Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for The Andersons 2025 Investor Day. We're excited to have you here, whether in person or virtually. For those of you that don't know me, I'm Mike Hoelter, Vice President, Corporate Controller and Investor Relations, and I've been with The Andersons for about 12 years, holding several financial roles within the company. Today is an opportunity for us to share our strategy, provide deeper insight into our business, and discuss how we're positioning ourselves for long-term growth and value creation. Before we begin, I'd like to draw your attention to the Safe Harbor Statement on the screen. This contains important information regarding forward-looking statements. Please review it carefully, as our remarks today may include projections and expectations that involve risks and uncertainties.
Actual results may differ materially from those discussed, and we encourage you to review our SEC filings for a full discussion of risk factors. Our website also contains a copy of today's presentation slides. Let me quickly walk you through what you can expect to hear today. We'll start with an overview of our company vision and long-term strategy, led by our President and CEO, Bill Krueger. Next, you'll hear from Weston Heide, EVP of Agribusiness, who will discuss how we are driving growth and value across the ag supply chain and strengthening our competitive position. Then you'll hear from Mark Simmons, EVP of Renewables, who will provide an update on how we are scaling our Renewables platform for sustained profitable growth and expanding our participation in growing end markets. After these presentations, we'll break for a brief Q&A session, followed by a short break.
When we return, Sarah Zibbel, our CHRO, will share how we are building an execution-focused culture supported by high-performing talent, a critical enabler of our long-term success. Finally, Brian Valentine, our CFO, will bring all the pieces together by walking through our financial performance, margin expansion trajectory, long-term algorithm, and capital allocation priorities. After hearing closing remarks from Bill, we will open it up for a final Q&A session with all the presenters, where we look forward to addressing your questions. For those of you in the room, please join us afterwards for a luncheon with our leadership team, where we welcome you to ask any further questions. So let's get started with a short video before we welcome our President and CEO, Bill Krueger, to the stage. Thank you.
It all starts here at the farm gate, where relationships are built on trust and hard work fuels something bigger. From these fields to customers around the world, The Andersons connects agriculture to opportunity, bringing together growers to end users across food, feed, and fuel. In Agribusiness and Renewables, we're accelerating growth by expanding strong established capabilities across the agriculture and renewable fuels supply chains. Strategic investments demonstrate how we're building on core capabilities to nimbly reach more markets and create long-term opportunity. Behind every efficient system is a team that knows what excellence looks like. Our people bring deep expertise and relentless focus to every part of the operation, turning precision, discipline, and teamwork into performance. We deliver value across the entire North American ag and Renewables supply chain, from crop inputs that strengthen yields to grain, feed, and renewable products that power global markets.
It's about balance, using disciplined capital deployment and operational focus to create lasting value for our growers, customers, and shareholders. We are grounded by our purpose and the enduring principles that define who we are. The Andersons, delivering value for generations to come.
Thank you, Mike. I'd like to welcome everyone to The Andersons 2025 Investor Day. I'm Bill Krueger, President and CEO of The Andersons. I've been with the organization for six years. Prior to that, I was the President and CEO of Lansing Trade Group, which The Andersons acquired in 2019. As we go through the day, I want everyone to understand how proud I am of leading the organization that you're going to get to hear from today. With that, I'm going to move into the four key messages that I really want everyone, both in the audience and online, to take away. We're going to dive into all four of these as we go through the morning. First, we are a materially stronger company led by a seasoned team with deep expertise in ag, renewable fuels, operational excellence, and poised for profitable growth.
The Andersons has a balanced, diversified portfolio that's been resilient through the cycles, is deeply rooted in North American ag and renewable supply chain. We have a strong Renewables growth engine anchored by our ethanol assets. It's been one of our higher returning businesses for more than a decade, with continued investment opportunities. And finally, our disciplined capital allocation strategy, leveraging our balance sheet, consistent cash flows, and execution to drive long-term value for our shareholders. We're going to first dive into the first bullet point that I talked about: a materially stronger company. And I'm going to walk through the sequence of why I believe that, starting with the integration of the purchase of Lansing Trade Group.
The Andersons, a more traditional Eastern Corn Belt company with minority investments in four ethanol plants and a network of fertilizer assets, acquired Lansing Trade Group, a more asset-light merchant company with a smaller group of assets in the Western Corn Belt. Through that integration, we're able to truly take the best of both companies, put them together with both operational excellence, a merchandising mindset, and create a leader in the industry. From that, we have built a mindset of continuous improvement, consistent execution, and a focus on maximizing free cash flow. We do have a willingness to liquidate non-strategic and non-performing businesses that we've created over the last six years. An example of that is the sale of our railcar leasing business in 2021, which was highly capital-intensive with lower return potential.
We've been able to reduce our long-term debt to EBITDA by over two and a half turns since 2020, while still deploying $1 billion of capital. We've built the fourth largest grain network in the United States. In 2022 and 2023, at the peak of the ag cycle, we were able to demonstrate the earnings power of our agribusiness. We acquired the majority ownership in Skyland Grain in November of 2024, and we've continued to deploy capital, both organic and with smaller M&A opportunities over the last several years. We feel very confident in our Agribusiness segment moving forward. Next, we have truly built a strong Renewables growth engine. The most recent action was the $425 million acquisition to acquire 100% of our ethanol plants, doubling our financial exposure and opportunity to the ethanol space.
We're also, with this growth engine, able to take advantage of the current bipartisan biofuels policy that the U.S. has implemented. As a result, our shareholders now have less exposure to the regional grain ag cycles. By being patient investors of our capital, we believe we can now look at materially larger transactions moving forward. Now I want to move into who we are and what we do. As you can see, this is a snapshot of our Q3 2025 numbers. You can see on the slide the numbers, but I'd like to draw your attention to a few specific items. Our adjusted EPS exiting Q3 of 2025 was $2.56 a share. We remain fully committed to our publicly stated target of $4.30 per share exiting 2026. As you can see, our split is pretty even between Agribusiness and Renewables.
However, macro factors and investment strategies over time may alter that split. Finally, our competitive advantages. The broad geographic footprint that we have allows us to reach from the producer to the consumer. With the acquisition of Lansing and the more recent acquisition of Skyland Grain in our Agribusiness segment, with the vast array of network of transload and aggregation centers that you'll see in our renewable sector, we truly have become a company that competes with our largest major competitors in the U.S. We believe that we are integral to the North American ag and Renewables supply chain, connecting production to demand, and finally, and most importantly, we have created deep relationships with our customers, ranging from the start with the farmer all the way to the largest consumer product goods companies globally, by addressing their problems and creating solutions.
Now I'd like to talk about the two business segments. They're both integrated and complementary to each other. Weston Heide and Mark Simmons will discuss their respective businesses in more detail later. But what I'd like to talk about is this format allows us not only with the optimal cost structure, but it also allows us to generate more gross margin opportunities. I want to talk a little bit about three different areas where we're able to demonstrate this on a daily basis. We'll talk about an example that we call horizontal integration between the two business segments. Our Agribusiness segment trades over 800 million bushels of corn annually. Our Renewables group buys 165 million bushels of corn annually to supply our ethanol plants. Most ethanol companies only buy the amount of corn they need to operate.
Through the utilization of our agribusiness, we are able to buy over 80% of our corn for our ethanol plants directly from local producers. This drives our cost lower for the single largest input for our ethanol plants, generating a competitive advantage. Next is an example of vertical integration, where inside our Renewables group, we produce 140 million pounds of distillers corn oil. That flows into our renewable feedstocks merchandising business, which trades 1.6 billion pounds. This allows us to extract a premium price for our distillers corn oil. And finally, our fertilizer business supplies crop nutrients to 2 million acres of production agriculture annually. This provides the entire company with the understanding of the farm gate trends, planting intentions early in the year, and then as we progress throughout the crop year, potential yield results.
These are just a few examples of the synergies that we expect to achieve through our One ANDE approach. Now I'd like to go into the part of this, what we do. This slide illustrates a simplified summary of our business model. We often get asked by investors and analysts to better describe our business model. I hope the next five slides will do just that for you. The highlighted blue boxes are where The Andersons are a recognized leader. I'm going to start with the categories of end users that we list here. We have thousands of customers on the sales side. But for the purposes of this presentation, I want to break it down into four categories. Our feed supply chain is the pet food industry, the pork industry, the beef industry, the dairy industry as examples.
For The Andersons, we have a number of food supply chain customers, but those would be companies like flour milling, specialty crops processing, consumer packaged goods companies. The third area that we have our customers broken down into is the fuel supply chain. For The Andersons, that is primarily the ethanol buyers, renewable diesel, and biodiesel customers. Finally, our international customers are a wide array of customers that procure grains and feed ingredients across the globe. The Andersons has a unique position to connect production to domestic and global demand for food, feed, and fuel. Now we're going to start with the fertilizer part of our Agribusiness segment first. The Andersons participates in the entire production cycle of grains, starting with fertilizer, ending with the end users. Our wholesale distribution is a network of 17 warehouses that distributes bulk fertilizer for multinational mining companies.
This is a low-risk consignment business. The larger portion of our wholesale distribution is a merchant business that buys and sells bulk fertilizer using our network of assets and logistics expertise. Our specialty liquids group is a collection of six manufacturing facilities that use core fertilizers as raw materials to produce specialty liquids for retail outlets. We also utilize those same assets to support our industrial markets with products like de-icer for airports and products that go into concrete production. And finally, we have 20 farm centers that provide agronomy consulting, fertilizer sales, and application services to our farmers. The normalized EBITDA for our fertilizer business is 25%-30% of our Agribusiness segment. Next, we're going to move into our grain handling and storage assets. As you can see on here, the grain elevators and export terminals are what we're going to address.
They start, though, with the well over 100 grain originators that we have across the organization that buy grain from over 25,000 farmers and small regional co-ops and grain companies. These originations flow into a network of 175 grain elevators that handle several hundred million bushels of grain, supplying domestic feed and food consumptive demand along with the export markets. Our export terminals in Houston, Texas, and Toledo, Ohio originate a higher percentage of their grain from larger cooperative systems and grain companies with a smaller percentage coming from the farmer. Now, in this area, we have margins that are comprised of four areas. One is the fees we receive for our risk management tools that we provide to the farmers.
Our elevation margins, which are the price spread between the purchase price and the sales price, space income, which is the appreciation of grain while it's in our facilities, along with the drying, mixing, and blending of the grain to improve the quality, and finally, our processing fees that we receive from sophisticated customers that request us to do things like color sorting, super cleaning, and basic processing in return for paying us a premium price. The normalized EBITDA contribution from our grain assets is 30%-35% of the agribusiness total. Finally, in agribusiness, our merchandising businesses, which are the buying and selling of grain products that do not go through our owned assets. We refer to this as our asset-light model. In general, this business produces higher return on invested capital. And as you look at the slide here, you'll notice that all the boxes are gray.
The arrows are blue. That's where The Andersons' merchandising expertise comes into play. There are hundreds of boxes in the real world for us, but the blue arrows all are the same, taking advantage of the opportunities. And I'm going to give you some of those. It's much more than just the difference between the purchase price and the sales price. We utilize our macro expertise, fundamental market analysis, and logistics execution to generate arbitrage. We always try to buy as close to the origin and sell as close to the destination. We call that freight arbitrage. And as a company, we manage a freight book that has truck, rail, containers, barges, and vessels. We pay between $800 million- $900 million a year in total freight costs. For The Andersons, that equals opportunity.
