PureCycle Technologies Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
February 27, 2025

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Pure Cycle Technologies Fourth Quarter twenty twenty four Corporate Update Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session.

Operator

To ask a question during the session, you would need to press 11 on your telephone. You would then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker today, Eric Denali, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Michelle. Welcome to Pure Cycle Technologies' fourth quarter twenty twenty four corporate update conference call. I'm Eric DiNantale, Director of Investor Relations for Pure Cycle. And joining me on the call today are Dustin Olson, our Chief Executive Officer and Jamie Vasquez, our Chief Financial Officer. This morning, we will be highlighting our corporate developments for the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four.

Speaker 1

The presentation we'll be going through on this call can also be found on the Investors tab at our website at purecycle.com. Many of the statements made today will be forward looking and are based on management's beliefs and assumptions and information currently available to management at this time. The statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which may be beyond our control, including those set forth in our safe harbor provisions and forward looking statements that can be found at the end of our fourth quarter twenty twenty four corporate update press release that was filed this morning, as well as in other reports on file with the SEC that provides further detail about the risks related to our business. Additionally, please note that the company's actual results may differ materially from those anticipated and except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update any forward looking statements. Our remarks today may also include preliminary non GAAP estimates and are subject to risks and uncertainties, including among other things, changes in connection with quarter end and year end adjustments.

Speaker 1

Any variation between PURE Cycle's actual results and the preliminary financial data set forth herein may be material. You're welcome to follow along with our slide deck. Or if you're joining us by phone, you can access it at any time at purecycle.com. We are excited to share updates from the previous quarter with you. I will now turn it over to Dustin Olson, Pure Cycle's Chief Executive Officer.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Eric. And by the way, welcome to Pure Cycle. The fourth quarter was an exciting time for Pure Cycle with continued momentum across our business. This is a testament to the hard work and dedication of our team. And as I look around the company, I can see we are all increasingly energized as we enter this new chapter.

Speaker 2

Before we get into the specific quarterly details, I think it's worth taking a step back to frame the progress we have made and to share why we believe so strongly in the future of Pure Cycle. It's never easy to bring a first of its kind technology to the market, but the last year and a half of ramping Ironton has shown the strength of our team through tremendous grit, determination and innovative spirit. All of this is foundational and will serve us well into the future. With our first meaningful purchase order from Drake, we are now entering into a new period of commercialization of Ironton. I'm incredibly pleased with the progress made so far and excited with what is to come.

Speaker 2

As we have previously discussed, the potential market for recycled polypropylene is enormous, with virgin market soon to exceed 200,000,000,000 pounds globally. Plastic waste disposal sustainability continues to be an unsolved problem. Despite pushes from policymakers, polypropylene is still less than 1% recycled on a global basis. Of the polypropylene, which is recycled, it is generally done so through mechanical processes and is of lesser quality than virgin. The solution technology is a unique technology segment that fits between mechanical and chemical recycling technologies and is more and more efficiently checks the boxes of yield, quality and carbon footprint.

Speaker 2

Simply stated, we believe this technology stands alone. Inside this space, PureCycle's technology is leading the market as the only dissolution process which can produce at industrial scale and meet customers often stringent quality needs. We are thrilled to be in commercialization, finding so much success and adoption within commercialization and believe our success in the next chapter will allow for decades of profitable expansion. The feedback from our customers has been incredibly positive, with many saying that our product meets the qualities of virgin material and some even saying that our compounds exceed the qualities of virgin material. Our list of potential customers continues to grow.

Speaker 2

We are engaged in more than 20 trials with more than 10 in later stage industrial trials with significant volume potential. And I'm incredibly impressed by our technical team's ability to meet spec requirements across numerous industries and applications. And let me just say this personally, this has been so much fun. There is nothing more gratifying than seeing a decade of work turn into a product that customers are excited about. This initial phase of development has been time consuming, but our successful qualifications of new applications is opening large channels of demand for our product that will serve us well for Ironton and beyond.

Speaker 2

Since we became a public company, we've learned a lot about recycled plastic ecosystem and made many strategic decisions to best position ourselves to capitalize and monetize the incredible opportunity in front of us. What has emerged is a vertically integrated strategy that connects our business from the purchase of bales to the sale of compounded material and then to our customers product that you see in the store. This approach has several key benefits. First, it is designed to give us control over our own destiny as we enter a nascent and ever evolving feedstock market. Second, it gives us broader access to customer applications through compounding strategy.

Speaker 2

Third, we believe that we are an increment that there are incremental economic returns at each stage of the vertical. This is most clear in our compounding operations, where we see an increasing portions of volumes going, but we also see additional opportunities in feedstock preprocessing operations as well. And fourth, given our technology's feedstock flexibility, we see strong ability to expand the technology globally. This will allow us to create one of the world's first vertically integrated global recycling companies, capable of supplying product to the global brands around the world. We are also very excited about the substantial progress that has been made in Ironton.

