Refiners Tank On Valero Outlook

A worse-than-expected second-quarter outlook scared investors away from oil refiners on Wednesday.

Valero Energy (VLO) forecast a loss of -50 cents a share in the second quarter of 2009, down from a prior projection of 59 cents of EPS. Analysts had even loftier expectations for the company, with the Q2 EPS consensus sitting at 74 cents a share prior to Valero’s announcement. The major shift in outlook shocked investors, who are dumping oil refiners as a result. Valero, which is down by more than -16% today, also announced that it is looking to improve its balance sheet via capital raising efforts. The planned issue of 40 to 46 million shares would dilute common equity by -8%.

As a whole the Oil Refiner Stocks Index is down by -6%. It now trails the S&P 500 by -1.5% over the last month.

Shares of Frontier Oil (FTO), Tesoro (TSO), Western Refining (WNR), and CVR Energy (CVI) are all plummeting by more than -11%.

Holly (HOC), Alon USA Energy (ALJ), and Sunoco (SUN) are all off by more than -8%.

The sector’s giants are all down significantly today. Imperial Oil (IMO), Marathon Oil (MRO), Hess (HES), and Petro-Canada (PCZ) are all off by more than -3%.

As of this writing the Oil Refiner Stocks Index is among the cheapest 15 tickerspy Indexes based on P/E ratio. The average P/E for the Index is 9.2.

Investors can follow the Oil Refiner Stocks Index and view related performance charts and metrics at tickerspy.com.

Tags: ALJ, CVI, FTO, HES, HOC, IMO, MRO, PCZ, SUN, TSO, VLO, WNR