Earnings call transcript: HF Sinclair Q3 2025 earnings beat expectations

HF Sinclair Corp (DINO) reported its third-quarter 2025 earnings, surpassing analysts’ expectations with an earnings per share (EPS) of $2.44, significantly above the forecasted $1.82. The company also exceeded revenue forecasts, reporting $7.25 billion against the anticipated $6.9 billion. Following the earnings announcement, HF Sinclair’s stock saw a premarket increase of 1.59%, trading at $54.82.

Key Takeaways

• HF Sinclair reported a substantial EPS beat, with a 34.07% surprise.
• Revenue exceeded expectations by 5.07%, indicating strong operational performance.
• The stock price increased 1.59% in premarket trading, reflecting positive investor sentiment.
• The company showcased significant growth in its refining segment, with EBITDA rising to $661 million.
• HF Sinclair is optimistic about future demand, particularly in the West Coast markets.

Company Performance

HF Sinclair demonstrated robust performance in Q3 2025, driven by its refining segment and strategic initiatives. The company reported a net income of $403 million, or $2.15 per diluted share, with adjusted net income reaching $459 million. Compared to the previous year, the adjusted EBITDA surged from $316 million to $870 million, marking a significant improvement. The company’s strategic projects, such as the CARB gasoline project at Puget Sound Refinery, contributed to its competitive positioning.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $7.25 billion, up from the forecast of $6.9 billion.
• Earnings per share: $2.44, exceeding the forecast of $1.82.
• Adjusted EBITDA: $870 million, up from $316 million in Q3 2024.
• Cash returned to shareholders: $254 million.

Earnings vs. Forecast

HF Sinclair’s actual EPS of $2.44 surpassed the forecast of $1.82, resulting in a surprise of 34.07%. The revenue also exceeded expectations by 5.07%, with actual figures at $7.25 billion compared to the forecasted $6.9 billion. This performance reflects the company’s strong operational execution and market positioning.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings release, HF Sinclair’s stock experienced a premarket rise of 1.59%, trading at $54.82. This movement indicates investor confidence in the company’s financial health and future prospects. The stock remains near its 52-week high of $55.63, showcasing its resilience amidst market fluctuations.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking forward, HF Sinclair remains optimistic about refining fundamentals over the next 6 to 12 months. The company anticipates a crude oil run rate of 550,000-590,000 barrels per day in Q4 2025 and is targeting a minimum 50% payout ratio for shareholder returns. HF Sinclair plans to invest approximately $775 million in sustaining capital for 2025, underscoring its commitment to growth and shareholder value.

Executive Commentary

CEO Tim Go emphasized the company’s strategic focus, stating, "We are constructive on the fundamentals of each of our businesses." He also reiterated the company’s priorities: "Our priorities remain the same: improve reliability, integrate and optimize our portfolio, and return excess cash to shareholders."

Risks and Challenges

• Supply Chain Issues: Potential disruptions could impact production schedules and cost structures.
• Market Saturation: Increased competition in key markets may pressure margins.
• Macroeconomic Pressures: Global economic uncertainties could affect demand and pricing.
• Regulatory Challenges: Changes in environmental regulations may necessitate additional investments.
• Geopolitical Risks: Global tensions, particularly in oil-producing regions, could affect supply stability.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the impact of Small Refinery Exemptions (SREs), which totaled $171 million. The company also discussed its pipeline expansion strategy in Western U.S. markets and highlighted the performance and potential of its lubricants market.

Full transcript - HF Sinclair Corp (DINO) Q3 2025:

Ellie, Conference Call Operator: Welcome to HF Sinclair Corporation’s third quarter 2025 conference call and webcast. Hosting the call today is Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer of HF Sinclair. He is joined by Steve Ledbetter, Chief Financial Officer, Valerie Pompa, Executive Vice President of Commercial, Matt Joyce, Executive Vice President of Operations, and Craig Biery, Vice President of Investor Relations. At this time, all participants have been placed in a listen-only mode and the floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question at that time, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing the pound key. If you should require operator assistance, please press star zero. We ask that you keep or limit yourself to one question and one follow-up.

Additionally, we ask that you pick up your handset to allow optimal sound quality. Please note that this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to Craig Biery, Vice President of Investor Relations. Craig, you may now begin.

Craig Biery, Vice President of Investor Relations, HF Sinclair Corporation: Thank you, Ellie. Good morning everyone and welcome to HF Sinclair Corporation’s third quarter 2025 earnings call. This morning we issued a press release announcing results for the quarter ending September 30, 2025. If you would like a copy of the earnings press release, you may find it on our website at hfsinclair.com. Before we proceed with remarks, please note the safe harbor disclosure statement in today’s press release. In summary, it says statements made regarding management expectations, judgments or predictions are forward-looking statements. These statements are intended to be covered under the safe harbor provisions of federal security laws. There are many factors that could cause results to differ from expectations, including those noted in our SEC filings. The call also may include discussion of non-GAAP measures. Please see the earnings press release for reconciliations to GAAP financial measures.

