GEVO - NASDAQ

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Gevo First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Eric Frey, Vice President of Finance and Strategy. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. This is Eric Frey, Vice President of Finance and Strategy. I'm also responsible for Investor Relations here at Gevo. Thanks for joining us to discuss Gevo's first quarter results for the period ended March 31, 2024. I would like to start by introducing today's participants from the company. With us today are Dr. Patrick Gruber, Chief Executive Officer; and Lynn Smull, Chief Financial Officer. We also have Dr. Chris Ryan, President and Chief Operating Officer; and Dr. Paul Bloom, Chief Carbon Officer and Chief Innovation Officer. Earlier today, we issued a press release that outlines the topics we plan to discuss. A copy of this press release is available on our website at www.gevo.com. Please be advised that our remarks today, including answers to your questions, contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from those currently anticipated. Those statements include projections about the timing, development, engineering, financing, and construction of our sustainable aviation fuel projects, our recently executed agreements, our renewable natural gas project, and other activities described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are incorporated by reference. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. In addition, we may provide certain non-GAAP financial information on this call. The relevant definitions and GAAP reconciliations may be found in our earnings release, which can be found on our website at www.gevo.com in the Investor Relations section. Following the prepared remarks, we'll open the call for questions. I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is open to the media, and we are providing a simultaneous webcast to the public. A replay will be available via the company's Investor Relations page at www.gevo.com. I'd like to now turn the call over to CEO of Gevo, Dr. Patrick Gruber. Pat?

Thanks, Eric. Good afternoon everyone, and thanks for joining us on our call. We are filing our form 10-Q today and we ask that you refer to it for more detailed information after this call. Today, I would like to highlight a couple of key items from our filing and also talk about the recent IRA Section 40-B SAF tax credit guidance that came out, which I have to say is very encouraging. Number one, we began utilizing our previously announced stock repurchase program. Lynn Smull, our Chief Financial Officer, will say more about this when he's on deck here to give comments. Now, my comment on this is that if you look at our cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, divide that by our number of common shares outstanding, you will see that alone is worth approximately [ $1.40 ] share. That is about double where the share price was at various times in the first quarter. Obviously, we think the market has undervalued our shares since in addition to our cash we have a renewable natural gas business with positive standalone adjusted EBITDA, a wholly-owned carbon accounting tech startup that we call Verity, a robust intellectual property portfolio and significant progress toward a well-positioned greenfield alcohol-to-jet project called N

Thank you, Pat. During Q1 2024, our Northwest Iowa RNG project sold 88,967 MMBtu of RNG. Revenue of $4 million for the quarter included RNG sales of $0.2 million and $3.8 million net proceeds from the sale of the environmental attributes. Gevo's Q1 interest income was $4.6 million. Our corporate spend that is G&A was $7.9 million for the quarter, excluding non-cash stock-based compensation of $4.2 million, which is a $1.8 million increase from the first quarter of 2023, mainly due to increased personnel costs. Debt related to our RNG project remained unchanged at quarter end at $68.2 million after we successfully remarketed the RNG green bonds on April 1st of this year. The remarketed bonds bear interest of 3.875% and are backed by a new letter of credit of $69.9 million, a $0.3 million reduction from the previous bonds letter of credit. We ended Q1 with a liquidity position of $340.6 million in cash, restricted cash and other liquid investments. The restricted cash portion is $69.9 million and collateralizes our RNG bond letter of credit. During Q1, we invested and capitalized $17.5 million cash in capital projects comprised of approximately $16.5 million into Net-

Thanks, Lynn. For those of you who don't know me, I'm the Senior Executive at Gevo, directly overseen and responsible for our Net-

Thanks, Chris. So briefly, because I get asked this question sometimes, let me address it. What is the Chief Carbon Officer? I did a fireside chat last year to answer that. For those of you who haven't seen it, I can sum it up that my job is all about maximizing the value in carbon abatement for Gevo, and our shareholders throughout the entire supply chain. To that end, one of my primary responsibilities is leading our wholly-owned carbon accounting tech startup called Verity. In every aspect of our business, from the field to the seat on the aircraft, it is critical that we can accurately measure, report, verify and value carbon abatement with a high level of trust and transparency. Verity intends to provide Gevo and our customers with the digital tools to make sure that we can count all of the carbon abatement across the entire supply chain, while fully capturing value from voluntary and compliance carbon markets and tax credits, while avoiding double counting. As policies like the Section 40-B SAF tax credit and in the future Section 45-

Thanks, Paul. So you heard Paul just now talk about Verity. It's a pretty exciting opportunity. We're way out ahead in the curve here, having thought about this stuff for years. Chris talked about our Net-

Thank you. At this time, we'll conduct the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from the line of Peter Gastreich of Water Tower Research. Your line is now open.

