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Operator
Greetings. Welcome to the Danimer Scientific 2023 first quarter earnings call. At this time, all lines are in the listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Wednesday, May 10, 2023. I would now like to turn the presentation over to Mr. James Polzinski. the company's investor relations representative.
James Polzinski
Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon to everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Denimer Scientific's 2023 First Quarter Earnings Call. Leading the call today is Steve Crosscreed, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Hajost, Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to note that there is a slide deck that accompanies today's discussion, which is available on the investor relations section of our website at dannemerscientific.com. I'll call your attention to the company's safe harbor language, which is published in our SEC filings and on slide two of the presentation I just referenced. On today's call, we may discuss forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 as amended. Forward-looking statements include, among other things, statements regarding future results of operations, including margins, profitability, capacity, production, customer programs, and market demand levels. Actual results could differ materially from what is expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. The company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof except as required by law. Today's presentation also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of SEC Regulation G. We believe these non-GAAP measures have analytical value, but note that they should be taken as an additional measure of performance to GAAP results. We have provided reconciliations for non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings release and our presentations. Thank you, and it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Steve Crossgree, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Denimer Scientific.
Steve Crosscreed
Thank you, James. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us to talk about our progress thus far in 2023. When we reported our 2022 year-end results, we were just a few days shy of completing our first quarter, and as you might anticipate, our quarterly results are in line with our expectations. They show the pressure of a timing shift in top-line revenue, which impacted gross profitability, but that temporary situation is now behind us. What's also clear in the first quarter numbers and is expected to remain clear in future quarters is the progress we've made in controlling our operating costs. We continue to expect, with the impact of new commercial opportunities, to accelerate our growth through the remainder of the year. We are gathering momentum in the business, harnessing our research and development to drive new solutions into the market, and growing in confidence about the path in front of us. We have gained additional and specific visibility into the levels of demand associated with a discrete set of near-term commercial opportunities. If captured in full, this business would require the lion's share of our remaining production capacity. We have a solid strategic and competitive position to secure those programs with uniquely capable material and ready capacity. We are increasingly confident that we will finish 2023 on a strong pace. I'd like to walk through a few recent operational and strategic highlights that should demonstrate why we feel that way. I'll start by reviewing some important advances in our customer and product portfolio. While it is premature to make any customer or program announcements, we are energized about the near-term opportunities that are materializing in the quick service restaurant channel for straws and for cutlery especially, but also in the cup category with our coating materials. As we speak, our product is in a multi-store test for straws with a new major QSR chain with thousands of locations in the United States. We anticipate a successful test will lead to a wider rollout in the third quarter. Additionally, we are in the late stages of an opportunity with another major QSR chain for straws, also numbering in the thousands of locations in the United States alone. Further, we are excited to be moving quickly forward with our biodegradable cutlery resin. As we announced last quarter, we were pleased to capture, in coordination with Hobby, cutlery for an important snack line with Zespri. We made the first shipments to execute that program at the end of the first quarter and believe that a fully biodegradable solution for this high visibility application will prove to be brand enhancing. We are also pursuing a large and high priority opportunity in the cutlery market with a major QSR that we expect to begin shipping to in early 2024. We believe that the unique environmental benefits of our PHA-based resins are becoming increasingly visible, and we were honored to be invited to ring the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange on April the 17th to help recognize the importance of Earth Day. In conjunction with that event, we announced that we have successfully developed, in partnership with Total Energy's Corbion, a new engineered resin for the manufacture of single-use coffee pods. That material, which is used in an injection molding process, has been in development for a little over two years. While any new resin we develop benefits from decades of research into various blends, this is a challenging material to formulate given the combination of requirements for heat tolerance, barrier properties, and stringent biodegradability standards required within the EU market for this product. Importantly, we have experience in this category and currently have a PLA-based material used for the manufacture of coffee pods for a U.S. brand. We are pleased to have received certification for