Q2 2025 Gevo Inc Earnings Call
Speaker #2: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Gevo Incorporated's second-quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode.
Speaker #2: After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one-one on your telephone.
Speaker #2: 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.
Speaker #2: 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.
Speaker #3: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call. To discuss Gevo's second quarter 2025 results, I'm Eric Frey, Vice President of Finance and Strategy at Gevo.
Speaker #3: With me today, we have Patrick Gruber, our Chief Executive Officer, Lake Aguirre, our ief Financial Officer, Chris Ryan, our President and Chief Operating Officer, and Paul Bloom, our ief Business Officer.
Speaker #3: Earlier today, we issued a press release that outlines our second 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.
Speaker #3: 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.
Speaker #3: 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&D plants, and other activities described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are incorporated by reference.
Speaker #3: We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. In addition, we may provide certain non-GAAP financial information on this call. The relevant definitions and GAAP reconciliations may be found in our earnings release, which can be found on our website at www.gevo.com, in the Investor Relations section.
Speaker #3: 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.
Speaker #3: 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.
Speaker #3: Pat?
Speaker #4: Thanks, Eric. We had a really nice quarter. It's great to have turned the corner on adjusted EBITDA. Our financial results this quarter and for the first six months of the year are consistent with our expectations for the year. But, you know what?
Speaker #4: We achieved them faster than we anticipated. It surprised us. We're making good progress. The key achievements in addition to being adjusted EBITDA positive and incrementally net profitable include successfully selling voluntary carbon credits generated at our North Dakota site with carbon capture and sequestration.
Speaker #4: Also, the selling of tax credits, the excellent ethanol and R&D operations, all of this while never losing sight of our long-term objectives of successfully financing and deploying renewable resource-based jet fuel plants.
Speaker #4: Our existing operations have provided us with a step up and adjusted EBITDA, while at the same time providing the ingredients to deploy those jet fuel plants.
Speaker #4: Putting things into context, it's clear to all that it takes time to finance and build synthetic aviation fuel, the jet fuel, and the SAF plants.
Speaker #4: Let me make a few observations on this point. Making jet fuel in the U.S. from abundant, cost-effective raw materials that are grown domestically makes a lot of sense.
Speaker #4: There's a finite amount of jet fuel on a barrel of oil. Jet fuel demand is increasing, and the US alone, jet fuel demand is expected to increase an additional 2.3 billion gallons per year over the next 10 years according to projections from the US EIA.
Speaker #4: That's the energy information agency. However, the US is not building new refineries. In fact, we are shutting them down and converting them for other products.
Speaker #4: So where will the future jet fuel come from? Imports? Well, that doesn't make a lot of sense to serve our domestic energy needs. We view that renewable jet from cornstarch carbohydrates, in other words, the sugars, can be achieved at a cost-to-production similar to petroleum-based jet fuel once fully scaled up and operating.
Speaker #4: And it can deliver the added market-driven attribute of a low or even negative net carbon footprint. With our business system, it is possible to achieve both a low carbon footprint and a low cost.
Speaker #4: This opportunity is absolutely huge in our view. We continue to pursue it. Two, we are very focused on our alcohol to jet $30 million gallon plant design, targeting its first deployment to our North Dakota site.
Speaker #4: Our North Dakota site is particularly attractive because of the great ethanol and protein operation there. As well as the carbon capture assets. We are in the midst of translating our ATJ60, that's the $60 million gallon plant design, to the ATJ30 design.
Speaker #4: With the knowledge we have gained by engineering the heck out of these plants, we believe that we can make great reductions in project employment costs, both technical and financial.
Speaker #4: A 30 million gallon ATJ plant would need about 50 million gallons of ethanol as a feedstock. This is a practical size where the economies of scale work.
Speaker #4: Smaller plants than this would be expected to be severely disadvantaged in cost price. Our ATJ60 project targeted for Lake Preston is plugging along albeit slowly.
Speaker #4: We've been working the DOE and our ustomers, and we are waiting to see what happens with the carbon dioxide pipeline. It'll take natural course; we are done with the engineering on it and have shifted resources to the ATJ30 plant.
Speaker #4: The overall strategy for Gevo is to use our current base of assets to improve profitability and increase carbon credit sales and tax credit sales, while deploying ATJ plants.
Speaker #4: We see improved operations and associated profitability as giving us solid footing to launch ATJ projects. And to achieve our long-run goal, ATJ continues to be the major path for growth.
Speaker #4: And selling carbon abatement as a co-product is key. I'll turn it over to Lake Aguirre, our Chief Financial Officer, who will take through the latest financial results.
