Gevo Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
March 27, 2025

There are 11 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Gevo Incorporated Q4 twenty twenty four Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, please press 11 on your telephone.

Operator

You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call to discuss Kiva's fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty four results, as well as the business update and new corporate investor presentation that we published on March 7. I'm Eric Fry, Vice President of Corporate Development at Gevo. With me today, we have Patrick Gruber, our Chief Executive Officer Lynn Small, our Chief Financial Officer Chris Ryan, our President and Chief Operating Officer and Paul Blum, our Chief Business Officer. Earlier today, we issued a press release that outlines our fourth quarter and full year '20 '20 '4 results. In addition, on March 7, we released a business update that outlines the topics we plan to discuss.

Speaker 1

A copy of these press releases are available on our website at www.gevo.com. You can also find a copy of our investor presentation on our website. Please be advised that our remarks today, including answers to your questions, contain forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from those currently anticipated. Those statements include projections about the timing, development, engineering, financing and construction of our sustainable aviation fuel projects, our recently executed agreements, our renewable natural gas project and other activities described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are incorporated by reference.

Speaker 1

We disclaim any obligation to update these forward looking statements. In addition, we may provide certain non GAAP financial information on this call. The relevant definitions and GAAP reconciliations may be found in our earnings release, which can be found on our website at www.givo.com in the Investor Relations section. Following the prepared remarks, we'll open the call for questions. I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is open to the media and we are providing a simultaneous webcast to the public.

Speaker 1

A replay of this call and other past events will be available via the company's Investor Relations page at www.gevo.com. I'd now like to turn the call over to

Speaker 2

the CEO of Gevo, Patrick Gruber. Pat? Thanks, Eric. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us on our call. We have filed our Form 10 K today, and we ask that you refer to it for more detailed information after this call.

Speaker 2

We're here to talk about our results from the fourth quarter and for the full year 2024 and to discuss the business update that we released on March 7. There's a lot to talk about. We want to leave some time for questions, so let's get at it. 2024 was a big year for Gevo. It set us on a path we believe for substantial growth this year, targeting positive adjusted EBITDA.

Speaker 2

We explained this in our business update and our press release earlier today. And you'll also see these ideas laid out visually in our investor presentation on our website. Please go take a look. It's pretty darn interesting. First up, GEO North Dakota.

Speaker 2

This acquisition in Richardson, North Dakota is a game changer for us and it's already contributing. The site is one of the two low carbon ethanol plants with operational carbon capture and sequestration or CCS that are operating today. It captures over 160,000 tons of biogenic carbon dioxide a year and has one of the lowest carbon intensity scores in the industry. The CI score at Gevo, North Dakota is an estimated 21 grams of CO2 equivalents per megajoule under the Argonne Greed 45Z model. That's not including any benefits from regenerative agricultural practices.

Speaker 2

That's a big deal because it means we can start monetizing carbon abatement and the 45 tax credit immediately. We're already working on it. This asset alone has the potential to generate $30,000,000 to $60,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA annually. Depending upon the price of ethanol, depending upon the full values of the 45 Zs and all the rest and RINs. So it's very, very interesting opportunity for us.

Speaker 2

On RNG, we saw strong production growth in 2024. We're on track to produce over 400,000 BTUs in 2025. And with the biogas 45z tax credit, that business is shaping up to be a solid contributor as well. We expect adjusted EBITDA in the $9,000,000 to $18,000,000 range in the year 2025 from this project due to operational improvements securing the provisional California Air Resources Board or CARB, net carbon intensity score and the monetization of biogas 45 Z tax credits. We're excited that CARB has published our comment for low carbon fuel standard pathway application, and it has a weighted CI score of around minus three thirty nine.

Speaker 2

So that's right in line with what our expectations were. We're feeling pretty good about that. And actually, we should get that any day now. Our South Dakota project, which we're now calling Alcohol to Jet 60 or ATJ 60, that means we're talking about Alcohol to Jet 60,000,000 gallons is progressing. Last year, we received a conditional commitment for a loan guarantee with disbursements totaling $1,460,000,000 excluding the capitalized interest during construction from the U.

Speaker 2

S. Department of Energy DOE Loan Program Office for our ATJ60 project. With capitalized interest during construction, the DOE loan facility has a borrowing capacity of 1,630,000,000 We're pleased with the continued collaboration with the DOE loan office as we move forward to achieve financial goals for the project. Now lots of questions about what happens, was there any changes during the transition for the President and his new administration? Well, I got to say, we haven't seen much of a slowdown.

Speaker 2

I see there I know I see all these repress reports, but they're not correct. They didn't we didn't see a slowdown. They're plugging away. We are plugging away to do on our end as well. Now one good piece of news that I can point to that isn't that I think is worthwhile is that at Sarah Week in Houston a couple of weeks ago, Secretary Wright said in his presentation that the DOE Loan Office, the LPL, would be honoring the commitments made by them.

Speaker 2

That's good because I think that was his first wide public statement of that. We are watching the Summit pipeline issue with interest. I would like to see what Summit does next regarding the pipeline before we finalize economics for our project. While we do have our own sequestration site with our up at North Dakota at our Richardson plant, we can capture the CCS, bring it there and put it downhole and capture value from it. And we could do that.