this new material from TUV Austria for home compost and are currently in testing with multiple potential customers. While somewhat obvious, this means that our material biodegrades safely and quickly in home as well as industrial composting and can eliminate a tremendous amount of waste from the environment. While the EU legislation is still a bit into the future, we expect that demand for our material may be strong even in advance of the legislation's in action as major suppliers seek to pre-position themselves to avoid potential disruption to their business. I'd like to turn to cup coating materials, which provide a barrier to contain liquids. In the aggregate, this is a significant application for single-use plastics. Currently, paper cups achieve functionality with a petroleum plastic liner, making them essentially non-recyclable. Our PHA-based biodegradable coating materials can change that as an important customer of ours is demonstrating. We were very excited to see WinCup launch a new paper cup product with a Nodax-based coating under its distinctive Fade brand. Fade is an increasingly meaningful and visible brand in an otherwise commodity-oriented set of categories. We think that is a powerful statement to the market and we're proud to provide the unique PHA-based resins that enable their products. While we share a vision for the future with many customers, we think what WinCup is doing in the market speaks exceptionally well to that mission. As we look toward the second half of the year, we're confident that our Kentucky manufacturing plant is capable of operating at a high level. It has consistently performed at or above all requested throughput targets. Further, we are working toward improved product quality and process efficiency, all of which should benefit our margins. In closing, I'll just note that we have no information to provide regarding the Department of Energy's process. We will communicate any developments as soon as the DOE informs us of our status. Now, I'll turn the call over to Mike Hajos for discussion of our first quarter results.
James
Thank you, Steve, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll start with our financial results on slide seven of our presentation for those of you following along. First quarter revenues were 11.9 million as compared to 14.7 million in the same quarter of 2022. We experienced a modest decline in both product and service revenue. First quarter product revenue was 2.1 million lower versus prior year, driven largely by an unfavorable shift in the timing of PHA-based shipments to a large customer relative to the first quarter of 2022. This was partially offset by modest growth in the PLA-based product sales in the quarter. I'd also note that the PLA business now shows normalized comparisons as disruption to that business from the war in the Ukraine impacted both this year's and last year's quarter. First quarter services revenue continues to be lower, reflecting, as was the case in the fourth quarter, that certain customers that have completed funded R&D projects are now moving to commercialization. We reported a first quarter 2023 gross loss of $6.3 million compared to a gross loss of $1.3 million in the first quarter of 2022. An increase of $3.4 million in non-cash depreciation and amortization expenses was by far the largest driver. After adjusting for depreciation, stock-based compensation, and certain non-recurring items, we reported an adjusted gross loss of $1 million as compared to adjusted gross profit of $2 million in the first quarter of 2022. On top of an increase in fixed production costs associated with greater capacity in Kentucky, we also had unfavorable leverage of those fixed costs due to decreased production volume. We expect gross margin to recover nicely with growing volume. R&D and SG&A expenses, excluding depreciation and amortization, stock-based compensation, and one-time items, totaled $7.6 million in the first quarter, compared to $12.3 million in the prior year quarter. This improvement was a result of a broad cost control program that yields savings in many areas of the business. Adjusted EBITDA loss for the first quarter improved to $8.9 million compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $10.6 million in the first quarter of 2022. Despite the revenue timing impact and fall off an adjusted gross margin, the positive operating cost factors permitted adjusted EBITDA to improve by $1.7 million year over year. Adjusted EBITDA excludes stock comp, other income, and other addbacks as reconciled in the appendix. Including $12 million of restricted cash that has since become unrestricted, effective liquidity at the end of the first quarter was $114 million, as compared to $62.8 million at the end of 2022. Capital expenditures in the first quarter were $16.4 million, mainly related to pre-existing obligations to the Greenfield facility. This should represent the highest budgeted quarterly spend for CapEx this year. We continue to guide to full-year CapEx spend in the range of $26 to $31 million. We ended the first quarter with a total debt balance of $380 million. This now reflects the term loan we closed on during the first quarter. I'll remind you that this includes about $46 million of new market tax credit loans, which we expect will be forgiven starting in 2026. As we noted on our year end call, the key to our performance in 2023 will be the magnitude and timing of the customer demand ramp up for PHA based resins and our increased utilization to serve that demand from our Kentucky operations. Our first quarter was fully consistent with our expectations and therefore has had no impact on our full year guidance. We are maintaining our expectation for adjusted EBITDA in the range of negative 31 million to negative 23 million in 2023, and improvement in profitability of between 14 million to 22 million over the negative 45 million we reported for 2022. I'll now hand the call back to Steve for his closing remarks.