Speaker #4: Lake A.
Speaker #5: Thank ou, Pat. We did indeed have an excellent second quarter. Now, here are the numbers. We ended the quarter with $127 million in cash, cash equivalent, and restricted cash.
Speaker #5: During the second quarter, combined operating revenue, interest, and investment income was $44.7 million. Our income from operations was $5.8 million, and our non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA was $17.3 million.
Speaker #5: Gevo North Dakota generated income from operations of $17.1 million, and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA of $24.2 million. Gevo R&D generated income from operations of $1.5 million, and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA of $2.6 million.
Speaker #5: And finally, net income per share attributed to Gevo was $0.01 per share for the second quarter. Here are some more details. Our second quarter results include a one-time catch-up recognition of our clean fuel production credits over the last two quarters, since among other things, we closed the sale of $22 million of our CFPC credits in the second quarter.
Speaker #5: Going forward, our results will reflect the CFPC credits that we generated in the period being reported. Our first quarter results did not include one month of Gevo North Dakota operations since we bought the facility at the end of January.
Speaker #5: It did not include any carbon dioxide removal credit sales, and it did not recognize generation of and proceeds from the sale of the clean fuel production tax credits.
Speaker #5: So as a result, we think our combined first and second quarter results more closely represent where we are. For the six-month ending June 30th, 2025, our net income grew by $20 million, and our non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA grew by $32 million compared the same period last year.
Speaker #5: We see this as recurring step-change growth, which we expect will continue to grow from there. We are thrilled with our second quarter performance.
Speaker #5: Both operationally and financially. We believe our businesses are well positioned for sustained success and strategic for the execution of our rowth plans. Now, I will hand it over to Paul.
Speaker #6: Thanks, Lake A. During the second quarter, we started our carbon business and sold over $1 million worth of carbon dioxide removal credits, or CDRs. In addition, we were recently featured in NASDAQ's 2024 Sustainability Report for our supply of high-integrity carbon removal credits from Gevo North Dakota.
Speaker #6: We believe this new co-product business could add a significant stream of new stable revenue for us as we are able to immediately supply a growing global marketplace with high-integrity credits.
Speaker #6: We anticipate growing CDR credit sales to three to five million dollars by the end of this year and estimate long-term sales of this new co-product could exceed $30 million per year from our current production volumes which could be significantly expanded in the future.
Speaker #6: We think the tionality to sell carbon separately from the fuel provides us with a unique advantage. As our business expands, we like having the ability to balance returns by separating and shifting carbon attributes from volatile low-carbon fuel markets to selling CDRs and potentially more stable, higher-value markets.
Speaker #6: For some additional background, bio-based carbon dioxide is a co-product of ethanol fermentation that can be efficiently captured for use in industrial applications such as carbonated beverages, petroleum processing, or permanently stored in appropriate geological formations to generate carbon dioxide removal credits.
Speaker #6: The high-integrity CDR credits we are currently selling are known as CORCs, or CO2 removal credits. These credits are certified by Pure Earth and can be purchased by customers and retired immediately to offset the effect of emissions.
Speaker #6: The Gevo North Dakota facility has the appropriate geological formation and operational Class 6 well for carbon capture and sequestration, with a total estimated sequestration capacity of up to $1 million metric tons of CO2 per year.
Speaker #6: Our facility was also the first Pure Earth certified CO2 storage facility in the United States. Our credits are certified by Pure Earth under its strict standards for 1,000-plus years of permanence and other key quality parameters required by customers.
Speaker #6: Our research tells us that, in total, the marketplace for carbon dioxide removal credits has exceeded $10 billion in the past few years, reflecting nearly 40 million tons of CO2 removals.
Speaker #6: We look forward to increasing our participation in this market as it continues to expand. We also began our business of selling clean fuel production tax credits.
Speaker #6: Clean fuel production credits, or CFPCs, are also known as the 45Z tax credit. We expect to generate cash from the production, sale, and transfer of credits to third-party taxpayers.
Speaker #6: On June 30th of this year, we entered into our first tax credit transfer agreement for $22 million worth of credits to a third party.
Speaker #6: We are one of the first companies to monetize these credits, and we anticipate finalizing additional tax credit transfer agreements with third-party taxpayers this year to sell out our anticipated volume of credits for the balance of 2025.
Speaker #6: Based on our production of a low-carbon ethanol and R&D, we expect our clean fuel production credits to benefit our net income and adjusted EBITDA by more than $10 million per quarter going forward.
