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spk02: Hello, and welcome to GEVO's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. My name is Tawanda, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. Later, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeffrey Williams, GEVO's Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary. Please go ahead, Mr. Williams.
spk08: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining GEVO's first quarter 2021 earnings conference call. I would like to start today by introducing the participants from the company. With us today is Patrick Gruber, GEVO's chief executive officer, and Carolyn Romero, GEVO's chief accounting 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. I'd like to remind our listeners that this conference call is open to the media and that we are providing a simultaneous webcast of this call to the public. A replay of today's call will be available on Jeeva's website. On the call today and on this webcast, you will hear discussions of certain non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are contained in the press release distributed today, which is available and posted on our website. We will also make certain forward-looking statements about events and circumstances that have not yet occurred, including but not limited to projections about GEVO's operating activities for the remainder of 2021 and beyond. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current beliefs, expectations, and assumptions, and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, including those disclosed in GVO's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, which was filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and in subsequent reports and other filings made with the SEC by GVO, including GVO's quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements speak only as of today's date, and GVO disclaims any obligation to update information contained in these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. On today's call, Pat will begin with a discussion of GVO's business developments. Carolyn will then review GVO's financial results for the first quarter of 2021. And following that presentation, we'll open up the call for questions. I'll now turn the call over to Pat.
spk05: Thanks, Jeff. Well, we're on track to accomplish our goals for this year. The engineering of Net Zero One is on track. The debt solution with Citi to finance Net Zero One is actually ahead of schedule. We still have a lot of work to do, but so far the Net Zero One project is looking very good. We broke ground recently. on our RNG project. It should come online next year. This project is targeting production of 355,000 million BTUs per year and should generate free cash flow for GEVO of approximately $9 to $16 million on an annualized basis beginning in late 2022. Tim Cesarek, our Chief Commercial Officer, has managed to increase our customer contract pipeline by several fold. We now are discussing and negotiating upwards of $10 billion of take or pay offtake agreements on a revenue basis. Recall that for each 45 million gallons of contracted product sales, which is the current approximate design capacity of our net zero plans, the sum of the anticipated product sales revenue during the expected take or pay contract terms of six to seven years should be about $1.5 billion. It's real money. Real business. So if we're able to ink all the contracts in our pipeline, it would mean several more additional plants would be needed to be built. These take-or-pay contracts are non-trivial to obtain because they require the customer to back it with their balance sheet or some other credit support method. We expect to announce the customers and volumes when we can after the contracts are signed. I think it is likely that we could have more than one net zero plant being built at the same time in the coming years. Based on our current modeling assumptions, we believe that the EBITDA for a net zero plant should be more than $100 million per year once operating. We believe that subsequent net zero plants would likewise model out to be in that same range. As we get more plants booked with take-or-pay contracts, it'll be interesting to see how strategic investors in Wall Street view us. We would hope that the increased visibility into more potential cash flow streams would result in better recognition of value for Jivo and its shareholders. Now, with strategic investors, it's a slightly different perspective. As the tangible demand in the form of take or pays becomes bigger, then it becomes even more undeniable as to the potential for our business. The more take or pay contracts we make, the more net zero plans we will need, the more attractive we should become to strategic investors. Next, I want to address questions from several investors about one of our proposals in our definitive proxy statement for our annual meeting of shareholders to be held on June 9th, 2021. The questions are specifically on proposal number four, which is an amendment to our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to increase the total number of authorized shares of common stock. This proposal seems to have created confusion for some stockholders, namely a reaction that this proposal means that there would be immediate dilution to current stockholders. Proposal number four is asking stockholders to approve an amendment to the company certificate of incorporation to increase the number of authorized shares of common stock from 250 million to 500 million. This increase doesn't mean we are issuing these new shares immediately. I want to be clear that we're not asking shareholders to approve an offering of common stock at this time. That's not what we're doing here. It's important to remember that GEVO has used most of its existing authorized shares of common stock over the years. The Board of Directors believes it is in the best interest of the company to increase the number of authorized shares of common stock in order to give us greater flexibility in considering and planning for future potential business needs, including but not limited to potential strategic transactions, strategic partnerships, business combinations, of course, financing the construction of accretive production facilities, as well as other general corporate transactions. Now, I will turn the call over to Carolyn, who will take us through the financials. Carolyn?