We are able to take advantage of understanding our freight books through our logistics expertise to generate additional margin. The next is what we call calendar and geographic arbitrage. And the easiest way for me to explain this is just to give you an example. We just concluded corn harvest. Let's say during corn harvest, we choose to buy some corn for January shipment in Nebraska. The merchant or group of merchants decides selling corn for August delivery into the Southeast poultry market is the best sale that day. As we come into January and it's time to take shipment, we will take the corn that we've bought in Nebraska and potentially sell it to a local ethanol plant. Then the decision becomes, what do we buy in? Do we buy in the August shipment period?
In this instance, let's say that we decide to go to Illinois, we buy in the August corn to ship to the Southeast feed demand market. In that scenario, we've taken advantage of the time spread between January and August. We've taken advantage of the geographic spreads because it's a lot cheaper to ship corn to the Southeast than it is from Nebraska. That sounds simple. In reality, when I tell investors what we do is simple, we just do this thousands of times per week. So that really is the best way to think about our merchandising business when you're getting asked. The merchandising business also generates between 35%-40% of the normalized EBITDA for agribusiness. Next, I'm going to move into the Renewables segment. I'm going to talk about our ethanol production and our plants.
Again, you heard me talk about the complementary nature of corn procurement, and you're going to hear it at least two more times today because we believe it is that critical of a competitive advantage for The Andersons from different angles. For those of you who are not quite as familiar with the ethanol industry, 85% of the ethanol that is produced in the United States gets consumed. It's actually slightly over 85% gets consumed domestically. A little less than 15% of the ethanol that gets produced is exported. And that number is growing. You'll hear from Mark on that later. One key thing to remember is a third of that ethanol goes to Canada. Now, everyone understands the value of an ethanol plant producing ethanol.
The one thing that some investors and analysts don't always connect the dots on is the co-products that come out of our ethanol plants: the dry distillers grains, the corn oil, and the CO2. And this excludes sequestration around CO2, generates 20%-25% of the revenue, so having the understanding and the expertise to maximize co-product values is what separates many ethanol companies apart. Distillers grains go primarily into the animal feed supply chain. 35% of the distillers grains that are produced in the U.S. get exported. Distillers corn oil, which I mentioned earlier, 80% of that goes into the fuel and 20% goes into the feed industry. Mark's going to drill down on operational excellence, but a key stat that I want to share with this group. Our four ethanol plants, as built and expanded, have a nameplate capacity of 393 million gallons.
We're operating those plants well north of 500 million gallons. So we're substantially past 100% utilization of our plants. And the final point is The Andersons truly believe it is driving value to rural America through increasing domestic demand for U.S. corn at our ethanol plants. Our plants generate an EBITDA contribution of roughly 85%-90% of our Renewables segment. And finally, the Renewables merchandising businesses. This is really a mirror of the agribusiness merchandising that I described earlier. I just want to add a few more comments around the Renewables merchandising businesses. We will transact with more than 45 non-ANDE owned third-party ethanol plants in our dry distillers grains merchandising and our third-party ethanol businesses. Our renewable feedstocks merchandising business is one of the areas of greatest potential.
For those of you who've been around the name for a couple of years, you've heard me say this several times. Why do I still believe that today? The biofuels policy and the proposed RVOs could increase demand for renewable low CI feedstocks by 30% from 2025 to 2027. This group originates its product from ethanol plants, soybean crush plants, fats, oils, and grease production facilities, such as waste collection sites and packing and rendering facilities. For this group of businesses, the merchandising is not only profit-generating, but with the ever-moving and fluid biofuels policy today, it collects market intelligence and enhances our market fundamentals, providing valuable information to the rest of the organization. Our normalized EBITDA contribution is 10%-15% of our Renewables business. Now, we're going to address one of the newest variables in the Renewables segment: 45Z Clean Fuel Production Credits.
These 45Z credits, as they're often referenced, are performance-based tax credits for clean fuels production starting in 2025. It promotes the production of low carbon transportation fuels, and it supports reinvestment to increase domestic ag and low CI feedstock demand. The OBBB made a couple of modifications to the original Inflation Reduction Act. That's by extending the credit timeline through 2029 and removing the indirect land use change penalty starting in 2026. This rule will reduce the carbon intensity score by five and a half to six points. Now, the tax credits are based on the GREET CI modeling. It's listed on the bottom of the screen for those of you who are interested in understanding more about the GREET model.
But in summary, what's important to understand is before you can qualify for any 45Z tax credits, you have to have a CI score below 47.5, 47.5 or lower. Once you achieve 47.5, there is no more increased 45Z tax credits until you get below 42.5. This tiered scale is something that was introduced in 2025, and it is important to understand. Now, as you continue to go lower down the scale in five-point increments, it will increase by up to $0.10 a gallon each five points you go down with a maximum of $1 per gallon credit. Now, The Andersons are looking at reducing our CI score. You're going to hear a lot about that today through plant efficiency projects, lowering our natural gas and electricity usage, and looking for the potential of carbon sequestration. Much more on tax credits later.
Next, I want to move into why The Andersons are poised to capture market opportunity with a clear growth strategy. We believe that The Andersons are well poised for the favorable macro trends that are both bipartisan and support both energy and agriculture markets. Mark and Weston are going to go through these five macro trends in detail, but I just wanted to put them up there for everyone to see as we keep moving throughout the morning. We have built a long-term strategic framework for profitable growth. You heard me say that earlier. Question may be how. Okay. Each of the groups behind me will dive into it, but I want to give you my opinion on why this is going to work. Organic growth is generally the highest returns and can be accelerated through leveraging strong customer relationships and expanding our high-performing businesses into adjacent opportunities.
Second, we have a core belief as a company that we can always get better through optimization. This is driving a culture of continuous improvement and unlocking cost savings and efficiencies through better integration. Our disciplined approach to deploying capital allows us to deliver profitable growth, utilizing the strength of our balance sheet, which you're going to hear about later, and evaluating strategic investments that enhance both our scale and our capabilities. Now, how do we take this long-term framework and apply it on a daily basis? Sarah Zibbel is going to walk through our operating model for the group, but from my perspective, it's pretty simple. The Andersons are here to serve.
Utilizing our core values, our strengths, and our results-driven mentality, we're able to tie our Statement of Principles to the four stakeholders that we believe we have: customers, employees, the communities in which we operate, and our shareholders. Our senior leadership team, which is pictured here, has a good mix of ANDE tenure, industry experience, and both public and private leadership roles. You'll get to hear from Weston, Mark, Sarah, and Brian, and Emmanuel is in attendance to answer questions later. What is equally important to understand is that each of these five leaders has equally strong teams assisting them in running their business segments or enterprise functions. We have a strong belief in empowering our employees to perform at the highest levels and are willing to reward them for success.
I will conclude the opening session here with the execution of our strategy generates us the capability of establishing a new publicly stated target of a run rate EPS exiting 2028 of $7 per share. Brian will dive deeper into this later in his presentation, but what I want the investors and public to understand is we view our responsibility of leading The Andersons as an obligation to our customers, our employees, and our shareholders. We expect both our current and future shareholders to be rewarded by investing in our company. And with that, I'll hand it over to Weston Heide.
Thank you, Bill, and good morning. My name is Weston Heide. I've worked with the company for 17 years, first as part of Lansing Trade Group and then with The Andersons following the acquisition in 2019.
I've held a variety of roles within the company, including finance, business development, operations, and commercial roles across grain, feed, and premium ingredients, and today, I serve as the Executive Vice President of our Agribusiness segment. I'll spend the next several minutes providing a review of our Agribusiness segment and describing how we provide value and drive growth across the ag supply chain. There are four key messages that define our strategic direction and long-term value proposition. First, our Agribusiness segment is well positioned for long-term profitable growth. Our deep understanding of agricultural markets locally, regionally, and globally, complemented with our logistics expertise, enhances our ability to serve markets and, importantly, gives us a competitive edge. Second, we create value across the entire ag supply chain from farmers to end users.
The ag supply chain is complex and covers many touch points from fertilizer producers to farmers to end users, as Bill described in his diagrams earlier. Our focused and value-added approach ensures that we're not just participating in the market, but we're making a meaningful impact at each step of the supply chain. We think about making that meaningful impact at each step where we can deliver value for our customers, and that translates into value for us. Third, we are strategically expanding. Our growth strategy is deliberate. We're growing through targeted investments and complementary acquisitions that align with our core strengths and our long-term strategy and direction. And fourth, we are delivering stable, diversified growth. Our balanced mix of geographies, ag products, and revenue streams provides stability and resilience. This diversification allows us to perform well across ag market cycles.
As we look at our business at a glance, here are a few highlights of our platform. We operate with an integrated model, a full-service approach from crop inputs to grain handling and commodity merchandising, serving producers, processors, and end-use customers across the value chain. Our footprint spans over 175 facilities, from grain elevators to storage assets, agronomy centers, and fertilizer warehouses, as well as transloading sites. This scale enables flexibility and market reach. Through our assets and our merchandising, we trade over 33 million metric tons of grains and feed ingredients on an annual basis. Primarily, this is corn at about 60% of our volume, followed by wheat and soybeans. We also sell 1.9 million tons of fertilizer products across our wholesale, specialty liquid, and through our farm centers.
We serve nearly two million acres with agronomy services through our farm center and agronomy service businesses across the key grain belts. With 275 million bushels of storage capacity, we command relevance in a fragmented market. Our share of the U.S. commercial grain space is only about 3%, leaving significant room for continued growth. Finally, from a financial perspective, our assets and our volumes combine to drive performance. Over the trailing 12 months, we have delivered $554 million of gross profit, $195 million of earnings before taxes, interest, depreciation, and amortization, and $76 million of pre-tax income. Clear evidence of our scale translating into results. Now, our asset network covers key North American grain regions and facilitates our ability to store, source, and transport agricultural products efficiently and enhances our ability to leverage local and regional market knowledge.
We have strong presence in the Eastern Grain Belt, primarily in the states of Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. Our presence in the Western Grain Belt spans from Nebraska to Kansas, Colorado, and into the Panhandle of Texas. We complement this with other pockets of assets that provide unique value to our network, such as our locations in Northeast Louisiana, where we see some of the earliest harvest bushels for corn and soybeans each year. This really ties to Bill's comment earlier on leveraging market intelligence, where we can capitalize on specific market information provided from our network and gather it through our assets. Our footprint expansions, they align with our strategy to increase our capacity, broaden our geography, and strengthen the connectivity of our network. As an example, last November, we acquired Skyland Grain assets in Southwest Kansas, Colorado, and Texas.
This group of assets enhanced our Western Grain Belt presence and complemented our merchandising capabilities. For many years, we've had a very strong presence in that geography. We were buying grain from producers and commercials and selling it to end users such as feedlots and ethanol plants. And we did all of this without any owned physical grain assets in the region. The Skyland acquisition added over 40 facilities and over 100 million bushels of additional storage capacity to our network that we can now pair with our merchandising businesses and drive additional value by trading around those assets and adding depth to our market strategies. We're also investing in export infrastructure. Our Port of Houston project is one that I'll describe in a little bit more detail in a later slide. Now, this is a reference slide.