Steve Crosscreed
Thank you, Mike, and to everyone for joining us. Even in the short time since our last call, we've been able to make progress across the board. We feel really good about a few recent developments in particular. Identification of some specific high-volume sales opportunities, which we expect to be decided very soon, ongoing process engineering work in Kentucky, increasing discipline on our expense line, and progress on research and development specific to a number of significant market opportunities. The momentum in our business is tangible. Major customer opportunities are now very close at hand, and we are very excited about the future we are creating. Thank you to everyone listening to today's call. For your attention and your support and operator, we're now ready to take questions.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the number one on your touchtone tone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. If you would like to withdraw your request, please press the star followed by the number two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys.
Kevin Estak
One moment, please, for your first question. Also, as a reminder, you are only allowed to ask two questions.
Operator
And first question comes from Lawrence Alexander with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Lawrence Alexander
This is Kevin Estak on for Lawrence Alexander. Thank you for taking my questions. I guess my first question, oh, hey. Yeah, so I actually have more than two, so I'll maybe hop back on the line after. But I guess if you were to roll together all the brand launches that you hear customers intend for this year, and you talked a bit about this in the call already, but I guess what is the implied run rate of demand if those all scale as expected? And I guess what is the potential demand Just from those customers, if those launches go well and then they flip the switch and then embrace PHA in a more aggressive fashion, I guess like sort of an upside scenario.
Kevin Estak
Just curious to hear your thoughts there. Yeah, thanks, Kevin. This is Steve.
Steve Crosscreed
If every one of the forecasted launches hits and hits at the scale that's forecasted, I guess the first step is that we would fill up Kentucky. If those customers then get even more aggressive and move forward with follow-on applications, we could fill up the Greenfield as well.
Greenfield
Okay, thank you. That's really helpful.
Lawrence Alexander
And then I was just wondering if you could provide an update on the adhesive partnership, I guess, Any progress there and I guess what would be a reasonable timeframe for seeing a revenue stream and maybe another or another monetization event?
spk02
I'm sorry, Kevin, which partnership?
Lawrence Alexander
Adhesives. Yes, your adhesives partnerships or even maybe an update on the November applications and acrylic acid. I guess any progress there. Just curious to get some, you know, updates on partnerships you have.
Steve Crosscreed
Sure. So, on the Dannemere Catalytic Technology side, which was the November acquisition, we are building out the pilot plant. All the modules have been delivered and hooked up, and we're well along the way in commissioning that facility. In terms of the partnerships, as we've talked about in the past, we're negotiating a co-location agreement in the Gulf Coast, and we're also negotiating an offtake agreement with a major chemical company. Those conversations are still going well, and they're actively being negotiated, so we still expect to be able to
Thomas Boyce
complete those or or at least you know make some announcements about those towards the end of the year okay thank you very much i appreciate it thank you and next question we have thomas boys with cd carway please go ahead thanks for uh for taking my questions uh maybe the first one just looking at the kind of coffee pod opportunity more broadly. I mean, you kind of articulated what it looked like in Europe, but since you already have a PLA version here in the U.S., just wondering if you could kind of give me a sense of maybe potential demand or size of opportunity that you could see here. I know that, you know, overall policy landscape is a little bit more fragmented in the U.S. than in Europe, but I was just trying to get a better sense there of what's going on or what could go on.