spk01: Thank you, Pat. Jibo reported revenue in the first quarter of 2021 of 0.1 million as compared to $3.8 million in the same period in 2020. During the first quarter of 2021, there were no hydrocarbon revenue compared with 0.1 million in the same period in 2020. Hydrocarbon sales decreased because of lower production volumes at the Southampton Resources Inc. facility in Sillsby, Texas. During the first quarter of 2021, no revenue was derived at the Levering facility from ethanol sales and related products compared with $3.7 million during the same period in 2020. As a result of unfavorable commodity environment during the three months ended March 31, 2020, we terminated our production of ethanol and distillers grains, which resulted in no sales for the current period. Cost of goods sold was $2.0 million in the first quarter of 2021 versus $8.1 million in the same period in 2020. Cost of goods sold included approximately $0.9 million associated with the maintenance of the liver and facility and approximately $1.1 million in depreciation expense. Gross loss was $1.9 million for the first quarter of 2021 versus $4.3 million for the first quarter of 2020. Research and development expense increased by 0.8 million during the first quarter of 2021 compared with the same period in 2020 due primarily to an increase in personnel and consulting expenses. Selling, general, and administrative expense increased by 1.2 million during the first quarter of 2021 compared with the same period in 2020 due primarily to an increase in personnel and consulting expenses. Preliminary stage project costs increased by 2.6 million during the three months ended March 31, 2021, compared with the same period in 2020 due primarily to increased consulting and research and development expenses related to our RNG and net zero projects. Within total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2021, we reported approximately 0.8 million of non-cash stock-based compensation. For the first quarter of 2021, we reported a loss of operations of $9.9 million, compared to 8.0 million for the same period in 2020. In the first quarter of 2021, cash EBITDA loss, a non-GAAP measure that is calculated by adding back depreciation and non-cash stock-based compensation to GAAP loss from operations, with $7.8 million compared with 6.2 million in the same quarter of 2020. There's no interest expense for the three months ended March 31, 2021, a decrease of 0.5 million as compared to the same period in 2020 due to the conversion of all of our 12% convertible senior notes due 2020-2021 to common stock during 2020. For the first quarter of 2021, we reported a net loss of $10.1 million, or a loss of 5 cents per share on a weighted average shares outstanding of 183,566,524. This compares to a loss of $9.3 million in the first quarter of 2020, or a loss of 64 cents per share based on a weighted average shares outstanding of 14,472,798. In the first quarter of 2021, GEVO recognized net non-cash loss totaling 0.1 million due to changes in the fair value of certain of our financial instruments, such as warrants and embedded derivatives. Adding back these non-cash losses resulted in a non-GAAP adjusted net loss of $10.0 million in the first quarter of 2021, or a non-GAAP adjusted net loss per share of $0.05. This compares to a non-GAAP adjusted net loss of $8.5 million in the first quarter of 2020, or a non-GAAP adjusted net loss per share of $0.59. Now, I will turn the call back over to Pat to wrap things up.
spk05: Thanks, Carolyn. So then, overall, things are on track and looking good. We have the catalysts that are coming up between the offtake agreements and such. I'm pretty pleased with where we are. Let's open up this call for questions. Operator?
spk02: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to ask the question, you will need to press star then 1 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Again, that's star 1 to ask the question. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Amit Dale with HC Wainwright. Your line is open.
spk04: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I appreciate taking my questions. Pat, did you say that you are pursuing $10 billion worth of offtake agreements?
spk05: We're more than pursuing them. That's what's being worked on and actively negotiated. in various forms that's a threefold increase you this is a game-changing kind of a thing for us considering where we had been and what we're doing people are figuring out that we have a solution here so it's going to be exciting and we're going to be in the position of having to supply product from multiple plants that wants to dang good thing we did a greenfield cookie cutter plant and are designing it the way we're doing it we got okay it was foresight lucky we did good, and my people did a really good job. So it's kind of exciting space we're in. And, you know, I just, as always, I never know when we're going to get the darn agreements done. Some of these are really big deals and with not that many customers. And so they'll take time, but we're stacking them up in multiple net zero plans. It's pretty exciting.
spk04: Are these agreements with Are these potential agreements with the airlines or with players in sort of the middle of the value chain? Who are these agreements being negotiated with?
spk05: I think it would be fair to say I can't comment on this stuff like that. We are sworn to secrecy about these things. I know we get this question all the time. Everyone wants to tell us who is it early. We can't do that. But I will say this. It's a mix of those. Okay. That's what you just asked me about. It's a mix.
