All right. Darling has positioned itself as a global leader across rendering, biofuels, and food ingredients as strategic acquisitions, capacity expansions, and its Diamond Green Diesel joint venture have transformed its business model over time. CEO Randy Stuewe has led Darling through that business transformation, and the business could be poised to demonstrate its improved earnings potential moving forward, given evolving biofuels policy, ramping sustainable aviation fuel production, and expansion into higher margin ingredient categories. We're really appreciative, Randy, that you're here with us today, so thank you very much. Maybe I'll start on what I feel like is what I've been spending the most time talking about, and that's the regulatory environment. We have guidance on 45Z, a preliminary RVO potentially coming here very soon.
We've also seen kind of some pushback within Congress or portions of Congress to reinstate the PTC, another one to eliminate the IRA tax credits, which now we have some visibility against, so maybe that's not as much of a risk. How would you characterize the regulatory environment broadly under the current administration and kind of its view on decarbonization policies?
No, I think a lot of broad topics there. You know, I think we're very much in a transition moment at this time. For those that were following, you know, the House Ways and Means Committee just passed and has now sent the big, beautiful bill on over. It contains a lot of great things in there for Darling and for many in the room. I think what I'd like to say is it's transitioning from climate change to support for the agriculture community. Ultimately, the things that are contained in it from the 45Z, which is you've got to go back to the history there. We've had a blender's tax credit since 2007, sometimes in place, sometimes retroactive, always a lot of unknown, but never really pulled. At the end of the day, the PTC was enacted for 2025, 2026, and 2027.
As the House Ways and Means Resolution or Committee report suggests, it's going to be extended out to 2031, which is good. Ultimately, we've got what we want out there is agriculture. I think the piece you left out of there was, you know, if you think of the industry, you know, Darling has led the world in renewable fuel since 2013. We've had some wonderful, incredible years. Then because of mandates that were too low for 2024, we finally hit the blend wall, as you would call it. The renewable volume obligation, which we anticipate any day now will return that. The combination of 45Z as a producer's tax credit that, you know, made in America for America, that actually generated under Chuck Grassley about 10 years ago, but was shut down by a series of lobbyists at that time, is now back in place.
Renewable volume obligation is now being proposed somewhere. We're hearing numbers, $5.25 billion. That's very constructive to both Darling and constructive to my predecessors up here at ADM. It's a very good thing for American agriculture. If you think of the world that we're in today and we lived through the tariff moments and then Trump tariff on Mondays that were relaxed, you know, at the end of the day, we've got what he was trying to target, and that was lower energy prices, natural gas. We've got ultimately pump, you know, fuel pump prices. And now, you know, the only thing we don't have is we've still got $10 soybeans and $4 corn. So we've not rewarded the farmer yet. And so, Andrew, it's coming.
Are there unintended consequences and will there be some horse trading, no pun intended, in that that ultimately, you know, make this thing really work? I think it is really exciting and, you know, this will return us to, you know, we had six record years in a row, a seventh year that I had a little challenging and I'm expecting to return to that track again.
Can you, you mentioned the $5.25 on the RVO. Can you frame what that means, you know, relative to production capacity, relative to feedstocks? Like, how do you think about that number in the context of what the industry can produce and the implications for you guys?
Yeah, the number one, you know, I always have to wear two hats. I wear the Darling hat, where for those in the room that know us, we process about 15%-18% of the world's slaughtered animal byproducts into fats and proteins. You know, in a rising protein and fat market, we do really, really well. One out of every six animals in the world goes through one of our factories. When I wear my hydrocarbon hat, you know, we ultimately want to have a nice margin in there, which we had from 2013- 2018 and 2018- 2023, and then 2024 became a bit of a challenge here. As we look at the RVO today, back in 2022, we told the EPA through various trade organizations, we said, "Hey, the margins in this business have been very good. There's capacity under construction.
It's coming from capacity that may not understand why they're getting into the business, namely big oil. Once they go, they're going to go. They built about 5.2 billion gallons of capacity. There's nothing magic with the 5.2. That was preached, delivered, and now I hope it will be recognized. That's the first thing. People say, "Where did that come from?" The second piece of it is, is that good or bad? The interesting thing with it is we've added a lot of crushing capacity, you know, the ABCs and the Ds did and the co-ops did, more processed at home, or what's your alternative? You're reliant on China to buy your product, the beans, the corn, the canola. We've added a lot of capacity. There's plenty of oil in this country, or veg oil, to fulfill most of it.