Also, please note any time-sensitive information provided on today’s call may no longer be accurate at the time of any webcast replay or rereading of the transcript. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Tim Go.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Good morning everyone and thank you for joining our call. I am pleased to report that HF Sinclair’s strong third quarter results are underpinned by the measurable improvement in our operating and commercial performance, including the sequential increases in refining, throughput and capture, and continued reductions in operating costs during the quarter. We returned $254 million in cash to shareholders and today announced a $0.50 quarterly dividend. We are pleased with the progress we have made on our key priorities and believe our year to date performance reflects the value of this strategic focus. Now let me cover our business highlights. In refining, we delivered another quarter of sequential improvements in throughput, capture, and operating expenses per barrel. Gross margin per barrel benefited from strong cracks in our regions along with small refinery exemptions granted by the EPA.

The SRE benefit in the third quarter was comprised of $115 million in lower cost of goods and $56 million in higher revenue. From the commercial optimization of our RINs position, we achieved a record low operating expense of $7.12 per throughput barrel, crossing over our near term goal of $7.25 per barrel. Throughput was our second highest quarter on record and we are on pace to establish many new annual records for the full year. Our marketing segment delivered record EBITDA in the quarter of $29 million and realized an adjusted gross margin of $0.11 per. We are very pleased with the growth we have achieved in our marketing segment and we continue to unlock the value of the Sinclair branded stores, providing a consistent sales channel with margin uplift for our produced fuels.

We have added 146 branded sites through third quarter 2025 with more than 130 sites with contracts signed and expected to come online over the next six to twelve months. During the quarter, we returned $254 million in cash to shareholders consisting of $160 million in share repurchases and $94 million in regular dividends. Since the Sinclair acquisition in March of 2022, we have returned over $4.5 billion in cash to shareholders and have reduced our share count by over 61 million shares. As of September 30, 2025, we still have approximately $589 million remaining on our share repurchase authorization and we remain committed to returning excess cash to shareholders while maintaining our investment grade balance sheet. Also today we announced that our Board of Directors declared a regular quarterly dividend of $0.50 per share payable on December 5, 2025, to holders of record on November 19, 2025.

Now I will cover some strategic updates. We believe we are well positioned to supply the growing needs on the West Coast. As I mentioned earlier, we recently completed the CARB project at our Puget Sound Refinery, which gave us the capability to produce more CARB gasoline or CARB components that we can ship to the California market. In addition to that, we are announcing a jet project at our Puget Sound Refinery this quarter that will give us the flexibility to produce more jet from diesel to supply the West Coast depending on what the market is calling for. This project will be complete and in service following the turnaround this quarter. Finally, yesterday we announced we are evaluating a multi-phased expansion of our midstream refined products footprint across PADD 4 and PADD 5. This initiative is designed to address the increasing supply and demand imbalances in key Western U.S.

markets, particularly Nevada and multiple markets in California, resulting from announced refinery closures on the West Coast. HF Sinclair believes its geographic footprint and current infrastructure provide an advantaged position to quickly and efficiently deliver refined products where the market needs are strongest, subject to Board and regulatory approvals. The proposed multi-phased expansion projects under review are projected to enable incremental supply of up to 150,000 barrels a day of product into various West Coast markets. The first phase would increase capacity by a projected 35,000 barrels per day to move supply from our Rockies production and into Nevada and is targeted to be online in 2028. This initial phase would include expanding the Pioneer Pipeline, a jointly owned pipeline with Phillips 66 from Sinclair, Wyoming to Salt Lake City, Utah, and debottlenecking our wholly owned UNEV Pipeline from Salt Lake City, Utah to Las Vegas, Nevada.

These projects reflect HF Sinclair’s strategic focus on asset integration and value chain optimization of our refining, midstream, and marketing businesses and are examples of how we can leverage our competitive advantages and geographic footprint to support our efforts to deliver accretive long-term growth well into the future. In closing, we remain committed to advancing our strategic priorities and believe our focus on reliability and integration and optimization will drive future growth across our businesses. Looking ahead, we are constructive on the fundamentals of each of our businesses and in particular believe the supportive refining backdrop positions us well as we head into 2026. With that, let me turn the call over to Agnes.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Thank you, Tim, and good morning, everyone. Let’s begin by reviewing HF Sinclair’s financial highlights. Today we reported third quarter net income attributable to HF Sinclair shareholders of $403 million, or $2.15 per diluted share. These results reflect special items that collectively decrease net income by $56 million. Excluding these items, adjusted net income for the third quarter was $459 million, or $2.44 per diluted share, compared to adjusted net income of $96 million, or $0.51 per diluted share, for the same period in 2024. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter was $870 million compared to $316 million in the third quarter of 2024. In our refining segment, third quarter adjusted EBITDA was $661 million compared to $110 million in the third quarter of 2024.

