Welcome to Gevo Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Gigi, and I will be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I'll now turn the call over to Geoff Williams, Gevo's Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary. Please go ahead, Mr. Williams.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining Gevo's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. I would like to start by introducing today's participants from the company. With us today is Patrick Gruber, Gevo's Chief Executive Officer, Lynn Smull, Gevo's Chief Financial Officer, and Paul Bloom, Gevo's Chief Carbon and Innovation Officer. Earlier today, we issued a press release that outlines the topics we plan to discuss. A copy of this press release is available on our website at www.gevo.com. I would like to remind our listeners that this conference call is open to the media and that we are providing a simultaneous webcast of this call to the public. A replay of today's call will be available on Gevo's website. On the call today and on this webcast, you will hear discussions of certain non-GAAP financial measures.
Non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is contained in the press release distributed today, which is posted on our website. We will also make certain forward-looking statements about events and circumstances that have not yet occurred, including, but not limited to projections about Gevo's Net-Zero 1 project and Gevo's operating activities for the remainder of 2021 and beyond.
These forward-looking statements are based on management's current beliefs, expectations, and assumptions and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, including those disclosed in Gevo's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, that was filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and in subsequent reports and other filings made with the SEC by Gevo, including Gevo's quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements speak only as of today's date, and Gevo disclaims any obligation to update information contained in these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. On today's call, Pat will begin with a discussion of Gevo's business developments. Lynn will then review Gevo's financial position, and Paul will finish up with a discussion of Verity Tracking.
Following these prepared remarks, we will open up the call for questions. I'll now turn the call over to Pat.
Thanks, Geoff. As everyone paying attention to us knows and seeing our presentations or press releases, the videos, they know we're on a crusade in the pursuit of net zero drop-in fuels. We have learned that we can convert renewable carbon into gasoline, jet fuel, SAF, and diesel fuel, as well as the building block chemicals to make most plastics and other larger volume chemicals. The technologies work. The key to driving out the fossil footprint in all of these products is renewable electricity and alternatives to fossil-based natural gas. If we reduce and eliminate fossil energy from our production systems, we should be able to achieve net zero fossil footprints of our products as measured across the whole of the business system. That means all the way from carbon capture to tailpipe or the exhaust of a jet engine.
We are in the business of transforming renewable energy into energy-dense liquids like SAF and motor fuels. When we look at our business, we have some similar issues with that that are confronted by EVs and hydrogen. That is, what's the source of electricity? Is it fossil or not? What's the source of energy to produce hydrogen, fossil or not? It turns out we're all aligned regarding infrastructure. If our business system has access to renewable energy, then it shouldn't surprise anybody that the fossil footprint could be reduced and potentially eliminated. So EV folk, the hydrogen folk, and companies like us all need improved access to renewable energy. I'm glad to see the emphasis of this in public policy, particularly regarding infrastructure. I'm glad to see that bill got passed.
Because of the size of our renewable energy need and the ability to achieve economies of scale, we expect that our business system could further catalyze development of renewable energy. We are finding that there are many parties interested in building out renewable energy infrastructure. They need a big customer, someone like us. I'm also glad that our products drop into existing pipelines and enhance existing markets. I'm glad our products are dropping at the consumer level. There is a benefit if no one needs new airplanes, cars or trucks to reduce or even eliminate the fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions footprint from combustion engines.
I expect that we will have the opportunity to help the EV and hydrogen people too, as we expect to generate excess energy, excess renewable energy, electricity, and even hydrogen and supply to the marketplace, where they wouldn't otherwise have it or couldn't do it. Our Net-Zero 1 plant design is unusual for the following reason. We are designing it with the carbon footprint in mind from the get-go. We are working with Juhl Energy on a wind farm that would be wired directly to the plant. We are planning to install a wastewater treatment plant that has the ability to generate water for use in the production process, sure. Equally as important, it is expected to produce enough bio-based methane to run the plant. We also plan to install a electrolysis unit to produce green hydrogen from wind.
