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Greetings, and welcome to REX American Resources Corporation Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Doug Bruggeman. Thank you. You may begin.

Good morning, and thank you for joining this morning's call. Joining us today is Stuart Rose, Executive Chairman, and

Good morning, and thank you again to everyone for joining us. Fiscal 2024 saw a continuation of the positive results from REX's time-tested approach to our core ethanol business. Sales of ethanol grew over 2023 levels with 289.7 million gallons of ethanol sold. Despite lower prices, our management of the overall business remained as focused as ever, and total net income and income per share remained strong, along with gross profit. REX continues to be among the best in the industry in our core ethanol business line. As for our several growth projects, during 2024, we substantially completed construction of the capture and compression portions of our planned carbon capture facility. Additionally, we progressed our capacity expansion project at the One Earth Energy Ethanol facility. Our overall business saw great financial results and good operational progress during 2024. As we move forward through 2025, the REX team is bringing the same attention to detail, close management of the day-to-day, as we have in the past. We are concentrating on the things we can control and acting prudently as conditions change. Aside from our steadfast focus on efficient and profitable operations, REX has had a long-standing commitment to delivering value to our shareholders through a well-considered share repurchase program. We are selective in how we apply this authorization from our Board of Directors and act when we see value in our share price. To this way of thinking, we were active in the fiscal fourth quarter, repurchasing approximately 373,000 shares, and we have been active in fiscal quarter one with repurchases totaling 282,000 shares. As of yesterday, REX's Board of Directors authorized an additional 1.5 million shares to be available for repurchase. These are in addition to the remaining 222,510 shares still available for repurchase under the previous buyback authorization. As for additional avenues for growth, we are always looking for facilities that come on the market that meet our operational and financial criteria. Our ability to do so is always thanks to the incredible team we have at REX, whether operating the facilities, their plants to high efficiency or monitoring corn and natural gas markets and taking advantage of beneficial conditions to lower our cost base. The people we have at REX are second to none in the industry. I want to take a moment, as always, to thank them for the work they do on a daily basis. All of this is to say that REX is in a good position to make progress on our strategic goals during 2025, delivering value to our shareholders. I'd now like to turn things over to our CEO,

Thank you, Stuart. During fiscal year 2024, we made steady progress on our carbon capture and sequestration project in Gibson City, Illinois. During the year, we substantially completed construction on the capture and compression portion of the facility. During 2025, we anticipated moving forward in the sequestration portion of the project. Currently, we are waiting for approval of a Class VI injection well permit from the EPA. The EPA currently projects issuing this permit in October. We are hopeful that once we have obtained this permit that we will be able to move forward with other required state and local permitting. Given proposed rulemaking earlier in the year by the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration, we are closely monitoring potential action to accelerate updating rules and regulations for the CO2 pipeline from the Trump administration and towards getting the project moving forward. Once all approvals are received and the facility is operational, the One Earth Carbon Capture and Sequestration Facility should contribute to REX's bottom line through both 45

Thank you,

Thanks, Doug. I would like to give some color around our priorities for 2025 and the several factors that will influence our business for the remainder of the calendar year. Overall, we are pleased with Q4 and how we managed through some challenges and are now focused on a profitable 2025. Q1 is already off to a good start, and we are expecting a profitable Q1, which would be our nineteenth consecutive profitable quarter for a net income prospect. Against this positive current financial and operational backdrop, we are maintaining a focus on properly positioning our business for the future and executing on our several growth projects during the year. Importantly, we are carefully watching the policy forces that could impact our business and the overall market for our products. Chief among these is the possibility of tariffs on ethanol and co-product exports, which could be imposed by foreign governments. During 2024, total ethanol exports from the US reached a record high of 1.9 billion gallons, supporting pricing throughout the year. We are particularly mindful of the tariff impact on Canada and Mexico, as Canada represents approximately 36% of US ethanol exports and Mexico represents approximately 21% of US DDG exports in 2024. Both of these were the top export markets for the respective products. Second is the debate around year-round E15 blending. We believe this proposed policy change, part of the nationwide Consumer and Fuel Retailer Choice Act introduced to Congress in February, would be beneficial not just to ethanol producers but to US consumers as well, creating increased demand while also lowering fuel prices for drivers. We are closely monitoring developments in the market as well as on Capitol Hill to continue making informed and prudent decisions for our business. In closing, I want to say that the entire REX team looks forward to what is to come for our business in 2025. Thank you to all our stakeholders for your continued support. Now I'd like to open things up to questions. Operator?

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. You may press *2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Jordan Levy with Truist Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Good morning, all, and thanks for taking my questions. Nice quarter again. Can you maybe just provide a little detail,

Sure, Jordan. As you know, we always concentrate on three things. Number one is profit. We have been able to produce 18 consecutive profitable quarters. We also have decided to see how we can position our company towards growth, and particularly organic growth. Number three, we always look at policies. So coming back to the growth, when we looked at it, different types of equipment, which were energy-efficient equipment, we realized some of those pieces of equipment would not be able to handle 200 to 220 million-gallon production. Because we wanted to position our plants so that way if in the future we try to grow further from 200 million gallons to 225 million, we do not have to spend extra money in the future. So we decided to evaluate those and we decided to have equipment which can manage 200 to 220 million gallons per production. So when we looked at that, that's one of the major reasons that we have to spend extra money for future growth. And that's the main reason that our budget has increased and also the timeline has increased.

And I appreciate that transparency. I think it makes a lot of sense. Maybe just moving over to the regulatory side, the permitting side of things. Can you just talk—you guys, this is your first update since the new—

I'm sorry. Jordan, you were cut off. Could you repeat that question again, please?

We lost Jordan somehow.

I think if I understood correctly, you were probably talking about PHMSA rules. So as you know, PHMSA issued new regulations two days before the end of the Biden administration. However, these were not posted for the required 60-days public comment period and are currently under review by the new administration, making them invalid. We are waiting for the new administration to review those and then either eliminate some of the rules or repost them. So that's where we are at this time for the PHMSA rules, if that was what your question was.

Yeah. Can you hear me now?

Yes, we can hear you.

Oh, okay. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. And then just lastly, I just wanted to see if you've had any direct dialogue with the EPA on plastics well permitting since the new administration took over and if there's been any change in that dialogue.

Yes. Essentially, what happened is originally when the Biden administration took over in January twentieth, all communication was stopped. And later on, communication started again. We have had two conversations with the EPA and believe we will be able to answer all those questions they were previously asking. So communication has started.

Jordan, we cannot control the administration, but with the previous administration, they were very, very slow on everything. It appears the new administration, at least, is responsive and we'll see how fast they are, but we do not know yet. We do not know what the legislation is going to include. It may be more favorable, maybe less favorable, when they come out with a tax bill. But in terms of responsiveness, it seems like we're getting the communications opened up, and they seem to be going very well at this moment, at least with the EPA.

Yep.

Exactly. You know, just so you know, Jordan, as I mentioned, we are watching all these policies very closely. So that's what Stuart is saying; some of these are beyond our control, but we are watching them closely.

Yeah, totally. I appreciate all the context. Thanks so much.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. At this point, I'd like to turn the call back over to Stuart Rose for closing comments.

Thank you. We had another great year, I think it was the third-best in our history and really a terrific year. We have great plants. We are in a great area of the country with our plants. We have great growth prospects, which