Green Plains Inc. (NASDAQ:GPRE) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Green Plains Inc. (NASDAQ:GPRE) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 3, 2024

Green Plains Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.81167 EPS, expectations were $-0.33. Green Plains Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good morning and welcome to Green Plains Incorporated First 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 and I will now turn the call over to your host, Phil Boggs, Executive Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Boggs, please go ahead.

Phil Boggs: Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Green Plains, Inc. first 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 the 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 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.

Todd Becker: Thanks, Phil. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our call today. We were not alone in managing through a challenging market during the first quarter driven by industry oversupply from elevated production during a mild winter leading to an increased stocks position, combined with weaker vegetable oil markets and compressed protein markets as well, leading to a weak first quarter and negative EBITDA of $21.5 million, although an improvement from last year of about 22%. The typical first quarter doldrums hit the industry as well as a quick deep freeze that had an outsized impact on some of our plants. Since we saw the extended margin compression, we took the opportunity to launch two major refreshes in Mount Vernon and Obion so we can run beyond historical norms at some of our best plants when completed, especially at Obion, which was one of our historically strongest margin plants that we’ve had for the last 15 to 17 years.

As I said, both of these are happening at traditionally strong margin sites, so can have an outsized effect in a low-margin environment. Operationally, we performed well with utilization at about 92%, and another strong quarter of protein production, and in an improved margin environment we can start to push towards high-90% run rates with all the refresh investments we have made and are making. Speaking of margins though, we have recovered a bit, but still a long way to go. Q2 margins now range from the mid-high single digits to the low-teens across the rest of the quarter on average. For the rest of the year, every month has returned to a positive margin on the curve, which is unique for this industry at this time of year. This is at least a $0.25 a gallon improvement off the lows in some months.

We’ll talk fundamentals a little bit later on the fuel markets. During the quarter, though, we continued to execute on our transformation strategy across the board, completing the acquisition of Green Plains Partners in early January, started commissioning of the SFCT demonstration facility with our partners at Shell in March, commissioning our CST project in Shenandoah as we speak, as well as bringing our MSC protein joint venture at Tharaldson Ethanol in North Dakota online over the last couple of weeks, in addition to launching our Sequence brand for our 60 Pro product. We achieved these key milestones and I will discuss more about these areas as we go through the call, and may seem like this is all not happening during times of macro weakness, but I can assure you that it is, and we have a lot of positive updates to share on sugar, protein, and carbon, which is part of the reason we see positive margins currently for the rest of 2024.

Of note, the recent Green SAF modeling update demonstrates that if you can make low-carbon fuels, you have an asset more valuable today than you did on Tuesday morning. I will show you that path as well. We continue to anticipate that as spring maintenance and summer driving season progresses, we expect to see seasonal stock draws leading to strengthening base margins and lead us out of the winter doldrums that we have been stuck in for the last several months. Corn plantings look off — look to be off to an excellent start, which could lead to a more favorable basis values as we move through the summer. We remain primarily open to the margin structure across all of our products. One quick update on the strategic review. The Board and the leadership team are fully engaged with evaluating our strategic options as we have disclosed last quarter.

We continue to believe that value of our platform is not reflected in our stock price even more so after the Green updates that I mentioned. Hopefully you saw during the quarter, we announced our new specialty ingredient brand Sequence for our 60% protein product. We are really excited about this brand and what it represents for the high-value aquaculture, feed, and pet food markets we serve, as well as our ability to begin to custom tailor nutritional solutions for our customers, beyond just selling them protein, which is why we called it Sequence. Leslie and the innovation team have been working hard on a very specific, tailored taste and texture solutions that can be combined with Sequence, another reason we are getting traction with our customers.

Our Sequence sales have been increasing as we approach the equivalent of one plant’s production’s worth of recurring sales, representing approximately 10% of our production capacity. Interest in this product has been strong and we believe we are on track to exit the year at the 20% to 30% capacity being committed to repeat sales customers, and anticipate expanding it from there with the goal of eventually moving to 100% of our production to Sequence. This product separates us from more commoditized 50 Pro market that has been under pressure from soybean meal to corn — the spread between soybean meal and corn, which has been influenced by rapidly expanding soy crush capacity, although we have seen soy meal prices elevate quite nicely over the last several days.

