PBF Energy Inc.

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 Investors Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, Lily. Good morning and welcome to today's call. With me today are Matt Lucey, our CEO, Mike Bukowski, our Head of Refining, Joe Marino, our CFO, 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 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. Consistent with our prior periods, we'll discuss our results excluding special items, which are described in today's press release. Also included in the press release is forward-looking guidance information. For any questions on these items or other follow-up questions, please contact Investor Relations following the call. I'll now turn the call over to Matt Lucey.

Thanks, Colin. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call. First, I'd like to welcome and introduce Joe Marino as PBF's new Chief Financial Officer. Many on the call may be familiar with Joe, as he's been with PBF since before our 2012 IPO and has been our treasurer for the last five years. In the same breath, I'd like to thank Karen Davis for her service, and I'm thrilled to welcome her back to the Board of Directors. I want to address three topics. on the status of Martinez, to our third quarter performance, and lastly the near-term outlook. Regarding Martinez, consistent with our call in July, we are on schedule for a December restart. Maintenance teams are scheduled to be turning over the impacted units to operations in early December. As units get handed over, we will commence a deliberate and sequential restart of the affected units. Our plan is to have Martinez fully operational by the end of the year. The dedication of the Martinez team in this effort continues to be exemplary. While PBF's third quarter represented a sequential improvement over the prior few quarters, the real news is the sequential improvement that occurred during the quarter. Unquestionably, there was a shift in September, which represented a significant positive step in the right direction. While product cracks were relatively strong throughout the quarter, crude differentials only began to improve towards the end of the quarter. Now, as we sit in what is typically the seasonally weaker period, Product cracks are quite strong and crude differentials continue to widen. As we look past the fourth quarter into 26, refined product supply constraints coupled with a well-supplied crude market should create a positive theme for domestic and global refining. Global demand continues to outstrip net refining capacity additions, and we expect to see additional capacity rationalizations that will be supportive of tight product balances, as we saw this month with the shutdown of another refinery in California. PBF remains focused on controlling the aspects of our business that we can control. We expect to be well positioned to capture favorable market conditions as we move forward. To be successful and enhance value for our investors, we must operate safely, reliably, and responsibly, and we must do it as efficiently as possible. To that end, we are on track with our commitment to our business improvement initiatives. We are working to improve our performance every day. So to summarize, strong product cracks with improving crew dynamics, coupled with the full power of our responding system, as Martinez should be up by the end of the year, operating with improved efficiency thanks to our RBI program, all of which should come together to create a dynamic environment for the company and our shareholders. With that, I'll turn it over to Mike.

Thank you, Matt. Good morning, everyone. Before discussing the progress of our Refining Business Improvement Program, or RBI for short, I'll provide a few comments on third quarter operations and our Martinez refinery status. On the West Coast, we continue to progress with the full repair and restart of Martinez. We plan to begin transitioning from maintenance to operations in early December. This time we will execute a methodical sequence startup plan with its primary focus being the safe and environmentally sound restart of the repaired processing units. Our Martinez team has completed a tremendous amount of work this year. To give you a little bit of an idea as to the scale of this effort In addition to completing the FCC turnaround, we're installing 130 tons of new steel, laying over 20,000 feet of pipe and over 200,000 feet of electrical and instrument cabling. All major equipment components have arrived on site and we have completed installation of the two major columns that had to be replaced. I commend our Martinez team for continuing to execute the repair work safely. While the team is focused on restoring operations, we will not let time be a constraint from executing the startup safely. While there has been a lot of focus on Martinez, our team at Torrance successfully and safely completed the hydrocracker turnaround in the third quarter. At Toledo, at midsummer, hydrocracker unplanned outage and pipeline maintenance impacted third quarter throughput. Aside from a few minor issues, the rest of our system operated reasonably well in the quarter. and we have no major turnaround work for the remainder of the year. Shifting topics to RBI. We are on track to meet our previously announced goal to implement $230 million of annualized run rate savings by the end of 2025. This goal represents 50 cents per barrel or approximately $160 million reduction in operating expenses against our 2024 benchmark and will be fully realized in 2026. In addition, we expect to reduce sustaining capital and turnaround expenditures by $70 million. As you may recall, we started this program with centralized efforts in procurement, capital projects, organizational design, turnarounds and site efforts at our Torrance and Delaware Valley refineries. As of the third quarter, all refineries are engaged in RBI and are contributing to the savings goals. One of the recent successes achieved through the RBI program is a 5% cost reduction of our Torrance hydrocracker turnaround through our Productivity Improvement Initiative. This program uses dedicated resources to identify and eliminate waste and remove barriers to job productivity. Additionally, we've achieved approximately $21 million in run rate savings by revamping our procurement model to leverage our spend across the refining circuit. System-wide, we are focusing on improving our maintenance efficiency and reinvesting some of the savings in energy reduction projects while also reducing our maintenance backlogs. The outcome will have the dual effect of improved energy efficiency and reliability. We are providing enhanced performance monitoring tools to our employees and incorporating them into our site work processes across the fleet. The new tools and processes will drive the organization to not only maintain our savings performance and efficiency, but drive continuous improvement. Our main priority will always be to focus on safe, reliable, and responsible operations across our system. RBI will help us improve across all areas and result in a sustainable culture of operational excellence and continuous improvement. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Joe Marino for our financial overview.