spk04: Okay. And then I guess I'll ask the obligatory feedstock-related question. You know, as you are getting visibility into the size of, you know, these opportunities, how are you thinking about managing feedstock requirements, et cetera?
spk05: Well, what's interesting is because we use carbohydrates to feed stock, these are incredibly abundant. So, for example, you know, the – You know, the corn supply here in the U.S. is, what, 14.2 billion bushels a year ago, and it's increasing. And we use the carbohydrate portion. We separate out the protein. A billion gallons would require several percent of corn supply. And, of course, that's really not an accurate count because we're separating. It's closer to an accurate count, but we're separating out all the protein that goes with it. So there's more than enough feedstock availability, especially when ethanol, well, it's made a little bit of a comeback, but the ethanol supply has gone down a bit. So we're in pretty good shape in terms of feedstock, and that puts us at a comparative advantage compared to some of the other feedstocks that are out there for renewables. Of course, around the world, it's not corn. In Germany, we would work with something else, and in India, it's definitely molasses and things like that. So, and I think in South America, as we get going, you'll see us work with molasses and other products. So carbohydrates are a great feedstock because they're so ubiquitous in such large amounts, especially compared when one's looking at oil seeds or one of those other things.
spk04: So just to, you know, so these net zero plants don't essentially have to be in the U.S. They could be, you know, in other geographies?
spk05: Sure they can. It's a concept. So what we're doing is building plants and building in the renewable energy infrastructure that goes with them. Because of the way we process things, we have the ability to take and put like a water treatment plant. We'll put that water treatment plant in. It makes biogas. We use that to do the thermal demand for the plant, displacing the fossil-based natural gas. Of course, we want renewable electricity. Electricity is the thing that causes it in between. Electricity and natural gas, that is the thing that causes the bulk of our footprint. This is true of all energy. When we're trying to drive the footprint down on greenhouse gases, it is about electricity. This seems to be lost on the world at large. And the same thing is true with the natural gas. It's fossil-based, both of them. Well, okay, electricity is 60% fossil-based in this country, and around the world it's about the same. So there's an enormous amount of work to do. So we think of it as every time we do a net zero plant, we'll have done something about renewable energy. And, in fact, our company is, in fact, a developer company. of renewable natural gas. That's a fact. We are a co-developer of wind. We did a project last year. We're going to do another around our net zero plant. And you know what? We're going to continue to be active in the renewable energy. And it was just a different mentality about what needs to be done to solve these greenhouse gas problems and make money while we do it.
spk04: The green bond for the RNG that you issued Is that allowing you to pay a lower interest rate versus, you know, a regular bond, I guess?
spk05: Hey, Lynn, are you on the line, Lynn? There's an interest rate, and I thought we published it. I mean, it's public stuff, so it's there.
spk04: Okay, I'll check that. I'll look up that.
spk05: Yeah.
spk04: No problem yet. Okay. I guess my other question was around, you know, how much we need to factor in with respect to the interest burden related to this, but I can loop that up also. But essentially, the payments on this will begin in 2Q21, right?
spk05: Yeah, so what will happen is, yeah, so, yeah, and What we'll do is you have to – you know what you should do is call in and talk to him and find out more color on it. And the thing that I'm paying attention to is I want this plant built and mechanically complete by the end of the year. I want it operational in the first quarter of next year so that we can get all of our qualifications done to get the stuff certified so we can start generating cash, get that done. I want the money in the door by the end of – well, in the third, fourth quarter of next year, whenever that timing works out. And, you know, I want the cash coming in the door. And when we're talking about $9 million to $16 million of cash, that might sound small to people. But, dang, that's like real money. We want it. And that's after, you know, the debt service and all the rest. So, you know, that's – I want it.
spk04: So, Pat, what's the delta – what accounts for the delta between the $9 million to $16 million in that range? Like what could be the difference between you coming in at $9 million or $16 million? Yeah.
spk05: You have to go through California and get certified as to what exactly the pathway is, and they look at your dairies and they'll judge them in some way. And we're trying to give our B conservative. So in the worst-case scenario, we say it's 9. We think it's more like 16. And so we're just giving ourselves a range so we can hit something that's reasonable. But you've got to go through this. Whenever you've got to go through the certification process, which is normal, you've got to get their blessings to say, yep, that's legit. um it depends on how they're looking at things at that time you know and because it's in future world you know we just say okay we we plan on nine hoping it's 16. that's the cash out on the revenue side what that means on the revenue side is it's like 23 to 28 million dollars revenue okay so this will get narrowed down once you get the certifications that's it well we would know we would know then we we will know if if If they do what they have done in the past, it's the high side.
