deployed $590 million in cash, repurchasing 14 million shares or 11% of the shares outstanding. Going forward, we expect to remain active in buying back shares. The ultimate level of buyback activity will be determined by the excess cash generation of our business, coupled with a rigorous evaluation of reinvestment opportunities relative to share buyback economics. Investments in growth will be disciplined and will leverage PBF's strengths. We have no plans to get bigger for the sake of getting bigger. Diversification will not be pursued for the sake of diversification.

Our goal is to leverage our core strengths and assets and expertise to make investments in complementary businesses with compelling risk-return ratios. Perfect example of this blueprint is our investment in St. Bernard Renewables, where we leveraged an idled asset and our expertise in fuels manufacturing into a compelling renewable diesel joint venture with a world-class partner in Eni. Turning to renewable diesel, we are pleased to announce that in the first full quarter of operations, St. Bernard Renewables has reported positive earnings. We continue to line out operations post RDU startup in June and the PTU startup in late July. We did advance the catalyst change on the RDU into the fourth quarter as we work to optimize the assets.

We are more than pleased to have gotten to this point working alongside our joint venture partner, Eni Sustainable Mobility, as we continue exploring opportunities to expand our partnership. Furthering PBF's participation in the future of energy, the U.S. Department of Energy recently selected MACH2 project as the regional hydrogen hub that will receive funding under the IRA. Although there is still a lot of ground to cover, we are pleased to be part of the consortium that will advance this project and ultimately supply hydrogen as a clean energy transportation fuel. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, we're in the midst of planned maintenance at Torrance on the FCC and alkylation units, and we're doing additional work on the Martinez Flexicoker. The Flexicoker work was unplanned, and the downtime from both Torrance and Martinez will impact fourth quarter capture rates on the West Coast.

The good news is that Martinez work should be complete in the next week or so, and Torrance work should be complete before the end of the month. As we saw from material activity early in the quarter, combined markets will continue to be volatile. The global refining system, and PBF in particular, will be nimble in adapting to market conditions. Before I turn the call over to Karen, I want to repeat the tailwinds that we currently see for PBF. First, our complex, predominantly coastal coking refining system is well situated for the current marketplace. Second, maybe most importantly, the transformation of our balance sheet is now complete. We have reduced and extended our gross debt, we've brought in the intermediation agreement, and as of today, we have essentially extinguished our outstanding RIN obligation.

We've reinstated, now increased our dividend, implemented a share repurchase program, and are now producing renewable fuels and have also been selected as part of the growing hydrogen economy with the MACH2 project. These are all tailwinds that PBF has had a direct hand in creating and will help drive long-term value. With that, I'll turn it over to Karen.

Karen Davis (CFO)

Thank you, Matt. For the third quarter, we reported adjusted net income of $6.61 per share and adjusted EBITDA of $1.3 billion. This includes approximately $14.6 million generated from our equity interest in SBR. Also included in our results is an approximate $100 million benefit from the market decline in the price of renewable energy credits, which is captured in our gross margin. Cash flow from operations for the quarter was $1.15 billion, excluding working capital changes. Working capital was a headwind of $618 million for the quarter, mostly related to our continued efforts to strengthen and simplify our balance sheet. Those efforts in the third quarter included exiting our inventory intermediation agreement in July at a total cost of $268 million.

Second, we further reduced our outstanding environmental payables by $339 million. That brings the total reduction in our environmental credit liability to over $900 million for the year to date. The liability totaled $454 million as of September 30. One comment on our outstanding environmental payables. In our previous calls, we mentioned a normalized range of payables of approximately $200 million-$400 million. Recently, we have seen that the price of environmental credits can indeed come down. This impacts the dollar range previously provided. Going forward, we suggest thinking about our normalized payables as reflecting approximately two to four months of our net obligation. Taking into account the RINs we are buying from SBR, our normalized environmental payables will likely reflect a balance of approximately 50 million-100 million RINs.