This increase was principally driven by higher adjusted refinery gross margins in both the West and Mid Con regions, which included small refinery RINs waivers granted by the EPA. Crude oil charge averaged 639,000 barrels per day for the third quarter, our second highest quarter, primarily driven by our continued reliability efforts. Crude oil charge averaged 607,000 barrels per day for the third quarter of 2024 in our renewables segment. Excluding the lower of cost or market inventory valuation adjustment charge of $20 million, we reported adjusted EBITDA of negative $13 million for the third quarter compared to $1 million for the third quarter of 2024. During the quarter, we recognized incrementally more in value from the Producer Tax Credit, and we expect to capture additional incremental value in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Total sales volumes were 57 million gallons for the third quarter of 2025 compared to 69 million gallons for the third quarter of 2024. Our marketing segment reported EBITDA of $29 million for the third quarter compared to $22 million for the third quarter of 2024. This increase was primarily driven by high margins and high grading our mix of stores in the third quarter of 2025. Our lubricants and specialty segments bounced back from the heavy turnaround workload in 2Q and reported EBITDA of $78 million for the third quarter compared to EBITDA of $76 million for the third quarter of 2024. This increase was primarily driven by improved mix and FIFO benefit, partially offset by an increase in operating expenses. Our midstream segment reported EBITDA of $114 million in the third quarter compared to $111 million of adjusted EBITDA in the same period of last year.

This increase was primarily driven by lower operating expenses as we continue to integrate our midstream and refining businesses, partially offset by lower throughput volumes in the third quarter of 2025. Net cash provided by operations totaled $809 million in the third quarter, which included $31 million of turnaround spend. HF Sinclair capital expenditures totaled $121 million for the third quarter of 2025. During the quarter, HF Sinclair issued $500 million of senior notes at 5.5% due 2032 in order to redeem our remaining 5.875% notes due 2026 and 6.375% notes due 2027. This allowed us to lengthen our maturities and reduce our weighted average cost of debt. As of 9-30-2025, HF Sinclair’s cash balance was approximately $1.5 billion and we have $2.8 billion of debt outstanding with a debt-to-cap ratio of 23% and net debt-to-cap ratio of 11%. Let’s go through some guidance items with respect to capital spending.

For full year 2025, we still expect to spend approximately $775 million in sustaining capital, including turnaround and catalysts. In addition, we expect to spend $100 million in growth capital investments across our business segments. For the fourth quarter of 2025, we expect to run between 550,000 and 590,000 barrels per day of crude oil in our refining segment, which reflects the planned turnaround at our Puget Sound Refinery. We’re now ready to take questions from the audience.

Ellie, Conference Call Operator: The floor is now open for questions. At this time, if you have any questions or comments, please press Star followed by 1 on your touch-tone phone. We ask that you limit to one question and one follow-up. If you have additional questions, you are welcome to rejoin the queue. If at any point your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing the pound key. Thank you. Your first question comes from the line of Manav Gupta of UBS Investment Bank. Your line is now open.

Good morning, guys. Congrats on a very strong print and a big jump in buybacks. I just wanted to start on this multi-phased expansion on what you’re looking to target as PADD 4 and PADD 5.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Sir.

There are some other projects which are also trying to do something similar, and of course you have a strong refining footprint. I’m trying to understand what’s your competitive edge here. Why do you feel your project would be at an advantage compared to some of these other projects that are also looking to move product somewhere in the similar direction? If you could talk a little bit about that.

Good morning, Manav. Thanks for the question, and let me ask Steve to jump in right away.

Steve Ledbetter, Executive (likely CFO or similar), HF Sinclair Corporation: Hey Manav. Yeah, we’re excited to make this announcement. We believe that we’re in a pretty strategic advantaged place, both from a production and having infrastructure already in the ground that can be debottlenecked or expanded to bring product into a growing short in PADD 5. With the announced refinery closures in California, we think we can produce the product and deliver it at a competitive rate to compete with what is going to be a short and even compete with the growing imports. Whether or not it is the sole project or complementary to the other ones, we felt it was important to come to the market and be clear that we are looking to evaluate this and expand it, and we think we’ll be successful doing that.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Yeah. Manav, this is Tim. I’ll just chime in on what Steve said. We really do think this is complementary to the other two pipelines that were announced. The other two we’re talking about are really barrels from the Mid-Con and from the Gulf Coast going in the south area towards the Phoenix area. We’re really talking Rockies barrels going on the northern side into Nevada. We believe this is a different type of project. We think it’s mostly with our equity barrels as opposed to open season third party barrels. As Steve mentioned, we’re utilizing a lot of our existing infrastructure, which we think will be quicker and have a lower cost to implement. Perfect, sir.

On refining, strong quarter improvement in further capture. Just wanted to understand your near term or medium term outlook for refining margins. We are seeing tremendous resilience in margins and some global capacity outages, Russia and other places. How do you see the refining macro playing out for the next three to six months, particularly in the two regions you are actively involved in? Thank you.

