Green Plains - Q3 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning and welcome to the Green Plains Inc. Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Following the company's prepared remarks, instructions will be provided for Q&A. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will now turn the call over to your host, Phil Boggs, Executive Vice President, Investor Relations and Finance. Mr. Boggs, please go ahead.

Ann Reis (CFO)

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Green Plains Inc. Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. Participants on today's call are Todd Becker, President and Chief Executive Officer, Jim Stark, Chief Financial Officer, and several other members of Green Plains' senior leadership team. There is a slide presentation available, and you can find it on our investor page under the Events and Presentations link on our website. During this call, we will be making forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could materially differ because of factors discussed in today's press release, in the comments made during this conference call, and in the risk factors section of our Form 10-K, Form 10-Q, and other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statement. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Todd Becker.

Chris Osowski (CEO)

Yeah, thanks, Phil. Good morning and thanks for joining our call today. We reported $83.3 million in EBITDA for the third quarter, inclusive of a $30.7 million gain on the sale of the Birmingham Unit Train Terminal. Our EBITDA from normal operations was $53 million, and our standalone consolidated crush margin was $58 million. Before I get too deep into the numbers, I'm sure you saw the announcement this morning regarding Jim Stark retiring from Green Plains and the promotion of Phil Boggs as Chief Financial Officer. These two guys are really well known to all of you, which should make for a seamless transition. When Jim returned to Green Plains and subsequently named CFO, I always knew this day would come as his goal was to get back to Nebraska and spend more time with his grandkids.

One of the things that was part of this succession planning was to set Phil up for success, and Jim lived up to his end of the bargain and more. Jim and I spent many years together at Green Plains, and he is one of the many who will have made a long-standing impact on the company, and I'm proud to have worked with him. I'll let Jim tell you a bit more, but he will be exiting the public company world to focus on the next stage of his career with smaller private companies and spend more time with his family. Thanks again, Jim, for your dedication and loyalty, so let's get back to the quarter.

Our ethanol operating rate reached nearly 97%, and we also delivered a record quarter of ultra-high protein production, as well as maintaining a strong corn oil yield in line with our record rates achieved in the second quarter. Our operating results are demonstrating the success of years of planning and execution to deliver improved operational performance across our platform, and we believe we have room to continue improving on these operating rates. The mid- to high-90s run rate should be the new normal for our platform, as we still have some more improvements underway to get there and are finishing up some of those in the fourth quarter as well. Earlier this month, we completed an extended shutdown at our Mount Vernon location, as we indicated earlier, performing some of the needed maintenance to bring the plant back to its full run rate capabilities.

We are now beginning to scale our production and expect to reap the reward of additional capacity in the next couple of weeks. We are in the process of upgrading Obion in the next coming months and anticipate that plant being able to increase its efficiency in production as well over the next several quarters. The operations team have done a fantastic job safely maximizing the platform, and we continue to find new opportunities to increase throughput and improve production metrics. Margins were solid during the quarter, as we indicated on the prior call, driven by demand of continued strong exports and favorable natural gas and corn prices, even though we did see some rapid compression laid into the quarter.

We continue to experience tailwinds for ethanol exports with totals through August of 1.2 billion gallons and on pace for a record year of 1.8-1.9 billion gallons as other countries ramp up their blend mandates and low-carbon programs. We believe this will continue to grow, led by Canada, where they are rapidly expanding blends and represent over one-third of where all of our exports go. Overall, we significantly outperformed the prior quarter and were up prior year as well. We will cover protein, carbon, and corn oil on this call as well, but I would be remiss not to start with clean sugar. While it may have taken longer than we all wanted, the ongoing startup and commissioning of our CST project in Shenandoah was a key focus during the quarter.

As we had indicated earlier this week, we have worked through most of the challenges, and we have begun to supply product to customers for validation. We also believe we will be executing our first bulk commercial sales and shipping low-CI dextrose to customers during the fourth quarter. The production process will continue to be the bottleneck, ramping up over the coming year, and interest remains very strong despite the delays. Having up to a 40% carbon intensity advantage, it's worth the wait for many of these customers. As we always said, this technology developed by Fluid Quip is massively disruptive to an industry supply oligopoly that has existed for decades, and no one thought we could make clear, clean, low-carbon dextrose, but here we are. It was a Herculean effort across Green Plains and Fluid Quip to get to this point.

We still have plenty to do to scale from here, but this is one of the many steps to realizing the true value of this technology. I'll spend a little bit more time on this later in the call. During the quarter, we completed the sale of the Birmingham Unit Train Terminal and used the proceeds to retire the remaining high-priced debt related to Green Plains Partners. This was an important step, enabling the additional simplification and efficiency gains anticipated when we first began the process of acquiring Green Plains Partners. The board of directors continues to progress the strategic review process, working with its financial advisors, BMO and Moelis, as outlined in the press release, and now I'll hand the call over to Jim to provide an update on the overall financial results.

I'll come back on the call to provide an updated policy outlook and discuss our progress on all of our initiatives in more detail. Jim?

Ann Reis (CFO)

Thank you, Todd. Good morning, everyone. Green Plains' consolidated revenues for the third quarter were $658.7 million, which was $234 million, or approximately 26% lower than the same period a year ago. As it has been in the last couple of quarters, the lower revenue is attributable to lower prices experienced for ethanol, dry distillers grains, and renewable corn oil in the third quarter of 2024 as compared to the same period a year ago. As Todd mentioned, we also saw a drop in our commodity inputs with corn and natural gas down significantly year over year, resulting in a stronger margin opportunity in the quarter compared to the prior quarter and prior year. Our plant utilization rate was 97% during the quarter compared to a 94% run rate in the same period last year.