This range may fluctuate depending on market conditions and commercial strategy. We further strengthened the balance sheet during the quarter by reducing our gross debt by approximately $170 million, primarily through issuing $500 million in 2030 notes and calling the remaining balance of our 2025 notes. Of note, with the issuance of our new 2030 notes in August and redemption of the 2025 notes, we have no near-term debt maturities, and we also increased the size of our undrawn ABL facilities to $3.5 billion and extended the maturity to 2028.

Consolidated CapEx for the third quarter was approximately $190 million, which includes $155 million for refining, corporate, and logistics, and approximately $35 million related to SBR. For the entirety of 2023, we expect PBF Energy CapEx, excluding SBR, to be approximately $800 million-$850 million. This is above the previously provided range, primarily due to the increased scope of work for our ongoing West Coast turnaround and advanced purchases of long lead items for planned 2024 turnarounds. Also, during the third quarter, we received $415 million in proceeds related to the SBR joint venture, bringing total proceeds received related to our investment in SBR to $845 million. We continue to demonstrate our commitment to shareholder returns through our quarterly dividends and share repurchase program.

Dividends paid during the third quarter totaled $27 million, and as Matt mentioned, we just announced an increase in our quarterly dividend from $0.20 to $0.25. With respect to our share repurchase program, of the almost $590 million of total repurchases to date, $115 million was executed in the third quarter. For the life of the program, as of October 31st, we have repurchased almost 14.3 million shares and reduced our total share count to just under 122 million shares. We view dividends and share repurchases as important components of our overall long-term capital allocation and shareholder return objectives. Our G&A expenses for the third quarter came in at $93 million, which includes our base G&A expense and amounts related to the company's incentive and equity-based compensation plans.

As mentioned last quarter, depending on financial and operational performance, there could be approximately $125 million-$175 million of incremental G&A expense annually related to our compensation programs above our annual base G&A of approximately $225 million. We ended the quarter with almost $1.9 million in cash and just over $1.2 billion of debt. We are retaining incremental cash above our previously guided ranges because it's earmarked for future near-term uses, including higher turnaround activity in Q4, continued reductions in outstanding environmental payables and other current liabilities, and the final payment of the Martinez earn out early next year. We will continue to focus on maintaining a robust balance sheet and exercising sound financial policy. Our balance sheet and the safe operations of our assets are key priorities, while maintaining a disciplined approach to rewarding our shareholders.

We believe our sector-leading balance sheet meets or exceeds many investment-grade credit metrics, and we maintain our goal of eventually achieving investment-grade status. Operator, we've completed our opening remarks, and we'd be pleased to take questions.

Operator (participant)

In a moment, we will open the call to questions. The company requests that all callers limit each turn to one question and one follow-up. You may rejoin the queue with additional questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Roger Read with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.

Roger Read (Senior Energy Analyst)

Yeah, thank you. Good morning, and, just say, you know, congrats on the, the overall transformation. I mean, it wasn't that long ago I assumed you were gonna have to issue shares to keep the company, solvent, and now you're, you know, in the process of returning this much cash to shareholders. So great, great job there. My question, Matt, and you were alluding to a lot of it, you know, maybe more than alluding during, during your, comments, but growth. Avoid growth for growth rate's sake, avoid growth for, diversification, but we also know that there's a big auction process for Citgo. What, what are your thoughts as you look at that or any other, let's say, U.S. refining opportunity, or maybe even more broadly, North America, since there's a, an East Canada unit that might be on the market as well?

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

Thanks for the question and the comments, Roger. In regards to Citgo, it's a quagmire. I mean, it's you know, in a court process, it's within geopolitics, you know, football that's being thrown around. Quite frankly, I don't think it's worth talking about at this point. I don't see any reason why. Anecdotally, I've read articles where the valuations, if they're true, they're exorbitantly more than what PBF is being valued today. So, you know, I hope it's true because it means our company's worth a lot more, and the shares that we've been buying over the last year are gonna be worth a lot more. So I don't think there's anything to comment on in regards to Citgo in particular.