Steve Ledbetter, Executive (likely CFO or similar), HF Sinclair Corporation: Yeah, Manav, we are very excited and pretty bullish on what the current market environment looks like. As you mentioned, it starts at a global macro basis and today I think year over year, we’re net about 800,000 barrels a day short. When you look at the capacity closures as well as being outpaced by demand when it comes into the U.S., supply is up mainly in jet and diesel, with gas being down, but demand of distillate is really supportive and part of that is justified by some lower renewable diesel production that is not online. As a result of what’s happened with the regulatory framework in our region, specifically, gas demand has been up slightly and diesel demand has been up. We see particularly the distillate make in jet and diesel being very supportive through the end of the fourth quarter and into first quarter.

We’re in max diesel mode and that’s part of the reason why our capture has continued to be improved in some of the projects that were mentioned earlier. These further enable us to flexibly move between the right products to meet the market demands that we see happening. We’re pretty, pretty encouraged by the overall market structure for the next six months or so.

Yeah.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Manav, just taking a step back from more of a macro standpoint, we do think that in 2026, demand growth continues to outpace supply growth. Our numbers still show that true as what we saw here in 2025, especially in distillate, we see distillate continuing to be short. While you’re seeing, for example, in our West area, distillate demand at five-year highs, overall, we think the market is underestimating the impact of the Russia outages. We think those are significant and will take time to come back online. We think the market’s underestimating the demand impacts that lower gasoline prices are having on increasing demand. We think that’s a positive for refining. We think the market is not fully appreciating the low product inventories that we continue to operate at as a result of trying to keep up with demand. People like to talk about high utilization.

I think the low product inventories is a sign that despite the high utilization, we’re still as a global balance trying to keep up with global demand.

Perfect.

Sir, I agree with everything you said on the refined mapper. Thank you so much.

Ellie, Conference Call Operator: The next question comes from the line of Ryan M. Todd of Piper Sandler. Your line is now open.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Good, thanks.

Craig Biery, Vice President of Investor Relations, HF Sinclair Corporation: Maybe when starting out on small refinery exemptions. Just a point of clarification on the quarter. You had, there was a $115 million benefit and a, was it a $56 million benefit? Are those incremental to each other or how do I think about the clarifying of that? Maybe at a higher level, can you talk about your view on the process from here? Given the guidance provided by the EPA earlier, how does this compare versus the process historically? Does this change your confidence on the ability to capture exemptions going forward?

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Yeah, Ryan, this is Tim, let me take a shot at it. Yes, the third quarter impact that I mentioned in my prepared remarks, $115 million that you can say are basically directly a result of the granting of the SREs by the EPA that impacts cost of sales and roughly translates to, call it $0.47 at EPS. The $56 million is additive to that. It goes into cost of revenue. What I consider that is more of an indirect benefit of basically buying and selling RINs in the marketplace based on our RINs position at the time. This is more trading benefits associated with our RINs position and what we think our RINs positions will need to be in the future.

We don’t disclose kind of what our strategy is or what we do, but in the third quarter we had $56 million associated with that, which translates to about $0.23 on an EPS basis. First, second of all, let me just say we appreciate the White House and the EPA taking actions to recognize that small refineries face hardship and granting the SREs under the RFS program. As you know, there was a large backlog for many years that this administration took action on following discussions with the DOE and the EPA. We actually believe that the SREs that we submitted could be more. We added new and supplemental information and submitted or resubmitted applications for five refineries in our portfolio for the 2023 and 2024 years. That’s Woods Cross, Parco, Casper, Tulsa, and Artesia.

Going forward, we believe we have five small refineries that were exempted from the RFS in the past and we believe qualify for SREs going forward. While we can’t quantify future outcomes or probabilities, we do believe we have considerable upside on a future run rate basis.

Steve Ledbetter, Executive (likely CFO or similar), HF Sinclair Corporation: Thank you, Tim.

Craig Biery, Vice President of Investor Relations, HF Sinclair Corporation: Maybe a shift on refining margin capture. On the surface, it seemed like you’ve gone from a number of the industry went from a number of slight headwinds in third quarter to what might be modest tailwinds in the fourth quarter, whether it’s from slightly widening crude differentials, lower crude backwardation, addition of butane blending, etc. You’re a month into the quarter. Any thoughts on how you see the various trends in the market potentially driving margin capture in the quarter?

Steve Ledbetter, Executive (likely CFO or similar), HF Sinclair Corporation: Yeah, this is Steve. I’ll take that one. I think we don’t see a ton of help in terms of like the heavy differential widening. We do see some stuff up in Q4, and as we’ve always talked about.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: That.

Steve Ledbetter, Executive (likely CFO or similar), HF Sinclair Corporation: We see towards the end of 2026 the differentials coming back into play, you know, and we were very backwardated in the quarter. That looks to be flattening out. The roll, which is very impactful for us, seems to be in a better position. I think ultimately, you know, we have a good make and mix of our distillate components over gasoline. As the jet and the diesel cracks remain strong relative to some of the macro elements that we’ve talked about—low inventories, an uptick on a colder winter, some of the geopolitical concerns that we have internationally—those all look good for us into the fourth quarter. We look to go, you know, swell the gasoline pool with our butane blending that we have in, you know, in the pipe. Overall, our Q4 looks for us to be more bullish than maybe we’d seen in the past.