Speaker 2

As I explained at the Ironton Showcase Day back in March, we expect operational progress to follow in S curve with slow initial movements improvements followed by a stage of rapid acceleration. With meaningful improvement in max rates as well as on stream time, we believe we are in the latter phase and we have line of sight to moving toward nameplate capacity. As we have brought Ironton into commercial operations, we made the strategic decision to hold back some of the sales to achieve higher value for the product as we sell into the marketplace. We know our resin is PCR compliant and we know PCR compliance generates values for our customers. We also know that many customers require third party validation and thus have made the decision to hold the inventory until we receive the certification to maximize value in the company.

Speaker 2

We're in the process of acquiring third party certification, expect it will retroactively apply to the £7,200,000 of finished product in inventory and currently expect to receive it toward the end of Q1. I think it's useful to go into more detail surrounding the customer application process and how we proceed from initial interest to a firm purchase order. The first step is an iterative phase of pilot trials, where our technology and compounding teams work diligently with the customer to find the formulation that meets the requisite product specifications. This part is the most time consuming. It requires a very focused discussion to fully understand exactly what the customer requires and is the most complex part of our process that can take up to six months.

Speaker 2

And the good news is that after we qualify a product application with one customer, the timeframe should be substantially reduced and shortened with future customers. We are already seeing this play out with fiber where we accelerated the qualification process with numerous other customers subsequent to our Drake successes. We then enter industrial trials where we run a full scale production to ensure product viability at the customer's commercial level volumes. This stage generally takes less time than the initial phase and is usually completed in one to three months. Though this also should shorten after initial application success.

Speaker 2

Upon the completion the successful completion of this phase, the commercial ramp begins and we can build to fill to full customer volume targets. Our relationship with Procter and Gamble continues to be extremely strong. As filed in an eight ks earlier this week, we have recently amended our license agreement, which concludes the North American requirements to secure exclusivity and provides additional exclusivity as we pursue expansion into other regions. This agreement is a testament to our strong working relationship and our shared excitement about the success going forward. We're entering into industrial trials for five different applications with P and G, all of which are well known consumer brands.

Speaker 2

This shows we're not only gaining momentum with P and G, we're also gaining momentum with specific brands within P and G. The current goal is for full approval early in Q2 and we will then ramp sales into year end. Note, this is only the first phase of work with P and G and there are more than twice the number of applications not listed here that are currently in earlier stages. We believe this puts us on track to get the full PPG allocation by year end. We are extremely grateful for the collaboration and hard work from our largest partner and excited for what is about to come.

Speaker 2

We are very happy to succeed in qualifying fiber applications and announcing a commercial order with Drake extrusion. The fiber market is an extremely challenging application to enter with recycled material. As discussed before, recycled resins typically carry excessive ash and contaminants that makes this a very difficult process. Our purification process was able to remove these contaminants, produce a resin that is greater than 99% pure and our team worked with Drake to compound a resin that performed like a virgin material or in their words, better than the virgin resin. We ran industrial scale trials to successfully produce staple fibers and continuous filament yarns.

Speaker 2

This ultimately led to their first purchase order, which we announced in late January. Drake extrusion is part of a larger global conglomerate, but the Virginia facility alone that qualifies the Pure Cycle material currently purchases 60,000,000 pounds to 70,000,000 pounds of polypropylene per year. We're excited to continue to partner and look to scale our business with Drake into the future, And we continue to work on other product applications in their portfolio. For those of you who haven't seen it, we've provided a link at the bottom of this slide to our recent interview with the CEO of Drake, where we discussed our relationship and the use of our purified resin in their facility. Over the course of the quarter, we compounded approximately 4,000,000 pounds of material for fiber applications.

Speaker 2

The Drake purchase came out of that material and since the announcement, other customers are also starting to pull on the inventory. We also recently announced our first commercial product line Run It Back with Churchill container. Churchill is the leading manufacturer of all of your favorite local and national souvenir cups and containers. This new product line is made of Pure5 resin and was able to meet strict product requirements around odor, color and processability. We are incredibly excited to get this product onto the market, particularly in front of the upcoming baseball season.

Speaker 2

We estimate that most professional sports teams in the big four sports in North America use about 50,000 to 100,000 pounds of resin in their souvenir containers each season. When you add to that, Churchill's presence in college sports, live events, movie theaters, conventions and convenience stores, we believe the commercial opportunity here is quite large and they could be a significant customer for Ironton. Since the announcement, Churchill has already received the first commitment from a professional sports team and more than 10 other professional sports teams have already submitted inquiries to Churchill. They are a great partner. We are thrilled to see this relationship grow.