Steve Crosscreed
Yeah, thanks, Thomas. Good question. Off the top of my head, I do not know the market share for that particular application in the U.S., so I can't answer that, but we could find that out and get back to you. So we do have a PLA version of the pod, which we've been selling in the U.S. for quite some time, but I don't see that growing. It's part of our PLA business, which... you know, we don't really see as strategic, but we could see those sales flipping over to PHA and then potentially becoming a growth driver. But it's not a current part of our forecast.
Kevin Estak
Got it. I appreciate the insight there. And then,
Thomas Boyce
Maybe another question would just be on the work that you're doing with Corban. Since you're both kind of committing resins there, is it the same kind of split? Are you 50-50 as far as what that final product looks like? Is there still more work to be done on final formulation and kind of getting it exactly where you want it to be? Or is that set in stone and you know what kind of fillers and additives you need to get it to perform the way you want?
Steve Crosscreed
The formulation is set in stone, although sometimes we think that and then there could be potential tweaks along the way as you scale up. But right now we think that's in final form and it's in the very final stages of testing to be able to go live with a specific customer, specific customer testing to be able to go live this year with that. As far as kind of how that arrangement works, it's really similar to how we have always done business in terms of formulating with PLA. It's a buy-sell. So we buy the PLA from Total Energy's Corbion, and then we formulate it and sell it to the market.
Kevin Estak
Thank you very much. I have a couple more housekeeping ones, and then I'll jump back in queue.
Greenfield
All right. Thanks, Alex.
Kevin Estak
Thank you.
Operator
Next question, we have John Sunwanting with CJS Security. Please go ahead.
Greenfield
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. It's nice to see that you're getting better visibility here. I was wondering if you could give us a little bit more sense of how you expect utilization in Kentucky facilities to trend with all these, you know, new and large, I guess, projects that are in the pipeline. Any hope of getting it towards full utilization by the end of next year? Is there any milestones that you want to reach before that?
Kevin Estak
Just help us get a sense of how quickly these things are actually going to ramp from a volume perspective.
spk02
Yeah, thanks, John. Yes, I think it's a reasonable expectation to think that by the end of 24, we would be at full utilization there.
Greenfield
Okay, and your sense of fluidization is like, what, 80%, 90% or thereabouts of nameplate in that range? Sure, yeah. Okay, got it. The cutlery announcement is interesting because my understanding is that that probably uses a lot more PHA per unit than a straw would. Could you help us understand the economics of something like that and how it's being distributed and kind of the use cases?
spk02
Sure.
Steve Crosscreed
So as far as the amount of PHA, I don't think that you could say that it uses more PHA on a percentage basis than straw resin would. But what it really comes down to is what end-of-life standard you're trying to achieve in terms of the amount of PHA that we need to put in it. So to achieve industrial compostable, we don't need much at all. To achieve home compostable, we need more. And then to achieve marine degradable, we would need even more. So right now, we have more than one formulation out on market trials. And so there's sort of a range. But it's still kind of in that mid
spk02
like 50 to 60% kind of area as far as the amount of PHA that's in the formulation.
Kevin Estak
Okay.
Greenfield
I was actually thinking of like the absolute amount, just in comparison to a straw. I assume that it would be significant.
Steve Crosscreed
Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, okay, John. I misunderstood. You know, from what I've seen from individual customers, I would say that the size of those two markets are, at least when you look at like one QSR, any one QSR, the size of those markets are similar. If one cutlery might be a little larger than straws, but not a whole lot larger.
Greenfield
Okay, understood. Got one from Mike. Your OpEx was just a little bit under $8 million on an adjusted basis. Is that a good run rate to be using going forward, or what are the puts and takes as you progress through the year?
