Contrarian Corpus
activist full deck follow up
2019-09-24 · 45 pages

Marathon Petroleum Corporation MPC

N 5 Narrative
V 4 Visual
C 4 Craft
Original source ↗

The three reasons

  1. 1

    Separating Marathon into three independent businesses unlocks $22-$40bn of value (60%+ upside)

  2. 2

    Integrated model has failed: MPC underperformed Valero by 149% since 2011 spin-out

  3. 3

    SOTP discount is at its widest ever (-61%); refining implied at <1x 2020E EBITDA

Primary demands

  • Publicly commit to a full separation of Marathon into three independent companies (Refining, Midstream, Retail)
  • Form a Special Committee of the Board to oversee the separation
  • Develop a leadership transition plan to identify independent, world-class leadership for each business
  • Map out each company's key value-creation initiatives
  • Modernize corporate governance (annual elections, remove supermajority voting, independent boards)

KPIs cited

Total value unlock
$22-$40bn, implying $89 pro forma and $115 full potential per share vs. $55 current
Relative TSR vs. Valero (refining peer)
Marathon underperformed by 149% since 2011 IPO
Relative TSR vs. Couche-Tard (retail peer)
Marathon underperformed by 387% since 2011 IPO
SOTP discount to fair value
Widened from -34% (Nov 2016) to -24% (Sep 2017) to -61% (Sep 2019)
Implied refining EV/EBITDA
0.9x for MPC vs. 5.1x Valero and 4.1x HollyFrontier
2020E EV/EBITDA multiple
MPC 5.0x vs. Valero 5.7x and HollyFrontier 5.5x
Negative earnings-day reactions (1Q18-2Q19)
MPC 66.7% vs. HFC 50.0%, PSX 33.3%, VLO 16.7%
Average one-day earnings price reaction
MPC -2.2% vs. VLO +2.7%, HFC +0.9%, PSX +0.6%
2020E EBITDA mix
Refining $6.4bn (55%), Midstream $5.5bn (29%), Retail $1.8bn (16%)
Post-Andeavor TSR (Apr 2018-Aug 2019)
Marathon -43% vs. refining peers -20% and retail peers +52%

Pattern membership

Where this document fits across the library's 12 rhetorical / structural patterns.

Notable slides (6)

Notes

Classic Elliott breakup-thesis deck with a dedicated campaign microsite (www.RemakingMPC.com). Structure is textbook SCQA: Situation (world-class assets), Complication (integrated model, poor governance, SOTP discount at record wide), Question (why no separation?), Answer (split into three independent companies). Strong peer-gap tables, explicit before/after value bridges ($55 -> $89 -> $115), and CEO quote contradiction (Heminger: 'Our integrated business model allows for differentiated results' juxtaposed against 8-year TSR tables). Elliott frames this as follow-up to its 2016 engagement where MPC's 'Full and Thorough Review' was later revealed to have been conducted while already six months into the Andeavor acquisition. Campaign resulted in MPC announcing Speedway separation and CEO Heminger's retirement shortly after (Oct 2019 / 2020).