Good morning. My name is Voranart, the IR manager. I would like to welcome you to SPRC analyst meeting for the fourth quarter 2025 and the 2025 performance. Before we begin, I would like to introduce SPRC management team who are present in the meeting with me today. First, Khun Herbert Matthew Payne, our CEO.
Khrap.
Khun Shashank Nanavati, Executive Vice President, Commercial. Khun Nutsara Somkiatweera, Vice President, Finance and Accounting. Lastly, Khun Nongnapa Thongpitukthavorn, Vice President, Strategy and Policy. We will refer to the presentation that is available on SPRC website. Today meeting, Khun Matthew will begin with introducing our new vision, mission, and then present about key strategy and highlight. After that, the performance analysis part will be presented by Khun Shashank and Khun Nutsara. Lastly, Khun Nongnapa will present for looking ahead before we start the Q&A sessions. If you have any questions, please click on the raise hand button or send the question through the chat channel. As a reminder, this virtual meeting is being recorded. At this time, I will turn on the session to our CEO, Khun Matthew. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. As we begin, I would like to introduce our new vision and mission. Following a comprehensive review, SPRC's board of directors has approved a new vision, mission, and strategy statement, which take effect on January 1, 2026. The new vision and mission reflect the evolving energy landscape and our commitment to remain competitive, to be resilient, and to be focused on long-term value creation. Our operating environment is undergoing continued change with increased competition, evolving customer needs, and higher expectations around reliability, efficiency, and sustainability. These factors require us to sharpen our focus and ensure our direction remains clear and relevant. With that, SPRC's new vision and mission are captured in these statements. The vision: To be the leading energy provider, empowering growth for a sustainable future.
Our mission: We strive to power a better tomorrow by delivering safe, efficient, and reliable energy with a strong commitment to our people, our communities, and sustainable growth for the future. These statements should clearly express who we are, what we do, and what we stand for. They are not just aspirational. They will guide our decisions, our priorities, and our behaviors across the organization. Supporting the vision and mission is our strategy, which remains being focused on maintaining our financial strength required to deliver reliable dividends and to make timely strategic investments. We will achieve this by safely and reliably optimizing our refining and marketing value chain while enhancing cash generation through the profitable growth of our marketing business. With that, I would like to turn our attention to some key activities that defined 2025.
Despite marketing volatility and a challenging industry landscape, we continue to deliver reliable performance to strengthen our commercial footprint and advance on our sustainability commitments. I will start by looking at our enterprise performance. Our total shareholder return for 2025 was - 4%, which still outperformed both the SET Index and the SET Energy Index for 2025. Despite price fluctuations throughout the year, we remain focused on delivering consistent and reliable rewards to our shareholders. We successfully captured enterprise value of $54 million, driving maximization of our domestic sales and through cost efficiency and productivity enhancements across our organization. Our spot-to-street strategy further strengthened margins by expanding sales in our highest value sales channels, such as retail and aviation. Our core profit was solid at $145 million, reflecting the resilience of our core operations and our disciplined cost management.
Through ongoing cost management activities, we achieved a reduction in enterprise OpEx per barrel compared to the previous year, reaching a level below $3 per barrel. On dividends, we have announced a total dividend payment for 2025 of THB 0.45 per share, representing a yield of 6.2%. Supported by favorable market conditions, we were able to provide excess awards on top of our stable dividend framework. Now, as we move to looking at our refinery operations. In 2025, we continued to improve the reliability and efficiency of our refinery. First, we successfully implemented the turnaround and inspection optimization, which minimizes our current downtime for this turnaround and will improve our cost efficiency and our operational integrity. Second, we also advanced the light crude processing project, which helps debottleneck light product processing and enhances plant flexibility.
This positions us to capture higher margins under varying crude market conditions. These efforts collectively strengthen our operational backbone and our ability to generate sustained margin. On the commercial side, we achieved strong momentum in growing our high margin channels this year. Retail volume increased from the previous year, supported by a series of quick-win initiatives, including the expansion of our Caltex network to 533 stations, primarily through our collaboration with Pure Thai Energy. We also improved the overall network efficiency by closing underperforming sites and replacing them with higher performing locations. Meanwhile, our aviation business delivered solid growth as we captured opportunities from the recovery in regional travel. We also expanded our commercial and industrial, or C&I, term contracts, now on track to reach 50% coverage of our 2025 volume, aligned with our strategy to stabilize our volumes and margins through long-term agreements.
