Gevo - Earnings Call - Q3 2025

Executive Summary

• Q3 2025 delivered second consecutive positive Adjusted EBITDA ($6.7M) with revenue scaling to $42.7M, driven by Gevo North Dakota and RNG operations, while GAAP loss from operations improved to $(3.7)M and EPS was $(0.03).
• Clear beats vs S&P Global consensus: Revenue $42.71M vs $31.37M*, EPS $(0.03) vs $(0.063); GAAP EBITDA came in at ~$3.8M vs $4.2M; Adjusted EBITDA was stronger at $6.7M (non-GAAP).
• Strategic progress: sold all 2025 Clean Fuel Production Credits (45Z) totaling $52M; executed multi‑year ~$26M CDR offtake and commenced CORC deliveries, reinforcing a ratable carbon monetization model.
• Growth path: DOE LPO extended its $1.46B conditional loan guarantee and is evaluating scope modification to ATJ‑30 at North Dakota (target FID mid‑2026); ATJ‑30 capex estimated at ~$500M, with ~$150M Adjusted EBITDA potential uplift when operational.
• Potential stock reaction catalysts: recurring monetization of 45Z credits, durable CDR deliveries, DOE LPO extension toward ATJ‑30, and continued Adjusted EBITDA momentum.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Second consecutive positive Adjusted EBITDA; consolidated $6.7M with GevoND $17.8M and RNG $2.6M supporting core earnings engine.
  • Monetized carbon at scale: sold all remaining 2025 45Z CFPCs ($52M total); executed and began deliveries under a $26M five‑year CORC agreement (Puro.Earth standard, 1,000‑year permanence).
  • Management confidence and clarity: “Our consecutive quarter of positive Adjusted EBITDA shows that our baseline business model works...we have plans to make it even stronger.” — CEO Patrick Gruber.

• What Went Wrong

  • GAAP profitability: Q3 GAAP net loss $(8.0)M and loss from operations $(3.7)M reflect interest expense and ongoing development costs; though improved YoY, they remain headwinds.
  • Interest burden: interest expense rose (Q3 $(5.2)M), linked to GevoND acquisition financing and remarketed RNG bonds.
  • Cash flow timing: CFO highlighted operating cash flow can lag Adjusted EBITDA due to 45Z credit generation and delivery timing; targeting neutral/positive operating cash flows in coming quarters.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Gevo Incorporated third quarter 2025 earnings conference 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. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker for today, Eric Frey, Vice President of Finance and Strategy. Eric, you may begin.

Eric Frey (VP of Finance and Strategy)

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call to discuss Gevo's third quarter 2025 results. I'm Eric Frey, Vice President of Finance and Strategy at Gevo. With me today, we have Patrick Gruber, our Chief Executive Officer, Leke Agiri, our Chief Financial Officer, Chris Ryan, our President and Chief Operating Officer, and Paul Bloom, our Chief Business Officer. Earlier today, we issued a press release that outlines our third quarter 2025 results and some of the topics we plan to discuss. A copy of the press release is available on our website at www.gevo.com. 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 alcohol-to-jet projects, our future carbon credit sales, our Gevo North Dakota and R&G plants, and other activities described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are incorporated by reference. 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 non-GAAP reconciliations may be found in our earnings release, which can be found on our website at www.gevo.com in the Investor Relations section. Following the prepared remarks, we'll open the call for questions. I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call is open to the media, and we're providing a simultaneous webcast to the public. 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 the CEO of Gevo, Patrick Gruber. Pat?

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Thanks, Eric. What a change we've had. The acquisition of our ethanol plant, carbon capture plant, and Class VI sequestration wells turning out even better than we imagined. All of this is located at Gevo North Dakota, or GND, as we refer to it internally, and it's all operating really well. We've learned that our carbon sequestration well is unusual because, A, it has a Class VI sequestration well that's been operating since June of 2022; B, we are the only ones using the formation of our well, and that simplifies the auditing as such; and C, it's in an unusually good geology. In fact, a European certification group, Puro.Earth, which is owned primarily by NASDAQ, certified our well as a 1,000-year performance well. We understand that we're the only alcohol production site in the world so far with this certification.

Also, I must say that North Dakota is an outstanding state in which to do business and grow. It's pro-agriculture and pro-energy business environment, so we fit in really well. Great assets combined with a great business environment combined with growing markets, I believe, leads to great opportunities for growth and making money. That's what's in front of us. At Gevo, we have long believed that carbon is an important co-product that if we can monetize the value for carbon, we can unlock economics for growth products like jet fuel. We are pleased to find out that we can, in fact, monetize carbon value through a variety of methods that Paul Bloom, our Chief Business Officer, will explain in a few minutes. In our business model, we view selling carbon as a key initiative.

On a separate and unrelated front, we are learning how to generate and sell production tax credits. These credits are based in the volume of ethanol produced and the carbon intensity score of that ethanol. Because we have a very efficient ethanol plant with a carbon capture and sequestration well beneath it, we can achieve very low CI scores utilizing the rules of Section 45Z of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Leke Agiri, our CFO, will give more color on this topic in a few minutes, but I can't hold back. I am just so pleased that we sold all of our credits for 2025 production for a total of $52 million worth of credits. I got to say, we had a lot of learning to do about this too. Lots of auditing, lawyers, insurance people to make these deals as bulletproof as possible.

