Calumet, Inc

Calumet, Inc

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Nov 06Next Earn

Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptFebruary 27, 2026

Operator

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Calumet Inc. fourth quarter and fiscal year 2025 earnings conference call.

All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero.

After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your telephone keypads.

To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. Please also note today's event is being recorded.

At this time, I'd like to turn the conference call over to John Kompa, Investor Relations. Sir, please go ahead.

John Kompa

Thanks, Jamie. Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for joining our call today. With me on today's call are Todd Borgmann, CEO; David Lunin, EVP and Chief Financial Officer; Bruce Fleming, EVP, Montana Renewables and Corporate Development; and Scott Obermeier, President, Specialties.

You may now download the slides that accompany the remarks made on today's conference call, which can be accessed in the Investor Relations section of our website at calumet.com. Also, a webcast replay of this call will be available on our site within a few hours.

Turning to the presentation, on slide two, you can find our cautionary statements. I'd like to remind everyone that during this call, we may provide various forward-looking statements.

Please refer to our press release that was issued this morning, as well as our latest filings with the SEC, for a list of factors that may affect our actual results and cause them to differ from our expectations. As we turn to slide three, I'll now pass the call to Todd.

Todd Borgmann

Thanks, John. Good morning, and welcome to Calumet's fourth quarter 2025 earnings call.

2025 was a defining, high-impact year here at Calumet. We began the year with a credible plan and large potential amidst deep market uncertainty.

Throughout the year, risk was aggressively managed, and execution of our strategy turned Calumet's potential to actualized results. We opened the year with a mandate to demonstrate critical strategic objectives.

First, we needed to demonstrate that our Specialties business would consistently generate durable free cash flow amidst large market uncertainty. Second, Montana Renewables needed to prove standalone financial resilience and a structural advantage.

Third, needed to receive the transformative DOE loan at Montana Renewables. Last, accomplish material deleveraging of the balance sheet.

As we reflect on 2025 today, I believe Calumet achieved each of these strategic milestones. Over the course of the year, we reduced financial risk, expanded our structural earnings power, and repositioned Calumet for long-term value creation.

Let me walk you through some of the highlights, and we'll start with the balance sheet. We ended 2024 with restricted group leverage standing above 8 times.

We faced near-term maturities and elevated cash interest costs. Montana Renewables was awaiting DOE funding, and the broad equity markets were hesitant to engage with fundamental value plays like ours.

Today, that picture is very different. For full year 2025, we delivered $293 million of adjusted EBITDA with tax attributes, nearly a 30% increase year-over-year.

We reduced restricted debt by more than $220 million. Net recourse leverage improved from 8.2 times to 4.9 times.

We eliminated our 2026 and 2027 debt maturities, and Montana Renewables successfully closed its DOE loan, removing roughly $80 million of annual cash debt service while also proving its leadership position in its industry. The outcome was a fundamental shift in financial durability, and this outcome was driven by structural improvements.

Across the system, we dramatically reduced costs and drove increased reliability. Fixed costs were down over $40 million.

Water treatment costs at Montana Renewables were down over $20 million, as were our crude transportation costs in the Specialties business, while greatly enhancing feed flexibility and our ability to dial in specific specialty products for our customers. As a result of improved reliability and fewer repairs, capital spending was also reduced by roughly $20 million.

At the same time, our ops team increased production by roughly 1.3 million barrels on the year. Results like this come from entire organization working towards a common goal.

I thank our employees for accepting the challenge to responsibly attack costs, which includes our 900-plus teammates in the field, our Ops Excellence team, which is relatively small, but pound-for-pound exceptional, our finance team that made a step change in partnering with our sites and making information readily available, and more broadly everyone who leaned into owning and accomplishing this company-changing priority. Looking ahead, we believe there's more opportunity on both cost and reliability.

Our company's been operating the current asset base for a little over three years, and during each of these, our team has delivered stronger production and lower operating costs, and we expect for that to continue in 2026, despite what's going to be a very heavy turnaround year. Let's turn to slide four.