Base margins for our 50 Pro were under pressure from both a tighter protein spread as well as decline in vegetable oil pricing, but we have always said we justified the investment with 50% protein, but built them for 60%/Sequence or higher. Our Sequence protein becomes a differentiator in the long run. Let me tell you why we’re getting traction. This is a novel 60% protein. It’s the world’s first plant-based 60% protein ingredient, made from a combination of corn and yeast. It is fermented for intestinal health. Corn and yeast provide a greater bioavailability and nutritional benefits for the customers we serve. Lastly, on this topic, I’m very pleased to report that in a recent analysis titled Emerging Protein Rich Ingredients for Aquaculture, our protein ingredient received the highest accolades in a recent European report that continues to validate our view that our scalable and low-carbon intensity protein products are a much-welcomed addition to the supply of quality ingredients for aquaculture, of which we are in trials in some of the highest values in the markets — value markets in the world today.

With ethanol at a roughly $1 gallon discount to RBOB, it makes sense to max blend and we are seeing strong exports and could end up the year — record year for US exports potentially even exceeding 2018 1.7 billion gallons. 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 strategic outlook and how carbon and sugar will play a larger role going forward.

Jim Stark: Thanks, Todd. And good morning, everyone. Green Plains consolidated revenues for the first quarter were $597.2 million, which was $235.7 million or approximately 28% lower than the same period a year ago. The lower revenue is attributable to lower prices for ethanol, dry distillers grains, and corn oil in Q1 of ’24 as compared to the same period a year ago. On average, prices were down in the range of 25% to 30% year-over-year. While we also saw a drop in our commodity inputs with corn and natural gas down significantly year-over-year and with ethanol trading at a significant discount to RBOB, margin opportunities were limited in the first quarter due to the ethanol industry oversupply Todd mentioned earlier. Our plant utilization rate was 92% during the first quarter compared to 87.5% run rate reported in the same period last year and only slightly lower than the fourth quarter of 2023.

We anticipate our plants to continue to perform in the mid-90% range of our stated capacity for 2024, barring any events outside of our control. For the quarter, we reported net loss attributable to Green Plains of $51.4 million or $0.81 per diluted share compared to a loss at $70.3 million or $1.20 per diluted share for the same period in 2023. EBITDA for the quarter was a negative $21.5 million compared to negative $27.7 million in the prior-year period. Depreciation and amortization expense was lower by $3.9 million versus a year ago at $21.5 million. We anticipate that D&A will average approximately $22 million per quarter for 2024. We realized a loss of $9.3 million in consolidated crush in Q1 of ’24 that compares to a loss of $12.5 million in the prior year.

With the acquisition of the partnership completed in January, we have combined the partnership segment into ethanol production since the partnership was primarily driven by ethanol-related items, including the throughput fees and storage tanks associated with our ethanol plants. We have previously added much of that back to the consolidated crush, but there are some minor adjustments from combining the entire partnership, which are reflected in the 8-K filed this morning. Also, the operating maintenance expense line was combined into the cost of goods sold. For the first quarter, our SG&A expense for all segments was $31.8 million, which is in line with the prior-year number. Interest expense was $7.8 million for the quarter, which includes the impact of debt amortization and capitalized interest and was $2 million favorable from the prior-year’s first quarter.

The decrease is primarily due to lower debt balances offset by slightly higher rates quarter to quarter. Our income tax expense for the first quarter was $300,000 compared to a tax expense of $3.4 million for the same period in ’23. At the end of the quarter, the net — federal net loss carryforwards available to the company were $89.6 million, which may be carried forward indefinitely. Our normalized tax rates for the quarter at Green Plains, excluding minority interest, is around 24%, and we anticipate that our tax rate for ’24 will also average at 24% rate. Our liquidity position at the end of first quarter decreased from year-end due to cash used in the completion of the partnership acquisition, capital investments made during the quarter, and the results from operations.