Thanks, Mike. For the third quarter, we reported an adjusted net loss of $0.52 per share and an adjusted EBITDA of $144.4 million. Our discussion of third quarter results excludes the net effect of special items, including $14.6 million in incremental topics related to the Martinez refinery incident, a $250 million gain on insurance recoveries, a $94 million gain on the sale of terminal assets, an $8.5 million loss relating to PBS' 50% share of SBR's LCM inventory adjustment for the quarter, and approximately $8 million of charges associated with the RBI initiative. The $250 million gain on insurance recoveries related to the Martinez fire is a result of the second unallocated payment agreed to at the end of the third quarter, of which the majority has already been received in Q4. Going forward, we will continue to work with our insurance providers for potential additional interim payments. However, the timing and amount of any agreed upon future payments will be dependent on the amount of incurred covered expenditures, plus calculated business interruption losses. Our Q3 P&L reflects incremental optics at Martinez of $14.6 million that we are reflecting as a special item because it relates to construction of temporary equipment to restart undamaged units and other fire-related non-capital expenses. While we anticipate recovering a portion of this amount through insurance, the specific amount will be determined as we progress further into the claims process. Generally speaking, any insurance proceeds we receive in future periods will be reflected as gain on insurance recoveries on our income statement and reported as a special item. Shifting back to our normal quarterly results discussion, also included in our results is a $19.7 million loss related to PDF's equity investment in St. Bernard Renewables. SBR produced an average of 15,400 barrels per day of renewable diesel in the third quarter. SBR's production was somewhat below guidance, driven by broader market conditions and renewable fuel space. Throughout the year, we've seen impacts from tariffs cascade through the feed market, and the policy landscape continues to shift, adding uncertainty and volatility to the business. CVS cash flow from operations for the quarter was approximately $25 million, which includes a working capital draw of approximately $74 million, primarily related to the timing of cash interest payments, movements in inventory, and falling commodity prices. Also included in our cash flow for the quarter are the previously announced tax refund of $75 million, including interest, and the $175 million received for the sale of the Knoxville and Philadelphia terminal assets, excluding commission and closing costs. Cash invested in consolidated capex for the third quarter was approximately $132 million, which includes refining, corporate, and logistics. This amount excludes third quarter capital expenses of approximately $128 million related to the Martinez incident. Year-to-date rebuild capital expenses through the end of the third quarter are approximately $260 million. Additionally, our board of directors approved a regular quarter dividend of 27.5 cents per share. We ended the quarter with $482 million in cash and approximately $1.9 billion of net debt. Maintaining our firm financial footing and a resilient balance sheet remain priorities. At quarter end, our net debt to cap was 32%, and our current liquidity is approximately $2.1 billion, based on current commodity prices, cash, and borrowing capacity under our ABL. If you take into consideration the second installment of our insurance proceeds already received in Q4, our liquidity and net deposition has improved versus the prior quarter. As we look ahead, we expect to use periods of strength to focus on deleveraging and preserving the balance sheet. Operator, we've completed our opening remarks, and we'd be pleased to take any questions.