It's a different set of paradigms about how to install energy and manage it across the whole. Of course, we get excited that we can prove using the world-leading Argonne National Laboratory GREET model that by substituting the energy sources, getting it away from fossil-based sources, and by using carbohydrates from sustainably grown corn, that the system we are building should be able to achieve a net zero fossil carbon footprint across the whole life cycle from carbon capture to tailpipe or exhaust to a jet engine. Think about it for a second here. Jet fuel has roughly a fossil footprint of about 90 using a carbon score index. That means a 90 is a fossil-based score. Our SAF, when burned, according to the Argonne GREET model, is expected to be zero.
That means that our SAF sitting in a tank or a rail car before it's been burned is at least a -90 CI score, -90. If we never burned it as a fuel, it would just be sequestered carbon in a tank. That's an interesting paradigm. When the fuel such as SAF is burned, it does release CO2, so then the carbon score is back up from -90 to near zero. Renewable energy in a tank with all the advantages that infrastructure provides to take it to market and all the vehicles, the planes, they all exist and can be used without change. That's pretty amazing. It's really a new game to think about what can be done. For a minute, suppose our building blocks produced at our Net-Zero plant were used to make plastics rather than making SAF or motor fuels.
These building blocks would result in the same plastics made from petroleum, except that we'd have swapped out the fossil carbon for renewable carbon captured from the atmosphere. The technology works. Imagine car bumpers with tires made from our stuff. It'd be sequestered carbon captured from the air, transformed into durable goods. The carbon score of that bumper or tires could be expected to be massively negative because we're not burning the products. They're being made into durable goods. Of course, it would depend upon the content of those plastics or rubber derived from our Net-Zero type of ingredients. Looking forward and in the future, we expect to add geological sequestration to the decarbonization mix. Of course, we can do that. Others can, we can do it too. That should make our footprint even more negative, more negative in a big way.
That according to GREET, we'd expect the possibility of a negative 30-40 CI score from where we are today. That's even after the fuel is burned. If we add some new techniques in agriculture, it can even be more negative across the whole of the life cycle. How could it be so negative? Because our business system would be the cause of carbon sequestration, for instance, in the soil or in geological formations. In addition, by using the latest processing techniques for corn, higher value protein products and corn oil can be produced and sold into the food chain. This is really important. We believe that it's possible to use land to produce food and generate raw materials for energy simultaneously, and many improvements still can be made. We're not done yet.
Of course, we can also use carbohydrate feedstocks derived from wood, biomass, molasses, and other carbohydrate sources. Any of these are fair game for us as we grow our business. The sustainability of each feedstock would need to be proven, and it must be cost-effective before we take it on. Now we've been making excellent progress on the business front. First, Chevron. The MOU with them outlines the basic deal where they would take up to 150 million gallons of hydrocarbon fuels and correspondingly invest in the production assets to produce those fuels. Good. That means that if we did six Net-Zero 1 style plants, each with a capacity of about 50 million gallons, and if they took 50% of the capacity, then the MOU contemplates them investing in 50% of the capital in each of the plants.
We still got to convert the MOU to definitive agreements, and there could be some twists and turns along the way, but we like Chevron's commitment and their energy that they bring to getting this done. Ethanol to jet is a new thing for us. We've been working on it quietly for years, and then, we announced that we signed a deal with Axens of North America that gives Gevo the exclusive license to develop ethanol to jet in North America. Axens is the licensing arm of the French National Research and Engineering Laboratory called IFP. IFP focuses on applied research and engineering. They do a lot of work, over the years, over the decades on refining technology, chemical plant technology, and many, many other technologies. They're a really well-known research and engineering outfit. Their capabilities are truly immense.