Speaker 2

And if we went this route, the project returns for South Dakota plant would still be attractive. However, doing that transfer without a pipeline hurts back couple of IRR points. Now, Summit tells us that they still believe strongly that the pipeline is going to get done. And I do know this, that CCS and CO2 are part of the energy infrastructure. CO2 absolutely is going to be needed in North Dakota for enhanced oil recovery in The Bakken.

Speaker 2

Getting more oil out of the Bakken strikes me as a priority. Now it takes years to build that infrastructure. So we'll see what happens here. Is it going to get incorporated in part of the overall energy infrastructure? I'm interested to see how this all unfolds.

Speaker 2

We also need to pin down some tweaks to off kick agreements with airlines to make them more compatible with project financing requirements put up by or put on us by the DOE loan office. We want to underpin carbon value outside of the regulatory value. We're making progress on this front. We'll announce details after it's done. Now recall that the jet fuel is that will produce is valued as a commodity like fossil jet.

Speaker 2

It's just jet fuel has to be that way for it to be a drop in. Now there certainly is a regulatory value like RINs or the state level and we expect 45 Z, okay. All good, that adds value. In addition to that, it's this voluntary carbon value that is worthwhile. We want to make sure that we're getting paid properly for the carbon value.

Speaker 2

So we're reworking some of the contracts, some of the deals, some of the approaches to make sure that we aren't giving money away. We're working on it. In addition to Gevo's paid in capital as we develop this project, we're going to need to raise roughly about $800,000,000 of equity into a special purpose vehicle whose mission is to build that plant and operate that plant. This SPV will be a project level company that would not and it would not be dilutive to Gevo. It's not raising money at a Gevo level, it's at a special purpose vehicle level, project level, classic project financing for the DOE loan.

Speaker 2

We are targeting financial close for our project level capital raise by twenty twenty five year end. That includes the DB loan, our project level equity capital raising and then the start of construction of the facility. In order for us to get to financial close, we expect that we will need to spend maybe 40 more million dollars of development money inclusive of the whole year of 2025, actually to get all the way to FID, so even if it's stretched further. Once we get the financial close, we'll be off to the races building this plant in South Dakota, it will be heavily modularized and it wouldn't require any further capital from Gevo. That's a pretty big deal to bake into the memory.

Speaker 2

We're also doing the engineering work for our ATJ plant at our North Dakota site. This one's on the fast track, because we can leverage the work that was done for our ATJ60. North Dakota is an extremely friendly business state. We have great ethanol plant there. We've already got CCS and there seems to be a lot of interest in this plant.

Speaker 2

So we're going to try to move it along very fast, leveraging what we have already done. So more to come on this as we progress. We also have two other plants in concept development based on what we're doing in North Dakota. So what's interesting is I think we're getting this modularization model pinned down, here's how we can replicate things, copy paste is how Paul Bloom likes to refer to it, sometimes copy edit paste, but we're getting interest from around the world on this. So let's see what comes true in the future.

Speaker 2

We won't lose focus on getting the plant, getting ourselves to EBITDA positive, but then also getting this ATJ plant in North Dakota, getting the one in South Dakota deployed. Now stepping back for a second, the reason that we have interest in our plants and technologies that we could produce this drop in jet fuel and that on a production cost basis can be competitive with fossil based jet fuel. That is a big deal in terms of concept. It's not that it's one or the other reducing the carbon footprint. You can actually make jet fuel for renewable resources like cornstarch that are competitive with on a production cost basis with fossil based jet fuel.

Speaker 2

That's a big concept. It's the capital that is the issue. If our plant was paid off, then we just compete head to head, no substitute tax credits required, but we do have capital to pay back. Now to pay back the capital and generate reinvestment returns, the tax credits for SAF, the RINs, they're certainly useful. We are bringing this new attribute to market.

Speaker 2

So we're spending a lot of work on effort to make sure that we're how do we capture value from carbon abatement That's separate than tax credit and RINs. There are people there's a market that people will pay for the carbon to be reduced. A project like our ATJ 60 could abate 500,000 to 600,000 tons of carbon annually. I wonder how many dollars per ton can we get for that. And I wonder if there'll be different fractions that we might be able to market to add value.

Speaker 2

Bottom line is, it's not that this project isn't about carbon reduction at any cost, it's about making a cost competitive jet fuel and cash rebounded from the new attribute we bring, which is the carbon abatement. It's carbon reduction done cost effectively. So So we're having to sort this out, takes work. And I got to tell you that when you add it all up, you add up the tax credits, you add up the RIDs, you add up the voluntary market, you add up the fact that it's drop in jet fuel, it makes for exciting project. That's why we're getting such broad support across the board.

Speaker 2

And I think it's that there aren't that many approaches that can do this. We happen to have one of them. ATJ is going to be part of the product mix in the future. We see now turning my attention to a little bit to 45Z, it's a common question we get asked. I got to say, we see a lot of bipartisan support for 45Z extension.