We strengthened our retail ecosystem, elevating, I'm sorry, our customer experience by partnering with more retail brands, enhancing our promotions, and growing both the volume sold through and the number of active users on our Caltex Rewards program. All of these initiatives support our strategy to move our products through the highest net back channels. On ESG, SPRC was awarded the SET ESG rating of BB B, reflecting our progress in responsible business practices and transparent governance. We also received the ESG DNA certificate, recognizing our continued commitment to integrating sustainability into all parts of our business. These recognitions reinforce our direction toward long-term value creation for all stakeholders. Next, we'll briefly touch on a few highlights from our performance in 2025.
As mentioned, our 2025 adjusted net profit was $145 million and supported by an enterprise margin that stood at $7.30 per barrel, which was higher than last year. This is made up of a gross refining margin of $6.10 per barrel and a commercial margin of $1.19 a barrel. This was our BLIP contribution of $0.75 per barrel and also an enterprise sales volume reaching nearly 69 million barrels, which contributed an integration value of $54 million. We achieved 93% domestic sales placement. Our operational excellence was reinforced by cost reductions in logistics and inventory, improved crude sourcing and freight management. This year, we also had a higher processing of opportunity crudes.
Efficiency initiatives included product quality optimization opportunities, energy savings, and debottlenecking to help maximize unit run rates. Thus, our refinery was able to achieve a strong utilization rate of 93%, an improvement from the previous year. With these achievements, SPRC has highlighted its ability to deliver strong financial results, to optimize our operations, and to position ourselves for sustainable performance moving forward. Next, a brief look ahead to 2026. Our trajectory is clear and firmly supported by our ongoing operational progress and our strong commitment to commercial fundamentals. Let's look at a few things that we have coming up, and we'll start with the T&I, which is currently underway. Our turnaround started in late last month, and the CDU, crude distillation unit, is on track to resume operations within February of 2026, within this month.
Our RFCC unit will follow within the next two weeks, which will bring us back to full conversion capability. Meanwhile, our upgrade of our single point mooring system, or SPM, is progressing well and is expected to begin commercial operation within the second quarter of 2026 as planned. We'd like to thank our parent company, our stakeholders, and all of our strategic partners in helping us to progress this significant project. These milestones will significantly strengthen our operational readiness and enable us to capture more value once all units have been returned to stable operation. Next, I'd like to talk about our strategies for becoming a smarter cash generator.
We are advancing the light crude projects, which will be completed during this T&I, which enhances our processing flexibility and positions us to capture additional opportunities in the gasoline and jet fuel markets, which are segments where we continue to see strong demand. We are continuing to strengthen our competitiveness through operational excellence, through cost optimization, and better monetization across our value chain. Our cost efficiency programs remain robust, and over the next one to two years, we expect to see lower maintenance spending following the completion of this major turnaround. We also expect to see reduced depreciation expenses as certain refinery assets with a 30-year full life reach full depreciation. We continue to reinforce operational reliability and technical capabilities at our assets, ensuring that they operate safely, efficiently, and at higher availability. We also continue to be focused on commercial expansion.
We see clear opportunities to further strengthen and expand our retail ecosystem, enhancing customer engagement and channel profitability. We also plan to increase the tank truck loading at our terminal capacities by modifying facilities there. In aviation, we are accelerating the development of the jet terminal infrastructure needed in order for us to participate in the Sustainable Aviation Fuel market in partnership with our industry stakeholders. These initiatives will broaden our commercial portfolio while strategically positioning us for sustained growth across both established and emerging markets. We are very excited about 2026, and we look forward to performing as a more competitive, resilient, and future-ready company. Next, I will turn it over to Shashank for a further deep dive into our platform.
Thank you, Matthew, and good morning, everyone. For the next few minutes, I will cover the market and performance updates for SPRC in the fourth quarter and in general, all of last year. Let us take a closer look at the market dynamics and how SPRC is positioned. On the chart to the left, you see SPRC's GRM and Singapore GRM. Throughout the fourth quarter of 2025, SPRC refinery margin remained firm at $9.30 a barrel, supported primarily by strong middle distillate crack spreads and some supply tightness from regional refinery shutdowns, as well as some geopolitical tensions. Our GRM consistently outperformed the Singapore GRM, which is about $8.30 a barrel, and that represents and reflects our operational efficiency and our optimization strategies.