You may refer to it later, and it has a lot of details. But the main theme is that The Andersons serves our producer customers throughout the year, supporting farmers with grain merchandising, fertilizer inputs, logistics, and advice. And while I'm not going to cover everything on this slide, of course, let me give you one quick example relevant to this time of year. We have now wrapped up the fall harvest, and farmers are turning their attention to post-harvest fertilizer applications to prepare for next year's planting intentions. Generally, this will be phosphates and potash being applied to the soil to replenish those nutrients in their farm ground. Our agronomy teams are working with those producers right now to work on pricing and application approaches, part of our continuous service model that enhances and fosters a trusted relationship with those producers.
At a high level, agribusiness spans three core areas: assets and merchandising, premium ingredients, and fertilizers, each playing a distinct role in connecting production to demand. Our primary area is assets and merchandising. We leverage grain elevators, multimodal logistics, and deep market expertise to manage grain flows and mitigate risk. Merchandising is all about connecting producers to end users, creating arbitrage across geographies, time, and qualities. Paired with strong asset operations, we maximize margins in grain handling and storage. And these capabilities drive value across grains as well as feed ingredients. Our premium ingredients area is focused on merchandising and light processing for higher value commodities and specialty ingredients. Often, this segment services our consumer packaged goods or CPG customers in the food and companion animal spaces. Our expertise in food safety and quality assurance, combined with our deep understanding of customers' procurement strategies, positions us as a trusted partner.
Premium ingredients include our pet food inputs, our specialty crops business, such as pulses, peas, lentils, and chickpeas, food corn, as well as organic ingredients. And the third area where we play is in the fertilizer markets. Our wholesale distribution network aligns with our grain geographies and links to our farm centers for the retail channel. We provide specialty liquid fertilizers that enhance yields and protect crops, along with application services provided through our agronomy centers. Our wholesale businesses sell about 15% of their volume to our farm centers, and our farm centers purchase about 100% of their volume from our wholesale and specialty liquid groups. This allows us to deliver an integrated approach that strengthens our customer relationships and understanding.
Across all of these areas, our strength lies in our ability to connect production to demand across time and geography, ensuring efficient movement and transformation of agricultural inputs and outputs. Our Agribusiness segment is well positioned to capitalize on long-term tailwinds driven by an increased emphasis on domestic demand, excess soybean meal supply, and evolving consumer and stakeholder requirements. Bill touched on these earlier at a high level. Let me provide a little bit more detail to connect our strategy to these factors. First, the increased emphasis on domestic ag consumption is being driven by policy. When you combine this with an industry that is continually driving for efficiency and productivity through crop yields, it really sets the stage for us. As noted before, we have well-positioned grain handling capacity and lots of it. The value of that space generally increases with larger crop sizes.
Our ability to complement our assets with our merchandising expertise positions us favorably for the increased demand brought by these policies. Second, our proactive investment at the Port of Houston positions us to benefit from excess soybean meal supply. Soybean crush has increased significantly over the last several years, largely in part to biofuels policies, crushing the soybeans to create oil used for the renewable diesel industry, which Mark will touch on later in his presentation. As a reminder, of the 4.3 billion bushel soybean crop, about 55%-60% of that goes to soybean crush. Of the soybean itself, about 80% turns into meal and 20% turns into oil. Our Houston facility with Class I railroad service is uniquely positioned to participate in the increased exports. The increased exports are because the domestic supply exceeds the domestic demand.
It connects especially well with the Western soybean meal crush plants. Third, consumer and stakeholder requirements are evolving, and we're positioned to serve them. Our capability is strong with our CPG customers, especially for procurement, food safety, and quality assurance. Examples include our value-added services that we provide for food and pet food ingredients. We also recognize that for many of our customers, sustainability and traceability remain important. We are partnering with our customers and with our farmer-producer customers to develop sustainability programs, regenerative farming practices that provide mutual value for our customers and for our partners. Overall, we're not just reacting to industry changes. We're ahead of them with the infrastructure, the relationships, and the expertise to thrive in this evolving and dynamic agriculture environment.
So turning from macro factors to specifics on why we win in the market, The Andersons is one of the largest grain companies in North America. This provides us with excellent scale and reach to drive value across the areas discussed: assets and merchandising, premium ingredients, and fertilizers. A key factor of our success is our merchandising volumes, which are a multiple of our storage capacity. This allows us to amplify our market impact well beyond our baseline asset capacity. We strategically align our assets with our merchandising. Our proximity to producers allows us to deliver a service model with localized market expertise and connects with our network of assets, such as our ethanol plants. We serve nearly 25,000 producers across grain and fertilizer businesses. We connect those growers via logistics to access end markets both domestically and across the globe.
And even with a commodity-based business, a hyper-focus on customers is a key to our success. We bring a proven ability to deliver tailored and high-value solutions, areas such as premium ingredients, where we work with cereal companies to develop customer origination programs for their inputs, or where we're working with farmers to identify ideal varieties for food corn applications, to other areas such as specialty liquids, where we sell yield-enhancing starter fertilizers that can be applied in-furrow at the same time as planting, thereby driving efficiency for our farmer customers. And some of those products can increase the yields by 5 up to 10 bushels per acre, providing clear value for our customers and for us. And the other area marking why we win really dovetails on one of Bill's slides earlier, talking about the integration between Agribusiness and Renewables.
Recall that we trade five times the volume of corn that our ethanol plants grind on an annual basis. The company's unified approach across grain, fertilizer, and ethanol markets enables a full value chain delivery, optimizing our corn sourcing and enhancing our commercial coordination across Agribusiness and Renewables. So with the background of what our Agribusiness segment is, where we play, and how we win in the market, let's now turn our attention to our strategy and how we are executing on that strategy. Earlier today, Bill introduced our long-term approach to driving profitable growth through these three interconnected pillars: accelerating, optimizing, and delivering. I will cover the first two with respect to agribusiness in the next couple of slides, and Brian will cover the latter of the three in his presentation later.
Under the accelerating pillar, we are scaling our growth through strategic investments in acquisitions and capital projects that expand our reach, enhance our capabilities, and deliver greater value to our customers. As I mentioned earlier today, we closed on the Skyland investment last November. And while that was just about one year ago today, it remains an important part of our growth strategy and provides a good example of how we view growth through our core competencies. Skyland substantially increased our geographic footprint in the Western Grain Belt, expanded our storage capacity, and strongly complemented our merchandising capabilities in that geography. In addition to being right down the fairway in terms of our core capabilities, we also gained access to over 7,000 new-to-us farmer customers with whom we can foster that same value and trusted relationship across grain and fertilizer to deliver mutual benefits.
Connecting to our discussion on macro factors and trends, our significant capital investment into our export terminal at the Port of Houston is a key part of our growth. Not only are we able to efficiently export Western grains such as wheat and milo from this terminal, with our project, we will now be able to also export soybean meal. Drawing from rail-connected soybean crushers to our facility via the Class I railroads positions us extremely well to benefit from excess soybean meal, which we'll need to clear the markets through export channels. And this project is also a great example of how we create the connection between North American ag and global ag markets. In addition to these two projects, we have a robust pipeline of organic growth projects. Across many of our businesses, we deploy a Stage-Gate methodology to identify, assess, and execute on growth projects.
Many of the most successful of these are closely tied to our customer-centric strategy. In addition, in our accelerating pillar, we add complementary acquisitions. We are expanding our capacity, broadening our geographic reach, and aligning with our customer demand through these acquisitions. Moving on to the optimizing pillar, we have a dual focus on commercial and operational excellence. Commercial excellence centers on embedding a customer-first culture across all commercial activities. Let me provide a brief example to bring this to life just a bit. One of our pet food customers came to us with a problem related to their corn supply. We researched and proposed a solution that went well beyond the traditional methods of dealing with this issue, a solution that leveraged our expertise in our food corn business as well as our food safety and quality assurance.
Ultimately, we deployed capital across four sites in North America, and we are now serving the majority of their demand. Their quality has increased. Their customer complaints have decreased, and this provides great satisfaction to our team, and at a personal level, when I buy food for my own dog from the local pet supply store, I buy this product. I know which facility it is made in, and I know that our work at The Andersons contributes directly to what's in that bag. Talk about a great feeling, and it all starts with a customer-first mindset. Another aspect of commercial excellence, especially with a merchandising business like ours, is our talent pipeline. We are continuously strengthening workforce capabilities via targeted training and talent development. We have a dedicated training program designed specifically for early-in-career merchants.
This program has been in place for over a dozen years and focuses on building the foundational skills in merchandising, risk management, and market strategies. We recruit talent from targeted universities and provide structured development that prepares them for leadership roles as their careers advance, and when deploying our talent, we do so in the local market areas. Our merchants and originators out in our field locations complement our merchandising teams in our headquarters offices. They enhance our overall market expertise by drawing together that local, regional, and global perspective. Now, operational excellence. This focuses on strategic deployment of our assets across key growing and merchandising regions.
Examples include our assets that are tributary to our ethanol plants, unique assets such as those I described in Louisiana earlier, where we have access to rail and barge markets on the Mississippi River, or assets like Skyland, which strongly complement a presence of merchandising in that geography. Increasing our specialty fertilizer production is another way that we drive operational excellence through scale, and we are also using data-driven tools and dashboards to monitor our performance and fuel ongoing improvements. As I wrap up, I want to leave you with four key takeaways that define our strategy and our position in the market. The Andersons' Agribusiness segment is well-equipped for sustained profitable growth, leveraging deep market knowledge and logistics capabilities. By serving stakeholders from farmers to end users, we deliver differentiated value through a focused and value-add approach across the entire ag supply chain.
We are expanding with a portfolio of strategic acquisitions, capital investments, and organic growth projects that ensure scalability and relevance in evolving ag markets. We are delivering diversified and resilient growth through a balanced mix of ag products, geographies, and revenue streams that perform across varied ag market cycles. Thank you. With this, I will turn to my colleague, Mark Simmons, to discuss our Renewables segment.
Hello. My name is Mark Simmons, and I'm the Executive Vice President of the Renewables Group at The Andersons. I've been with the company since 2019, and prior to that, I was part of the Lansing transaction.
I've been in various commodity trading roles in ag and energy for more than 25 years, and I couldn't be more excited to lead the Renewables Group because of the long-standing history of success and the long runway of opportunities that we have before us. Scaling for sustained profitable growth. Here are our key messages. Number one, operational excellence and execution. We're staying disciplined in how we operate our plants, and there's significant runway ahead for continued value creation. We have a seasoned team with a proven track record of delivering value and driving efficiencies. Number two, accelerating growth through M&A. We transacted on the minority share of the ethanol plants, and we continue to look for growth opportunities that meet our criteria of being large-scale, efficient, having good geography, and the potential to lower the carbon intensity of our ethanol. And third is our low carbon intensity strategy.
We continue to look for ways to lower the CI to capitalize on the 45Z tax credit in Low Carbon Fuel Standard markets, and last is our competitive advantage. Our integrated capabilities with agribusiness and strong market knowledge give us a strategic edge against the competition. As Bill and Weston mentioned previously, we merchandise or handle significantly more corn as a company than the 165 million bushels that we grind at our ethanol plants, giving us superior market-based knowledge in the space and allowing us to buy grain more efficiently, which improves the overall net back to the ethanol plant.