We’re looking to take advantage of that, have a good strong loan for Q4.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Ryan, this is Tim. What I would just say is, you know, we’re pleased with the progress we’re making on capture. All the things Steve talks about, you know, we’re on pace for record jet production premium, all the product mix opportunities that he’s talked about in the past. That’s despite the headwinds that we’re seeing on not just roll, but on crude diffs in general. With the outlook that we have that crude diffs should widen WCSWTI in particular next year, we do think there’s some upside to continued improvement in capture.

Craig Biery, Vice President of Investor Relations, HF Sinclair Corporation: Thank you.

Ellie, Conference Call Operator: Question comes from the line of Douglas Leggate of Wolfe Research. Your line is now open.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Hey guys. Hey Tim, thank you for taking my questions. I’m sorry to be up on this SRE issue, but just to be clear.

So.

I’m curious, why didn’t you break out the $115 million and the $56 million as non-recurring? I’m assuming they were in your capture, in your realized margins, or can you explain where they show up in the numbers? Yeah, Doug, hi, this is Atanas. The $115 million, which is the bulk of the impact, shows in our as a benefit to our cost of sales. The reason that’s the case is because we had taken that expense in the past. The company incurred those expenses, recognized them in our previous EBITDA, lowered our EBITDA, and we appropriately have captured those in our current EBITDA as an offset to that. The remaining $56 million is revenue and it results from optimizing hybrid strategy. That’s somewhat different than the reimbursement of what I call prior expenses. Therefore, that bulk $115 million goes into our cost of sales as credit.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Doug, this is Tim, what I would just say is sure, you know, we don’t view this as a one time event. We view this as we will be, you know, assuming the SREs continue to be in the RFS legislation, that we will be entitled to this and as I mentioned in my earlier remarks, even more of an impact than what we’ve seen today. We don’t think it’s a one time event.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: No, I completely understand and completely agree with that. Sorry, Tim, maybe I’m being thick as a rock here, but can you just clarify, is this the single quarter impact or is this a cumulative recovery of the SRES for all prior years? Yeah, this is cumulative based on the exemptions that we were granted but taken in the third quarter, correct?

Yeah.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: I would just say that, Doug, the $115 million which we talked about in terms of cost of sales is the cumulative impact of the SREs that are being granted. The $56 million is just related to specific actions that were taken in the trading markets in the third quarter that attribute to revenue and which we consider. You know, we don’t talk about the buying and selling of crude or our crude inventory positions or our product inventory positions quarter by quarter. We think that $56 million for SREs fits into that same category for RINs. It’s just normal course of buying and selling of RINs in the course of a quarter based on our overall annual strategy. That’s how we view that, that’s why we break it up the two separately.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Okay, that’s really helpful. The $0.47 is a bit. That’s non-recurring then.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Basically, if you want to call it that, you can call it that depending on what your view of future SREs are. The $0.23 associated with the $56 million of revenue we just think is ordinary course of business.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Great stuff. I’m sorry to have labored that. My follow up is awfully a quick one. Your capital spending run rate looks light relative to your full year guide, I guess. Can you just reiterate for us what do you see as your sustaining capital for the total business, including turnarounds? Yeah. First of all, Doug, to the first part of your question, this is just timing of CapEx spend. We still stand by the guidance that we indicated in our prepared remarks with respect on a sustaining basis. On a go forward basis, we see probably about $100 million of benefit on a go forward basis relative to what.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: We have.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Said so far, we’ll give more specifics later in the year.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Yeah, Doug, we’re not ready to give guidance yet. We’ll do that in December like we normally do. Just like we said on previous calls, we believe that we have now passed our catch-up maintenance period in our overall turnaround process. We think we peaked in 2024. 2025 from a refining standpoint is actually lower on overall CapEx, but it’s kind of masked a little bit because we had a larger loops turnaround, if you remember, earlier this year. We do think looking forward into 2026 that we’ll see that substantial reduction in overall CapEx. We’ve talked about that before in terms of order of magnitude. Atlas is kind of giving you a ballpark, and then we’ll come out with further guidance when we put the final numbers out in December.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Really helpful, guys. Thanks very much and look forward to dinner in December.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Thanks.

Ellie, Conference Call Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Phillip J. Jungwirth of BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Thanks. Good morning. Can you talk about how you look to finance these pipeline expansion projects? Any difference between the first phase and if you ultimately go through with the other phases? We normally think of these as 5, 6 times build multiple projects. Is that at least within the ballpark of what you’re thinking of?

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Yeah.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Philip.