Speaker #6: For clarity, these sales do not show up on the revenue line, but due to the applicable accounting standards, instead show up as a reduction to our cost of goods sold line on the income statement.
Speaker #6: I'll conclude with some brief remarks on our technology platforms, which are driving innovation for our ected growth. First, Verity is our wholly-owned sidiary that is developing a software platform for traceability, compliance reporting, and the monetization of carbon intensity across the agriculture and renewable fuels business system.
Speaker #6: Verity is earning revenue now and is in growth mode. In July, Landis, a $2.4 billion agricultural solutions company, spanning 34 states that connects thousands of farmers announced the partnership with Verity to track and trace their 2025 soybean crop for premium market opportunities and a first-of-its-kind carbon intensity supply chain program for ethanol production.
Speaker #6: These supply chains are complex, involving extensive data and have significant compliance requirements. Verity aims to help farmers and partners like Landis easily obtain high-quality, verifiable results. Our innovative solutions are starting to pay dividends for Gevo and our customers.
Speaker #6: Next, we continue to make good progress on developing Gevo's proprietary ethanol-to-olefins technology with our development partners LG Chem and Axins. Gevo's ETO technology targets the lowest capital and operating cost to convert ethanol into olefins that can be used for renewable fuels and chemicals including SAF and biopropylene.
Speaker #6: As of today, Gevo has approximately 80 active global patent assets in our ETO intellectual property portfolio. Finally, our long-term growth is supported by a strong intellectual property portfolio, including our SAF platform, ETO technology, ISObutanol portfolio, and carbon tracking solutions.
Speaker #6: We hold over 400 patent assets globally, many granted recently as we've refined our ATJ30 and ATJ60 designs. We continue to secure new patents as our innovations progress.
Speaker #6: Let's now go to Chris to talk about operations. Chris?
Speaker #7: Thanks, Paul. Let me review some key operating results for the second quarter. Our team at Gevo North Dakota continues to keep the plant running well.
Speaker #7: And the production numbers through the second quarter support that point. In the second quarter, we ground 5.7 million bushels of corn to produce 17 million gallons of low-carbon fuel-grade ethanol.
Speaker #7: And that's around three gallons per bushel yield, which is good. That also equates to about a $67 million gallon per year run rate. On ethanol.
Speaker #7: We produced 52,000 tons of high-protein animal feed and over $5 million pounds of distiller's corn oil which is about one pound of oil per bushel of corn ground.
Speaker #7: In our carbon capture and storage business, we sequestered over 40,000 metric tons of CO2 in the second quarter. That CO2 being sequestered is a small fraction of the capacity the reservoir that we sit on top of in North Dakota.
Speaker #7: We have a lot of extra capacity to sequester CO2, and we're actively talking to third parties to do that. All these numbers equate to approximately equal amounts by weight of ethanol, high-protein feed, and CO2.
Speaker #7: With some corn oil on top. This is a good diversification for our operations. At our R&D business in Northwest Iowa, where we have partnered with three dairy farms, we produced about 92,000 million BTUs of renewable natural gas during the second quarter.
Speaker #7: And we continue to optimize that process to push production higher. This year has been a great year for growing corn. This year's harvest in the United States is projected to be another record year.
Speaker #7: And that's great for us. But the farmers really need to see some new uses for corn. That brings me to our synthetic aviation fuel or SAF platform.
Speaker #7: We've been building our SAF platform because we see a substantial and expanding market ahead, one where we believe Gevo is strongly positioned to lead.
Speaker #7: According to the US Energy Information Administration data, US jet fuel demand is projected to rise by more than $2 billion gallons per year over the next decade.
Speaker #7: We have a great opportunity to help meet that demand with domestic production, using agriculture and rural communities as the backbone to do that. At Gevo, we've created the template for doing that using ethanol as the feedstock to produce SAF, or jet fuel, in a modular plant.
Speaker #7: It would only take few dozen of our ATJ facilities to process roughly three and a half billion gallons of ethanol. Into more than $2 billion gallons of competitively priced domestically produced jet fuel.
Speaker #7: Channeling billions of dollars in investment into rural agricultural communities and creating a new use for corn, which the agricultural industry really needs. It's worth noting that traditional fossil-based jet fuel makes up only about 9% of the output from traditional U.S. refineries, whereas the ATJ process that we've designed can produce more than 90% jet fuel from its production stream.
Speaker #7: To capture this opportunity, we've created three standardized plant designs. We call them ATJ30, ATJ60, and ATJ150; all convert low carbon ethanol into SAF. Gevo North Dakota stands out as a promising ATJ30 location thanks to our existing carbon capture and storage infrastructure, reservoir access to low-cost, low-carbon ethanol, and the large acreage we have at our site.