The year-ago quarter of 2023 included production gallons from the Atkinson plant that was sold in the third quarter of last year. So utilization actually increased despite production gallons declining slightly year over year. For the trailing four quarters, we have averaged a 94% utilization rate, and we anticipate our plants to continue to perform in that mid-90% range of our stated capacity for the fourth quarter, barring any events outside of our control. For the quarter, we reported net income attributable to Green Plains of $48.2 million, or $0.69 per diluted share. That compares to a net income of $22.3 million, or $0.35 per diluted share for the same period in 2023.

I want to point out that the diluted share count for the third quarter for both the current and prior year third quarters includes the dilutive effect of the 2027 converts due to the accounting treatment of the as-if converted method, so long as the effect would not be anti-dilutive, for which it was not. EBITDA for the quarter was $83.3 million, inclusive of that $30.7 million gain on the sale of Birmingham Unit Train Terminal, compared to $52 million in the prior year period. Like for like, adjusted EBITDA for Q3 of 2024 was $53.3 million, compared to $42.9 million for Q3 of 2023 when you adjust out one-time items for both periods. Depreciation and amortization expense was higher by $2.2 million versus a year ago at $26.1 million. This includes a one-time $3.5 million impairment charge related to R&D intangible assets that were taken in Q3.

We realized $58.3 million in consolidated crush for the quarter, and that compares to $52.9 million for the prior year of 2023. Also, in the third quarter, our SG&A cost for all segments was $26.7 million. That's $8.6 million lower than the prior year due to lower personnel costs and adjustments to incentive accruals. Interest expense of $10.1 million for the quarter, which includes the impact of debt amortization and capitalized interest, was $500,000 higher than the prior year's third quarter. This increase was primarily due to loan fees associated with the payoff that Green Plains Partners debt retired in the third quarter of 2024. Our income tax for the quarter was a benefit of $0.8 million compared to a tax benefit of $7.8 million for the same period in 2023.

At the end of the quarter, the federal net loss carry forwards available to the company was $10.8 million, which may be carried forward indefinitely. The NOLs were down significantly from our Q2 2024, as the NOLs were used to offset the gain on the sale of the Birmingham Unit Train Terminal and the profitability we had within the quarter. Our normalized tax rate for the quarter was around 25%. Our liquidity position at the end of the quarter improved from the prior quarter due to strong results from operations. Our liquidity included $252 million in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash, along with approximately $228.5 million available under our working capital revolver.

For the third quarter, we allocated $28 million to capital across the platform, including $9 million to our clean sugar initiative, about $8 million to other growth initiatives, and approximately $11 million towards maintenance, safety, and regulatory capital. On a year-to-date basis, we have incurred capital expenditures of about $67.8 million, and we anticipate CapEx for the total year of 2024 will be in that range of about $90-$100 million. Again, as a reminder, this range excludes approximately $110 million in carbon capture equipment needed for our Nebraska initiatives, as we have financing lined up to cover those needs. In closing, my time with Green Plains has been immensely rewarding. I'm grateful for the opportunities I've been given to grow professionally and personally during my 14 years here.

I cannot thank Todd and the board enough for allowing me to rejoin Green Plains at the executive level at the beginning of 2022 to be closer to my family and grandkids. I have complete confidence that Phil Boggs will excel in his well-deserved new position as CFO, and the finance and accounting team will continue to support him and the management team as the company moves forward. I look forward to my next chapter, and I appreciate knowing and working with all of you on this call over the last nearly 16 years of my public company career in the renewable fuels industry. Now I'll turn the call back over to Todd. Yeah, thanks, Jim. And again, thank you and good luck in the future. So let's talk carbon.

Our Advantage Nebraska strategy to decarbonize our 287 million gallon footprint in the state remains on track, and along with our pipeline partners, we have made great progress again this quarter. Of note, Wyoming, which is one of three states with primacy for issuing Class VI permits, approved the first sequestration well for the Trailblazer project in September, and we expect additional well approvals for the project to follow in the coming months. The long lead-time carbon compression equipment has been ordered and is on schedule for delivery in Q2 of 2025, and we expect to begin construction on these facilities in the next month or so. The initiative is on track for the second half of 2025 operations and cash flows. This is another game-changing and differentiating project for Green Plains shareholders that we will be one of the earliest and largest platforms sequestering carbon.

Our carbon earning estimates remain intact, with the expectation we will generate $130 million or so per year starting in the second half of 2025, assuming 45Z values and a $70/ton carbon credit or LCFS credit, even after discounting the value of the tax credits. Nebraska, as an asset alone with this type of base earnings, is not at all reflected in our share price of our company, in my opinion, in our opinion as well. During the quarter, we saw our decarbonized ethanol production facility exchange hands for the price over $3 per gallon, so you could do the math. The value of our 287 million gallons in Nebraska would be higher than our current market cap from those plants alone.

While the Summit Carbon Solutions project continues to make progress with permitting and right-of-way, we anticipate the Nebraska pipeline will be online prior to that, giving us some of the largest volumes of low-CI ethanol gallons during the existing 45Z runway of 2025-2027, with the 12-year 45Q credit available if it is not extended. And what some misunderstand is that 12-year credit is from the date when the facility is placed in service, not from when the IRA was enacted. And I think that's a really important point when we look at the availability of our long-term cash flows. We do believe that 45Z will be extended beyond 2027 when the new Congress considers a broader tax package next year.

Regardless of how this election plays out, there is bipartisan support for this measure and support across a diverse set of industries, but we will still be waiting for proposed regulations to come out. Now, on to distillers' corn oil. We have seen some stabilization in oil prices as the market has tightened up, as evidenced by the rise in palm and soy oil prices during the quarter. We look forward to 2025 as we know DCO becomes an advantaged feedstock, and we continue to push record yields as a platform with more to come in the future. When you add corn oil and carbon, those two account for over $220 million of combined EBITDA contribution beginning in the last half of 2025.