Speaker 2

45Z is set up so that it is truly a pay for performance. Right now, I'm only aware of two plants in the country that could qualify for a 45 tax credit as of today. Both of them are in North Dakota, one is ours. So that's good. And I think as CCS becomes more widely available, there might be some other plants, etcetera, that can be done.

Speaker 2

But it's not a government giveaway at all. You got to do something for it. That's creative and helps set up infrastructure. When it comes to jet fuel, jet fuel is now referred to by the new administration as synthetic aviation fuel rather than sustainable aviation fuel. I think that's actually closer to the name it was originally called, synthetic kerosene.

Speaker 2

That actually is what it's called in the ASTM certifications. So great, it's one of the on their list. Awesome. And so I think 45Z is relevant for that and it's exciting because 45Z SAF allows a new market for ethanol. That's a big deal for who you're trying to develop our economy.

Speaker 2

So when we do an ATJ plan, it's about energy security, real economic development, impact on commodity prices and jobs, all of that stuff together. Now we did a study done by Charles River Associates looking at ATK 60 plant in South Dakota and it would be expected to create for 100 direct jobs, 700 indirect jobs right in the region. You have more than 1,000 highly paid construction jobs during the build out period of three years. It'd be expected to generate when it's operating $100,000,000 plus per year of regional economic development right there in South Dakota for as long as the plant exists and operates. That's a huge economic impact.

Speaker 2

It lifts the prices of the commodities. It's like, it makes cost competitive production cost competitive fuels. And the ATJ sixty plan to draw corn from roughly two thirty farmers would help them. They'd expect to see the price rise in their corn because we're buying it locally and we have a business system that we expect will be able to capture value from the agricultural practices. We'll be able to differentiate it.

Speaker 2

And this is what Verity is all about, tracking and tracing and taking it forth to the market place as attributes so we can find those people who value it. The other thing that Charles Rivers Associates did is that they estimated that for every $1 tax credit in the forty five Z, the return to the treasury should be expected to be up to $6, 6 bucks for every dollar of tax credit $6 back to the treasury. So even if you're a big skeptic, you'd say, that's all those things that they take into account and all those soft things, even the hard things, you'd still going to get a couple of $3 back to treasury per dollar of tax credit. This matters. This is what economic development is all about using government money wisely.

Speaker 2

But you've got to pay for performance, you've got to deliver something, jobs, energy security, cost dependent products, address a new market. So it's all about adding jobs, adding value for farmers, economic development, delivering the drop ins, competitive with fossil based jet fuel and that abates carbon. Yes, cost competitive and carbon abatement are possible at the same time. I'm excited for the future and what's possible. Now imagine cookie cutter versions of our ATJ plants.

Speaker 2

This is actually the approach that we're taking. It's what we want to do. It's why we're pursuing the modularization approach. There's roughly 180 ethanol plants currently operating in The U. S.

Speaker 2

Imagine the impact by converting a chunk of these into ATJ plants. Think of the jobs created. Think of the ethanol think about how the ethanol market is in current overcapacity. We could sop up that overcapacity, turn it into jet fuel and lift ethanol prices and lift corn prices. It'd be a good deal actually.

Speaker 2

I think everybody would benefit. And of course, all this while we're adding to energy security producing more jet fuel. And of course, whenever we say jet fuel, we can also produce diesel fuel too. These plants can do either one. And these can be cost competitive with the fossil based fuels.

Speaker 2

And don't forget, these business systems would produce about three tons of protein and feed products for the food chain for every ton of jet fuel produced. So it's not food versus fuel or anything like that. It's about doing both wisely and economically and making the overall business system better, the economy better. And there's also no more need to draw in more land for agriculture. In fact, we're finding and the farmers are doing great.

Speaker 2

They can increase productivity. There's a lot of room to grow on the land that they already have. So all this talk that we occasionally hear about, oh, it's going to take so much more land. No, that's wrong. Let's go.

Speaker 2

We got data. It's an exciting time for us. I really, really liked President Trump's executive order call declaring a national emergency. Did you all catch that biofuels are listed right there with oil, that ethanol and aviation fuel are listed right there with refined products as priorities? That's very cool, very, very good for us.

Speaker 2

I also like the executive order called Unleashing American Energy. This one talked about clearing the roadblocks for infrastructure deployment. It also called for removal of political bias and assessments and models. That's huge, because that's how that's been a problem in the past with this how EnviroGroups do. They say, hey, here's this really cool thing we can do.

Speaker 2

This is the government. We do a really cool thing. We're going to make this new thing. Oh, and then also there's 50,000 rules that make it impossible to take any action. Good.

Speaker 2

Let's get rid of that stuff.

Speaker 3

A lot of those rules

Speaker 2

are put in there by Enviro Group. They're the ones who raise these issues with no data. Great. Let's get rid of it. Look at the data and the facts.

Speaker 2

I'm all about that. The other thing that I'm interested in is that this new administration is interested in leveling the playing field at the EU level. Good. You penalize the agricultural products in The United States. They do that.