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 while we poll for questions. Your first question comes from Manav Gupta from UBS. Please go ahead.

Morning team would like to first welcome Joe in his new role and wish him all the luck in this role. Matt, maybe for you or somebody else, but just I mean you made some positive comments about Martinus restart. I think there's a lot of focus on that given the capacity closures that are happening. And yes, some new pipelines might get built, but that could take two to three years. So the key here is to get that refinery up and running. And I'm just trying to understand your confidence level in getting this thing across the line i understand you know sometimes there could be regulatory delays but looks like the government wants you to get this up and running so help us understand where we are in the process and your confidence level in getting this asset up and running by year end thanks manav um i don't anticipate any regulatory issues uh to be clear we have we have all our permits and we've had a good working relationship with the state and as you said

I think they're very, very interested in getting the refinery back up and running. I have tremendous confidence in our team. They have done amazing work to get us to this point. It is a major lift. As Mike Rakowski can detail, any project that a refinery does usually has years of advance work done. And when you have an unplanned incident like we had, it creates a much more difficult environment to execute because there is no pre-planning. And so our team has just distinguished themselves. Indeed, we have confidence in the plan that we put forward, which is to commence startup during the month of December and be up and running in December. Of course, that requires us doing everything as safely and reliably as we can. If there's a moment in time when we need to take a breath or introduce a bit more time, there's always time for safety. But I have complete confidence in the team. We have all our permits in place. And so I think we just need to let it play out over the next couple months.

Perfect, sir. All the best for that. And I have come back to one of the comments you made on the call earlier where you said, look, the DIFs really started to widen out towards the end of the quarter. So just trying to understand the outlook for the heavy light differentials. I think we all acknowledge PBS is one of the most levered to that trend. If that DIF does widen, it will lead to material increase in your capture rates. So help us understand what you're seeing out there. Are there heavier discounted barrels now showing up on the Gulf Coast, which was, or other parts of your system, which was not the case even two or three quarters ago, if you could help us talk through that. Thank you.

Absolutely. I'm going to make a couple of comments and turn it over to Tom. Look, the market has been constrained. If you go back, you know, starting over four years ago when barrels started getting pulled off the market, So when OPEC made its deliberate shift going back six months ago, there's simply a lag. And now obviously they made their shift at a moment in time where you're going into peak runs and you're also going into crude burn in the Middle East. And so demand is sort of at its highest. In any scenario, there's going to be a lag considering the seasonal time that the tapering began there's probably even more of a lag, one that was a bit frustrating to us. But indeed, we are now seeing crude loosened as a result of the OPEC moves.

Tom? Yeah. Thanks, Manav. I mean, kind of just going a little bit further, I mean, I think Matt summarized that well in terms of the, you know, peak run environment and the crude burn. And obviously, you know, OPEC's pivoting in terms of where they've been in terms of their policies. That certainly has shifted the dynamics. As we look at this year, this has been a year where crude stocks have been building, but they've been building in the non-OECD. And the Western Basin or the Atlantic Basin has been tight in comparison. Stocks are low. But we now have seen at this juncture, there's enormous amounts of oil that have been pushed out on water. David Wiltshire- Freight is very expensive, a lot of the oil going on water is clearly something related around some of the sanctions but. David Wiltshire- Inevitably, that will then need to come back on shore and when that comes on shore that sort of is a little bit more of the sustaining aspect of what we've been seeing in the near term. in terms of the widening of differentials, because you've got cheap tanks available in the U.S. Cushing and Pad 3 are certainly available to be built at far more economic numbers than putting it on a ship at multi-year highs in terms of freight. And then I think the last couple of comments in terms of barrels that were getting pulled out of the Atlantic Basin to the Pacific, particularly some LATAM barrels, we are seeing avails and we are buying barrels that we have not bought in several years. And that's coming into our system. And I think one of the larger things also to kind of comment is if we were talking about the market a year ago, we would have been talking about, obviously, the paper and all the different effects. But we would have been talking about underperformance in Brazil. Guyana was just getting its sort of feet under itself. We've had prolific finds and gains in those areas that are certainly contributing. to the dynamics where the crude markets or dynamics certainly look a little bit better and a lot better, excuse me, in terms of their availabilities, you know, particularly to the coastal regions.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Ryan Todd from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Maybe it might be hard to answer, but maybe it's great news on the approval of another $250 million installment of the insurance proceeds. Is there a way to think about this from a timeline point of view in terms of what it covers or what is included in the installments up to this point? Does it cover costs and losses? Implied through year end under the current plan or through then the third quarter. I guess it's part of like how. How should we think about the you know the the possibility of further meaningful installments in the future?