James
I think overall, we're continuing to control costs very carefully. We're pleased with what we did achieve in the first quarter, especially on a year-over-year basis, which I think was substantial. Some of those you know, related to, you know, reversals of bad debt reserve and things like that. So we'll have to kind of see if we continue to move the needle on things like that. But from an overall cost perspective, we are very cautious of looking at those costs. As you know, when we came out as a public company, we had to stand up a lot of things very quickly, and that took a lot of external spend to get us in a position to be able to manage those. And we've been able to reduce a lot of those costs by bringing those in-house, just by having more internal experience now and skills. So we're really pleased with how we've been able to get rid of outside services. We brought in our own internal general counsel, and we believe that saved us a lot of money in legal expenses there. So I'll say a lot of things between outside services, consulting, and all of that. We would expect to maintain those levels going forward, and we'll continue then to look at the next tranche of costs that we can kind of manage. So we're hopeful it can go down further. Certainly we don't expect it to go up.
Kevin Estak
Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you.
Operator
Next question, we have Charles Livert with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
Charles Livert
Good afternoon, guys. Just a couple of things. One, when you looked at the build-out of the things that you mentioned, you know, the cutlery, the straws, some of the other end markets, and I know you talked already about, you know, the size of those markets as they are, I guess, today. When we get to, you know, the more full-use, not the, like you said, but the you know, the period of introduction in there, where, which products are the biggest and, you know, in terms of sort of split of where the PHA is going?
Kevin Estak
And where do you estimate them, you know, looking out longer term, which one has the strongest, the best possibility for volume?
Steve Crosscreed
So, Charlie, let me take a stab at that. I'm not 100% sure I got the question, but I'll give you an answer and if it's not the right question, you can repeat. So, you know, straws and cutlery are sizable opportunities for us, you know, given the amount of capacity that we have available. But cups is kind of the next Domino to fall and that is a much bigger opportunity coded coatings for cups those coatings can be you know extrusion you know which are PHA based or they can be aqueous coatings that are PHA based order of magnitude again from what I've seen with individual customers that the size of that business is can be 8 to 10 times larger than straws or coloring.
Kevin Estak
Got it.
Charles Livert
No, that's perfect. And also, though, so if I look going forward, you know, your opportunities, you've got some opportunities in straws, they're growing. You've got some opportunities in utensils, they're growing. But is there any reason that over the course of the next year and a half, you're going to for lack of a better term, reserve some capacity for the cup coatings if they start to move? Is that something you're going to have to do? I mean, you just said this potentially is the biggest thing we got, and you might be getting some traction on it over the course of the next, let's say, 12 months. Given the fact that you won't have the new plant up for a while, how do you strategize going forward in terms of gaining volume? Is that something you're going to have to, you know, it's a nice problem to deal with, but how do you deal with that?
Steve Crosscreed
Yeah, good question. So, you know, when I answered John's question earlier on, John or Thomas asked about our run rate at the end of next year. You know, I'm including in that assumption that there's going to be some cup business in there. So, you know, our plan would be to try to match the timing of the greenfields coming online with the timing of customers' ramp-ups. And, you know, that doesn't mean that there's, you know, you're not going to hit some point where that means you're flat on the top line for some period of time. But obviously, you know, we want to compress that as much as possible.
Charles Livert
And one last question. This one's a little sort of offbeat. Is the cutlery that you guys put out with the resident, and we'll call it on the commercial side, not residential, not marine side, is that, well, let's say, for lack of a better term, flimsy like polypropylene or stiff and firm like polystyrene would be in the cutlery business?
Kevin Estak
What's, you know, how does the quality get on?
Steve Crosscreed
Yeah, good question, Charlie. I mean, we think the quality is fantastic and the items that our customers have seen are getting good reviews. I would say that the answer to me, it depends on the thickness. of the cutlery. So different molds, as you're aware, have different thicknesses. Now, honestly, I can't personally tell you that at a 60 mil thickness, is it softer or stiffer than polystyrene or polypropylene? I'm not sure because I know I see the differences at different thicknesses. So I'm not 100% sure.