The operational improvements we just discussed are more than just volume and cost. Layering that capability on top of our leading commercial platform, which has been built out over decades, provides our sales team more volume and flexibility to support customers.

We produced record levels of product in our Specialty Products and Solutions segment in 2025, and our commercial engine more than kept up, as we sustained material margins above historic norms, despite softer macro conditions in the broader specialty chemicals industry. Our team places material successfully to new homes consistently, as specialty sales volumes exceeded 20,000 barrels per day during every quarter of the year.

The continued results in this business reflect years of investment: commercial excellence, culture and talent, integration of Performance Brands, targeted reliability and mix improvement initiatives, and disciplined capital deployment. Our integrated asset network and ability to dynamically shift production into the highest value markets continues to be an advantage, and our extremely high customer experience scores are the result of a differentiated passion for customers, which is a core Calumet value.

Turning to slide five, we see that Montana Renewables also enters 2026 in a much different position than a year ago. Throughout last year, we reached a new level of operational reliability and cost competitiveness, demonstrating a financial leadership position in one of the most compressed renewable diesel margin environments on record.

Operating costs averaged 41 cents per gallon in the second half of the year, a 60% improvement over two years ago. Further, we monetized more than $90 million of Production Tax Credits, which was essentially everything we made, and we are pleased to see the 45Z regulations progress in early 2026.

On the strategic front, two quarters ago, we announced our streamlined MaxSAF 150 expansion, would be bringing 120 to 150 million gallons of annual SAF capacity online at a fraction of the originally contemplated cost. Last quarter, we mentioned that roughly 100 million gallons of new SAF contracts at $1 to $2 per gallon premium over renewable diesel were in final review with the DOE.

These contracts are now complete, with more in process that will lay in to support our volume ramp. These contracts are all multi-year, and they include increased take-or-pay volumes from existing customers, new physical SPK offtakers, and blended SAF offtakes combined with contracts for Scope 1 and Scope 3 credits through book-and-claim, which opens up premium renewable markets globally that complement the strong local markets we serve in Illinois, Minnesota, the Rockies, Canada, the Pacific Northwest, and California.

Montana Renewables will begin its turnaround and MaxSAF 150 project next week, and remain down through late April, at which point we'll rebuild inventories and begin ramping up SAF production and serving these new customers. The regulatory environment for biofuels also continues to improve.

I mentioned the 45Z rules are now clarified and out for final comment. Further, and with plenty of press, the new renewable volume obligation is expected eminently.

We anticipate that a stronger RVO will improve industry utilization and margin improvement, as idle facilities are expected to be required to restart to meet increased mandates. Restarting production to meet demand volume is a very different and much-improved market dynamic than one where companies are hanging on at variable costs while waiting for the rules to shift.

In fact, we've already seen improvement in the index margin on both the back of this expectation and the 2024 RIN carryforward overhang drifting into history. An increased base level of industry RD margins would be a welcome change for all, and at Montana Renewables, we're excited to stack on top of that the added margin from increased SAF as we complete our project in the second quarter.

With that, I'll turn the call over to David.

David Lunin

Thanks, Todd. Turning to slide six, overall, our quarter and full-year results were strong both financially and strategically.

We generated $69.3 million of adjusted EBITDA with tax attributes in the quarter, and $293.3 million for the full year 2025. Each segment contributed meaningfully to our financial results.

We saw continued momentum and record production both in our SPS segment and Montana Renewables, as well as continued outperformance and growth in our Performance Brands segment. Our strong earnings results during the quarter also allowed us to reduce restricted group indebtedness by nearly $80 million, in addition to the $220 million that was reduced for the full year 2025.

Before I get into more details, I wanted to highlight our planned capital expenditures for 2026, as we are forecasting total capex of $115 million to $145 million for all of Calumet, of which $70 to $90 million is in the restricted group. This is $30 to $40 million higher than normal, primarily due to a heavy turnaround year, which is scheduled maintenance at Shreveport, Cotton Valley, Princeton, Karns City, and Great Falls.