Yeah, happy to address that to some degree. We don't want. We're not going to get into the detailed, you know, accounting or the dissection of it, Here's how I would describe it. In the third quarter, we got a $250 million payment shortly after the quarter, so it wasn't in the results. So if you look at the third quarter and you take credit for that $250 million that came in just after September 30th, we're a little bit in arrears. So if you pull out... more broadly and look at the third quarter, and we had an asset sale of $175 million, and you take that out, but then you solve for the insurance payment that came in right after the quarter, and you account for us being in a bit of arrears in some insurance collections through the quarter. I look at our operations on a pro forma basis for Q3 as being cash flow positive to the tune of between $100 and $200 million. In regards to going forward, all I can say is we've had a tremendous relationship with the insurance markets, with the underwriters. I don't know if that can always be said for other companies and other industries and other incidents, but we've had a longstanding relationship with our insurance underwriters. Our team, I was, along with our team, over in London, meeting with the insurance markets over there. We hosted the group here in New Jersey for the U.S. underwriters, and we continue to really value the relationship we have with them. There will be some payments that are in arrears, but it's very, very manageable.

Great. Thank you. That's helpful. Maybe one, shifting to the RBI program, I'm not sure if I missed this, but can you maybe, you know, congratulations on the progress that you've made up to this point. Can you provide a little more color on maybe how much you've been able to capture to date on your OpEx for Burial reduction targets or CapEx run rate targets, you know, What are the big buckets left to achieve as you work towards 2026, you know, kind of target completion on that plan?

Okay. So thanks for the question, Ryan. This is Mike. So as I said, we're on target for the $230 million. I think as of today, we're close to about $210 million of implemented savings on a run rate basis. throughout the course of the year. That's cash, so that's not just all OPEX. And so roughly think about that, as I said before, 70% OPEX, 30% CAPEX. And so we look real good to finish up the year to hit our goal of $230 million. When we look across the system, remember, we just started this in two refineries back in January, and so there's kind of a time basis of this. But I think across the course of the year up to the third quarter, probably captured order of magnitude about $30 to $40 million of OPEX and then another $10 to $15 million of turnaround savings. And one thing you may want to take a look at in our earnings release is the third quarter performance of the Delaware City refinery, you'll see that in an era where we had some headwinds on energy prices, the utilization was about the same quarter to quarter, and we're showing a reduction in OPEX. So we're starting to see it get to the bottom line.

Thanks. Do you think that there's a – is there a – Another leg to this process, as you think beyond the, you know, kind of the 2026 completion now that you've, I mean, you're not that far into this process. Is there kind of a second leg and tranche that might be visible at this point that's more, you know, more upside in the future?

Yes, definitely. I tend not to think of this as legs or tranches. I tend to think of this as a continuous improvement journey that never really ends. But as I said in my prepared remarks, we added the other refineries in the third quarter to the program. And so initially it was just Torrance and Delaware City, and then we're bringing on these other refineries. So a large impact in that $210 million has been through the central and just those two refineries. So additional savings will be coming online from the refineries that we added to the program. And then the way we're doing this, this is not just deferring expenses. This is finding waste, driving efficiency, and eliminating costs. And so we will spend the time next year going through another what we call brainstorming or ideation process at all the facilities, one, to ensure we sustain what we have, but also to drive improvement going forward. As I look towards the end of 2026, I see that run rate savings going up to over $350 million.

Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Doug Legate from Wolf Research.