Charles Livert
Yeah. I mean, I asked the question because of who might be the buyers that The better cutlery, the firmer stuff is done by sort of higher end places and places that use the polypropylene are looking for really cheap. And again, you can hardly cut anything or pick anything up with their fork. So it's sort of a problem. But I like to move into a higher end of the market.
spk02
Yeah, good question.
Steve Crosscreed
I will tell you that every sample that I've seen is not floppy. They're firm enough to be able to cut food with and things like that. But here's a key point is it depends on the customer. What does the customer want?
Kevin Estak
We can formulate to meet either standard, if you will. Brian, are you there?
Operator
Oh, sorry, I wasn't. Next question, we have Lawrence Alexander with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Lawrence Alexander
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. This is Kevin again. I guess I was just wondering if you could unpack, I guess, trends you're seeing in ASPs. So, I mean, like in the different applications and product categories, are they relatively stable or are they sort of moving just you know, as sort of there's kind of rising uncertainty in the U.S., but I'm just curious to hear what you're seeing in terms of pricing in your end applications.
Kevin Estak
Yeah, Kevin, good question.
Steve Crosscreed
You know, what we saw through 21 and 22 was some really rapid inflation, and that drove up a lot of our raw material costs, and so we were passing on costs that put the average selling price up, but that has stabilized. And so we have not seen, as far as trends go, there has not been any trend up or down with respect to current products that are on the market.
Lawrence Alexander
Got it. Okay. Thank you. And I guess my last question, I guess I'm just curious to hear what you're hearing from your customers and further downstream. I guess I guess, what are you hearing and what do you expect maybe in the cadence of launches? Could they change if there's a recession in the back half of this year and in 2024? Just curious to hear what you're hearing from customers.
Steve Crosscreed
Yeah, I wish I was that good at predicting the future, but obviously, you know, anything could happen, especially if there's a dramatic change in the economy. But the things that we're focused on right now are a long way down the road. I would expect that even in the event of some, you know, as long as it wasn't some kind of massive economic upheaval in a mild recession, I wouldn't expect a significant impact on our forecast.
Kevin Estak
Got it. Okay. Thank you very much.
Operator
Thank you. Again, ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1. Again, you may ask two questions per queue. After that, you may press star 1 again to re-queue. Next question, we have Thomas Boyce with C.D. Cohen.
Thomas Boyce
Thanks for taking the follow-ups here. Just I didn't see in the deck, can you let us know what percentage of revenue was attributable to PHA for the quarter?
spk02
Yeah, I never calculated that personally.
James
Do you have that, Mike? I do. I'm not sure if that's something. Yeah, let me get that for you here. If you have another question, I'll get that information for you. Go ahead, Thomas.
Thomas Boyce
Sure. Yeah, I just wanted to kind of better understand the nature of the restricted cash release. Was that performance-related with something that was going on, or was there something else there?
James
Yeah, I'll take that here as I go. You know, we had, you know, changes in our restricted cash for the most part were kind of related to the IP term loan, and those were short-term in nature. The one that, you know, has really stuck with us is the interest reserve account, where we had to put about $12.5 million into that and roughly maintain that balance, you know, over the next couple of years to have reserves for the interest payments on the loan. There was, I would say, some short-term changes I would say cash availability constraints that we had. We had to go through and get some consents from the new market tax credit lenders for our Kentucky operation, which we have gotten in place already. But prior to that, we did have some restrictions on about $45 million of minimum cash balance that we maintained of those proceeds. And we also had to put $12 million into a restricted account, a blocked account, just for any kind of subsequent those loans in the event that we never did get that consent. So there's a lot of noise in the restricted cash line this quarter, a lot to do about nothing. But, you know, we've got all of that kind of worked out at this point. And the only real, you know, change we for the most part have is just a restricted interest payment. So I think going forward, as we talk about, we've got to look through all of that. And when we talk about our really our effective liquidity being um, you know, $114 million. Uh, but you realize I think that 12 million of that was actually, you know, in a restricted account for a short period of time. Um, so does that help you?