spk04: Okay.
spk05: Understood.
spk04: And I guess my last question was around, you know, what the expected cash levels would be as you exit 2021. I don't know if Len is online, but I can follow up with him if he's not available.
spk05: Yeah, I follow up. Maybe that we have some long lead time items. I think we talked about that once before where, We may have to put money down along lead equipment for net zero plans. That might be, you know, tie up $20 million or something. But I don't know. We have to ask him exactly. And we'll have to sort through that as we get further along. Lynn, you're here?
spk03: Yeah, I'm sorry. I was dropped, so I'm back. What was the question?
spk04: The question was, you know, where do you expect to be with your cash position as you exit 2021? Ballpark. Yeah.
spk03: About $490 million. Okay.
spk05: Okay. Now, look, everybody, everybody that has a big error bar around it, it depends upon if we do long lead equipments and pay for them or not. Don't write that one in stone, okay? And so it depends upon what we do.
spk03: Yeah. The question, as I understood it, was expectation, and expectation to me is based on the development cost that we incur as we develop net zero one. Yeah, it does depend on a lot of things, especially around long lead equipment deposits to advance the construction schedule. That's the big uncertainty. So there is an error bar around that, but that's a point estimate. Yeah, there you go.
spk04: Thank you for that. Just one last one, I guess. The amendment with Scandinavian Airlines, Pat, was this related to volume or pricing or something else?
spk05: Volume. It was volume. They came back for more. And I think we'll see more of that in the future from others. Understood.
spk04: That's all I have. Thank you so much.
spk02: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sean Severson with Water Tower Research. Your line is open.
spk06: Great. Thanks. Pat, I'm trying to understand, when you talk about, you know, $10 billion, I mean, when would all this pipeline want to start? I mean, is it like some of them say they'd want to start taking delivery in 2027 or 2030? Or are you talking about basically as fast as you could build plants, which you'd have many in parallel to facilitate?
spk05: It's the – now it's in the game of wanting it sooner, faster, and all the rest. And it is about gasoline, alkali, and jet fuel both. And we can't do them fast enough. So we've got to go through the cycle we're in to pin things down. And then the Net Zero 2 plant, I think, is – it'll be done in pair in overlapping with net zero one is the hypothesis. Net zero three could be done exactly at the same time potentially. So it depends on when we get the contracts done, it's going to get interesting. And then we got to think about how to do even bigger chunks all at once because the, it's that kind of a pipeline. And so, uh, it's getting to be interesting. People want the stuff fast. So net zero one is expected to come online in first part of 2024. I think it would be interesting to see. Could we push it and get the NED-02 online in 2024 as well, and the NED-03 maybe? This is how we're thinking about it and why we're going to such detailed work to get it right on this engineering is so we can cookie-cut these things to make them work with certainty.
spk06: Are you seeing any interest or inclination in that pipeline? Would they want you to work with a strategic, or are you basically – operating fine on your own, obviously signing all take agreements, you're operating fine on your own, but I'm just trying to understand if there's a nuance there that, you know, they're saying, hey, you know, we want big partners in this or just the mentality of these customers.
spk05: No, there's like, they get it, is that we're interesting and unique as a company because we do development of our own renewable energy We've learned how to do it. We are the experts in the fermentation chemistry side of things. We've run these big processes in our past lives. Everybody knows that. So everyone vets us. And they look at it and they go, well, you guys know how to do stuff we don't know how to do. So are people interested in investing? Yeah, there'll be times when we can take project investment in or there's, you know, people have been approaching this around corporate investments as well. And it's just we've got to figure out the right timing. And so... It's going to get interesting, but as far as execution goes, no, that's easy. Not easy. We know how to do that in the engineering firms that we work with, and there's lots of them that we're working with. It's a big group of them. They are pretty good at this stuff, too, and my folk are really good project managers and leaders, and so you've got to remember that we've been here and done this before in our past lives, and so this isn't like a new rodeo for us. But, no, people look at us and generally go, God, you guys are self-sufficient. The other thing that you've got to remember and that everyone should remember, and this is fundamentally different about us than most other companies, most other companies make some kind of a soup as a product that has to get refined and so they need a refinery. We don't. We make it deliberately, the jet fuel and the octane, and we can change things. If we want to make more stuff for gasoline, we can do that without changing anything in the plant, just change the conditions, or if I want to make more jet fuel. So in that sense, we're like a chemical plant. This is a fundamental difference and is important when you think about how this marketplace can unfold. We've got a competitive edge, I believe.