Steve Ledbetter, Executive (likely CFO or similar), HF Sinclair Corporation: Steve, you know we always like to say let’s understand the project and the economics of the project and then figure out how we finance it. We think we have multiple ways to do that, whether that’s due to liquidity on our balance sheet, we have some joint venture partner options and some extensions of that. We’re not in a position to talk about how we’re going to go put the capital to work to make these things happen. If and when we get to FID, which we are not at FID, this is evaluating a multi-phased expansion to go get to those Western U.S. markets.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Yeah. Philip, this is Tim. While we need to make those decisions when the time is appropriate, we do think that the overall cost is significantly lower than the cost that at least are rumored or circulated to be on those other two lines.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Okay, great.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Could you touch on specifically the Medicine Boat pipeline review? Just because this currently serves the.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Denver market, which is a good market for you.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: What will be the rationale for the reversal? Recognizing this isn’t in the first phase of projects you’re evaluating?

Steve Ledbetter, Executive (likely CFO or similar), HF Sinclair Corporation: Yeah. As you know, there’s an expansion that is coming to the Denver market. It will be online in Q3 2026, and that pulls barrels out of the midcon. We supply some of that. We also supply some of that from the Rockies, and that goes down our Medicine Bow pipeline. Mainly, that 35,000 a day that gets into the Denver market is going to be less valued once the expansion comes on, bringing more barrels into Denver. That is why we are planning to go make this first phase happen, which is up to 35,000 barrels a day to move those barrels that were getting into Denver west into higher graded markets. Depending on what happens, the timing of that, as we mentioned, we believe phase one could come on in 2028. That is really just to manage the overall value of that market.

I think there’s going to be a bit more oversupplied later in the year. That addresses that first situation. Longer term, in the various phases of the project to move up to 150,000 barrels a day, we would reverse Medicine Bow and potentially expand it to go get more product out of a lot of equity production in our midcon to move those barrels into PADD 5, both Nevada and eventually into California.

Yeah.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Philip, today Medicine Bow is primarily moving equity barrels of ours, and we anticipate that continuing even through past the expansion. Got it.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Makes sense.

Craig Biery, Vice President of Investor Relations, HF Sinclair Corporation: Thanks.

Ellie, Conference Call Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Paul Cheng of Scotiabank. Your line is now open.

Can you hold one second? Hi, so sorry guys, just one second.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: No problem, Paul.

I’m sorry, I was trying to manage multiple core. I think you sort of answered that question. In the first phase of your proposed midstream expansion or upgrade over there, the 35,000 barrel per day, should we assume that it’s all going to come from your equity barrel and so that from that standpoint the first phase at least is going to be a goal because you don’t need other people to come in or that. Do I get it wrong?

Steve Ledbetter, Executive (likely CFO or similar), HF Sinclair Corporation: No, Paul, I think the question was is the first thing is all equity barrels? I would say a good portion of that would be equity barrels. Again, we will follow all the requirements that are laid out from the Interstate Commerce Act and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to make fair available for all, but a good portion of those barrels from origin point to destination point would be equity barrels.

Yeah, I guess my point is that should we assume that the phase one, regardless of what the open season outcome is, is a go because that you will be sufficient of an anchor shipper that you actually don’t need other people?

Yeah, I think that is a fair assumption. Again, we have not taken FID. We anticipate an FID decision by midyear 2026, and we do believe that we have enough equity production, given the dynamics that I just mentioned, to go support this project.

Right. What kind of TANF that we should assume?

Sorry, can you repeat the question there, Paul?

What kind of tariff should we assume? What is the proposed tariff?

Yeah, again we’re not commenting on tariff structure at this point. Once we get closer to taking FID, we’ll come back to the market with a more definitive set of potential guidance items and economics.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Yeah, we do think, Paul, that we haven’t calculated tariff yet, as you know, but we do think that the overall cost and timing of what we’re proposing can be quicker and more efficient than what others have announced just because of the existing infrastructure we have. On the equity barrel comment, the Pioneer Pipeline, as we talked about, is a joint venture between us and Phillips 66. While we can’t speak for them, we would expect them to probably have some equity barrels to put on the line as well.

Okay, and the second question maybe is that you can share with us that how the lubricants market looks and also that from I know that you guys have continued to look for the bolt-on acquisition over there. How’s that market condition also looks.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Hey Paul, it’s Matt Joyce. The market is continuing to perform at a pretty healthy rate. You’ve seen our quarterly performance. We returned to a historic run rate, and we were really pleased with that. The teams continue to execute on our strategy of forward integrating our base stocks into finished and specialty products. You’re seeing the benefit of a diverse portfolio that we serve with our customer base today. Looking forward, we just continue to manage and watch any sort of tariff upheaval that we may have. We’ve seen some slowdowns in forestry in Canada, but on the long of it we’re pretty confident that fourth quarter will be in and around our traditional run rates.

How about on the M&A.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Market with regards to the M&A?

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Yeah, we don’t have anything to speak about today, but we continue to explore options and opportunities that are interesting to us and help us build on our portfolio and build out our competencies, in particular in the U.S. markets where we’re looking to continue to grow at a nice pace.