Thomas Boyce
No, that makes sense. I appreciate the insight. I was just kind of wanting to make sure I understood the machinations that were, that were going on. Um, yeah. So give you enough time for the PHA percentage or we can always take it offline. It's easier.
James
My, uh, my stellar staff is, uh, hanging me here on that. And, um, PHA was about 42% in the current quarter, and it was about 52% in the prior quarter.
Kevin Estak
I think this is in the 10Q.
Greenfield
Perfect. I appreciate it. Thanks again.
Kevin Estak
Okay. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Next question, we have John with CJS Security. Please go ahead.
Greenfield
I was wondering if you could give us a sense of just what's happening in Q2, just directionally. I know timing impacts Q1. Have those issues been resolved and kind of is regular production resuming, number one? And do you have any programs actually ramping in Q2? I know you mentioned Q3, Q4, Q1, but I didn't hear any mention of actually this quarter.
Kevin Estak
Yeah, John.
Steve Crosscreed
Issue that caused the tough comparison the last quarter was really the Eagle Starbucks ramp. And so that's behind us going forward. We expect year-over-year growth. But as Mike caveated last quarter, we're still small, and these are big customers, so it's still possible that we'll see lumpiness as these things scale up. And as far as any Q2 scale-up, we do have one large QSR that's starting store trials this quarter, which is really just the first step in the ramp-up. So we have every expectation that that ramp will continue to scale and we'll end up with all of their straw business.
Greenfield
Great, thank you. And then, Mike, any update on just input costs and where those are going relative to where you thought they would be earlier this year?
James
Yeah, look, we've been really pleased with what we're seeing as the direction of canola prices. You know, they kind of, you know, got pretty high last year, especially as the war in Ukraine took off, and that put a lot of pressure on commodity prices in general. And we are at our forward outlook, and these are numbers that we're starting to kind of lock in with our contracts. You know, we see prices that were up in the mid-90s sometime here last year, and low 90s is some of the things that we're experiencing, you know, even our first quarter into our second quarter as we kind of work off some of those inventories. But as we look forward here, we're looking at, you know, prices now that we can contract in Q1 that could be in the low 70s. And, you know, we think that, you know, maybe it's a little bit, if we can be a little bit patient, what we're hearing from our brokers and and vendors is, you know, we can start seeing things that are maybe, you know, mid to high 60s, maybe second quarter of next year. So, I think that's very promising compared to where we've been as a sizable input cost that we track.
Kevin Estak
Great. Thank you very much. Last one for you. Just how much interest was actually capitalized in the quarter? Could you give us that number? There's very little interest capitalized in the quarter.
James
It's, I think, less than a million dollars and probably less than that. Overall, as we've kind of paused the Greenfield project and our capex spend has come way down, our CIP has gone way down as well. So at this point, the majority of our interest is now flowing through the interest expense line as opposed to being capitalized. Once we get the funding for the Greenfield project and that starts up again, We can see a change on that going forward. Right now, the amount of interest that we're seeing capitalized is pretty de minimis.
Greenfield
Got it. Thank you.
Kevin Estak
If there are no further questions at this time, Pete, do you have any closing remarks? Yes. Thanks, Brian.
Steve Crosscreed
I'd like to thank everyone on the call with us again for your time and attention today. We're excited about the increased awareness of PHA-based materials among consumers and customers, pleased to have major opportunities for growth right in front of us, and grateful for the ongoing support, dedication, and shared vision of our investors, employees, partners, teammates, and customers.
Kevin Estak
We'll be looking forward to speaking to you about our continued progress again next quarter. This concludes your conference call for today. Thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.
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