However, I am certain we continue to be well positioned to achieve the next steps of our transformation plan. Our liquidity included $277.4 million in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash, along with approximately $230 million available under our working capital revolver. For the first quarter, we allocated $22 million of capital across the platform, including $13 million to our clean sugar initiative, about $4 million to other growth initiatives, and approximately $5 million towards maintenance, safety, and regulatory capital. We anticipate CapEx for the year will now be in the range of $95 million to $115 million in ’24. This range excludes the capture equipment needed for our Nebraska carbon capture initiatives. We do have financing lined up to cover those needs and the plan to discuss these items further in the near future as the project progresses.

Our capital strategy continues to be to deploy capital into the highest and best-returning projects. Now, I’d like to turn the call back over to Todd.

Todd Becker: Thanks, Jim. So, when we embarked on our journey several years ago, the IRA did not exist. So while our go-forward mix of opportunities may have changed, the forward outlook, in aggregate, remains the same for 2025. Because of the IRA and the 45Z Clean Fuel Production Credit and the opportunities these present to produce low-carbon intensity fuels, it is driving a reprioritization of our overall capital allocation strategy because of the guaranteed returns backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. We remain confident that our advantaged Nebraska approach in carbon capture could begin to yield significant returns as early as next year. Our three Nebraska facilities, which represent 287 million gallons of capacity at present, will be on a pipeline project that already has its trunk line in the ground as a converted natural gas pipeline, so building the laterals to our plants is relatively straightforward.

Currently, our pipeline partners continue to make solid progress and we are on track for starting up in the second half of 2025, and we plan to begin ordering the capture equipment in the next several months and expect construction to start later this year. Given that we have first-mover status, we are actively exploring redeploying capital to expand the production capacities for our Central City and Wood River, Nebraska facilities by 30 million to 40 million gallons to take advantage — each, to take advantage of the early days of the 45Z Clean Fuel Production Credit and position ourselves as a preferred early feedstock supplier to alcohol to jet sustainable aviation fuel producers. We have already seen interest in the supply from multiple different parties, especially with the GREET SAF update announced.

These are a couple of our premier facilities already have MSC deployed and have abundant local corn supply. With York, we plan to decarbonize distillation with a small CapEx project to reduce energy usage, which reduces carbon intensity as today qualifies for 45Q and we want to change that and opportunistically take advantage of early 45Z economics But it really doesn’t stop in Nebraska. We have four other plants on the Summit Carbon pipeline and they continue to make good progress as well on permitting in the states that we will operate in. With all of that said, at current econs, once up and running, we expect Nebraska alone to contribute over $100 million per year in carbon EBITDA starting in the second half of 2025. With the current progress we have made, again, all backed by the 45Z tax credit.

Our MSC — on MSC and protein, since our Fairmont and Madison locations have faced permitting delays for the proposed MSC protein projects for some time now, and we literally received our Illinois permit yesterday, we previously made the decision because of the carbon economics to put the capital allocation — capital allocation for that on hold for the time being and only for the time being while we turn our attention to our significant return profile of the advantaged Nebraska strategy, along with potential clean sugar facility which would be two to three times larger than what we have in Shenandoah, Iowa today. The returns associated with both carbon capture and clean sugar are driving this and are significantly better than anything else we can do.

We will continue to evaluate our overall asset mix and we are focused on the future of decarbonization and clean sugar as our top two priorities after 60% protein or Sequence going forward when we evaluate our portfolio. Part of the permit in Illinois is also the ability to run the plant at an expanded rate to reduce OpEx per gallon and improve margins at that site as we always have had spare capacity we could not run under the previous permit. We also have several projects to be able to capture carbon in Mount Vernon and Madison under review as well. Those will just be a little further out. While we have not issued a press release, I’m happy to update you on our CST project, clean sugar project in Shenandoah. It is now mechanically complete and we have begun commissioning over the last month and we expect to produce on-spec product in the next week or so.