Speaker #7: We have leveraged our ATJ design from South Dakota and our engineers are busy editing it for the ATJ30 design to be deployed at our site in North Dakota.
Speaker #7: For ATJ60, the project in South Dakota, we remain in active discussions with the U.S. Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office to advance the $1.63 billion loan guarantee for our South Dakota project.
Speaker #7: And we're pacing our development spend to align with the financing timeline. In the future, once our ATJ process is operational, we intend to expand the business by leveraging our SAF platform and proprietary systems through multiple business models including joint ventures, licensing, and build-own operate.
Speaker #7: With about 180 existing brownfield ethanol plants in the United States, plus additional greenfield sites domestically and worldwide, we see significant potential for scaling. With that, I'll hand it over to Pat.
Speaker #4: Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Paul, and Lake A. You guys did a good job at hitting the highlights. Let's go ahead and open it up for questions.
Speaker #4: Operator?
Speaker #8: As a reminder, to ask a question, please press *11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again.
Speaker #8: Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Duchamp, Eilani, with Jeffries, your line is open.
Speaker #9: Hi, team. This is Whitney with Thelema On for Duchamp. Impressive results this quarter, especially on the early monetization of CDR and CFPC credits. So on the CFPC monetization, like while ethanol-related CFPCs have been monetized biogas credits haven't yet, so what's holding back that monetization piece?
Speaker #9: And when do you ect to see such activity?
Speaker #4: We already included it here, Lake A. Why don't you give it a little more explanation? As for CFPCs for ethanol, we haven't seen any others from ethanol before.
Speaker #4: Go ahead, Lake A.
Speaker #10: Yeah. So the 45Z, or the Clean Fuel Production Tax Credit for ethanol production, was what we monetized in the sale of the $22 million sale to a private party that was announced.
Speaker #10: The transaction was consummated with also making use of the relevant call it insurance policy to make sure residual risks are actually being managed on behalf of Gevo and also on the buyer party.
Speaker #10: What we do expect, especially now, is that the big, beautiful bill has passed and effectively, hopefully, rendered the discussions around the retroactive changing tax law issues addressed. We believe that issue is actually officially sort of addressed with the passing of the bill.
Speaker #10: Expectation is ethanol facilities that actually qualify for 45Z or CFPC the market should hit up and you're going to start seeing some of that sale.
Speaker #10: But we are one of the first parties to actually get a chance to actually execute the transaction. And as we articulated, we are also in the process of monetizing the rest of our clean fuel production tax credit for the for this year what we should also I liked is we have a pathway as part of the execution of actually selling our current tax credit for 2025 we have a pathway that we've identified to also be able to place our credits for 2026.
Speaker #9: Okay. Thank you. And then can we expect a similar cadence for the R&D business?
Speaker #10: That is exactly right. In fact, the deal construct, the transaction structure for our ethanol facility is very similar to that of our R&D facility. So, the rest of the tax credits that we are going to monetize for the rest of the year are for our ethanol facility and our R&D facility.
Speaker #10: And same cadence for 2026 going forward.
Speaker #9: Sounds good. Thank you.
Speaker #8: Thank you. Our next question comes from Amit Dayal with HC Wainwright. Your line is open.
Speaker #11: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Congrats on a really positive quarter. I think a lot people are surprised you know with how the financials are showing up now.
Speaker #11: With respect to the CFPC, the 45Z credits, guys, the $10 million benefit per quarter, is that sort of a base case? What kind of variance should we expect on that?
Speaker #11: You know, at least for the next few quarters, as far as you have visibility?
Speaker #4: Lake A, why don't you go ahead and answer that?
Speaker #11: Sure. Short answer to your question is that over $10 million or that's what $10 million number is actually stressed. As you you guys are probably familiar, the monetization of any production tax credit is tied to the actual production of the facility.
Speaker #11: We believe that if there are no going concerns—and we don't have any going concerns—we could actually do better than $10 million in tax credit generation per quarter.
Speaker #11: So, while I think it's a slightly conservative view of what we've disclosed, we actually believe we could do better than $10 million of credit generation every quarter.
Speaker #11: And that number is a combination of 45Z generation from our ethanol facility and our R&D facility.
Speaker #4: And then the last thing to add, for all you guys, all you analysts, do me a favor and make sure that you heard the point about this goes to a credit against cost of goods sold, not the revenue line.
