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spk05: Good morning. Thank you for attending the Benson Hill second quarter 2022 earnings call. My name is Jordan and I'll be your moderator. All lines are on mute for the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. I'd now like to pass the conference over to your host, Ruben Meyer, Senior Director, Investor Relations with Benson Hill. Ruben, please go ahead.
spk02: Thank you, Jordan, and good morning. We appreciate you joining us to review our second quarter and year-to-date earnings results and the exciting news we have announced today that advances the achievement of our strategic objectives. With me are Matt Crisp, Benson Hill's Chief Executive Officer, and Dean Freeman, our Chief Financial Officer. Earlier this morning, we issued our earnings release in Form 8K. These documents, as well as a presentation, which we are referencing during the prepared remarks, are available on the investor section of the Benson Hill website. Comments today from management will contain forward-looking statements, including Benson Hill's expectations of future financial and business performance, current guidance about 2022 annual results, and our 2025 financial targets, as well as industry outlook. Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, and are not guarantees of performance. We caution you to consider these risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward listing statements. Such factors include those referenced in the cautionary note included in our Form 10-K and 10-Q filings, press release, and other filings with the SEC. Also during this presentation, we'll be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation to GAAP is available on our earnings release and presentation. I will now turn the call over to Matt, who will give an update on the business and recent developments.
spk01: Thanks, Ruben, and good morning, everyone. As some of you may have seen earlier this morning, we announced a long-term strategic licensing partnership with ADM. We look forward to talking more about this exciting news during our call today. But first, we want to note how 2022 continues to shape up as a dramatic year of change for the food system itself. If you turn to slide four, the macro forces we talked about at our April Investor Day, skyrocketing food inflation, food supply chain disruptions, environmental impact, and food-driven health implications remain disruptors of the status quo, which are intensifying the sense of urgency for the change we see today. As we shared with you at that time, and as exemplified by this morning's announcement, we believe the evolution of the food system is well underway, supported by a growing number of established agri-food companies, as well as new venturants. At the center of this new paradigm remains the consumer, who is demanding better food options that are more nutritious, sustainable, traceable, and accessible. It is important to reiterate that we fundamentally believe innovation is deflationary, evolutionary, and capable of significant sustainability improvements. As you can see on slide five, our innovations are two-sided, underpinned by both technological advancement and an integrated go-to-market approach. Together, this synergistic combination enables our mission to set the pace of innovation in food through our efforts to drive adoption and to achieve scale of our proprietary solutions with partners in an expedited format. For our actions and performance since last year, we are proving how to run new trains down old tracks in the food, edible oil, and aquaculture markets, and to do so in a way that increases speed without a derailment. This requires innovative thinking about how each link in the food system can work together. Now, turning to slide six. Our business innovation is a three-step playbook. Step one positions us with a channel to market and to build relationships with customers, which help inform the development of new products enabled by our CropOS technology platform. Step two introduces our new innovations into that channel with the goal of introducing and establishing these Benson Hill ingredient products in the marketplace. Step three is where we form partnerships and licensing agreements to further broaden our market reach and to scale the adoption of our innovations. We have discussed this approach with you previously, but it's worth repeating as it reinforces the commercial strategy of our proprietary soybean portfolio underway today, as well as efforts in Yellow Pea that we are undertaking in the coming years. We have also shared with you previously the strong interest and ongoing engagement with prospective licensing partners across the markets we serve. As you can see on slide seven, our agreement with ADM moves us to step three of our playbook by combining our soybean seed innovation with ADM's current and expanding processing infrastructure, as well as their capabilities as a protein ingredient leader to serve the growing plant-based markets. Here are some key features of this partnership. First, ADM will exclusively license Benson Hill ultra-high protein soy in North America to produce and commercialize protein concentrates, texturized protein concentrates, and texturized flour containing 60% to 65% protein content, as