When we start adding up the potential adjusted EBITDA from selling carbon, generating tax credits, making more ethanol, using more of the well, we can see a picture for GND where we could potentially generate more than $100 million a year of adjusted EBITDA just from that site. Get this, this is all without deploying any large capital projects or building a jet fuel plant. Now, the question is how best to go about it. Obviously, we're going to go for the low-hanging fruit first, like incremental expansions of CO2 volume driven by incremental ethanol expansion and by optimizing which markets we place our carbon credit products in. It's all pretty exciting. If you haven't seen our recent investor deck, please go take a look at it. It spells out more clearly what we're thinking.

When we meet with investors and they see what we're doing at GND, they suggest that we should figure out how to use more of the well, produce more ethanol to improve the adjusted EBITDA base, and then, of course, get on with getting the jet plant built. GND provides an outstanding platform from which to grow. It's obvious when people see what we're doing. GND does, in fact, present a great site to build a jet fuel plant. We have ethanol feedstock, great farmers to supply the ethanol plant, carbon sequestration, an industrial complex that's already built. Now adding a jet fuel plant is incremental. It makes a lot of sense. When we look forward, we think that adding a 30 million-gallon jet fuel plant would add an additional adjusted EBITDA uplift of about $150 million to the site. Think of that.

We recently were notified by the Department of Energy that they consider shifting their loan guarantee to Gevo North Dakota from South Dakota. I suspect they see the same things we do. Infrastructure already exists. The plants that are there make money, and we can build upon that. We will be working with them to sort it all out, taking advantage of what we learned from our ATJ-60 project. I hope to get the financing for the ATJ-30 plant closed sometime mid-2026. Chris Ryan, our President and Chief Operating Officer, will talk about the operations of GND and our R&G facility, then give an update on where we are with the ATJ-30 project, giving color to the growth plan and cost. Okay, I have talked enough. I will turn it over to my team, Leke.

Leke Agiri (CFO)

Thanks, Pat. We are pleased to have delivered another quarter of improved financial performance. Now, here are the numbers. We ended the quarter with $108 million in cash, cash equivalent, restricted cash. During the quarter, combined operating revenue, interest, and investment income was $43.6 million. Our loss from operations was $3.7 million, and our non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA was a positive $6.6 million. Gevo North Dakota generated income from operations of $12.3 million and a positive non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA of $17.8 million. Gevo R&G generated income from operations of $0.5 million and positive non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA of $2.7 million. Net loss per share attributable to Gevo was $0.03 per share for the third quarter. Just as a reminder to everyone, last year's third quarter revenue was approximately $2 million. This year's third quarter revenue was approximately $43 million, or an increase of approximately $41 million.

Last year's third quarter adjusted EBITDA was approximately negative $16.7 million. This year's third quarter adjusted EBITDA was approximately $6.6 million, or an increase of approximately $23 million. A key driver for improved financial performance continues to be Gevo North Dakota, which is now a core earnings engine for us. This site is demonstrating reliable energy production, efficient carbon capture, and consistent monetization of clean fuel production credits, or Section 45Z tax credits, which are based on production volumes we generate and carbon intensity score. We're also successfully selling voluntary carbon credits to customers who value verified carbon removal. After the end of the quarter, we completed the sale of our remaining 2025 Section 45Z clean fuel production credits from Gevo North Dakota, bringing our total contracted sale for the year to $52 million of credits. We also received net proceeds of approximately $29 million so far.

We expect to bring in the rest of the cash over the next quarter or two. We just need to get our carbon into the ground first. We generate production tax credit based on two key metrics: our production volumes and our carbon intensity score. Our score reflects how we manage energy usage at our plants, the amount of carbon we sequester, and other operational factors as measured under the Section 45Z methodology. In order to deliver the credits to customers and bring the associated cash in, we need to generate the credits first. However, when we produce a gallon of ethanol, the value of the related credit is applied to our cost of goods sold. This creates a timing difference between what we see on the income statement versus when the cash comes in.

One way to think of it is that our cash flow from operations can temporarily lag our adjusted EBITDA performance. We view this as a normal aspect of the tax credit monetization cycle. As we move forward, we expect our operating cash flows to normalize and trend towards break-even or better in the coming quarters. An additional point I can't forget to mention, and it's important, is our tax credit sales continue to be backed by a tax insurance policy, which mitigates much of the residual risk of these credit transfer transactions. Taking together these steps, positive adjusted EBITDA generation, recurring monetization of 45Z tax credits, and a credible pathway to break-even operating cash flow positions us for steadily improving cash generation and financial flexibility. Now I will hand it over to Paul. Paul.

Paul Bloom (Chief Business Officer)

Thanks, Leke. One of the most exciting parts of our progress this year is how we're capturing and optimizing the value of our carbon dioxide co-product, which is approximately 165,000 tons per year that we are sequestering at our CCS site in North Dakota. During Q3, roughly 90% of all the carbon benefits associated with our CO2 sequestration remained attached to ethanol gallons and were sold into low-carbon fuel markets. We are seeing strong values in select low-carbon fuel markets and look to take advantage of those where we have active pathways that include CCS. Going forward, we are applying for more pathway approvals in low-carbon fuel markets that include CCS, allowing Gevo optionality to target those markets with the highest returns.

More importantly, we are expanding the portion of our carbon value derived from CCS that we separate from the fuel and sell into the carbon dioxide removal, or CDR, credit markets. Our recent $26 million five-year agreement with Biorecro for carbon dioxide removal credits is a prime example of this growth. In addition, earlier this year, we were featured in NASDAQ's corporate sustainability report as one of their suppliers of high-integrity, durable carbon dioxide removal credits. This is great recognition, and we believe it shows that major corporations are looking for the high-integrity carbon removal credits that Gevo can provide. We think the high durability and quality of our carbon dioxide removal credits are critical components of the credit value and market acceptance. We anticipate our CDR sales will continue to grow from $1 million in the second quarter to $3 million-$5 million by the end of 2025.