Speaker #4: Don't be doing your modeling by showing these credits as revenue items. They're not. That's not how the accounting treatment works. It's a credit towards the cost of goods sold.
Speaker #11: Understood. Yeah. I got that. And then you know the path to $30 million in CDR sales, Pat, can you share is that going to be driven by you ow just a better capacity utilization for the sequestration business?
Speaker #11: Or are there other avenues that get you from, you know, the $3 million to $5 million this year, and then towards the $30 million in the future?
Speaker #4: Yeah. I'm going to let Paul answer this. And go ahead, Paul. Go ahead. Answer.
Speaker #10: Sure. So so you know when we think about this going forward, you know we're just getting started. Obviously, in the in the CDR market.
Speaker #10: And the bulk of our carbon capture and sequestration the the CCS value is going into low carbon fuel markets today. So we'll be shifting that as we see the market develop into the CDR sales.
Speaker #10: And then long-term, right, as we we get there, meaning the next two years or so, we're going to be trying to grow that as much as we can.
Speaker #10: But it's really about a journey to put our carbon value, as much carbon value, in our SAF. Really. And the whole thing is predicated on the high quality in this market.
Speaker #10: And that's where we think you know if you look at the the overall market, we talked a little bit about how it's growing. It's grown to $40 million metric tons.
Speaker #10: Over $10 billion in sales. If you just do the quick math on that, that puts you at about $250 a metric ton for average carbon removal credits.
Speaker #10: But we know that there's a wide range of where that value is. So the way that you or we believe that you go after this value is to have the highest quality credits, the highest quality information.
Speaker #10: That's really where Pure standards come in. We're using the leading crediting platform for engineered carbon removals and putting those into the market, obviously.
Speaker #10: So that's kind of our path as we go forward here, shifting from more volatile, you know, low-carbon fuel markets into something that we think can provide, you know, more returns and less volatility in CDRs.
Speaker #4: So the way to think of it is that we have we produce what? 165 thousand tons, 167 thousand tons or something like that of carbon dioxide.
Speaker #4: The projections and and discussion of revenue from CDRs is related to that. We have a million tons of capacity. That's not contemplated in the numbers that Paul threw .
Speaker #11: Right. Right. Understood. No, that was helpful. Thank you. And then you know now that this clarity on the 45Z credits, etc., and you know the regulatory environment is very favorable, can we expect some maybe faster movement on the ATJ30 or ATJ60 projects?
Speaker #11: Any color on that, Patrick, would help, I guess. You know, investors just get a sense of how that part of the business may shape up in the next 12 to 18 months.
Speaker #4: I'll add . I'll say a comment first, and I'll hand over to Chris. But it comes down to that this had been this last, I don't know, the last eight months or so have been really kind of uncertain.
Speaker #4: Everyone was everybody's kind of, "Whoa, what's going to happen? It's all bad. Everything you know is bad." Well, you know what? It hasn't been for us, obviously.
Speaker #4: We did pretty darn well, and I think that's good for the administration. They're supportive of the kind of thing that we're doing. But we're focused on being cost competitive with petrol.
Speaker #4: Understand that point. There is nobody else like that that I'm aware of. Nobody. And yet we can still eliminate the carbon footprint. The thing is we've got to finish the engineering for the ATJ30 and then get it financed.
Speaker #4: That's the that'll be the rate-limiting steps. The ATJ60 project, as we mentioned, we got to work it through with the DOE. It's a big capital number.
Speaker #4: We still need to know what happens with the Summit pipeline. We've talked about that in the past. We're not going to build it before we have clarity.
Speaker #4: We're not going to try to finance it before until we have clarity around that. What happens on the pipeline? Because why would we ever build a plant that's economically disadvantaged that'd stupid?
Speaker #4: So we're going to do that. Chris, you want to add anything? Talk about the.
Speaker #11: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, thanks, Pat. You know, the good thing is we started with the ATJ60 design that we made for Lake Preston.
Speaker #11: And we took that and basically copy, edit, paste it into the North Dakota site. So right now, our engineers are working on editing it.
Speaker #11: So the good news is that goes a lot faster than if we didn't have that ATJ60 design. So the good thing is you know it is going faster.
Speaker #11: The reality is it takes time to you know do that editing and then actually build a plant of this size. You know it takes a few years.
Speaker #11: But yeah, 're looking for every opportunity we can to to speed things up and cut costs. Okay. Thank you, guys. That's all I have for now.
Speaker #11: I'll take no other questions offline.
Speaker #8: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one-one on your telephone. Again, that is star one-one to ask a question.
Speaker #8: Our next question comes from Peter Gastrick. With water tower research, your line is open.