Yes. Hello, thanks very much for the call and congratulations on your results. It's also great to hear regarding the 40-B tax credit because I know your company's been advocating for that for a number of years. So my question here is regarding the Net-

Chris, I think you're in the best position to address that. You want to take that one up?

Yes, sure. So what we did is we negotiated with our EPC and our wind and hydrogen equipment providers and basically push back payments until after financial close. At the same time, we're looking for ways to cut costs, not only in the project development, but the execution phase as well. But the majority of it is pushing costs out till after close.

Great. Thank you very much.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of David Boehm of Thomist Capital. Your line is now open.

Hey guys, thanks for taking the question. Now that you've had a couple days to have the 40-B model in your hand. I'm wondering if you could provide any sort of indicator CI range for what Net-

Yes, sure. So one of the things that in our design, where we've integrated a plant like this, we focus a lot on lowering CI score. Our plant design itself takes down any ATJ by about 55 to 59 points just from how we do it with our energy, how we integrate and all the rest. That's real different than if I had a plant that was unintegrated. So we're at. We start with a very significant advantage. Some of the numbers that we see in the IRA bill or the guidance that came out, they're talking about ATJ in the 70 to 80 range, okay. Subtract off, 55 to 60 points straight [indiscernible] CCS or before climate smart ag or anything else. So that means that under the 40-B, we would already hit $1.75. And the question will be, how are they going to treat 45-

Yes, I am, too. I mean…

I got Lindsay Fitzgerald here. She's sitting with me and her take, Lindsay is the one who she's the Vice President, Government Relations. Lindsay, you want to comment on this? I mean, it's a…

Yes, you stole all of my points, but this is a great place to be. This is the first time that we're seeing GREET built-in with very minimal modifications. It's got climate smart ag, again, something that we are trying to recognize and help farmers do. It's being understood. And this is a phenomenal jumping off point for what we want to see under 45-

Yes, that's good.

Yes, it's a great starting place. I know 45-

It is -- it is.

Same organization who's making the rules as the one who's possibly giving you guys this loan?

They're the same big organization, different departments. But that working group, we are, I know for sure that we're on the mind of all the people making the rules because we're an example of what can be done when it's done right, and we've got the data to prove it. And so that is on their mind. They've told us that directly, and we also provide data for them and the working group EPA, the DOE, the administration itself, DOT and others. And so we help. We provide a lot of information for these guys because we're not trying to do it. We see a lot of companies out here in our space. It's just freebies. They just, hey, it's a gallon, sell you a gallon of jet fuel. Don't ask me to CI score. That's kind of the approach. No, this is all about selling a jet fuel along with a whole lot of carbon abatement and getting, monetizing that carbon abatement. And you'd be astounded in this marketplace how many people where that concept just doesn't resonate. A lot of our competitors, they don't want to talk about that. And so we're no, this game is all about how do you drive real carbon value, it's by mitigating it throughout the business system, measuring it, tracking it, proving it. And you know what? That's like the track that they're on. And I can tell you this, too, from having talked with people from both sides of the aisle and politics, when we talk about measuring it, proving that you're getting something for your money that plays to both sides of the aisle. That's a big deal too. So I'm pretty fired up about, I think these guys are serious and wanting a lasting policy that's rational, has potential to drive improvements in a systematic way without being a freebie giveaway right? So I like what I'm seeing a lot. I am like seriously fired up. The more I think about it, I'm getting really fired up, right? So I thought it was great. I thought, I'm stunned, actually. It's the right direction. It's better than I was expecting.

And just one more quick one for me, if I can. So appreciate the reduced CapEx spend, appreciate the guidance to in the buyback. So I am looking at $340 million cash called $100 million to get to FID after what you spent in the first quarter and a market cap of $160 million. So I guess my question is, why stop at the $25 million authorization on the buyback? It looks like you could buy back the entire market cap of the company and still have $80 million left. So what's the limit there in terms of what you guys are going to do on the buyback when the valuation makes so much sense, for that matter?