Speaker 2

And while the customers are sensitive to managing the balance between overall cost and value creation, Churchill has seen no pushback from their customers on premium resin pricing. We currently are underway with 29 trials with potential customers, of which 16 on an industrial scale and this is just the tip of the iceberg. The total volume potential volume from these trials is one is on the total volume potential from these trials is based on one, the applications we are testing and two, the customers stated market intentions. And it is approximately £250,000,000 to £500,000,000 per year at steady state. We also have customer interest in 42 trials that should begin soon and these applications could unlock north of £1,000,000,000 of demand.

Speaker 2

The progress that has been made on this front gives us tremendous amount of confidence that we can sell out Ironton in the near future. Success in these trials should accelerate the need for global expansion as our ability to supply our customers stated needs will be constrained. Rigid, let's go through a few of these segments. Rigid packaging is the largest market for polypropylene in North America at roughly 3,800,000,000 pounds per year. By unlocking access to this large premium part of the market, we can go a long way to successfully ramping our commercial operations at attractive unit margins.

Speaker 2

We are currently engaged in seven pilot application trials and five industrial trials. This includes large CPGs and one of the largest converters in the country and successful conversion here can unlock over 200,000,000 pounds of customer demand. The flexible packaging market or film represents a significant opportunity for us. Many CPG customers many CPG companies have a strong appetite for recycled content, but face limited access to high quality recycled solutions. Last quarter, we discussed the path for development here and we have remained on track with those estimates.

Speaker 2

We've developed a 30% PCT content compound that we feel good about for various flexible applications and are currently engaged in two pilot trials with additional trials set to begin soon. This is a massive, largely undersupplied market with very high demand and pending the results of these early trials, we are well positioned to capitalize on. The non woven and other fiber markets represent approximately £1,900,000,000 in North America and roughly £6,800,000,000 globally. And of that only 0.3% is made up of recycled content in 2024. We are incredibly excited about our recent success at Drake and this announcement has accelerated commercial interest across other interested parties, both in parallel to Drake and downstream of Drake.

Speaker 2

This has shortened the approval process for others and we are engaged in seven industrial trials, which should be completed in the coming months. This has also created the opportunity to direct sell to end market brands that you can find in your local big box stores. The automotive market is another important market for Pure Cycle to target future sales. The industry's trend in light weighting to improve fuel economy has created the need for increasing plastic content in cars. Currently, there is approximately 100 pounds of polypropylene per car, and we believe it will continue to grow.

Speaker 2

Additionally, as proposed regulation in Europe and Japan aims to have 25 recycle content per vehicle in 02/1930. While the final form of the legislation is still to be determined, we see increased urgency to find reliable, high quality recycle solutions from automotive manufacturers, particularly those in Europe and Japan, and those with global platforms. Europe is expected to produce over 16,000,000 vehicles in 2025, growing to over 18,000,000 in 02/1930. It's with that context that we are incredibly excited by our successful production of a compound with Washington Penn to create a bumper fascia for one of the largest global automotive manufacturers. This is a major step forward for our use of recycled content in the automotive industry.

Speaker 2

As you know, automotive quality standards are among the highest in the world. Using post consumer recycle or PCR as a feedstock for parts is incredibly challenging for traditional recycling programs. Typically, automotive manufacturers face challenges with paint adhesion, scrap rate and consistency or are limited by highly restricted feedstocks when using other recycling techniques. However, with the compound and PCT's product, we see very good success across all these quality components. This application was comprised primarily of PURE5 resin, which was compounded with other non polypropylene components to make the final bumper.

Speaker 2

We expect further safety testing to be completed in the coming months with approval scheduled later in 2025. While there is no change in interest from the customer, there is still an open discussion on whether it will be introduced into this model in mid-twenty twenty five or in the next model, which is slated to start production in late twenty twenty five. It's important to note the scale of this opportunity. Global demand for just one bumper fascia on one vehicle model is roughly 30,000,000 per year with 15,000,000 for North America alone. With this case, both the addressable volume and the margin opportunity driven by regulation has the potential to be a very strong component for the Pure Cycle strategy in the coming years.

Speaker 2

The bottom line for all of our commercial activity is this, while initial qualification can be time intensive, it is a necessary undertaking for us to unlock and enhance the value of our resin. To date, we've had good success. And frankly, we've succeeded at every application we've tested, even if it's taken a few iterations to get there. Based on customer interest and success we've achieved across numerous applications, we see even higher demand for our product today. Given the supply and demand imbalance in the market, the high percentage of applications that are FDA continues to provide the confidence in our unit margins and growth to come.

Speaker 2

On the operational front, we're really excited about the progress we've made since our last update. We continue to pace Ironton production to match the commercial ramp. We produced 3,600,000 pounds in Q4 and there is tremendous improvement under the surface. There are three areas that highlight our increased confidence in the path to nameplate capacity and meeting our customers' needs. First, we have continued to improve our maximum achieved feed rate.

