HollyFrontier Misses Profit Estimates Hurt By Outage

Reuters

Aug 2 (Reuters) - U.S. oil refiner HollyFrontier Corp's quarterly profit missed analysts' estimates on Thursday, hurt by an outage that increased operating costs and cut refining volumes sending its shares down as much as 11.8 percent in early trade.

HollyFrontier's refinery in Woods Cross, Utah, with a capacity of 45,000 barrels per stream day (bpsd) has been running at reduced rates throughout the quarter after a fire broke out in the unit in March.

Senior vice president of refining James Stump said the company's consolidated operating cost of $5.89 per throughput barrel was 10 percent higher from a year earlier.

He said the increase was primarily driven by comps associated with the Woods Cross outage that started in March.

Stump said the Dallas-based company expects to increase production through August and reach full run rates by September.

HollyFrontier's total refinery throughput was 490,200 barrels per day (bpd), down from 498,300 bpd, a year earlier.

Total operating costs rose 18.7 percent to $3.96 billion.

The profit miss comes at a time when larger rivals Valero Energy Corp and Marathon Petroleum Corp topped Wall street estimates last week on higher refining margins.

HollyFrontier, which mostly processes sweet crude oil said its refinery gross margins rose by 45.8 percent to $16.57 per barrel in the reported quarter.

The refinery gross margins was below Wells Fargo's estimate of $17.62 per barrel.

Net profit attributable to shareholders rose to $345.5 million, or $1.94 per share, in the second quarter ended June 30, from $57.8 million, or 33 cents per share, a year earlier. (https://bit.ly/2LSmaUS)

Sales and other revenue rose to $4.47 billion from $3.46 billion.

Excluding items, the company posted a profit of $1.45 per share, missing analysts' average estimate of $1.61 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Shares were down about 8 percent at $68.20 in Thursday morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Akshara P in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Shailesh Kuber)



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