Welcome back, everyone. We are welcoming ReGen III, oh, excuse me, we are welcoming ReGen III. ReGen III is a clean tech company commercializing a proprietary process to upcycle used motor oil into high-value lubricating base oils. The company recently had some exciting news regarding its U.S. Department of Energy Loan Programs Office application, and here to tell us more is Mark Redcliffe, president of ReGen III. Welcome back, Mark.
Thanks very much, Anna. Really nice to see you again. Appreciate the time. So to give the audience a quick refresher on ReGen III, we're advancing the development of a re-refining facility in Texas City, in Texas, and that makes a synthetic Group III base oil from used motor oil. The Group III has been that holy grail for re-refiners for decades, and it's the fastest-growing segment of the base oils market. Group III trades at a 50% premium to the lower grade base oils that other re-refiners make, and there's a massive domestic production shortfall and almost no sustainable supply globally. So ReGen III is the only company that can produce Group III at high yields, and this is our major competitive advantage.
To date, we've made many advances: completing extensive pilot testing, selecting a site, signing LOIs for more than 50% of our feedstock, completing FEL2 and value engineering, and then identifying an exceptional list of technical partners. But we're currently advancing negotiations with numerous offtake parties, including some of the largest companies in the world. We continue to work with extraordinary financial partners, including National Bank Financial on the Texas project, and with Raymond James on the opportunistic M&A situations. We've received a $108 million indicative term sheet from Export Development Canada, and recently we were approved and invited to proceed with Part II of our DOE LPO application, as you've hinted at there, Anna.
Well, that's a perfect segue. Tell me a little bit more about the LPO, what it does, why you're pursuing a Title 17 loan through the DOE's Loan Programs Office in the first place. Talk about it.
Absolutely, Anna, thank you. We're very excited about this opportunity. ReGen's applying under Title 17, which has $300 billion in funding available through the Inflation Reduction Act. The LPO provides a good funding option for early-stage clean tech companies, such as us, that are ready to scale up and start construction. The LPO's motto is to provide a bridge to bankability for high-impact, large-scale clean energy projects. Again, like us.
Wow! So what makes the LPO financing so attractive?
Sure. The LPO provides access to non-dilutive project-level senior debt for construction. We're currently seeking up to 70% debt coverage from the LPO, and the LPO check sizes are generally over $100 million. Their terms are competitive, highly competitive, and flexible. They offer very attractive rates, typically in the high single digits, and generally, they're a longer duration than commercial loans, of up to 10 or 20 years. So from a commercial lender's viewpoint, the LPO approval is a vote of confidence in the technology, and that one's project is advanced enough to proceed to commercialization. Give you a recent example of LPO funding was the $1.66 billion conditional loan to a firm called Plug Power, and the market really liked that news, and their share price had a great rally on the back of that announcement.
They're still up.
Well, good news with that, and you also had some more recent news about your work with Koch Modular. So who is Koch Modular? Why did you undertake lab work with them, and how are the results?
Sure. Yeah, Koch Modular is a joint venture with Koch Industries, and they develop a modular process system for chemicals industries, right? We've been working with them for roughly six years now, and they are the process engineer, or process designer, I should say, that we hired for our proprietary second stage, where we pull out the Group III base oils. The purpose behind these tests was twofold. First, due to the considerable demand we had from offtakers that we're in discussion with, we ran out of samples from our prior pilot testing, and we needed to generate more physical samples of Group III and other base oil products. And second, we also wanted to update the technical work we had done in the past using a more current feedstock, because these things evolve over time.
So what the testing has allowed us to do is verify the feedstock properties that we're gathering from abroad. We've been able to confirm increased yields of critical offtake products and improve viscosities of the base oils. And what we've also done is prove up the relevant American Petroleum Institute qualifying properties of our base oil products.
A big reason you've undertaken these tests is to meet demand for samples. Tell us how those discussions and negotiations are going.
Sure. So, thanks. We're in talks with quite a few offtakers, who, unfortunately, are all under NDA, so I can't list them for our shareholders or this audience today, and that's tough as a pubc o. We've shipped, and they're continuing to ship more samples to a number of offtake parties that range from super majors, majors, international trading houses, up to finished lubricant blenders globally. With the samples continuing to go out, the conversations for offtake are accelerating, and we're swapping paperwork these days. A good indication of this early interest came when our first LOI was negotiated and announced prior to testing completion at KMPS.
...Well, it sounds like there's a lot of demand for your product, so what's driving all this demand?