We were just visiting there in the last month. They're quite impressive. We got to know them. We got to know Axens. Because of our work on Net-Zero 1, we are co-engineering the process to convert isobutanol into jet fuel and renewable alkylate. We get along really well with them, and as we got to know them, we learned that they have more than 60 patents and 25 plants commercially operating with the technology to convert ethylene into fuels and chemicals. Now, we know how to decarbonize alcohols, and we know how to convert alcohols into olefins. Ethylene is an olefin. Together it occurred to us that, you know what? We've got a really clear path to take ethanol as a feedstock using commercially proven technology and convert ethanol to SAF in proven processes. It's pretty impressive. They have done these technologies using petrochemical based feedstocks. What's new here?
Bringing ethanol in, converting it to ethylene, and taking the ethylene onward into the well-proven processes. We struck a strategic alliance with them, and we believe that ethanol to jet is gonna be important, and we see it as synergistic with the isobutanol to hydrocarbon routes. In fact, there's many opportunities to add value to each. It should give us the opportunity to produce more products, a wider slate of products. As Tim Cesarek likes to say, we can do diesel fuel, jet fuel, gasoline products, and many other building blocks for the chemical industry and ultimately achieve a higher renewable content in fuels. In other words, makes it easier. We have more building blocks to work with so we can make a more complete fuel over the long run.
It's also worth noting that Axens will provide process performance guarantees for the alcohol to SAF and motor fuels technologies. Of course, that's really useful when financing production facilities at the project level. We signed an MOU with ADM with the intent of converting 900 million gallons per year of ethanol into about 500 million gallons of SAF and hydrocarbons, and along with that, to build IBA to hydrocarbons, particularly in Decatur. ADM has some of the most economical ethanol plants on the planet. Starting with low cost ethanol is a really good idea when converting it into SAF. The work with ADM is expected to result in a JV with them and other investors. ADM in Decatur has been a pioneer in geological sequestration too. It's an exciting opportunity, and I expect that they will be a good partner.
I know everybody's interested in the customer pipeline. It's growing. We are still on track of obtaining financial offtake agreements. The pipeline of potential contracts is now well over 1 billion gallons per year. We are negotiating these contracts. The interest in SAF has definitely increased, especially since the White House meeting a couple months ago. We expect to announce the next agreement that sells out Net-Zero 2 and beyond soon. We acquired the Butamax patent portfolio. We now have about 600 or so patents covering the biotechnology fermentation, production processes, converting alcohols into hydrocarbons. It adds value to have all these patents under one roof. I'm glad to have that cleaned up. Our Net-Zero 1 project is on track. Kiewit, one of the world's largest and most capable engineering and construction firms, is a great addition to our team.
Kiewit has tremendous horsepower and the capability to build multiple plants at once. This ability is really important to us since that is the situation I think we're gonna find ourselves in, that is needing to build more than one plant at once. They have a reputation of delivering on time and on budget. In addition, they're really good people. We'll have the next round of engineering done around year-end. Then we'll be moving to a more detailed phase. We expect to have the EPC wrap completed around the end of the first quarter, maybe early second quarter, and then work to complete the project debt deal. If this timing all holds up, we expect to get the plant up and running in 2024. Our Northwest Iowa Renewable Natural Gas project is on track. It's expected to start up in the first part of next year.
It's gone very well so far. I like the experience we are getting because renewable methane, biogas, and RNG are all gonna be really important to us as we work to defossilize the hydrocarbon production systems like alcohol and alcohol to hydrocarbons. As I already mentioned, one of the big issues that creates the footprint from these plants is the fossil based natural gas and fossil based electricity. Eliminating these things makes everything more green. As a last key point, we are changing our ambitions. We believe that it's possible to bring online a business that delivers and sells 1 billion gallons of capacity or more per year using the combination of IBA and ethanol as feedstocks to hydrocarbons to serve SAF and motor fuels markets by 2030. We call this a billion gallon initiative. Simple. 1 billion gallons or more by 2030.
This is what we're working on, and I believe the pieces are falling into place. Net-Zero 1 is the first step, and we need to get it right. We see that the potential is large, and we can achieve fast growth beyond Net-Zero 1. We see that Chevron, ADM, Axens, and others all could be part of making this happen. Now, Lynn Smull is here with me today. We decided to change the format and content of our earnings calls. Rather than read the financial details that are already disclosed in our earnings press release and Form 10-Q, we figured it'd be far more useful for Lynn Smull to just talk about Gevo's financial position and what his thoughts are in larger, more general terms. Lynn.