We expect this business to keep growing in years to come, backed by a combination of spot sales and multi-year agreements. Our CDR credits are certified under the Puro.Earth Standard, which we believe is becoming one of the leading frameworks for corporate buyers. When you buy our carbon credits, the CO2 has already been verified as being sequestered over a mile underground in the appropriate geological formation where it mineralizes over time and is rated to remain secure for at least 1,000 years. We also believe our ability to produce and deliver high-integrity credits to the market today is a differentiator for Gevo. According to the reporting platform CDR.fyi that focuses on the durable carbon credit removal market, approximately 38.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide removal credits have been sold, but only 2.5% of these have actually been delivered.

We think this puts Gevo in a unique position of being able to produce and deliver credits today while others are still working to activate their projects in this growing global market that we understand has a total value exceeding $10 billion. We believe the ability to detach the carbon value from the commodity fuel is unique and powerful because it allows us to serve the market more efficiently. This approach also aligns with our plant synthetic aviation fuel business. For example, the agreement we signed with Future Energy Global, or FEG, in April demonstrates our intentions to offer customers more choices and improve service by selling voluntary carbon credits separately from our commodity jet fuel.

Since it will take time for SAF to be available at major airports worldwide, our agreement with FEG will allow airlines and corporate customers to purchase carbon credits from FEG, which have been separated from the physical fuel we produce, to offset their emissions through a book and claim approach. Of course, we believe all of this will be better enabled by Verity, our digital carbon tracking and verification platform, to deliver the proof customers need while avoiding double-counting. Through measuring, reporting, and producing verifiable carbon intensity from farm to flight or fleet, Verity aims to simplify carbon accounting through complex supply chains to track final fuel products and carbon credits with the transparency, trust, and truth customers require. It's going to help us, farmers, and other biofuel producers turn carbon into measurable and marketable co-product while bringing new transparency to the low-carbon fuel ecosystem.

To that point, Verity has been installed at our Gevo North Dakota facility, and we anticipate it will be fully functional by the end of the year. In addition, in Q3, Frontier Infrastructure Holdings announced a strategic partnership with Verity and Gevo to offer North America's first integrated carbon management platform for ethanol producers. Frontier plans to deliver CO2 by rail solutions and permanent CO2 storage in Wyoming, while Verity provides the digital platform for full carbon tracking. Frontier anticipates this unique combination will provide carbon management solutions to ethanol plants that do not have direct access to geological storage or access to proposed CO2 pipelines, while Verity brings our carbon accounting platform to the table to help ethanol producers monetize their carbon dioxide co-product. We like this approach for Gevo as it could unlock new potential ATJ-30 sites that we can explore with more verified low-carbon ethanol producers.

With that, I'll hand it over to Chris. Chris?

Chris Ryan (President and COO)

Thanks, Paul. At this time of year, the thing that takes up a lot of our attention in operations is corn harvest. At Gevo North Dakota, we're happy to have a great relationship with the farmers up there who supply us with the 23 million bushels per year of corn we need to keep the plant running. This year, those farmers have done a great job turning out a record harvest in North Dakota in spite of the early frost that occurred in the western part of the state. This season is a good reminder that while weather can have a negative impact on some farmers, overall, the ag industry continues to get more crop out of the same amount of land, which creates a need for new uses such as SAF, which I'll talk about in a minute.

Farmers in North Dakota are nearing the end of harvest, and at Gevo North Dakota, we're nearly full of our 3 million bushel capacity, with our cash bids currently around $0.40-$0.60 per bushel under the Chicago board price, depending upon delivery month. This is important for our investors to understand. The point is, when thinking about making products like SAF from alcohol to jet, we have a lot of low-cost, low-carbon, easy-to-handle feed stock at scale that begins with our relationship with the farmers. Related to that, a few weeks ago, we had our second community event where we had nearly 100 farmers and community members spend a couple of hours with us at Gevo while we talked about our improvements at the North Dakota site and our vision for the future.

The audience was very engaged and supportive, which makes our work up there much more meaningful. Moving beyond the farmers to our Gevo North Dakota operations, I'd like to acknowledge, once again, the great job our team is doing in maintaining, improving, and operating the assets there. The improvements include fundamental things such as new truck scales critical for receiving corn and selling feed, improving roads to ensure safety for those farmers, and several energy efficiency improvements. The operations team successfully completed a safe turnaround of the plant in five days in September and came back online quickly. For Q3, they ground over 5 million bushels of corn while producing and selling over 16 million gal of fuel ethanol, 46,000 tons of high-protein animal feed, nearly 5 million lbs of corn oil, all while sequestering 42,000 tons of carbon dioxide, which generates the carbon dioxide removal credits Paul mentioned.

That brings us to over 550,000 metric tons of CO2 that's been sequestered at the site since the sequestration operation began in June 2022. That's proof that we can capture carbon reliably each and every day we operate, which is well over 350 days a year. Remember that the captured CO2, it was originally pulled from the air through photosynthesis by plants, then released during our fermentation process in nearly pure form for us to sequester underground. In addition to the operations team, we have a team of engineers at Gevo engaged in engineering a number of improvements at the site, along with engineering the ATJ-30 plant, which is designed to make SAF. Improvements include expanding the ethanol plant, both incremental and step-change expansions, expanding corn storage and receiving, expanding our carbon sequestration and utilization, improving energy efficiency.