Speaker #12: Yes. Thank you. I'm Peter Gastrick here from Water Tower. So congratulations on your results and executing your strategy ahead of expectations. You know it's really great see the impact of North Dakota in a very nice EBITDA figure coming through.
Speaker #12: Just a couple of questions from me. The first one is a question about North Dakota expansion options and next steps. I understand your project's economics for ATJ, you know we're designed to be dependent on 45Z.
Speaker #12: But I'd just like to get you know kind of asked whether the outcome of 45Z and the big, beautiful bill, you know whether that affects how you think about capital allocation in North Dakota and your options there, for example, expanding low carbon ethanol capacity versus pursuing ATJ30 or other project up there.
Speaker #12: Thank you.
Speaker #4: Well, the obvious thing is that that tax credit expires in 2029 or the end 2029. And so for an ATJ plant to become operational in time frame, it'd only have a very limited time to capture value from it.
Speaker #4: may be opportunities from the big, beautiful bill for the accelerated depreciation credits. And things like that that we have we're still working through. So it could be that there's other benefits.
Speaker #4: But from the specific thing you're asking about with the 45Z section, for ATJ, it's not it doesn't that's not going to ter. And that's always been our position.
Speaker #4: I think that on with ethanol, it definitely influences how we think about things. I mean, we're going to want to take vantage of that.
Speaker #4: And as much as and optimize it as much as we possibly can. So 've got a whole range of projects like that. Chris, you want to comment further?
Speaker #11: Yeah. I mean, that site in North Dakota is a great site for doing a lot of projects and potential expansion. Because you know you got the CCS there.
Speaker #11: And we have 500 acres of land. And we've got plenty of eager farmers ready to supply more corn. So ou put all that together, and we there are opportunities that we're oking at that they're shorter-term opportunities that could take advantage of the 45Z.
Speaker #11: So it's too early to really talk those. But we're oking at all potential opportunities. You know.
Speaker #4: We got that, like I mentioned, million tons of capacity down there for a year. We got to use it and take advantage of it and figure it out.
Speaker #4: So we'll be we'll be all over this. And I ink that as far as the jet fuel goes, I would on the big, autiful bill, I surely would have liked to have seen jet fuel extended beyond 2029.
Speaker #4: That had been more helpful. I'm not I actually was I'm glad that it got two years rather than none. You know that's helpful for us as a business for sure.
Speaker #4: And you know we're a who's reinvesting that money in expansion of biofuel opportunities here in the US, doing advanced biofuel opportunities. Moving into hydrocarbons.
Speaker #4: Setting up infrastructure for CO2 remember, CO2 is going to be needed in North Dakota for enhanced oil recovery and within a within a few years.
Speaker #4: That's so we need infrastructure for CO2. So great. We're a part of that game. And it's going to be pretty darn interesting going forward. It's a at site.
Speaker #4: We got we did a good job. Our team did a good ob. And the people of our Gevo North Dakota team have done a great job.
Speaker #4: It's been fun to watch. I got to say.
Speaker #8: Okay. Thank you y much. Sorry, just the next just next question, one more question, please, about Verity. So including the new soybean tracking partnership that you just mentioned from last month, how many customers do you now have for Verity?
Speaker #8: And and also just if you're able to share any broad color on your recent discussions you ow with with prospects there, you ow what are your prospects of seeing some more announcements this year on on Verity customers?
Speaker #8: Thank you.
Speaker #4: Well, I'll let you take that question.
Speaker #11: Sure. You know, look, we're really excited about the Verity growth here. And it's great to have the tool working out with the customer like Landis.
Speaker #11: Right now, we've got a handful of ethanol plants and five ethanol customers today with whom we've got agreements on Verity. We think this is going to grow sizably because what Verity is really doing is simplifying that carbon accounting system that you need for tax credits and for voluntary carbon credits.
Speaker #11: So we think Verity's got a nice growth portfolio or perspective going forward. But what we're going to be doing next is really making sure that we can demonstrate everything that Verity does at our Gevo North Dakota site.
Speaker #11: So this will be really helpful for us, as you can see, we're we've got a lot of complexity in the business moving between voluntary credits, compliance credits, tax credits, and so nothing better than to use Verity to demonstrate how we can simplify our lives, which is what Verity really does for the customer.
Speaker #11: So really excited about the growth potential and making it all real in North Dakota for us.
Speaker #4: I'm going to add something on these this tax credit game of getting this stuff verified, like I said, we're aware of anyone doing a 45Z like we've done.