spk06: I want to go to another question about kind of the pipeline. How diverse is it? You kind of nuanced it. You said there are some large ones in there, but just how, how diverse is that, um, um, is that, uh, um, you know, group and, and for modeling purposes, should we assume that, you know, most of these plants and the offtake agreements have similar economics?
spk05: Yeah. The way we think of it as, uh, every net zero plant of 45 million gallons generates, uh, EBITDA stream of plus $100 million. That's how, that's how we think of it internally. And it would have, um, you have to do the math to figure out the cost of life of the contract, six to seven years, so 6.5 years, $1.5 billion of revenue across the life of the contract divided by 45 million gallons is $5 and whatever it is, 10 to 15 cents a gallon.
spk06: There is a big variation in these contracts, I guess is what I meant. When we look at When we sign up contracts and it's starting to fill up, we should think of very similar economics, use the same economics for all of them. Yes, we do. Yeah, okay.
spk05: Yeah, and we found a sweet spot on pricing where it works for everybody. It works well, keeps the customers incentivized to work with us because they get some of the green value. It's interesting.
spk06: Just to clarify the diversity in that pipeline?
spk05: Oh, yeah. Yeah, the diversity of the pipeline. So what do you mean by diversity?
spk06: Give me some. Is this 30 or three that are in there? I'm trying to understand if these are smaller.
spk05: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, there's probably of the $10 billion, I think it's like, I'm going to call it, you know, 15 to 20.
spk06: Got it. Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. Yeah.
spk02: Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, that's star one to ask the question. Our next question comes from the line of Craig Irwin with Roth Capital Partners. Your line is open.
spk07: Good evening, and thanks for taking my questions. So, Pat, I understand the enthusiasm of your customers out there. Jet fuel is the one fuel that really has the least environmental compliance of all the liquid fuels. You know, it's high sulfur. high emissions, high particulates, and really one of the best opportunities for environmental remediation with clean fuels. Can you maybe talk a little bit about what you're seeing as one of the leaders in this industry on the regulatory front? You know, I think many of the customers out there are acting today in anticipation of regulatory action. What do you see as possibilities on the horizon that could bring the rest of the industry along with the thought leaders that have already signed up as your customers?
spk05: Yeah, so I think what will happen – there's several things. You're exactly right. Jetfield needs work. They can't get to their – the industry can't get to the goals without having – sustainable aviation feel available. And there's a couple things that are happening. One is that the industry itself is pushing to go up from the 50% blends to the 100%, and that's going to take a mixture of stuff. People like us, we could go make more than all the components as well, but there's lots of guys who can do that. I think mixing and matching is probably the right thing. The key is to drive to low carbon. The lower the carbon, the better. How you count carbons matters a ton. And you've got to do it on a fair basis and legit, otherwise you start doing really weird, you know, people do weird behaviors. So there's a bunch of things like that that are being cooked. And then the important ones are around, there's some bills proposed, like for Blender's tax credits, that would give like $1.50 a gallon for jet fuel produced in the States. And that would help the economics. The airline industry itself does not want to pay a premium for these fuels. They know they have to buy them. The model that we have for selling fuels allows them to share in the environmental benefits, and so we aren't quite as dependent upon this as other people, which is why we get some of these contracts and maybe others don't. Remember, we're getting on a take-or-pay basis, a real take-or-pay basis, and that makes us slightly different than most.
spk07: Okay, excellent. So then just, you know, economics are something that's going to be a little bit of a wiggle room. as production comes online. And today, really, everything's based on forecasts. But can you maybe talk us through just the basic process that you see when you talk to regulators? Traditionally, for example, CARB starts with production today and looks at what you can achieve versus that baseline. So if you start off with... I don't know, whatever it is, 600 ppm, I'm probably off of sulfur in jet fuel. And you can bring that, you know, down to 500 ppm by mixing in 20%, you know, clean fuels. That move down in the baseline is where the economic value is uncovered. And, you know, that's a much bigger move down in SOx emissions than you're going to get and almost any other investment out there environmentally. I mean, are these the things that are factoring into the sort of regulatory considerations out there and some of the potential economic compliance values that will impact the credit values as we look out on the horizon? Because I assume there will be credits at some point for the compliance value of these fuels.