Now, the magnitude of the 5.25 is that's 1.9 billion gallons bigger than the 25 number today. And if it takes seven and a half pounds or eight pounds, I'll do fuzzy math, let's call it 14 billion pounds of new supply to fulfill that. There's production capacity to convert it, but it's a very significant number. It's very constructive to veg oil prices. It's constructive to animal fat and waste cooking oil prices. It's a big number that's out there. It's what agriculture needs. It will allow some additional expansion in the crushing side. It'll allow our animal fats to receive the value they deserve. You know, and we'll just see how it works. The challenge that's out there is, as you look at the world today, last year, why did margins go bad?
Margins in the R&D business went bad because of cheap biofuel being diverted into this country and cheap feedstocks that were coming out of the Asian countries, namely Chinese UCO. The way that the legislation today now prohibits some of those feedstocks from coming in, that's even more friendly. Over time, you're going to have to allow additional feedstock into this country in order to meet that need. People will figure that out. That's a down the road deal.
We've seen a pretty significant increase in RIN values. In some ways, it coincided with some of the policy actions or discussion. Do you think that that's been the real driver? Is it simply the Boho spread? Is it more kind of the underproduction maybe that we've seen relative to the current mandate? With what we've seen so far, how do you think about what's been the driver of RINs?
Yeah, so ultimately what the renewables or the biomass-based diesel business experienced last year was the mandate blend wall. You know, ultimately ethanol experienced it many years ago, but when you make one extra gallon, it's worth zero. Ultimately, as big oil finally got to the party here, they overproduced with the imports coming in, still generating RINs. You know, and ultimately at the end of the day, we drove the margin to zero. That's why it has to go up now. What's it going to take? You know, I think the more relevant question is, what's it take to restart the industry? If you look at January, February, March, possibly April here in a few more days, you know, RIN production is not large enough to meet the need this year.
Yes, we're carrying over a surplus and yes, it'll get tighter towards the end of the year. Yes, you can roll your gallons forwards, et cetera. There's a lot of way to play the roulette game here in a sense. At the end of the day, in order to create a RIN, you got to make a physical gallon. In order for a physical gallon to be created, it's got to be marginally profitable, however you want to define that. We would tell you today, given where feedstock costs are, given where RINs are, that the RIN has to come up at least another $0.60-$0.80 a gallon in order to restart capacity to meet this year's requirement, not next year's. We've never been in a marketplace that's trying to trade the future.
Really, at the end of the day, the RINs market's very thin. The physicals can be, you know, if you will, shifted out or diverted to another year. You know, this is a moment, like I said, it's an inflection point in the business. I think, you know, as we're hearing, hopefully the RVO will be released before Memorial Day. You'll have the details of it. Certainly, it'll be out for public comment. Certainly, there'll be people that are really happy and there'll be people that aren't. You've already seen the 45Z announcements. You've seen the extension there. You've seen foreign feedstocks. You know, like I said, this thing is really, really setting up very nice. I always ask myself when I convince myself that it's setting up really, really nice, what could go wrong? I think it's fair.
You know, under Trump 1.0 and under Scott Pruitt and under Carl Icahn, you had all the small refinery exemptions. There are exemptions still out there that came out of the courts now dating back to 2017. They may take a little bit of the edge off of it, but not going forward. At the end of the day, it's not material. Last night at dinner with you, you know, they said, "Well, what if it's not 5.2?" I said, "Well, what if it's 4.5? Let's take all 800 million of small refinery exemptions." That's still a 10 billion pound feed stock increase. I mean, the numbers are there. Now, when the market accepts it and realizes it, you know, we'll see.
One of the, I go through the same exercise. When it sounds as positive as it could be, you know, I think about the risks. One of the things you did not mention is imports. If the RINs go up that much, you mitigate kind of the impact of the tax credit. Do you think imports will come back in? What is your concern about that maybe also taking the edge off?
You know my personality, I'm trying not to offend too many people in the same day. You know, but it's a very naive approach in the world to believe that you can build a wall. If you think around Europe, they built a wall. You know, it's very hard to move product in and out. In the U.S., if we do, if this isn't done properly, you'll build a wall. You can't be so naive to believe that those feedstocks that exist out in the world, we're the largest operator in Brazil and Europe, you know, our Chinese operations, those feedstocks will find other conversion capacity offshore, most likely Neste. They'll be discounted because they can't get here. Then they've created a renewable fuel that will be brought in here.
