This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk04: Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Origin Materials' fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and 0. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ashish Gupta, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk01: Thank you and welcome, everyone, to Origin Materials' fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Joining the call today from Origin Materials are co-CEO Rich Riley, co-CEO and co-founder John Bissell, and CFO Nate Whaley. Ahead of this call, Origin issued its fourth quarter press release and presentation, which we will refer to today. These can be found on the investor relations section of our website at originmaterials.com. Please note, on this call, we will be making forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. These statements reflect our views as of today, should not be relied upon as representative about views of any subsequent date, and we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. For further discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our financial results, please refer to our filings with the SEC, including our last quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed on November 12, 2021, and our annual report on Form 10-K to be filed next week. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful as supplemental measures of origin materials performance. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute or in isolation from GAAP results. You will find additional disclosures regarding the non-GAAP financial measures discussed on today's call and our press release issued this afternoon and our filings with the SEC, each of which is posted on our website. The webcast of this call will also be available on the investor relations section of our company website. With that, I will turn the call over to Rich.
spk09: Thank you, Ashish, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. For today's presentation, we will be referring to the slides or posted to the investor relations section of our website earlier this afternoon. I will start by reviewing Q4 highlights, then discuss important industry announcements, and provide a commercial update. I will then turn it over to John, who will discuss construction progress on Origin 1 and Origin 2. Nate will wrap up with a financial overview. We will begin on slide three. We continue to make steady progress against our strategic initiatives and are maintaining our expectations for the capital budget and production timelines for both Origin 1 and Origin 2. First, we remain well capitalized on budget and on track for completion of Origin 1 by the end of 2022, having achieved several construction milestones during the fourth quarter. Origin 2 remains on track to be operational by mid 2025. We recently announced the selection of Geismar, Louisiana as the site location for Origin 2 subject to the finalization of certain economic incentives. State and local incentives are estimated to be more than $100 million, in addition to a municipal tax-exempt bond allocation from the state of Louisiana of $400 million. Today, we are also pleased to announce the selection of Hunt, Guillaume & Associates as our owner's engineer for Origin 2. Second, our customer demand has more than quintupled since our announcement to become a public company in February of last year. with offtake and capacity reservations increasing by over $1.4 billion since the third quarter call in November to $5.6 billion as of today. And third, we remain well capitalized with approximately $445 million in cash and cash equivalents on hand. We are maintaining our expectation that the capital projects for Origin 1 and Origin 2 can be fully funded from our existing cash on hand and previously indicated traditional project financing sources. Now, as I did in our last call, I'd like to give a brief overview of the company for those who are new to the story. Origin was founded with a mission to help solve climate change by enabling the world's transition to sustainable materials. Our patented drop-in core technology, economics, and carbon impacts have gained the support of a growing list of major global brands and investors, including Danone, Nestle Waters, PepsiCo, Ford Motor Company, Mitsubishi Gas Chemical, Cologne Industries, Primaloft, Solvay, Mitsui & Co., and Minifin Group. Mitsui & Co. and Minifin Group are new additions to our growing list of partnerships, both of which will increase our exposure to a multitude of consumer and industrial end markets while also expanding our international footprint. Our CPG partners have publicly disclosed their intent to migrate 100% of their current petroleum-based PET consumption to decarbonized and recycled materials. After extensively testing our technology, these market leaders have made significant financial contributions to Origin, both as investors and customers, demonstrating their environmental commitment and confidence in our technology. They have signed multi-year off-take contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. We continue to see strong, favorable tailwinds for our technology and business model, with some of the world's largest public companies committing to zero-carbon mandates to help tackle climate change. In Japan, we've been encouraged by a recent pickup in decarbonization activity, building upon the country's commitment at COP26 to become carbon neutral by 2050. A recent survey commissioned by NHK Japan, or the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, found that the majority of participants from 100 of Japan's largest companies believe achieving carbon neutrality within that timeframe is possible. The decarbonization momentum that we are seeing globally is creating significant opportunities for origin, including our strategic partnerships with Mitsui & Co. and the Minifin Group, which we will discuss in more detail shortly. With more than 99% of plastics made from fossil fuels, the world clearly needs to dramatically transform the way it produces and uses plastic as fast as possible. With our first product, Origin offers an entirely circular plastic solution, 100% zero-carbon recyclable PET, which the world's plastic recycling infrastructure is already designed to collect, sort, and reuse, with the critical added benefit of removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Beyond that, despite the progress in the shift to renewable energy generation and electric vehicles, It is clear that reducing emissions from energy use alone is insufficient to achieve the goals and commitments established by companies and governments. Consequently, in the near term, we believe that these companies will need to integrate decarbonized materials into their supply chains. As such, we expect the strong demand environment to continue and remain well ahead of our projected supplies for the foreseeable future. Turning to slide four, we continue to make steady progress commercializing the business. and have grown customer demand by more than $1.4 billion since our third quarter earnings call, for a total of $5.6 billion today, made up of uptake agreements and capacity reservations. This has more than quintupled since we announced our intent to go public in February 2021. Moving to slide five. In January, we announced a strategic partnership with Mitsui & Co. to industrialize advanced carbon negative materials and chemicals for the automotive, chemicals, electronics, packaging, textiles, construction, and personal care industries. Mitsui, a global leader in multiple business areas, including chemicals, textiles, and many others, also signed a multi-year capacity reservation agreement to purchase sustainable carbon negative materials from origin. Consistent with our view that climate change is an urgent international priority, we are excited both by the potential to collaborate with Mitsui on the commercialization of new products and also the opportunity to leverage Mitsui's global supply chain reach to target Japanese and international markets. In February, we announced a strategic partnership with Minifin Group to industrialize high-value specialty chemicals based on our carbon-negative materials for applications in the pharmaceutical, agricultural, cosmetics, and personal care and automotive industries. The partnership includes multiple collaboration areas and is an important milestone for bringing cost-competitive, bio-based products to these end markets. This partnership with Minifin Group continues to demonstrate the versatility and broad range of applications for our carbon-negative platform technology. On slide four, we are very excited about a new strategic relationship with a major global retail company, which is our first retail partnership. We're thrilled to continue to expand into new parts of our total addressable market and into new end markets, and look forward to saying more about this partnership and others when appropriate. In addition to these partnership announcements, Origin was recognized in November by Chemical Week for Best Sustainable Product by an Emerging Company as part of Chemical Week Sustainability Awards 2021. The award recognizes emerging chemical companies with a product or range of products whose design and innovation serve a sustainable or environmental purpose. In January, Origin was recognized by the Business Intelligence Group for the company's leadership and innovation and received the 2022 Big Innovation Award. We received the award for our patented category-leading breakthrough technology, which, as most of you know, is built around converting low-cost, sustainable wood residues into decarbonized, supply-chain-ready materials. With that, I'd like to turn it over to John, who will provide an update on Origin 1 and Origin 2.
spk03: Thanks, Rich. I'm going to begin on slide 7 and provide an update on Origin 1 and Origin 2. For Origin 1, our first plant, which is under construction in Sarnia, Ontario, we remain well capitalized and on track for completion by the end of 2022. We continue to execute on our construction timeline, achieving several project milestones ahead of schedule, further de-risking our overall project schedule. As we disclosed on our third quarter call in October 2021, we completed the installation of key production modules that contain equipment used for the conversion of biomass feedstock into high-value chemicals six months ahead of the plan announced in April 2021. The ENCON evaporator module system was placed and bolted three months ahead of schedule in accordance with the accelerated target origin provided in November 2021. As I mentioned last quarter, the ENCON evaporator module system is used for recovery and regeneration of the aqueous phase of our process. an important part of how we recycle water in the plant. We've continued to make progress in 2022. Installation of structural elements and interconnecting piping of the main plant production modules is in progress and largely completed. The foundational work for the majority of the auxiliary process building to tank farms is also complete. Piping fabrication, which began earlier this year, is more than three months ahead of the plan announced in April and faster than the pulled forward target that we laid out for you on our third quarter earnings call in November, further de-risking our schedule. If you refer to slide 10, you'll see a picture of a large delivery of carbon steel pipe and structural steel, which we'll utilize to fabricate pipe modules in shop during the cold winter months, a process that we expect to continue for several months as it will take time to complete the modules, which will be sent to Origin 1 for site for installation. We'll be finishing the piping modules, sending them to the site, and installing them over time. As we've described before, Origin has chosen a modular construction approach, whereby our equipment can be fabricated offsite and generally indoors. There are several advantages to this method. For one, modular construction can offer control over environmental conditions and therefore more predictable production, especially when considering very cold winter conditions. Additionally, modular construction gives you better control over the quality of the work. Turning to an update on Origin 2, our first world-scale manufacturing facility, the plant remains on track to be mechanically complete and operational in mid-2025. Origin 2 will produce carbon-negative materials used to make PET plastic, which is used in packaging, textiles, apparel, and other applications. and hydrothermal carbon, which can be used in fuel pellets, as activated carbon, and as a replacement for carbon