Despite this, we expect total company production to increase year-over-year on the reliability improvements implemented over the past few years. Looking at our Specialty Products and Solutions segment on slide seven, both our quarterly and full-year results reflected the continued benefits of our commercial excellence initiatives and totaled $88.5 million for the quarter and $291.8 million for the full year.

The team continues to leverage the inherent optionality in our manufacturing network to place volumes where they can generate the most value while serving our diversified customer base. In fact, more than 50% of our customers buy more than one product line from Calumet, and many are long-term customers because of our unique ability to meet their product specifications.

Both our quarter and full year reflect a favorable product mix, and even with certain specialty markets demonstrating some softness, our sales team has continued to place our products at over $60 a barrel margin. The benefits of our past reliability investments can also be seen in our strong operations, as we've had five consecutive quarters of specialty volume greater than 20,000 barrels per day.

It was also the second consecutive quarter of record production. With our cost reduction initiatives and increased production, our fixed cost per barrel declined by over a dollar per barrel versus the prior year period.

Finally, our steady production environment again enabled the capture of stronger crack environment, as fuel margins increased significantly year-over-year, which we view as upside to our integrated model. As I mentioned last quarter, we gained access to a new crude oil supply chain earlier this year, including the ability to target specific, segregated, or blended crudes in Cushing and further north in the DJ Basin, and at the same time reduce our pipeline tariffs.

In 2025, this improvement drove about $19 million decrease in transportation costs and provides even further ability to dial in our assets and feed to a specific use. In our Performance Brands segment on slide eight, we also saw the benefit of our commercial excellence initiatives, strong and growing brands, and integration capabilities.

Adjusted EBITDA was $5.4 million for the quarter and $47.9 million for the full year 2025. Keep in mind that fiscal year 2024 includes a full year of Royal Purple industrial results, and that the Royal Purple industrial business was sold at the end of Q1 2025.

Adjusting for the divestiture and insurance proceeds received, 2025 was the third consecutive year of growth in the segment as we offset the lost contribution from RPI through growth and cost reduction. One of our standout product lines is once again our TruFuel business, which posted another record year.

This ready-to-use fuel engineered for outdoor power equipment is available for four-cycle and two-cycle engines, and the product continues to resonate with both consumers and first responders, considering its proven ability to protect small engines from the corrosive nature of ethanol while ensuring peak performance of the equipment. Moving to slide nine, our Montana/Renewables segment fourth quarter 2025 adjusted EBITDA with tax attributes was negative $5.4 million, and positive $31.3 million for the full year 2025.

On the MRL side, the company worked through trough renewable fuel industry conditions for most of the year, and the quarter was burdened with disproportionate transaction costs related to the $65 million of PTCs that we sold during the quarter. We expect to monetize our production tax credits more ratably as the market is now normalized.

On a full year 2025 basis, adjusted EBITDA with tax attributes for MRL was nearly breakeven, even as margins remained compressed by the low 2025 RVO, offset by our significant cost reduction efforts. Notably, the full year results do not reflect an additional $8.4 million of 2025-generated PTCs, which occurred after final regulations were posted after quarter end.

Our MaxSAF 150 plans remain unchanged, and we are set to begin the project as we head into March, and combine the required changes to our feed with the turnaround. We expect to complete the expansion in the second quarter and then steadily ramp volumes moving into the third quarter to meet new customer contracts, including the notable agreement we announced recently with World Energy, previously announced contract with FEG, and an increase in offtake with Shell, amongst others.

Finally, on the Montana asphalt side, both the fourth quarter and fiscal year results improved on the strength of improved asphalt margins and cost production initiatives, following years of site reconfiguration. Further, we are seeing a widening of the WCS differential into 2026.

With the site back at a reasonable cost level and more normalized WCS, we expect the site to continue producing in the $30 to $50 million of EBITDA range we've discussed routinely. Let me now turn the call back to Todd for his concluding remarks.

Todd Borgmann

Thanks, David. We're entering 2026 with the same high level of energy and excitement of a year ago, but with a much improved underlying fundamental.