I call this out because this is something that is very important and sets us apart from other producers in the market that may only have a single buyer of corn in their area, in their market, buying grain for that plant, where we have a team of merchandisers covering the entire U.S. and international and understand market flows, arbitrage, and quality differences from one market to another. Corn makes up a significant portion of the input costs at an ethanol plant, which is why this is so important. Our Renewables segment is a scaled, agile platform positioned to succeed through market cycles. We're focused on the production and distribution of renewable fuels and feedstocks with a strong emphasis on ethanol and its co-products. By optimizing the end-to-end supply chain, we drive efficiency and shareholder value. Operationally, we have significant scale.
We produce well over 500 million gallons of ethanol across the four facilities. In addition to what we produce, we merchandise or trade an additional 335 million gallons of third-party ethanol, which gives us broad market knowledge across the entire U.S., benefiting the plants by increasing their overall net back. We merchandise 1.6 billion pounds of renewable feedstocks, which is more than 10x what we produce as distillers' corn oil from the ethanol plants. We handle more than 2.5 million tons of feed products, with roughly a quarter of what we produce and merchandise getting exported. Not only for just dried distillers' grains, but we are in the top five of all shippers of ag products in containers. This breadth gives us flexibility and resilience in a dynamic market and gives us the visibility to the global trade. Financially, the segment is delivering strong results.
One thing to call out is the adjusted pre-tax income. You can see the overall financial impact attributable to ANDE , and you can see what the impact of the minority share transaction has and what it means to have 100% of the earnings. These numbers underscore the strength of our integrated model and discipline execution. Looking ahead, our strategy remains clear: leverage scale, optimize operations, and capitalize on the growing demand for renewable fuels. Our Eastern footprint provides a strong competitive advantage in North America. The strategic location of our ethanol plants drives sourcing efficiency and ensures proximity to feedstock, which translates into cost savings and operational reliability. We have access to all active North American Low Carbon Fuel Standard markets, positioning us to capture premium opportunities as demand for low carbon solutions accelerates. A key differentiator that I want to point out is our supply chain strength.
The majority of our corn is sourced directly from farmers, giving us superior cost control and visibility. This direct relationship enhances our ability to manage volatility and maintain quality. Our complementary and efficient distribution network includes ethanol plants, ethanol transloads, renewable feedstocks terminals, and this infrastructure connects growers and end users seamlessly, reinforcing our ability to deliver value across the value chain. In short, our footprint and integrated network positions us to capitalize on market growth while maintaining cost control, leadership, and operational flexibility. The main takeaway here is we're so much more than an ethanol producer with four plants. Our footprint and reach extends much further, both upstream and down across a broad commodity slate. Our Renewables segment is built on three core capabilities: ethanol production, co-product sales, and merchandising. Now let's break each of them down. First, ethanol production.
We own and operate four ethanol plants that produce fuel-grade ethanol from corn primarily used for blending with gasoline to reduce emissions. We're also investing in carbon intensity reduction, plant efficiencies, and carbon capture technologies to enhance our profitability. Second is co-product sales. Ethanol production generates valuable co-products like distillers dried grains for animal feed and distillers corn oil for the biodiesel market and also animal feed. And we also capture CO2 for use in food, beverage, and industrial applications, creating additional revenue streams. Third is merchandising. We merchandise third-party ethanol through strategic partnerships and supply renewable feedstocks to the bio-based diesel markets. We're a major supplier and exporter of DDGS, which positions us well in the global feed markets. Finally, our collaboration with agribusiness ensures supply reliability, price risk management, and logistics for moving corn to the ethanol plants.
We also provide co-product export logistics and offer comprehensive market analysis to support our operations. And to highlight a specific example of how Renewables is working with agribusiness, we're in the final stages of building out additional tankage for our renewable feedstocks business by leveraging the capabilities of one of our Skyland assets in Ulysses, Kansas. This integrated model allows us to maximize value across the supply chain while meeting growing demand for renewable fuels and feedstocks. Next, we want to show you a simplified breakdown of what drives our results in Renewables. The left side is educational, but the right shows a breakdown of where the revenue from the ethanol plants comes from. One kernel of corn delivers significant value through multiple outputs. From each kernel, you can see the breakdown of what becomes ethanol and the various co-products. These co-products are critical to our integrated model.
When we look at revenue contribution, ethanol accounts for about 77% of the average plant revenues, while the co-products make up the rest. This diversified revenue stream strengthens our resilience and profitability. Every kernel we process generates multiple revenue streams and creates additional value beyond the ethanol production. It's not just the ethanol and the corn price that determines plant profitability. It's also the co-products. 23% of the revenue comes from the co-products from the plants, which has a meaningful impact on our results. Bill introduced you to these in his macro trend slides, but I'm going to do a deeper dive. The fundamentals behind ethanol are supportive, and we're well positioned to capitalize on the favorable long-term tailwinds. We're seeing increased domestic consumption through E15 and higher blend rates globally, fueling export growth.
Biofuels policy, including a favorable RVO, favorable proposed RVO, and 45Z, is creating momentum, and we have strategic alignment with the Renewables tailwinds. With the global push to decarbonize, we're well positioned as a low-CI producer with scalable capacity. Our flexibility across ethanol, renewable feedstocks, and CO2 utilization gives us a unique edge. In an evolving biofuels policy landscape, we're built to thrive regardless of the policy scenario because we are in the top tier of all ethanol producers, which allows us to manage through market fluctuations that many of our competitors cannot. We continue to stay active with industry groups in shaping policy in Washington, D.C., and we're active members of one of the major biofuels policy groups and hold a seat on the board of directors.
With the increasing demand for low-CI solutions, we feel we're well positioned for growth, and our deep customer relationships support multi-commodity sales and recurring demand. An example of this would be our supply chain value with a large refiner where they are a consistent customer of ethanol sales from our third-party trading business and also our ethanol plants. They're also one of the larger off-takers of our low-CI feedstocks for the renewable diesel plants. Consolidation and scaling in Renewables, we operate large-scale efficient assets that stand out in a consolidating industry, and our vertical integration and strong market knowledge differentiate us from our peers. We are the fifth largest ethanol producer in the U.S., and we win in Renewables because of three key strengths: scale, location, and integration. First, scale. As a top five ethanol producer, we focus on the continuous improvement and operational excellence.
Our deep relationships across the supply chain allow us to merchandise ethanol and co-products effectively, leveraging our production assets and providing superior service. We also have expertise in supplying corn oil and other renewable feedstocks to the bio-based diesel markets. Second is our location. Our ethanol plants are geographically advantaged, close to corn production, with most corn purchased directly from farmers, which lowers our costs. We have strategic access to end users through logistical expertise and third-party terminals, and our plant locations position us well for future carbon capture opportunities. For example, we're advancing with our project to sequester carbon at our Clymers, Indiana facility, and we're in the early stages of similar projects for sequestration and utilization at the other plants in our network. Third is integration. We operate across the entire value chain from farm gate to tank, enabling control and efficiency.
Our direct grower relationships ensure feedstock quality and security of supply. We also leverage unique synergies with our Agribusiness segment, integrating grain sourcing and logistics to enhance margin and agility. We're one of the few companies in the space that is vertically integrated. We have proven ability to monetize sustainability programs, including traceability, LCFS credits, and carbon value streams. These advantages make us a leader in Renewables, positioned to deliver strong results and capitalize on the growing demand for low-carbon solutions. As Bill laid out earlier in this presentation, we have three pillars: accelerating, optimizing, and delivering. Similar to Weston, I'm just going to cover the first two. On accelerating growth, we're expanding at our established plants and businesses. We're building on what works and scaling it, and we're optimizing margins. We're focused on commercial and operational excellence to improve profitability and efficiency.
And precision and execution are key to unlocking margin improvements. Under the accelerating pillar, we are well positioned to unlock growth through low-CI opportunities in renewable feedstocks. Our strategy is built on scalable platforms, policy tailwinds, disciplined growth, and innovation, all driving long-term value creation. Starting with our strategic growth levers, we have policy-driven momentum. The 45Z tax credit provides scalable financial uplift by lowering the carbon intensity across our operations. E15 adoption and a strong RVO proposal are expanding market access for ethanol and renewable feedstocks. We're actively growing in North American LCFS markets, unlocking new revenue streams. And we're disciplined in M&A execution. We acquired the full ownership of our ethanol plants, and we're enhancing operational control and increasing margin potential. Future acquisitions are evaluated rigorously based on geography, scale, and strategic fit, ensuring every move drives shareholder value.
Driving through growth through renewable feedstock innovation and expansion, we're aggregating and blending low-CI feedstocks to unlock profitable growth. I gave you the Ulysses example, but we're also leveraging the more than 25 transloading and blending locations to grow that business. Plant expansions and improved corn oil yields are boosting performance. We have and continue to implement projects at our plants to improve on corn oil and ethanol yields, and our merchandising capabilities are expanding. We're creating new commercial opportunities. We continue to lean into our renewable feedstocks group to help grow that business. An example of this organic growth has come via the handling of all classes of fats, oils, and greases. It gives us insight into bio-based diesel demand, RIN generation, and the collective insight into the entire feedstocks balance sheet.
This knowledge allows us to leverage multi-commodity RINs and biofuels positions, making us truly unique in the biofuel space. Next, we're unlocking value through the 45Z tax credit and carbon projects. We're optimizing the 45Z tax credit. And today, all of our plants are qualifying for the 45Z credit in 2025. And with the removal of the indirect land use change or ILUC penalty in 2026, all of our plants are going to be in an even better position to capitalize on the benefits. Efficiency projects like corn oil skimmers and increased fermentation are also generating additional uplift. And carbon capture and sequestration. I mentioned it earlier, but this next point is really important. And through our Stage-Gate process, we're advancing with our Class VI well permit at our Clymers, Indiana facility. And we're also evaluating other sequestration and utilization opportunities across our network.
Our integrated strategy, combining policy alignment, operational excellence, and innovation, positions us to lead in the renewable space. We're not just adapting to change; we're shaping it and delivering sustainable, profitable growth for our investors. Next, we're focused on margin optimization through a dual approach: strategic commercial leverage and operational excellence. This disciplined execution is driving stronger financial performance and positioning us for scalable growth. Beginning with our commercial leverage on our merchandising efficiencies, we're enhancing margins by leveraging complementary volumes of ethanol, co-products, and renewable feedstocks. As I mentioned before, the amount of feedstocks, ethanol, and co-products that we merchandise and trade over and above what we grind or produce enhances our margins by having superior market knowledge, and it enables us to better position ourselves. In addition, our logistical expertise allows us to control product flows to destination, maximizing plant-level profitability, and we're strengthening our commercial capabilities.
We're investing in systems and talent, and our cross-functional collaboration between commercial and operational teams is driving smarter decisions and stronger market presence. Operational excellence at the plant level. We're improving our efficiency and our output. We're increasing production through targeted projects and added capacity. Through technology and experienced teams, we're improving efficiency and lowering our carbon intensity scores. Consistent production and minimal downtime are key to maximizing profitability. This point is very important to understand, but for every down day at one of our Eastern plants, it's equivalent to $1 million in lost revenue. So you can see how important it is to minimize the amount of downtime at the plants. And through all this, we're managing our controllable costs. We're extracting more value from vertically integrated corn originations, and focused cost discipline is embedded into our operations.