Speaker 2

This is really exciting. As nameplate capacity is now in sight, each time we reach new heights, we learn more about our facilities potential. Second, our reliability is improving significantly. This is appropriately measured by on stream time, which is almost 70% in December, a new monthly high. We expect to continue to see quarter over quarter reliability improvements and we'll update the market on our performance as each quarter concludes.

Speaker 2

Finally, our quality metrics continue to improve as well. This is practically seen in our ability to qualify customer applications, but is also seen in the pellets with improvements in opacity and odor. This is a direct result of the investment that we made in Denver and our flake starting operations coming online and improved operating performance at Ironton. Running PCR feeds is much harder than running post industrial recycle or PIR And yet, the PP we are producing is over 99% pure compared to mechanically recycled product, which is typically in the 90% to 95% range. Given we are now running almost exclusively very challenging PCR feedstocks, this operational progress is even more exciting to our team and really increases our confidence for Ironton and beyond.

Speaker 2

We also ramped our compounding activities in Q4 to 4,000,000 which is helping our customer qualification efforts. As I've mentioned before, the domestic market for compounding capacity is in excess and we secured £5,000,000 per month of local compounding capacity at very attractive unit economics. This is an exciting development and is making the theoretical economic benefit of compounding very real. We are also finding additional sales channels for our co products from the purification process as well as the excess PET and PE from and other saleable materials from our purchased bales. Approximately 5% of our feed to purification goes to co product one and co product two and we see emerging sales channels at the $0.22 to $0.55 per pound range.

Speaker 2

This process is still being optimized, but it is a clear and exciting opportunity to further lower our net feedstock costs going forward. We have continued to spend capital on long lead equipment for Augusta given the progress we see in Ironton. The data that has come out of Ironton has been valuable in developing our plans for future growth. There is a lot of work going on behind the scenes. We are seeing real opportunities to improve our project and technology execution, and I can't wait to update the market on our expansion plan soon.

Speaker 2

This coupled with our successes in operations and commercial efforts are the principal reasons why we continue to invest. Let me end by saying that I'm incredibly proud of how far the company has come and even more excited about the opportunity in front of us. What we have seen in the last three months has only further validated the scale of the opportunity in front of us, as well as the potential financial returns for our stakeholders. A company is only as good as its people. We continue to grow our talent, particularly in commercial sales and projects, and the people across the entire company are as energetic and optimistic as ever.

Speaker 2

This new chapter is an exciting one and a bridge to becoming a unique growth concept, one that can create substantial good for the society and the world at large, while generating strong returns for our stakeholders. With that, I will turn it over to Jamie for the financial presentation. Jamie? Thank you, Justin. On Slide 10, you can see our year end liquidity position, which included just under $16,000,000 of unrestricted cash.

Speaker 2

As we highlighted, we raised $33,000,000 in February by entering into subscription agreements with certain investors. This included a significant investment by Plead Investment Advisors, a Hong Kong based fundamental equity investor that has done due diligence on PuraCycle for a period of time. We believe that attracting a firm like Pleiad helps further validate the progress that PuraCycle is making towards commercialization. The capital raise was also supported by Saliva Capital and Samland Capital, who further increased their investments in Puricycle. In addition to the capital raise, we still hold about 118,000,000 of revenue bonds that we anticipate to sell in 2025, which will further enhance our liquidity position.

Speaker 2

Our cash expenses for the fourth quarter totaled $68,000,000 This amount included about $36,000,000 payment, mostly for equipment related to our growth projects. Adjusted for the $36,000,000 payment, as well as the revenue bond interest payment, our cash expense for the quarter was around $27,000,000 which was in line with recent previous quarters. Now, I would like to turn the call back to Michelle to open the call for questions.

Operator

Thank you. And the first question will come from Andre Sheppard with Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is now open.

Speaker 3

Hey, everyone. Good morning and congratulations on the quarter and all the great progress. Dustin, you touched on this a little bit on your prepared remarks. There's a lot of exciting information in the deck surrounding the commercial ramp. I'm wondering if you can maybe elaborate what gives you confidence about this flowing through?

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes. Hey, thanks a lot, Andreas. Look, we are just so excited about the application successes we're seeing in the customer trials. I mean, I can tell you, when I went to Drake the other day and shot the video that we released a couple of weeks ago, it was so exciting to see our product dropped into their plant and watch the staple fiber production. It was exciting.

Speaker 2

And when you see that kind of success across extremely different difficult customer applications, it gives us extreme confidence in our ability to do this. And that's just one example. I mean, we see this across the board and all of the segments that I mentioned and that's what gives us our confidence.

Speaker 3

Wonderful. That's super helpful and again very exciting indeed. Maybe as a quick follow-up, Jamie, I'm wondering if you can maybe comment a bit further on your current cash positions and plans around financing going forward? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Absolutely. I don't want to comment beyond the fourth quarter, but as you saw, we ended the quarter with $15,000,000 of unrestricted cash and we raised another $33,000,000 in February. We still have the revenue bonds to sell. And I'm very confident that as Ironton continues to perform the way it's been performing and we have continued to have the commercialization success, we'll be able to sell those revenue bonds near term.