We expect that incremental improvements will lead to substantial increases in adjusted EBITDA at North Dakota, and the step-change projects we have in mind could make it even bigger. The ATJ-30 project and expected adjusted EBITDA would be even more growth on top of it all. On the ATJ-30 project, design and engineering work are progressing well. We're leveraging our patents and know-how from previous project design work to shorten our design time, simplify construction, increase efficiencies, and manage carbon. We currently estimate the installed capital cost to be around $500 million, not including financing-related costs. I'm happy to report that we've partnered with the state of North Dakota on a couple of our improvements, thanks to the North Dakota Department of Ag for their generous grants of over $3 million to help us improve energy efficiency of the plant and expand infrastructure required for the ATJ-30 project.

Our long-term vision for the future of jet fuel plants is straightforward. Build ATJ-30 right here at Gevo North Dakota, prove it out, and then copy, edit, and paste that same blueprint across other strategic locations in the U.S. and globally. Today, we want the site to showcase farming and carbon management done right. In the future, we want ATJ-30 to showcase alcohol to jet done right, a model that can be replicated efficiently using abundant domestic feed stocks and proven carbon management systems. Behind all this progress is a talented team of operators, engineers, and community partners who make it happen every day. Of course, we could not do it without the support of our farmer partners and the state of North Dakota, which continues to be a terrific place to do business. Back to you, Pat.

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Thanks, Chris, Paul, and Leke. We have advanced. We've been de-risking our plans to get the jet fuel production. We've known that to achieve the best economics and carbon scores for jet fuel that ethanol and the ATJ process need to be integrated and that we need a carbon sequestration to achieve our carbon footprint goals. At Lake Preston, we would have had to build all three greenfield, albeit the sequestration would have been done in cooperation with the Summit Pipeline. Today we have an outstanding ethanol plant and sequestration. Great. De-risked, and we make money on those assets to boot. Oh, and we get to learn how to monetize the carbon with real carbon products. Now we should maximize the adjusted EBITDA from those assets and get on with the ATJ plant. The pieces are coming together. Let's go ahead and open it up for questions. Operator?

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Derrick Whitfield with Texas Capital.

Derrick Whitfield (Managing Director)

Good afternoon, guys, and congrats on all of your progress over this last quarter.

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Hey, Derrick. Yeah, thank you. It's been pretty cool.

Derrick Whitfield (Managing Director)

Referencing slide 12, it's clear Gevo North Dakota represents significant upside to your EBITDA projections. Maybe speaking to this slide, could you elaborate on the incremental capital and steps required to optimize your operation and a reasonable timeline to achieve $110 million of EBITDA?

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Yeah. It is incremental capital. Incremental capital is like in that $15 million-ish, plus or minus a few million range. That is what we think it is. It could change. This is about debottlenecking the ethanol plant to get it so it can produce maximally with what we have there. Also optimize the energy use, the capture of more carbon dioxide, all those kind of normal things you can do. Remember, there is leverage every time we do something like that because as you produce more ethanol, you get more CO2. When we capture more CO2, we can optimize energy, capture more CO2, etc. When Chris is referring to a step change, that would be adding additional ethanol capacity, per se, like a whole nother plant. We are going to look at that too. I just do not have a timeline for that.

What you see on slide 12 in our investor presentation and for everybody else, what Derrick is referring to is that we have a net EBITDA of something like $40 million on the left side. Adjusted EBITDA on the left side of the slide, it's $40 million. On the right side, it's plus $100 million. That's, say, over the next 18-24 months, we can get up there to $110 million. How fast we do it? I don't know. It depends on how the world is working for us. We're well on the way. If anyone's paying attention, they should see this. We're well on the way to moving towards that $40 million. This is all about just doing what we're doing and have a full year at it and getting better at it, capturing more value from the carbon.

We expect our CI scores to go down in the future, so that makes more for the 45Z tax credit. We have Paul's team is really learning how to maximize value from the carbon by selling it as a bundle with a gallon, the carbon value with a bundle as a gallon in low-carbon fuel markets, or separating the carbon and selling it separately and maximizing that value. As they learn how to do that, I expect that they will continue to increase. That's what I'm most keen on, is watching those numbers around the carbon value per ton. We made a good move by buying this plant. There's no question.

Derrick Whitfield (Managing Director)

Certainly a great acquisition for you guys. As my follow-up, I wanted to touch on the DOE loan extension that you guys announced a few weeks ago. Could you elaborate on kind of how that extension and the change of scope that you guys are pursuing increases the likelihood of DOE financing?

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

I would say, I'll comment first. I'm going to hand it over to Leke to give it a little more color. From my point of view, whenever you have a change of administrations like this, the fact that we survive straight away was good. I mean, that's a good thing. It says we're kind of in their zone of things that are interesting and attractive. They have taken a long time to get leadership in place. They've been doing—and I'm talking about not at the secretary level, but with the secretary. It took a while for people to get into place and musical chairs a little bit. They're getting their act together. They're looking at it. They see realistically what we've done. I'm going to reiterate this.

When you compare the site that we have at Lake Preston, everything is greenfield, to taking that site and moving north to North Dakota, where we have an ethanol plant that operates and makes money, has a sequestration site right underneath the plant that makes money, it is a different game to play in terms of how one thinks about the possibilities of financing. Now, remember, they were committed. The conditional commitment is an actual commitment to do the financing if we do all the prerequisites and get the rest of the funding in place, etc. We were surprised that they suggested shifting it up to North Dakota because we think it's a good idea too. It was a kind of a meeting of the minds thing. We are very pleased about that, but it's just the very beginning, and we got to go work through it.