well as protein isolate products. ADM is a market leader in these categories, which are an ideal fit for our soy genetics. ADM will utilize its current and planned protein ingredient manufacturing capacity designated for human food to process Benson Hill's proprietary soy. That includes leveraging the sizable investment that ADM has planned for its Decatur, Illinois production and innovation facilities. To put into perspective what this scale means for Benson Hill, the acres required to fill this capacity on an annual basis in the next three to five years will be greater than all of the cumulative acres Benson Hill has contracted for planting over the last three years since we began to commercialize our proprietary soy portfolio. Third, we will cooperate to engage ADM's existing network of U.S. farmers to help source proprietary Benson Hill soybeans to fuel this collaboration. This enables rapid expansion of the farmer network with access to our technology, giving farmers the opportunity to participate in the seed-to-fork revolution that this partnership exemplifies. We and ADM are also aligned around the importance of on-farm data collection to provide important insights to our farmer partners while maintaining the integrity of the traceable closed-loop production system for the benefit of our customers. Data collected in collaboration with farmer partners will further improve the capabilities of CropOS to bring more value back to the farm in a way that better connects them with the end consumer. Fourth, through this collaboration, ADM will bring to the market an expanded and more diversified portfolio of proprietary ingredients to serve the alternative meat, meat extension, alternative dairy, specialized nutrition, and other markets in North America. The products will include current ingredients from Benson Hill's TrueVale portfolio, as well as proprietary ingredients enabled by Benson Hill and CropOS that are not currently available on the market. Our products in this diverse portfolio of ingredients will provide a compelling value proposition to customers, bringing enhanced functionality, traceability, and sustainability attributes. In some cases, the products will also feature the significant energy and water savings of our ingredients, as shown on slide eight, and similar to those offered in our current clean, fresh ingredients. Turning to slide nine, we are enthusiastic about what our companies can deliver and believe that together we will make an impact that neither of us could achieve alone. It is this kind of licensing arrangement that brings innovation to the next level. evolving from one mega commodity system to deliver more customized ingredient streams that serve the plant-based protein markets with efficiency of scale. It is a proof point that the seed-to-fork evolution is underway and that our CropOS platform is the engine to help drive it. For the sake of clarity, let me specify now what is not within scope of the partnership. Not included are ultra-high protein and high protein flour products within our TrueVale soy ingredients portfolio, our proprietary soy meal for animal markets, including aquaculture, our high oleic oil ingredients, and anything related to yellow pea or other ingredient portfolios. Benson Hill will continue to market the aforementioned ingredient products. And of course, we maintain the ability to market our entire ingredient portfolio outside of North America. I would like to take this time to also note that we have decided to sunset the TruVail brand name. Going forward, we will use the name Benson Hill Ingredients for all of our products, and the portfolio of products with ADM will be co-branded by both companies. We believe this partnership represents a pivotal milestone that validates our strategic playbook and will meaningfully contribute to our commercial plan, which supports our previously stated financial targets, including becoming profitable in 2025. While financial terms are not being disclosed, we can share that the agreement includes value sharing on all products delivered from Benson Hill Genetics, technology access fees for the use of Benson Hill proprietary soy, and milestone payments upon achievement of certain commercial objectives. This alignment with an industry leader represents a win-win scenario for both parties, and we are eager to engage with the ADM team to leverage what we do best, genomic innovation in the seed, and commercialized ingredients that are made better from the beginning. We will continue to execute our closed-loop business model to absorb greater capacity at our Creston and Seymour facilities along the lines of our previously discussed plans. As a result, we will continue to grow the proportion of proprietary ingredient solutions in adjacent human food-related markets and other markets domestically and elsewhere. One example, on slide 10, is in the edible oil market, where we remain well-positioned with our Berry Brain cooking oil, sourced from Benson Hills proprietary soy. Berry is a more sustainable alternative to other vegetable oils like canola by using significantly less land, reducing CO2 emissions, and conserving water. Furthermore, this product boasts a healthier oleic fatty acid profile than commodity soy oils, and a longer useful life in frying applications, which