Our strategy is clear: optimize margins through commercial and operational excellence. And with disciplined execution, enhanced capabilities, and a strong asset base, we're delivering higher returns and unlocking long-term value. As a wrap-up, we're executing with discipline, scaling with purpose, and innovating with intent. Our advantaged assets, strategic M&A, and alignment with low-carbon trends position us to lead in a rapidly evolving Renewables landscape. With favorable policy tailwinds and a clear growth strategy, we're unlocking long-term value, not just for our business, but for our investors. The opportunity ahead is significant, and we're ready to capitalize. Now I'll kick it over to Mike.
Okay, before we jump into Q&A, let me take a quick moment to outline the process. We will have a team member circulating some microphones, so if you'd like to ask a question, please raise your hand, and we'll bring a microphone over to you.
Before asking your question, please state your name and your firm. And for those who joined virtually, you can submit questions online. We'll be monitoring them throughout the session. And as a reminder, if we don't get to your question during this Q&A session, we'll have another session at the end, and our leadership team will be available during the luncheon as well. So let's get Bill, Weston, and Mark on the stage and get ready so we can take the first question.
Thank you. Hi, Pooran Sharma with Stephens. First, wanted to say thanks for putting the presentation together. A lot of great information here. Maybe wanted to start out by understanding a little bit more about the resegmentation. And you guys had originally talked about getting synergies commercially and also maybe cost-wise.
And I think you detailed it here a little bit about how you're able to kind of connect from the farmer to kind of the end user in a better kind of fashion under the new segment. So maybe just to start off, could you maybe let us know where you are kind of in this journey, how much room you have left to go, what inning are you in, so to speak?
Sure, Pooran. I'll start with that and hand it over to Weston. It's a good question. And we're in the early innings. The concept of bringing basically the fertilizer and trade business together has proven in its first year to be the right decision. We're seeing a lot more cooperation, consolidation, idea generating. We have seen some synergy cost savings, which we expected early on, but that's not really why we did it.
It's continuing to link that farm gate to the ultimate end consumer. And we all understand you only grow one crop per year, so the opportunities exist for each crop here. And we've seen a noticeable step up in that interaction in the first year and think that it's going to continue to grow kind of on a multiplying effect as we move forward. Weston?
Yeah, I would just add to that. There's a couple of pieces that I think are really intriguing as we've gone through this for the first year effectively. One of the most important ones is our internal communication and coordination across the groups.
And by having this kind of unified approach to how we serve our customers with that integrated model, the risk management services that we provide, fertilizer inputs, grain merchandising, the collective of those, and how we are having from a commercial perspective, our teams think about not just their one particular segment of that, but the overall segment of that really helps us to drive that mindset. And I really think that that mindset is that same customer-first mindset that I mentioned earlier. It helps to fuel what we're trying to deliver value for. The other piece, and I think Bill is exactly right, early innings. Are there some things that we look at from an integration standpoint? Absolutely, and we're driving on those across our processes and our systems.
Hi, Ben Mayhew from BMO Capital Markets.
I was hoping you could just touch on where your CI score is right now, your plans to invest in lower CI score over time, and just kind of how that timeline, how you think about that timeline, and ultimately, where can you get these plants? How low can they go?
That's a good question, Ben.
In terms of where our CI scores are currently, I think that was the first part of your question, correct? All four plants achieved 45Z tax credits, so as we went through the presentation, they're all below 47.5 today. The opportunities, again, as we mentioned, and I'll let Mark give you some specific examples, but carbon sequestration is obviously the number one goal. There's also carbon utilization opportunities that we're looking towards. Those are long-term, and from our perspective, it's more about the longevity of the projects than just sprinting to capitalize on 45Z.
There's 45Q that can fall in behind that. We have no idea on an extension of 45Z, but so with that, there are a number of efficiency projects that we're working on that I hope you'll understand. From a competitive nature, we don't feel compelled to share those today, but I'll let Mark address some of the more broad-scale ones.
Yeah, you covered it well, Bill. As Bill said, we're qualifying for the 45Z today. As I mentioned in the presentation, with the removal of the ILUC penalty, we'll be able to further capitalize on the benefits from the tax credit, and then, as Bill touched on, the biggest lever that we're focused on that we'll be able to lean into in the future is our sequestration opportunity at Clymers, Indiana, and we're also evaluating other opportunities for utilization and sequestration across the other plants.
In addition to that, again, there's efficiency projects and ways to leverage lowering the CI. This is not something that's new to The Andersons. I mean, we've been doing it with our Denison, Iowa plant and evaluating ways to lower our carbon intensity into California and the other LCFS markets. So we'll continue to leverage our in-house expertise there and look for ways to get below the next tier of the credit.
Hi, Kristen Owen from Oppenheimer. When I look at the priorities that you've outlined between growth and optimization and the bridge from 2026 to 2028 that you've given us a preliminary look at, how much of that bridge is dependent on some of the growth initiatives, whether that's organic or inorganic, and how much of that should we think about coming from the optimization of the current footprint that you have?
That's a good question.
The optimization and the growth opportunities are going to be kind of hand in hand, right? We always want to be the most efficient, lowest-cost producer, whether it's in the Agribusiness segment or in the renewable segment. I would tell you the bridge to 2028, that capital's deployed. That 2028 number does not include the need for substantial M&A activity. As I mentioned, and Brian's going to hit on it, so maybe we can come back to your question later, is we've deployed a lot of capital over the last four years, and we are now in a position over the next three years to really take advantage of that. So the majority of it's going to come from the execution of the capital we've deployed, along with that optimization piece of always trying to be better than our competitors at what we do.
Hi, Ben Klieve with Benchmark StoneX .
Thanks for a great presentation so far. Weston, I had a question for you specifically on the Port of Houston initiative. I'm wondering if you can elaborate a bit on, first of all, the kind of status of that expansion. Everything seems to be on track, but just like to hear that reiterated and then talk about kind of the level of investment that's gone in. And then also the expectations that you guys have embedded within your forward outlook for that project around the excess supply of soybean meal and kind of your assumptions for the durability of your profit margin coming out of that facility given the abundant supply throughout the country.
Yeah, great question. Thank you for that. So our project is on track. We should be complete with that in the third to fourth quarters of 2026. This is a substantial project at our terminal there.
That's from a timeline perspective. From a capital expenditure standpoint, I think Brian's mentioned this previously, but it's in that $85 million range. I'm sorry, about an $80 million range for that project. From the durability of our margin profile, one of the things that's really important for us is to connect our domestic soybean meal business with our Port of Houston and the opportunities for merchandising and marketing that soybean meal globally as it will have to clear through exports. That's really that interconnected nature of our domestic teams, our terminal team, as well as our international destination marketing teams. We believe that there'll be substantial excess supply based on the S&Ds for soybean meal, and we think that we'll have very durable returns going forward.
Weston, I think we've articulated with us about a $70 million project at Houston.
Okay, thanks for the clarification.
Thank you. Pooran Sharma with Stephens again. Just wanted to ask about Renewables. And I know you said bridge to 2028 would require little M&A, but just wondering, as you're looking out there, what is the price you guys are kind of looking for? And I ask this because when you guys took in the assets from Marathon, I think you paid about $1.54 per gallon, but those are your own plants. You're familiar with them. Maybe you could argue that there could be a premium there. At the same token, we've seen some plants sell for as high as $3.23 a gallon. So just wondering if you could maybe update us on the landscape, what you're seeing out there, and maybe if you could give us maybe a target range in terms of what kind of purchase price works for you guys in regards to ethanol.
I'll start with that.
The Andersons didn't pay $3 a gallon, or do I think we will anytime soon? It's a really good question because at what value do you put on 45Z opportunities through today, as through 2029? What value do you put on the sequestration? So a plant that has a clear path to sequestration is geographically benefited, as Mark was talking about, quality of corn, quantity of corn, the ability to be the right technology, and a large plant. That plant has substantial more value in a cents per gallon or dollars per gallon than a 55 million gallon destination plant. So I think it's very difficult to say, "Here's a range on numbers," but we feel very confident, and you are correct on the price that we paid to buy our partner out for TAMH.
We feel very comfortable in saying, "We would do that again." So if that wants to be your low bar, I think I started with the high bar, and I know that's a wide range, but plant values today have significant value if they check all the boxes. If they don't, unfortunately, that slope is very steep for the declining value. So hopefully I answered that question. I know we'll have a lot more renewable questions around this after Brian gets done with the financial presentation, but that'd be the short answer to your question.
Bill, maybe we'll take one online question before we take our break to stay on time. Under your strategic pillars, you referenced adjacent opportunities. What adjacencies do you find most compelling, and what is expected timing for expansion into those areas?
So the easiest way for me to answer this is to rewind back to 2006 and 2007. The Andersons had no understanding of producing ethanol. They knew how to buy corn. The Andersons didn't know how to sell DDGS or distillers corn oil at the time. The Andersons today has such a breadth. As you look at those two, and I'm guessing there were people in the room that were surprised, the size of the company that we have built and the breadth and depth of it, I think that potential adjacencies that are tied to our core competency. And I tried to, people may ask, "Why is the CEO explaining what they do?" It's to this question: our core competencies around commodity risk management, logistics expertise, customer service. If we can find investments in adjacent markets that allow us to continue to develop those, we have a lot of confidence.
Timing is a good question. We've looked at opportunities over the last three years, one of them very seriously, and we decided it wasn't the best use of our capital. Again, our focus is on Agribusiness and Renewables. But if the opportunity comes, as we showed that pie up there today, having a third slice to that pie, there's nothing wrong with it if it's adjacent to us and allows us to utilize our core competencies.
Okay, in the essence of time, we'll conclude our first Q&A session. We're going to take a short break and reconvene right at 11:00 A.M. Thanks.
Thanks.
Oh, we're okay. 20 seconds. I'm just trying to make sure we catch up on time because we were a little behind. Good to go? All right. Good morning, everyone. I met some of you walking in.
If you haven't met me yet, my name is Sarah Zibbel. I am the Chief Human Resources Officer for The Andersons, and I'm fortunate to lead the People and Culture Agenda for the organization. What I'm going to spend time on today is really what I feel differentiates us in the marketplace, and that comes down to our people and culture, ultimately our capabilities. My background is actually in glass manufacturing. I spent the last 20+ years at companies like Owens Corning, Owens-Illinois, and most recently the CHRO for Libbey Glass, and so when this opportunity presented itself, I was a little nervous to leave an industry that was well known, but I was so excited about the growth potential of this organization, underpinned by such a strong base of talent and culture to work from, so what a great opportunity for somebody like myself.
Three things I plan to cover over the next few minutes. So first is how we really spend time aligning our people, process, and systems to relentlessly focus on operational excellence to unlock our strategic growth. I'll also share some details on how we continue to differentiate through our high-performing talent and execution-focused culture. Importantly, we are maintaining strong focus on attracting, developing, and retaining top talent. So let's start with a little bit of a snapshot on our people. We have strong stability in our talent of 2,600 employees. While the market is experiencing what we're hearing to be this promotion recession, we're seeing something very different at The Andersons. In fact, people are being promoted at higher rates. Just in this last year, we had 40% of our employees receive promotions into higher leadership responsibilities.