In protein, as noted on the top of the call, we had record production of ultra-high protein during Q3 at our Green Plains plants, and we will continue to grow from there in the future. Our commercial and operations team have continued to execute and improve our processes to maximize the flexibility and efficiency at each of the locations. Our Tharaldson JV also ramped up production during the quarter and continues to get to max run rates. Commercially, we continue to open up new markets and win new customers for our 50 Pro ultra-high protein product, both in the U.S. and internationally. We now ship to many Asian destinations and started commercial shipments to our strategic customers in Latin America. With J.V. production, we now also have better access to customers in the Western U.S., opening another new market for us from a transportation standpoint.

The team is making great progress, increasing our sales to our pet and aquaculture customers. While operationally, we've been improving, margins are somewhat lower than expected due to the availability of cheap competing products. We believe this will work itself out in due time and continue to believe that adding optionality and flexibility to our bio-refinery platform to maximize what can be achieved with a kernel of corn positions us for long-term success. For our 60 Pro Sequence product, we have been making additional upgrades to our production capabilities and continue to refine and improve our product. Our upgrade at Wood River is expected to be online in the first quarter next year to allow that plant to better and more efficiently and cheaper produce more Sequence.

More important, we just completed a new run at Central City, and we were up to spec of Sequence in less than six hours with little disruption to daily operations as we continue to ship and sell Sequence to customers. There is a lot of interest in this ingredient, but we are limiting volumes until we finish these upgrades during the first quarter of 2025. We also have some really exciting potential process breakthroughs for 60 Pro on deck for early next year, so stay tuned. Lastly, we will wait and see how the margin structure shakes out this quarter once the corn crop is fully harvested.

The forward look on ethanol margins is a bit of an unknown, as usual, but we know export and demand overall does not support this margin structure tone, as evidenced by yesterday's EIA report showing stocks now under 20 days of production and the crush yesterday finally improving $0.04 per gallon on this news. If you compare year over year at this time last year relative to much similar numbers, margins were significantly higher, and hopefully yesterday began the march to start to match some of those numbers, but we have a little bit of ways to go. With regard to sugar, our outstanding operational and engineering teams worked tirelessly to prove out this groundbreaking technology at commercial scale, and we have been consistently producing at the facility with product already sent to key customers for formulation testing.

We will continue to work over the coming quarters to optimize the Shenandoah facility to increase production volumes, including addressing additional bottlenecks. Learnings from our York Innovation Center pilot and now building and operating this commercial-scale facility in Shenandoah puts us in a much better place for when we decide to execute on serial number two. The critical piece here is that what we have proven is the technology at scale, and now it's a matter of building out that infrastructure and reshaping an industry that has never been disrupted. Our Q3 performance demonstrated the capabilities of our platform with strong run rates and yields, allowing us to capture the positive margin environment. We intend to keep checking off milestones of our decarbonization strategy and as we ramp up the Clean Sugar Technology to improve shareholder value. Thanks for joining the call today, but we can start the Q&A session.

Operator (participant)

At this time, if you would like to ask a question, press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If your question has been answered and you would like to remove yourself from the queue, press star one again. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Jordan Levy with Truist Securities.

Ann Reis (CFO)

Morning all, and Jim, thank you for everything and best of luck on the next venture, and still congratulations on the new role. Todd, you mentioned it on the call, but your equity value here is certainly not reflecting the value of Advantage Nebraska on the CCS side and maybe even more so the other initiatives in protein and sugar. Can you just talk to, outside of the strategic review process you have, what you think the market needs to see from you all to get more value reflected there on what the work you guys are doing?

Chris Osowski (CEO)

I think that obviously the milestones, there's a couple of big events, the milestones in carbon are going to be really critical, and we should be able to break ground here in the next 30-45 days on that project. And I think once we do that, you're going to start to see a quick ramp-up in the interest and in the credits that we are going to produce, both 45Z and voluntary and/or LCFS credits for California. I think what's really important is that those are programs that are in place, and I think that once that starts to kick off, just from that alone, the value of our company will begin to adjust higher, if not sooner than that. Obviously, we've gone through some ups and downs as an industry.

I think broadly as an industry as well, whether it's going to be in ag or renewable fuels or ethanol or anything in between, we've seen compressions across the board in overall values as an industry. I think a little bit of that is overblown, especially as the value of our asset base. If you look at a per-gallon value of our asset base today, it's just significantly too low. But we've had a few challenging quarters, and I think what we were able to show this quarter in a normal margin environment, we can certainly deliver free cash flows.

I think when we look at things like sugar that was delayed, it's not going to be an immediate impact to earnings, but what it is, we believe, and we've always believed, is that our CST technology developed at Fluid Quip and now producing at Green Plains is a game changer, but it's a longer-term process that will take place, but we have significant interest in those products, so I think just overall, it's a little bit of everything. We've had ups and downs as a company, and I think the margin environment continues to be very, very volatile in this industry, and we're just going to have to watch that closely, but our financial position remains strong. Our per-gallon, just generally, on a generic per-gallon valuation, is too low relative to replacement and relative to other transactions.

I think just overall, it's just a step process to get ourselves revalued back into where we need to be.

Ann Reis (CFO)

Appreciate that. And then maybe just kind of building on the CST side that you mentioned, I don't think it's quite as well understood market, certainly as ethanol, but even as much as protein. But maybe just help differentiate the long-term value you see from that business and from some of the more near-term challenges we've seen in protein, and maybe just give a little more detail on how you view the sugar dextrose market evolving.

Chris Osowski (CEO)

Yeah, that market and demand remain strong for dextrose overall, but even more so for low-carbon dextrose as CPG companies continue to remain focused on lowering the carbon score of their products. And that's where we see interest, everything from pancake syrup to industrial chemicals and everything in between. I think that's a misunderstanding that a lot of that happens in fermentation or sweeteners are used in many other areas, and that's really what we're producing. We have started to receive our certifications, and now that we are producing product, our goal now is to get our food-grade certification so we can begin to sell into the consumer markets as well. And I think that's just the first step of many steps that we want to do to monetize this product. The margins remain strong. If you make a dextrose instead of alcohol, your margin is significantly higher.