reduces our customers' operating costs. We are sold out of our inventory from our 2021 crop and are already forward-selling inventory that will be derived from our 2022 crop. We recently announced a regional supplier agreement with St. Louis-based Schnuck Markets, along with its network of more than 100 grocery stores. And we're also seeing an emergence of demand in Europe, where there are shortages of heart-healthy, high oleic oil for human food markets, given supply chain challenges coming out of Ukraine. Another example, shown on slide 11, is in the aquaculture market, where activity is ramping up to supply our ultra-high protein soy meal, sourced from the U.S. for the trout market and also for northern European salmon producers and feed suppliers. Our commitment to the aquaculture category provides an opening for Benson Hill to also become a global commercial player. As these milestones and progress reflect, the headway we are making in the ingredients business is real and continues to gain momentum ahead of our expectations. Year to date, we are executing well on our priority to gain share across multiple segments, as evidenced with year-over-year ingredients revenue growth of 332% to $160 million, and we are on track to deliver organic growth in excess of 80% as we increase our revenue guidance for the full year. We believe that we are in the midst of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to accelerate the adoption of plant-based foods, which requires a more consumer-centric food system. The most impactful investments that we can make against this thesis right now is in our ingredients business. As such, earlier this year, we announced the suspension of R&D for our fresh segment. While we believe seed innovation in fresh produce can support the rapidly emerging food is health movement, it is important that we press our advantage and fully commit to higher value product opportunities and ingredients. This has led us to the decision to explore strategic options for our fresh business. I will conclude my remarks after covering two other topics, starting on slide 12. We completed the planting of our proprietary soy varieties for this growing season after delays that were caused by a cool, wet spring. Our colleagues and farmer partners worked tirelessly to make up for the lost time, and for that, we are grateful. This is the time of year when we now engage farmers for our 2023 planting season. What's different this year is that we can offer a stronger value proposition due to the assets we have in place now, as well as a major validating commercial partnership with an industry leader. neither of which we had at this time last year in addition we are ideally positioned to be more deliberate with our farmer engagement efforts across the ice states and to optimize our supply chain in the primary north american soy growing regions in fact last week i had the chance to meet with several of our current and prospective farmer partners across missouri and iowa and in the next few weeks i'll have the opportunity to do the same in indiana and illinois This process of listening and learning from farmers informs how we invest in innovation and build a more resilient and connected food system together. It's also energizing to hear directly from stakeholders who are eager not only to bring more value back to the farm, but to help connect more with the consumer demand for the benefit of their families, land, and society. Now turning to slide 13. We recently published our 2021 ESG report. This culminated from months of effort, and I hope you'll find that its content meet expectations for transparent reporting. But most importantly, we hope it further validates that our financial success is inextricably linked to social and environmental KPIs. We have established corporate governance best practices to ensure we operate with transparency and with an unrelenting curiosity to learn and continually improve. This ongoing effort is overseen by the Sustainability and Governance Committee of our Board of Directors. We have also established processes for ESG reporting across our operations, including completing our first materiality assessment, as well as GHG Scope 1 and Scope 2 inventory assessments. Our role enabling seed-to-fork innovation gives us a unique opportunity to catalyze social and environmental impact across our supply chain. Being a pure play ESG company means that as we scale our product, we not only deliver financial performance, but also realize positive social and environmental impact beyond our walls and fields. Our closed loop traceable production model offers a unique competitive advantage. And as we seamlessly leverage data from the farm through ingredient production, to support the sustainability goals of our customers, which now more than ever is front and center for CPGs and the private sector. Our ESG report further highlights our clean crush ingredients and strategy, which in the case of multiple of our proprietary soy-based ingredient products, enable significant reductions in water and CO2 emissions. I invite you to read the ESG report at BensonHill.com backslash impact. to understand better the scale and types of positive impact that we expect to deliver as we grow. With that, I will turn the call over to Dean for his perspective.