This, combined with very strong tenure and turnover, allows us to ensure a strong, stable foundation of talent to build from as we think about acquiring new talent or even new organizations through M&A. Grounded in our Statement of Principles, it's our talent that differentiates us, bringing better performance and better outcomes for our customers and our business. As Bill touched on earlier, we've established an operating model that brings transparency and alignment to the core elements of our strategic and cultural commitments as an organization. This is a tool that allows us to sharpen our focus across people, process, and system priorities. So if you look at the model, it's really a blueprint that aligns all key stakeholder needs, leveraging our strong core, enabling scale and agility as we continue to strategically grow.
There are different layers of focus in the model that's intended to build from the center core values to the middle strengths and ultimately to our strategic commitments, as we know that is what drives our long-term value. So if we work from the inside out, the model is rooted in a purpose that's unwavering to our commitment to service to all of our key stakeholders. So we remain true to our core Statement of Principles in service to our customers, our employees, the communities where we work and live, and of course, our shareholders. If we move to the center circle, these are our shared commitments. They provide clear expectations on our values, behavioral norms, as well as our operating principles. These norms activate and accelerate our mission, our values, as well as our strategic priorities.
When we align these commitments with clear initiatives and leadership, we create clarity for the organization, allowing us to speed up things like M&A integration, as well as providing that anchor during times of uncertainty. Our strengths are what differentiate us in the marketplace. These are recognized capabilities that drive long-standing relationships, as well as providing a strong foundation for future partnerships. Our strengths remain focused on being that customer-focused first, believing in our core expertise, having a willingness to be nimble while allowing our employees to be entrepreneurial to better serve our customers. So taking you to the perimeter of the model, this aligns our talent to the marketplace, driving that outside-in mentality across the organization, ensuring we're always proactive in evaluating what's ahead while remaining laser-focused on our results and financial targets that Brian will elaborate on later.
As part of our annual strategic planning process, we are diligent in assessing our incentive programs to ensure we are aligned for success. In addition to market competitive base pay and benefits, all 2,600 of our employees have a direct connection to business performance through our annual incentive programs. Both hourly and salaried participate in short-term incentive programs focused on operational excellence across the enterprise as well as their business unit. Our industry-leading commercial talent are incentivized to drive growth and profitability within their business units. This drives that strong entrepreneurial spirit and sense of ownership that has proven to be a key differentiator in the attraction and retention of commercial talent. Our top 85-level leaders also participate in a long-term incentive program that helps drive that deep commitment to share appreciation.
We're always thinking about the best ways to preserve, to protect, and to grow what we know differentiates us in the marketplace. To do this, we've established programs that enable us to be intentional in preparing our talent for the future with a continuous improvement mindset. We have several leadership programs that enable us to build strengths and skills across the executive teams through cohort-based programs, cross-functional networks that also help increase accountability and accelerate the development of our leaders. West and Mark both touched on this. We are diligent in fueling that pipeline of talent. We're fueling the entry-level feeder roles across commercial operations as well as enterprise functions. This has enabled us to create internal networks that build strong collaboration for information sharing, peer-to-peer coaching, as well as strengthening our culture overall.
Since 1947, it's been our people that have established the strong culture of performance, which is rooted in an ownership mentality across the company. We're proud to say that 100% of our employees in the U.S. own Andersons stock, driving a vested interest in the value creation across our workforce. We also see best-in-class engagement survey participation. We leverage this program as well as many others, like our employee resource groups, CEO luncheons, and other feedback mechanisms to ensure that we're meeting the workplace where they are and providing an environment where they can truly thrive. Overall, we take pride in our ability to serve our customers and help feed the world, and we love what we do. In closing, I hope I was able to shed some light on what truly differentiates us, and that's our high-performing talent and purpose-driven culture.
To further reinforce our culture, we remain committed to attracting, retaining, and developing our top talent pipeline for the future. Importantly, we continue to leverage that operating model to strategically align our priorities and capabilities. And with that said, I'm going to hand things over to my colleague, Brian Valentine, our Chief Financial Officer. Thank you.
Thanks, Sarah. And good morning, everyone. As Sarah mentioned, I'm Brian Valentine and serve as Chief Financial Officer at The Andersons. I've been with the company since 2018, so it's been about seven and a half years now. Prior to that time, I spent 20 years with the Lubrizol Corporation, which is a specialty chemicals company based in Cleveland, Ohio. The company was a standalone, publicly traded company until 2011 when it was acquired by Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. I served in a variety of finance and accounting roles over the years.
I was treasurer when the company was acquired and then became CFO and served in that role for six, seven years before joining The Andersons. So now that the team has provided some insight about the company, our business group strategies, and we talked a little bit about talent, we wanted to provide a financial overview, including some history, talk a little bit about our key focus areas, and then share our thoughts about capital allocation going forward. So beginning with some of our key messages. First, The Andersons has transitioned into a North American ag and renewable fuels company over the past several years. We've taken steps to diversify our portfolio with a complementary mix of assets, which really should enable us to deliver better, more resilient performance through various market conditions.
Second, our balanced portfolio enables us to generate strong operating cash flows, even though we operate in cyclical businesses. And we expect this to continue to be the case going forward and, in fact, increase as we execute on the strategy and projects that you heard Weston and Mark speak about today, and also take steps to optimize across the organization. Lastly, we're focused on driving long-term shareholder value by utilizing our strong balance sheet to fund growth in a disciplined and responsible manner and also rewarding shareholders. Now, this next slide provides an overview of our historical financial performance. The last five years have been solid for the company. It included record performance in 2022 and 2023 at the peak of the ag cycle with strong demand, high commodity prices, and volatility.
Now, over the last 18 to 24 months, we've seen U.S. ag markets shift into oversupplied carry markets. But throughout this time, our teams have continued to execute well, and our diversified portfolio has enabled us to offset some of these market headwinds, proving that the strategic combination of The Andersons and Lansing Trade Group made us a stronger and more well-balanced company with a complementary mix of grain assets and merchandising profit centers, while at the same time demonstrating that efficient and well-run ethanol operations can be profitable in various market conditions. Now, in the left-hand portion of this slide, you can see that our trailing 12 months gross profit was about $700 million, which was just above the five-year average. Moving across to the right, you see that our trailing 12 months adjusted pre-tax income is below the five-year average given the weaker ag environment.
Now, you may be wondering why earnings are down when gross profit is, in fact, up. This really relates to the fact that a larger portion of our earnings over the past year or two have been driven by our ethanol plants. Now, both Bill and Mark spoke about our recent acquisition of our partner share of these plants. Prior to that transaction, we did have a controlling interest in that joint venture, so we consolidated it into our results, which meant we had 100% of the gross profit, but from an earnings before tax perspective, that was only our 51% share of those earnings. Now, going forward, we will have access to 100% of the earnings and cash flow of these ethanol plants, which is just one more reason why this was such an attractive opportunity for us.
Turning then to our balance sheet and cash flows, this slide summarizes some of our key balance sheet and cash flow metrics as of September 30th. The first three lines on the left reflect our cash, readily marketable inventories, and short-term debt. Now, our working capital and the related short-term borrowings can move around significantly given the seasonal nature of our businesses. This is particularly true in the grain markets when you think about the timing of the harvest, but it's also true in our fertilizer business when you think about the timing of the planting and fertilizer application seasons. There can also be sizable impacts due to changes in commodity prices through the ag cycle. So it's also important to note, though, that a significant portion of our working capital represents readily marketable inventory. And basically, these are grain inventories that are easily convertible to cash.
This inventory is marked to market and can bring volatility in both our borrowing needs and our reporting. Now, as you can see, as of September 30th, our readily marketable inventory was about $630 million, which is almost $500 million more than our short-term debt of $140 million. It is consistently the case that readily marketable inventory is significantly higher than our short-term debt. As a result, a key metric for us is cash flow from operations before changes in working capital. We believe this is a much better cash generation measure for our business. This is shown in the upper right-hand portion of the slide. Now, similar to earnings, you could see that the trailing 12-month number is below the five-year average, again, given the ag market backdrop and trade policies. This number is consistently in the range of $300 million plus.
As you could see, the five-year average is about $310-$312 million, and we expect this to increase going forward. Now, shifting to the lower left-hand portion of the slide, you could see we have plenty of available liquidity. We have about $2 billion in available credit. We have a strong supportive bank group that includes several large commercial banks as well as the Farm Credit System. We have long-term debt of about $630 million currently, and our long-term debt to EBITDA is roughly two times. And when we think about our capital structure and the related leverage, we tend to focus on long-term debt to EBITDA. As I mentioned, our short-term debt can be more cyclical and seasonal in nature as we fund readily marketable inventories and margin calls. And so long-term debt to EBITDA is a much better measure.
We have a stated target of long-term debt to EBITDA below 2.5x , and the chart in the lower right-hand portion of the slide shows some history. Now, back in 2019, we levered up at the time of the completion of the Lansing acquisition, and at that time, our long-term debt to EBITDA was north of 4.5x , but then, through a strong focus on cash flows as well as working capital management, combined with the proceeds of the sale of the rail business, enabled us to achieve our stated target by the end of 2021, and since that time, you could see that we've been consistently below that level, and as I mentioned, we're currently at about 2x . We have a balance sheet that is well positioned to support additional growth, both from a capital and an M&A perspective.
So then, let's talk a little bit about capital allocation. This slide provides a breakdown of the capital deployed over the last three years. Now, as you can see in the center, it shows the total of about $1.1 billion, with roughly 45% being allocated to capital expenditures, another 45% utilized for acquisitions, and the remaining 10% returned to shareholders. Now, going forward, our key focus areas are expected to be similar. From a capital expenditure perspective, we're focused on organic growth projects that are close to our core and should help us accelerate growth. And you heard Weston and Mark both provide examples today across the Agribusiness and Renewables segments. Our three-year average capital expenditures have been about $170 million, with roughly half of that being growth and the remainder being maintenance. Now, this year, we do expect total capital expenditures to be closer to $200 million.
Over the next few years, we expect capital expenditures will be in the range of $200-$225 million per year, again, including a mix of growth and maintenance. From an M&A perspective, the largest acquisition we've completed during the last three years was the purchase of our partner share of the ethanol plants. M&A also included, though, our investment in Skyland Grain, as well as some other smaller bolt-on transactions. We continue to evaluate projects in our growth pipeline, and we are focused on finding the right deals at attractive valuations that align closely with our strategy. With regard to returning cash to shareholders, we've consistently paid a dividend with modest growth over time, and we expect this to continue to be the case going forward. We do also have a $100 million share repurchase authorization in place.
We tend to take an opportunistic approach, and we've repurchased roughly $15 million in shares this year. Next, let's talk a little bit about our approach to investments. We do utilize a Stage-Gate process to ensure that there's a thorough review of capital expenditures and investments. It's a process that we refer to internally as The Andersons' growth process, and it includes a number of stages, including the development of detailed business cases, financial modeling, project approvals, and then, of course, execution and integration. The pipeline is reviewed on a regular basis with leadership to ensure alignment with all of our goals and objectives. Now, when looking at potential investments, we evaluate a number of strategic filters, including the strategic and cultural fit. We also look at our ability to meet customer needs and help customers solve problems.