Well, we have a view. There's a couple parts to that buyback and all those kind of things. And so there we have that to pay attention to. We've been working on doing buybacks on. For my mind, I really want the when we're buying stock back, I really want the stock back. So when I'm spending the money, because I think it's too stupidly cheap and we should be buying it back. And so that we set it at 25 for now and if we use it all, then we'll look at it again and expand it if we need to. We have other needs for our money, too. There is -- we have multiple plants that we can do or things like that, or other opportunities that might be accretive so all that stuff comes into play. And so attention to our cash, manage it carefully. We're going to make the decisions to try to get us to profitability a whole lot sooner than waiting around for N

Yes. I think the accretive opportunities is the key there. I mean, we do have competing interest for the cash that we have on our balance sheet. If we were to buyback all the shares, we'd be left with not enough capital to develop a business that is, I think everyone can see it's a massive opportunity. And we're as Gevo with alcohol-to-jet technology at the forefront of leadership into delivering carbon abatement in SAF. And without resources, we won't be able to do that. So that there's a trade-off there. And that's why we wouldn't go most likely for the whole shebang of the equity stack at this point.

If we did, it would be more along the lines of the intent of doing it all or something. We'd have to be thinking about that. We're not that, I think that's premature. And when I look at this, I see a pretty large opportunity here that we're going to have to measure quarter by quarter, pay attention to it and make the decisions appropriately. And I'm keen on getting us; I'm keen on two things. Getting us profitability sooner, getting cash flow streams get EBITDA up. RNG business is doing well. We are going to eventually get the approval down and [indiscernible] contribute. So we're actually -- I want to get to profitability here sooner rather than later. And I do not want to raise money at the Gevo corporate level. If I can ever again, I'm one of the top shareholders of this company and I do not want to do that. It's real simple. And so I don't want to put us in a position where we're cash short prematurely. So we'll measure it, conserve it, pay attention to it and go.

Thanks guys.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Derrick Whitfield with Stifel. Your line is now open.

Good afternoon, Pat and team, and congrats on your legislative accomplishment.

Thank you.

Perhaps building on Chris prepared comments, I wanted to open the question on 40-B policy. As I think about the way climate smart ag was defined in the SAF credit guidance. How much of your expected corn feedstock surrounding the Lake Preston site would qualify today? And then more broadly, what's your take on the amount of corn feedstock in the Midwest that would qualify today or could qualify by 2027?

Well, if we read it right, I think that the -- what they -- the way that they described the -- I don't think they're going to -- in 45-

Terrific. And then kind of looking forward in time, how do you think carbon will treat CI scoring for your project? Or is this a moot point based on Illinois being the target market?

Well, the target markets are the states that already have programs in place. You have Illinois, you have Oregon, you have California, Washington, you have -- who else? Minnesota's developing one that's not quite finalized.

New Mexico.

Yes, New Mexico has one. And so, yes, it's going where it's optimal. So the idea that everything has to get shipped to California, wrong paradigm. That's not how it's going to get done. It'll be whatever the market needs, wherever you need enough game to play now that we can put it in different places and it makes sense doing the optimization. You also have Canada. So it's a different game to play. We expect more states to be doing their own policies over the next few years, and they're going to be focused on that same kind of a thing that we're seeing in New Mexico or Illinois or Minnesota. It'll be stuff like that. So it's not everything has to go to California or you're toast. Now back to how do you think -- how do I think carbon will adjust to this? I'll tell you, it's interesting. The world is shifting about the perception of crops and the perception around indirect land use and all those things. In this guidance, you'll notice the indirect land use numbers are way down. And of course, I'm a believer they shouldn't exist in the first place. But you know what, they're going the right direction. They're way, way, way down from where they were that's fundamentally important because that's not a real metric of anything that we can tell. It's somewhat artificial, but okay, it's headed the right direction. Good. I was just at the -- I was just in Turin, Italy, and to sign this joint statement of Turin on biofuels. This is an international thing for the UN, for the G7. And it's talking about using crops. Europe is talking about using crops for feedstocks for biofuels. Hello, the world is changing and that's good. It's a fundamental shift. Well, who does it impact? All these people who are weak kneed about taking on real data and using it. And it also is, as we're doing this, I think people are starting to recognize that this idea of its food versus fuel, that's not true. That is just a false paradigm. It's not that. It's fact is you can generate the protein for the food chain and generate the raw materials for energy and there's several ways to go about it. And so that's something that's coming into play that people are starting to recognize and understand that it isn't as it's been portrayed. So this is good. It's going to be a shift that takes time, maybe years. But California will adjust as well as more data comes forth. And there are data organizations. So as we get going and develop data, they said they want to see the data as we develop the data from the farms under our climate smart ag programs. Great, we'll show it to them and then we'll have the conversation. And it's persuasive as heck because it goes, flies in the face of what a lot of the environment will say.