In Specialties, we expect the cost discipline embedded over the past two years to be durable, along with our continued commercial leadership position. While 2025 was another step change in operational excellence, we believe further opportunity remains to expand earnings through incremental reliability gains and customer-focused growth.

In addition to that, David mentioned a heavy turnaround year, and I'll highlight that turnaround excellence is the next step in our evolution. Our operations team has been planning these for some time, and during these events we're making critical improvements that will underpin the next step change in operational performance.

At Montana Renewables, our objectives are clear. First, execute MaxSAF 150 safely, on time, and on budget in the second quarter.

Second, continue improving our already strong cost levels. Third, continue to leverage our early mover advantage in SAF as we grow.

We expect that accomplishing these will drive a step change financial improvement, even in past trough market conditions, and will be increasingly exciting if the market's growing assumptions surrounding an improved RVO play out as expected. Last, on the back of these key items, we'll continue to evaluate strategic pathways to unlock long-term value as the platform demonstrates sustained performance.

Across Calumet, our capital allocation priorities remain disciplined and consistent. We expect to continue to drive durable free cash flow that underpins enhanced deleveraging.

We plan to grow both our Specialties, widening our competitive moat, and execute on our MaxSAF 150 strategy at Montana Renewables. We plan to execute this strategy and continually develop it, with an eye towards mid-term shareholder value creation.

With that, thank you for your time today. I'll turn the call back to the operator and see if we have any questions.

Operator?

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we will begin that question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your telephone keypads.

If you are using a speakerphone, we do ask you please pick up your handset before pressing the keys to ensure the best sound quality. At any time your question has been addressed, and you would like to withdraw your question, you may press star and two.

Once again, that is star and then one to join the question queue. Our first question today comes from Alexa Petrick from Goldman Sachs.

Please go ahead with your question.

Alexa Petrick

Hey, good morning, team, and thank you for taking our question. We wanted to ask two parts maybe.

First, can you talk about the macro setup from here? There is still some regulatory uncertainties, but we got a bit of an update yesterday.

Then from there, talk about what you're doing at an operational level. What are the gating items at MaxSAF, and what should we expect from here?

Bruce Fleming

Hey, Alexa. It's Bruce.

Look, the regulatory uncertainty is as a lot of us call it, it's just a feature of the landscape. The global energy transition is a regulated market, but it's collective governments, many, many governments acting directionally.

We feel like that's a very robust framework. We also feel like it adds the equivalent of a lot of margin volatility on top of kind of the base energy.

With that said, if you want to survive in that environment, be a low-cost provider, be well positioned, be able to shift gears quickly, and we think we are all three.

Todd Borgmann

Alexa, it's Todd. Maybe I'll pile on a little bit.

One of the things that we think so important and exciting about our MaxSAF project at Montana Renewables is it adds an element of just durability on top of the RD margin volatility that Bruce mentioned. You can kind of think about it a lot like our Specialties business relative to fuels in the other half of Calumet.

We have contracted volumes with meaningful margin in them that, even if we kind of rewind the clock to last year, we're generating pretty meaningful free cash flow at Montana Renewables with the addition of the SAF volume and the contracts that we have. Like Bruce said, then you get to layer on the improvements that we're expecting from the RVO, and it creates a really nice dynamic.

There's kind of the risk-reward, I'd say, both sides of that coin are really improved with the SAF project. Thanks for the question.

Alexa Petrick

Thank you. That's very helpful.

Sounds like a good setup. I'll turn it back.

Operator

Our next question comes from Conor Fitzpatrick from Bank of America. Please go ahead with your question.

Conor Fitzpatrick

Good morning, everybody. It looks like we're in the phase of the RINs market and demand step-up progressing where we should sometime soon begin to see producers ramp utilization.

I think one way to glean that is from moves in feed prices, and they've gone up, but a lot of that is raw soybean cost pass-through through the crush spread. I was just wondering, there's not been a lot of press releases of idled plants coming back online.