Speaker 2

They do it even their modeling and their scoring of carbon and all the rest. Good. That's been an issue. I want to see it get addressed. Let's go.

Speaker 2

Small and all, I'm very optimistic. I want to see what these guys can deliver. If what they do what they say, it can be very, very good for all of us. Now before I turn it over to Lynn, I want to give you some context as to what we're doing with Accent. No doubt you saw a press release about that and wondered.

Speaker 2

It comes down to this. We announced that we're broadening the relationship with Accent. They've been a good partner. We started working with Acxis a number of years ago because they have proven technology unit operations that can convert ethanol into jet fuel. There are several steps involved.

Speaker 2

They did them in the petrochemical industry. So by working together, we can put the whole process together. The thing about them is that these technologies, these unit operations have been operating for instance ethylene to make butanes, then butanes to make the thing that's just real close to jet fuel. They've been operating for decades on a commercial basis in the petrochemical industry. They didn't make it from ethanol.

Speaker 2

They got their ethylene from a different source. So that's why we could clear the technical diligence for the DOE launch showing and proving to their independent engineers, the DOE's independent engineers who are being paid to prove things to say no, we could prove to them that these technologies work. That's why we're able to achieve this. Athens is the only company with each of the critical unit operations commercialized, albeit with fossil fuels, except for they have a project in that does ethanol dehydration to ethylene in Japan. Having technologies for unit operations is only one piece of the puzzle, however, and that's where Gevo comes in.

Speaker 2

We know how to put it all together with renewable energy and how to integrate ethanol plants that drive both cost and CI down. The overall plant designs we own, those are our property, our intellectual property. We have the patents on how to achieve a very low CI footprint. We file those patents. We also know how to track and trace carbon as well as a deeper understanding of the developing market because the company that needs the jet fuel isn't necessarily the one who needs the carbon, might be somebody else in the value chain.

Speaker 2

We also have roughly over 100 patents covering the whole business system of ethanol to jet from end to end. They have technology, we have technology, we have quite a lot of it. So it makes sense to partner to offer a more complete business offering to potential customers who want to build plants. And remember, we see ourselves as developing plants or even selling plants. Already down the road on this, we'll be a developer and a licensor leverage what we learned in our South Dakota project.

Speaker 2

We believe that the market for alcohol to hydrocarbons will continue to increase fundamentally economically sound. We've also licensed our etail technology to Accent. So they need to become a licensor from us, taking a license from us. I find this very significant. The reason is this, the access technology embodied in the first generation processes, the ones we are planning to use for our HTJ60 plant and for our North Dakota ATJ plant, they won a Nobel Prize for the critical step of converting ethylene to mixed butane.

Speaker 2

This was a long time ago. This was like four years ago. They won it. That step was a great breakthrough. That's why they're the only ones who they've led the way in that technology in the petrochemical industry.

Speaker 2

We see a lot of startups try to do this tech and they're going to they fail or they will fail or they're going to fail. It's a very, very difficult step. That's why we finally got Axios to work with us after trying for ten years. Axios has proven it out, it works. There's no question about it.

Speaker 2

Now, I take great pride then that these people with the Nobel Prize in their background think that our Ito technology is a breakthrough on this converting of ethylene ethanol, ethylene, ethylene into the jet system and that it simplifies steps and it's expected to lower CapEx and OpEx by a ballpark of about 30%, beating their technology. That makes me feel like maybe we're onto something here. So together, we're going to go finish it out, scale it up, probably take about eighteen more months, depending upon what we learn as we go or kind of roadblocks we run into. We got to go through and scale up these kind of technologies. So for all of these reasons together, technology and business system that make for a great partnership.

Speaker 2

All right then, Lynn, it's over to you.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Pat. Let's go over some key numbers. We ended Q4 twenty twenty four with $259,000,000 in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash. Combined operating revenue and other net income was $8,900,000 for the fourth quarter and $32,700,000 for the full year. Our RNG subsidiary generated $15,800,000 in revenue during the year.

Speaker 4

We're working towards securing a final LCFS carbon intensity score from CARB, which we expect in the first quarter of twenty twenty five. As Pat said, that's any day now. That will unlock more value and better margins for the RNG project. Company wide, loss from operations was $19,600,000 last quarter with a non GAAP adjusted EBITDA loss of $11,300,000 Given that the acquisition of Gevo North Dakota has closed and the ethanol 45z and biogas 45z tax credits expected this year and other factors as Pat mentioned, we see a clear path to a positive run rate adjusted EBITDA in 2025. That's a major shift in our financial trajectory and the updated investor presentation on our website provides more information on that topic.

Speaker 4

We continue to be disciplined with our capital. We project $40,000,000 of spend on the ATJ60 project development from January until we reach financial close. We expect total development cost at financial close to be well under previously announced high end of potential ATJ 60 development spend. At the start of last year, we said we plan to achieve first revenue at Verity, our software as a service business for tracking and tracing of regenerative agricultural products. We achieved that in 2024 and we expect to grow the customer base in 2025.

