HF SINCLAIR CORPORATION (DINO): what the price assumes

boothcheck covers HF SINCLAIR CORPORATION (DINO) but does not put one priced-in number on it: here the defensible answer is the evidence rather than a point estimate. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating. Narrative composed 2026-07-25.

Generated: 2026-08-30 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/DINO

Headline

FieldValue
TickerDINO
CompanyHF SINCLAIR CORPORATION
Sector / IndustryEnergy
Current price$99.71/sh
CompositionTransportation fuels 78% / Lubricants and specialty products 9% / Asphalt, fuel oil and other products 5% / Excess crude oil revenues 5% / Transportation and logistic services 0% / Other revenues 3%

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

FieldValue
Inversion basiswhole-company
Operating margin (value-band context)1.4%
Operating margin today8.3%
Margin compression (value-band)-6.9pp
Multiple paid7x operating income

The operating-margin figure is value-band context at year 12: derived from the framework's value band, a separate calculation — not part of the priced-in solve.

The price sits below what even a 5%/yr operating-profit decline would warrant; the inversion reports a bound, not a solved growth path.

Solve inputs: computed at a 9% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage.

How unusual the bet is: within-range (limited comparison data)

ReferenceValue
vs own history-0.38σ
cohort percentile (of 48 peers)15

Valuation X-Ray

The price is supported by asset-based and earnings-power and relative-multiple and growth-DCF value. A value/asset-supported name, not a pure growth bet.

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

FamilyMedian price/FVModelsReads
Asset0.85x5justifies
Earnings0.81x4justifies
Relative0.52x2justifies
Growth0.79x3justifies

Families that justify the price: Asset, Earnings, Relative, Growth

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 7.9%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=14)

ModelFamilyFVPrice/FVApplicableMethodology
DCF Perpetual GrowthGrowth$151.470.66xyesFCF base $2.3B, growth -3% (input: historical growth), terminal g 0.5%, WACC 7.9%, 5yr projection
DCF Exit MultipleGrowth$126.400.79xyesExit EV/EBITDA: 4.0x / 5.3x / 7.3x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 5yr
Relative ValuationRelativenoP/E 18x (static sector reference · 2026-04), scenarios: 15.2x / 18.0x / 20.8x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 9.33x
Simple DDMGrowthno
Two-Stage DDMGrowthno
Simple Excess ReturnAsset$116.450.86xyesBV/sh $57.85, ROE (TTM) 18.6%, ke 9.3%
Two-Stage Excess ReturnAsset$163.200.61xyes5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3%
Discounted Future Market CapGrowth$57.541.73xyesRev $31.2B, growth -3% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 0.5x / 0.6x / 0.7x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 8x)
Peter Lynch Fair ValueRelative$125.880.79xyesEPS $10.49, growth 2% (input: historical EPS growth), PEG=4.63 (Overvalued)
Margin TrajectoryGrowthno
Earnings Power ValueEarnings$100.500.99xyesNormalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $1.95B × (1−24%) / WACC 7.9% → EPV (no growth)
Residual IncomeAsset$160.910.62xyesBV $57.85 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 18.6% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 8.8%/yr
Graham NumberAsset$116.850.85xyes√(22.5 × EPS $10.49 × BVPS $57.85) — Graham's conservative floor
EV/EBITDA RelativeRelativenoEBITDA $3.50B × sector EV/EBITDA 12.0x
FCF YieldEarnings$135.540.74xyesFCF $2312.0M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity
SBC-Adj FCF YieldEarningsno
Ben Graham FormulaEarnings$338.480.29xyesEPS $10.49 × (8.5 + 2×15.0%) × (4.4 / 5.3%)
ROIC-Justified P/BAsset$58.111.72xyesBV $57.85 × (ROIC 8.0% / WACC 7.9%)
P/Sales SectorRelativenoRevenue $31.23B × sector P/S 2.5x
PEG Fair ValueRelative$393.380.25xyesEPS $10.49 × (PEG 1.5 × growth 25.0% (input: historical EPS growth)) → PE 37.5x
Earnings YieldEarnings$113.410.88xyesEPS $10.49 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%)
Funds From Operations MultipleRelativeno
Clinical Phase NPVGrowthno
MertonAssetno
V5 Mechanicalno

Economic-Unit Decomposition (Sum Of The Parts)

One or more material disclosed units has unresolved economics. Unknown/general is not evidence of homogeneity: segment SOTP is primary but incomplete, consolidated cash flow may remain only a secondary cross-check when every unit shares an enterprise basis, and one sector multiple or target margin is withheld.

UnitRoleValuation basisRevenueReported profitValue evidenceStatus
Refiningoperatingenterprise$23.8b$563.0m operating-income$3.7b indicative EV subtotalindicative enterprise value
Renewablesoperatingenterprise$991.0m-$133.0m operating-incomewithheldunresolved no unit value
Marketingoperatingenterprise$3.1b$73.0m operating-incomewithheldunresolved no unit value
Lubricants & Specialtiesoperatingenterprise$2.5b$165.0m operating-income$1.1b indicative EV subtotalindicative enterprise value
Midstreamoperatingenterprise$643.0m$363.0m operating-income$5.6b indicative EV subtotalindicative enterprise value

No total common-equity value is stated. One or more material units lack a supported unit value. The displayed values are an indicative subtotal; consolidated debt and cash cannot be applied to a fraction of the company.