Great question. It comes down to the quality of our product, the environmental benefits from this product, and the fact that we're a domestic solution for the U.S. market. So let me expand on that. First factor is that two-thirds of the major base oil and lubricant producers globally have published Scope 3 emission reduction targets. And what does that mean? Those are basically the emissions that come from their finished product lines, and there are primarily two ways to reduce those footprints. The first is to stop making the product, which they won't do, or to use raw materials with a lower carbon footprint than the existing raw materials they're using. So in the lubricants industry, a circular economy effectively means shifting to a re-refined base oil, and currently, less than 2% of global Group III supply comes from re-refined sources.
We're the only company with the technology to make sustainable Group III at high yields, north of 53%. The second factor is that 75% of North American supply is imported, and these imports obviously have a higher carbon footprint by virtue of being shipped long distances, primarily from South Korea and the Middle East.
So walk me through the next steps for the project and the project financing?
Sure. We recently announced that we had wrapped up a small financing for operating and testing expenses. We're in the process of delivering more samples to interested parties. We're driving the offtake LOI and agreements process forward aggressively. Once we secure those offtake agreements, we'll move into FEL3 financing to complete front-end engineering and design, and we'll also begin our community outreach process, which is a requirement of the LPO. Once FEL3 is advanced enough, we'll submit our completed Part II application to the DOE LPO. And with those milestones being complete, we should be in a great position to accelerate project-level equity financing discussions with other commercial lenders. Then it's on to what's known as final investment decision, or FID.
It sounds like offtake is a critical milestone to advance this project. How does this process compare to the experience with BP?
Absolutely agreed, and we're certainly more experienced with these large companies now. The market size and interest in sustainable products has grown since then, and there's a strong appetite for circular products. We found BP quickly, and we didn't need to seek out competitors at that time, but this time we have multiple parties at the table. Many of them are interested in offtake, and some are looking for strategic relationships as part of the LOI negotiation process. Competitive tension that we have right now is providing us with negotiating leverage, and from a technical standpoint, we have much more data now than we did when we were working with BP. We've completed FEL2 and the value engineering process, and we also have a very robust project costing in place, as well as a financial model that we can leverage for decision-making purposes.
All right. Well, we've also seen some insider buying recently. So the big question is, why should investors also consider buying the stock?
Sure. Insiders now hold roughly 21% of the shares outstanding. There are plenty of catalysts coming down the pipe. We have ongoing discussions for offtake, obviously. We have FEL3 or FEED advancement next. We have the LPO Part II application underway, and hopefully the positive outcome from that. So once these items ramp up, we should see greater value reflected in our share price, and I would not be unlike any other president if I didn't tell you that I believed our share price was undervalued. We're trading at a fraction of a single project's EBITDA, while our lubricant peers are trading at 12x project EBITDA. So the macro trends are also in our favor. We have high interest in circular materials and the demand for our greener products, and synthetics demand is growing, and we're the only large-scale sustainable Group III producer.
There's a robust market for Group III that delivers greater project economics to a group like ourselves.
Well, fantastic. Let's take a quick question from our viewers. Is there a timeline for the Part II application for the U.S. Department of Energy loan guarantee? Specifically, if Republicans win the election, is the DOE loan guarantee in jeopardy? And how is ReGen management dealing with this risk?
Right. Yes, great questions. We'll need to advance through FEED before we finalize Part II, and FEED or FEL3 depends on financing, obviously, a small financing. As to the change in the federal government, if one comes, we still feel very positive based on our discussions with the DOE, because the popularity of the IRA or, you know, the Inflation Reduction Act in this is, is great with the states, with investors, and industry. There's been over $170 billion in new investments made for green energy, and three-quarters of those are actually in red states. Many manufacturing companies and facilities are actively moving to the U.S. to take advantage of this IRA, and it's created roughly 300,000 jobs to date. Politically, it's very difficult to cut support for these projects. The LPO is a great opportunity, but it's also not our only option for debt financing.
We're continuing to pursue other sources in parallel with the LPO process. We've already received that $108 million indicative term sheet from Export Development Canada. We have private sources that we've been approached by. We're working with National Bank and Raymond James on commercial lenders, and ultimately, I would expect that we could replace any project development debt with better terms once the facility's up and running.
Well, fantastic, Mark. Thank you for this thorough update. We certainly look forward to following you along with this journey.
Great. Thanks very much for your time, Anna. Appreciate everything. You guys have a great day.
All right, we'll see you soon.
Thanks.
All right, everyone, that completes day one of our virtual conference. We will see you back here tomorrow morning at 9:00 A.M. Eastern for day two of our Sequire Virtual Investor Conference. Thanks, everyone, for watching. See you tomorrow!