I think if they liked it before at Lake Preston, they're going to like it a heck of a lot better up in North Dakota because we all make more money, and it doesn't require as much external financing. The project is much smaller, right? Because we only have to build an ATJ increment. Plus, we might have to do some energy. Does that help you?

Derrick Whitfield (Managing Director)

It does. Thanks for the color. I'll turn it back to the operator.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Amit Dayal with HC Wainwright.

Amit Dayal (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Hey, good afternoon, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. Great to see the execution continue to come through. With respect to the EBITDA drivers for next year, can we maybe just get a little bit of color on whether it's primarily going to come from the sequestration capacity expansion or some of these debottlenecking efforts you may be implementing? Just a sense of where the drivers are and how we should think about growth in cash flows for next year?

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Yeah. On slide 12 in our presentation, on the left hand of that slide is what I think a picture of what is closer to what 2026 should look like is something like that. Give or take still, we're working on it. We'll finalize something after the first year is what we really think. That's kind of the picture. Remember, we're ramping up. This is kind of a curve that's going upward. How fast does it go upward? How much faster can it go upward? We know for a fact that there's going to be improvements of carbon score in 2026 built into the big beautiful bill. We know we're going to make more money at that front.

I think on the carbon side, and I'm going to let Paul comment on it in the next year to give a picture of that because I think that's the one I'm keeping my eye on mostly. I want to see that grow. It's incremental. Already, we're projecting as to what we should be able to do from where we are today and on an upward trajectory. The ethanol itself is going to be ethanol. The R&G is going to be we plan super conservatively on R&G. This is simply because we're realistic on this market. It is just a tough market in general, but our plant operates really well. We aren't these big we aren't padding anything or being super optimistic about that, although it generates value for us. It's good. Hopefully, if the market turns, great.

It'll be a huge upside for us. We are not planning that optimistically. Paul, I think this question of what's the growth look like? I'm going to rephrase yours, Amit. Paul, give us some color on what you think the dollars per ton going forward, how's it look? What's that build look like? What's in front of us? How does that pan out? Because we're doing something different than everybody else here.

Paul Bloom (Chief Business Officer)

Yeah. Thanks, Pat. Just a little more color on the carbon business, right? As we talked about during this quarter, we're moving more. You see 90% of our carbon value today being sold in fuels. With the Biorecro deal, we're selling much more into a separated carbon dioxide removal market, right? These credits. That's exciting for us because those can be, like the Biorecro deal, longer-term deals in the market where we're bringing in more ratable revenue. We're not as subject to the ups and downs in the volatility that you see in low-carbon fuel markets, even in the low-carbon fuel credit prices. That's going to continue to grow. Even with the Biorecro deal, right, we start growing into $5 million just a year down the road with that type of a deal. We're going to look to do more of those, right?

You see this a big piece, and this is how long-term we think this can start adding in this $30 million type range over the next two years between the compliance markets and the voluntary markets as we balance that, as we see where either of those markets go. We have a lot of flexibility. That is what we like. That is why we are continuing to do both, right? We are putting on more pathways in the compliance and the regulatory fuel markets where we can go after low-carbon fuel with that CCS value attached, or we can separate that out into the carbon dioxide removal markets where we have that flexibility to maximize our returns.

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

I think the way to look at slide 12 is on the right side of that slide is a little further out. I do not have a timeframe on it per se because we could do it faster, as far as it depends on how projects get done. That includes an incremental expansion of the ethanol plant, taking it up to like 75 million gal a year. That produces more ethanol, more CO2. You can imagine how the numbers increase because of that because we have leverage, right? We are making more ethanol. We make more CO2. We generate more credits, generate more production tax credit, etc. That is why you see those numbers. That is what our picture looks like. As we work through stuff, and this is all with the low capital version, it is kind of exciting. It is a good place to be.

ATJ is completely on top of all of that. That would be a different spend in a different bucket, a different project.

Amit Dayal (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Right. No, makes sense, Matt. So it seems like expanding the ethanol capacity to 75 million gal per year is pretty natural, I guess, in terms of how you are executing and all the other infrastructure you have over there to be able to monitor that. What I'm trying to get at is if you were to have to make a call between ATJ-30 and much larger expansion of the ethanol capacity, would you lean more towards the ATJ-30 with or without DOE funding?

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

The ATJ-30 plan right now, the way it pencils in with our contracts is we add an uplift of about $150 million a year of EBITDA. Now, turning back to ethanol, the 45Z credits, they end at the end of, what, 2029. If you're looking at long-term plans of building new plants, what's going to be in the money? ATJ plant, a jet plant, is dependent upon the long-run economics of a 45Z tax credit. Remember, our site, we're lucky we can take a Q too. We're pretty much indifferent between those two at the moment, the way that the world is structured. Remember, a Q runs out for 12 years. We're in good shape on that kind of a front. We don't take it's not crucial. We'd love to have it extended. Love to. You know what?

It'll be what it is. It's going to compete economically. Paul will be successful, and his team will be successful selling carbon. So it'll be what it is. Ethanol, if we can get it built really fast and do a, say, duplicate of what we currently have of capacity, how fast can we get it built? How long will the credits last, really? You do not want to be in a business of just doing ethanol. You do not want to be in a plain old ethanol business. That's not a good business. It's too dang volatile. This is why Paul was emphasizing turning carbon into a product and selling it gets us into a ratable business. The Biorecro deal was a multi-year contract. Think of that. A multi-year contract selling carbon, really. That's what we just did. And we're going to do more of that.