I have no idea where it's gonna go, and I don't think it's gonna go anywhere in the near future. My comments were specific for a reason in that, and I think our company has become much, much easier with its simple and pristine balance sheet that we have now. So anything that we look at has to have a compelling return aspect that is much more attractive than the shares that we've been buying, and we've bought almost 600 million shares. $600 million worth of shares over the last year. It becomes very, very simple.

I can assure you, as I can assure the marketplace, we have not only are we using the words rigor and discipline, but we've formalized an internal process so that everything will be, you know, down into an Excel model, making a mathematical calculation that shows the risk-return, you know, results of all of our alternatives, and we'll continue to execute that going forward.

Roger Read (Senior Energy Analyst)

Appreciate that. Follow-up question is on the SBR. You know, a little guidance of some work coming here in the fourth quarter. But just stepping back, looking at the way this unit has started up, where you've been able to move the product, how do things look today versus six months ago before startup, in terms of, you know, what you expected, what the budget looked like, and, you know, kind of what's been better, what's been worse? You know, we know a lot of others have had issues with start-ups, so I'm just curious, you know, the good, the bad, and the ugly here.

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

Yeah. No, it's good, and it's sort of multifaceted. So you have the base operation, and then you have the marketplace. I can start with the marketplace. You know, the way we think about those that are participating in renewable fuels, it, you know, within the diesel market, I don't want to confuse lingo here, but, you know, you have one end of the spectrum, you've got biodiesel. Maybe in the middle, you have renewable diesel manufacturers that don't have pretreatment units. And then you've got integrated, pretreated or pretreatment units with the capability to manufacture renewable diesel. And then, obviously, geography plays on that. With the fall in some of the regulatory credits, I think bio-based diesel manufacturing is threatened in the short term.

I think those that have a pretreatment facility and are able to run low carbon fuels will be able to operate profitably, but albeit at a lower margin than where it was a year ago. Obviously, there's lots of dynamic factors in it. It's not just the regulatory credits. But at the end of the day, I'm very, very confident that there will be a market incentive, a resilient market incentive for those with a pretreatment unit to manufacture renewable diesel. In regards to our operations, it's no different than the startup of probably any other operation. There's fits and starts. There's pluses and minuses. All in all, we've been very pleased. We got our unit up in a time frame that was consistent with what we talked about.

We did accelerate some catalyst work into the fourth quarter, which was earlier than we had planned, but that's all in an attempt to optimize the unit. That will impact Q4 operations clearly, because we're—we have to take the unit down to do that. But, you know, as we're working through it, we're, you know... As I said, I think we're going to be able to improve on the throughput of the unit. So I think our, our capacity and, and we're, we're ultimately able to work through the unit will probably be a positive surprise. I'm myopically focused on what the yields look like coming off the unit, and they've been a little bit worse than we expected.

So there's pluses and minuses, but we're working every day to make sure it's optimized and that we're getting a huge benefit from our partners at Eni. They've got a couple of these facilities already. They have expertise. They have relationships with some of the service providers. So it's—I'm more than pleased with it, you know, in its entirety.

Roger Read (Senior Energy Analyst)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Doug Leggate with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Doug Leggate (Managing Director and Head of U.S. Oil and Gas)

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Matt, thanks for taking my questions. Phenomenal capture rate in the quarter, and I wonder if you could speak to the absence of, as you pointed out in your prepared remarks, any meaningful downtime. How unusual should we think this quarter looks versus the outlook? Or do you think a higher sustainable level of capture rate going forward? I think this is one of the highest I've seen on, you know, on your history, frankly. How sustainable that might be? Has anything changed that reinforces your confidence that operational reliability is moved to a new level?

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

Well, look, I think you-- when you're talking about work, you always have to look at the calendar. And, you know, we obviously plan our work during periods that where demand is not at its highest, and it's usually at its highest in the third quarter. So by definition, you're gonna want the second quarter and third quarter to have less work. That being said, I-- as much as it frustrates me, I would like to send a memo out and cancel all future work and just run, but that's not possible. We do have, you know, turnarounds that will happen in the first quarter.