And I think that's still proven by results that you see from the others in the space that make dextrose in wet mill. Those margins continue to remain strong, especially on that product. So we have an interesting technology. We have interest in the technology from around the world right now, and Fluid Quip continues to get calls in and the work that they've done. And what we're proving out in the United States, where we're really going to focus our efforts, is that there's significant demand. People have waited for us, and it's from food all the way through chemicals. And I think you'll start to see us deliver on some commercial volumes to customers and also some offtakes as well during the kind of next 30-90 days. So we're really excited about that.

The team has worked really hard, but the margins have maintained themselves throughout this whole process and have not compressed relative to everything else that we have seen, and we're really excited about it. It's a long game on this one, but owning and controlling this IP and this technology and proving at commercial scale that we can make low-carbon dextrose and sweeteners. This has never been done before in the history of agriculture at this type of scale and this type of level where you can take a dry grind facility and make dextrose to be used in food and industrial products, so it's really exciting, and it's a great testament to our team.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Lawrence Alexander with Jefferies.

Hey, good morning. This is Kevin Estok for Lawrence. I've got two questions, one on clean sugar and one on ethanol margins. I guess I know that you said that margins don't really reflect current conditions, and I guess just given the direction that ethanol prices have moved in the last several weeks, months, I mean, could you foresee producers possibly lowering rates like September production to sort of lift pricing? And just be curious how your outlook has changed for margins and prices since the last earnings. And I think you said last call that the corn basis was coming down into Q3. Did that play out as expected?

Chris Osowski (CEO)

Yeah, I mean, this is a little bit of a wait and see on margins this quarter. I think what we saw was a compression late in the quarter. You all saw that. You've all talked about that late in the third quarter, and it continued into October. But I think as we leave October and these numbers that we saw yesterday prove that what we produce is being absorbed, with draws at a 1080 run rate yesterday. And I think the market's going to have to adjust to that. I think we were dragged down by this weakness in oil and gasoline prices that we saw in the quarter, and ethanol took the hit as well. But overall, I think hopefully we're bottoming out here. And again, we saw some increase yesterday, and we'd like to see that continue and see what happens over the next coming weeks.

But we still have turnarounds in the industry, and we still have some other areas where I think we're going to take some stuff offline naturally. But I don't know yet today that we're at a point where anybody's going to significantly reduce production. And as we go into next year, if we can maintain these stocks and get through the first quarter and get into driving season again, I think that'll be very positive for next year's margins. And we do believe exports will remain strong through the rest of the year and hit those numbers. So generally speaking, we're using what we're producing, but it would be nice if we can get even a larger draw. But with days of demand less than 20, typically we see an expansion back into normal margin structures. On the corn basis.

Corn basis, thank you.

We've definitely come out of harvest firmer than I think anybody really thought. The farmer's able to put some of this away, but the corn basis in Q3 was at least $0.50 a bushel better than the prior three years, so we saw that market come down, which obviously helped the margin structure for everybody in the industry, including ourselves, and as we come out of harvest, basis is still lower in areas than traditional last couple of years, but it's definitely firmer than we thought, but we're not having any trouble buying corn. It's just a matter of at these flat prices with futures pushing towards $4, the basis is going to remain firm, I think, throughout the year.

Understood. Thank you. And now just on clean sugar, as you announced earlier this week, the first commercial clean sugar tech deployment in Shenandoah with samples going to customers. Just curious what your feedback has been from those customers, I mean, whether or not you've received feedback on those samples. And I guess just curious about the geographic makeup. I mean, are most of them North American customers or? Any color there would be helpful. Thank you.

I'll answer your last question first. They're all North American customers today. It's really where sugar is going to, our dextrose is going to travel, but we are seeing global demand for the technology from customers that want to talk to Fluid Quip about bringing their technologies to other countries, and again, we're not opposed to that, and I think it's going to be a very big value creator for them and for Green Plains as well. Relative to customer feedback, they've seen product already out of our York Innovation Center that is structurally similar to what we're producing in Shenandoah, and the product we'll have in Shenandoah will be even better, so for us, it's really a matter of time now. You have to make product before you can get food-grade certification started, the process, and that's where we're at today is we're going to start that process.

But you saw we had GMP approvals. We got other approvals pending. I think you'll start to see that our product will become a very well-accepted product. Our first goal is to ship our products into industrial markets today because they're not food-grade markets, although they do need some of their own certifications. But early feedback on stuff that we have shared has been good, but again, we're just starting to ship it out now. So it's going to take a little bit of time. This is a long game, but owning and controlling this IP and this technology that is such a disruption and game-changing, and we have proven now that it works and it works at scale, but there's still some things we're going to have to continue to work through in Shenandoah.

But as we think about number two, it'll be better engineered and better constructed in terms of cost and cost per pound and cost per ton and those type of things. I think we're on a. It's just a long path, but this is absolutely a disruptive technology that has never been done before in history, and we're very proud of the team that has done it. So thanks.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Saumya Jain with UBS.

Saumya Jain (Analyst)

Hi, guys. Congrats on the quarter. I guess I just wanted any color on how the partnership with Shell is progressing and if you guys have any updates on the Tharaldson as well.

Chris Osowski (CEO)

Yeah, I'll let Leslie comment on our SFCT partnership. There's some exciting things going on there. Leslie, you want to comment on that to start?

Leslie van der Meulen (Company Representative)

Sure, so the process has successfully started up in York, and the first cellulosic ethanol has been produced. The process will now switch to really a one-of-a-kind opportunity. The DCO, or what we call the second-gen DCO, is the next in line to line out. So that's basically the previously unattainable corn oil. And then the last piece is going to be the alignment of protein. Once that all is up and running, then the process will switch to campaign mode, and that's when we'll be producing more products for validation efforts on the protein side.