That changes the game of what's possible and gets us out of this volatility over the long run. That is how we're thinking about it. Getting to 75 million gal is the natural expansion of what we should do in debottlenecking. There will be other things we can do to optimize energy, lower the CI score further. We're already a very, very low CI score, and it'll go lower as we improve. After 75 million gal, now we got to build a brand new plant. In order to do that capacity, that's in the multiple dollars per gallon, to call it rounding it to $2.50 a gal for new capacity once you're doing a full-size plant, say, 50 million gal-100 million gal. It's in that kind of a range ballpark. Does it make sense? Under what circumstances does it make sense? Depends.

We will sort that out later. That is not our focus. We are going to evaluate it, make sure we understand it so we can jump all over it to make it happen if we need to, if the market conditions are there. I will tell you, first things first. Get the low-hanging fruit. Get the 75 million gal. Get the credits. Generate more credits. Generate more revenue. Get better and better at selling the carbon. Remember, we have an advantage. We have a sequestration site directly underneath our plant. We are the only ones in the world with that. We do not have all the complexities that everybody else has of pipelines and sharing and all this kind of stuff. Ours is relatively straightforward. Still, it is a huge amount of work to get it audited, insured, and all the rest to generate these viable credits.

We need to get good at this. We are going to do that. Walk in before we run, expand incrementally, use our capital wisely, save our powder. Debottleneck, save our powder with the DOE, work with them, get that plant financed. The economics are good. We will also treat then a full build-out of a new ethanol plant as an opportunity to be evaluated on the marketing conditions as we see them and working with partners who want to do it.

Amit Dayal (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Right. Understood.

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

That's how we think about it. Use what we got, maximize what we got, expand ATJ, and then making sure we're not losing sight of these other opportunities to grow because we could have them. They might be very much real.

Amit Dayal (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Got it. Just last one on the Verity offering. How much more development work needs to be done before you can get more aggressive towards commercializing that offering?

Derrick Whitfield (Managing Director)

Paul, go ahead and answer that one.

Paul Bloom (Chief Business Officer)

Yeah. I think we're getting to that point right now, Amit. This is what I was talking about. Getting this implemented at Gevo North Dakota is a critical step for us. I mean, we've already got it implemented with other customers, but having it running in our own operation, we'll be able to show even other Verity potential customers, say, "Hey, come look at it," right? Stop by our plant, see how we're using it, see how it simplifies your life, how it makes everything better, totals up all your carbon for voluntary markets, for compliance markets, for tax credits, right? It's really a simplification tool. We think that we're really nearing that point, right, where we can now scale this. Just like Chris was talking about ATJ-30 to do the copy, edit, paste.

I mean, this is where we can start to do the copy, edit, paste for Verity, really, more broadly with biofuel producers. So we're in a really good spot.

Amit Dayal (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Yeah. Interesting. I think this is going to be a really interesting catalyst.

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Here's for everyone's perspective, there's everyone and their brothers going, "Hi, we know how to count carbon. We know how to measure CI," all this. No, you actually do not. It's actually kind of complicated. And you got to keep track of a heck of a lot of stuff. There's simple on the internet, you can find everyone does their ChatGPT version. Sorry. To get a product that someone buys and transfers money, actual cash on the barrelhead to pay you for something, that takes a whole lot more diligence to make sure it's right and have multiple parties auditing it. In our case, you heard Leke talk about getting even insured. How does that work? And getting that system operating well, working well.

With Verity, that offers a whole new level of assurance and gets it tracking it back to farm by farm, field by field, integrating the plant and its energy and giving you a stronger score that can be verified and audited. This is the important part: auditing throughout the whole supply chain. That is why we can get paid now. That is why we will get paid in the future. And why Verity is important? Because we can take that technology and use it as a service and get paid with other plants. That is why it is important and why it is interesting. We are doing an end-to-end solution. Other people are not. They are just doing pieces and parts and using their equivalent of internet says. We are not doing that.

Amit Dayal (Managing Director of Equity Research)

That's all I have, guys. Thank you so much for all the color. I appreciate it.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Craig Irwin with Roth Capital Partners.

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Hey, Craig.

Craig Irwin (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, Pat. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions. Pat, can you maybe update us on the conversations with potential customers that could be using your well in Richardson to sequester their carbon? I guess that would be tolling customers or customers where you provide the service for them. I mean, where do you stand with those potential incremental additions to the overall profitability?

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Yeah. I'm going to restate your question. We have this big site. Our capacity is 1 million tons per year. We're currently only using about 16-17% of that well. We should use more of it. Craig is right. We should use more of it. Paul, what's the plan?

Paul Bloom (Chief Business Officer)

Craig, a couple of things. One, as we expand our footprint there and make more fuel, we'll have more CO2 to sequester. That's one, step one, right? We love that because we don't have to go anywhere else. We've already got the capacity. The second part is think about a complex. When we're thinking about Gevo North Dakota, we're also thinking about what energy sources we need, all the different stuff that we have to put in place to really build out the ATJ-30 plant. Hey, it could be other partners as well. We are looking and have ongoing discussions today with other companies that would maybe want to co-locate with us and take advantage of some of that sequestration well.

We could be storing CO2 for others and obviously getting fees for that, helping them sell their carbon credits, all those types of things. We are pretty excited about that. Just like this deal where Frontier is looking at taking CO2 by rail to North Dakota, there are always options like that. I think we talked about on one of our earlier calls around looking at how can we take more CO2 in kind of virtual pipeline style. Those are things that we are contemplating today. We do not have any concrete plans, but all of that coupled helps to use that capacity that we have already invested in.

It's really about how do we harvest that value from the investment that we already made with this great purchase at Gevo North Dakota because of that extra pore space that if we use it ourselves, use it for third parties, absolutely.