And Pat, if I could just one last question about 40-B, how should we think about the fundamental value of your Verity service with an inherently increasing demand as evidenced by the policy we're actually talking about. Like how do you guys think about the fundamental value of that service and your role in, I guess, creating value throughout the industry by CI scoring?

Yes. Yes, and it's bigger than that. And so I'm going to let Paul address this. Paul, I'd like you to give him a picture of how we see value here around Verity and the different options and parts that come to it.

Yes, sure thing, Pat. And thanks for the question, because I think this is really the main reason why we created Verity in the first place was to help people simplify a lot of the carbon accounting that needs to be done. So first and foremost, we can do that by making sure that how we total up the value of the carbon intensity from the bushel that that can then transfer into the carbon intensity that we can calculate at the gallon level, right? And everything that Chris talked about, whether it's wind energy, renewable natural gas, carbon capture, sequestration, all those things, in addition to the climate smart benefits from agriculture have to be connected together, right? So we're seamlessly connecting that together and making that simplified audit trail happen, so we simplify things for the farmers, we simplify things for a SAF producer like Gevo, and we're doing that same simplification for companies like ethanol producers who are not signed up with Verity. So we're really bringing that simplification to something that's otherwise really complicated, right? We always say we could do this with a bunch of spreadsheets, but we're doing this with distributed ledger technology, tying it together, making the tracking going forward, seamless so we can substantiate claims and then doing the auditing in reverse quickly. And we'll do that with third-party auditors. But that's really the big benefit that we bring. And really, the goal is to not leave any carbon on the table where if you're going after compliance markets, voluntary markets or tax credits, you don't want to leave any of that behind. So you got to capture all that value and that's what we can help people do.

That's helpful. Thanks for your time.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Sameer Joshi of H.C. Wainwright. Your line is now open.

Yes. Thanks. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe I will take Paul's base and ask about the first revenues expected from Verity later this year. Which area like, what kind of customer is this and what should we expect?

Paul?

Yes, sure. And again, I think we've mentioned this a few times. We're obviously Gevo is first and foremost as we start to track what we need for our sustainable aviation fuel. But we realize that the solution that we've created with Verity is the solution that many others need. So today, we've got three ethanol clients signed up. We did sign this letter of intent that we mentioned with an engine technology manufacturer, and then we'll be connecting that supply chain for connecting fuel in the fleet service to make sure that even the end users of the services of fleet can capture their carbon intensity and quantify that. So again, with 190 ethanol producers out there, that's a good fit. We're also looking at renewable diesel, biodiesel that biofuels vertical is a big one. But then you think about the carbon tracking needs. So while we're focused on the biofuels vertical now, we're rapidly expanding into adjacencies where we need this help and this carbon tracking and transparency through the value chain, things think food, feed and other industrial products, like what we're talking about with LG Chem.

Understood. Yes. Actually…

Yes. I was going to say. So in terms of the kind of numbers we think about is I asked this question, Paul, like on a weekly basis, actually. And I probably get on his nerves. And it always is coming, and it is coming and it's going to be -- it'll be a few million, it's in that kind of a number this gets it going good and it'll grow from there. And so it's not this year in 2024. I don't expect it to be a giant number. It won't be. But you know what? It's initial sales with real customers, initial partnerships being paid for services and fee, fees for service and that type of thing. And it has huge potential. And what's interesting is it cuts across supply chains too. So we're stay focused on the basics of how do you measure the stuff around the agriculture and the farms and then how transform the products through ethanol plants. But you know what? You also then have a potential in tracking animal feed for people who want low carbon beef. And so that just comes hand in hand with it. So it's getting to be quite an interesting game to play. And I like the direction from 40-B and what they said out loud about where they're headed with 45-

Yes. No, completely agree on that. The potential for Verity enhanced by the 40-B and 45-

Yes. So, I'm going to let Paul to answer that, okay? And Lindsay, if I miss something, you jump in. But it's that next step is to build a bigger pilot plant or a small demo plant. And right now it's about going ahead, getting the bids. That's on LG's dime, not ours. And we get to use the data. We own the electrical property. This is a good deal for us. And we're aligned strategically in what we want. Remember our process, carbohydrates to alcohols, alcohols to olefins. We have an improved technology for those olefins we can selectively make propylene; we can also make it into fuels. So we get to leverage all that knowledge into our fuels business. So it's a win-win straight away. And what's fascinating about this is the savings here are big. There's not some incremental improvement. A lot of companies are focused on little improvements. This is a big improvement. And I think in our deep dive deck, it talks about this. It shows some -- it shows what it could mean. So it's pretty exciting. I wish it was ready for primetime now. It's not -- it's going to take a couple of years to get it to be fully vetted, scaled up and commercialized. But you know what? It's pretty cool and it's ours. So that's a lot of fun.