Solvency

FieldValue
Net debt$595.0m
Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax)0.30x
Net debt / operating income (pre-tax)0.23x
Interest coverage14.7x
Share count CAGR (buyback)-5.3%
Burning cashno

Bullet Takeaways

Bull Case

The part of this company the market is paying up for is not the part that makes the revenue. Roughly four fifths of what HF Sinclair sells is transportation fuel, yet the premium embedded in today's price attaches to the pipelines, terminals and rental assets that move it. For a business most investors file under the word refiner, that is an odd place for the premium to land, and it is the most interesting thing in the numbers.

Those midstream assets are physical and countable. The 10-K describes approximately 660 miles of refined product pipelines, including 340 miles of leased pipelines, used to transport gasoline, diesel and jet fuel principally from our Navajo Refineries in New Mexico, and the money they earn arrives from transactions with unaffiliated parties for pipeline transportation, rental and terminalling operations. That is fee income from third parties paying to use capacity, not a slice of the processing spread. The first quarter of 2026 showed both faces of it, with management reporting that our results continued to benefit from higher third-party pipeline revenues during the three months ended March 31, 2026, but were marginally impacted by a fuel-contamination incident at one of our product terminals in Colorado.

Why that distinction is worth money shows up in the cohort. WMB and KMI, both moving hydrocarbons for fees, each converted close to 29% of revenue into operating income, on revenue of $15.4 billion and $17.5 billion respectively. Refining sits at the other end of that range: PBF turned 2.5% of $30.2 billion of revenue into operating income, and VLO 4.7% of $124.8 billion. A dollar of fee-based revenue and a dollar of refined-product revenue are simply not the same dollar, and HF Sinclair owns some of each.

The lubricants arm is the other piece that behaves unlike a refinery. It is about 9% of revenue and, per the filings, includes the operations of our Petro-Canada Lubricants, Red Giant Oil and Sonneborn businesses. Formulated lubricants and specialty base oils sell on brand, specification and long qualification cycles rather than on the day's crack spread. They do not swing with crude the way gasoline does.

Refining itself had a genuinely better year. Adjusted refinery gross margin reached 15.37 dollars per produced barrel sold for the year ended December 31, 2025, and the 10-K reports that Adjusted refinery gross margin per produced barrel sold in our Refining segment for 2025 increased 47% over the year ended December 31, 2024. That cash landed on a balance sheet with room to use it: at December 31, 2025 the company reported no outstanding borrowings or letters of credit under its revolving credit agreement and compliance with all covenants, having termed out debt through a $500 million issue of 5.500% senior notes due 2032 in August 2025.

Management has been explicit about where the cash goes, stating that we aim to self-fund development projects and make strategic investments focused on profitable growth, while reducing our debt and returning cash to stockholders through dividends and share repurchases. In May the board put that into practice with a regular quarterly dividend of $0.50 a share. For a cyclical business, the bull case rarely rests on any single quarter's spread. It rests on owning assets that keep earning when the spread is bad, and on a treasury that does not force a sale at the bottom.

Bear Case

The valuation methods here do not disagree by a little. They disagree about what kind of company this is. Every approach that lands meaningfully above today's price gets there the same way, by applying a multiple drawn from the wider energy sector to a refiner's revenue line. That line is overwhelmingly the cost of crude passing through a plant on its way to a pump, so a sales multiple measures throughput of somebody else's oil rather than anything the company owns. Take that lens away and the careful methods bunch up tightly right at the quote: book value plus excess returns lands almost exactly on today's price, the earnings-power read a few percent under it, and Graham's conservative floor a dollar or so above. When the conservative approaches all agree with the market to within a rounding error, the market is not offering compensation for anything going wrong.

Something structural sits underneath that. The company buys its feedstock and rents its shelf space, and says so: we do not currently own or operate retail outlets and therefore are dependent upon others for outlets for our refined products. Integrated competitors hold at least one end, sometimes both. This is not a fatal condition and it is not new. It does mean the processing spread is close to the entire earnings engine, with nothing upstream or downstream to damp the swing.

The price also carries a specific requirement. It asks the midstream business to hold operating growth at the fastest pace it can fund from its own cash flow, and to hold it for roughly six years. Standing alone that is not outlandish. It is unusual in company. The multiple sits at the very top of its peer distribution, well beyond the upper quartile, and among comparable fast growers only about a quarter sustained that pace for six years or so. Growth arriving one percentage point slower stretches the horizon the price needs by more than two additional years, and the support underneath is asset value, which the price has already reached.