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Yeah. Amplifying what Paul said, this thing about the virtual pipeline, what that means is taking CO2 by rail. That is how CO2 has been transported forever. We could do that. The deal with Frontier contemplates that and tracking it and tracing it, the deal. If we had a rail terminal, for example, we can offload CO2 and put it down the hole for others. That also accomplishes yet another thing. I think that in a few years' time, call it in the five-year timeframe, the Bakken is going to need more CO2. Great, maybe there will be a market for enhanced oil recovery CO2. I think the world at large in that area is going to be interested in CO2 collection, sourcing, treating CO2 as a product. Great. People want us to put it down a hole. Awesome. We can get paid for that. Cool.

Get more credits for that. Great. Or sell it to somebody else. It is a paradigm shift in that CO2 as a product should be valued, should be collected, and utilized. We have to put those plans together, but that is part of what we are working on and figuring out. That kind of incremental expansion is not included on our slide 12 that we referred to earlier. It is not part of that. That would be on top of it. That is great to be on top of what you see there.

Craig Irwin (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Understood. Understood. I wanted to go back to a little bit of the content on your slide 12. The incremental CI improvement that you guys are tracking for over the next number of quarters, how should we go about projecting that or forecasting that from our side? Because it ends up having a fairly material impact on the overall level of profitability. Is this something that we should parse the capital plan and the different pieces of your capital plan that are likely to be completed on a finite time horizon? What should we do to kind of understand and maybe be a little bit ahead of the curve as we see the CI score improvements over the next couple of years?

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

I think, Leke, you can help with this one. There's basically in the One Big Beautiful Bill, the CI score drops automatically next year. That's a large part of it. Go ahead and give that some color, Leke, and then we'll come back to it.

Leke Agiri (CFO)

Thanks, Pat. High level, I think Pat already sort of touched on it. In the Big Beautiful Bill, the note ILOC that reduces our CI score by a tangible amount, which effectively increases our 45Z generation by another $0.10 per gal. The last bit of the puzzle, which for us we're working on, is are there other decarbonization measures that we can introduce to our facility to effectively be able to get another $0.10 per gal increase in credit generation? The $52 million tax credits that we sold this year from Gevo North Dakota, I think folks can easily do the math based on our ownership of the asset for 11 months out of 12 months. That number rounds up to about, call it, $0.80 per gal of credit generation.

Next year, we are working actively with the note ILOC and the other decarbonization strategies. We're hoping to be closer to a dollar per gallon. Keep in mind, production tax credit is also subject to inflation. Those annual inflation, for example, this year that's released by the IRS was around 6.6% and some change. Maybe inflation is not going to be that high next year, but you have to factor that into your math as well. Next year, we're going to have a tangible increase in that 45Z generation from where we are today. Does that help?

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Yeah.

Craig Irwin (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

That definitely helps. That definitely helps. That is also going to help your cash flow. Congratulations on the progress.

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

It's an interesting game, isn't it, Craig? I mean, it's like the world. We did good. Our timing was good. And we're learning how to sell this car, having a real carbon product to figure out a real tangible thing where it's actual tons. What does it mean in terms of CI score? How do you monetize tax credits? One of the things that's different from what we're doing, from what I think everyone else is doing, we're selling them directly. Leke's team has done an outstanding job of interfacing directly with the purchasers of these carbon credits. We aren't going to a broker where the broker has to go figure it out later. Our stuff is done based on real CI scores audited by multiple parties, stuff that's based on carbon that's gone down a hole.

Leke's been able to strike really good deals, getting good value. When he says, "Remember, it's a 67 million gal plant," he's talking about a dollar a gallon. The maximum value you can get is about a dollar a gallon from the 45Z. We are one of the lowest CI score plants under the 45Z One Big Beautiful Bill. It looks like we're in a really good position. That's an awesome thing. This is before we've done anything around decarbonization of the energy at the plant. It's just that it's a very efficient plant. It is not taking into account agricultural practices like so many people talk about. It's not taking that into account. It's just well-run, a great sequestration plant, and our team is good at capturing carbon, putting it down a hole.

Craig Irwin (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Maybe I can ask another question, right? Red Trail, what did they do right on the commissioning of their well? There is another well that was supposed to be testing, maybe commissioned. It is another Class VI well for, I guess, the third guy that is supposed to be on, but they have been late. They are not eager to confirm that there is a ribbon cutting on Wednesday, right? You guys have brought up your well, generated credits consistently off it, and obviously had pretty clean execution. What did Gevo really do? Or what did Red Trail really do right, the team at Gevo now, that allowed you to execute consistently?

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Yeah. Chris, would you want to go ahead and explain this? Yeah. Go ahead and explain this because it's a fascinating story.

Chris Ryan (President and COO)

Let me tell you that it starts with the former CEO of Red Trail, a guy by the name of Gerald Bachmeier, who really led that. Earlier in his career, he did oil and was involved in drilling. I would argue he knew how to pick the right contractors to do the work. They really focused on doing good quality execution because the guys that ran that plant, including Gerald, were boots on the ground, get-or-done guys that know how to get things done and know how to get things done well. That is really the notion that really led to doing that well.

What you got here is remember, up in that area, you got farmers. Remember, Red Trail was a co-op, big giant co-op, 900-plus members. Corn guys are oil guys and vice versa up there. It is actually a wonderful place to have a plant like this where you're trying to work with the petrochemical industry. The guys are big farmers anyway. Everybody cooperates. They have a lot of expertise about how to drill wells. That is what Gerald was about and knowing how to do it. He definitely had his own way of going about it that was different than what was being sold to others. I have been told that over and over again, and I believe it to be true. That is why I think we did not have the problems that other people have seen.