Yes. Yes. No, no, that's true. On the DOE loan, can you just give us a little bit more insight on the level of engagement and maybe the timeline for next milestones just so that we can keep track of it?

Yes. So I can tell you this, the engagement level is high. They're working hard to get this done. The DOE is the government. The government's bureaucratic. They got all kinds of rules to comply with, and they're working their butts off from here I can tell. I think it helped a lot. The question earlier was about do they all talk to each other at the DOE. And I think the answer is yes. I think it helps because they all know that we have the low cost route to make alcohol-to-jet and lowest carbon score, most carbon abatement. And so I think they all know that and can see it and see why, they're rated and transparent with it. Again, you can -- this transparent with you guys, too. You can go look at it. It's on our website as to why and how it compares to other people's technologies. So they're working it. How long does it take? Well, Chris talked about that. We're getting the engineering details figured out, mapped to what can be done on the DOE side, map to what could be done on the customer side adjusting it. And so that stuff should become more clear relatively soon. Chris, I'm going to call upon you in just a minute, and you can comment on that more specifically on that timeline. So give it a thought. And then when we hope, I hate to project, when we're going to say we're going to get to FI, the loan closed because stuff happens and everyone, well, you said it was going to happen at this time and it didn't. Well, it's not in my control exactly. All we can do is go through the work to go get her done. Chris, you want to comment on the DOE project here?

Sure. I just have to be aware of the fact that DOE has explicitly told us that we can't say too much publicly about it. But I will tell you that we've really felt the support from the DOE loan office in terms of them wanting to work with us to get this to work. There's a real sense that this is of strategic importance and that really helps the team between Gevo and all of our counterparties and DOE, as we work through all the details. I think we will be able to say something more definitively over the next few months a milestone a key milestone. But we are, as Pat said, high level of engagement, frequent discussions, very detailed due diligence they're doing on us, and everything's moving forward. So that's about all I can say.

Got it. And then just a last one and maybe for Lynn. I know the reduction costs are related to mainly CapEx, that you would do at a later stage. Does it mean that any of the project development costs budgeted for this year are lower? The $5.3 million that was incurred in 1Q? Should we expect a reduction in that, or were you capitalizing those CapEx in a different accounting manner?

Are you referring to project development cost in the statement of operations, the income statement?

Yes.

Yes.

Recently, the reductions announced…

Yes, the reduction. I think the reductions will probably not hit that line item as much. Those are ongoing costs for a range of things in combination with the G&A. Those two items really cover the operations of the company, inclusive of -- some of that goes to Verity, some of it goes to other project sites to have a slate of opportunities to exploit once we close Net-

And Sameer, I'm going to add something. So some of you might wonder about what the heck you're working on multiple sites for. I'll tell you why. Customers want multiple sites. They don't just want one off plant. And so part of the deal with them is you got to have a path forward that you can show them that something's real, that you can go ahead and develop multiple sites. And so we do have to spend some effort on that and show people we're managing the cash to keep it low. And we definitely have multiple sites available to us that we could point to and say, no, here's where we would go. Here, there, and over there. We could point to those things. And you got to have that credible story because no one's interested in the one-off, nobody. So that's all part of what we have to do to build market.

Understood and thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Saumya Jain of UBS. Your line is now open.

Hi, thanks, guys. I guess I was wondering could you provide some clarity on the net zero one and net zero two timeline as well? And I guess, have you guys considered, have you looked into maybe, like, securing a partner to help financing or any other cost reductions on that regard that you're looking into?

Yes. So Net-

Okay. Got it. So when you say for Net-

I hate to predict that. The normal timeframes, you can't win at this, actually. So it's 24 months. 24 months if things go right. And if they don't, it takes a little longer. Now, if it was us building off our balance sheet, and I had my own engineers building it without having to have help, I could do it faster I'll bet. But you know what? That's not how this gets done in this modern world. It's disappointing, so, okay, 24 months-ish.

Thank you.

Thank you. This concludes the question-and-answer session. I'll now like to turn it back to Pat Gruber for closing remarks.

Yes. So this GREET, this 45-