In addition, we are negotiating multi-year contracts for our low-carbon intense dextrose corn syrups, and we are continuing with substantive late-stage discussions for all of our 2025 volumes, to take all of our capacity. We expect to start to sign some agreements in — even in the next week or so. The Clean Sugar Technology is a game changer for Green Plains and sets us apart as we actively explore plans for Site Number 2. Lastly, based on current markets and pricing, the uplift and converted margins have remained the same at a minimum of $0.60 a gallon uplift with some products and volumes significantly higher in the $0.80 per gallon or $0.90 per gallon range. This is another reason we want to allocate capital to this versus protein at this point, especially now that we have Shenandoah beginning to operate.

The SAF tax credit and updated GREET model from earlier this week sets the stage for an increased asset valuations for any plant that can decarbonize. The SAF guidance has given us a starting point for rulemaking for the all-important 45Z Clean Fuel Production Credit, which begins this coming January, just eight months from now, and we remain optimistic this will carry through to that rulemaking. A couple of takeaways here and I think they’re really important for everybody to understand. The guidance for SAF was in line with our expectations, and to their credit, they actually lowered some of the unreasonable land use change penalties associated with corn as a feedstock for alcohol to jet. Climate smart ag practices also allowed to count towards CI reduction in corn.

It’s important to remember that 40B for SAF is just a stepping stone to the 45Z Clean Fuel Production Credit. One really important and lastly really important point, the common misconception this week on the recent SAF guidance is that low CI corn will be required to qualify, and this is just not the case. With CCS or carbon capture, you can get your score low enough to qualify for SAF, and after that, the lower CI corn is just additive to those economics, and we have a significant program around that as well. Bottom line, there is now a path for US corn-based ethanol to qualify as a feedstock for producing alcohol at the jet SAF, and the plants that can decarbonize are going to be at a distinct advantage. And this gives us an increased confidence in our Advantage Nebraska strategy, and believe that ATJ sustainable aviation fuel has the potential to fundamentally revalue our asset base or any other plant that’s on a pipeline today.

By the way, we were just checking, but to build a new ethanol plant in the United States in our view could be as high as $2.50 a gallon because we have priced them to see the econs related to when alcohol to jet becomes a reality and that’s a minimum price at this point. We continue to see Chinese “Uco” weighing on the domestic veg oil prices, including our renewable corn oil, hopefully new and expanded our decapacity coming online to help to rectify this imbalance, and we remain bullish on the long-term value of our low-carbon intensity corn oil. However, there is recent pricing pressure from our prior projections when we were using $0.70 a pound that is now currently in the high-30s to low-40s, resulting in EBITDA from our base corn oil uplift to the base ethanol margin of $80 million to $90 million for 2024.

Our MSC uplift has always included an uplift from corn oil yield increases as well, which is where some base pressure came from, combined with the pricing pressure from lower soybean meal spreads during Q1. Although, starting to recover with a $40 a ton rally from the lows, we are experiencing an MSC uplift of $0.07 to $0.12 gallon. We believe Sequence margin will more than make up this difference and more, which is why we are focused on customer conversions every day, in every market around the world. When we look forward ahead to the opportunity in front of us in 2025, if we assume some normalization while our mix has changed, our guidance has not. We are still on track for a near $300 million EBITDA contribution from our protein, corn oil, clean sugar, and decarbonization pillars, excluding any income contribution from base ethanol, corporate overhead, or ag and energy segments, which by the way, has performed well last year and off to a good start this year.

I tried every which way I can, but we keep coming up with this result, which is consistent with what we outlined at the beginning of our transformation in 2025. In protein, our 640 million gallons of converted capacity, including half of our ownership in our joint venture, could generate a base load of 80 million to 120 million. As protein spreads widen back out, we will increase and we will see an increase as we — as 30% to 50% of our platform moves to Sequence we believe in 2025. We’ll also look to add another one production facility in the future as we mentioned earlier, but we want to make sure we allocate capital to the best projects today. Corn oil contributions on the base business are fully reliant on prices, but 2025 should see some recovery as we are approaching the end of the biodiesel tax credit on December 31, and corn oil is an advantaged feedstock relative to those valuations.