You heard Weston provide an example in that area today in the pet food space. We also look at alignment with our geographic footprint. Lansing is a great example. If you think about it, The Andersons was traditionally more Eastern grain belt intensive, more asset intensive. Lansing was more Western asset footprint, but more of an asset light and more trading and merchandising. So very complementary, both from an Eastern and Western perspective, as well as trading and merchandising and assets. More recently, Skyland was another good example where that was the region of the country where we already had a lot of trading and merchandising activities, and this helped round out our asset footprint in that region of the country. We also look at whether it provides scale, differentiation, or the ability to move up the value chain.
An example here is in ethanol where we're vertically integrated, given that we originate the corn, we produce the ethanol and the related co-products, and then we market the finished products. Now, from a financial perspective, we target transactions that are immediately accretive to both margins and cash flows and to earnings per share within two years. From a return perspective, we target a return on invested capital that is at least 200 basis points above our weighted average cost of capital. Now, the number of projects in our pipeline changes over time. In general, our teams evaluate over 100 different opportunities each year. We really want to ensure that any transactions and investments align closely with our strategy. So we have robust due diligence in integration processes to ensure that we have a greater likelihood of success.
Now, a recent example that you've heard both Mark and Bill speak about is the acquisition of our partner share of the ethanol plants. From our perspective, this is a transaction that aligns perfectly with our strategy. It meets all of our stated criteria, and from our view, these were some of the best assets potentially available to us. These are plants that we know well and, in fact, already managed. This transaction should provide a variety of financial benefits. It'll be immediately accretive from an earnings per share perspective, and it provides full access to the cash flows of these plants. So previously, when they were held in a joint venture, the cash would have to be distributed to the partners in the form of dividend distributions.
Now we have full access to that cash flow and, in fact, are already sweeping it on a daily basis as part of just our normal treasury operations. There's also a supportive biofuels policy backdrop currently, and as you heard, we do expect to benefit from 45Z tax credits, and so the table on the right-hand portion of this slide shows the potential of these tax credits over the next few years. Now, at our Third Quarter Earnings Call, we spoke about our 2025 expectations for tax credits. All four of our plants qualify for the first tier of tax credits in 2025, which results in a benefit of up to $0.10 per gallon. As we noted at that time, we expect credits this year to be in the range of $30-$35 million, with $10-$15 million of that coming in the fourth quarter.
Now, starting in 2026, provisions in the recent tax legislation remove the indirect land use change penalty. As you heard earlier, this is expected to reduce the carbon intensity scores by between 5.5 and 6 points, which would enable us to qualify for the second tier of tax credits, which could result in a benefit of up to $0.20 per gallon. Now, we produce roughly 500 million gallons of ethanol at our plants each year. So, as you can see, the value of these tax credits could potentially be in the range of $90-$100 million each of the next few years and aggregate more than $300 million over the next few years, providing significant additional cash flows to reinvest in our businesses. Next, we wanted to spend just a minute on shareholder dividends.
We have a track record of more than 25 years of paying dividends through various commodity cycles. Now, when we evaluate our dividend, we take into account a number of considerations, including peer group yield comparisons. We look at the portion of our cash flows being allocated to dividends, as well as the payout ratio. As you can see on the slide, we've had a dividend growth rate of 12% over time. We're really proud of our dividend track record. Okay, so before we move on to the longer-term earnings per share targets, we wanted to spend just a minute or two discussing how we'll drive long-term value creation. So, if we start with some of the growth enablers, we do have a diversified portfolio that includes a complementary mix of asset and merchandising profit centers combined with processing assets, the largest of which is in Renewables.
We are closely aligned with our customers. As Weston mentioned, we have deep relationships with approximately 25,000 active producers, and we also have strong relationships with end users. We're focused on executing our strategy in both segments through a variety of growth projects and acquisitions, many of which you've heard about today. With regard to some of our competitive advantages, we do have high-performing ethanol operations that are vertically integrated. And you've heard this theme throughout the day, and Bill talked about it earlier. The corn that we originate into our plants is roughly 165 million bushels that is used for ethanol production. This compares to total corn traded by our teams across the enterprise of roughly 800 million bushels per year.
This provides a lot of benefits for us from a cost perspective and also enables better inventory management because, if you think about it, there's also corn being traded and merchandised throughout our system, so this allows us to run inventory just in time at certain times of the year, knowing that if for some reason there's going to be a short, we can pull it from somewhere else within the system. The teams are also able to leverage their strong market knowledge. We have robust risk management processes. We have a risk management committee that meets on a regular basis that includes an experienced team with the knowledge and expertise to navigate various market conditions. From a financial perspective, we do generate strong operating cash through the cycle, and as mentioned, going forward, we will have full access to 100% of the ethanol plant cash flows.
We have a well-capitalized balance sheet that provides us the flexibility to fund a variety of growth investments. However, it's really important to note we will remain disciplined in our approach. We are focused on driving long-term shareholder value. Okay, so last, we wanted to provide an update on our longer-term growth assumptions and growth rates and including assumptions. Now, as you can see, and Bill mentioned this earlier, we target a run rate earnings per share of $7 per share coming out of 2028. This would represent a compounded annual growth rate of more than 35% from 2025 to 2028. Now, these targets assume a mid-cycle type marketing environment and commodity prices, stable demand for low carbon intensity fuels, and steady export flows.
So, if we think about this relative to the environment that we've been operating in in 2025, it would imply some improvement in the operating environment for agribusiness, but potentially offset by more normalized margins in the Renewables segment. With regard to the mix of growth, it does include the organic growth projects and all of the other acquisitions, things that we've heard us talk about today, but it does not reflect incremental M&A investments. For the tax credits, it includes the 45Z tax credits that we outlined a few slides ago. These tax credits will be reported above the line, so they will be included in EBITDA, earnings before tax, as well as in earnings per share. And of course, they'll provide us with additional cash flows to redeploy into future growth investments.
With regard to capital allocation, we're assuming somewhere in the range of $200-$225 million a year in capital expenditures. We do expect to continue with a modest growth in our dividend. And again, we target long-term debt to EBITDA below 2.5x . Now, the bottom portion of the slide provides a summary of some of the key projects. In Agribusiness, we're really focused on the successful completion of the growth projects that you heard about today, plus various integration and optimization efforts. In Renewables, growth takes into consideration the impact of the ethanol plant acquisition, future plant investments, as well as the 45Z tax credits that we talked about.
Now, many of these are the same factors that give us the confidence in our ability to achieve the $4.30 earnings per share run rate target by the end of next year and then further support our path to $7 by the end of 2028. So then, turning to our key takeaways. First, the company has transitioned into a North American ag and renewable fuels company over the past several years. We've taken steps to diversify our portfolio with a complementary mix of assets that really should enable us to better deliver more resilient performance through various market conditions. Second, our balanced portfolio enables us to generate strong and increasing operating cash flows as we bring strategic growth investments online and also take steps to further optimize across the enterprise.
Last, but certainly not least, we're focused on driving long-term shareholder value by utilizing our strong balance sheet to fund growth in a disciplined and responsible way while also rewarding our shareholders. We're really excited about the positioning of our business as well as our growth strategy. So, we thank you for your time and your interest in The Andersons. And with that, I'll turn things back over to Bill for some closing remarks.
Okay, we'll wrap this up with some closing comments. I want to thank everyone for your time today, your interest in the company. It's truly appreciated. Hopefully, you've been able to gain a better understanding about what The Andersons are doing today and what we plan to be doing in the future. The excitement of the management team that you saw today, trust me, it's conveyed throughout the entire organization.
I've been in this industry since 1989, and I honestly cannot remember having a company in the position that The Andersons are today. The strength of our balance sheet, our employee base, our management team, and quite honestly, the potential that we have for both Agribusiness and Renewables. We have a bipartisan biofuels policy that supports both of our business segments, from increased demand for U.S.-grown ag products to renewable fuels. And as you've heard today, we are committed to redeploying capital in our successful businesses. And to that end, we would like to announce today that we're going to spend an additional $60 million to expand our Clymers, Indiana production by more than 20% or 30 million gallons, taking that facility to early to mid-2027, up to 170 million gallon production.
As investors, analysts, you can expect more of these announcements as we find both targeted and opportunistic capital projects that fit the strategy that you've heard today, along with the financial criteria that you've heard today, because we have a lot of confidence in where we've been and where we're going. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Mike.
Okay, thanks again for your engagement today. We'll now bring all the presenters back on stage for our final Q&A session. Format is the same. Please raise your hand. We'll bring a microphone to you. Please state your name and your firm before your questions and keep it to one so we can get to as many as possible. For those joining virtually, feel free to continue submitting questions online. We want to make sure that you leave today with clarity and confidence.
And so, with that, let's open it up for questions.
Hi, Kristen Owen from Oppenheimer. So, the $60 million investment in expanding the Indiana facility, how much of that are you underwriting based on 45Z credits over the next two years? How reliant is that on your ROIC objectives? How reliant is that on your well permit going through? Just help us understand, obviously very aligned with some of the near-term drivers of growth, but the long-term drivers of expanding that ethanol production.
Good question. And if you think through a $60 million capital expansion to de-bottleneck and achieve 30 million gallons of production at $2 a gallon, that project stands alone above our hurdle rates without accounting for any 45Z. So, good question. And this is a project that we've been analyzing for well over a year, different sizes and scope. So, hopefully, that'll answer your question.
Thank you.
Pooran Sharma with Stephens. Just wanted to hone into the longer-term EPS run rate target, just understanding its run rate, and was hoping you could help us kind of maybe better understand seasonality, quarter to quarter, and how you kind of exit the year. Would it be fair to kind of look at the company over the past three years and kind of from a seasonal perspective, hey, you get a lot of earnings in like 2Q, for example, and just kind of establish percentages based off that? Or how should we be thinking about how the year kind of ends next year as you achieve your $4.30 run rate?
You want to talk seasonality and cyclicality?
Yeah. Knowing what we know today, the seasonality of our two business segments should remain pretty consistent.
Yeah. And if we think, I think to your point, Pooran, you're right.
I mean, the second quarter tends to be the strongest for the fertilizer business in general, though, if we think about the fourth quarter tends to be a strong quarter for our business. If you think about some of the projects that we have underway and some of the factors, even as we enter into next year, we have now the full ownership of the ethanol plants that happened July 31st, August 1st of this year. So, we'll have a full year run rate of that as we enter into next year. We also have the Skyland investment that we made about a year ago. At that time, we said we expect the incremental EBITDA to be roughly $30-$40 million per year. Now, this year, in 2025, we expect it to be about half that amount given the weak exports.
If you think about sorghum or milo, those were down significantly, I think probably 80%-90% year-over-year. And then when you think about some of these other growth projects coming online, you heard Weston talk about the timeline for the $70 million investment in Houston. That's probably an incremental $15-$20 million a year of EBITDA, but that's going to get further out into, call it 2027. And then, of course, you start to have the impact of the incremental 45Z tax credits. And so, all of that stuff just continues to build together with additional growth projects.
Ben Klieve with Benchmark StoneX . I'd like to lean into the conversation around carbon sequestration. Wondering if you can talk a bit about, first of all, kind of the process at Clymers.
Once you get permits successfully approved, the kind of timeline for that project beyond that successful permit, and then also the degree to which sequestration initiatives are included within both your CapEx spend and then also the 2028 EPS outlook.