Thank you, Pat. Gevo's primary execution focus is getting Net-Zero 1 built and operating. Net-Zero 1's design and engineering work is progressing well, and we're advancing the plant engineering, procurement, and construction contract with Kiewit. We feel very good about our partnership approach with Kiewit and their strong expertise and capabilities, as well as their abilities around delivering multiple plants simultaneously, as Pat mentioned. We expect to start ordering long lead equipment to engage in site mobilization and preparation work and to continue detailed engineering in the first half of 2022. This is key to enable us to hold our project timelines.
The wind power and wastewater anaerobic digestion design, build, own, operate, manage partnerships, referred to as DBOOM partnerships, are progressing well. Juhl Energy, our wind DBOOM partner, is advancing Net-Zero 1's 60 MW behind the meter wind project development and working with potential utility partners to ensure a structure that works for all participants. We are well into the engineering and commercial processes with multiple wastewater anaerobic digestion DBOOM partners and expect to finalize those arrangements with a winning party early 2022. We've been very active with advanced work around the Net-Zero 1 non-recourse debt financing. We have multiple tracks underway, including tax-exempt private activity bonds or PABs, a potential Department of Energy loan guarantee route, and some interest with long-term private placement debt providers. We're pursuing multiple paths out of an abundance of caution and to see which will present the best debt structure and terms.
The base case so far has been a PABs offering by Citigroup. The majority of our Net-Zero project costs are eligible to be funded with PABs, and those markets are very attractive for this type of credit. We expect to have the project finance elements in place in time for a mid-year 2022 debt offering, regardless of the route taken. The strength of Net-Zero 1's project participants, from offtakers to Kiewit to Citigroup and a range of other important supporting elements, will all play well as we head towards breaking ground and financing construction next year. We are also working to get follow-on Net-Zero 1 plants sold out with offtake agreements developed, financed, and built. To build out a fleet of plants, we'll be raising money at the project level as contemplated in the Chevron MOU.
If the right circumstances arise at the Gevo, Inc. level. For example, adding a strategic party or two in the mix is a possibility and would enhance our ability to execute on projects. In any case, we will eventually want to raise money at the Gevo, Inc. level so that we have capital to contribute as equity and can benefit from commensurate levels of project cash flows. Our view on capital investments is that the opportunities are immense and that they should be accretive. We are also interested in partnering with companies that own ethanol assets and in acquiring ethanol assets with the intent to decarbonize existing ethanol production to provide low carbon feedstock to new SAF production capacity with correspondingly low carbon index scores on the final product. We would welcome hearing from ethanol plant owners who may be interested in Gevo's approach to SAF.
We have identified and are pursuing several sites for follow-on greenfield Net-Zero projects that are as attractive as Net-Zero 1's Lake Preston site. We will need these options on locations as we grow production capacity. Decarbonization of production is always a focus when looking at sites. For example, ADM's Decatur, Illinois, site presents a superb opportunity around that need due to its carbon sequestration capacity. We are also operating our Luverne plant to make isobutanol and working on optimizations of systems and processes. These learnings should serve us well as we operate the Net-Zero plants. We're using the Luverne isobutanol to make small quantities of hydrocarbons down at the Silsbee, Texas, plant. Next year, we expect to use Luverne's isobutanol production as feedstock for a modular hydrocarbon plant that is currently being fabricated by Praj and is scheduled to be installed at Luverne in 2022.
We are currently a pre-revenue company. Recall that while we are producing isobutanol at Luverne to accumulate feedstocks for hydrocarbon production, we suspended the plant's ethanol production in Q1 2020 to focus on our Net-Zero program. Late next year, we would expect to see some revenues from our RNG project and some revenues from sales of small quantities of hydrocarbon products. In late 2024, we expect to see substantial revenue upon Net-Zero 1's project, projected startup. As our 1 billion gallon initiative begins to take shape, we would expect to put out some guidance, but that is premature today. Given our pre-revenue status, the key third quarter financial metrics are as follows: End of Q3, cash and cash equivalents was $522.4 million. Long-term debt outstanding was $66.8 million. Corporate burn was $6.1 million.