There's not a ton of evidence of utilization coming back within the overall market. I was wondering if your views are similar or different, as it relates to, and it's particularly important to our views of the cost of producing RINs at 2026 demand levels.

Bruce Fleming

Hey, Conor, it's Bruce. Thank you for the question.

Let me answer with a concept of timescale. We think the industry is running at variable margin now.

People are not covering fixed costs, and the half of the group that's in the high cost structure and have been closing. We have been running full.

You got to be tactical on where do you stand in the supply stack exactly. That ghost capacity which exists in biodiesel plants that can come back quickly and renewable diesel plants that are online and can speed up, that's available, but it's not going to be called into the market until we see the RVO come out.

We're all waiting for that. We feel good about what we're hearing, and let's see what the facts are shortly, we hope.

Todd Borgmann

I'd add, Conor, it's Todd, the likelihood that people turn back on when they're covering fixed costs by a penny after some of the decisions made more broadly in industry over the past couple years, we think is very favorable to the market. I've talked about this kind of the last couple quarters in the prepared comments.

Like Bruce said, as we float on variable margin, our normal kind of supply stack doesn't govern today because people aren't making long-term rational economic decisions. They're hanging on based on expectations that they're going to recover the investments in the fixed-cost losses in the near term.

As we see people have to restart and make that decision to restart to cover increased demand, we don't think that they're going to do that for a penny. We think that people are going to be very thoughtful and cautious, and it creates quite a constructive outlook if you believe that.

We'll see what the final RVO is. I know there's a lot of rumors going around out there.

When we do, we don't think that the industry just kind of ramps up overnight. We think it's going to be kind of a very thoughtful volume ramp-up over time that will be beneficial to those who are in it operating every day.

Conor Fitzpatrick

Thanks. That's good color.

For what it's worth, if you look historically at the changing marginal producer back in time, that producer tends to earn 20 to 30 cents per gallon, if you do some rough math on it. Then I guess my follow-up question was just moving parts for fourth quarter Montana Renewables margin.

Market margins were pretty fluctuant, and they were up for some weeks and down for other weeks. I was wondering just how that translated into margin capture for the business and operations.

Bruce Fleming

Conor, it's Bruce again. Eating's been pretty good at shifting gears there.

Our inbound and outbound supply chains are pretty short in terms of days of shipping. We do track capture.

We don't publish it, but I'll tell you that we capture more than 100% of the renewable diesel index margin. That's because of our ability to shift gears quickly.

Now, it's worth noting the fourth quarter managed to hit the lowest renewable diesel index margin ever recorded in the history of the world. We're very much looking forward to the current administration restoring reasonable industry structure through their proposed RVO.

We're bullish on that, and I think that's going to bring things back to historical. Remember that these margins were $2 to $3 a gallon on a index basis just recently as three years ago.

We just need to resume that kind of environment, and we're going to have an entirely different view of our success here.

Conor Fitzpatrick

Thanks, that's all I have.

Operator

Our next question comes from Sameer Joshi from H.C. Wainwright.

Please go ahead with your question.

Sameer Joshi

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions.

This capacity expansion that I think Todd said will start next week and is likely to complete by late April, when should we see capacity ramp-up at full scale? Does this bring along with it, of course, capacity expansion, but also operational savings, like would you be lower than 41 gallons, sorry, 41 cents per gallon?

Todd Borgmann

Hey, Sameer, it's Todd. Good questions.

I'll start at the end. On the cost curve, we're obviously heading in the right direction, and just continue to almost every quarter see improvement over the one previous.

We expect to just continued incremental improvement there. We're going to keep getting more efficient over time.

Yes, as we increase our volume, then we'll see more unit efficiencies drop to the bottom line as we progress. I don't think there's anything in this specific MaxSAF project that would say, hey, there's a major major cost out.

We're certainly going to be making more margins. We continue to improve our costs regardless of the project, just in the steady state.

To the extent that we're ramping up volume, like I said, it helps kind of at the unit level on the bottom line. That's probably one side of your question.