black. Front-end design is well underway, and Origin expects detailed engineering to begin in 2023. We recently announced that we've selected the site for Origin 2 in Geismar, Louisiana, subject to finalization of economic incentives. We expect the 150-acre facility will create an estimated 500 construction jobs, 200 local full-time positions, and between 500 and 1,000 indirect local jobs. The plant will convert an estimated 1 million dry metric tons of sustainable wood residues each year into products for a wide range of end markets. We're incredibly excited about the site and went through an extensive process to choose what we believe is an ideal location for Orchard 2. We started the process looking at over 40 sites. Then we narrowed our list using criteria that we knew would be important to our facility, things like access to ethylene, waterways, rail access, and other factors. We subsequently narrowed our site down to 15, many of which we visited in person to assess further. And then during our third quarter 2021 earnings call, we described that we narrowed the list down to only three sites. And now we are pleased to tell you more about the Geismar Louisiana location for our first world scale facility. I'll tell you some of the reasons that we believe the Geismar site is the ideal location for Origin 2. Baton Rouge and New Orleans have extremely skilled labor pools across refining, pulp and paper, forestry and agronomy, feedstock, logistics, and chemicals in general. The site will give us access to plentiful sustainable feedstock for use in production, including residuals or waste wood from local large-scale pulp mills and sawmills. In addition, the site has excellent transportation access. It has great access to rail and also sits along the Mississippi River with easy barge access to the Gulf Coast, which is valuable for the distribution of our intermediates. The site also gives us access to reliable utilities, with the local industrial cluster offering access to hydrogen pipelines, ethylene pipelines, valuable inorganic species, water, and wastewater treatment. The proposed incentives package for building in the area is also compelling, with pending state and local government incentives estimated to be worth more than $100 million. In addition to the private activities, bond volume cap allocation of $400 million from the state of Louisiana. We were able to pursue this allocation because the Origin 2 sustainable feedstock of wood residue qualifies as a waste material under the tax code. Origin 2 will, in essence, be converting waste wood residues into useful carbon negative and recyclable materials. This is a great example of how the circular economy will work in the future, and Nate will cover the financing in more detail later. Now, when we laid out our initial plans for this public company, we explained that our strategy may involve co-location with defunct pulp and paper mills. Co-location, we still believe, can play a meaningful role in creating efficiencies for one of our future plants. However, for Origin 2, we ultimately decided not to pursue this strategy. The reason is that the Geismar site is, in fact, much better than the pulp sites we'd expected to find. The site sits at a confluence of nearly every utility we need, plus all the relevant infrastructure, and it still has access to sustainable feedstock. We also expect to integrate substantially with the local community. This is not just an isolated plant. We see many opportunities to place origin products in the local industrial ecosystem and to participate as a customer in that ecosystem as well. On balance, we thought that was ultimately of more value than reutilizing the wood yard and utilities of a pulp mill. And that said, while we ended up not co-locating with a pulp mill for Origin 2, we will continue to explore that strategy for future plans. We're grateful for the partnership of Louisiana Economic Development, the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, and Ascension Parish, of course, for the support that they provide us in the site selection process. We look forward to working with all involved into being a part of the community for years to come. And lastly, I want to say that we are very proud of the team for achieving this milestone. It's a big cross-functional undertaking. The team did a great job, and the spot we chose is excellent. And to destroy our site selection news, we're pleased to announce our selection of Hunt, Geo, and Associates, or HGA, as owner's engineer for Orgy 2. The owner's engineer is an important role that provides full-service engineering to support and augment Orgy in all phases of the project, from early design to construction. They support everything from logistics, planning, detailed scheduling, cost forecasts, progress tracking and reporting, and integrating the different work streams. HGA will serve as an independent advocate for Origin, representing us during design, development, and construction of the facility to ensure that their work adheres to the highest standards. One advantage of HGA in particular is that they are headquartered in Louisiana, and they have offices in Houston and Baton Rouge. So they are close to many Tier 1 engineering companies, to the site in Geismar, and to much of the Origin design team. They also have proven experience as an owner's engineer in multiple projects worth over a billion dollars and have extensive wood handling and forest products experience, which is an important part of the project. We're thrilled to be partnering with a company based she has caliber for this important role. Before I conclude, I'd like to give you some additional detail about what we're working on for Origin 2 right now. Presently, the team is laying out the Origin 2 plot plan based on equipment sizing and starting to build the 3D CAD model. We're working closely with fiber suppliers in Louisiana and Mississippi to develop optimal delivery strategies for rail, truck, and barge, on the constructability for site access, and on right-of-way contracting for rail, pipelines, and roads. To summarize, the team has continued to make significant progress, and we continue to expect Origin 1 to be completed by the end of 2022, with Origin 2 on track to be operational by mid-2025. And with that, I will turn it over to Nate to discuss some of the financial details.