Turning to the top right at crude prices, the average Dubai price in the fourth quarter fell to $63.80 a barrel, which is down from $70.10 a barrel in Q3. I think oversupply concerns outweighed the geopolitical risks, including sanctions, conflicts, and supply disruptions. With tensions involving Iran, Israel, U.K., and Russia, along with the U.S. sanctions on Russian oil companies, create a temporary risk premium. Global inventory builds and seasonal refinery maintenance added some downward pressure on the price of crude. In contrast, the Murban's Official Selling Price or OSP rose to $2.80 per barrel above Dubai, reflecting sort of the premium crude dynamics previously mentioned.
Looking forward, the finalization of the U.S.-India trade agreement, which is expected to curb India's imports of Russian crude, could drive the crude premiums higher, though the restart of CPC crude flows after recent refinery disruptions is expected to cap some of that upside. Finally, in the bottom right of the chart, let's take a look at the Singapore product cracks. As previously mentioned, middle distillates strengthened significantly in the fourth quarter. Diesel cracks specifically surged to $24.50 a barrel, supported by sanctions and drone attacks on the Russian oil infrastructure. Jet cracks also rose sharply to average $24.60 a barrel, also boosted by holiday travel demand in India and China. The gasoline cracks remained fairly firm at $15.70 a barrel, driven by strong import demand from Indonesia and outages at some regional refineries, including Pengerang and Dangote.
Looking forward, middle distillates are expected to remain firm, supported by ongoing supply uncertainties, heating oil demand in the winter season, and upcoming refinery maintenance work. Gasoline cracks will continue to benefit from the Lunar New Year travels, Australia's summer holidays, and extended outages at some key refineries. Moving to the next slide in product supply. In the fourth quarter of 2025, SPRC's domestic supply volume of gasoline and diesel grew by 5% compared to Q3, giving us an 18% market share. This growth was driven by optimized production and throughput. Share in the consumer segment or retail channel rose to 4.7% of the demand, marking a steady increase over the past 12 months. This demonstrates the success of our spot-to-street strategy, which focuses on optimizing sales channels and maximizing our fuel netback margins.
To strengthen our presence, we will continue to expand the Caltex network, what's currently end of the year at 533 stations nationwide. Our profitable channels, including sales volume to consumer and businesses, improved slightly, up 3.2% from the previous quarter, supported by a higher demand during the holiday season. Overall, SPRC remains a key player in the domestic gasoline market, holding nearly a 22% share while maintaining a strong position in the middle distillate segment. Moving to more details in the sales performance overview. In the fourth quarter of 2025, total enterprise sales volume reached 17 million barrels, reflecting our continued focus on maximizing refinery utilization and placing the sales through our commercial channels, giving us the best economic performance. The retail and aviation channels both showed strong improvement in the fourth quarter.
Retail sales grew almost 5% quarter-over-quarter, supported by seasonal demand towards the end of the year and the New Year holidays, and the resumption of operations in the southern region of Thailand after significant flooding in the third quarter. Aviation sales continue their upward trend, rising 12% quarter-over-quarter, driven by increased travel demand towards the end of the year and the New Year holiday. For the full-year 2025, retail sales grew an impressive 6% year-over-year, supported, as Matthew mentioned, in part by our strong partnership with the PTT Energy Group. Aviation sales posted robust growth of nearly 22% year-over-year, with rising jet fuel demand in Thailand.
On the domestic versus export side, nearly 93% of our sales volume was in the domestic channels, up from 91% last year, which aligns with our strategy of continuing to place the barrels in the highest margin channels and supporting and prioritizing our domestic sales. Our retail market share continued to grow year-over-year, ending the year at 5.7%, reflecting our strengthening competitive positioning as well as our network expansion, site renovations, and greater focus on the retail segment. Thailand's gasoline demand is projected to keep rising, fueled by strong travel activity. To capture this momentum, our strategy emphasizes a sales mix weighted towards gasoline, while also expanding diesel volumes through new fleet card customer acquisition. At the same time, aviation demand is expected to remain resilient, supported by peak travel season, ongoing recovery of international flight operations.
In response, we plan to actively pursue fresh contract bidding on the jet fuel business and boost our sales both in domestic aviation clients and with international airline customers. With that, I will hand over to our CFO, Khun Nutsara, to cover the financial performance. Thank you.
