Phillips 66 (PSX) Risk Analysis

Publicly traded companies are increasingly subject to campaigns by activist shareholders advocating corporate actions such as operational, governance or management changes, or sales of assets or entire segments. The Company has been and may again be subject to shareholder activism and the corporate actions advocated by the shareholder activist that may not align with the Company's current business strategies and the best interests of all of the Company's shareholders. The actions of activist shareholders may cause fluctuations in our stock price based on temporary or speculative market perceptions or other factors that do not necessarily reflect the underlying fundamentals or prospects of our business. In addition, responding to the actions of activist shareholders can be costly and time-consuming, disrupting our business and diverting the attention of our Board of Directors and management from pursuing our business strategies.

Our operating results are largely dependent on the continued operation of facilities and assets owned and operated by us and our equity affiliates. Interruptions may materially reduce productivity and thus, the profitability, of operations during and after downtime, including for planned turnarounds and scheduled maintenance activities. In the past, we and certain of our equity affiliates also have temporarily shut down facilities due to the threat of severe weather, such as hurricanes. Additionally, the availability of natural gas and electricity necessary to operate our assets can be affected by weather, pipeline interruptions, grid outages, and logistics disruptions, which may also cause us to temporarily curtail or shut down operations. Although we take precautions to ensure and enhance the safety of our operations and minimize the risk of disruptions, our operations are subject to the hazards inherent in chemicals, refining and midstream businesses, such as explosions, fires, refinery, processing facility or pipeline releases or other incidents, power outages, labor disputes, global health crises, restrictive governmental regulation or other natural or man-made disasters, such as geopolitical conflicts and acts of terrorism, including cyber intrusion. The inability to operate facilities or assets due to any of these events could significantly impair our ability to manufacture, process, store or transport products. Any casualty occurrence involving our assets or operations could result in serious personal injury or loss of human life, significant damage to property and equipment, environmental pollution, impairment of operations and substantial losses to us. For assets located near populated areas, including residential areas, commercial business centers, industrial sites and other public gathering areas, the level of damage resulting from these risks could be greater. Damages resulting from an incident involving any of our assets or operations may result in our being named as a defendant in one or more lawsuits asserting potentially substantial claims or in our being assessed potentially substantial remediation fines or penalties by governmental authorities. Should any of these risks materialize at any of our equity affiliates, it could have a material adverse effect on the business and financial condition of the equity affiliate and negatively impact their ability to make future distributions to us.

Actions of federal, state, local and international governments through legislation or regulation, executive order, permit or other review of infrastructure or facility development, and commercial restrictions could delay projects, increase costs, limit development, or otherwise reduce our profitability both in the United States and abroad. Any such actions may affect many aspects of our operations, including: - Establishing maximum margins that can be earned on sales of motor fuels or imposing financial penalties on profits earned above established maximum margins. - Limiting or prohibiting our ability to undertake turnaround or maintenance activities, or to cease operations at our refineries. - Requiring permits or other approvals that may impose unforeseen or unduly burdensome conditions or potentially cause delays in our operations. - Further limiting or prohibiting construction or other activities in environmentally sensitive or other areas. - Requiring increased capital costs to construct, maintain or upgrade equipment, facilities or infrastructure. - Restricting the locations where we may construct facilities or requiring the relocation of facilities. For example, in March 2023, the California legislature adopted Senate Bill No. 2 (such statute, together with any regulations contemplated or issued thereunder, SBx 1-2), which, among other things, (i) authorizes the establishment of a maximum gross gasoline refining margin (maximum margin) and the imposition of a financial penalty for profits above the maximum margin, (ii) significantly expands reporting obligations relating to the maintenance and business of our California facilities, which includes reporting requirements to the California Energy Commission (CEC) for all participants in the transportation fuels industry supply chain in California, (iii) creates the Division of Petroleum Market Oversight within the CEC to analyze the data provided under SBx 1-2, and (iv) authorizes the CEC to regulate the timing and other aspects of facility turnaround and other maintenance activities in certain instances. The CEC is currently in rulemaking with respect to various aspects of SBx 1-2, and the potential implementation of a financial penalty or any restrictions or delays on our ability to undertake turnaround or other maintenance activities creates uncertainty due to the potential adverse effects on our refining, marketing, renewable and midstream operations in California, which may be material to our results of operations, financial condition, profitability and cash flows. We anticipate that other jurisdictions may contemplate similarly focused legislation or actions. The timing and impacts of SBx 1-2 and any other similarly focused legislation or actions are subject to considerable uncertainty due to a number of factors, including technological and economic feasibility, legal challenges, and potential changes in law, regulation, or policy, and it is not currently possible to predict the ultimate effects of these matters and developments, but they may be significant. For example, adverse effects on the financial performance of our operations in the state of California or the useful lives of the assets related to such operations may result in the recognition of material asset impairment charges and asset retirement obligations. Furthermore, the U.S. government can prevent or restrict us from doing business in foreign countries and from doing business with entities affiliated with foreign governments, which can include state oil companies and U.S. subsidiaries of those companies. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions based on U.S. foreign policy and national security matters. The effect of any such OFAC sanctions could disrupt transactions with or operations involving entities affiliated with sanctioned countries, and could limit our ability to obtain optimum crude slates and other feedstocks and effectively distribute refined products. We may face other regulatory changes in the U.S. including, but not limited to, the enactment of tax law changes that adversely affect our industry, tariffs on imported material, components and feedstocks and retaliatory tariffs imposed by other countries on U.S. made goods, new emissions standards, restrictive flaring regulations, and more stringent requirements for environmental impact studies and reviews. Hostilities in the Middle East, Eastern Europe or elsewhere or the occurrence or threat of future terrorist attacks could adversely affect the economies of the U.S. and other countries. Other political and economic risks include global health crises; financial market turmoil; economic volatility and global economic slowdown; currency exchange rate fluctuations; short-term and long-term inflationary pressures; rising or prolonged periods of high interest rates; import or export restrictions and changes in trade regulations; supply chain disruptions; civil unrest and other political risks; limitations in the availability of labor to develop, staff and manage operations; and potentially adverse tax developments. If any of these events occur, our businesses and results of operations may be adversely affected.