Okay, I'll take that. Good morning, everybody. Wonder Matt if I could hit on the lower turnaround expenses and I'm wondering. As part of your efficiency drive, do we basically get your at your reference Delaware and your remarks just there in the last question? Do we think about higher utilization? Being a new normal, I guess for PBF going forward, it seems to us that the whole industry is. managed to shift up its utilization. Obviously, that resets our view of mid-cycle free cash flow. We're just wondering if that also applies to you guys.

Yeah, so our turnaround program is set up a couple different ways. And in the past, we haven't been happy with our performance on cost and schedule. And then also, we have an opportunity to optimize our intervals. And so we think we'll see a lengthening of intervals, for one thing, so that'll allow more runtime We are working with a third-party benchmarking firm to really set our turnaround budgets and schedules going forward, and that's how we're going to drive the savings. And so we would expect to see somewhat shorter duration turnarounds and much more effective turnarounds, which ultimately will turn into higher utilization while the units are up.

In regards to utilization broadly, I sort of think of it maybe in a simplified manner. I think you have a confluence of a number of events. One is if you have a winterless winter or if you have a stormless summer, it certainly makes an operating environment easier to operate if you don't have disruptions. And we've seen that over the last number of seasons where there's been minimal impact, whether it's from storms or from harsh winters. And then you have, obviously, some creep, whether it's capacity creep, deep bottlenecking, some increases in throughput. And so numerators may be a bit dated. And then you have this pursuit of operational excellence where everyone is trying to become more efficient and become the best operators they can. And in so doing, you're able to increase your reliability and increase your throughput. We are on that journey, and we expect it to pay dividends for sure.

Okay. It seems to be applying. I observed to Phillips and Valero that between them they replaced Linedale-Houston basically with their better utilization, but Anyway, I'm grateful for the input. Thank you. My follow-up, I'll add my welcome to Joe and ask him maybe to run his crust a little bit today. Joe, I don't know if this is something you can do, but if we try to simplify all the moving parts on the cost, the money going out the door for the repairs, the insurance proceeds coming in, obviously you took out the short-term loan to navigate through this. If we normalize the balance sheet, when all is said and done, where do you think your net debt would sit? I'm not talking about contributions from future quarters and so on. When you normalize for the money out and the money in, what would your net debt be if you hadn't had this event?

That's an interesting question. Obviously, there'd be a lot of different factors playing into the market and how our results would be if the event didn't happen. And part of the issuing of that additional notes earlier this year was, you know, in advance of the potential market that we were looking at at that point. So some of that was outside of purely just Martinez related. So I think, you know, hard to specifically answer that question to it down to a fine detail, but it would be less than it is today, but probably more than, you know, from a net debt standpoint than entering entering the year.

Yeah, I know it's a tough one to answer. Just to clarify what I'm asking, I'm not looking for the lost opportunity cost. I'm looking for the extraordinary costs and the extraordinary cash inflows from insurance. If those were all taken out, is that a net debt lower number or can you put a magnitude on it or no? We should try and figure out how much to be deducted from our DCF for your net debt on a normalized basis.

Yeah, I think... Again, it's hard to put a fine point on that. Obviously, the cost, as we've said before, actual repair costs are going to be substantially covered by our insurance, so that really won't have a meaningful impact on our overall net debt, whether you look at our pro forma or go forward basis. There's impact to the business and our net debt profile from the downtime, for sure. And we think a good deal of that will be offset by BI insurance, you know, when everything is all said and done. But, you know, we don't have, you know, an exact impact of what that would look like, you know, at this point.

Yeah, I'll take it offline with Colin. Thanks so much, Joe. Thanks again.

Thank you. The next question comes from Neil Netta from Goldman Sachs.

Yeah, good morning. Good morning, Mac morning team. You know there's been a lot of talk about moving product into the West Coast as as some of your competitors retire capacity with three independent projects. You know talked about either into the to to the Southwest or even into California. Just your perspective on whether that can alleviate some of the pressure on on Pat 5 and. How do you think about timing and potential impacts of that?