Speaker 4

It's too early to provide specific guidance, but we have a unique software platform that provides much needed accuracy, transparency and quality that is poised to grow into a very large total addressable market. With that, I'll pass it over to Chris.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Lynn. You'll

Speaker 5

find a summary of our Gevo North Dakota acquisition in our press release and Pat also made some comments. So I'll just provide a brief update on that. Our operations team at the plant are doing a great job keeping the processes running smoothly. They're producing about 67,000,000 gallons a year of low carbon ethanol, which includes 2,000,000 gallons of ultra low carbon intensity corn fiber ethanol. We're capturing carbon and sequestering it on-site, which gives us an important competitive advantage in the ethanol industry, while we generate valuable carbon dioxide removal credits, otherwise known as CDRs.

Speaker 5

To put some carbon score numbers on this, our British Columbia carbon intensity is about 19 grams of CO2 per megajoule and our CI score calculated according to the Argonne R and D GREET model is about 21 grams CO2 per megajoule before we take into account the regenerative ag practices from the corn farmers that are supplying us. For those who are familiar, that's nearly the lowest carbon intensity in the ethanol industry. As a result, as Pat mentioned, this acquisition immediately strengthened our ability to generate monetized carbon reduction even without any major capital investments. In the longer term, we believe it's a great site to look at potentially converting that low carbon ethanol into Synthetic Aviation Fuel or SAF. In March, a group from Gevo management spent the afternoon with many of the farmers that supply our plant in Richardson.

Speaker 5

We talked with these farmers about our vision for growth at the site, including the potential for an ATJ plant, which represents a whole new use for American agricultural products. We listened to the farmers talk about the regenerative ag practices that they are already using there and we talked about ways those practices may translate into more value for them. These farmer relationships are critical for the success of our plant and we all walked away feeling our interests were aligned with them. We're excited about what this means for Gevo's future. With that, I'll turn it over to Paul.

Speaker 6

Thanks, Chris. I'll be brief as well. Regarding Verity, we're growing fast. We're currently generating revenue and growing our customer base. We doubled our Growers Program acreage since the second quarter of twenty twenty four and tracked over 200,000 acres in 2024.

Speaker 6

We signed agreements with five ethanol producers and two soy crush plants and have more on the way. Verity aims to help the industry measure and verify sustainable attributes from the field to final products made from corn, soybeans and other agricultural feedstocks for food, feed, fuels and industrial products. The growing unmet demand for traceability in agriculture and energy is real and Verity is proving to be a valuable tool. Regarding our patented ethanol to olefins or ITO technology, as Pat mentioned, we expanded our strategic alliance with Axins to develop, commercialize and license this technology globally for fuels. We also aligned our technology, business system and know how with Axins to drive alcohol to jet commercialization under a new alliance agreement.

Speaker 6

We aren't just building our own ATJ projects, we have a robust IP portfolio to license technology and engineered solutions to the whole industry. In addition, we continue to make good progress with our Ethanol to Olefins joint development agreement with LG Chem to make bio based chemicals, including propylene, which is a key building block in the petrochemical industry today. The market opportunity here is large and could create more demand for U. S. Agricultural products.

Speaker 6

We're talking about technologies that can take corn and ethanol and convert into low carbon drop in fuels and materials that match petroleum to help make all kinds of products from diapers to durable parts for our cars to jet fuel. We're using our technology and business system to bring agriculture and energy together to drive growth for rural America. Back to you, Pat.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Paul. And with that, let's open it up for questions.

Operator

Thank you. And our first question will be coming from the line of Amit Dayo of H. C. Wainwright. Your line is open.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions.

Speaker 2

Yes.

Speaker 3

Pat, with respect to the SPV side of the Net Zero One opportunity, what are the equity investor options in front of you? Are these potentially like strategic portfolio in that value chain? Or are these typical financial investors? Like who are you speaking to right now? Any color on what those options in front of you are?

Speaker 2

Yes. It's the normal set of characters across all ranging from strategic to specialty funds to those classic financial funds. It's a whole spectrum of them. And just got to go work through it and see who's going to what's real and will make it happen.

Speaker 3

Okay. And does some of this need to be arranged to close the DOE loan or can that come later when you start tapping into or drawing down on that one?

Speaker 2

No, this would be a prerequisite. Okay. To have the commitment, it's a prerequisite to have the commitments to get to FID, it would all come together at once.

Speaker 3

So then in that context, like what is the timeline to complete sort of this side of the process?

Speaker 2

I think the best bet we're not supposed to talk about the details of the DOE loan process still. But I think it's to say that we get it done in 2025, that's what we're targeting. And it's in that timeframe that we would come together. We've already been engaged obviously in Wall Street and talking to funds. So we already have a sense of interest.

Speaker 2

And we have a sense that the economics can work. I think this point that we made about pinning down some of the carbon value that market is growing in the voluntary carbon market, Scope one and Scope three emissions is pretty interesting. And so, we are tweaking some of our contracts because it makes a better project. And so, we're doing that. So, we're going to want to get that done, but it's just the practical reality is this is going to be later in the year to get it all done.

Speaker 2

Okay, understood.