The contribution should be a base of $100 million and grow from there. In sugar, our belief that Shenandoah will be fully lined out as we go through this year, and the facility could generate a baseload $15 million to $25 million a year on a full year basis, depending on what the customer mix ends up. Again, we have strong customer demand and as mentioned, we expect food-grade certification in around 90 days after we make the on-spec product, hopefully in the next week or so. Finally, in decarbonization, the Nebraska First strategy is on track and based on the latest GREET model, could generate up to and possibly exceeding $110 million a year on an annualized basis from our Nebraska assets alone beginning in 2025 and then grow from there if we are able to quickly expand those assets and additionally when Summit Carbon pipeline comes online as well.

We will also continually review our asset mix and where we have opportunities to monetize an asset pay off debt and delever our balance sheet while focusing on our Nebraska first-mover advantage where a combined expansion of 50 million to 70 million gallons could have an outsized return due to carbon capture we will do that. Much of our asset base is unencumbered, and we have no near-term maturities and remain in a strong cash position. We are also focusing, though, on reducing our cost of debt as well as we’ve seen some opportunities to do that as well. So, while you see that the mix has changed from where we originally laid out the transformation, our efforts to transform this earnings power have not wavered, notwithstanding a weak Q1 we just reported.

Thanks for joining our call today. We can now start the Q&A session.

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Q&A Session

Operator: [Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from Adam Samuelson with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Adam Samuelson: Yes, thank you. Good morning, everyone.

Todd Becker: Good morning.

Adam Samuelson: Morning. So, Todd, there’s a lot of ground to cover. Maybe I’d love to start on just the ethanol market outlook and kind of where we go from here to get things back in better balance. You talked about forward curves that are more favorable than the past, but you also talked about the business being open. Can you help us think about the demand side which seems sluggish? What you’re seeing on exports that might be the critical swing on that demand balance, and where you’re seeing spot margins today and certainly through the second quarter?

Todd Becker: Yeah, spot margins today across our platform are kind of ranging on average between $0.08 and $0.12 a gallon, somewhere in that range on May and June at this point, and post that, mid to high single-digits really kind of across the platform, maybe some little bit lower, a little bit higher in some places, all inclusive. And so, that has come off significantly from the lows. I mean, we saw mid-teens to, and even in the negative-20s across the curve, and we’ve seen a significant rally on the backend of the curve as we — typically when we see those type of numbers, it’s not going to — it won’t hold very long. So, you have a carry into corn market and we had a flat-to-inverted ethanol market, and that’s kind of changed a little bit.

We have to see more contribution from the simple crush as we’ve seen less contribution going forward from things like corn oil and distillers and those types of things. Although, natural gas is now a significant tailwind price wise. So generally speaking, from a demand perspective, we’ve seen some pretty good weeks on driving demand kind of coming out of winter. We have also now, as we enter into more of a summer driving season, hopefully, get ourselves well-positioned as an industry to take advantage of that. We remain a well over $1 under — well, we remain $1 or so under RBOB. And with the RIN values in the mid-50s or so, at any given point, that’s a $1.50 blend credit. So, we’ve seen blends as high as 10.5% here recently. So generally speaking, the base business in the US and gas demand hopefully recovers kind of post last week and the week before as we get into this driving season, especially with higher fare rates and less capacity, and we’re very optimistic that the summer will act typically the same that it has.

On top of that, we’re so well-priced in the world on ethanol today. And I think more importantly, when you look at the last half of the year, we actually see Brazil as an opportunity to price into, even with the tariffs that are in place as they do not have the excess ethanol capacity at this point to take care of all their back-half demand. So when you kind of line it all up, and you look at, if we can just keep production steady as an industry and maintain some self discipline, I think where we can set ourselves up for a continuing draw as we kind of come through the end of this maintenance season. But generally speaking, margins are positive at this time of year across the board fully, and we’re optimistic that that can continue to improve.

Jim, did you have something?

Jim Stark: Yeah, just from an export perspective, Adam, we’re running about 25%, 26% ahead for the first quarter this year versus last year. So, that’s what gives us the optimism that this could be a record year for us from ethanol export standpoint.

Adam Samuelson: Okay, that’s very helpful. I want to just go over to the — some of the strategic initiatives and maybe talking about the clean sugar piece and talk about being in kind of late-stage negotiations with different offtakers. As you’re seeing the Shenandoah plant commission, as you’re getting close to the end of some of those pricing negotiations, can you talk about how you’re envisioning kind of EBITDA uplift from that plant, both — presumably in the second half of the year, but just the cadence and magnitude of EBITDA that we should start to see from that?

