Darling Ingredients Inc. (NYSE:DAR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Brad Phillips: Adam, one thing. This is Brad. So on the net loss mentioned in the K and footnote 3, that is predominantly — and Randy referenced it earlier, the Ward facility, a sizable facility. We also had an insurance deductible charge taken in the quarter. So that contributes to that number being higher than the Q3 rate on that. Other than that on Valley, Randy?

Randall Stuewe: Yes. I mean, ultimately, we’re making great progress there. And clearly, we’re near business case at our timeline, remember our 1,000-day integration plan, we’re at our business case very close without the Ward fire. In January, we made a lot of adjustments to raw material procurement agreements that will kick in here in Q1. Those were contracts that had to be renegotiated. We’re seeing some unique things as the poultry industry changes diets to adjust for the renewable diesel demand for animal fats now, where they were used to feeding animal fats in their diets, they’re taking them out and substituting alternative ingredients and changing different attributes of the rendering materials that we’re getting. That has to be accounted for in your procurement formulas.

And so we have done that in Q1, and that will start to flow through here towards the end of Q1, early Q2 and predominantly Valley plants on the Eastern shore are poultry plants. And so those are sizable numbers as we go forward. The FASA, the business is running classically right on business case. John, anything you want to add?

John Bullock: No, I think the most important thing is you look and I understand as we get dips and as we bring dips in pricing here and there and as we bring these facilities on, it’s not always a straight line. But the underlying strength here is the volumes are exactly what we thought they were going to be. And as long as those volumes remain there, we are going to be able to get the Valley profitability over our timeline within where the Darling system operates. And we’re going to be able to have the type of profitability we anticipated on all these acquisitions. So the underlying strength here is our volume is great.

Randall Stuewe: Yes. And I think the other thing, Adam, that isn’t very transparent, and it’s hard to break out, but in Europe, we were paying EUR 210, EUR 230 a megawatt — per megawatt hour for electricity. We’re down to EUR 50 now. And so the gas prices ran up hard on us that — you can’t make raw material adjustments that quick in Europe. They’ve come back off. We’re now back to $2 natural gas or plus burner tip distribution in the U.S. So gas prices impact Q4 a little bit, too, and it’s always hard to see how that flows through.

Operator: The next question is from Dushyant Ailani from Jefferies.

Dushyant Ailani: My first one is trying to understand the CapEx cadence going forward. I know you talked about, I think, roughly $565 million for 2023. How do you think about 2024 considering just the Valley integration?

Randall Stuewe: Yes. I mean, clearly, we gave a number of around $125 million that would have to go into those Valley plants over the next couple of years. We’re about halfway through that now. So a portion of that number is FASA, the 2 plants under construction. We got a plant under construction in Turlock, California, another under construction in Boise, Idaho. We’re going to start permitting the Bellevue, Nebraska plant. We got the Epitacio spray dryer. We’ve got a wastewater plant in Brazil. And then we’ve got the green energy expansions in Europe of the Op de Beeck, Belgium digester and the sun digester. And all of that’s rolled into there. And so like we said, about 20% of it is growth projects that would meet our 15% to 20% hurdle rate. And the rest of it is just maintenance and standard CapEx between fleet and operating plants.

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