Thank you, Shashank. Our next section will be on the financial performance of the fourth quarter of last year, and also for the total year. Starting from the enterprise margin. In the fourth quarter of 2025, SPRC earnings, SPRC enterprise margin is $7.54 per barrel, which strengthened from the prior quarter. This comprised strong refinery margin of $9.3 per barrel and commercial margin of $1.1 per barrel. The strong improvement in refinery margin from the previous quarter came from stronger middle distillate crack spread and supply tightness. Commercial margin was softer due to intensified competition within the C&I and asphalt channels. Given the decrease in crude oil price, SPRC also realized a stock loss of $3.8 a barrel, which there was stock gain of $1 a barrel in the prior quarter.
The enterprise margin for the total year of 2025 was strong at $7.3 per barrel, growing from the year before, with the increase in both the refinery margin and also commercial margin. SPRC continues to drive optimization initiatives across all refinery operation and commercial activities, reinforcing integration and creating sustainable value. At the same time, we remain committed to fostering a cost-effective culture throughout the organization, ensuring that every expenditure creates value and contributes to the long-term growth of the company. In term of the enterprise OPEX in the fourth quarter of last year, enterprise normal OPEX averaged at $3.1 per barrel, rising from the prior quarter due to the seasonal peak in activity, but declining from the fourth quarter in the prior year, underscoring the company's continued emphasis on cost efficiency across both refinery and commercial operation.
On a full-year basis, 2025 normal enterprise OPEX showed a downtrend to $2.90 per barrel, which Matthew already highlighted. This is down from $3.1 per barrel in 2024, primarily reflecting the impact of ongoing cost efficiency initiatives. These programs effectively offset the incremental OPEX associated with the M&I activity. On the consolidated EBITDA and net profit. In the fourth quarter, SPRC delivered EBITDA of $69 million and net profit of $33 million. This is down from the previous quarter, but showing a strong year-on-year growth. The quarterly decline was largely attributable to an inventory loss of $336 million or $45 million, which is net of tax, and slightly lower crude run during the quarter. However, strong refinery margin helped mitigate the impact, and SPRC still reports a strong net earnings for the fourth quarter.
Comparing to the same quarter of 2024, earning improvement in this quarter was driven by higher margin, better crude utilization, and reduced operating expense. On an adjusted basis, excluding some gain and loss, the adjusted net profit in Q4 came in at $78 million, making sharp improvement both quarterly and annually. For the full-year 2025, SPRC reported consolidated EBITDA of $207 million, and net profit of $79 million, both higher than 2024. The uplift reflects stronger enterprise margin and lower operating costs. Adjusted net profit, which excluding the stock loss, reached $145 million, surpassing the prior year performance. On the statement of financial position, the asset as of the end of 2025 were $1.9 billion, slightly decreased from December 2024. The key reduction include lower inventory and account receivable following a lower average crude price.
The consolidated liability were $736 million, decreasing by previous year of $122 million. This is mainly from the repayment of the borrowing from the cash that the company had generated during the year. Shareholders equity were $1.2 billion, increased $49 million from ending of 2024, is driven by net profit in 2025 of $79 million, offset by the dividend income that SPRC pay of $39 million. In term of the Net Interest-Bearing Debt to equity ratio, SPRC still maintain healthy balance sheet, which Net Interest-Bearing Debt to equity ratio has lessened to 0.12 x from the repayment of the borrowing. On the dividend payment, the company policy is to pay the dividend twice a year.
Yesterday, the board of director meeting, the year end dividend of THB 0.3 per share from 2025 operating result has been approved, and including the interim dividend of THB 0.15 per share. So this make the total dividend for the total year to THB 0.45 per share. The proposed dividend will be submitted for the approval by the AGM in April of this year. Through this distribution, SPRC reinforce our commitment to deliver a reliable dividend and additional reward to shareholders, which remains our foremost financial priority. Next, I pass to Khun Nongnapa.
Thank you, Khun Nutsara. Good morning, everyone. This session is the future opportunities. For SPRC, we continue our focus on unlocking future opportunities through two key strategic pillars, which is optimizing the value chain and growing the profitable of the marketing business. The first one is the optimizing of the value chain. The optimization that we are working on involve everything from the initial cost, sourcings of the crude oil, until the final sales of our product to consumer. This ensuring our operation is safe, reliable, and to deliver committed outcomes. We are focusing and also strengthening our financial discipline, preserving cash and prioritize smart investment that maximize the shareholder value. As Khun Matthew mentioned earlier, that we are working on the 2026 turnaround.