spk02: Thanks, John. I will begin with some commentary on our fourth quarter results. Financing Expectations for Origin 1 and Origin 2, and finish with our 2022 outlook. Speaking to slide 18, fourth quarter operating expenses were $7.8 million compared to $5.5 million during the same period in the prior year. Full year operating expenses were $26.9 million. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $6.6 million for the fourth quarter compared to a loss of $3.8 million in the same period in the prior year. Full year adjusted EBITDA loss was $20 million. And finally, net income was $5.2 million for the fourth quarter compared to a net loss, $23.5 million in the same period in the prior year. Full year net income was $42.1 million. Turning to our balance sheet, Origin ended the fourth quarter with $444.6 million in cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities. We are pleased to maintain our expectation of fully funding the construction of both plans using our existing balance sheet cash and cash equivalents and previously indicated traditional financing sources. For the financing of Origin 2, the state of Louisiana pending finalization is expected to award a private activity bond volume cap allocation to us in the amount of $400 million. Private activity bonds are tax exempt bonds authorized by the state and local governments for the financing of qualified projects with private capital. We also expect to receive more than $100 million in pending state and local incentives. We continue to consult with leading financial institutions that specialize in financing capital projects such as Origin 2 and are pleased to reaffirm our financing assumptions for Origin 2 remained reasonable and achievable. The $400 million private activity bond allocation from the state of Louisiana provides a strong foundation for the financing of Origin 2. And in combination with certain 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provision could enable debt financing of Origin 2 using entirely tax-exempt bonds. We also continue to work with these institutions on other forms of traditional private financing and federal loan programs, including through the USDA and the Department of Energy. As we mentioned in our Q3 call in November, inflationary pressures remain a focal point. Based on our most recent analysis, we continue to expect construction costs to remain within our overall capital budget, and as discussed previously, we've projected approximately $100 million of excess cash beyond the capital budget for Origin 1 and Origin 2, in addition to contingencies already included in our capital project budgets. However, we acknowledge that the situation remains fluid. We look to update our cost estimates such that we can communicate any changes to the market as appropriate as we continue to make progress towards our targeted 2025 completion date. To wrap up with our initial outlook for the full year 2022, we are providing guidance for capital expenditures of up to $155 million and an adjusted EBITDA loss of up to $36 million. With that, I'll turn it back to Rich for closing remarks.
spk09: Thank you, Nate. To close, I'm incredibly proud of what the Origin team accomplished in 2021 and encouraged by the strong momentum that we continue to see for our industry-leading technology in 2022 as the world moves aggressively to a zero-carbon future. I would like to thank all of our customers for their commitments to Origin, our team and construction and engineering partners for their contribution to our company's success, and our shareholders for their continuous support. And with that, I would like to ask the operator to open the line for questions.
spk04: We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. The first question is from Steve Byron from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
spk06: Thanks for taking my questions. So, the first thing I want to understand a little bit better is if you can provide more color on what products MeToo and Meenafin would like to – are planning on producing from your CMS, if you have any more details that you can share.
spk08: Yeah, thanks for the question.
spk09: We can't disclose more than we've already shared in the slides and in our press release, but we're very excited about our partnership with Minifin. As you may know, they are a significant fine chemicals producer and an example of us partnering with a company that can take our products into even higher value and very specialized applications across a wide range of industries, including pharmaceutical, agricultural, cosmetics, and automotive. And so it's a very broad partnership, and we're collaborating across multiple products.
spk06: Okay, great. And with respect to the second plan in Geismar, I was wondering, the access that you mentioned, if you're going to have to pipelines for hydrogen and other inputs, who do you consider and who did that allow you, for example, to go further down the value chain, other building blocks for PET, or are you going to produce just CMF and you're going to use that access more to sell to customers nearby?
spk03: Yeah, great question. Thanks. Generally speaking, we view the Geismar plant as one that's going to go all the way through to paraxylene. So it won't just be producing CMF. We'll also be doing the downstream conversion of CMF into the PET-related intermediates. As you picked up, that's why ready access to those kinds of additional reagents is really quite valuable for that plant.