Chris Osowski (CEO)

Thanks, Leslie. And then also—what was the second question that you had?

Saumya Jain (Analyst)

Any update on Tharaldson?

Chris Osowski (CEO)

Yeah, Tharaldson startup, obviously, it took a little bit longer than we wanted. Construction took a little bit longer, and we continued to debottleneck there, but we're starting to push towards the upper end of the rates that are available of the production capacity there. Bringing on that much protein on the market, we had to wait for customer approvals. But the quality of the protein is excellent. The toxin levels at Tharaldson are the lowest in the country, which is nice because there's certainly customers that wanted North Dakota product because of the absolute zero toxin in corn that is there. And so that's opening up new markets as well as the West Coast, where we really did not have a freight advantage out of our terminals or out of our facilities to get to the West Coast. We're seeing some new demand out of there as well.

So again, these are long games, but I think as we go to max production over the next several quarters, we're just excited about the fact that we have a really great product and as Sequence starts to kick in in 2025. So more on that next quarter.

Saumya Jain (Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Andrew Strelzik from BMO Capital Markets.

Hi, guys. This is actually Ben on for Andrew. I just want to say congratulations, Jim, and to Phil as well. Jim, wish you all the best of luck there. So my question has to do with carbon capture. Can you just walk through the key milestones that we should be tracking in order to hit the second half $25-$70 a credit target? Thanks.

Chris Osowski (CEO)

So what we're watching very closely, obviously, is the lead time, our equipment order. That is all on track, and we've been talking to the manufacturer, and they believe they are on track for our second quarter delivery. We expect to break ground on the structure in the next several weeks or less than a month from now. And that will really be the first milestone. I think that'll be important to everybody. Most of the engineering has been done already. We have the credit or the permits to operate in all of the counties where we are located. Nebraska is very different than other states relative to carbon capture and approvals and permits. And so very supportive from the state. So we'll wait to see when Trailblazer starts to build their laterals as well. And so we'll know at that point. I think we'll watch that closely.

We do have some air permits just to start construction, which we expect to receive shortly. Those are just permits from the state as we receive on every other construction project that we do, and there doesn't seem to be any delays receiving those relative to started construction, so that's really up to our partner to make sure the pipeline is in service and the laterals are built and the construction of Class VI wells in Wyoming. All of this has been laid out in the past, and I think each of those are going to be really important. I think what also is important is the rules on 45Z as they roll out early next year sometime.

We believe those will be positive relative to what we've seen in the past and expect certainly by the third quarter of next year to have those full rules outlined by the time we're sequestering carbon so we can earn the 45Z tax credit. Then on top of that, the voluntary credits or the LCFS credit. It's just a step-by-step process, but at this point, the equipment is in construction and in manufacture. We're on track to somewhere in that third quarter begin to capture carbon. When we turn it on, we're basically turning on at a full rate. We have no reason to believe that our partner won't be operational as well.

So I mean, I think that when you look at that and the interest that we have, not only in the low carbon ethanol, which I think don't underestimate the interest in low CI ethanol, both domestically and globally, especially as we start to see what we believe will be better outcomes in Europe on CORSIA modeling is what we're hearing as well, as well as some of the other things that are happening relative to modeling in carbon markets. But I think what's also really important is our door is also being knocked for getting those carbon credits and also providing us with payments relative to those credits. So I think the value of it is just very well misrepresented in our current share price.

I think that's going to have to change because the value of these assets are just too high in the future, especially relative to the future cash flows of when you add that corn oil in Nebraska, add on top of that protein in both of those plants, add on top of that, those are some of the best plants that we have, generally speaking, long term. The value of that asset base is underrepresented in our share price. But I think one thing that's really important here is that which is missed, and we don't talk about it much, is we think by the end of the year, early into the first quarter, we will have nine of our 10 plants approved for D3 RIN generation for 1% or 2% of our capacity.

That D3 RINs, because you add certain things into fermentation, when you talk about eight or nine million gallons and the spread between D3 and D6 RINs is $2.50-$3 a gallon, that is not represented at all in our capabilities as a company. On top of that, the corn kernel fiber program in California is not represented either. We think in 2025, that also gets added to carbon earnings. There's a lot more going on here than just sequestering carbon, especially around D3 RIN generation with our ability to make 1% or 2% of cellulosic or next-generation ethanol, as well as what's going to happen with SFCT in the future. It's a step-by-step process, but I think each of those milestones will be met in carbon, and it's just now a path to turning it on in the third quarter of next year.

Hey, thanks, guys. I'll leave it there.

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Salvador Tiano with Bank of America.

Salvator Tiano (Analyst)

Thank you very much. Firstly, I want to check a little bit on any update on Blue Blade Energy. I think the plan was you test the SAF technology, and if it works, you would start construction on the pilot plant this year, 2024. So where do we stand on that?

Chris Osowski (CEO)

Yeah, I think from the Blue Blade standpoint, what we've done is we had a partnership, and we looked at several different catalysts, or we looked at a catalyst that we had control of. And at this point, we've decided not to proceed with that catalyst. I think there's other things with the other technologies that are out there that are much quicker to get to market. When you bring a new technology to market, as we learned in clean sugar and even in Sequence and other proteins, it just takes a long time to scale up. And since there are other technologies, much like a Honeywell UOP or others that are out there, we think that that's a much faster path to market for alcohol-to-jet. Our focus from that standpoint is we want to be a provider of low-carbon fuels, energy, and ingredients.

And that's where we're spending our time. Before anything happens in sustainable aviation fuel with alcohol-to-jet, you have to be able to decarbonize the alcohol. And being a significant advantage for Green Plains is we will have some of the largest quantities in the United States and globally on decarbonized alcohol middle of next year. And that's where we're going to focus our efforts today. I think for Green Plains to build an alcohol-to-jet plant is probably not something we focus on today because I think we can earn a significant return for our shareholders by just making sure that we're a great supplier of low carbon ingredients and fuels.