Todd Becker: Yeah, we said relative to contribution — yeah, thank you. We said prior to these calls, contribution will ramp up during ’24 because the plan — we’re going to take a slow burn startup, as we say, just to make sure every single thing we do is on track and on spec. And we really want to get the food-grade certification over the next 90 days once we make our first product. We are in significant negotiations with counterparties from everywhere from beverage markets to ingredient mark — food ingredient markets, all the way into industrial markets. We have enough demand to take all of our production for next year, which is 200 million to 250 million pounds of product and all of that at a — at the previously discussed margins or better.

So, it’s really up to us at this point to get the plant lined out, up and running, get product on spec made, get it tested in all of these companies, the food companies, the industrials have pretty much ready to go to get it fully tested and certified. And at that point, I don’t think we’ll have any shortage of demand for this. And even the next plant that we build, margins are hanging — are actually — are in where the range we talk about, which is kind of $0.65 to $0.90 a gallon uplift for those. Some things we have to take into consideration, obviously, is the impact of the Gen 1 plant a little bit, but generally speaking, we’re very optimistic about that. We believe we will have significant offtakes in place because we are negotiating them right now as the lion’s share of everything we produce out of this plant, both from industrial and food use, especially into some of the ingredient markets that happen in fermentation.

So, it’s a long time coming. We’re really excited about it. We are going to do a grand opening in May of the site as well, and I think it’s a great kick-off. And our first sales should come as early as next week for this year, and we’re excited about that as well. And you’ll be the first to know, I assure you, as our shareholders and people that follow the company.

Adam Samuelson: Okay. I appreciate all that color. I’ll pass it on. Thank you.

Operator: And we will take our next question from Kristen Owen with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Kristen Owen: Thank you for taking the question. A couple for me. Just one clarification, Obion and Mount Vernon, are these back online?

Todd Becker: Obion is starting to ramp up a little bit. What we’ve done there, so everybody knows, is we’ve done a major refresh on conveyors that were 17 years old. We are replacing literally every conveyor front to back so the plants can run at higher capacities going forward. I mean, I think it’s just some major refreshers that just have to happen occasionally. In addition, at Obion, we’re adding a new RTO to allow us to run the Gen 1 plant harder and the Gen 2 plant for protein harder as well. We are a little undersized there, and it is one of the — we think, premier plants in the United States, and it just hasn’t run to where we want it to because of the conveyor project as well as the RTO. So, that should be completed middle of the year, but we are already seeing some of the results because some of those conveyors are completed as we speak.

So generally speaking, it’s not having as big of an impact in the second quarter as it had in the first quarter just because of where it was. But I think we will still see a little bit. But overall, the margins I gave you were the average across our total platform, including those at this point. So, that’s really what we’re doing at those two plants.

Jim Stark: And Kristen, I would add, as we indicated, we still should be in that mid-90% utilization rate. So, that would include those plants having to run, getting running back to their normalized levels.

Todd Becker: Yeah. And lastly, when you look at the increased ability for Obion to run back at 120 million to 130 million gallons a year, Madison has been limited to 100 million — under a 100 million gallons a year because of permits that has now been unlocked as of yesterday to go to 130 million or 140 million, potentially. We want to make sure that we do that responsibly based on the permit, but that’s really just drives — that’s really the big programs that drive our OpEx back down to where it should be per gallon.

Kristen Owen: Okay. One additional follow-up there and then I’ll ask my second question at the same time, just so I’m not taking up too much time here, but the additional follow-up is Tharaldson included in that mid-90s capacity utilization? And then, sort of the bigger question here is, really, given the improving curve, you’ve got to ramp-up these other facilities, clean sugar commissioning, I mean, I think the question that investors frequently ask is, are we at the point where we’re now seeing the trough in Green Plains earnings potential and that we should see upside from here? Is this the low point and how do we get comfortable with that? Thank you.