I guess the other on the ramp-up, look, we've previously guided to 120 to 150 million gallons annually, and that's where we expect to stay. We're not naive enough to say that everything goes perfect, and we come out of this thing in May, and the very first day, we're producing 150 million gallons.

We also don't have too technically challenging of a turnaround. This is pretty well controlled, it's pretty well designed, and it's expanding equipment that we know a lot about, and isn't a major kind of risk, I'd say, like the last major project that we had going on.

I think what you'll see is coming online, we'll have a really nice, strong volume. We'll ramp up accordingly.

Exactly how long it takes us to get to the 120, 150 million gallons run rate, we don't think it's going to be too long. We'll come up in May and keep everybody up to speed on where we're doing, and think in the second half of the year that we're going to be at that level.

Sameer Joshi

Got it. Thanks for that color.

Then I think you mentioned 100 million gallons of contracts, multi-year contracts, and they are indexed at $1 to $2 premium RD premium. Will you help us or remind us how does the feedstock pricing play into this, and how is that likely to impact profitability?

Bruce Fleming

Hey, Sameer, it's Bruce. It's worth noting that we're performing now under the SAF contracts, but until we de-constrain the unit during this upcoming turnaround, we can't get our rate up to where we want it.

We're going to have the acceleration Todd mentioned. As we lean into that, the book of business that our marketing guys have created is very interesting.

We've intentionally executed contracts one by one, which are different than the other contracts. In other words, we're trying to have a portfolio that is robust to some of the dynamics we talked about with Alexa a minute ago.

With that in mind, I think the expectation should be that all of that fevers in. If we can hit the high end of the engineering ranges, then we'll get them towards the 150, and if we hit the lower end, it'll be towards the 120.

The contract volume, the differential that you asked about, that's inked, and we've had those folks lifting already.

Todd Borgmann

I'd add a little bit more, Sameer, on the feedstock so you asked about. We've been pretty successful linking those to the contracts.

Again, we're in a location in Great Falls where we have access to a broad range of feedstocks, including all of the low-CI ones that the SAF market typically wants. We've been pretty successful landing those on long-term contracts as well, and feel quite confident in our ability to both continually add offtake and volume as we ramp up, but to match that with contracts on the feed side, just given kind of the robustness around the number of options that we have in the region.

Sameer Joshi

Sounds good. Thanks for that color.

Congrats on the progress operationally, and as well as leveraging. Thank you.

Bruce Fleming

Thank you.

Operator

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two.

Our next question comes from Jason Gabelman from TD Cowen. Please go ahead with your question.

Jason Gabelman

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions.

Maybe shifting over to the base business, the specialty margin was strong once again, above $60 a barrel. What's going on in the business that's enabling you to sustain those higher levels, and do you see that to continue to move higher over time?

Then conversely, if you could just comment on the Performance Brands weakness in the quarter.

Scott Obermeier

Hey, Jason, Scott here. A few answers.

In terms of the strength of the specialty piece within SPS, this hasn't just been a one-quarter or one-year high performance. I think you've covered us for a while, you've seen the progression over the past five years, and frankly the transformation of the business.

Todd talked about in the prepared remarks, really at the end of the day, our commercial excellence focus and the initiatives that we've done over the years, and couple that with our integration and the optionality has proven to be highly successful, highly durable through really almost any type of market. Then the improving production reliability as well have added the volumes to it.

We remain really positive and constructive overall within that piece of the business. As we look heading into the early part of this year, we expect our high performance to continue.

Certainly, we've got some headwind early on in 2026 with the crude oil run-up, some short-term headwind, but overall we feel really good about the business, and the work that's been done in that business that is going to continue to outperform the market. I think on the Performance Brands, we were really pleased with the year.

We think we're essentially at a place now, Jason, where we've essentially offset even as we said that we would do, offset the Royal Purple industrial sale, and the margin that went away with that. Feel really good about the year overall.

We did see in the fourth quarter, though, as you pointed out, a lot of the customer base, retail in particular, that really destocked late in the year. Some challenges there, but we're feeling good about the start of this year, and the orders that we're seeing.