Speaker 3

Got it. Wonderful. Thanks again and congrats on the quarter. I'll pass it on.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks a lot, Andres.

Operator

The next question will come from Hudson Ahmed with Alembic. Your line is now open.

Speaker 4

Good morning, Dustin. Fantastic seeing all the commercial successes you guys are making. Love the fact that you pointed out a line of sight to $2.50 plus million pounds of resin sales, right? And the fact that you are almost approaching nameplate utilization, right? So from a commercial perspective, things seem to be well on track from an operational perspective as well.

Speaker 4

Now as you guys are sort of hitting all of these milestones, can we revisit unit economics? I mean, what are you guys seeing in terms of sales price? What are you guys seeing in terms of feedstock costs? What are you guys seeing in terms of potential EBITDA margins? And to use your words, as you are sort of embarking on this next chapter, it would be interesting to revisit where we stand in terms of unit economics.

Speaker 2

Yes. Look, thanks, Hassan, for the question. We still feel really strong about the unit economics. I mean, as we've mentioned before, there's a few key components here. One is obviously sales price.

Speaker 2

We continue to stand by the sales price that we discussed in prior public disclosures being an aggregate of like $1.36 per pound of PCTPP. So that still feels really good to us. Our variable cost components, both fixed and variable at the Ironton site, they're quite good. We continue to find efficiencies on the utility side. Those are very strong.

Speaker 2

Those are I think we've noted this before, but those are substantially lower than what we originally estimated in the initial Ironton stuff. And then there's feedstock. And on the feedstock side, what you see is a market where the number five bale is moving around quite a bit. So that's something we're paying attention to. But with the integration of the Denver facility, our flake sorting operations, our ability to compound some of the co products that come off of prep, as well as the feedstock flexibility that our technology offers, it's still very good.

Speaker 2

I mean, we view our technology as unique and the ability to run different feeds that give us cost advantage on the feedstock side, as well as gaining improved opportunities to continue to further optimize the overall site. We feel really good about all of that. And like we've mentioned before, the breakeven economics for Ironton, they still look quite good at the 40% to 50% operating range. And the breakeven economics for PCT, we still say are quite good at the 80% to 90% range. So Hassan, we feel really good about the unit economics and quite frankly, the commercial successes are going to drive a lot of the top end here.

Speaker 2

And the more commercial success that we can show across a wide variety of applications, the more opportunity we're going to have to sell to higher value creation customers that can afford to spend a bit more on the product. And that's going to give us a lot of flexibility going forward, as well as fuel the growth plan for the company.

Speaker 4

Very helpful. And just as a follow-up, sort of towards the end of your answer, you talked about these growth projects. Obviously, with this commercial success, with the operational success, I'm sure there's a lot more interest now in the product, in PCT and the like. So can you just talk a bit more about future growth projects, maybe potentially some sort of rough timeline associated with those as well?

Speaker 2

Yes. I mean, look, I mean, we've always said that unlocking the potential for growth was dependent on our ability to commercialize the product and run Ironton at good rates with good reliability. And we believe that we're at that turning point now. We believe that we're able to show the market our capability, both in terms of producing the product quality required for the customers, as well as running the plant in a controlled fashion that's going to give us access to the growth. The growth side of things, look, we're in a great position, okay.

Speaker 2

We have a really good relationship with our friends in Augusta and a site that's ready to go. We have a really good relationship with the both the site at the Port Of Antwerp as well as the government in Belgium. They're very excited for that to progress and we have a very compelling package for our European growth plan that will be quite good. And then we also have additional growth opportunities beyond Europe and The U. S.

Speaker 2

And Asia, which we're currently working. So we as you know, we've purchased a lot of the long lead equipment for two one hundred and thirty million pound lines. Those are ready to go and ready to execute and we believe the timeline to execute that will be a bridge because we've already bought most of the long lead equipment for those projects. And so once we so we're on the cusp of moving that forward. The other thing I'd like to mention is just it's just about the learnings we've taken from Ironton Hessant.

Speaker 2

I mean, it's one thing to run the plant more reliably and to show that we can hit top end rates. But the data that we're collecting off of the plant gives us critical insight to the fundamentals of the plant operations that is far beyond what we've ever had in the past. And we're going to be able to leverage that information to not only improve the design of the 130s, but also lead to enhanced designs in the future beyond the 130s that will have substantial improvements in operations, technical deployment as well as CapEx per pound. And so we're not going to talk too much more about the growth plan, it's coming, but I can't wait to share that with the market.

Speaker 4

Extremely helpful, Dustin. Thank you so much.

Operator

And the next question will come from Eric Stine with Craig Hallum. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Good morning everyone.

Speaker 2

Hey, Eric. How are you doing?