Todd Becker: Yeah, thank you. Tharaldson is never included in our numbers, but protein will give you the update on how that ran during the quarter, but it’s an excellent plant, one of the best probably in the world today, and one of the biggest in the world as well. So, they do a great job up there, amazing site, which is why we wanted to partner with them on our joint venture facility with the improving curve, with everything coming back online, with improved capacities. Q1 quarters are always an adventure. I think everybody knows that. Some Q1s are better than others and some are worse than others. Part of our — in a negative margin environment, along with the fact that we actually allocate SG&A compared to maybe some others, it’s just — it’s an outsized negative quarter typically.

I think we have to take a more proactive approach when we do actually do see margins out forward and not get too worried about hedging off some higher margins in the first quarter when there are opportunities to do that. I think we went away from that a little bit. But generally speaking, on the rest of the curve, we remain open. Look, CST is commissioning, protein is ramping, oil prices, hopefully — that’s part of the trough, too. You got to remember oil share for soy guys is hitting multi-year lows at this point with oil in the low-40s. And now we’re seeing protein prices rally again. We saw this a couple years ago when protein really compressed the distillers grains. We’ve seen that as narrow here recently as $120 a ton, and now it’s back out to $210 a ton in parts of the curve.

That helps our margin structure overall, but we really need some recovery in veg oil prices as we see some major RD plants coming on middle of the year as well. And so, some of these plants have 50,000 barrels a day of production needs for veg oils. And if you think about that, that’s more than the whole US ethanol industry makes. That’s coming online later this year. So, I think we’re troughing in a lot of different areas, and I think a lower corn price, lower corn basis, and lower natural gas prices, when you add all those things up together, you know, I think we’re going to start coming out of this and start to deliver what we talked about over the last several years.

Kristen Owen: Thank you. I’ll take the rest offline.

Operator: And we will take our next question from Craig Irwin with ROTH MKM. Your line is open.

Craig Irwin: Hi, thank you for taking my questions. So, Todd, the progress here with carbon is exciting, and I guess we all look forward to the confirmation you’ve ordered the compression equipment, given that the interconnects sound like they’re relatively straightforward. So my question is, with carbon coming online, the implication is SaaS actually gets a lot more exciting, a lot more real. And the GREET numbers seem to line up for your Nebraska plants to be early suppliers in there. Can you maybe talk to us about whether or not you’re having conversations about offtake for low-carbon ethanol? Is there specific interest out of the SAF complex, people that are looking at building or already have capacity there? Can you help us frame out how long it’ll be before we see potential production with those gallons out of Nebraska into south?

Todd Becker: Yeah, thanks for the question. We’re right now sizing the needs at this point, except — what we’ve seen is a reduction of compression lead times from about 55 weeks to 40 weeks at this point. With our partner in Nebraska we’re getting ready to put our order in as we kind of finalize the scope that should happen in the next few months. Construction on their project is starting in — final construction on their project is starting in the next few months as well, and we expect to start — hopefully construction on our — once we get the compression order, we’ll start constructions on our own interconnects at our plant as well as the building. So, we’re very excited about it. Look, I think we’re going to start everything last half of the year to be on last half of next year.

If you would have asked me a few months ago with kind of what we were thinking about the SAF ATJ guidance that was going to come out, I would say it’s a stretch that alcohol could potentially qualify and we weren’t really sure, but we always have — we always keep the faith. But generally speaking, what we saw come out gives us more confidence that our Nebraska early alcohol that qualifies to be put into SAF will be very — a very valuable product and it will give people confidence to build these plants at this point because I think until these rules came out, you just didn’t really know whether alcohol could qualify. So, when you go look at the guidance, if you have a lower CI plant like our Nebraska plants are, the starting point, and you deduct the 30-plus points for carbon capture, under the new guidance, you do qualify.

And then, the low-carbon smart or the carbon smart practices on the farm make it even more beneficial and more — and it will give people courage to build alcohol to jet plants, I think, going forward and even before that, we were engaged in multiple different discussions on post the new guidance. What can we do to enter into agreements to have commit early gallons to somebody that wants to build an early ATJ plant, and there’s a lot of that going on out there today. So, when you take a look at the value of an asset in the middle of Nebraska, that’s going to be on an early decarbonized situation because of the early potential of the pipeline that’s already built in Nebraska, that’s a very, very valuable option, which is why we have to look at Wood River and Central City today to say where can we debottleneck without a significant capital cost, 30 million to 40 million gallons per plant, and take advantage of the early 45Z because we’re going to be two years of 45Z with those plants.