They have taken away the demand that has been created by the new RVO. We have to be careful on prohibiting feedstocks. If you wanted to say what is the ultimate win, the ultimate win would be to somehow either tariff imported renewable diesel or not let it generate a RIN. You have that in the perfect environment in a sense. I am not sure we will get there. I think the Congress is pretty open to allowing feedstocks in here, where Chinese UCO fits into that. For those that still, you know, think Chinese UCO is the devil, I mean, remember there are 12.6 million restaurants in China. There are 700,000 in the U.S. Yes, they produce UCO. It cannot go to animal feed in China, so it has to go somewhere.
Ultimately, it will find its way to the most efficient market in the world. It was European biodiesel, but now as SAF and RD capacity come online, it's finding its way there.
Kind of just to round out the regulatory discussion, I wanted to get your perspective on LCFS and where that process stands now. How is that progressing? Do you have a sense on timeline, how that'll be implemented? What are your current thoughts?
What I am told, number one, we were very disappointed that, you know, it went back to, you know, basically CARB for administrative review, 22 pages. Who knows the real reason behind that? It's political. We understand that CARB has wrapped it up and we understand that CARB will most likely deliver it here between May 18th or May 19th. People say, "Why is that a critical date?" That allows then OAL under a statutory review, the Office of Administrative Law, to relook at it in 30 days and hand it off to Governor Newsom. If they do that before July 1, it by definition has a January 1 implementation date of 2025. We are hoping that happens. We're told we are. I think many of you in the room watched the news and the media out of California every day.
Where Governor Newsom is, this is his program, but he's all over the political map today.
SAF, that's obviously one of the growth engines for Darling through DGD. Production is online. It came online last year. Where is that in the ramp? How did it contribute to the first quarter? You know, maybe how should we think about the progression of that through the balance of the year?
Yeah, SAF, and as we like to talk to people, when we went into the renewable diesel business and plant came online in, I think, 2013, you know, ultimately the first mover advantage and the first machine in the world that could convert low-cost feedstocks into a hydrocarbon, we started looking at SAF. The market wasn't really defined, but we said, you know, if big oil brings on this RD capacity, why not have the optionality to play in both markets? We said, well, what's that cost? Is that worth the risk? Do we believe that SAF will develop? The answer was yes to all of them. Plant came online early in November, starting up last year. It's at or near capacity today. The sales ledger is really developing at the margins that we'd expected.
You know, and at the end of the day, we've got the physicals market, which is voluntary in the U.S. You've seen many of our announcements out there. There are a few gallons here, a few gallons there. You're seeing Europe. Europe's obligation doesn't really initiate till the end of the year. Europe's being a little slow. They're trying to figure out the rules to bring it in and how it, and you know, it's turned into a very complicated feedstock issue. Because if you think about it, and this is kind of the learning in the room, because when somebody says, "I'm going to make SAF," great. Those are easy words. When you're physically going to make it, it takes technology that can split the molecule and give you a, you know, a freeze point that you need for the standard.
You're going to make about half RD and you're going to make half SAF. On January 20th, what'd the world tell you under 45Z? They told you which feedstocks qualify. Even though we could bring in Chinese UCO that's Corsia- certified, make SAF and ship it back to Europe and claim a duty drawback, at the end of the day, the other 50% of RD wouldn't get duty drawback or the PTC. It is a very complicated trade right now is what I would tell you. The team has figured it out. Port Arthur is now really just a UCO animal fat plant that is doing quite well and meeting all of our expectations. The sales ledger, you know, on one side of the ledger, you've got the voluntary, you've got the mandated. And really, there's a min max is on there.
There's lots of flexibility on these contracts. It feels like we're building out to a full book for 2025 and 2026. Sales are coming. The other piece that's developing out there is really what we would call the book and claim market. The book and claim market is, we kind of, we'd like to just, without giving names of who's there, the technology companies that are really focused on AI and are going to be huge energy consumers want to remain or try to be back to energy or carbon neutral. They're willing to buy a credit. That is in the early development stages. If you asked me to handicap it, we may be making Jet A and selling book and claim credits as we go forward.
I mean, how, you know, you're watching the airlines in the U.S. all talk about lower summer travel and challenges. I mean, you know, without that credit being able to be marketed, which is what some of the airlines are doing, it's really kind of without a mandate, at least in the U.S., it's physically and economically challenging.