Speaker #4: And it's wrapped with an insurance product. You know, the amount of work that that took was quite impressive. And it's a skill; it's not something we have.
Speaker #4: We're going use it. And then there's the question of on the CDRs. The CDRs for I'm going to reiterate this. CDRs are think of them as voluntary credits.
Speaker #4: The actual carbon removal credits that people will buy. This is a market that's already been growing. These are legit. We have like the gold standard type credits.
Speaker #4: It's CO2 going down a hole measured by a meter. We can measure tons going down a hole. That's a big deal. That's why we can get the Pure certification.
Speaker #4: For CORCs, we're the only ones in the country—first ever—to get that kind of certification. That sort of thing should matter. It's a legitimate removal of carbon, and people are willing to pay for it on a voluntary basis.
Speaker #4: That's the kind of co-product we want to see in the future. And grow it. Paul's team is all over this. It's a big deal.
Speaker #8: Okay. Great. Well, thanks y much for taking my questions and again, congratulations.
Speaker #4: Thank ou.
Speaker #8: Thank you. Our next question comes from Dirk Whitfield. With Texas Capital, your line is open.
Speaker #12: Good afternoon, guys. And congrats as well on a strong quarter and update.
Speaker #4: Thank ou.
Speaker #12: With respect to the CDR market, thanks for the detail included in the release. I wanted to see if you could maybe help characterize the depth and durability of the market and separately could you speak to the contract structure and if these were sold to a single counterparty or multiple?
Speaker #4: The answer, yeah. So go ahead, Paul. Go ahead and address it where you can, because I know you'll be restricted a little bit on the details of the contracts.
Speaker #4: But the rest of it, go for it.
Speaker #11: Yeah. Look, I mean, this is a new and developing market, so we're learning this and getting into it. We're pretty excited that we've already made a lot of progress here.
Speaker #11: And and so as you think these these markets, we're finding out that there are some that are traditional kind of more spot sales. And then there are multi-year type agreements.
Speaker #11: And this is where we're we're headed. With a lot of the the new business that we're planning to put on, where you know customers once they they find out what high-quality that you've got and the high-integrity credits that you're iding, you ow there's a lot of work that goes into that.
Speaker #11: And a lot of diligence. So finding a high-quality credit supplier to make sure that they've bought down the risk and they can really show what they're looking for for their products, it's a big deal.
Speaker #11: And we can do that. And so this is where we're headed. With with more longer-term contracts. But I would say the spot market for the CDRs is getting interesting.
Speaker #11: If you go back and and remember the numbers that I said with $40 million metric tons of credits that have been sold so far in the CDR market, only about a little over 2% of that has actually been delivered.
Speaker #11: So the thing that we're watching closely is that as other projects may have been sold out, there may be projects that aren't really working today.
Speaker #11: They haven't started to deliver. Now, a lot of these projects probably will start to deliver. But we're already delivering. So we think that there's going to be an interesting spot market developing, and we're here to be able to supply those credits as needed.
Speaker #12: Great. Thanks for the detail on that. For my follow-up, I wanted focus on Gevo North Dakota. With the optionality your team has with ethanol sales, I wanted to ask if you could speak to how you're thinking about marketing and optimizing revenue from the low-carbon ethanol between the voluntary market in California and Oregon and Canada.
Speaker #4: That's a great question. What I think you should do, guys, is have a tag team between Chris and Paul.
Speaker #11: Yeah. Actually, Pat, I think Paul, this is a at question stemming from the last one. So go ahead, Paul.
Speaker #4: Yeah.
Speaker #11: No. Thanks, Chris. So you know as we sell, a lot of our CCS value today is in low-carbon fuel markets. You have to have a pathway.
Speaker #11: So we are in the progress progress of making you know putting in pathways. We've already got pathways that include CCS and don't include CCS.
Speaker #11: We have optionality. Do we put that into that low-carbon fuel market? Or do we separate that CCS value and put in CDR market? That's really the optionality that we're talking .
Speaker #11: So as we look at these markets, we have some timing that we have to balance. But as we see carbon prices, carbon credit prices increase in certain low-carbon fuel markets, we want to be able to take advantage of those.
Speaker #11: And so we work with our marketing partner to do that. To go after those so we can deliver the returns both on the fuel but then also start to put a book on for those that CDR value that's separated.
Speaker #11: And as we look at that price, you ow we're looking at what's going to give us the best return between the net back of including that CCS value in the fuel or stripping that off and selling it into the into the CDR market.