spk06: Great. And just one last one on the $100 million incentives from the state. Are these going to be provided over the life of the project or over the duration of the construction? What is the timeline for these?
spk02: Christopher Ptomey, yeah no great great question glad you asked it's a combination of both we're looking for first I should just reiterate john's comment that. Christopher Ptomey, We were really appreciative of the of the state of Louisiana. Christopher Ptomey, Baton Rouge area Chamber and sanction parish for their their partnership, but both the project or the the the incentives rather. are a combination of both over the lifetime of the plant and during construction. So we're tremendously excited about that, as well as Rich pointed out earlier, the $400 million of private activity bond allocation, which we think is just a tremendous foundation for the financing.
spk12: Great. Thank you very much.
spk04: The next question is from Frank Mitch from Fermium Research. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hey, good morning, gentlemen, and I really appreciate the color, especially on the site selection, because as you mentioned, John, we were kind of thinking that it was going to be located in an old pulp and paper mill, but obviously Geismar is a chemical hotbed. I was struck by the increase in the off-tick agreements and capacity reservations up another $1.2 billion yesterday. I'm curious as to how you think about the margins, the potential margins of that business. If I think about where the price of oil was, even just when we had our conference call three months or so ago, to where it is today and where it may go. How do we think about the margins on some of this additional new business?
spk09: Yeah, thanks, Frank. $1.4 billion is certainly a very strong quarter in terms of adding to our demand. And we continue to see pricing evolve in a favorable direction as we go through time. And the deals we're doing are meet or exceed the revenue and margin expectations in our financial projections. And so I would say things continue to develop favorably. And we continue to sign deals across a wide range of geographies and markets, um, this quarter with, with Minifin, which we talked about, you know, Mitsui, which is a massive player, uh, especially in Japan, but, but globally, and then also a major retail partner, which represents our first new retail partnership. And so, um, you know, we continue to see strong demand and strong pricing.
spk07: Gotcha. Understood. Um, and, uh, And speaking of the financial projections that you laid out in the past, I note that, you know, 2022, you were anticipated when you rolled out to spend about $126 million of CapEx. You're looking at $155. Obviously, $21 came in a little bit lighter, but is there anything else that we should read into the upsizing of your 2022 capital expectations?
spk02: No, not at all. The upsizing of 2022 really reflects just a deferral of costs that we expected we might incur when we rolled out the original 2021 projections. So this is really just reflective of actual terms we've gotten from our contractors, progress we're making on Origin 2 as we progress through now from site selection, which we've just announced through the through the FBL design gates. So everything is just moving along. We've reaffirmed our overall project budgets, so everything is moving along exactly as we foresaw.
spk12: Thank you very much, gentlemen.
spk04: The next question is from Bob Court from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
spk00: Hi, this is Emily Keck on for Bob. With demand now exceeding $5.6 billion, would you guys be able to provide any color on the breakdown between offtake agreements and capacity reservations, and then how that ratio might have changed since the third quarter?
spk09: Yeah. Hi, Emily. We're not providing that breakdown at this time. We continue to believe that our overall number is the most accurate representation of demand. But I will say that we continue to make progress on converting capacity reservations into offtake agreements and remain very confident that we will have sufficient offtake agreements in place in plenty of time for the financing of Origin 2.
spk00: Okay, great. And then one more question. I think that in the slide you guys mentioned the Origin 2 site in Geismar as being subject to the finalization of economic incentives. Do you know what the timeline looks like for when we might learn more there?
spk02: Yeah, those are routine approvals that go through, whether it's the governor's office or the state and local jurisdictions that'll be finalized over the coming months.
spk11: Thank you.
spk04: As a reminder, it is star one to ask a question. The next question is from Eric Stein from Craig Hallam. Please go ahead.
spk13: Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. So you had a pretty exhaustive search, obviously, for the site for Plant 2. Just curious how that maybe changes or increases your confidence in terms of looking beyond Plant 2. Because obviously, given the demand you're talking about, it won't be too long before you have to start thinking, and you probably already are, thinking about Plant 3. And then just curious, I mean, Geismar, obviously, you know, pretty generous incentives, you know, the municipal bond availability there. Just curious kind of what you found at other locations as you went through the process.