Capital investments associated with Net-Zero 1 and other capital projects was $16.8 million. We had other investing activity of $9 million associated with the Butamax patent acquisition. As Jeff noted, full financials are available in our earnings release and our Form 10-Q, available on our website. Now I'll turn it over to Paul Bloom to talk about where we're at on the Verity Tracking. Paul?
Thanks, Lynn. First, I'd like to note that we have executed a joint venture agreement for Verity Tracking with Blocksize Capital. Verity Tracking is based upon distributed ledger technology, commonly called blockchain, and is focused on the tracking of sustainability attributes such as the greenhouse gas footprint across the whole of the supply chain, including carbon capture, feedstocks, sources of energy used in production, and other key inputs to determine the lifecycle footprint of products like ours. We intend to provide verifiable, immutable, sustainability data from the source of the raw material to the tailpipe and exhaust of jet engines. I am the responsible executive at Gevo for this joint venture. In the future, we intend on spinning Verity Tracking out of Gevo. We still have some more work to do to get it organized, such as putting the key leadership team in place.
We envision that Verity can be a benefit to any company that needs to prove their sustainability footprint. When we started Verity, we were focused on using it for Gevo's sustainability systems and products. We quickly discovered that this technology and method of tracking sustainability improvements using a blockchain solution filled a gap for other industries as well. We intend to open Verity up to work with any company that wants verifiable proof of their carbon intensity reduction and is willing to commit to transparency. As the anticipated demand grows for high-quality carbon offsets for compliance and voluntary markets, Verity Tracking is anticipated to provide the carbon accounting needed for both segments while avoiding double counting. We also intend to simplify auditing while providing users with the best-in-class data security. We look forward to continuing to develop the joint venture with Blocksize Capital and developing solutions for other potential customers.
Thank you. Now I will turn it back over to Pat to wrap things up.
All right. Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Lynn. Let us open up the call for questions. Operator?
As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Nate Pendleton from Stifel. Your line is now open.
Good afternoon, all, and thanks for taking my questions.
Sure.
The first question is, with the understanding that you and ADM are only a couple of weeks removed from your ethanol to jet announcement, could you share comments on how your dialogue is progressing and what's a reasonable timeline for disclosure of commercialization plans to achieve first production in the 2025/2026 timeframe?
Well, the steps that have to happen are that we gotta figure out the game plan of how we're gonna fully decarbonize, and then we're doing some engineering work on the ethanol to jet stuff. Once we have that pinned down, we'll know what the timeline should be. We're a ways away from that yet. It's not like it's in the months. As far as we go with ADM, the idea is, you heard that their CEO talked about it as well in their earnings call, is that, you know, using 900 million gallons of ethanol as raw material is, that's a good starting point to generate a heck of a lot of SAF. We got a lot of work to do, put in the game plan to do this.
We gotta bring in other partners 'cause it's a lot of work to decarbonize things. We have to finance the whole thing. There's a whole lot of interested parties who are hanging around here, working on it with us. It's one of these things you just have to stay tuned to.
Excellent. Thank you. For a quick follow-up, regarding Net-Zero 1, I wanted to follow up on the CCS commentary that you gave.
Mm-hmm.
While not part of the initial design for Net-Zero 1, could you comment on the opportunity you have to integrate CCS and the price and EBITDA uplift potential?
Well, I'll comment first, then Lynn, you can pick it up and talk about it, what it might mean economically or something. All right? The answer is, yeah, our plant at Net-Zero 1 is like any other plant. It's a fermentation plant that generates some CO2. That CO2 is actually pretty valuable in that it could be captured and sequestered. When you do that has an impact of about 35 CI points. If we're starting at a -5 CI points, it's another, you know, -35 CI points. Even in California, where they just penalize corn, and, you know, our -5 in California is a 40, and that's what our contracts are based upon. You would get presumably credit for carbon sequestration, so you'd get some improvement there. If you got the full credit, you'd be down to a CI score of five in California.