Speaker 3

Then with respect to the carbon capture expansion opportunity at North Dakota, Going forward, as you increase capacity over there, what are the options sort of to monetize that? Will you be sort of participating in the carbon trading markets or is there sort of a different monetization strategy that is maybe easier and more provides a better visibility for you guys?

Speaker 2

Paul, I'm going to let you answer that. This is your realm as the Chief Business Officer and you're busy on carbon.

Speaker 6

Yes, sure. No problem. So we've got a couple of options here on how to monetize. Obviously, we can put that value from the CCS into an approved pathway with the renewable fuel. So think about just including that all bundled together.

Speaker 6

But then separately, if we don't do that, we can take that CCS value into a market called CDRs. And Chris mentioned this, which are carbon dioxide removal credits. And these are permanent carbon dioxide removals, right? They're going to be there for one hundred thousand of years as we store that CO2 that used to be in the atmosphere. And that's a market that's developing today.

Speaker 6

And so we're actively participating there and working on how do we market carbon either with the fuel or separately from the fuel into those markets. So more to come on that.

Speaker 3

Understood. Thank you. Just last one for me. The expansion on the RNG front, I know you were looking to increase volumes, etcetera. Is that already done or are you still in the process of executing on that?

Speaker 2

Well, we've already expanded it. So it's a capacity 400,000 BTUs and we're going to push it up further. How far we go beyond that? We put in some additional equipment and such. So we have to go do that work.

Speaker 3

Okay. All right. But that's all I have. I will take my other questions offline. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for the next question. And our next question will be coming from the line of Nate Pendleton of Texas Capital. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Good afternoon. Specifically looking at your first plant, can you share your perspective on how recent tariff announcements are impacting potential costs there as you approach financial close?

Speaker 2

Do you mean for the ATJ sixty in South Dakota?

Speaker 7

That's correct.

Speaker 2

Yes. Hey, Chris, you want to comment on it? That's your bailiwick.

Speaker 5

Yours are not impacting, if that was the question, really not impacting our project at all. We've got when you look at, say project cost, for example, most of the project really wouldn't be subject to that.

Speaker 7

Okay, understood. Thank you. And then shifting over to the ethanol to olefins technology that you touched on in the prepared remarks. Can you lay out future milestones that the market should be watching as that business scales?

Speaker 2

Paul, you want to take that one?

Speaker 6

Yes, sure. As Pat mentioned in his remarks, right now we've got the development we're in the development phase of that with Axon, so active project. We've been through a first pilot stage, so that was our real first milestone that we made after getting through our lab phase. And now we're really in this stage, can we get this done in twelve months, can we get it done in eighteen months. It's all about de risking that technology.

Speaker 6

So we're very comfortable with moving to scale. So that's kind of the timeframe that we're looking at to have our next milestone, which is really getting this ready for commercialization.

Speaker 2

And I'll add that. It's typical this chemistry converting these what are called olefins into these fuel products. When you think about them at really large scale, things that are PPM, parts per million matter because you're doing millions and millions of pounds. And so what builds up, what happens, do you really understand it in detail? This is the mistake that is classically made over and over and over.

Speaker 2

People will take something from the lab and just rush it into scale up in these catalytic systems. These are catalytic systems, not fermentation systems, catalytic systems. And they get burned by it. Stuff doesn't work, plugs the columns or the catalysts just don't work the way they thought. This is the beauty of what Accent has done in the past and why it's fun to work with them because they've seen lots of these things.

Speaker 2

Between us, we have a we've been working on these catalytic technologies since 02/2007. I think people have forgotten that we were the first to do ethanol to jet fuel back and even in 02/2007, '2 thousand and '8 timeframe we did it. It was just this very practical case of at that point, accident didn't want to license their technology to us because they didn't believe we could get to a low carbon, a zero carbon footprint. Well, we were pursuing isobutanol, which is a way of skipping the steps and then we had Ito. When everyone got focused on the jet fuel, on SAF and jet fuel, then it was got then Axis had already been working with us on the isobutanol to jet and gasoline because we thought gasoline was going to be the big driver.

Speaker 2

Well, the market centered on that. Well, then together we said they learned with us that, my gosh, you really can get to zero and below footprint on a CI score. So they licensed it to us. Good. I wish they'd done it sooner or even further ahead on the ethanol front.

Speaker 2

So the Ito thing is a breakthrough. It looks really good. It is just classic case of we don't know fully what we don't know and we're going to go look for things that go wrong and scale it up. And that's the approach you take on these kinds of scale ups, try to figure out what breaks the system. That's what we have to go do and we learn something, then we'll adjust the condition.

Speaker 2

So I hate to say that here's a hard and fast milestone in order to go through the scale ups. By the way, this is the same technology that we're already working on scale up with LG Chem. The LG Chem for propylene is a variant of the technology. So we already have pretty good confidence that it works at reasonable size scale, but we need ginormous scale for fuels. Chemical products only need kind of medium size scale.

Speaker 2

Fuels ginormous scale.

Speaker 7

Got it. I appreciate that detail. And then just one last one for me, if

Speaker 8

I may. Regarding your La Verne facility,

Speaker 7

can you provide any thoughts around how you may leverage that asset in the future?