spk04: Thanks, Matt, and good morning, everyone. I'm going to focus my remarks on three themes from the strategic milestone Matt shared with you and our financial performance here today. First, as we've previously communicated, our long-range targets include the contribution from partnership and licensing agreements. We expect ADM to be a significant contributor to achieving that overall objective. Second, strong customer demand has led to ingredient sales growing faster than expected. As a result, we now forecast full year revenues for the ingredient segment to exceed our previous guidance. In addition, our operations are taking actions to further optimize and reduce higher than expected costs in our supply chain, logistics, and production work streams to meet this demand and further mitigate growing inflationary pressures. Third, we're enabling our strategic plan to achieve positive EBITDA and free cash flow in 2025 by further accessing non-dilutive sources of capital, and we'll continue to pursue other options to extend our liquidity runway. I'll begin with comments on the financial impact of the ADM partnership on slide 14. Matt mentioned The partnership enables Benson Hill to not only achieve scale and accelerate market adoption of our innovations with an industry leader, but we believe it also results in mitigating risk in the execution of our strategic plan. One of our key objectives has always been to scale our technology innovations through an asset-light approach. And ADM will utilize Benson Hill innovations across its vast processing operations and commercial platform, starting at the farm gate. The revenue streams Matt mentioned are expected to contribute a significant portion of the 20% proprietary partnership and licensing annual revenues targeted in the 2025-2027 timeframe as we outlined on our investor day in April. Additionally, the payments and proceeds from our value sharing agreement are anticipated to represent a significant majority of all currently forecasted gross profit from partnership and licensing sources across our three-year strategic plan. We expect the vast majority of the economic benefits just described to occur in later fiscal periods with minimal revenue contribution in 2022. Turning to slides 15 and 16 to review our performance in the first half of this year and an updated outlook for the full year. Revenues for the ingredient segment grew 332% to $160 million, which exceeded our expectations and positions us to deliver full year ingredient segment revenues between $275 million and $325 million, above the $250 million to $275 million range provided in our earlier guidance. We are still on track to achieve $70 to $80 million in proprietary soy product revenues. In terms of potential sales from the 2022 crop in the fourth quarter, we will have greater clarity once the harvest is complete. The upside in guidance is largely a result of higher than expected volumes from non-proprietary sales, as well as price. Revenues from the fresh segment increased 26% to $43 million, which was ahead of expectations in the first half of the year. While we are pleased to have strong growth in the ingredients business, the volume we've seen and continue to anticipate is putting stress on current supply chain and logistics infrastructure, as processing throughput and shipping volumes are temporarily lagging the faster pace of growth. Also, as we've mentioned throughout the year, we're not immune to inflationary pressures. It's become more acute in the second quarter with higher costs for freight, logistics, and factory overhead. The ingredients revenue upside is expected to cover these additional cost pressures as we take actions to optimize our production throughput and logistics value chain. Therefore, we are maintaining our consolidated gross profit guidance in the range of $9 million to $13 million and contribution margins of 1% to 3% for the proprietary portfolio. Gross margins here to date for the fresh segment were in high single digits, which is in line with guidance for the full year, inclusive of the inventory write-down this quarter. Adjusted EBITDA here to date was a loss of $43 million. For the full year, we expect adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow losses to be within our previously guided range of $80 million to $85 million and $120 million to $130 million, respectively. Our guidance for capital expenditures, $14 million to $16 million, remains the same. As we outlined in the earnings release, a sizable part of the $8.2 million in mark-to-market losses in the first quarter related to timing differences reversed in the second quarter. We still have $2.9 million of losses in our reported results that we expect unwind in the coming quarters. Let's turn to liquidity on slide 17. As of June 30, We have $210 million of cash in marketable securities, which includes the remaining $20 million available from the $100 million credit facility for our 8K filing last month. While we look forward to activating other opportunities to further improve our liquidity, our near-term priority is to remain disciplined in our use of cash. Anticipated revenues from ADM for access to our technologies and potential milestone payments will also contribute to our non-dilutive sources of funding. We believe the milestones achieved over the past few months, including the pipe raise, the alliance with ADM, as well as important commercial agreements with Kellogg's, NOFO, and Riverence, coupled with continued discipline and focused cash management, reaffirms our required liquidity sources into 2024. By the end of this year, we'll have an update on the operating performance and the outcome of the strategic assessment of the fresh business Matt mentioned in his remarks, All in taken together, we expect these initiatives will further position our cash funding to achieve the 2025 financial objectives as shown in slide 18. That concludes our prepared remarks, and we'll now take your questions.