Do you want to start with the process?
Yeah, Ben, thanks for the question. I can start with the process. We're following a Stage-Gate process. We filed the well permit earlier this year. We moved into the technical review stage, and we're really encouraged about some of the projects that were ahead of ours starting to get approved. So, it's encouraging for us. As we look at that project, after we get approval, which we're estimating, I believe publicly it was late 2027, early 2028 is kind of what we're estimating there, then we'll go through the process of commencing the sequestration on site.
There's a fair amount of things that are going through that process as far as approval and geology and everything in that.
The one thing I would add is, just as a reminder, the test well's already dug. Unlike some applicants don't have the test well dug, we've already completed that.
Bill or Mark, do you guys want to talk about CapEx and working with a partner?
Yeah. In the CapEx projections that we have alluded to today, we don't have any. There's no capital expenditures for the CCS, nor is there any benefit from that as we move through that project. It's all everything that's been committed to at this point.
Hi, Ben Mayhew, BMO Capital Markets. I was wondering if you could discuss some of the key catalysts you are hoping for that would drive above mid-cycle market environment.
So, you referred to on the slide, we're kind of in this trough market environment for agribusiness. What are some of the things that you're looking at in the news with all the noise going on with the Trump administration? What should investors be focused on that could really drive a quick shift in the market environment? Thank you.
You want to add that first?
Yeah. I'll start and then hand it over to Weston. I'm not certain that there's a quick switch from oversupply outside of a major weather event. The one thing that we have started to feel is the results of recent trade negotiations. We've had increased sales of wheat, soybeans, and milo to China, which is beneficial. The work that we've done with the EU on growing their imports has been beneficial.
But at the end of the day, what we really need is just to come through a normal ag cycle. And I do feel like maybe unlike a year ago, I do feel like we're coming through the trough today and have increased domestic demand is definitely on the horizon. Better exports are on the horizon. The USTR, Section 301, has been delayed at least for a year. So, I do think there's some positive momentum policy-wise. It's just making sure that we work through the amount of corn carryout that a 16 billion bushel corn crop produces.
Yeah, I think, and adding to that, that 16 billion is a great marker for us because it really speaks to the overall supply and demand characteristics of the industry. And when we have that oversupply, we will generally have lower prices.
Now, the good part is we've also had extremely good corn exports this year. So, that has bolstered some of our opportunities, marketing opportunities, and connecting that with the growers. So, amidst that backdrop, you also have to kind of look at the entire supply chain that we've discussed today from the producer and the impacts that they have, sometimes with lower commodity prices and the challenges that it presents to them, and they're striving for greater yields and greater efficiencies, our domestic landscape, but also the global landscape to understand where things are going. Bill alluded to the recent discussions, in particular with China, to get the 12 million metric tons recently announced and hopefully more to the 25 million metric tons on an annual basis of soybeans to China to get that restarted after a pretty challenging 2025.
So, those are some of the factors that we're looking at.
Okay, let's go to an online question here. For Sarah, you've emphasized a culture that culture is a competitive advantage. As the company grows and integrates new businesses, what are the most important actions you're taking to preserve the entrepreneurial nimble culture that defines The Andersons?
Sure. So, it's a good question. One thing that we're really focused on is ensuring that we protect the legacy of The Andersons, kind of this deep-rooted, purpose-driven organization and culture that takes us back to 1947 to today while embedding what we know is more aspirational or things that will be required for our future.
So, if we start with where we're at today, we're leaning into this operating model to really make sure we're setting a consistent set of expectations across the organization, either as a new employee, current employee, on what truly to expect as it relates to your accountability. But we're also ensuring we're always refining our people strategy to secure those differentiating capabilities. So, in particular, the commercial space, as I touched on earlier, do we have the right incentive structure in place to really keep that kind of hungry hunter entrepreneur at the desk? And it's proving to be of good use to us. But we're not going to take our eye off the ball.
That's something we're looking at every quarter, quite frankly, to ensure that we've got the right kind of underpinning mechanisms in place to keep that talent engaged and excited about their work every day, regardless of where you sit in the company.
Thanks. We'll go to another online question. Weston, as you integrate Skyland and continue to optimize your facility network, where do you see the biggest opportunities to drive margin expansion?
Mike, when you think about Skyland, and as I described earlier, the strong presence that we had in merchandising in that geography, and then pairing together the asset network that we have now with Skyland, one of the most impactful things that we can do is to integrate our market strategy there.
The way that we can now, with our merchandising teams, utilize those assets, utilize the producers in that area, the destination demands for ethanol as well as feedlots, but also pull that together in that arbitrage mindset that we talked about earlier, that's where we can really unlock a lot of growth. And this year has been challenging. We talked about some of the reasons for that, kind of macro factors that made it pretty challenging in that market. We probably even mentioned lack of milo exports. That's a big milo producing area. So, that was impactful for us in this year. But we've really put those teams together well. I mentioned earlier, we deploy our talent in local places. We've taken some of our merchants out of our Overland Park, Kansas office and placed them into the local areas in southwest Kansas.
So, now we have this better connection with our merchandising teams. And that's probably the area that I'm most excited about with Skyland.
Hi, Pooran Sharma with Stephens. Wanted to maybe just ask about sorghum since we're on it. I know you just spoke about it, but I think we had 80%-90% declines in sorghum exports last year. So, as we look to the China trade deal and knowing how much they're buying from South America, what does that line up for U.S. sorghum exports potentially? And have you been hearing anything for increased U.S. grain exports given the amount of oilseeds that China is already buying from South America? Just wanted to get your sense on the potential for sorghum this year. Thanks.
What I can tell you is this year, I assume you're kind of meaning the marketing year, we have seen flash sales.
China has purchased a handful of vessels here in the last two weeks, and that's positive, so trying to estimate the amount of total tons that China will take this crop year, we're probably not in the business of doing that. What we can tell you is that the U.S. has a lot of sorghum that will be available at very competitive prices globally. I don't know if it was a record sorghum crop, but it was big, and when you have the large corn crop like we did, they compete against feed demand. It's going to be simple that the best price is going to buy the sorghum, and recently, China has been the better price for the sorghum, so the potential there is pretty good for the U.S. sorghum market. There's also talk about weather in China, the northern region of China.
Trying to understand that demand, I think, is going to unfold here over the next one or two quarters.
Thank you. Excuse me, Ben Klieve with Benchmark StoneX again. Question, I think for Sarah, but whoever wants to jump in is great. Regarding prevailing wages within being one of the mandates embedded within 45Z tax credits, given how critical of a box that is to check, but also how kind of complicated of one it is to be able to ensure that you've satisfied all the conditions, can you give us an update on kind of your confidence in being able to check that box here along the timeline that was talked about for the tax credits in the presentation?
I'll go ahead and take that one. As an organization, we spent a fair amount of time in understanding both internally and externally on prevailing wage.
In the interest of competitive information, I don't think it's fair to share publicly where we're at on prevailing wage.
Kristen Owen, I wanted to ask about the agribusiness footprint that you have, because we're spending a lot of time talking about growth and optimizing the existing facilities. When I look at this physical geographic footprint, are there any areas where you're seeing perhaps returns that aren't commensurate with your hurdle rates? Are there opportunities to improve the efficiency of your revenue base? And I'm thinking specifically on the agribusiness side.
Yeah, I think the thing that we look at across all of our assets, we do look at internal hurdle rates as we look at each one of the assets. Oftentimes, we group our assets into pockets.
So, if we have four or five that are in a similar geography close together, we'll look at those as kind of a region or a collective group. We're constantly looking at that. In a portfolio like ours with 175 facilities, there will be some that aren't performing as well, and there'll be some that are performing as well, so what I would tell you is that we're constantly looking at them, and where we have those that are not performing as well, that's when we begin to scrutinize each of their characteristics. I mentioned the dashboards that we look at. That's one of them, so we can understand operating costs across each of those facilities, look for opportunities for improvement, and ultimately, if they aren't meeting our hurdle rates, then we have different strategic decisions that we have to make with those assets.
A little follow-on, and this is before Weston took over the Agribusiness segment. But in 2019, when we brought The Andersons and Lansing together, we actually had just a little over 220 million bushels of space. And through the process that Brian and what we've all been talking about, we did bring that number down to 180 million bushels of space prior to the Skyland transaction. So, we're always looking at opportunities to either maybe trade out assets or shut down assets that aren't meeting our hurdle rates.
Let's hop back to some online questions. Bill, what part of your investment thesis is least appreciated or most misunderstood by the investment community?
It's a wide question. I think that the investing community sometimes becomes overwhelmed or consumed with their perceived inability to model the results.
The entire purpose of the five slides that I put up there on who we are and what we do was designed to address that. We get asked at nearly every investor conference or one-on-ones that we have is to better define how they can model The Andersons' results. As you can see through those five slides, what we do is not that difficult. We just do it over and over and over. So, trying to get that cadence, but truly understanding that it's bringing value to all of our customers from the farmer to the ultimate consumer and being able to extract margin out of that is what we've been really good at doing for over 75 years. And with the recent acquisitions and changes that the company has been willing to make, I think we're getting even better at it.
So, if there's one thing that I encourage investors to ask more questions about is understanding the potential of the business model.
Pooran Sharma, Stephens. Bill, maybe last one from me for you here. You've been in the role for a little over a year. What are kind of the key learnings, key surprises? And you mentioned it in your commentary how you've never seen the business in a better position. As you look ahead, maybe you could tease us with what you're most excited about.
The first part of your question is fair. The 14 years' experience that I had, albeit very much smaller, but being CEO of Lansing certainly has helped. Having, in my opinion, one of the best leadership teams in the industry has helped. So, I don't know that there's been anything that's surprised me outside of ordinary course policy.
Certainly nothing like the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, but that was a true black swan. So, we really haven't had that. What excites me the most, obviously the tailwinds for biofuels policy has to be number one. The ability for both renewables and agribusiness to take advantage of that, though, is what I want investors to understand. We are in a position to either with our assets or with our merchant model to be able to take advantage of that increased domestic demand, which we need increased domestic demand. Look at the U.S. farmers' ability to produce corn, beans, and wheat, along with a lot of other crops. But those three crops alone, we need to focus on increased North American demand, whether it's Canada, Mexico, the U.S. We need to focus on that demand because we are going to be more competitive reaching that demand.
Okay.
I think that's a good place to leave it here, so once again, I want to thank you all for joining us for The Andersons 2025 Investor Day. As you heard throughout today's presentation, we are excited about the opportunities ahead of us and our ability to drive sustainable growth, strengthen our competitive position, and deliver long-term value for stakeholders. For those joining us via webcast, thank you for tuning in. We appreciate your time and engagement, and for those here in person, thank you for spending your morning with our leadership team. Your feedback on today's event is always very important to us. In the spirit of continuous improvement, we have engaged Corbin Advisors to help us collect and assess your feedback, so they will be reaching out to many of you via email after the event.
We know you're busy, but we really appreciate any time that you can spend to share your thoughts. Our leadership team truly values your engagement, insights, and support. If we haven't had a chance to connect yet, we hope you stay for the luncheon where our teams will be available to answer questions and continue the conversation. So, with that, we'll conclude today's formal program. Thank you again for your continued interest and support of The Andersons.