Report
Valens Research

MPC - Embedded Expectations Analysis - 2018 01 23

- Marathon Petroleum Corporation (MPC:USA) currently trades above historical averages relative to UAFRS-based (Uniform) Assets, with a 1.6x Uniform P/B, implying bullish expectations for the firm. However, management has concerns about costs, gross margins, volumes, and their macro outlook

- Specifically, management appears to be concerned about their ability to offset increases in their crack cost with pricing improvements, and about the sustainability of their light product and merchandise gross margin. Moreover, they may be concerned about the sustainability of their record refinery production, and may have concerns about the strong supply of gasoline and distillate they are seeing in the market. Additionally, they may have concerns about OPEC's decision to continue pushing crude into the market
Underlying
Marathon Petroleum Corporation

Marathon Petroleum is an independent petroleum refining and marketing, retail and midstream company. The company's segments include: Refining and Marketing, which refines crude oil and other feedstocks at its refineries, purchases refined products and ethanol for resale and distributes refined products; Retail, which sells transportation fuels and convenience products in the retail market across the U.S.; and Midstream, which transports, stores, distributes and markets crude oil and refined products via refining logistics assets, pipelines, terminals, towboats and barges, gathers, processes and transports natural gas, and gathers, transports, fractionates, stores and markets natural gas liquids.

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Valens Research
Valens Research

In 2009, just as the dust was settling from the last major equity and credit market crises, we launched a boutique research firm with the intention of breaking Wall Street’s biases and broken incentives:

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