spk05: If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you'd like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, press star one. As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. We'll pause it briefly as questions are registered. Our first question comes from Ben Thurow of Barclays. Ben, your line is open.
spk06: Ben Thurow, Barclays. Thank you very much. Good morning, Matt, Dean. Congrats on, I guess, the results and the partnership. It almost feels like you guys bring something. It feels like you guys come up with something like that every quarter, right? So first it's on the customer side. You did it on purpose, right? Of course. Good. So let's put this aside and focus on a few things around this. And I guess there will be obviously a lot to be discussed on follow-ups, etc., But wanted to elaborate and get your maybe additional comments you can share. on what you've said, what's not included, but also on what is included. How exclusive is this agreement with ADM? How should we think about it on what you're basically licensing out? Is there a certain level of exclusivity, which is why there are certain products not included, because you think you're potentially better off with a different partner? How should we think about what you've struck on the deal now with ADM versus what's not part of it, as you've highlighted during the remarks, Matthew? on the not included piece, and where do you think this could potentially go? So that kind of would be my first question, a little broader, I guess. Sure, sure.
spk01: Yeah, the way that we think about this is we're marrying the capabilities that ADM has and is a distinct market leader in, particularly as it relates to the protein ingredients category in North America, and even more specifically, concentrates, texturized concentrates, functional concentrates, and obviously a market-leading business as well and other adjacencies. And so what we've done here is we've built a partnership that marries the ultra-high protein portfolio with an organization that as a track record of making very, very significant investments in developing its leadership position in those areas, and frankly continues to do so. I think we're very encouraged by the dedication of the ADM leadership behind its nutrition business, which spoke to us as a team when we were evaluating various go-to-market, we'll call it step three options, in that licensing paradigm that we've discussed with you and others extensively. And so that, you know, geographically, North America, as we've designated, from a protein ingredient portfolio perspective, it's really centered around those high-value areas in which ADM is made and continues to make really, really material investments that align with the differentiating factors our soybean genetics can bring to the market.
spk06: Okay. That's okay. Thank you very much. And then it hasn't been talked much about it, but in the press release, you've talked about at the very beginning, there's just this one line that management is assessing strategic alternatives for the fresh business. Any commentary you can give around this? Because it kind of feels like there's always something going on with the fresh business. You still haven't. How should we think about Whereas what's going to happen with the Thresh business in three years out by 2025? So is this still something we should consider or do you think this is better off with someone else?
spk01: Well, I mean, we can't speculate on timeframes. What I can say is that we and the board have had this discussion before. And there's strong alignment that we need to really play the hand that we have in the ingredient segment, which is an area of terrific strength for us. And to provide the opportunity for management to focus, for us to best allocate capital, and for us to, as an organization, relentlessly execute in the area where we have a distinct and significant competitive advantage we've decided to now explore options for that business. I think it's a little bit old news here as well, but you also recall that we've discontinued the research and development that was focused on the fresh businesses of earlier this year. So our innovation team is already focused on and has been for the bulk of 2022, the ingredients, current and prospective opportunities. I think this is a logical extension of looking at other alternatives that may be explored. And as Dean alluded to in his commentary, if that manifests itself in some additional liquidity, that would be a further benefit. But it's just too soon to speculate on if and when that might occur.
spk06: Okay, perfect. Well, Matt, thank you very much. I'll leave it to you. I'm risking to ask questions as well. Congrats again. Thank you, Ben.
spk05: Our next question comes from Adam Samuelson of Goldman Sachs. Adam, please go ahead.