Yeah, thanks, Neil. Good to hear from you. In regards to some of the announced projects, you know, I'm not going to speculate in regards to which, if any, are going to get to the finish line. I would just say in the base case, in the base case, you're going to be very, very expensive. In the base case, It's going to take a lot of time. And as an observer of the market and as a participant in the market, my guess is that the Bayes case may be aspirational in regards to time and money. I'd probably tend to take the over on time. Nothing is as easy as a result. You know it's cousin money. I'd probably take the over regardless of how long it takes. There will be substantial tariffs on any new pipes that are built. And so. We continue to think our in state manufacturing facilities will be low cost producer. The state is going to require imports whether it comes. from the water or from pipe, that will be higher priced imports. And so I think with the sort of rebalancing that has happened within California refining, we're very, very well positioned from a product standpoint, but also from a crude standpoint. If you have one refinery just came down, one refinery is still scheduled to come down, but you then also have less demand on local crews as a result. So I think our position in California is particularly attractive and interesting going forward, regardless of the potential pipes, you know, when they come on, how they come on. They will be coming on because it's a product short market.

All right. Thanks, Matt. Good color. Early thoughts on 2026 CapEx, recognizing we're going to get a little bit more color in Q4. And you guys have done a good job keeping a lid on spend this year. But how do you think about some of the moving pieces as you move into 26? And is there a soft number that we should be thinking about penciling and recognizing we're going to get a harder number on the Q4 call?

Yeah, I would keep to our schedule on that. We do have a heavy turnaround season next year. But we'll get into that normal course, Neil.

Thanks, Matt.

Thank you. The next question comes from Philip Youngworth from BMO.

I was hoping you could just talk to what you're seeing this month in the SoCal market, just given the moving pieces with Phillips LA closing down two weeks ago. Are you seeing any benefit here? And obviously, we had the unplanned downtime, which really helped get along with other product prices.

Well, I would say it's hard to tell what the impact of Phillips is this 10 seconds, because there is a tremendous amount of unplanned outages that are going on currently. So, As you highlighted, the market's quite dynamic this 10 seconds on everything gasoline, jet fuels, and distillates. So hard to judge this 10 seconds as to what impact the overall markets have with just Phillips going down by itself. But there's a fair amount of planned and unplanned events going on on the West Coast this 10 seconds. So it is what we call an all bid market.

Yeah. In regards to just pulling yourself out of the prompt screen, It is hugely impactful. There's going to be 100,000 barrels a day less of gasoline produced in the LA region. That now has to be imported from outside the state. Obviously, a significant amount of California crudes are no longer going to be procured by that refinery, and those crudes only home is with California refineries. You know, it will play out. The refinery literally shut, I think, two weeks ago. And there's been lots of sort of activity in the marketplace not related to the shutdown. So hard to unpack exactly. But over time, I think, you know, our position in California will prove out to be pretty compelling.

Okay, great. And with California now at least trying to stem the decline of local crude production, issuing permits, how optimistic are you that this could give benefit to PBFs and in-state refiners, or at least no longer a headwind with declining production?

Yes. My old joke is, you know, as a refining business, we're all big boys, and we generally don't ask for help. You simply ask for stop bashing us in the head with a shovel. And so, you know, systematically shutting in crude production was a significant headwind. I think with all that's going on in California, there's a recognition that that wasn't the single greatest policy to have in place and fixes have been put in place. So I think it's a removal of a headwind it will allow certainly the valley in California to stem declines. And so my other thing is you find yourself on a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. So hopefully we can have declines, you know, arrested. Whether the valley grows, I can't comment on. But simply, it's a very, very positive step to get that legislation through. We work very, very closely with all the parties in Sacramento. It is hugely beneficial to have it in place because the alternative was very poor. And so our team has worked unbelievably and has worked in concert With a number of the constituents in Sacramento, whether it's the CEC, the governor's office, with legislators, I think everyone appreciates the importance of supplying reliable, deliverable, affordable energy to the people of California. And they desperately need gasoline and diesel and jet fuel at affordable prices.

Thanks.