We will have turnarounds, you know, but like I said, usually you set your calendar up to match with what the market has traditionally been. So in the fourth quarter, we have a big turnaround at Torrance. I have to take a moment, Doug. Tom Nimbley, who's sitting here to the right, my right, has stated that what I'm about to say maybe 4,000 times, which is, you can never measure the success of a turnaround until the run is complete. I do have to take a moment for the people in Torrance. We just ran the cat cracker at Torrance for eight years, a phenomenal run. Phenomenal run.

If you're able to do that, you reduce your CapEx on a, you know, amortized basis, you increase your uptime, and it's really a great result. They deserve a lot of credit, and we intend to clearly communicate that to them. That work is impactful in Q4 for sure. We did have an issue with our Flexicoker, which, by the way, we had a turnaround on earlier in the year, in the first quarter. Part of the equipment that was untouched, and it wasn't touched because it shouldn't have been touched. We had an issue with a blower there, and so we've had to take that equipment down.

That is probably our more, maybe the most complex unit we have in our entire system. So that was unfortunate, but that's being addressed. And like I said in my comments, we expect that to be up over the next week or so, but that also will have an impact on Q4.

Doug Leggate (Managing Director and Head of U.S. Oil and Gas)

That's great color. Thanks, thanks, Matt. My, my follow-up is, I guess it's a regulatory question. Halfway through the quarter, Governor Newsom made some changes to RVP standards or timing rather, in California. I'm just wondering, you know, when you saw the strength of cracks in the first half of the quarter and obviously attracted some kind of regulatory response, what was your thinking and all the noise around how that might play out with the commission and so on, assuming volatility in the West Coast has also moved to a new level given the pending closure of, Rodeo?

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

Yeah, so interesting on the butane, I actually think it was a smart thing to do, and it increased supply. The problem we have with much of the regulatory framework, when they see problems with price, they don't address the core issue. Advancing the butane blending by a couple of weeks increased supply of gasoline, and we saw a precipitous drop in margins, which was fine. It, you know, it was probably a prudent thing to do for the people of California. Again, the issue is many of the steps that—most of the steps, if not all the steps besides that, have unintended consequences that usually exacerbate the problem, which could be, you know, limiting supply. So it was not a surprise to us.

We've seen regions do that, when there are, you know, when there's tightness in the market. I don't know what will happen in the future, but that's always sort of an arrow that can be pulled. But you know, we continue to recognize California as a very, very tight market and about to get tighter.

Doug Leggate (Managing Director and Head of U.S. Oil and Gas)

Yeah, we're watching with interest. Thanks so much, Matt. Appreciate the comments.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Todd with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.

Ryan Todd (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks. Congratulations on a great quarter, guys. And maybe Matt, if I could follow up on—thanks for your comments on the corporate and balance sheet priorities. I mean, I think with the balance sheet reductions complete, the ABL facility retired, like you said, and RIN liabilities retired or reduced significantly. Can you talk about cash priorities from here? Should we expect to see a greater share of free cash flow targeted for share buybacks going forward? Or are there other things that we should be, other than the hydrogen project, that we should be considering?

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

Well, look, I—you know, we've chopped a lot of wood, reducing leverage for the company over the last year. But as I sit here today, as we sit here today, it's complete. There's nothing left to address. We've got our bonds. Don, Karen, and our team did a great job extending our bond maturities. We reduced it a little bit. We've got $1.3 billion of bonds outstanding, and we have no interest in reducing it further. As you said, the RINs have been put to bed. Intermediation agreement's been paid off. So there is no more balance sheet work to be done, and it's a pretty amazing moment that we should all sort of take and recognize.

So going forward, as we generate excess cash, you know, we'll look to deploy it the best way we can. There are no major project on our books that we're reserving for at the moment. We're actively looking for opportunities for us to, you know, explore and bring to the market. But as of the moment, we have a very, very clean balance sheet, no more no work to be done. So as we generate cash, we'll look to reward shareholders.