Speaker 5

Hey, doing well. Thanks. So maybe we could just dig in a little bit on the production side. So appreciate the details in terms of max feed rate achieved. But just trying to put that in context, the 12,500 pounds per hour, just curious how long was that?

Speaker 5

I mean, was that a sustained run? And I guess what I'm getting at is, so you did 3,600,000 pounds in Q4, which I guess is roughly low teens in terms of your overall nameplate. What are you shooting for in terms of that production number for Q1?

Speaker 2

Yes, the 12,500 pounds per hour was a stable production. We basically planned the test, operated that test, moved the plant up to that position and held it, so we could get the required data from the plant to know how well it was operating at that position and we were really happy about those results. When it comes to where we're going with overall plant rates, it's going to be driven by commercial, okay. It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to generate product out of the plant and stack it before we have the commercial sales and the commercial applications well understood for a couple of reasons. One, it's a working capital stack that we have to watch out for.

Speaker 2

But two, when you get into the development of specific customer applications, it's very specific to the application itself. And so as we're compounding this material to meet the customer needs, we are very specific in what we want to do. And so we want to make sure that we produce exactly what the customer is looking for at the end of the day. So that's really what's driving our overall production. But from a basic production capability perspective, we feel very much in control of the plant.

Speaker 2

We understand the plant much better. If we tell the plant to go left, it goes left. If we tell the plant to go right, it goes right. And we know how to do that effectively. So we're very well poised at this point to move forward as the commercial sales develop.

Speaker 5

Got it. And maybe I guess just adding on there. I mean, so is it fair to you it sounds like you feel like production levels really not the limiting factor or much less of a limiting factor than it has been in the past. It really is getting through the qualifications, the trials, and then ramping with the customer, how fast that is?

Speaker 2

Yes, I think that's pretty accurate, Eric. I mean, look, we're a manufacturing facility and we will forever be working to improve the reliability of the site and the uptime of the site. And there's plenty of work that we need to do there to continue to make progress. But the items continue to get smaller and smaller and smaller. And so we're getting much more articulate with the improvements that we're making and that's leading to big gains on the manufacturing side.

Speaker 2

But you're right, I mean, we are ready to go. And as we get the customer sales locked down, we know exactly what we need to make, then we'll start ramping both feedstock procurement as well as operations along with the commercial.

Speaker 5

Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Eric.

Operator

The next question will come from Adit Shrestha with Stifel. Your line is open.

Speaker 3

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just quickly on the monthly cash burn, what is that currently running at? I think we looked at 4Q, it was around $10,000,000 and just want to make sure it's running at the same pace now. And you did raise $33,000,000 in February.

Speaker 3

I guess it gets you through at least first quarter, but how should we think about the remarketing of the SOPA bonds when that actually occurs based on sort of your burn rate and your expected production wrap up?

Speaker 2

Yes. So you're right, the cash burn has been historically has been in that 8,500,000 range. Now that we've brought on Denver, it's probably moved up into that $9,000,000 9 point 5 million dollars range. But look at the efficiencies and the revenue bonds behind us. That will be one avenue that we'll look to raise additional liquidity for the balance of the year.

Speaker 2

All

Speaker 3

right. And just maybe a quick update on Augusta. I know Dustin kind of talked about it, but just the sort of now the expectation is that Augusta construction resumes in 2025 and sort of have you started looking at sort of the financing options and if you have, are you seeing sort of more attractive rates in the market?

Speaker 2

Yes. I mean, Augusta project is it's on track. We are doing work at the site, some civil work in Augusta that will lead to preparing the site for the big project. We continue to have a good relationship with the AEDA. We continue to stand by the timeline that we discussed in the past.

Speaker 2

And we think that the Ironton success that we're seeing is going to lead to, like you said, improved rates for financing longer term, but also the access to the cash to continue to progress that project.

Operator

The next question comes from Thomas Boyes with TD Cowen. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Cowen. Maybe the first one, obviously, good to see the progress with P and G. For the chart, the sales volume chart that you showed in the deck that references the compounded resin, Do you have a sense of what maybe the average blend is there? Is this where we're talking about 25% recycled, 25% virgin or compounding referring to just finished resins where you're adding in final components to hit the customers' application spend?

Speaker 2

Yes. That's a great question, Thomas. The way to think about it is a couple of things. One, the whole purpose of compounding is to create the product that the customer needs. So in some cases, compounding does not add any additional material to it.

Speaker 2

It just augments the property. So we can change the what we call the melt flow rate of the resin from one number to another number because it will fit better into the system. A great example of this is with our Churchill containers. With Churchill, we ran our standard material off of the facility with a lower MFI and they could only get to 50% to 60% rates because of their specific equipment. But after we augmented the compound a little bit, didn't add anything to it, but augmented the mechanical properties, we were able to get the 100 performance out of the Churchill equipment and everybody was very excited about that.