spk05: Yeah, that's a really interesting point. So, you know, what Craig is asking about is that there's going to be the NOx in stocks and the particulates are big deals. The sulfur problem is something that is hard to deal with, and it comes in. It's inherent with petroleum-based products. You're right. We can eliminate that. And it's a clear cut. We can avoid it. We don't have it. And so this is a good thing. And likewise with particulates, we can get rid of those, and those are usually the aromatic compounds. You're right. They're valued. What I think is going to happen is we're going to see more regulation upon those things. In fact, even as part of the Clean Air Act, and I know you know this already, that's already there. It just hasn't been implemented yet. Will the new administrations start to push that stuff? Well, they should. They've been delaying it for how many years? A decade already. They should clamp down. That would benefit guys like us, and we normally don't talk about those benefits. Now, that said, One of the ways that we price our product is that we do an index like to jet fuel our gasoline on some of these, like a premium gasoline, and then we get paid a premium on top of that just for its technical properties, which in part are related to its lack of particulate, lack of sulfur. So in our pricing models, we're starting to see value for that already, which is pretty darn interesting because it's way early on. So it's our customer's problem. They see it. It's coming at them, and they're trying to figure out what to do.
spk07: Excellent, excellent. And then, you know, congratulations on the progress on Net Zero One. You know, I know we're really in a capital phase now, and a lot of this is going to be – the value is going to be realized, you know, as production comes online. What would you say we can look at today for best indicators of economics of production of that plant when it comes online, you know, It's difficult to compare, you know, a 10X scale-up, but is there anything else out there in sort of the broader universe of industrial built that maybe we can look at and say, you know, this has been done before and we understand the phenomenon?
spk05: Yeah, you betcha. There is. The last time a plant of the scale that was done that was a non-ethanol fermentation that did a combination of you know, a genetically modified yeast in a new fermentation system and then had to make it work right to do chemistry was back when we did PLA plastics at Cargill so that we genetically engineered yeast. The fermentation plant was giant. In fact, at the time, it was the world's biggest fermentation plant. The team I have at GEVO were the leaders of that. They did it. They're the guys. They're still with me at GEVO. This helps us in that there's, like, the lessons we learned about what works, what doesn't, what the problems with the pitfalls, This is knowledge you can't get any other place because you've got to know how to do this stuff at large scale and the subtleties that go with it. Well, my group has been there and done it before. That gives me enormous comfort. And you know Chris Ryan, my chief operating officer, he led that. Ron Borchardt, my head engineer, he's the guy who built those plants. And so we have them here, and they've been working with it ever since, and that's been on our mind in the lessons we learned. And so it is a – And this net zero plant that we're talking about is on the order of that kind of a plant that we did back in the day at Cargill, and it would be a little bit smaller than one of the giant ethanol plants.
spk07: Excellent. Well, congratulations on the progress. I look forward to tracking things going forward, and I'll hop back in the queue. Thank you.
spk05: Thanks, Greg.
spk02: Thank you. I'm not showing any further questions. I would now like to turn the call back over to Pat for closing remarks.
spk05: We have made great progress. I wish I could tell you all the details that I know. You'd get really, really excited. And I just can't. And it'll be fun to unfold them. And it takes patience for me, too. I want to see more of these contracts with customers done. I want to see the – They're exciting. And more than one net zero plant, that's a nice problem to have. And it'll also be interesting to see as that volume stacks up on take-or-pay contracts, it really does end the debate about what will people pay for this and are they interested really if you're sitting on the sidelines watching. So it's going to be interesting to see the impact on others around us and what happens. And then the engineering, we keep plugging along and we'll get her done. It takes an enormous quantity of work. We're doing something unusual here, integrating engineers. renewable energy called Renewable Energy Island into our plant because, remember, we've got to do the optimization of the wind. We're going to be making hydrogen. We're having a debate about how much hydrogen should we make because we think that's the very best way to store some energy from the excess wind we'll have. There's a question of should we sell the stuff. We've got a lot of things to sort out about how to conduct the integration. Thank God the technology itself is solid and worked out. So with that, thanks for joining us. Everybody have a good evening.
spk02: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
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