Speaker 2

Yes. You know what, I think it's a for us running it as an ethanol plant doesn't make sense. So, yes, we have some ideas here, so you'll have to stay tuned. But it's a we've got some really good ideas that are in play. We just can't talk about things yet.

Speaker 7

All right. Well, thanks for taking my questions.

Speaker 1

You bet.

Operator

Thank you. One moment, please. Next question that we have is coming from Ethan Fingerer of OpCo. One moment please. And your line is just Ethan.

Speaker 9

Hi, good afternoon guys. Can you talk about what's been holding up the DOE process and what the timeline is? What have been the obstacles and what have you accomplished and what's still left to be done, please? That's question one. And then the second question is, you mentioned needing to raise $800,000,000 in equity.

Speaker 9

One of the other questioners asked who the targets is in terms of the potential investors. I'm interested to know who's banking that for you? Who's helping you bank that? Which investment banks are you working with? Have you engaged anybody on that?

Speaker 9

And where does that stand, please? Can you guys hear me?

Speaker 2

All right. Thanks a lot. Hey, Ethan. So it's the same things we've been same things we've talked about in the past is that we have to go through and do some of the environmental stuff that's required for the DOE loan program that has to be done. That is was slowed down probably by the transition.

Speaker 2

There just weren't people there to sign off on things. That has to happen. We are tweaking some of these contracts. The uncertainty around the pipeline isn't helpful in that. We just kind of know which way it's going, which way it's blowing.

Speaker 2

We're still going to plan on that. The economics for the whole project work. But none of us really want to take a hit of a couple of percentage points on the IRRs. So that matters, especially for equity. So going slower on this, a month or two, it's a I want to see what happens.

Speaker 2

What is someone going to do next? I really would like to know that because it's a question that always comes up and we always have to answer it. This other thing that is interesting that I mentioned is the carbon markets. We have already talked that we're tweaking contracts. We've said this many earnings calls that we're tweaking contracts.

Speaker 2

Part of this is that if you just rush in and do a kind of a project finance contract, like the old way of just whatever, you're giving away a huge amount of value. I think it's really stupid. So we're tweaking stuff to make sure the project economics work in our favor. All those things added up plus the practical timing of things just say that it will get done sometime this year. For us, we think the project is going to get done.

Speaker 2

It's just a question of when and it will be fine. In terms of the bankers, we're still working at Guggenheim and Citi.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for the next question. And our next question is coming from the line of Peter Giedrich of Water Tower Research. Your line is open.

Speaker 8

Yes. Thank you. Excuse me, Peter Gaffdreich here. So thanks for the presentation today and congratulations to the team on executing your strategy. Just a couple of questions from me.

Speaker 8

The first one is on RedTrail. Just in terms of cash coming from carbon credits there, has that started from day one? And are you able to give any color on the broad assumption for that $30,000,000 to $60,000,000 adjusted EBITDA expectation? And what the contribution of carbon credits might look like? Is that range more the results of a commodity variable or do you have a range in credits in there as well?

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Speaker 2

Eric, I think you're probably in the best position to describe this. It's your chart that he's Peter is probably looking at.

Speaker 10

Yes, sure, Peter. So just to give you a sense, the carbon intensity using the 45 CME model for geologic code of FFO plant and CCS is about 21 grams of future growth for Nigel. And so the math, the way the 45 CME production transcript works is basically you get $0.02 per gallon of tax credit per CI point that's below 50%, okay, about. And so at a 21 CI score, which is really industry in carbon intensity because this ethanol plant is so unique because it has carbon capture and it's one of the few ethanol plants in the world that actually operates carbon capture. I think Pat mentioned that you think we want to basically do that.

Speaker 10

That means that the $45,000,000 tax credit loan is to get math on that 67,000,000 gallons per year of volume. It is worth somewhere between $30,000,000 to $40,000,000 just that tax credit. So there's other elements of value that we're targeting, but that's a big element of how you can get to kind of the range that we're talking about between $30,000,000 to $60,000,000 That's a large range and as we kind of get more experience in your results as we go through the year, you can see that just that tax credit alone gets us a pretty good foundation to achieving that target. And Chris, feel free to jump in if you want to add the detail of that as well, but that's kind of how we map, Peter.

Speaker 8

Okay, great. Thanks, Derek.

Speaker 2

Sorry, Peter, could you understand them?

Speaker 7

I got most of it, but yes, it was not

Speaker 8

a good line. We could follow-up afterwards as well.

Speaker 2

Yes. So the short version is this. Ethanol margins are they're low right now. So they should come back in the summertime like always. They'll follow the normal cycle of ethanol.

Speaker 2

So that'd be the normal contribution you'd expect from a 67,000,000 gallon per year ethanol plant. No, it will be the normalness there. And then I think that a large part of what you see on that slide is the monetization of the 45Z. It's a fascinating thing. There's a marketplace for the 45Zs already, even though they're still they're law, they have to do them.