Speaker 2

When it comes to the percentage of other materials added into the product, I think there's kind of a segment discussion here. When you think about fiber, we're currently running that at like a fifty-fifty blend, so 50% PCT material and 50% other. When you think about film, we expect that to be on the order of 30% our material and 70% other. And then when you come to automotive, it's really a mixed bag depending on the specific application that goes into the car. By the way, an automobile consumes a lot of different types of applications.

Speaker 2

They consume fiber into the rugs and the carpeting in the car. They consume ridges and they also consume compounds. And so as an example with the bumper, in that particular case, that was approximately 60% to 70% PCT material and then the balance was other non polypropylene type materials to make the performance of the bumper work. So I think that's a bit of a longer answer, but it really depends on the application. One thing is certain, we definitely see a lot of value in the compounding operation, more so than what we originally anticipated.

Speaker 2

The ability for us to deliver to the customer exactly what they need with a no compromise drop in solution is highly valued by the customer. And it really gets us in the door, has been the gating item to really unleash some of the commercial progress that we've seen.

Speaker 6

Got it. And that's extremely helpful. And maybe just on the automotive front, just with the kind of disclosures about the pilots that you have going, is that with one OEM that you have had the existing relationship or is that now expanded to other OEMs? And the reason I'm asking is just obviously the qualification time for with new OEMs to be designed into specific model years is a lot longer. So I'm just kind of wondering through that £45,000,000 number that's on Slide eight, if that's something that's near term or a portion of that is something that would come in a lot longer timeframe?

Speaker 2

Yes. So a couple of questions there. So the first thing is with every single application we see, application success that we see across all the segments, it leads to a lot more interest by others that are trying to jump in and participate as well. So after we discussed the automotive in the last quarterly, as well as we have some technical presentations coming up in the near future, the Republic, that interest level has driven a lot of additional requests for trials from other manufacturing facilities, other automotive tiers. And so that continues to go there.

Speaker 2

I would say a lot of success carry on success from the initial single pilot success. With respect to timing, this is also a bit the same across the board. It really depends customer by customer, application by application. So some customers can adopt much more quickly and drop it in. Other customers need they have longer qualification processes.

Speaker 2

In the case of our resin with the bumper, quite frankly, our resin dropped in and performed extremely well. I mean, I was actually at that trial as well, the first day we tried it and I mean, the bumpers just look fantastic. And they operated very well. It surprised people with how low the scrap rate was and we were very excited coming out of that day. Now, once you get past that point, that proves that your material is good enough to work in all bumpers.

Speaker 2

It's good enough to work in lots of very challenging automotive applications. But then you move into the commercial aspects of supply chain and pricing and drop in time and do you put it in on this model and replace the incumbent or do you drop it in the new model and just be a new supplier? And that's quite frankly is the discussion we're having right now and I'm not sure where that will land at this time. However, I'm not worried about it because we've got lots of interest in our product across the board and the interest in the customer has not slowed down at all. In fact, quite frankly, it's accelerated.

Speaker 2

After the success that we had with the bumper, we're getting additional inquiries about potential products on the interior of the car, potential products and some of the fiber backing behind the dashboard and the different substrates, as well as the fiber in the carpets and different places inside the car. So I think the story with automotive is growing and it will be a great growth discussion for us in the long term, especially as we grow globally. Remember, these automotive customers, they are highly quality sensitive and maybe even more so supply chain sensitive. They don't like to do things in singular locations. They like to do things globally.

Speaker 2

And as we begin to grow globally, we're going to be able to offer a global product to global platforms and that's going to be highly we believe it will be highly valued by the customers.

Speaker 6

Absolutely. Appreciate it. If I could just sneak one more in just around because you'd mentioned the bonds for the source of liquidity. For the discussions you're having, have you seen any inclination that the discount could contract? I mean, before I think you're getting $0.8 on the dollar there.

Speaker 6

And my expectation maybe is with a bit more performance information out of Ironton that you would slowly start to see that narrow. I'm just wondering if you're starting to see that actually play out.

Speaker 2

Yes, I think you're exactly right. Our viewpoint is that we have derisked the bonds with the performance of Ironton and with the success that we're having on the commercial side. So as we last sold the bonds, they were at $0.8 on the dollar and we would expect something to be much more than that.

Speaker 6

Great. And I'll hop back in queue. Thank you so much.

Operator

The next question will come from Gerry Sweeney with Roth Capital. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Good morning, Dustin and Jamie. Thanks for taking my call.

Speaker 2

Hey Gerry. Good morning.

Speaker 7

At one point, I'm just a little confused upon and I apologize, but these are my words not yours. Sounds like you can run Iron Tin maybe at a higher production level, you're a little reticent to do that because you don't want to build excess inventory because some of your customers have maybe certain specificity to their end product. But then we talk about compounding and taking products and compounding it to meet customer requirements. That's where my disconnect is. Why not run Ironton higher levels build some inventory and then when those orders come in compounded to meet some of those the specificity of orders or the requirements?