Speaker #11: So it's a little bit of balancing act. But today, it's more heavily focused on the LCF market, so low-carbon fuel markets. And as we build those sales of CDRs, we plan to put on a healthy mix or maybe even put on more CDRs if we can get you ow lower volatility with higher returns in that market.
Speaker #11: It's just a lot of optionality. We'll e how it develops.
Speaker #12: Great. And maybe one last question, if I could. With respect to your CCS site, could you speak to the market opportunity you guys see to accommodate third-party volumes and the amount of capacity you would feel comfortable offering up to the market?
Speaker #4: Yeah. We can comment on it. Who wants to take that one? Chris or Paul?
Speaker #11: Well, Paul, you can go head. Let me just add that you ow when we talk about the capacity about a million tons per year up there, we're talking about you know one well.
Speaker #11: And there's no limit on we're not limited to one well. Let's put it that way. But Paul, go head.
Speaker #3: Yeah. Sure. So that you ow this is an interesting one because we're also thinking about, hey, what do we do in the future? How do we see us expanding?
Speaker #3: The more ethanol we produce, the more CO2 we would produce. So you as you're fermenting ethanol, you make a pound of ethanol. You make a pound of CO2.
Speaker #3: That's kind of a one-to-one ratio there. And so we want to make sure we've got plenty for us. And then, as we look at projects, can we bring in CO2 from third parties?
Speaker #3: Sure. I mean, we've talked about things like a virtual pipeline using CO2 by rail. And we've ked about you know are there other opportunities to put you know partner sites on our right where we sit.
Speaker #3: And sequester CO2. As we see the need for more clean power or things like data centers and and other growth opportunities, we think we've got a at site.
Speaker #3: And and so it's it's really a question of which which of those projects are going to give us the best returns. While making sure that we've got plenty available capacity for our for our own needs.
Speaker #4: Yeah. And so one of the things I like about Gevo North Dakota is we have a huge amount of land that we own. And it's 500-plus acres.
Speaker #4: It's a great operation. There's great corn resource up in that area. The good workforce. Good farmer community. These people are good. And they're really it's a business the business environment in North Dakota, the the energy people and agricultural people are the same people.
Speaker #4: And they all get it. And they get that this is all entwined. And they understand it's important. They're an energy-producing state, and they're a food-producing state.
Speaker #4: And it's for export out of North Dakota. It's a great place to be. It's really attractive site. I wish we had had it sooner.
Speaker #4: I'm when I'm I'm ally glad that we have it now. And for us, this marketplace that Paul's team has established of the CDRs and CORCs and the rest, that's really, ally important because that's selling co-products is a key part of the economic equation.
Speaker #4: And it's really it's it's it's going to matter in the long run. As we you don't want to because the if we look a way out to future, you do not want to be dependent upon government.
Speaker #4: For anything on credits, because you know it can be, you can go with the whims. You don't want that. You want to establish the legit marketplace.
Speaker #4: Well, we've got legitimate stuff. Verity comes into play here and is a big deal for helping to certify the whole value chain and the sourcing of the raw materials and all the rest.
Doing it on integrated basis. You got to know how to operate plants. That's what my team brings. We know how to build plants. We know how to operate plants. We are the first. Remember, to do at first, we're the ones who got it certified and got it qualified, we still sell it in the marketplace, people forget that we're still active in it.
Small scale, you know, but demo plant scale. But this goes back to what we are all about here at jivo. That was kind of chemistry. We have a long history with it.
It is going to play out into the future with our alcohol to with our Ito process. You think we can do cost savings out to the Future.
It's a pretty exciting time.
This engineering and knowledge that we have learned from the atj 60 is being translated to 18330 and it's going to be create a winner. We believe it also is creating a platform that we could cut and paste other places. That's a pretty exciting model.
Uh, and we're looking forward to getting on with it. Sorry for that little bit of a soap box, but hey,
All very good. Pat stores. Really come together. I'm happy for you guys. Great quarter of an update. Thank you.
Further question.
S. At this time I would now like to turn it back to Pat Gruber for closing remarks.
Well, I already was on my Soap Box. You heard them in the main point. It is an outstanding quarter. It did happen, faster than we expected. We we, we thought this would happen.
We're an unusual company in that we're a developer with a huge amount of technology, but we actually are incrementally positive.
And profitability, I'll be a little tiny bit. 1 cent per share, hey, but that's positive.
And our even. Uh, she we expected to grow further on reproducible. Um,
Ibida. So it's good. It's going to be really good. We're a we got a great Foundation, we're building. And it gives us the latitude to play the optionality that's in front of us.
Thank you all for joining us.
Appreciate it.
This concludes today's conference call.
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