spk03: Yeah. Hey, Eric. Thanks for the question. So as you surmise, you know, having gone through now with a relatively fine-tooth comb a lot of the sites and the areas of interest for us in North America, we saw lots of sites that were, I would say, not just good enough, but really quite nice sites. And for us, fortunately, the last quarter or two has been more about figuring out which of these sites is absolutely the best site for our Origin 2 plant, rather than struggling to try to find an acceptable site. There are lots and lots of really good sites out there. And even though the site market evolves year by year, we're really, really confident that there's going to be plenty of space for us to build a bunch of origin threes and fours and fives and sixes. So I think I really, really enjoyed that site search. And I'd say it did increase our confidence in the ready availability of sites that would fit our specs. Yeah. So thanks for the question. Appreciate it. Yep.
spk13: And I would assume, I mean, part of that, it's obviously, you know, whether it's co-located or just, with all the factors that you're thinking about. But, I mean, there would also be incentives. Maybe not quite where they are for Geismar. Maybe they are. But, I mean, that's a fair assumption as well, I would think. Yeah.
spk03: Oh, right. Sorry. Thanks for asking the second part of your question. Yeah. So generally speaking, we did see, I'd say, a pretty robust incentives response across, you know, there's obviously, you know, you don't chase down the incentives for all of the 40 and more sites that we have looked at, right? It's really later in the process that you drive incentives discussions more so in a more concrete way. So I wouldn't say we got, you know, a mapping of literally the incentives for all of those different sites. But I'd say the sites that we dove down on, we really did see quite generous incentives. Often the packages could look quite different. And so it wasn't just straight apples to apples comparison across each of these sites and these incentives packages. But there was a lot of desire to have decarbonization projects as part of the various regions. So, you know, we often were, I would say, considered a special and quite unique and extraordinarily desirable project for each of the regions and the sites that we were looking at, which I think really, one, makes sense in our macro environment, and two, bodes well for future discussions on this topic.
spk13: Yep, absolutely. Okay, well, maybe last question for me, you know, whenever I whenever you give that number that, you know, that grows every quarter in terms of demand, what I keep coming back to is just scarcity value. And, you know, just curious how that kind of plays into the customer discussions and then how that also plays into something that Rich just talked about for a previous question, just moving customers from capacity arrangements to actual off-takes.
spk09: Yeah, so we – As you can see in the numbers, we continue to see exceptional customer demand, and it's grown from a year ago, primarily in the packaging space, to now include apparel and automotive and textiles and a wide range of industrial partnerships, and new this quarter, a major retail partnership. And then it also expands geographically as we announce major partnerships in Asia and Europe. And so we continue to see strong growth. There is, you know, customers see those numbers too and can see that there's an incredible demand. And I think that does drive some urgency in terms of getting materials. But fundamentally, our customers and potential customers are really trying to hit their net zero and sustainability goals. And, you know, many of them find that we are one of the best, if not only ways to address this portion of it, which is the emotions footprint that comes from the products they make. And so, you know, we just continue to see really strong demand and are excited to keep moving into additional categories, additional products, and additional geographies.
spk11: Okay, thanks.
spk04: The next question is from Graham Price from Raymond James. Please go ahead.
spk10: Hi, good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. Looking through the slide deck, it looks like the operating metrics for origin two on slide 20 are unchanged. I was just wondering if there was any upside to those contribution estimates kind of based on now that you have, you know, the Geismar site selected or whether those are fairly agnostic to site selection.
spk11: Yeah, thanks for asking the question. Generally speaking, you know,
spk03: There will be updates as a result of Geismar specifically. Generally, I'd say they shouldn't be dramatic updates in any way, shape, or form. Frankly speaking, there's a process when we say we reaffirm something that generally means that we've looked into it a little bit and updated some information. At this point, we selected the site relatively recently and don't feel like we've gone through enough of a process to really fine tune those numbers beyond what we've provided previously. So, at this point, I think it's reasonable to think of them as broadly similar. We don't expect there to be something dramatically different.
spk10: Got it. Understood. And then, I guess, quickly for my follow-up. Just as a reminder, once Origin 1 starts up, how long is it expected to reach for that to reach full capacity?
spk03: Yeah, so rather than thinking about it in terms of full capacity, we think about it in terms of meeting the projections that we've provided thus far. You know, we have – we think it will meet those projections, you know, quite handily, and so we're pretty comfortable there. In general, you know, plants like this can take, you know, a couple of quarters to come up to full capacity, but it's on a plant-by-plant basis.
spk11: But we're comfortable that we're going to meet the projections that we've laid out. Understood. Thank you very much.
spk04: This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to Rich Riley for any closing remarks.
spk08: Thank you all for joining us today and we look forward to continuing to update everyone on our progress.
spk04: This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.
Disclaimer