Gevo, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the Jivo Incorporated Quarter 1, 2026 Earnings Conference Call. I am Franz and I'll be the operator assisting you today. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Eric Frey, Vice President of Finance and Strategy. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call to discuss Jivo's first quarter and full year 2026 results. I'm Eric Frey, Vice President of Finance and Strategy at Jivo. With me today, we have Paul Bloom, our Chief Executive Officer, Leke Aguirre, our Chief Financial Officer, and Greg Hanselman, Executive Vice President of Operations and Engineering. Earlier today, we issued a press release that outlines our first quarter of 2026 results and some of the topics we plan to discuss. Copies of the press release are available on our website at www.jibo.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 alcohol-to-jet project, the potential expansion and de-bottlenecking of our Ejevo North Dakota plant, the potential expansion of our carbon sequestration well, our expected future adjusted EBITDA, our agreements with ARA Energy, 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.teva.com in the investor relations section. Following the prepared remarks, we'll open the call for questions. I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call is open to the media and we're providing a simultaneous webcast to the public. A replay of this call and other past events will be available via the company's investor relations page at www.jibo.com. I'd now like to turn the call over to the CEO of Jibo, Paul Bloom. Paul?

Thanks, Eric. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us. This quarter was about advancing execution and strengthening the foundation for scale. Our team continued to build on the momentum of last year, strengthening our core business while advancing the next phase of our growth. We made measurable progress on our ATJ30 project and our planned de-bottlenecking and expansion of Jibo North Dakota. We continued to improve the performance of our existing business and refine our financing strategy. The first quarter of 2026 was our fourth consecutive quarter delivering positive non-gap adjusted EBITDA and reflected better than expected results with improved margins on top of solid production volumes. Our carbon business continues to deliver strong returns from low-carbon ethanol compliance markets. In Q1, we sold approximately 57% of our carbon attributes to attached fuel. We also generated nearly 20,000 tons of engineered carbon dioxide removal credits, or CDRs, to be sold into the voluntary carbon market and continue to see steady demand and relatively strong credit pricing for low-carbon ethanol sales in markets where we participate. Our customers for CDRs continue to grow in Q1, including purchases and retirements of credits by Amgen, Bank of Montreal, and PayPal, while continuing to advance more sizable long-term CDR deals. Importantly, we see continued growth this year even before our de-bottlenecking at Vivo North Dakota comes into effect. Last year, we reported approximately $16 million of adjusted EBITDA. For 2026, we expect approximately $30 million of adjusted EBITDA as we progress towards our previously stated target of achieving $40 million of adjusted EBITDA on an annualized run rate basis from existing operations by the end of this year. The impact of our de-bottlenecking and other growth plans is incremental to this target. To further support our efforts, we've launched a corporate-wide initiative we're calling the EBITDA Challenge. This is about unlocking new revenue growth, improving operational performance, and managing costs across our organization. We look forward to providing more updates as we make progress on this critical initiative. Now let me turn to our alcohol to jet project that we call Project North Star, since I know that's top of mind. As previously announced, we've made the decision to withdraw from the DOE financing process following a conversation with them around certain new requirements for the loan guarantee, including enhanced oil recovery as a business objective. These requirements did not align with our duty to maximize value for our stakeholders from both an economic and timeline perspective. Withdrawing from the DOE process allows us to fully engage with a broader group of private capital providers while adding greater certainty and flexibility to our financing efforts. I'm pleased to report that we have received non-binding indications of interest from multiple lenders, which supports our goal of securing financing for Project North Star by the end of 2026. As a reminder, we are pursuing a combination of non-diluted project-level debt and strategic capital options for Project North Star. Beyond financing, we are making good progress on our other key milestones that include engineering and offtake agreements. On engineering, we talk about front-end loading, otherwise known as FEL, for which Stage 2 has been completed. We remain on track to complete FEL 3 this quarter, which will further refine our capital cost estimates and position us to move forward to detailed engineering. Regarding offtake, we've already secured approximately half of the financeable long-term contracts for synthetic aviation fuel and carbon attributes for the project. Currently, we are at the term sheet stage for additional contracts which, upon completion, we expect will meet our financing requirements. We see a clear path to final investment decision, or FID, and based on our progress, continue to believe that Project North Star could deliver approximately $150 million of adjusted EBITDA per year once fully commissioned and online. Switching gears to our expansion project, on March 30th, we announced our intent to expand the capacity of GEVO North Dakota by up to 75 million gallons per year, bringing our total capacity to an expected 150 million gallons per year. This expansion would effectively double the carbon capture and low-carbon ethanol production and all the value that comes with that from our original acquisition of the plant last year. To help finance the expansion, we've entered into a preliminary agreement with Aura Energy a global private equity and infrastructure firm focused on industrial decarbonization, to co-invest in the project. We still have to finalize the details, but we believe partnering with experienced capital providers will allow us to move faster than our balance sheet alone with support, while maintaining a disciplined approach to capital projects, avoiding dilution, and optimizing risk-adjusted returns. We expect construction of that expansion to take approximately 18 to 24 months following final investment decisions. Lastly, let me touch on the de-bottlenecking and other site improvements that are currently in progress at GEVA North Dakota. As previously announced, the volumes unlocked by our de-bottlenecking efforts should expand adjusted EBITDA in the GEVA North Dakota segment by an anticipated 10 to 15 percent. We are on track to deliver the de-bottlenecking and operational reliability projects by the end of 2026. Site improvements are underway, and Greg will talk more about that and our other operational and engineering highlights. But first, I'll turn it over to Lakey to run through the financial performance for the quarter, and I'll come back at the end to recap.