Salvator Tiano (Analyst)

Perfect. And I wanted to ask also what's kind of your view for ethanol exports next year and essentially demand from some key markets or key producing markets like Brazil and India, given what's happening in sugar production, among others?

Chris Osowski (CEO)

We think this train is going to continue down the road relative to us finding our path into global markets as they have increased their blend rates. You saw Brazil did that. You saw other countries have done that. We are going to—we're hitting some of the European markets as a country as well. The EU is very strong, and we continue to think that will continue to gain momentum, especially if we see positive news out of CORSIA for U.S. ethanol and the way they model that relative to 20-year-old modeling that's been in place. I think they've realized that we grow more corn per acre than 20 years ago, and that reduces our overall carbon scores. Generally speaking, the demand remains robust globally, and I think that's going to continue because I think we are a value molecule.

We're $0.40-$0.50 less than wholesale gasoline today at a minimum, plus in the United States with the RIN, but globally, we are very, very competitive as a molecule, and I think we've shown that we can ship significant quantities, and I don't believe next year will be any different than this year, and I think we need that, and I think we also continue to see blends increase in the United States, especially as we go through quarter after quarter of a driving demand, which doesn't seem to be going down right now. We've seen good driving miles in the last couple of months, and we saw great demand this week relative to the blend rates.

If you add all that up together, and if we can keep these stocks in check as we move into the end of the year, I think we have a really good shot at a good margin environment in 2025.

Salvator Tiano (Analyst)

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Kristin Owen with Oppenheimer.

Hi. Thank you for taking the question. A couple here that I wanted to ask on. First is the protein margins. You touched on this being a little bit lighter than what you were hoping for. That spread over traditional soybean meal, not quite where you want it to be yet. But as we look at some of the soybean crush capacity and the transition in the policy in 2025, how are you thinking about the premium for ultra-high protein as we come into this transition year next year?

Chris Osowski (CEO)

It's really going to depend on what market we go to. When we are sending our product internationally, as we continue to grow those markets, we realize the full spread and more many times, or at least within plus or minus 5 or 10 points of that. Our pet food demand remains strong. We've just renewed with our long-term customer and increased volumes during the first quarter of next year on our 50 Pro product and continue to get full access to that with a new plant coming on next year as well. But I think, look, there's a lot of protein coming. We've seen a lot of protein hit the market already, and we've settled out at these types of spreads. Demand remains really good. We'll have to wait and see what happens out of South America. Look, 14 or 15 million tons sounds like a lot.

If it all comes at once, it is a lot of soy meal hitting the market. But when ethanol came on, we brought 40 million tons of distillers onto the market as well. And so I think we are going to absorb much of that. It may take a few more quarters or at least another year or so. But look, we still earn a margin. It's not like we don't earn a margin and a return on our investment. It's just that we've seen some compression relative to the soy against corn. And I think that's probably most likely stabilizing at this point. I don't think we're going to see much more compression against those spreads. And we continue to make our product and sell everything that we produce.

And one of our past and one of our things that we've always talked about is our way to get out of that. We can make 60% protein products and higher, even. And we're working on even some of those products today. And Leslie's team is making great progress. And we're learning how to reduce the cost of producing Sequence, which I think drives a bigger margin contribution as well as we go into next year with the improvements we're making and some of the other technology improvements we made and the cost of production coming down. So it's a little bit of learnings, but I think in the next 18 months, a lot of this protein will just get absorbed into the market. There's not a bunch more soy crush capacity to come on. And it seems to be coming on in a more methodical pace.

You start to see investments being made in export capacity as well to get some of this protein out of the country.

Okay. That's helpful. I was actually thinking there's some soybean crush capacity that's not coming on and potentially slowing. So that could be a tailwind for your margins next year as well.

Yeah. We've seen some of that where projects were abandoned because of the cost versus the overall margin structure. And we believe that's happening as well, that it will come on slower or not come on at all. And I think that will be helpful overall. And then we get into next year and let our RD market settle out and see where that settles out from the oil standpoint as well.

Super. So then my follow-up question, as you said, the $250-300 million run rate value of carbon just from those Nebraska assets, probably not baked into most folks' models at this point in time. Help us understand now that that is becoming much more within the next 12 months' time frame. Help us understand the mechanics of those credits, how you think about monetization of them, what sort of tolling fees you might have to pay to use that pipeline. Just give us a little bit more granularity so that we can build that into our forecasts.

So let's start from the pipeline standpoint. We have an agreement with Trailblazer on transport and injection, and that's just a fixed fee. And there's no sharing of our upside and our credit values from the revenue side. So we just pay a standard transport midstream relationship that we have with Tallgrass and/or with Trailblazer owned by Tallgrass. And it's very simple. And then what we generate is revenue from 45Z, 45Q, and either voluntary credits or LCFS credits. And that's the revenue side of the equation. And I think we've outlined in the past our carbon score reductions at Central City, Wood River, and York, which will be on the pipelines to start. And I'll get into York in a second.

But when we look at the revenue side of the reduction, which is $0.02 per gallon per point from our starting point, it's everything below 50 carbon score. That's on the revenue side with the 45Z. On top of that, we'll be generating over 800,000 tons of high-quality carbon credits that either will flow into California or from the fuel standpoint and will monetize LCFS and/or from voluntary markets. So monetizing the 45Z and monetizing the carbon credit will be something that there are well-developed markets to do that. We've seen those trades in that 90%-95% of face value happen. And that's in our numbers as well. So we're going to sell those credits and monetize them and not use them internally unless we need to down the road from a standpoint of then we can realize 100% monetization of those credits.

We add all that revenue up. We discount it by somewhere between five and 10% to get to our net revenue, deduct our transport fees, a little bit of operational costs for the facility to get to an EBITDA number. Now, when we look at York, York today is a 45Q plant because they start with a higher carbon score. But we are on deck to lower their carbon score through low energy distillation that we would expect that we will try to get that into service within the first 6 to 12 months of their operation so that we can have that plant qualify for 45Z as well, which is upside to those numbers. Once we're able to do that, then we'll do other things to reduce our carbon scores overall to give upside to those numbers.