We were optimistic about the '26 results.

Jason Gabelman

Got it. Just on the '26 outlook, you mentioned the turnarounds, but you should have higher volumes despite that.

Is there any impact to the margin outlook given those turnarounds, and perhaps having to produce a different slate of products than you typically do?

Scott Obermeier

I would say simple answer is no. There shouldn't be much of an impact.

Despite turnarounds and some of the volatility going on, no.

Jason Gabelman

Got it. Thanks.

My follow-up is just going back to the SAF contracts, because I think one of the items we struggle with is just the confidence around that $1 to $2 a gallon premium that you've cited. I was hoping you could just clarify kind of how the contracts are structured.

When you talk about a premium over renewable diesel, are you indexing the contract to the renewable diesel margin including the RIN, the LCFS credit, the PTC, or is it more nuanced than that?

Bruce Fleming

Hey, Jason, Bruce. I'll give you a framework for that.

Great question. Looking backwards, it was fully indexed.

I mentioned earlier, we were intentionally diversifying the contract structures collectively. We want them to be different.

For example, FEG is a Scope 1 and 3 emissions certificate that we pull off. That means we take that SAF.

We sell it. We get all of the credits: RINs, LCFS, et cetera, Producer's Tax Credit.

On top of that, we get the certificate. That stacks up a little differently.

I could go around the table. As I said, each one's intentionally designed to act differently in different market conditions.

We think the portfolio will be more robust and more stable to prospective regulatory changes and evolution. With that said, we really don't want to start identifying specifics here, but the guidance has held for a long time.

One of the reasons for that is real simple: SAF is an excellent renewable diesel blend component, super high quality properties, and it cannot go into the market below RD. It can't.

Every once in a while, I pick up some publication where somebody calculated, we used to call this dry lab back in the chemistry class, somebody calculated that SAF is lower than diesel, and that's crazy. Because the operator is going to take the SAF tank, pump it into the diesel tank, and catch that R this afternoon on the day shift, right?

It's always more, and we're just arguing how much.

Todd Borgmann

I think if I can add just a little bit, the largest customers, nodding your question around the underlying components similar. Like Bruce said, we're intentionally diversifying.

At the same time, we're quite confident in the $1 to $2 a gallon range just because of how these contracts come together. A little more color on that.

Our largest customers are very similar to kind of what you just said. If you look at their contracts underlying the premium, it looks a lot like RD contracts, plus the fixed premium on top of that.

In that group, we're quite excited to have the exposure to the upside on the RD, plus a fixed premium, which you're kind of alluding to earlier. That fixed premium plays out even in scenarios if we rewind back to last year and looked at kind of trough index margin environments.

Then the other thing I'd say is, like Bruce highlighted, on the Scope 1 and Scope 3 credit sales, there's a naturally quite a correlation. We want diversification, we want exposure to those markets, and I think I've said in the past, we see it a lot like our Specialties business, where we can do some things that others probably don't want to when we're transacting in truckload volumes, and controlling quality, and transloading and doing those types of things that require a little bit more hands-on service.

It fits us really well. That being said, there's obviously a high correlation between the value of those credits and the fixed premium that other customers are willing to pay.

It's no coincidence that, as we look at both of those, they lie comfortably in the $1 to $2 a gallon range that we've talked about. I'll highlight these are fixed contracts, right?

I think that was probably part of your question, but this isn't a spot gasoline rack. These are contracts.

They're multi-year contracts. They have commitments to perform on both sides.

We're quite confident in the ability to capture that margin.

Jason Gabelman

Great. Thanks.

I appreciate all the color.

Todd Borgmann

Thank you.

Operator

With that, we'll be concluding today's question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to John Kompa for closing remarks.

John Kompa

Thank you, Jamie. On behalf of Todd and the entire management team, I'd like to thank everyone for their interest today in Calumet.

Have a great rest of the day. Thanks.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. We do thank you for attending today's presentation.

You may now disconnect your line.