Speaker 2

It's the law. And so people are betting on that already. And so it's very interesting and large part of that is the 45Z.

Speaker 8

Okay, great. Got it. Thank you very much for that. And just a second question. I just noticed in your 10 ks that there is disclosure about the weakness in controls.

Speaker 8

Could you just expand on this and what exactly is meant by the auditor there? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yes. This is one of these ones of as we're going through the end of the year stuff with the auditors and then also ourselves on our internal audit, we had a pattern of mischaracterizing we're treating a transaction as expenses or they should have been capitalized. So for me, this is one of these ones that I find very frustrating because we were miscategorizing things. It was a couple of contracts and some just transaction expenses for capital or for projects that should have been capitalized. So it turns out it doesn't hurt our cash, it doesn't hurt our earnings per share got better because stuff got capitalized.

Speaker 2

And so it's one of these very frustrating things where we made mistakes on the technical date, the technical interpretation of the rules of what it is we got it wrong. And so, that's just part of it and it's irritating, but that's what that one's about. We're already in the path remediation report as well, because that's about training as you saw in the K then, you saw it's about training people, getting the right people, etcetera.

Speaker 8

Okay. Thank you very much, Pat.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for the next question. And our next question will be coming from the line of James Areth of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Speaker 2

Hi guys. Thanks for taking my question here. I was wondering about the Verity portion of the business. And I guess I'm curious about, do you guys have any projections about revenue? I know that that would be very forward looking and nothing in concrete, but any like maybe a three year and a five year projection about what kind of revenue that that could bring in?

Speaker 2

Yes, Paul. How about that?

Speaker 6

Yes. So it's a good question. And we're I mean, the good news is we got first revenue last year like we said we were going to do. And so now what we see is that, well, I don't have the three and the five year projections for you, but we're signing up more customers, which come with typical subscription fees, so software as a service. And then some of the agreements that we have in place have a profit share, which we've talked about in the past, profit and revenue share.

Speaker 6

So some of those can be pretty sizable as we think about how this is going to grow and go forward. But yes, it's still too early to say a lot of the same things when we think about calculating carbon values and doing carbon accounting and profit shares that we've got built into some of those agreements.

Speaker 1

Got you. Thank you.

Operator

At this time. Okay. We have another question coming and it's from Karen McGinnis.

Speaker 8

Yes, good afternoon. I had a quick question. Given there's a number of issues around what we got to achieve for the DOE loan, how long does that commitment stay open?

Speaker 2

It depends on well, that's up to them. I mean, it's a I've seen them extend them for years, so we'll see. It's a you got to the way we view this is, there's a we're going to we have for us, we don't view this as a binary thing and a lot of shareholders do. I don't view it that way. It's not binary.

Speaker 2

This project makes a lot of sense. It will happen. The DOE loan makes a lot of sense, project financing. In the meantime, I got other projects to build too. We're going to get those built.

Speaker 2

And we'll do them a little bit differently than a classic project finance. So, it's not a binary outcome. Our game plan is to be profitable irrespective of net zero one. So this paradigm that people have that somehow we have to have that, it's going to be a miracle. And then, and wow, we better get cash flow from it.

Speaker 2

You think about the timelines. So our whole game is to not have to raise money again except for very accretive reasons. That's our whole game plan here. So it's not at all that paradigm of one thing or the other. I am keen on setting the right precedence in the market, setting the right price points, setting the right all the precedence of value.

Speaker 2

I'm very keen on that because that sets the stage for going forward.

Speaker 8

Thank you. The second question, just a simple question. Just listening to the call, there's a lot of moving pieces here

Speaker 6

and there seems to be

Speaker 8

a lot of we're going in a lot of different directions. What do you see as kind of the top two or three priorities as the CEO of the company?

Speaker 2

Are you kidding me? This is are you freaking kidding me? What do you think they are? Really? We're unclear?

Speaker 2

Have you been read our presentations, go look at our documentation. We're out to, first, we're developing the marketplace for alcohols into hydrocarbons and commercializing those products. We're establishing the carbon value for those same products. And along the way, we're building our network infrastructure in a property portfolio, so we have a serious competitive advantage. And you know what, we got a strong balance sheet.

Speaker 2

Those are the things, crystal clear. They're spelled out in our documents. Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. That does conclude our Q and A session for today. And I would like to turn the call over to Pat for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

It's been interesting times during the transition with the new administration. The number of questions that we're getting from the press is amazing. I think I've had something like 55 interviews with press. Usually they have the wrong information about things. And so what I find is the noise is going to have to settle down and I think we'll see money flow back into our sector.

Speaker 2

It has gone away because people don't know what to make of anything. That's all part of it. So I think we're in great shape. Our balance sheet is strong. Our technologies are strong.

Speaker 2

Our capabilities are strong. We continue to make progress in the marketplace. This carbon value that we talked about is real and it's separate than just regulatory value. That is the ultimate game is to make sure that you have technologies that are competitively making products on a cost basis and there's a value added attribute and it's carbon. So thanks for participating.

Speaker 2

Thanks for listening in.

Operator

Thank you all for participating in today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
Gevo Q4 2024
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