Gevo, Inc.

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.

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.

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?