That is — there’s not a lot of other people in the world that have that position, especially outside of Nebraska. So, on top of that, then we have York, which we believe is — honestly, it’s one of the oldest plants in the country and we’re still going to put some money in there to get our carbon score down. We don’t have to do a big capital investment, just to take advantage of 45Z, because it’s so beneficial. But I have to tell you, we contemplated, what is a new cost build? What is the new cost to build? And quite frankly, it’s $2.50 a gallon all-in. And so when you look at that relative to 45Z, it might work, but it’s $2.50 a gallon all in, even if you have a great site. So, that — I think the market’s going to contemplate those types of things when you look at the insatiable alcohol-to-jet demand that could transpire.

Craig Irwin: Excellent. So, my next question is related to sort of ethanol and ethanol macro demand. So right — we’re starting off this year quite a bit better than last year, even though, the crush of negative $0.04 was not what anybody wanted, but this year, we’ve got exports and we’ve got some other nice tailwinds like, I guess, the issues in the airline industry with seat prices going up and then routes being canceled because of plane availability, and some of the other complications out there, it looks like miles driven could be up nicely this summer, too. Again, gasoline demand bullish for ethanol. Can you maybe just help us frame out a little bit more precisely what you think on exports this year? I’m hearing that Brazil is going to have an awful sugarcane crop.

That means they could actually be an importer rather than an exporter. There’s other benefits maybe from Mexico or Canada. Can you maybe help us understand the size of the gap and what you think the export contribution can bring? I don’t know if you want to comment on the airline and miles driven issue, but anything to help us understand how this supply demand gap gets narrowed this summer.

Todd Becker: Well, it’s narrowing as we speak. I mean, we are starting to see some stock draws. We’d like to see production come down a little bit more, but generally speaking, we saw some stock draws over the last couple of weeks. Not big enough, though, to have an outsized impact yet because we have really even — haven’t even hit summer driving season yet. So, we’re watching that closely. You are correct, and we believe last half of the year we could see Brazil reappear as a demand driver. In addition to, we continue to have strong demand out of places like Canada and other markets around the world just because we just priced so well into some of those markets and they still have low carbon needs as well. So, generally speaking, as we looked out forward, we expected some of the margin recovery that happened already, but if we can get a few things to break our way, we could see a significant increase.

Last half of last year, we generated about $100 million or so across the platform. We think we can — the opportunity is to do better than that. If we think — get some things to break our way, especially with some of this ability to run our plants at more efficiently, at better rates. And so, overall, the macros are starting to turn and look favorable as shown by certainly the recent uptick in the forward curve. One thing we’ll have to watch is corn prices. We’ve got to get the crop planted, we had great plantings last week at 25%. We’ll wait to see what happens on Monday again, probably a little bit lower than we’ll think just because of the rain this week, and we have a rainy season ahead of us. But generally speaking, anybody that buys corn because we’re not going to get a crop planted is a bit of a fool’s game at this point.

It’s very early. Our view is that crop will get planted, the acres are going to ground, and I think that’ll be very favorable to ethanol.

Jim Stark: I think, Craig, I’d just gave a little more color on exports. We think we’ll be somewhere between 1.7 billion and 1.8 billion exported, and that really doesn’t include anything from — upside from Brazil. So when you look at kind of our leading export markets, it’s Canada, United Kingdom, India, Netherlands, Colombia, South Korea, they’re all — it’s very well spread across the universe. And if Brazil comes in, that could be helpful to even more stronger export demand for us.

Craig Irwin: Excellent. Thank you both for taking my questions. Congratulations on the progress…

Todd Becker: Thank you.

Craig Irwin: …with High Pro. I like the High Pro. Thank you.

Todd Becker: Thanks.

Operator: And we will take our next question from Andrew Strelzik with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.