Craig Irwin (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Understood. We do not have to talk about those problems. I will say congratulations for your success. Thanks for taking my questions.

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Of course.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star 11 on your touchstone phone. Our next question comes from Peter Gastreich with Water Tower Research.

Peter Gastreich (Managing Director of Energy Transition and Sustainable Investing)

Hi. Congratulations on your results, and thanks for taking my questions. The partnership that you've discussed with Frontier, it's certainly very interesting. It looks like it presents a lot of opportunities for you. The Summit Pipeline has obviously been very, very quiet. Just curious, if we look at Frontier entering this market, are they coming in as a potential competitor here to Summit, or should we think of Frontier more as being complementary and maybe focusing on the ethanol plants that are not on that pipeline route? How should we think about this entry into the market?

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Paul, go ahead and take that on, please.

Paul Bloom (Chief Business Officer)

Yeah, Peter. No, great question. I think if you look at what we had or Frontier really had in the announcement, they talk a lot about how many plants are kind of stranded. They do not have access to geological sequestration. They do not have access to pipelines today. I think that is really the first and foremost market because, like Pat said, CO2 is transported by rail all the time. This gives those plants that optionality. Basically, now you think about you either have the right geology, you may have access to a pipeline, or if you do not, now you have got a rail opportunity to go to a sequestration site like what they have in Wyoming and we have in North Dakota.

Peter Gastreich (Managing Director of Energy Transition and Sustainable Investing)

Okay. Got it. Thank you. Just a second question about overseas markets. Could you talk a bit more about the agreement that you've entered with Haush in Europe and the ethanol to jet facilities? With the SAF restrictions in Europe, what's the strategy there? Also, just curious broadly, your traction in overseas markets and where you see the best prospects there?

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Paul, go ahead and take that one again.

Paul Bloom (Chief Business Officer)

Yeah, sure. Haush is an interesting company that we really have enjoyed working with. And they've got a good focus. They're a hydrogen company fundamentally. As we're trying to find the right combination of sites and feedstocks, we think we've got a good partner. When we think about the feedstock, right, there are limitations. We do need to think about Refuel.eu does not allow corn ethanol, crop-based fuels to qualify. We are looking at sources, carbohydrate sources still for ethanol, obviously, but that come from waste and residue-type feedstocks that will qualify for those markets. That's kind of where we're focused. Those exist. We have a whole team that's taken a look at that. The question really comes down to what are the economics, the netbacks from Europe versus North America. Like Chris said, we really see ATJ-30 as a global business.

Even not just Europe, this is where can we find the right carbohydrate feedstocks? Ethanol is ubiquitous. And so it's really about how do we have a plan and then have the right partners in those geographies that we can execute.

Peter Gastreich (Managing Director of Energy Transition and Sustainable Investing)

Okay. That's great. Thank you very much. Congrats again to the team.

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Thanks.

Operator (participant)

That concludes today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back to Patrick Gruber for closing remarks.

Patrick Gruber (CEO)

Yeah. One of the interesting things, I would encourage people to take a look at the growth of the jet fuel demand out to the future. It's quite interesting in that it's continuing to increase here in the U.S. and around the world. Refining capacity, however, is not increasing, and not here in the U.S. In fact, it's decreasing. There's only a finite amount of jet fuel in a barrel. This means that there's going to be a shortage of jet fuel here in the U.S., a shortage, an incremental shortage. It adds up to big numbers, about 2.4 billion gal a year by about 2024. We have to do something different: bring it in, import it, or make it through alternative sources.

You'll find that if anyone does start searching and looking at this, you'll find that the world predicts that everything is going to be fulfilled with SAF. SAF, of course, is jet fuel plus its carbon, but think of it as just jet fuel. The question is, will all that get built really? You look at these projections, and it's already behind schedule everywhere in the world. That means jet fuel price is likely to go up, and likely the U.S. will have to import more jet fuel. With this administration, they're not big on importing products, and we can make them domestically. Remember our premise. Because we get netbacks of value from the co-product of carbon, because we get netbacks from protein and the oil, the corn oil, we can deliver cost-competitive jet fuel to the marketplace. Cost-competitive with petrol. Pretty fascinating.

2.4 billion gal, remember, is more like 70 plants needed in the U.S. over the next decade. That is a target-rich environment. That is what we are looking at here. That is what makes it interesting and why we do not lose track of those ATJ plants. We can use more ethanol. We can use more corn. And it makes a huge job grow. Improves energy security. It is a good overall practical story of doing cost-competitive energy delivery to the marketplace as an alternative. Do I think that we will wind up building 70 plants? No. The ethanol industry did it when they blew, when they went big, when ethanol did their boom between, what, 2007, 2012. They did more than that. It is possible to do. For us, realistically, no. I will just take a bite of that, though. That would be great.

We can do the same thing around the world. That is what is in front of us. We have got a great platform, Gevo North Dakota. This acquisition turned out better than we ever expected. We have cash flow coming. It is good to see. We can expand it. We have this huge opportunity and platform along with all of our intellectual property and designs around the jet. One of the last comments around ATJ that I will mention, because I think it is relevant to the questions that we get in the marketplace, is that in technology readiness sense, every single step that we are planning on deploying at ATJ-30, every one of them is proven, proven commercially already in this world. Technology readiness level is nine for all the steps. That is different than anyone else's ATJ technology. Thank you all for joining us. I appreciate it. Thanks for all your support.

I'm proud of my team, proud of what we've done. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.