It's 287 million gallons generating 800,000 tons or more of carbon credits. And today we have interest from companies and the broker markets to take our credits to market and/or come up with some structure to monetize those credits the day we start. And we can actually start selling credits before we even start to sequester carbon, knowing that we will be sequestering carbon at a certain date. And we have interest in that as well. Generally speaking, the demand for the alcohol remains strong from alcohol-to-jet players, and the demand for the credit remains strong from the tax credit markets all the way up from the big tech companies that need to buy offsets, and they can use our tax credits all the way down into just monetizing into the LCFS market. Is that helpful for you? Did we lose everybody?

Salvator Tiano (Analyst)

No. We must have lost our operator. Time for the next call?

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Matthew Blair with TPH.

Matthew Blair (Analyst)

Thanks. And good morning. And congrats, Jim and Phil, on your respective moves here. I wanted to ask about the election risk to the IRA and the associated credits like 45Z and 45Q. I think The Wall Street Journal had a story yesterday talking about how a potential candidate for Treasury Secretary was talking about scrapping the entire IRA. What do you make of that? How much does that concern you? And is there anything you can be doing today to potentially mitigate some of that risk?

Chris Osowski (CEO)

I'll let Devin comment on that first, and I'll close off after that.

Matthew Blair (Analyst)

Sure. So thanks for the question, Matthew. We saw that article, and there's been a lot of talk in this campaign of this Republican sweep of trying to eliminate the entire IRA. You recall that they tried to do this with the debt ceiling lift back in April of 2023, and there were seven Republican House members, all of whom had voted against the IRA, who blocked that from happening as it relates to 45Z. So there remains bipartisan support for not only preserving but extending 45Z. Several bills have been introduced with both Republican and Democratic support to extend that credit. And you got to remember that there's now multiple industries that are interested in this. It's not just biodiesel and renewable diesel and ethanol. It's also sustainable aviation fuel because the 45B credit rolls into the 45Z.

So we believe that regardless of the election outcome, there will be support for that program. And while some aspects of the IRA may be curtailed if Republicans control all three corners, we think the prospects are bright for having that extended to have a much longer runway.

Chris Osowski (CEO)

And one last thing, Matthew, is the 45Q. Let's just say worst-case scenario, the 45Q is the remaining program. If that were to happen, which we do not believe that will happen, that is not part of the IRA. It's expanded during the IRA, but it's not part of the IRA. And I think that that's an important point as well. And it's a 12-year program that starts when you start sequestering carbon. It doesn't go away from two years ago to 10 years from now. It goes away 12 years after you start to sequester carbon. It's been permanent for a long time in the program. And it's a direct-pay program as well for the first five years.

While we certainly would not like that to be the program, because I think there's much more opportunities around 45Z, if that were worst-case scenario, then we'd have less revenues around carbon, but it would still be a significantly profitable project. Instead of paying off in less than a year, maybe it would pay off in a year and four months. It's really not that much of a big difference for us. But it certainly is nicer to have the 45Z, and we do believe that will stay intact.

Matthew Blair (Analyst)

Thanks. That's helpful. And then earlier in the call, there was some talk about Mount Vernon and Obion increasing capacity. What's the total capacity increases that you're expecting? And does that shift anything on your product slate? Would you expect to increase your exports as a result of that new capacity?

Chris Osowski (CEO)

Mount Vernon is complete. We've redone all of the full conveyor systems, among other bins and tanks and systems and processes, and that was needed. We're starting to ramp that plant back up as we speak. That should add about 20 million gallons of yearly production run rate capacity there. When we add gallons, we add tons of corn oil, and we add tons of protein on top of that. That has a protein system down there as well. It's going to be all three components there. In Obion, we're waiting for final construction of the RTO instead of a TO, thermal oxidizer to a regenerative thermal oxidizer. That will allow the plant then to get back to the traditional run rate. That is another 20-25 million gallons of opportunity per year as well.

That project should be completed in the first quarter of next year. That plant should be running at a much higher rate. But because of the longer-term effects of this piece of equipment, we haven't been able to. And then we brought protein on. And now combined, it's just overloading all of the systems. And we're going to be able to get that back in line sometime, hopefully early in the first quarter of next year as well. So the two of those combined should add 40-50 million gallons, about 40 million gallons of additional capacity that we bring online. But it doesn't necessarily change where we ship. It's just shipping more product to the same markets. And those markets are ready to absorb everything we bring on.

Matthew Blair (Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question is from the line of Craig Irwin with Roth Capital Partners.

First, I would say congratulations still on the promotion, Jim. Going to miss you. It's been great working with you this last many years. My question is around clean sugar. I wanted to ask for a little bit more color. Todd, do you feel some of the projected economics that you've talked about these last couple of years are starting to be confirmed by the plant startup? And then if we rewind about a year, there was some optimism that we could start seeing additional facilities once this plant was up and running. What do you expect to see out of Shenandoah? What do you need to see out of this plant to make a go-decision to invest in the next facility? And can you remind us maybe on the CapEx and project returns that we should be thinking about?

Chris Osowski (CEO)

Yeah, thanks, and we have significant optimism for this product, the production process. There's definitely things that we will do different in a much larger facility than we did here relative to some of the equipment that we had outlined in the past where we had some early issues that we worked through and have fixed some of those issues. But I think the engineering on plant number two would be different than plant number one just in terms of improving the capabilities of the asset. The econs are very similar to when we started this five years ago. We said it's $0.67-$0.87 a gallon uplift relative to making alcohol. And those still exist today, even relative to sugar prices and sweetener prices that are out there on top of lower corn and input costs.