Ryan Todd (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Thank you. That, that's great. And then maybe just to follow up on the, on the CapEx increase that you talked about. It sounds like you, you may have pulled forward,

... a little bit of the long lead time items for the 2024 turnaround costs into the 2023 budget there. You know, with RD spend now complete, and as you said, no major projects on the books going forward, can you maybe walk through how we should think about the run rate for CapEx for the business going forward, in particular, as we look into 2024?

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

Yeah, you know, I mean, the simple answer is it's not going down. I mean, there's cost pressures, and that's our job to manage. We haven't put out CapEx guidance for next year yet. I think that's usually maybe on the next call. But, you know, I don't think someone should be saying that there's going to be a step down. It's our job to manage it so it's not a step up.

Ryan Todd (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay, thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Manav Gupta with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Manav Gupta (Executive Director)

Good morning, guys. I'm hoping you can give me some more macro commentary on the regional gasoline markets. You operate in all regions. Where are you seeing strength in gasoline relatively, and where there's some weakness? And also, are you actually seeing any kind of red flags in terms of demand, which should worry us? I mean, the gasoline crack went to mid-single digits. It has rebounded, but it's still lower, so is it just seasonal, or do you think there is something structural to worry about? If you could talk about those points.

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

So I'll start with the first part and then pass it over to Paul on the specific region. In regards to demand, I think what you're going to hear from us is consistent with what you've heard from others. It's been stable, and we've had no problem moving product through our system. We've had no decline in our wholesale business. And I was struck by sort of the monthly data that came out the other day that sort of corroborated that. I mean, you have weekly swings, ins and outs, and that's a bouncing ball that can be hard to follow. But when you pull back a little bit, I think maybe you get a little bit better picture. So the demand, I think, has been okay.

Obviously, we've hit the shoulder season, as we always do, and you see seasonal differences. But Paul, you want to run through regions?

Paul Davis (SVP of Supply, Trading and Optimization)

Yeah, from a regional standpoint, obviously, the coastal markets are the-- have been and are still the strongest markets. West Coast, primarily, is our strongest market that we see from a demand standpoint, obviously, for value, too. East Coast is, is right there, though. East Coast has been very strong through, through this year, certainly through the third quarter and even as we speak today. Weakest, you know, coming out of the third quarter, I'd say PADD 2 was the weakest, and that's what we saw on our circuit, but that's migrated down to the Gulf. And right now, I would say the Gulf Coast is the weakest market, both from value and, and overall demand.

Manav Gupta (Executive Director)

Perfect. I have a quick follow-up. Your press release says your outstanding environmental credit payables were reduced by $340 million. I'm just trying to understand, did you actually pay $340 million, or the, the RIN prices and stuff came down a little, and then you paid? And also, I think in the opening comments, you mentioned the RIN revaluation benefit of $100 million, if you could confirm that. Thank you.

Karen Davis (CFO)

Yes, I'll take that question. Yes, there was a $99 million mark-to-market benefit that's included in our gross margin. With respect to cash outlay for reducing environmental credits, yes, the amount that we provided was the cash outlay.

Manav Gupta (Executive Director)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Blair with Tudor, Pickering, Holt. Please proceed with your question.

Matthew Blair (Managing Director of Refiners, Chemicals, and Renewable Fuels Research)

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to follow up on this MACH2 hydrogen hub. Is your opportunity impacted at all by the hydrogen deal that you did with Air Products in 2020? And do you have any early thoughts on CapEx or the EBITDA opportunity here?

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

First answer is no in regards to the Air Products deal. In regards to capital, it is too early to get into that. We're gonna spend the next 12-18 months working with the consortium and developing a detailed plan. Once we get to that point, that could include PBF looking to participate in regards to contributing capital to the project. It could also include PBF bringing in a partner if the returns don't meet our expectations to do that. But there's no question the MACH2 project extends benefits and positive impacts to PBF. Obviously, there's the potential for a capital project. That capital project, as I said, will need to be competitive from a return standpoint.