Yeah, just curious about that. Sorry, Tim, please.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Yeah, Paul, I would just say, you know, overall we’ve talked about our loop strategy. You know, we want to grow our finished business, we want to reduce our base oil length, and we want to re-rate this business to a higher trading multiple based on the specialty business. We think what Matt and his team are doing is executing that strategy. We think there are opportunities to do some inorganic bolt-ons that will help us accelerate that strategy. We think, you know, as we’ve talked about, we’ve been a consolidator in this space in the past, and we think there’s opportunities for us to continue that net opportunity.

Tim, I don’t know if you can comment on that, but one of the major integrated oil companies, they’ve been trying to sell their lubricants business and the media rumor is that they have had some difficulty to get the price they want. Does it signal the valuation multiple on that business has changed? Previously, we all generally assume 10 to 12 times EBITDA. Have you seen in the marketplace that the valuation has changed?

Paul, we obviously can’t comment on specifics because we don’t know what’s going on. I think you’re probably referencing the Castrol process that has been in the news. All I can say is that we are quite different in our business than the Castrol business. Castrol’s a much more global business focused primarily around passenger cars, where our business is much more North American based and focused on the industrial side of the business. I don’t think I can comment on any of the other kind of speculations around the process they’re going through, Paul. What I can tell you is that we believe our business, again with our strategy, is a strong industrial based business and that we can continue to grow it and increase its trading multiple by growing the finish side of the business and reducing the base oil length. Okay, we do.

Thank you.

Ellie, Conference Call Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Matthew Blair of TPH. Your line is now open.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Hey, thank you and good morning, everyone. Could I circle back to the comment that you resubmitted SRE applications for? I think it was five refineries. You know, Parco, Tulsa, and Artesia are all well above 75 a day. Could you talk about how these refineries would be eligible?

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: I guess, going forward, would you plan.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: To run these refineries that have much lower utilization, to be below 75, a day?

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Yeah, Matthew, let me just clarify on that. The Parco refinery, as you know, actually can run higher than the 75,000 barrels a day, but it’s close. Yes, I think we would take that into consideration each year as we think about overall margins and overall product demand. We’d factor that into our decision in terms of whether to run above a certain amount or not. The Tulsa and the Artesia refineries, as you know, are actually two separate refineries that we tend to report as one, but are actually two physically separate refineries. There are other refineries, as you may know, that received small refinery exemptions that operate in a similar fashion. That’s what we’re talking about on those two refineries. Okay, okay.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Because you’re right, because Tulsa was a combination of.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: I think it was like a Sunoco and some other plant.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Okay, that’s helpful. I think it’s interesting, you’re making investments in the Puget Sound Refinery at the same time that there’s a lot of proposals for more product headed to PADD 5. Could you talk about where Puget Sound would stand on the cost curve in terms of getting product into California? I guess what gives you confidence that these are going to be good long term investments?

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Yeah.

Steve Ledbetter, Executive (likely CFO or similar), HF Sinclair Corporation: Matt, this is Steve. You know, we’ve been watching the market dynamics in PADD 5 play out for quite a while. There’s a good amount of jet that is imported today into California and PADD 5. One of our advantages of the Puget Sound Refinery is our dock capability and access. These projects are intended to provide flexibility to meet the demands of whatever is happening in the marketplace, including making CARB gasoline or the unfinished components that go into CARB gasoline. We’ve been successful at improving that. You’re seeing that in our capture on the West. That’s partially attributable to that. Moving this next project to be able to swing barrels from diesel to jet, we believe that that jet short will continue and growth will continue of that overall transport fuel stream.

That gives us the availability to either place barrels in the local Puget Sound market or export them, getting them into California, but also into other markets that we’ve found success into, LatAm, et cetera. This is really about product flexibility, which gives us a competitive advantage as the market dynamic plays out. You know, we’re seeing the signs and we’re putting the capital to work, small capital to work, to go make these adjustments that are very accretive for us in the long run.

Yeah.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Matthew, this is Tim. I’ll just emphasize a couple things that Steve said. These are small projects. They fit within the guidance that we’ve been talking about in terms of our growth capital that we guide to each year. We’re not talking significant CapEx required. It’s really about flexibility. As Steve mentioned, this gives us the flexibility. For example, the jet project that I mentioned gives us the flexibility to make jet or diesel depending on what the market is calling for and depending on whether the ARB to California is open or not. It’s going to give us flexibility to take more advantage of the different dynamics and the different arbs that are open at the time. The CARB gasoline project’s the same way, just gives us the flexibility to take advantage of that. Quite honestly, this pipeline project that we’re talking about is really all about flexibility.

It’s going to give us the ability to move barrels from the Rockies over to Nevada or not, just depending on what the market looks like. Thank you.

Ellie, Conference Call Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Neil Singhvi Mehta of Goldman Sachs Group. Your line is now open. Yeah.

Steve Ledbetter, Executive (likely CFO or similar), HF Sinclair Corporation: Good morning, Tim.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Good morning team. One tactical question, one strategic. Just tactically, the Q4 guide, the $550 to $590 of crack, charts lower than.

It’s been a while, and I think you cited the turnaround at Puget Sound.

Is there anything else that we should be thinking about there, or is there some conservatism there?