So from that standpoint, nothing's changed economically on how we think about a full-blown build of a clean sugar facility at a plant, either ours or even potentially standalone with support of a Gen 1 ethanol plant. So additional facilities, more to come on that. I think what we want to do is, like I said, it's only been a week. We've been at it. Give us a little more time. But I think what has been proven is that we can make the product. We're shipping the product. It's in rail cars. It'll be shipped in trucks. It'll end up on people's doorsteps for them to analyze. We still have to get food-grade certification.

We'd like to run it just a little bit longer than a week or two and continue to optimize and continue to drive better and better product quality because I think we continue to do that. It's not just around 95 dextrose equivalent. There's 63 and 48. I think that we want to make sure we can make all of those as well. Then we want to make sure we get into the food market. It'll be a little bit before we decide on facility number two or plant number two. I can tell you, based on early returns, we're very optimistic that that technology will be radically transformed, not just what we can do at a dry mill, but the industry in general over the long term, not necessarily in the next 6 to 12 months. CapEx still working through that.

We've seen some stuff come down and some stuff go up. Labor is still a challenge when you build anything, and long lead time on electrical gear and switches and those type of things remain a significant challenge with all the data center demand that exists in the United States and other things that are happening around nuclear and those type of things. But when we look at CST and we look at clean sugar and we look at what we can make out of a dry grind facility when everybody said, "You can't do that," I'm going to tell you this right now. We are absolutely 100% doing it. It's an amazing technology from Fluid Quip. Still has some work to do relative to what we would do maybe in serial number two, but we are really, really optimistic about the future of this technology as a whole.

Thank you for that. So my follow-up question, I guess, is a two-part question, right? Can you maybe share with us the, well, the housekeeping side is really sales mix on Hi-Pro products, 50 Pro versus 60 Pro. Do you have an estimated mix exiting the year? And then comments around what you think is reasonable for Green Plains to target in 2025. And then the second part is the blue sky economics out of Hi-Pro. One of the more exciting parts of the story was always the collaboration with Novozymes for some tailored products that might have improved nutritional profile and make it an even better match for many of the markets that you're pursuing. Do you have an update on the Novozymes partnership? Is there anything we should look for there over the next number of quarters?

I'll start with that. I'll let Leslie talk about some of the things that we're doing around product quality and nutritional quality and working with other customers on that. But we have re-signed our agreement with Novozymes and our partnership. We did it quietly as we were working together on several products and several opportunities. It's an amazing partnership between Green Plains and Novozymes and what we've been able to accomplish together, and especially around development of higher proteins and different nutritional characteristics that we continue to work on. So that has been renewed. On top of that, we talked about our pet food customer has begun to renew for 2025 as well. We just finished the first quarter at higher volumes in 2025. And so we're really excited to work together on all different types of recipes with Novozymes, inclusive of generating these D3 RINs as well.

Everything evolved in all of these technologies, and when we started out, we thought we'd put protein everywhere. Along came the IRA, and now we're going to invest capital into carbon sequestration with significant returns. Someday, I'm absolutely confident we'll continue to build protein systems as we absorb this protein into the market because what we have is that, depending on the species, it's a very special product that does really interesting things relative to that. We continue to work with some of the largest pet food customers in the world on 60 Pro inclusions in 2025, and we believe we are going to get a significant lift relative to demand from this year to next year. Today, we are making 60 Pro product. We are shipping 60 Pro product around the world.

As we always say, it always takes longer than we ever really want it to take. But when you kind of look at what we've been able to accomplish so far and where we've been able to ship this product, our team has done a great job finding homes for the product. And we are still working with those same large pet food customers on getting 60 Pro in large volumes into their systems. What we want to make sure, though, and Leslie maybe talks about that, is that what we send them is the same every day out of every location. And that's why we wanted to make sure that we did a little bit of CapEx in Wood River and Central City and wanted to make sure that we are able to ship that product consistently.

We are developing new markets in Asia and South America. We expect volumes to ramp up as we get through January and June and then really ramp up in July through December of next year. We have very large volumes we expect to kick in in July of next year. And we have other customers that we're going to sell more volumes of Sequence without negatively impacting anything else that we do. It's only positive impacts. So overall, everything always takes longer, as we always know, but the demand for our product remains strong. And we expect to make significant inroads into the 60 Pro market next year. Leslie, you want to talk a little bit about some of the things we're doing on quality?

Matthew Blair (Analyst)

Sure. Yeah. As Todd mentioned earlier, I think you're kind of looking at a bookend where we're looking at consistency on the product side, right, really making sure that that is where our customers can actually go to increased inclusion levels. And then the other side, which was already mentioned, is really the cost reduction. So that's been an opportunity for us to really tailor the use of our biological system to fine-tune it. On top of that, the team has been working on increased protein concentrations, which is, again, almost a third-generation product that we're working on. But I think the main focus has been between that consistency and the OpEx reduction side.

Excellent. Well, thanks again for taking my questions. And congratulations on the really strong crush margins this quarter. It's good to see those come through.

Chris Osowski (CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

I would now like to hand today's call back over to Todd Becker, CEO, for any closing remarks.

Chris Osowski (CEO)

Yeah. Thanks, everybody, for jumping on the call and participating in today's call. Our teams continue to execute at a high rate. We look forward to sharing our continued progress with you in coming months. We also want to make sure that we provide you with the information you need to make the best decisions around our company. And as you can see, with our carbon strategy, which is very unique and very advantaged and very early in the cycle, is going to be providing significant, what we believe, shareholder value creation. On top of that, all of our products are starting to kick in.

Obviously, when strong margin environments exist in the base product of fuel, which we believe will start to ramp back up as we get into 2025, I think we're well positioned to capitalize on all of that we've invested and all of the strategic advantages that we have as a company. Again, we wish Jim best of luck and Phil, best of luck in his new role. We really appreciate your support. We look forward to talking to you next quarter. Thank you for everybody being on the call.

Operator (participant)

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