This, in the future, will unlock our constraints and enabling us to process a higher ratio of light crude, and ultimately gain the benefit from higher gasoline and jet production. This enhance our sustainable run rate and margin. We also enhancing our cost efficiency, operational performance through the entire value chain optimization. We also have the bottom line improvement program, which is we call BLIP. The optimization embedded from crude and feedstock sourcing, logistic off-rate optimization. We manage the inventory damage, process optimization in the bottleneck constraint. This will increase the unit run rate. Catalysts optimization until our maximized product supply to consumer. In addition, we continue to explore integration opportunities with refinery and petrochemical partners. This capture full value chain of benefits. Another area is the circular economy, which we aim to capitalize on future demand trend through innovative infrastructure solution.
The second pillar is the profitable growth of the marketing business. We implementing spot-to-street strategy, optimizing sale channel to maximize fuel netback margin. Building a robust retail ecosystem, platforms enhancement, and automation. This accelerate domestic growth as you see our performance earlier, while reducing cost to serve through streamlined logistic and supply chain efficiency. Finally, we are expanding our product placement, securing new term of opportunity of the export into the ASEAN. Diversifying level of stream beyond the domestic market. This initiative position SPRC to deliver sustainable growth and resilient in an evolving energy landscape. Okay, thank you. Next, to Voranart.
Thank you. Thank you, all management. That's the concludes of our presentation today. Next, we are ready to take for your questions. Okay. Khun Khomsan, please go ahead.
Thank you, Matthew and Shashank, and Khun Nutsara for the presentation. Few question from me. First one is that you mentioned a lot about light crude processing project. Can you add more color, pre and post, in terms of product slate and crude diet? Can you guide us through the benefit of this project once it is trigger, and what would be the trigger point, i.e., what sort of light and heavy differentiation that should trigger this project?
That's the first question. The second question would be, after this T&I, you probably have a lot of free cash flow on hand. How should we approach this free cash flow that you have? This question for Khun Nutsara. For Khun Nutsara, can you give us an update on spending on the T&I? I mean, the total amount, how much is that split between CapEx and OpEx? How much have you invested up until now? Thank you.
Okay, thank you, Khun Khomsan. Let's start with the first questions about the light crude that will be handled by Khun Matthew.
Yes, thanks. The light crude project will complete, as I said, during this turnaround that we are executing right now. As far as what the crude slate will be, we'll continue to optimize the crude slate per the crude market at the time. It would be probably inappropriate for me to give a detail, like it will run this crude versus that crude in the future. What the project really does is it gives us the flexibility to make sure that we can fully utilize our equipment, sort of regardless of what the light heavy differential is. I will say that some early indications that we've seen is when we've done analysis with the new equipment, with the new capabilities, we see more often that we may want to run some condensates, which are very light, and we might pair those with heavier crudes.
Even when the light heavy differential is narrow, it will allow us to still be able to take advantage of the greater flexibility that we have to get a higher value raw material slate, more optimized raw material slate into the facility. I think you asked about the light heavy differential that will trigger the project. Again, the way we think about the project is not moving from crude slate A to crude slate B. It just gives us a much greater opportunity and flexibility to be able to optimize regardless of what the crude market is. If the light heavy differential gets wider, we will still see value from this project. If the light heavy differential stays narrow as it has been for the last four or five years versus history, we will still see a great value contribution from this project.
That's how we should think about the light crude project. I think the next question was about free cash flow.
Free cash flow and about the update on the T&I spending. Khun Nutsara, please go ahead.
Regarding the free cash flow that we still reinforce in term of the company financial priority, which the first one is to pay reliable and steady dividend to the shareholder. In addition to that, we also consider to pay the special return to the shareholder in term of the dividend. Apart from the dividend, this is the financial priority. Apart from that, we are also focusing on looking for the opportunity for the growth investment that may not have return to the company. So what we are striving is to pay the reliable dividend and also looking for the opportunity for the higher return. Regarding the update on the turnaround and expenditure for the major project. For the total year of last year, in term of the OpEx, we already incur around $25 million.
During quarter four, there is the reclassification, so the number for total year is still the same as the nine month we reported because there is some reclassification. However, in total of the operating expense regarding the turnaround, we still expect to be within the budget. Meaning that in 2026, there are going to be around $10 million-$15 million charged to the expense during the turnaround. Regarding the CapEx also within plan, meaning that in total expense, together with the OpEx and CapEx is still within plan of $150 million.
Khun Khomsan, apologies for not greeting you first, but it's good to hear from you, and good morning. Thanks for the question.
