Marathon Petroleum Tops Q3 Estimates on Record Refining Margins, Agrees $4.2B Refinery Sale to CVR Energy

MPC posted one of the strongest quarters in its history. Adjusted earnings came to $26.93 per share, against $3.01 in the third quarter of 2025 and a Zacks consensus of $25.74. GAAP earnings were $26.59 per share on net income of about $7.4 billion, according to the company's release. The driver was price, not volume: the refining and marketing margin rose to $45.70 per barrel from $17.60 a year earlier, roughly the 160% jump in the headlines, while the refineries ran at 100% of crude capacity.

The same day, CVR Energy said it had signed a definitive agreement to buy Marathon's St. Paul Park, Minnesota refinery (105,000 barrels per day) and its Mandan, North Dakota refinery (72,000 barrels per day), together with a marketing business that supplies up to 590 branded locations in the Upper Midwest and Northern Great Plains, for about $4.2 billion plus net working capital. The headline price is not all Marathon's: per Marathon's release, it includes related midstream assets, with about $3.45 billion going to Marathon and $750 million to its MPLX partnership. CVR, which is financing the deal with $2.5 billion of committed debt, equity from its controlling shareholder and an $800 million investment from Trafigura, expects to close by the end of 2026, subject to antitrust clearance under the HSR Act.

Marathon is also returning cash quickly. It returned $3.3 billion to shareholders in the quarter, raised its quarterly dividend 10%, and its board added $5 billion of buyback authorization; the company says it will reinvest the sale proceeds mainly in its Gulf Coast system. The Motley Fool's read was that the quarter "says more about the market than about the business", and Marathon gave no fourth-quarter margin outlook. CVR itself tied the roughly $1.2 billion of trailing EBITDA from the assets it is buying to current favorable market conditions.

What to watch: whether refining margins hold near these levels into the fourth quarter, when Marathon guides total throughput of about 3.08 million barrels per day; whether the CVR deal clears HSR review on its year-end timeline; and how fast Marathon works through its enlarged buyback with the cash from the sale.