spk03: Yes, thank you. Good morning, everyone. Morning, Adam. Morning. I guess the first question is going deeper into the agreement with ADM insofar as you can. Any way to frame maybe kind of the economics of this relative to how you'd frame some of the theoretical licensing, uh agreement at the time of um the the d-spac last year so thinking about the investor presentation ahead of kind of going public and there's been some kind of economics on future licensing agreements and how you would frame kind of the unit economics of the adm agreement versus that um sure i can comment on it at a high level um you know more so qualitatively
spk01: When we looked at the opportunity to move into step three last year, as we talked a little bit about that business model evolution and licensing and what it would mean from an economic perspective, we talked about the strong need for us to maintain an interest in incremental unit economics that were supplied in the scope of these partnerships to our partners. And we also talked about The fact that there may, depending on, you know, the partnership opportunity, come with that adjacent licensing or technology licensing fees. And we very much achieved our goals in these regards. You know, we have, we had a target and a set of criteria as we evaluated a number of different partnership options. Some of those were, of course, economic and quantitative in nature. Some of them are qualitative in nature around terms and conditions and scope of exclusivity. And I'm really pleased to report that we were able to meet all of our objectives on both ends of that spectrum through the way that this partnership has been organized. And that, you know, I think, let me just say, you know, I think it speaks to, you know, to ADM's leadership position and understanding that, you know, if they want to partner with, you know, an organization that is investing as much in the next generation of seed development, specifically to link farmer and consumer interests, you know, their willingness to come to the table and to establish very much a win-win scenario with Benson Hill to achieve that. You know, I think just it speaks to the progressive nature of what's going on in that nutrition business. And there's a strong alignment of, you know, how we're going to go to market together and and and really create some very synergistic value between between the two organizations so um you know long answer there adam but i just want i do want to say that it related to what we talked about last year publicly and uh in the process of publicly listing you know we were able to achieve all of our quantitative and qualitative targets okay that's um that's very helpful and then if we could just maybe
spk03: any additional color you can give on kind of the timing of implementation. And when you talked about some upfront kind of some upfront kind of cash payments, access to technology as well as kind of progress payments over the next couple of years. But how do we think about kind of the phasing of this in terms of which crop year we'll, we'll really start delivering kind of ingredient revenue and licensing income associated with that. in the following year.
spk01: Yeah, for sure. I'll talk to the operational startup of the partnership and then I'll ask Dean to comment on some of the financials. So we obviously have what we have from the 2021 drop year. So it's one reason why you're not going to see very much impact in 2022 because we're dealing with the inventory that we've already produced. And frankly, we're dealing with the inventory that we'll get out of the 2022 crop, which was not done in planning for one of these partnerships. So that's the reason why the near-term impact that Dean will talk about isn't going to be very, very substantive. But in terms of how and when we ramp, it's an aggressive path over the next several years. to move, as I mentioned, into a large portion, quite expeditiously, of the ADM production capacity. That'll involve collaboration at a couple levels, obviously at the origination level, which is igniting right now for the 2023 planting cycle, as well as on the commercial side, which will also be a fast follow, such that we can land what we're going to do together from a co-branding and marketing perspective of the products that we're collaborating with to take to market. So those things are happening quite quickly, and it will have a meaningful impact on our plans going into the 2023 planting cycle. Dean, you want to talk about the financial side?
spk04: Yeah, I think Matt hit it spot on. I think this is more about the trajectory of the value economics going into 2023 than it is in 2022. So I think the way We framed it with minimal impact on revenue in 2022 as sort of the, you know, as much as we can talk about. I think that it's really about realizing the full quantum of the benefit into 2023. The other thing I guess I would point you to is the comments around the significance of the partnership on the 20% total proprietary or the total partnership and licensing revenue from 2025 to 2027 that this represents, and the substantial gross profit coverage that this provides us across the, you know, the full term of that forecast horizon.
spk03: No, that's all very helpful. And I can just squeeze one more in. If I think about kind of that pathway to funding, cash funding through 2025, just help us understand kind of what still needs to happen to give you that full line of sight to getting to cash flow positive without external financing or diluted financing in 2025? Is it the sale of the fresh business? Is it other licensing kind of agreements on things not encompassed by this agreement? Just anything else would be helpful.