Same here, Matthew. I have a follow-up questions on Khun Shashank. Commercial have done very well this year. Is that because of the jet fuel sales that you're doing? I wanted to hear your thought on what sort of the growth outlook for the jet fuel. We have seen a lot of, a very strong growth from the jet fuel for the last couple of years now. It is coming back above the pre-COVID level. Are you seeing still a strong runway to grow from this one? Are you planning to take mark. Are you number two in this market? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks for the question, and good morning, Khun Khomsan. I think the result in 2025 were kind of a mix, right? There was some strength in the gasoline market domestically. There also was an increase in demand on the aviation jet fuels as you mentioned. We do see the jet fuel demand to remain fairly robust. The demand has been picking up. I think last year was already more than 12% higher than the prior year. There's a lot of factors, obviously, in terms of the demand. But the peak season so far has been strong. We see, we're forecasting a recovery even further on international flight routes, more tourists arriving, and also air cargo kind of expansion, this part of the world. So in general, I think jet demand should remain robust, and that will remain supportive of our production and our margins.
Additional infrastructure projects in Thailand, specifically new terminals, new runway expansions, could also support the growth even further. So yeah, jet fuel is a pretty big part of the story for us, and we will continue to produce more. In fact, the light crude project should increase the yields on the jet fuel we make by 3%-5% as well.
Are you number two in this market?
Sorry?
Are you number two in terms of the market share? Are you number two within the jet fuel market?
Domestically, I think if you look at the total sales, we're probably in that two and three kind of battling for the number two spot in the market. However, we're quite heavily favoring international airlines business, given our relationship and our ability to leverage our majority shareholder, and Chevron's strength globally. So there's still opportunity for us to grow further. But yeah, we're pretty competitive in that number two position.
Thank you.
Thank you, Khun Khomsan. Next, Khun Amornrat, please go ahead, kha.
Thank you, kha. May I ask about the outlook for the gasoline crack, because it seems to be soften during the past months. When do you expect it to recover? Is it by seasonal demand in the second quarter? Second question is on the light crude premium, given that the Brent and Dubai differential is very wide in the past month as well. What is the outlook going forward? Lastly, what would we think about the crude runs after the turnaround? Can it be a little bit higher than what we've seen in the third or the fourth quarter? Lastly, thank you for the revised MD&A. It is very useful for us for analyzing the company's results. Thank you.
Okay, so maybe we start with the gasoline outlook.
Go ahead. Maybe start Matthew, I can add if you'd like.
Good morning, and thank you for the question. We will start with the gas crack outlook. Globally, I think what you are seeing is global refining runs have been very strong, and particularly refining runs in the U.S. have been very strong over the past two quarters. Despite the fact that we have seen refinery rationalization in the North America market, I believe that they hit some all-time high utilization numbers over the late part of the fourth quarter and starting this year. A lot of gasoline being produced because that particular part of the world, those refineries are geared for gasoline production. We think that the gasoline cracks can likely remain soft for maybe another quarter or so until the refineries in that part of the world enter their turnaround season.
Then we may see a little bit of a supply tightness that would improve the gasoline crack following that. I do not know, Shashank, if you have any additional thoughts.
I think you covered it, Matthew. I think in addition, there is some seasonality that plays a part in the gasoline crack, specifically when you talk about the U.S., when they tighten their specifications in the summer driving season, it does reduce the supply and the production they are able to bring to market. So I think you are right. The first quarter, kind of heading into the second quarter is weaker than what we saw from recent highs on the gasoline crack, but there is reason for some optimism heading into the second quarter and the second half of the year.
I think the second question was about the light heavy crude spreads.
Premium. The crude premium.
The crude premiums. Okay. I think, one, quite a volatile situation here as we saw crude prices really declining in the fourth quarter, early part of the first quarter, just as the market is expecting for there to be structural oversupply. That got disrupted a bit by geopolitical tensions, and then the market began to suspect that there would be some structural, not structural, but just some short in the market due to perhaps some disruption due to geopolitical issues. When that happens, the front month to month two, month three spreads moves, they get pretty volatile. That volatility really shows up in your Brent Dubai spreads. It shows up in your Dubai to Murban spreads. We end up with quite a bit of volatility in that space. With volatility, thankfully also usually comes opportunities.
The good news for us is, again, because we are doing work to increase our flexibility and selection of raw materials, that ought to really increase our ability to be able to spot opportunities to create margin for our system. Volatility can be frustrating, but it is also a good way for us to find opportunities.