But also, you know, and by the way, I would describe PBF's participation in this as the anchor within MACH2, and I don't say that lightly. It's just Delaware City is where much of this is going to be located, you know, intertwined at the refinery. So, you know, it will further diversify, you know, PBF's energy platform and sort of further extend us into renewable fuels, even if we're just hosting it. But it also highlights the importance of having refining capacity in Delaware, because if that were not there, the competitiveness of this hydrogen hub would decline precipitously. And also, the last piece is. You know, we're in the early days of developing what we believe is a meaningful real estate portfolio around Delaware City.

We own 5,000 acres around it, and if we're able to construct a hydrogen hub that's based there, we think the value of that real estate, which is ideally situated for warehouse and distribution and refrigerated storage and data processing, to the extent you can have a green hydrogen project that's there and, and situated, the value of all those projects go up. So we think it's profoundly interesting, but it is a long slog, and we are in the very early days.

Matthew Blair (Managing Director of Refiners, Chemicals, and Renewable Fuels Research)

Thanks for the details. I wanted to turn to the RD side of things, and congrats on the strong initial operations at SBR. Could you share anything on what you're seeing in various RD end markets? For example, we've heard that areas like British Columbia and Oregon have become more appealing than the California market. And then also, if you could share anything on the feedstock side of things. I think the DOE showed a big increase in tallow consumption in August, and we were thinking that might be due to your PTU startup. Thanks.

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

Yeah, in regards to, look, I think there's gonna be competitive markets, and all the markets are dynamic. I think there's gonna be the ability to export into Europe. And so as regulatory credits move, move around and natural gas prices move around, feedstock prices move around, we are beholden to, to nobody. We do have logistical advantages to the degree we, import into California, and that's where we've been sending our product up until this point. But the moment that, we're able to economically improve our position by delivering other places, we will. In regards to specific, grades of feedstocks, I think you're gonna see lots of gyrations, because these markets are, are relatively small. But again, having the pretreatment capability is incredibly important. It's like having a complex refiner.

If you're a heavy sour coke refiner, you can run any crude, whereas if you're a sweet refiner, you can't run heavy grades. Well, having the pretreatment unit, we're able to buy the most economic feeds we can, and we're focused on buying them every single day.

Matthew Blair (Managing Director of Refiners, Chemicals, and Renewable Fuels Research)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Paul Cheng with Scotiabank. Please proceed with your question.

Paul Cheng (Analyst)

Thank you. Good morning, guys. Matt, maybe that, I would want to ask about Toledo Refinery. It seems like the utilization rate for that facility over the past several years has been lower than, say, earlier years, last decade. Is that the facility have changed the way how you run, and as a result, that the run rate has been lower, or is there some structural issue there?

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

No, nothing's changed at Toledo. The facility optimizes itself on a daily basis, obviously, a pipeline-fed refinery, and so you have to operate within the confines of that refinery, you know, the pipelines that feed it, but no, no major step change.

Paul Cheng (Analyst)

That you look like you've been running at somewhere between the high 80% to maybe 90%-91%. Is that the kind of utilization rate we could expect from this facility on a going forward basis?

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

Oh, no. I mean, they have not operated as well as they could, and therefore, we've had some impacts to throughput. I appreciate you calling them out because they should be called out, and they're, we expect it to improve.

Paul Cheng (Analyst)

Okay. And when I'm looking at your fourth quarter throughput guidance, it seems to be a tad low, given that you really don't have much of a turnaround other than in the West Coast. Is that reflecting some economic run slowdown, due to the current margin environment, or that why that the run may not be a bit higher?

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

No, I think it's based on a whole host of factors. And obviously, the current market should impact it. But there's no other limitations that we need to worry about.

Paul Cheng (Analyst)

Okay. Just final one is more of a request. If we would be able to see some additional out the joint venture operating data, if that's possible, in the press release going forward. Thank you.