spk04: Yeah, I think, and I'll let Matt make some comments as well. look i don't think much has changed i mean we are executing to our strategic plan but i think as we've alluded to uh once we raised the pipe we talked about funding into 2024 this is all sort of building up to making sure that we've got you know the um ample amount of liquidity um into executing through 2025 and 2027 but not the least of which i'll just say is that is the uh know is the gross profit expansion is the margin expansion that we talked about that is the number one thing that needs to happen execution is is sort of underpins the entirety of that and and candidly you know the proprietor the the proprietary uh business growth as well as the partnership and licensing those milestones are critical in that margin expansion and i think today's announcement is you know critical first step in in allowing us to achieve that and de-risking that margin outlook for the balance of the forecasted term.
spk01: Matt? Yeah, I mean, piggybacking on that a little bit, you know, when Dean mentioned that the significant majority of the gross profit derived from licensing and partnerships is covered by virtue of this deal in the next three-year operating plan at Benson Hill. Obviously, it speaks volumes to the quantum of what we're achieving here, but to your point, what else has to happen or what else has to be true in order for us to meet those published financial targets. We'll continue to explore, as we've stated previously, additional licensing and partnership opportunities. This isn't a one and done type approach. We're making substantial investments in the yellow P portfolio. For starters, we've got adjacent markets domestically and a full slate of opportunity that we may intend to pursue over time outside of North America. So there's a number of other, call it step three possibilities, none of which I'd say, you know, is an urgent need. We're going to do what we did with respect to establishing this partnership, and that is maintain patience and ensure that we're doing, we're establishing a partnership that preserves a healthy and fair proportion of incremental unit economics, because that's frankly what I think our shareholders should expect of us, is not to go and hurriedly do something, but to look at the long-term, to build a company to last and to maximize a long-term shareholder value. And I think this is certainly a major step towards achieving that, but there are other opportunities to do so as well. And then lastly, I'd say, we've also got continued very, very strong organic growth in the business. And I want to just highlight the the remarkable execution of our team. I mean, the team has this year really, really performed across the board. And that's at the plants, that's with our farmer partners, that's engaging with cutting edge innovation in the labs and our crop accelerator. Those are things that are going to continue to lead to an expanded breadth of opportunities along these lines, not just in the next three year period.
spk03: All right, great. That's all very helpful, Collier. I'll pass it on. Thank you.
spk05: As a reminder, that's star one to register a question. Our next question comes from Kristen Owen of Oppenheimer. Kristen, please go ahead.
spk00: Great. Thank you for taking the question, and congratulations on the announcement this morning. Wanted to follow up on your comments on yellow peas, since that is not part of the partnership. And just wondering if you can provide us an update on where you're tracking in that portfolio and how we should think about the opportunity set given now that you have a foundation for these types of partnerships.
spk01: Sure thing. And thanks for the question, Kristen. When we look at Yellow Pea, we think that it's got a meaningful role to play in the future of plant-based alternatives. There's a lot of attractiveness. We've continued to invest in both the AI accelerated breeding driven approaches for yellow pea, as well as CRISPR gene edited enabled approaches for yellow pea, we continue to believe that there's likely a place for both in the future. And we're on track, we'll know more at the end of this year about the breadth of the program and the 25 and beyond, but we are on track to plant initial commercial acreage in 2024. which, as you might recall, we shared during Investor Day as tracking about a year ahead of the schedule that we published in 2021. So that effort continues to go well. I know we had a team last week in North Dakota at our breeding station visiting plots. They came back very energized with what they were seeing. And I'm energized by seeing some of the results that come out of that program. So the breadth and depth of it is there. And we're definitely in what we'd call pre-commercial phase with the leading edge product opportunities. And I think in the next cycle or so, it'll become time for us to begin exploring some of these possible opportunities. But again, just to reiterate what I mentioned a minute ago, it's not as though we're in a hurry to do so.
spk00: That's really helpful. A couple of questions just on the scale of the opportunity that you have here. I think, Matt, you said in your prepared remarks, the cumulative acreage of this partnership is something that exceeds the acreage that you've planted thus far. So thinking about, you know, half a million acres that will be accelerated through this ADM partnership. I'm wondering if you can help us understand what that means from an innovation standpoint cycle in terms of the data collection that you'll be getting and how that contributes to the crop OS and innovation flywheel that you have planned? Thank you.