Steve Ledbetter, Executive (likely CFO or similar), HF Sinclair Corporation: Neil, this is Steve. The guidance reflects our planned turnaround at a large refinery in Puget Sound. As you know, that started very late September. In addition, we pushed out a few small maintenance elements into a lower margin environment in Q4 to take advantage of the market in the higher margin environment in Q3. The combination of those two get us to this 550 to 590 crude guidance. Nothing more to it than that.

Okay, any early thoughts on 2026?

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Turnarounds as we think about next year?

Ellie, Conference Call Operator: This is Valerie.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Our turnaround guidance will be coming.

Ellie, Conference Call Operator: Out generally, as we said before, we.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Are through the peak and continue. We’ve continued to level out our turnaround costs and our turnaround events.

Ellie, Conference Call Operator: Next year guidance will be coming out soon.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: I would expect lower, anticipate lower cost and fewer turnarounds. Perfect, Valerie.

The follow up, Tim, just.

On return of capital, very nice number this quarter you’ve talked.

About in 2026 and beyond, you want to get to dividends plus.

Buybacks being 50% or higher of net income.

Talk about how you’re thinking.

About return of capital levels on the go forward.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Neil, this is Atlas. Thanks for your question. With respect to our payout ratio, really that 50%. We look at it as a minimum payout ratio, which we’ve exceeded consistently over the years, including this year. Our priority remains to, you know, shareholder return of capital remains a priority for us. What does that translate into? Any excess cash flow that we generate over, above our non-discretionary spend, which is our dividend, our commitments to safety and reliability, highly accretive organic growth, anything over and above that, our target is to return to the shareholders.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Yeah, and Neil, I’ll just chime in with what Anna said. You know, we evaluate inorganic opportunities to grow, we evaluate these organic growth projects that we just talked about against our other options of returning cash to shareholders and look and choose to see what is the best decision for the business long term. We are factoring all that in as we do our capital allocation strategy. I will just point to our historical practice of returning cash to shareholders. If you look back over the last three or four years, we’ve been 16% in 2022, 12% cash returns in 2023, 16% cash returns in 2024, and we’re 11% here in the third quarter, 7% year to date in 2025. I think our track record of returning cash to shareholders is strong. Thanks, Tiff.

Thanks for having us.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Thank you.

Ellie, Conference Call Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jason Gabelman of TD Cowen. Your line is now open.

Yeah, hey, I’m going to pick up on that last question. I understand kind of the framework about returning cash to shareholders, but if I look year to date, it does seem like cash has built, you know, approaching $1 billion and debt has remained, I guess, somewhat stable. It seems like there’s been some build of excess cash. Should we expect a catch up where more of that excess cash is returned, or are you looking to stockpile cash for another reason, or is there something else going on there? Thanks.

Agnes/Atanas, Chief Financial Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Thanks for your question. We’re not looking to stockpile cash. If you look at the increase in our cash balance, really a lot of the build occurred in the third quarter, which is a very strong quarter. Our goal is to return our excess cash to shareholders. We don’t guide with respect to timing, but expect more to come in terms of capital returns.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Okay.

My other question is on the SRE topic, which I know has been hit a few times, but I just wanted to ask a couple of clarifying questions. First, can you break out the margin benefit to each one of your regions so we get a picture of what the underlying margin was for the quarter excluding the SRE benefit? To be clear, do you have now excess RINs on the balance sheet that you can sell back into the market, or does that kind of $50 million or so that you mentioned get you into a place that you’d want to be to manage your RIN exposure moving forward?

Yeah. Jason, this is Tim. I appreciate both of those questions that you’re asking, but we don’t provide that level of detail for either of those questions. SRE breakdown, you know, across the regions or by plant, we’ve just never done that in the past and we don’t believe it’s in our best interest to do that going forward. We’ve never talked about our RINs position, whether we’re RINs long or RINs short, all just from the very beginning. While we talked about it, you know, whether to disclose that or not, we decided it’s still in our best interest not to disclose that.

Okay, understood.

Thanks for the answers.

Ellie, Conference Call Operator: Thank you. I’d now like to hand the call back to Tim Go for final remarks.

Tim Go, Chief Executive Officer, HF Sinclair Corporation: Thank you, Ellie. Before we close, I want to point out that our business is much different from just a few years ago. Not just in acquired assets like with the Puget Sound Refinery, Sinclair HEP, but it’s also different in culture and performance. Refining, throughput, capture, operating costs, and CapEx are all trending in the right direction. Our non-refining segments continue to shine, including our lubricants and specialties, business marketing, and midstream businesses. All of these are proof points that our strategy is working and enabling us to generate free cash and deliver strong shareholder returns. Looking ahead, we are constructive on the fundamentals of each of our businesses, including our renewable diesel business. Our priorities remain the same: to 1 improve our reliability, 2 integrate and optimize our portfolio of assets, and 3 return excess cash to our shareholders. Thank you for joining our call.

Have a great day.

Ellie, Conference Call Operator: This does conclude today’s club teleconference. Please disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.

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