You guys have talked to, or you have talked about a potential second SAF plant at some point. I would love to know your thinking about that. I guess as I think longer term, if we do not have a mandate around SAF specifically, some of those challenges, do you foresee the margin premiums compressing or at least being some pushback or pressure on that? I guess I am just curious over time how you think about sustaining that.
Number one, we continue to finish engineering on SAF 2, where there's multiple options. Clearly, the feedstock challenges have made how you engineer and where you put it, whether it's Port Arthur or whether it's in Norco, more challenging. The phase out of the 45Z, is it really going to step down? You know, even if we put a spade in the ground today, you're talking 2027 until number two is up. Now, we're extremely bullish on SAF around the world and think that it's going to move forward. You know, the margin structure is such that I don't see it really changing because I don't see new capital going into it.
Okay, that's pretty clear. Shifting gears a bit to the feed segment. How do you, look, it's been a bit of a cycle here. How do you think about the earnings potential of that piece of the business over a multi-year period over the next couple of years? You've improved that business in a number of ways. You've made acquisitions, you know, integrated those. So what's kind of the right framework to think about the earnings potential of that piece of the business?
Yeah, and you know, it's always, it's interesting. You guys always talk the feed segment. I talk the whole business because, you know, we kind of really just make fats and proteins across the spectrum. The application is the segment, feed segment by far, because we pick up most in edible product is by far the largest. The margin structure in that business is driven by how you buy the raw material and more importantly, what's the value of the fat, the waste fat that comes off of it. Clearly, the resurgence and the RVO is making, you know, fats worth more. Decarbonization drove it for the last couple of years. We kind of hit the lower end here and now it feels like it's coming back.
As we came out of Q1, we started to see fats move back into the 50s now, which we have not seen for a lot of years. You know, you would have to go back. I have kind of forward cast it, you know, for the segment for the year $950. I hope I am low. I have been punished the last couple of years in a, you know, this is a business that I say is fairly easy to forward look as long as prices are stable, tonnage is stable. You know, and that is what we are kind of looking at. We think prices are actually going to move up. I think we are going to be on the low end there as we go forward.
Maybe to that point, you know, narrowing in on the quarter you just reported, the first quarter feed numbers were a bit lighter than we would have. Our forward look was maybe not as good as it should have been. What were the dynamics kind of that drove that? Was there anything unusual in there that we should keep in mind?
Yeah, you know, we've always operated in one of our core values is transparency. Q4 is always our biggest quarter because that's when we clean up everything around the world in a sense. We took in some insurance settlements that we probably should have kind of revealed that we had two fires over the years and then a eucalyptus forest in Brazil and a flood in Brazil. That was part of it. Part of it was there are significant, they won't let me use massive, you know, inventory holdbacks for both DGD and for the rising prices. When you normalize it, it made sense. January is always our most difficult month. February, we were hit by tornadoes, floods, and freezing everywhere. March just really came roaring back to where we thought it would be.
You know, December might have been optically a little better to you. My learning from it is I'm going to be more transparent on that in the future. I can tell you March and April are where we need to be and it should only improve.
Okay. So starting in Q2 and beyond, that's kind of the right way to think about.
Yep.
Okay. Okay. That makes sense. You talk about a $0.10 or penny move in fat prices. Rule of thumb is X to the profitability of the feed segment. Protein prices have been pretty depressed. Is there a rule of thumb on that side of the business?
There is, but not really. It's not material. Typically, you know, the biggest challenge on the protein side, so each penny globally or $20 a short ton is, you know, $12 million, maybe $15 million, depending on where you're at. And the protein side, the value added proteins, if you think that that would be pet foods and then aquaculture grade material got heavily, you know, tariffed into the destinations, China. Ultimately, if those tariffs roll back, then those proteins should come back. You know, mixed species animal byproduct meal or meat and bone meal now has very limited homes, but most of it is in the poultry regions of the Asia Pacific area. That's just got kind of confused here. Typically, you know, clearly we're crushing a lot more beans. Soybean meal's got a $300 in it.
We'd like to have a 300 in it again on our base product. I think it'll come back there.
Okay. That makes sense. You guys threw me a curveball this week. I had all my questions nicely prepared and then you announced the JV and the food segment. Can you talk about the rationale of that, of forming that JV and kind of what you're trying to achieve over the longer term with that?
Yeah. And, you know, try not to be a bit cliché, you know, we're not, clearly we built something special there. I mean, when an animal goes to slaughter, part of it, you know, can go to food grade materials. Obviously, the cut out of the meat does, but there's other byproducts that can. And those are bones and skins that we make collagen and gelatin out of. Edible animal fats, we've got a very significant edible fat business in Europe and then ultimately a casings business and a heparin business. And that rolls into the food segment. If you can't feed it to a human, but it hasn't been essentially condemned, that's the feed segment. You know, the formation of the stool or the platform was really by segmentation of animal back in 2015.
