Alto Ingredients, Inc.

Good day and welcome to Aalto Ingredients Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Harriet Freed of Alliance Advisors. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you all for joining us today for the Alto Ingredients Third Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call. On the call today are President and CEO Brian McGregor and CFO Rob Olander. Alto Ingredients issued a press release after the market closed today, providing details of the company's financial results for the third quarter of 2025. The company also prepared a presentation for today's call that is available on its website at altoingredients.com. Telephone replay of today's call will be available through November 12th, the details of which are included in today's press release. A webcast replay will also be available on the Alto Ingredients website. Please note that the information on this call speaks only as of today, November 5th. Your advice, that's time-sensitive information may no longer be accurate at the time of any replay. Please refer to the company's safe harbor statement in the slide deck posted to the company's website, which states that some of the comments in this presentation constitute forward-looking statements and considerations that involve risks and uncertainties. The actual future results of ALTO ingredients could differ materially from those statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, events, risks, and other factors previously and from time to time disclosed in ALTO ingredients filings with the SEC. Except as required by applicable law, the company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. In management's prepared remarks, non-GAAP measures will be referenced. Management uses these non-GAAP measures to monitor the financial performance of operations and believes these measures will assist investors in assessing the company's performance for the periods reported. The company defines adjusted EBITDA as consolidated net income or loss before interest expense, interest income, provision for income taxes, asset impairments, unrealized derivatives, gains and losses, acquisition-related expense, and depreciation and amortization expense. To support the company's review of non-GAAP information, A reconciling table has been included in today's release. On today's call, Brian will provide a review of the company's strategic plan and activity. Rob will comment on its financial results. Then Brian will wrap up and open the call for Q&A. It's now my pleasure to introduce Brian McGregor. Brian, go ahead, please.

Thank you, Harriet. Thank you all for joining us today. Strong market conditions combined with the benefits realized from our recent strategic realignment delivered improvements across all segments of our business in the third quarter of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. Gross profit increased $18 million, net income improved $17 million, and adjusted EBITDA grew $9 million. These robust improvements reflect several key factors. We increased renewable fuel export sales, illustrating the advantage of our platform's flexibility to shift our product mix to meet market demand to capture the highest value for our products. We benefited from strong demand for liquid CO2, particularly on the West Coast, and we reduced costs and improved efficiencies, including rationalizing unprofitable business activities, successfully lowered expenses year over year. As we've recently discussed, we've been prioritizing shorter-term projects based on cost, timing, and most importantly, projected ROI. We continue to believe this strategy will pave the way to incremental profitability and an improved future. Our goals include lowering our carbon intensity score to capture more of the benefits from the Section 45Z tax regulations and increasing our CO2 utilization at our Pekin campus and at Columbia, building on our successful carbonic acquisition. I'll provide some updates. We remain confident in our ability to generate Section 45Z tax credits on ethanol production. Once we complete our work to qualify for these credits, we expect to earn $0.10 per gallon at our Columbia plant for 2025. In addition, with the updated Indirect Land Use Change, or ILAC, In 2026, we expect to lower our carbon intensity scores, increasing available tax credits to $0.20 per gallon at our Columbia facility and earning $0.10 per gallon at our Keek and Dry Mill. As we mentioned last quarter, if our facility is produced at nameplate, this could amount to $18 million in aggregate gross Section 45Z tax credits over the two-year period before related monetization costs. Given that 45Z credits are transferable tax assets, we have begun the process to forward sell these assets and monetize the credits in 2026 through 2029. Notably, because of the recent Section 45Z updates, the intrinsic value of all of our facilities have improved. Our overall CO2 utilization has improved as a result of our acquisition of Kodiak Carbonic, now Alto Carbonic, in early 2025 in our initial CAPEX programs at our Columbia facility. Our efforts continue to further improve plant reliability and ethanol production rates to create greater synergies, including implementing measures to increase CO2 throughput, as well as adding storage capacity. A number of these ethanol production improvements were completed in October. Having proven the benefits of owning the system at our Columbia plant, we are now considering options for other liquid CO2 facilities. We believe this is a compelling opportunity as the demand for premium liquid CO2 continues to rise, particularly in Oregon and neighboring states like Idaho, generated by significant supply shortages and increased consumption in the region. This has positioned producers in the area to leverage strong market pricing and secure sales for liquid CO2. We continue to evaluate all options for our Magic Valley facility in Idaho, including the sale of the asset, CO2 utilization, and 45Z tax credits. Turning to our peak in campus, our ability to react to market signals and shift production enables us to capture the highest value for our products and continues to create opportunities. As a market for fuel ethanol eligible for exports began to grow, we earned the necessary certifications to export our products. This strategy is now paying off. In Q3, the fuel ethanol export market and related pricing was stronger than the domestic market. Accordingly, we produced and sold more gallons in the export market, capturing more of the demand. Furthermore, in Q3, we leveraged this advantage by forward contracting significant volumes in Q4 and the first half of 2026. Looking ahead, we believe the renewable fuel and export opportunities will continue to grow. The newly signed California Assembly Bill 30, authorizing E15 fuel cells year-round in California, unlocks significant demand for domestically produced ethanol. California is the largest market to allow E15 blends, adding potentially over 600 million additional gallons per year. AB30 expands consumer choice for lower carbon, cheaper fuels in California during a time when refineries are being idled, and gasoline capacity in California is tightening. With our marketing and distribution services on the West Coast, Alto is well positioned to help fill the gap. High-quality alcohol continues to deliver a premium to domestic renewable fuel, and our 2026 contracting season is on pace with 2025. As previously discussed, our carbon capture and storage project at Pekin is delayed due to regulatory and environmental constraints enacted in Illinois, including drilling restrictions specifically impacting our planned site. We continue to be flexible about our options to maximize our CO2 utilization as we collaborate with Vault around the changes in the law and determine the optimal path forward. Additionally, our long-standing CO2 customers who sell into the food and beverage markets have shown keen interest in expanding CO2 capture capabilities at our Beacon campus. We're also vetting additional low-cost options at our plants to further reduce our carbon intensity scores. Possibilities include reducing our energy consumption, changing the energy source to one with a lower carbon intensity impact, shifting to low carbon corn sourcing, and improving efficiencies and throughput with smaller projects. Now I'll turn the call to Rob for our financial review.