Yeah. Just to add one thing, because I think there's a question around the crude unit rates and utilizations. We do expect after the turnaround, sort of almost regardless of what's happening with light heavy and the Brent Dubai spreads, given the expanded opportunity for us to capitalize on more diverse crude slate, and potentially light heavy or lighter crude slate. We expect our crude runs after the crude unit comes up post-turnaround to be in the 170,000+ a day range, and utilization about 4% or 5% higher than we saw last year.
Thank you. If you have any further question, please press the raise hand buttons or you can send to the chat channel. I received one question in the chat channel asking about the cost saving from the new SPM that we are expecting.
Okay, good question. The SPM upgrade project is not really a cost savings project. We are investing in making sure that that piece of infrastructure, because it is very critical and the operation of it needs to be extremely reliable and it needs to be extremely safe from an integrity standpoint. This upgrade is all about really strengthening the safeguards in that system to make sure that the system can operate incident and leak-free. Once we get that system upgraded, I do not think we foresee any lower cost from the ongoing operation of that system. What we do expect to see is a much higher confidence in the ability for us to operate that equipment without impacting the environment or our neighbors. That is what that investment is all about.
Thank you to Matthew. Next, Khun Suwat, please go ahead.
Thank you. The first question I would like to know, what would be the factor that the company could achieve higher utilization, say above 95% on sustainable basis? Because I saw the last quarter have been dropping, even though the GRM has been so strong. Also, can you remind me again that what would be the reason why the OpEx increased from the third quarter per unit? That is the first question. The second question, I want to know about the impact of the so-called U.S. government policy in terms of the, what I believe would be the capping the price of the energy, particularly the gasoline, which is the big impact and contribution to the U.S. inflation. Would you think that the gasoline margin on going basis would be relatively, I would say, stagnant?
Because in the past few quarters, I saw U.S. government, and also the CPI, has been helped by the negative or even a small increase in the inflation for the gasoline price. Would you think that would be possible, that we expect the gasoline margin to be, say, about $10-$15 rather than have been upside to about $20? The third question I want to know about the commercial, particularly the gas station that you operate. Impressively, you increased the performance and the sale volume of the gas station. What would be the strategy going forward that you would increase potentially the non-oil EBITDA?
Also the sale volume per station, how you achieve that going forward, say, on a promotion on the superior product mix sales or maybe on the lower cost because I saw the cost per unit of the commercial increasing in the last quarter. Thank you.
Thank you, Khun Suwat. Maybe we could start with the impact from the U.S. government policy on the gasoline margin that would handle by Khun Matthew.
Okay. Good morning, and thank you for the question. I do not have a whole lot of comments on this one. The gasoline margins in the U.S. are driven by supply-demand fundamentals. As we stated, over the past while, the U.S. refining capacity has been running at sort of record high utilization. That is what has kind of led to gasoline margins and prices coming down. Obviously, when those prices are down, that looks good from a consumer price index and a low inflation thing in the U.S. I do not think that the U.S. has any particular policies to be sort of trying to drive gasoline prices down or to cap gasoline margins.
Okay. Thank you, Khun Matthew. Next question's about the factor to drive the high utilizations in further and the outlook on the commercial strategy, that would be handled by Khun Shashank.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you for the question. Good morning. I will try to hit the next three or four questions that were asked. But specifically utilization, I think our goal is to continue driving utilization in the high 90s. In fact, I mentioned after the turnaround, the likelihood of us running higher than 95% is very strong. Obviously, that depends on how dynamic the market is and the prices. But we believe investments made during this turnaround, specifically on the crude unit, will allow us to capitalize on many different scenarios of price outcomes, right? Whether it's a high LHD, low LHD, the buy Brent widening or narrowing, I think we can capitalize on all those scenarios. Each of those has opportunities for us to continue driving for the best margin outcome.
I will just say, we typically remain focused on optimizing the margin, and the enterprise margin we are delivering, not so much only on utilization. But to the extent that this project allows us more options, you should see high utilization and high margin realized through the enterprise on there. I think that's the reason for the optimism above 95% utilization on a sustainable basis. I think there's a question on, I heard on OpEx, Q4 OpEx may be higher than Q3. I think Khun Nutsara can probably add more flavor to that, but I will say, though, there was some spending related to turnaround in the fourth quarter of 2025, right? Some critical lead time materials that need to be ordered in preparation for the turnaround.