Speaker 7

And I know it's probably a little bit more complicated than I just said, but I think it's important just for clarity

Speaker 2

sake. No, it's a fair point, Jerry. I mean, there's a couple of things here. One is, there's still a working capital component on the feedstock side. So bringing that in and pushing the cash out is something we're keenly aware of and managing closely.

Speaker 2

And so for us being a good steward of working capital is an equal component to that story. But also, as we run our plant and learn about the plant and test different limits of the plant, we see the opportunity to optimize it to what the customer needs even at the Ironton level. And so running ahead of the customer requirements is premature for us. So we see it as a better value position for us to pace the rate at the plant with the customer request. Now to be fair, we have the opportunity, sorry, we plan to pace the commercial with the Ironton operation.

Speaker 7

Got it. Okay. Sorry, just looking at my notes, taking a lot of notes here. Procter and Gamble, do you think you have a nice chart there and you know ramp up and actually I think the table with all your programs that are sort of in different stages is actually great. I think it's super helpful.

Speaker 7

But on do you think Procter and Gamble would potentially would they be your largest customer this year? It seems like they're further along. You obviously have a great partnership with them. Just curious from that perspective.

Speaker 2

I don't think we're going to take a position on which customer is going to be the biggest stake in the final tally at the end of this year. What I can tell you is that we're very thankful to have Procter and Gamble on our team. And I think that what you saw from the eight ks that we filed this week is it's a pretty strong vote of confidence by Procter and Gamble to us. So we've got a lot of good trials already started with Procter and Gamble, the five that are mentioned before, and then we have quite a big backlog coming behind. And we think that that's going to put us in a great position to hopefully fill out their full capacity by the end of the year.

Speaker 7

Got it. That's fair. I appreciate it. Thanks for the clarity on the first question. I appreciate it very much.

Speaker 1

Yes. No, thanks.

Operator

I show no further questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Eric for closing remarks.

Speaker 1

All right. Thank you, Michelle. We also received a few questions through email. First, could you please provide more detail around the eight ks with Procter and Gamble?

Speaker 2

Yes. Like I mentioned just a second ago with Jerry, I mean, this is a real vote of confidence. I mean, this effectively provides exclusivity to Pure Cycle with the license for North America. And it also extends the exclusivity period across all of the regions in the world. And so we feel really good about that.

Speaker 2

This is also Procter and Gamble basically saying that we believe in PURE Cycles' ability to run the facility at expected rates and provide a product of the quality that's going to be good enough for their operation. That's quite good. I think this is all driven by the success that we're seeing in the trials. I think that Procter and Gamble is excited to be growing with us and getting into the commercialization phase. And look, I think it's important to just take a step back and to recognize the work that Procter and Gamble did at the beginning of the story.

Speaker 2

I mean, recognizing the unique position required on quality for a technology like this solution over a decade ago is brilliant. And then trusting in Pure Cycle to extend that dream into reality through the production at Ironton has been a very good partnership and we continue to work very well together going forward.

Speaker 1

Next, we also have a question that came in asking how pricing is bearing relative to virgin pricing.

Speaker 2

Yeah, we're not going to get into the specific pricing relative to virgin. But what I will tell you is that we still feel very comfortable about the stated prices that we put out about a year and a half ago at $1.36 level. And that's with virgin moving all over the map, okay. Virgin has moved from north of $0.8 a pound down to south of $0.6 a pound, but our pricing still stands pretty firm and secure. Ultimately, the price the final price of our product is going to be driven by supply and demand fundamentals, of which we believe there's an enormous undersupply of high quality material in the market and a growing demand for our product.

Speaker 2

And it's also important to note that this is not a commodity polypropylene market that we're operating in. We are a specialty product. We operate in a different market and it's quite disconnected from virgin. And I think we're starting to see that disconnect happen a bit across the board. So, I feel really good about our pricing really regardless of where the virgin pricing goes.

Speaker 1

Right. Thank you for everyone who submitted questions today. Dustin, if you have any final comments.

Speaker 2

Look, before we conclude, I just want to take a moment to sincerely thank all of our stakeholders, partners and employees for their continued trust and support. Your commitment has been instrumental in getting us to where we are today. We're incredibly proud of our progress, both operationally and commercially. Simply put, we've never been in a better position than we are right now. This strength enables us to continue executing with a discipline and focus, always making strategic decisions that serve the best interest of our stakeholders.

Speaker 2

Today, we're operating from a place of strength, which gives us even greater flexibility and confidence in our direction. We're excited about the opportunities ahead and look forward to connecting with many of you in upcoming conferences. Thank you again for your support. We look forward to continuing this journey together.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.

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Earnings Conference Call
PureCycle Technologies Q4 2024
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