spk01: Certainly. Well, let me answer that in sort of two parts. One, I want to make sure that my comments and my prepared remarks were clear. When I said that the cumulative acres that Benson Hills planted as part of its proprietary soybean program for the last three years, which as we published is greater than 200,000 acres in our investor day, that the annual expectation for drawdown of production from acreage will be greater than that as we move to the next three to five years with the EDM partnership. So I just want to clarify the scale, which is obviously very, very meaningful. To the second part of your question, how is that actualized? I'd say that we're playing from the same playbook. of how we engage farmer partners but we're eager to leverage the existing farmer network that adm has to ensure that we accelerate um you know and ramp you know our on-farm engagement in order to meet the expectations of volumes that will be required uh in the commercial context here so so what does that mean is that you know our team will be collaborating you know literally in the next several days with the team at ADM to outline plans and how we can go and achieve closed-loop contracting at the target levels that we foresee being required in 2023, and laying the foundation for the relationships that'll be important in that area for long-term success of the partnership and the value chain that we're establishing from an ingredients perspective. So that second part is really just execution, execution, It's not as though we need to build or organize a different capability. We truly are leveraging the mutual capabilities of our organizations. And it will just, you know, put additional pressure on ensuring that, you know, that we achieve those goals. But the plan that we've had today is working really, really well. And I have no reason to believe that it won't continue to work well, particularly as we're taking a tremendous amount of risk out of the equation and partnering with an industry leader.
spk00: Thank you so much. I'll take the rest offline.
spk05: We have no further questions on the line, so I'll hand back to Ruben for closing remarks.
spk02: Thank you, Jordan. As is our custom, we reach out to retail investors for questions. Matt and Dean, a lot of these were already covered, but we were asked by retail investors, what's your plan to improve? We covered that today. James Meeker & What are the three areas and that's the hill is focused on internally to improve the business operation we address that as well. James Meeker & How much cash to the company have how much money is the company spending monthly I mean we kind of covered that and your remarks be. James Meeker & And then there are two questions around this the status of the market and where we're going. James Meeker & So I think i'm really grateful for the questions from retail investors, and I think we've covered a lot of it on the call. One question we did get, Matt, and I'll direct this to you, is with all the flooding in St. Louis, how did that affect Benson Hill?
spk01: I appreciate that question. So we, for those who may be unaware, had some very persistent storms that hit St. Louis in the last couple weeks and now parts of Kentucky as well, which has caused a huge amount of damage and loss of life. And, you know, our thoughts go out to those who've been affected. Fortunately here, our colleagues are safe, and our headquarters and our facilities were not affected by the storms, though it is a mess. And we've got friends of colleagues who have been affected. And so that's obviously a terrible situation for some folks locally. But I do appreciate that question. Fortunately, it hasn't impacted Benson Hill.
spk02: And with that, Matt, I'll turn it over to you for closing remarks.
spk01: Certainly. Thanks, Ruben. Thanks, Jordan, for facilitating. I'll conclude by just saying that we were really appreciative of the time and the engagement from the group today. Dean and I are really proud of what our team has accomplished this year through strong execution and taking some really bold steps to build a company to last. Our premise is that we can accelerate the evolution of our food system using science and technology and combining that with a novel business approach to deliver food choices that are indeed more sustainable, nutritious, and accessible. And it's clear that 2022 will be a pivotal year for Benson Hill as we validate our purpose, as we deliver on our promises, and as we demonstrate the value of our products across the food value chain. We're off to a really good start in the second half of the year as we ramp up sales of our proprietary portfolio and we prepare for harvest of the 2022 crop, which will give us visibility into 2023. we remain disciplined in executing our strategic plan and finding ways to extend our liquidity to achieve our targets and become EBITDA and cash flow positive in 2025. With that, I'll thank everyone for their time this morning.
spk05: This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your
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