That's one reason why you would see some higher OpEx also in Q4 than you had earlier in the year of 2025. But as we mentioned in the forecast, after the turnaround, our costs are going to be monitored and managed very aggressively to make sure we continue driving a cost efficiency mindset throughout the enterprise for this year after turnaround. Lastly, I think there was a question on retail strategy and in general our retail business. Retail being one part of our commercial strategy, not counting aviation asphalt, our direct sales through our, what we call C&I channel and other direct to business sales. Our strategy in retail is to continue growing our retail volume, primarily in three ways. One would be, we want to continue adding and expanding our network of new Caltex stations nationwide.
You will see us do that through the course of this year. We also want to continue increasing our same store sales through each of the stations we already do have. To do that, we are going to continue supporting our retail partners as well as our consumer value proposition to bring in more consumers more often to our stations. We are investing to upgrade our, what we call the retail ecosystem at the stations, which includes everything from the point-of-sale systems to the loyalty program and the mentioned promotions, what we can offer the consumer in a very competitive market. As we continue evolving that and improving that, we do expect to see more consumers come to our stations and buy more of our products.
Part of that is to increase our connectivity with our non-oil offerings, so connecting the loyalty program to be able to do more cross-promotions between non-oil and oil, and also increase the number of non-oil options available at our stations for the consumer. All of that is expected to lead to higher retail sales, improved same station sales, as well as higher non-oil EBITDA and earnings by the end of the year in 2026.
Thank you, Khun Shashank.
Thank you. Can I again have one follow-up question? So about the OpEx per unit. After you complete your capital expenditure related to the turnaround, what will be the ongoing basis level? Would that be below $2, say about $1.8? Would that be possible? Thank you.
Yes. Actually, in the slide, we separate into the refinery OpEx and the commercial OpEx. If saying just only for the refinery OpEx after the turnaround, yes, we expect that because of the lower maintenance and also the cost efficiency in SPRC. So in term of the refinery OpEx, we expect that it will be in the range of $1.80 or $1.90 a barrel. And on top of that, there will be commercial OpEx relating to the commercial business of around $0.6, $0.7. So in total of the company to be $2.7 a barrel for the total enterprise. In addition to the question regarding the Q4 OpEx that Khun Shashank already provide the information, this is also because of the seasonal spending. Normally, we have a lot of activities during Q4.
But you can see that in total year in 2025, the OpEx show a downtrend. This reflects our cost efficiency program.
Thank you, Nutsara. So next, Khun Yupapan, please go ahead.
Thank you for your presentation. I have a question regarding maintenance cost in the first quarter. I saw that last year, your C&I cost is lower than expected. Should we expect the same in the first quarter? That is my first question. And second question is regarding dividend. What should I look in term of the dividend policy for SPRC? Because the absolute amount is higher than last year, from 40- 45 satang. Will this be the base number going forward, minimum payout per year? Should I look it that way?
Thank you. Nutsara, please.
For the first question is the maintenance expense. Is it the turnaround that you are asking for?
Yes, turnaround expense.
For the turnaround expense, what we expect in the first quarter of this year, that I mentioned earlier, that we expect around $10 million-$15 million. That's going to be record as the expense to first quarter of this year. That's relating to the turnaround expense. But after that, we expect that our operating expense, which include the normal maintenance, will go down.
Thank you, Nutsara. About the dividend trend will be handled by Matthew.
Okay. Thank you for the question. On the dividend, I will go back to our financial priorities. Our first financial priority is to be a reliable, sustainable dividend payer to our shareholders. The board looks through the cycle, and we determine, as we go through the full turnaround cycle, what we think a base dividend is that we believe that we should be able to pay. What I would guide you to is to look at what range our interim dividend for the year was. That kind of will give you a guide to that is what we would say our base is. Then for the final year dividend, as you look at what we proposed there, those include our reward to shareholders when we have a stronger performance.
I think your question is, well, if the dividend was increased from last year to this year, should we expect to see continuing increases? With that, I would say we cannot really fully comment, but our expectation is we should be improving our ability to generate margins and improving our ability to generate earnings. If we execute on those reliably, when we execute on those reliably, our shareholders will see more and more rewards through the programs that we have to return cash to shareholders.
Thank you, Matthew. I think we have covered a lot of topic today and a lot of great question we receive. Thank you very much from all of you. I think now is time for thank you very much, everyone, to join our analyst meeting in this quarters. Thank you for your interest, and we expect to see you for our next quarter. Thank you.
Thank you. Sawasdee khrap.
Khrap.