CVR Energy says exploring potential increase in liquidity, non-core asset sales

CVR Energy (CVI) executives stated on the company’s Q3 earnings call: “Overall refining markets remain challenging. While the Board’s decision to suspend the dividend was difficult, we believe the key to surviving these downturns and refineries is maintaining adequate liquidity and protecting the balance sheet. While we focus on areas we control – safe, reliable operations while reducing costs and capital spend – we are currently exploring the potential increase in our liquidity through possible access to capital markets… We are confident in our ability to navigate this challenging environment and be well prepared post turnaround for any improvements in refining margins… This creates an opportunity for us to focus on positioning our business for the long term so we are best equipped to take advantage of favorable market conditions when they return, as I believe they will… This includes internal cost cutting initiatives and reduced hiring. Focus also includes focusing our capital spend on projects that are in flight and those critical to safe, reliable operations. And finally, we are exploring access to capital markets, which could include non-core asset net sales. Suspending the dividend is also part of this, but our Board will continue to look at it each and every quarter. But we think this shows as we can make the tough decisions necessary to support the Company’s future and our goal of increasing value to our stockholders to focusing on executing our upcoming turnaround safely on time and on budget… Our track record for exceptional project execution speaks for itself. Although we’ve had some hiccups this year, we are great operators and have demonstrated our ability to successfully execute turnarounds in the past… We will not ignore accretive opportunities before us and liquidity measures we announced yesterday should help with this for, as always, continue to focus its focus on safe, reliable operations in an environmentally responsible manner. This should result lower operating costs, better capture rates and ultimately superior financial performance for our shareholders and stakeholders. In summary, despite the weakness in the current refining market, we see continue to believe the US fleet is the most advantage in the world. Given the high complexity access to low-cost crude oil and natural gas, our refineries are very competitive among this fleet. We have tremendous confidence in the future, and we see the actions we announced in our intended path forward as best positioning CVR to take advantage of it.”