Some of last year's improvement was granted rather than earned. Explaining the per-barrel margin gain, the 10-K says The increase was primarily due to lower crude oil and feedstock prices and the grant of small refinery RINs waivers, partially offset by lower average sales prices per barrel. Credit sales were $76 million of other revenue in the first quarter of 2026. Waivers are policy, policy moves, and the alternative to a waiver is buying compliance credits in a market the company neither controls nor forecasts well.

Two operating exposures round it out. The company states that we expect to execute turnarounds at a number of our refineries in 2026, which involve numerous risks and uncertainties, and turnarounds have a way of running long in exactly the quarters when margins are good. In lubricants, A large portion of our lubricants and specialties product sales, both in domestic and international markets, occur through distributors, which means the least cyclical segment is also the one standing furthest from its end customer.

The balance sheet is the part that holds. Net debt of roughly 1.7 billion dollars sits against liquid assets near 1.1 billion dollars, the revolver was undrawn at year end, interest expense ran $41 million in the first quarter of 2026, and the company is not consuming cash. What has not happened is share-count shrinkage: over the four years to March 2026 the count is up a shade under a percent a year, so the visible return has been the dividend rather than a smaller denominator. In a trough year the dividend and the turnaround budget compete for the same cash, and refining trough years arrive without much notice.

Valuation

Six years is the number worth sitting with. At $88.32, what the market is buying is the midstream business holding operating growth at the fastest pace it can fund internally, sustained for about that long, discounted at roughly a 9% cost of capital. Nothing about that is absurd on its face. It is simply a specific promise, and the useful question is how often such promises get kept.

Two references answer it. Measured against its peer group, the multiple sits at the very top of the distribution, well beyond the upper quartile. Measured against the record of companies that grew at comparable speed, only about a quarter held the pace for six years or so. Both readings point the same direction: this is a demanding assumption about continued execution, not a conservative one.

The map of methods is where it gets interesting, because the different families reach very different conclusions. The price sits about 3% above the asset-value methods, which is to say essentially on top of them. It sits about 12% above the earnings-power methods, a modest premium over what current profitability capitalizes into. It sits about 36% above the forward-growth methods, largely because those models carry a declining revenue trend forward into the projection years. And the peer-multiple methods land well above the price, which is the one family arguing the stock is cheap.

That last family deserves inspection rather than acceptance. It gets its answer by applying a sector-wide sales multiple to $27.6 billion of revenue. For a refiner, revenue is mostly the crude bill, so scaling it by a multiple built from companies with entirely different revenue composition produces a number that describes nothing the shareholder owns. The methods that work from profit and invested capital instead are the ones clustering at the quote, and they are the honest read.

The peer set frames the spread of outcomes without settling it. PARR converted 8.2% of $7.5 billion of revenue into operating income and MPC 6.7% of $135.4 billion, while at the other end DK managed 2.3% and PBF 2.5%. That range is mostly geography and configuration rather than management skill, and HF Sinclair's own 2025 result landed in the better half, with adjusted refinery gross margin of 15.37 dollars per produced barrel sold.

Solvency bounds the downside without adding to the upside. Net debt of roughly 1.7 billion dollars sits against liquid assets near 1.1 billion dollars, and the revolver was undrawn at the end of the year. Interest expense ran $41 million in the opening quarter of 2026, and the company is not consuming cash. Together that describes a company able to wait out a bad stretch. What it cannot do is supply a discount that is not there. With asset value and earnings power both sitting at or just under today's quote, the next several quarters of processing spread carry essentially the entire result.

Catalysts

Second-quarter results are scheduled for July 28, 2026. The first quarter set the reference point: refining margins improved year over year on strength in the West region, and the midstream line grew on higher third-party pipeline revenue while absorbing a fuel-contamination incident at a Colorado product terminal. Whether the second quarter extends that is what the print settles.

The operating bench changed weeks before it. On July 6, 2026 the board appointed Steven Ledbetter president and chief operating officer, and Valerie Pompa president of growth, technology and transformation. New operating leadership arriving into a year the company has already flagged for heavy turnaround activity is worth watching, because maintenance execution is where a refining year is generally won or lost.

The regulatory calendar carries unusual weight this cycle. Small refinery waivers under the renewable fuel standard were named by the company as a driver of the 2025 per-barrel margin improvement, and credit sales contributed $76 million of other revenue in the first quarter of 2026. Any shift in how those exemptions are granted flows into reported results without a lag. Capital return, by contrast, is on a published schedule: the board declared a regular quarterly dividend of $0.50 a share on May 1, 2026, payable June 2 to holders of record on May 11.

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Refining / Lubricants & Specialties (reported)

Renewables (reported)

Marketing (reported)

Midstream (reported)

Methodology Note

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.

Sources

FY2025 Form 10-K, accession 0001915657-26-000016 · Q1 2026 Form 10-Q, accession 0001915657-26-000040 · DINO scheduled Q2 2026 earnings date, July 28, 2026 · HF Sinclair Form 8-K filed July 8, 2026, accession 0001193125-26-297981 · FY2025 Form 10-K and Q1 2026 Form 10-Q · Q1 2026 Form 10-Q

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