Our ability to obtain credit and capital depends in large measure on the state of the credit and capital markets, which is subject to factors beyond our control. Our ability to access credit and capital markets may be restricted at a time when we would like, or need, access to those markets, which could constrain our flexibility to react to changing economic and business conditions. In addition, the cost and availability of debt and equity financing may be adversely impacted by unstable or illiquid market conditions. Protracted uncertainty and illiquidity in these markets also could have an adverse impact on our lenders, commodity transaction counterparties, or our customers, preventing them from meeting their obligations to us. From time to time, our cash needs may exceed our available cash and our business could be materially and adversely affected if we are unable to supplement the cash generated from our operations with proceeds from financing activities. Uncertainty and illiquidity in financial markets may materially impact the ability of the participating financial institutions to fund their commitments to us under our liquidity facilities that are supported by a broad syndicate of financial institutions. Accordingly, we may not be able to obtain the full amount of the funds available under our liquidity facilities to satisfy our cash requirements, and our failure to do so could have a material adverse effect on our operations and financial position.

Assumptions used in determining projected benefit obligations and the expected return on plan assets for our pension plans and other postretirement benefit plans are evaluated by us based on a variety of independent sources of market information and in consultation with outside actuaries. If we determine that changes are warranted in the assumptions used, such as the discount rate, expected long-term rate of return, or health care cost trend rate, our future pension and postretirement benefit expenses and funding requirements could increase. In addition, several factors could cause actual results to differ significantly from the actuarial assumptions that we use. Funding obligations are determined based on the value of assets and liabilities on a specific date as required under relevant regulations. Future pension funding requirements, and the timing of funding payments, could be affected by legislation enacted by governmental authorities.

We often utilize the services of third parties to transport crude oil or other feedstocks, NGL, refined petroleum and renewable fuels products to and from our facilities. In addition to our own operational risks, we could experience interruptions of supply or increases in costs to deliver our products to market if the ability to transport is disrupted because of weather events, natural disasters, accidents, governmental regulations, public health crises, armed hostilities, or third-party actions, including protests. A prolonged disruption in our ability to transport crude oil or other feedstocks, NGL, refined petroleum or renewable fuels products to or from one or more of our refineries or other facilities could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows. In order to maintain or increase throughput levels on our natural gas gathering and transportation pipeline systems and NGL pipelines and the asset utilization rates at our natural gas processing plants, we must continually obtain new supplies. The level of successful drilling activity and prices of, and demand for, natural gas and crude oil, as well as producers' desire and ability to obtain necessary permits are some of the factors that may affect new supplies of natural gas and NGL. If we are not able to obtain new supplies of natural gas to replace the natural decline in volumes from existing wells or because of competition, throughput on our pipelines and the utilization rates of our treating and processing facilities would decline. This could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, financial position and cash flows, and our ability to make cash distributions.

Our information technology and infrastructure, or information technology and infrastructure of our third-party service providers (e.g., cloud-based service providers), may be vulnerable to attacks by malicious actors or breached due to human error, malfeasance or other disruptions, including ransomware and other malware, phishing and social engineering schemes, deepfakes, malicious software, data privacy incidents, insiders or others with authorized access, attempts to gain unauthorized access to our data and systems, and other cybersecurity incidents. Any such incidents could compromise our networks and the information stored there could be accessed, publicly disclosed, lost or stolen. Any such unauthorized access, disclosure or other loss of information could result in one or more of the following outcomes: (i) unauthorized access to or a loss or misuse of intellectual property, proprietary information, or employee, customer or vendor data; (ii) public disclosure of sensitive information; (iii) increased costs to prevent, respond to, or mitigate cybersecurity events, such as deploying additional personnel and protection technologies, training employees, and engaging third-party experts and consultants; (iv) systems interruption; (v) disruption of our business operations; (vi) remediation costs for repairs of system damage, or regulatory fines or penalties; (vii) reputational damage that adversely affects customer or investor confidence; (viii) exposure to legal liability; and (ix) damage to our competitiveness, stock price, and long-term shareholder value. Generative artificial intelligence has contributed to an increase in the prevalence of such attacks and threats, expanding our potential exposure to disruptions. Any of the foregoing can be exacerbated by a delay or failure to detect a cybersecurity incident or the full extent of such incident. Further, we have exposure to cybersecurity incidents and the negative impacts of such incidents related to our critical data and proprietary information housed on third-party IT systems, including cloud-based systems. Additionally, authorized third-party IT systems or software can be compromised and used to gain access or introduce malware to our IT systems that can materially impact our business. Although we devote significant resources to prevent cybersecurity incidents and protect our system and data, we have experienced actual and attempted cybersecurity incidents, and while we do not believe that any of these incidents has had a material effect on our business, operations or financial condition, it is possible that a future incident may have such an effect. A cybersecurity incident may also result in legal claims or proceedings against us by our shareholders, employees, customers, vendors, and governmental authorities (U.S. and non-U.S.). Our infrastructure protection technologies and disaster recovery plans may not be able to prevent a technology systems breach or systems failure, which could have a material adverse effect on our financial position or results of operations. Furthermore, the continuing and evolving threat of cyberattacks has resulted in increased regulatory focus on prevention. To the extent we face increased regulatory requirements, we may be required to expend significant additional resources to meet such requirements.