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

Thanks, Paul.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Joe Laetsch with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Joe Laetsch (VP of Equity Research)

Hey, good morning, team. Congrats on a good quarter, and thanks for taking my questions. So I have two kind of related questions, so I'll just ask up front, if that's all right. So first, just on WCS, we saw spreads widen in the past couple of months. I was hoping you could just talk to the impact that had in the quarter, the setup for the fourth quarter going ahead, and then next year with TMX coming online? And then related to that, it looked like, to us at least, East Coast and West Coast capture given particularly strong. So just hope you could talk any drivers there? Thank you.

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

Look, I think widening crude diffs are tailwind. Tom, you want to just comment further?

Tom Nimbley (Executive Chairman)

Yeah. I mean, Joe, I think, as you mentioned, in terms of widening, WCS differentials, I think kind of a combination of-

...A lot of fits and starts as to when TMX was going to be starting. You know, so obviously, we got more clarity in terms of that being delayed. You had combination also with, you know, fairly robust turnaround, you know, activity with several refineries that consume a fair bit of WCS, which ultimately impacted really the value of where WCS was landing in the Gulf Coast, and then sort of several knock-on effects in that point, right? That coming out of the third quarter, where we had very strong differentials and, you know, particularly very strong fuel oil values. The fuel oil market basically responded to the WCS values and came off.

There's also just sort of, while not specifically in the market or any precipitous change at this point, but there's also, you know, any potential relaxations on Venezuela sort of opening up a more competitive environment for barrels being available in the Gulf Coast. So I think that those are what we've seen, and I think that, you know, certainly our expectations would be is that, you know, the crude differentials would continue to fall around the seasonals at this point, right? You know, differentials a bit wider in 4Q and 1Q, and then as we get into the second quarter and third quarter of next year, particularly if TMX, it meets its targets to coming online, probably could expect differentials to be a little bit tighter in there.

But, you know, there's also some impacts in terms of what the freight market has done, which is ultimately sort of capped the move on, you know, U.S. domestics, which were quite strong, sort of in the late part of the third quarter, and then have sort of declined in value since then.

Paul Cheng (Analyst)

Thank you. I appreciate it.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our final question comes from the line of Jason Gabelman with Cowen. Please proceed with your question.

Jason Gabelman (Director of Energy Equity Research)

Hey, morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The strong margin performance has already been called out a couple times, and part of that you alluded to was driven by the RIN mark-to-market. I just wanted to give you an opportunity, if there was anything else unique that drove the strong margins in the quarter that maybe won't repeat in four Q? And then, you know, somewhat tied to that, we've seen a lot of peers have pressure in their margins, driven by weaker secondary product realizations. And I'm wondering if your secondary product yields are perhaps a bit unique in the market or relative to your peers, and perhaps that supported three Q margins, and that will continue into four Q? Thanks.

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

I don't think there's anything unique in regards to PBF. Paul, you want to make any comments on secondary products?

Paul Davis (SVP of Supply, Trading and Optimization)

I mean, secondary, I mean, the one of the best attributes we got is our high, high level of octane production, and our, our jet fuel production is, is higher than probably some of the other peers that we have. And depending on that market, it definitely has some impact on our, on our captures. You know, West Coast, we're, we're definitively pretty strong on jet and octanes.

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

Yeah, and then the other aspect is, you know, in Q3, as Tom just went through, crude differentials were tight. That's actually a headwind for our capture rates. To the extent, to the extent crude differentials wide now, our capture rates should improve, provided we're operating. Obviously, the work on the West Coast is gonna impact the operations out there. But, I don't see anything else, as you mentioned, on like the RINs that have now been cleaned up and are behind us. So, I think it's pretty clean.

Jason Gabelman (Director of Energy Equity Research)

All right, great. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

We have reached the end of the question and answer session. I will now turn the call over to Matt Lucey for closing remarks.

Matt Lucey (President and CEO)

Well, I appreciate everyone's participation in today's call. Like I said, we're very, very pleased with where the company is, in regards to our asset base and our balance sheet, and we look forward to speaking to you again after the holidays. Have a great rest of the year. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.