The next question comes from Matthew Blair from PPH.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Could you talk about your outlook for refining capture in the fourth quarter? It seems like it could take a big step up. I think you already mentioned that food disks are trending a little bit wider, but it seems like other factors might be moving in your favor, less Less maintenance, less turnaround expense, better market structure, better jet versus diesel spreads, lower rims. I mean, pretty much everything across the board seems to be moving in your favor. I think you're in the mid 30% range on capture in Q3. Do you think something north of 40% is realistic for the fourth quarter?

We agree with everything you said. Bringing on staff. Look, I think it's very constructive look ahead. Crew deaths is the single largest thing. There's no question about it. And I think they're set to continually improve over the quarter. RINs is a tough one in regards to they have been relatively stable in regards to RIN prices. RIN prices are eventually going to have to move up. But of course, that goes to the cost to import as well. And if you look at the marketplace at the moment, it's pretty interesting. European gasoline is pricing higher than the US, not only for today, but out on the strip. And that's true for Asia as well. And so it sets up a constructive environment, whereas Either European prices have to come down, and we don't see that in the short term, or North America, Atlantic Basin, you know, Pad 1 prices have to increase to attract those imports. But everything he said, we agree with in regards to improved marketplace.

Sounds good. And then earlier you mentioned some of the challenges in the renewable diesel space. One of your competitors just threw in the towel on RD. Do you have any thoughts to shutting down your RD plant or what's the thinking there?

Our thinking is that it has been a challenging market. But unlike others, we view our asset as a top quartile asset. And I think There's a lot to juggle in regards to RD and you've had administration change where the whole focus of the program is shifted from a low carbon intensity incentive to reduce low carbon fuels. To the new administration, which is really focused on increasing. Soybean production and use. That change is more than a subtle one, and it's going to put a number of assets in a pickle, and you couple that with the new rules where, you know, imported feeds have a penalty, imported RD doesn't get the producer's tax credit. There's a lot to play out in it. Much of it points, most likely, to higher RIN prices. And by the way, higher RIN prices, not only because you need to create an environment that makes it economic to manufacture renewable diesel, but also as supply comes off, you have an RBO that's going to, you know, that's not going to decline. And so, you know, I do think RIN prices, there's a risk for higher RIN prices, and hopefully the administration understands that. They're taking comment now. on reallocation and such. But, you know, where we sit is no doubt been a very difficult market, but our location and the capabilities that we have at our plant, I think, sets us apart from a number of the other participants.

Great. Thanks for your comments.

Thank you. Your final question comes from Connor Fitzpatrick from PBF. Please go ahead.

I'm not sure. Hi. Hi. Sorry. It might have been a mix up there. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I apologize if some of this has been touched on before, but we're hearing that the vessels that need to be installed at Martinez have a 60-day time frame to install and construct. Have those arrived at the Martinez site yet? And we think they also need to be inspected and blessed by Bay Area Air Quality Management, EPA, and OSHA. Can federal sign-off be done during the government shutdown? I know you mentioned permitting before, but should there be any further issues as it relates to shutdown and oversight? And I guess more broadly, can you break down the timeline of equipment left to be received, authority to construct and shut down impacts on that, and time to place all the equipment into service? Thanks.

All right. Look, I'm aware maybe there was some fake news or stories. I would suggest everyone focus on what the company's official comments are. I'm not entirely sure where you're getting some of your information, but as I said, we have all our permits to construct. We have a very good relationship with not only the state, but with the county in regards to get us to the finish line. And we have our plan again to commence restart in December. which takes into consideration everything that is required. We're certainly not going to get into explicit details, despite you being announced as a PBF person, you're not a PBF employee. You are not going to get into explicit details on exactly what equipment is being restarted when, but we have a very thoughtful and delivered plan to restart the equipment, and we'll have all the approval necessary to do that.

Thanks. That's very clear. I guess I should correct and say that I'm from Bank of America. I think there was a mix-up. If you couldn't tell, I don't know. But thank you. That's the only question I had.

Well, I appreciate the question, and hopefully there shouldn't be any confusion in regards to it. And as Mike stated, We'll always make time for safety, but we've got a very, very good plan to get the plant up and running. With that, I believe that concludes our questions. So I greatly appreciate everyone's time and attention and look forward to very constructive markets looking forward. Thank you.

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