The belief was, well, we could dump it all and just call it global rendering and just really confuse the hell out of everybody. We could say food, feed, and fuel. Food, because these are specialty ingredients, should get a higher multiple. Feed, we're probably like big ag out there. We should get their multiple. Our small little fuel is an annuity business before Diamond Green Diesel. We knew it would get a lower multiple. The game was to try to blend it to around 11 or 12. The only thing I got rewarded with was a renewable fuel multiple at six and a half. You know, experiment failed. You know, we've taken the collagen business, we're one of the largest, if not the largest in the world. We're 150,000 tons before the joint venture.
We have built a product line that probably many of you touched this morning in the what's called Hydrolyzed Collagen Peptides. That's us. We're not retail. We're business to business. We've taken a business that used to make $90 million and it makes, you know, $250 million-$300 million now off of product line expansion. We're in 2.0 of that business now, which is, you know, concentrated or isolated collagen peptides that have a specific health, wellness, and nutrition application. We've launched one now for GLP-1 where it fits in the profile of, you know, weight management and appetite, you know, suppression. It's really just in its early stages. We've got about a dozen more of them out there that are in the launch form right now over the next three to five years.
The joint venture came out of a relationship with not only a competitor, but a friend of 10 + years. He called me and said, "Hey, I have five children." He says, "This business does not fit what the top five want to do. Would you think of, you know, letting us form a new company?" PB Leiner is an absolutely stellar player. They have brand recognition. They have products we do not have. They have plants in geographies we do not have. They have access to raw materials that is superior in some cases to us. We started down the path of saying, "What would a new company look like?" Because our challenge is, as we go forward with the next tight of product line, we were either going to have to acquire or construct capacity.
The deal we were capable of negotiating here made this a more favorable decision. You know, typically you do not announce an MOU. Unfortunately, under Belgian public company law, that triggers union notifications and stock exchange. You have to. We will head to definitive agreement as quickly as we can here. Then we will hand it off to the attorneys in the antitrust world of Europe, China, South America, and the U.S. to get approval. The concept here is, you know, as we look at the food segment, we have said this basically represents about 77% of our revenue in there, but in the high 80% of our earnings. There are some smaller businesses there that can be moved back over into the, I am going to call it the global rendering segment. You call it the feed segment. Then we will have the global rendering.
We like the word ag energy because Trump does not like the word renewables. We will stay away from renewables. Then we will have Nextida as a freestanding company that you will have complete transparency to of its performance, its growth, and its dreams, at which time it either will bring to me and us the multiple evaluation that we deserve, or we will take it public. It is just that simple. You know, yeah, that is a longer timeframe than most people in the room always want to hear, but that is the reality of how it works.
The JV is Nextida. The product is also Nextida. Can you talk about the product and your enthusiasm for the product? I think you officially launched six months ago, roughly. What's the receptivity been? Kind of how do we think about the glide path for that?
Yeah, it's, you know, essentially we're, as you go into these products, they operate in the supplement world, which is a bit of the wild, wild west of regulation or lack of regulation. But when your customers are large health and wellness companies, and you know who I'm talking about here, they're requiring a more sophisticated level of clinical trials. We completed, you know, many of them, smaller groups on our GLP-1 alternative, showed a 42% drop in glucose spikes. That's right there with the big pharma numbers. Maybe it doesn't have the appetite suppression side, but maybe it's the alternative when you come off of the pharma. And it's about $68 a jar for a month. So very affordable. We're in secondary and very significant clinicals on that, which should accelerate the growth. We've got brain health one, now dementia treatment potentially.
And then women's health, hair, nails, skin, there's many of them. You know, if, and I said, I know that it sounds like a lot. When I go back, 2015 is when we backstopped the little company in Chicago called Vital Proteins. And the founder had, he was an avid runner. As we all get older, we know that the lubricity in our joints lessens. He had done his research and said, "Can I have collagen?" And so we made him the first shipment out of Amparo, Brazil. Needless to say, that product line globally has grown to about 30% of our product line. What's unique about it and comparative is it took 10 years to get there. The Nextida platform's being launched. It has a library of products. It has great assets in the world.