You know, Lynn, do you have any comment on what you think that value might be, the upside?
It's 35 CI points. It's something like $0.02 a CI point per gallon. You know, it's substantial in terms of EBITDA uplift. The cost associated with engaging a counterparty under CCS is not nearly as great as the benefits that we're seeing out of the CI reductions. I would say though that for Net-Zero 1, we don't see carbon capture sequestration as being a key component of the debt financing, but rather a potential equity upside investment or engagement in a contract in the future.
Of course, that's because we think the debt will have to get financed before the CCS pipelines exist.
Great. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Shawn Severson from WTR. Your line is now open.
Great. Thanks, and good evening, Pat.
Okay.
Question on the mix of isooctane these days, renewable gasoline. Obviously, a lot of talk about SAF and certainly, you know, through the, you know, the ADM deal and stuff. But what are you seeing these days when you look at the, you know, the potential contracts, offtake agreements in isooctane versus SAF?
Well, interestingly enough, it's still split, you know, ballpark 50/50, maybe 40% isooctane, 60% jet. Recently since that White House meeting a couple months ago, there definitely has been an uptick in people focused on SAF. The airlines still have an issue in that they don't make a lot of money, so they're loath to, you know, project long-term purchasing and things like that. I think it'll be interesting to see who all steps into the fray as to who are the off-takers before the airlines. It's a bit changing. With isooctane is gasoline even after everyone decarbonizes things. If you took the most optimistic view of EVs and wildly successful EVs, the gasoline pool is still the biggest marketplace.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find anybody who thinks it isn't that way. Even the most optimistic scenarios say that gasoline will be bigger than jet fuel or diesel fuel out at 2050. We should decarbonize those two. California provides a pretty good model for it, though, in that they know how to count carbon there. They've done a good job, and they have a good model that works. Our business group, with partners, calculate that we need something like, you know, 26 isooctane plants aimed at California just to meet their demand currently. There's a good opportunity here, and that's because they import foreign isooctane or alkylate from other places. Of course, that's fossil based. There's a good opportunity here, and it's gonna be an important part of the mix.
The other thing about isooctane that's interesting is that when all these guys are doing the renewable diesel or if you're making some lower value naphtha products, naphtha is something that can be burned in gasoline. You mix some other isooctane, you just get more gallons of gasoline than. 'Cause our octane is such a high value product because it's pure isooctane. So we have the opportunity to take in more gallons from other people and make a better blend and get paid for it.
Just a follow-up question. What's the difference between Verity Tracking and the GREET model? I want you just compare and contrast. I mean, I know they're both carbon counting, but could you highlight some of the differences for me so I understand the two?
Sure. Paul, you wanna take this question, just explain what GREET is, and then the business concept of Verity.
Sure thing, and thanks for the question. You know, when you think about GREET's a lifecycle inventory program that Argonne National Lab runs. Basically, it can calculate the carbon intensity score of different products when you have the right inputs. The difference here between Verity Tracking uses GREET as part of our calculation system to make sure that we get the carbon intensity calculation right. What Verity Tracking also does is then tracks things from the sources. Think about what a farmer or grower does, what then you do with that corn at the processor level, and then how the final product user implements or uses that product.
Really what Verity Tracking does is use GREET, but then uses a blockchain or distributed ledger technology to connect all the dots through the value chain, through the whole of the business process system, to calculate the difference in the carbon intensity from the incumbent product that you're comparing it to.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Yeah. The thing is, Shawn, is that, think Argonne GREET is a scientific tool that measures stuff. Verity Tracking is actually gonna have, like, field auditors. We have to audit stuff in the field, measure stuff in a field, account for it, take pictures, whatever the heck it turns out to be. Then it's accounting for exactly the energy package that's used in the production, tracking it all the way back out to the marketplace. Think of Verity Tracking as the sustainability certificate that comes with the product. Except for it's gonna be a separate business 'cause it's gonna need to be audited, right? Have third parties looking at it and, saying, "Yep, that is in fact the case." Of course, it's not lost on any of us that Verity Tracking done right leads to tokenization of those attributes.