We see just, you know, really a strong trajectory of growth, which is more common to being able as a health and wellness company to talk about a three to five year outlook without, you know, injecting the word commodity in there.
Got it. Okay. If I think about what the opportunity looks like for that business overall, can you help us understand? I understand it takes some time to develop, but I think you made the comment that you think that business can be more valuable than the global rendering business, I think is what you said. Maybe I misunderstood that. How do you think about the.
Was I drinking last night?
Cannot confirm or deny.
Okay.
How do you frame that?
No, you know, you look at the margins, the gross margins, and they're 25%-30%. Last quarter, I think 29%. You take $1.5 billion revenue, you got, you know, $400 million-$450 million before the Nextida product line, a potential EBITDA. And that's really bringing the PB plants and product mixes and moving around and synergies over time after close. The question is, you know, when you start to say, when you go out and start finding health and wellness ingredient, you know, comparisons out there, you know, you're 12 times-16 times. You know, we've got a market cap today. I had a little under $6 billion before I got up here. Hopefully it doesn't go down after I get up here. Ultimately that's what that company would be worth today.
Got it. Okay. Thinking about this year, I believe the first quarter was weaker than you might have expected. It was weaker than we expected. You reiterated the guidance, you know, maybe frame how it compared to your expectations. What were the moving pieces that hold the guidance? What did you include versus what you were not including? How do I just kind of think about the expectations?
Yeah. The, you know, the March run rate divided by five times 40. And that gave us, you know, basically a 950 run rate without fat prices moving up anymore. The Diamond Green Diesel, you know, we're looking at that and just saying something's got to give. What we mean by that is margins have to improve or RINs are really going to jump here. That'll really be a back half of the year. It does not take much. The first five years we ran $1.26 a gallon. The next five years almost $2.20 a gallon. Then it kind of fell off last year. The investment case was around $0.80 a gallon. We still believe that's our competitive advantage before SAF. To restart the biodiesel industry and some of these, you know, off players, it's going to take a significant margin improvement.
We're there.
We started the discussion, my intro, we talked about the transformation of the business over a number of years. If I think about the next kind of three to five years and how you think about growing the business, we talked about SAF, we talked about Nextida. What are the other kind of ways in which you think about evolving the business, growing the business over the next handful of years?
Yeah. When I still look at the world, I still, you know, fundamentally, as we've always said, you know, with population, even though somewhat flat or declined in some places, you still got population growth, you got wealth creation, there's still people eating better and wanting protein. You know, at the end of the day, the preference is still animal-based protein. We continue to see continued growth in South America. I've got four plants down there today that are in need of additional capacity as we go forward. We continue to, I fundamentally believe Brazil and one day Argentina will help really feed China. I don't, we haven't waved off of that one. Clearly the Nextida is really exciting for us and the SAF project. Organic growth in the rendering business, new products in the collagen business, and aviation fuel as we go forward.
Does M&A become more a part of that as a driver? Certainly not with SAF and Nextida, but I think maybe for the core business, or is that something that you would do more organically?
M&A will be opportunistic as it comes. You know, the challenge in this business today has been over the last three to five years, the cost to build a plant has tripled. That changes the M&A, what you can acquire a brownfield for and ultimately retrofit. Yeah, there are players out there that clearly, there are three of them for sale in Brazil today. We're, you know, I've still declared an M&A holiday. I want to get the balance sheet more in a better shape. You know, ultimately in Nextida, once we close, do we move some debt over there? You know, those are all things. In no hurry to do anything other than to deliver on what's available to us today.
When I think about delivering on what is available to you today, and I think we closed with this last year as well, but I want to ask it again. When you look at Darling's asset basis, it sits today, and I get kind of the ups and downs of the cycles and some of those disruptions. What do you think this business should earn from an EBITDA perspective? Certainly not guidance, but just how do you think about what kind of the right level of earnings for this asset basis?
I mean, pre any future growth in Nextida today, you know, we look at, you know, when we put the Diamond Green Diesel machine on top of this, it was really thought of as a hedge. If we had low fat prices, we'd have higher earnings in DGD. You know, if we get the RVO, which we fundamentally do believe we'll get a significant increase, that goes back into play here. You know, easily as we've said, the core business is a $100 million a month business, $1.2 billion. And DGD, the investment case was right at $0.80 a gallon on 1.3 billion gallons. You know, you're somewhere between $1.8 billion-$2 billion in the current form that it's at today.
Before Nextida.
Before Nextida.
Got it. We're right on time. We'll end it there. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it.
Thank you.