That's interesting as well because that could be another means of commercializing that value.
Right. You mean that they would trade in some capacity? It could be exchanged like RINs are?
Yep.
What do you mean by that?
Well, you tokenize that. You know, everyone knows what a token is, right? Everybody who does blockchain understands tokens. If you have a certifiable attribute that's, you know, immutable, can't be changed, documented and all the rest, you can tokenize it. We've already worked on the prototypes for that. You could do that, and then they could be traded in some way. Except for what's gonna be different about these, this would be some hocus pocus hand waving. It's gonna have all the dang data attached to it, so you can say, "Here's exactly where it came from, how it came to be," the whole bit, like you would expect out of a blockchain system.
Great. Thanks for the explanation. Thanks, Pat.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Amit Dayal from H.C. Wainwright. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone.
Hey there.
Thank you for taking my question. Hi, Pat. Pat, what gets, you know, your partners and potential customers like Chevron from MOU to definitive agreements? Is there some sort of a trigger or some catalyst that, you know, moves that needle for you guys?
No, it's just plugging along. You know, it's getting Tim in the same room with people, me in the same room, and, you know, working it all through and figuring it out. That's all. That's progressing. It's the same thing true in all of these deals. Then around the ethanol plants, this deal with ADM is great, but we intend on working with more than just ADM. It'll be interesting to see who else comes into the mix because that's a very fast way of growing, and it's complementary to our isobutanol. It's interesting, and it'll be sporting to see how we change. I'm serious about this billion gallons per year of hydrocarbons by 2030, and that's our focus in it.
Yep, the Net-Zero project and what it proves that can be done is eye-opening for everybody because it shows how things can be decarbonized if you do the right mix of renewable energy, the electricity, and the gas. It shows people how it can be done. It creates a roadmap for everybody else. We're gonna use that. I'm glad that we were able to partner with Axens, and I'm glad that we have pieces that are falling into place.
Understood. Congratulations on getting the Butamax IP. I was wondering, you know, if you have any plans for that IP in the near term, or are you just gonna maybe sit on it and see how things play out for you guys?
Well, I'll tell you how we're gonna use it is that portfolio is really large, and so there's lots of active patents, and so we can extend those patents further, add to them, adjust them, and it extends the life of the patents. There's also, you know, useful technologies that are incorporated there. I'll tell you, what it does is we're gonna be successful, I believe, in being a big, large company with big revenues, and these patents have long lifetimes, 20 years. It's really important to make sure that we aren't creating somebody who comes back, something that I wanted to get them in our tent because I can imagine 10 years from now, something goes wrong, someone else might acquire them, and they might have some other hassle someday in the future when we're worth big bucks.
Cleaning it up is a good thing, and it gives us more opportunities to create even more intellectual property.
Understood. With respect to sort of, you know, your plant build-out, your equipment needs, et cetera, you know, the current supply chain environment and all of the backlog that, you know, these types of deployments are facing right now, are you already kind of dealing with those types of issues, or are they a little bit removed for you, at this stage?
Kiewit is superb at this. This is one of their strengths, and so they're already taking that into account. You know, so far I don't anticipate any big issues. You know, whether our plant starts up, you know, midyear, third quarter, late in the third quarter, or maybe it's even earlier, you know, those are all things that'll be determined on other, you know, project impacts and effects. But I don't expect issues with its equipment at this point. We know that when I ask that same question to the, you know, the engineers, they're like, "Oh, we already have taken those kind of things into account." Okay, we'll see.
I would add that for the non-recourse debt purposes, we have to have dates certain with liquidated damages. Kiewit will take into account the procurement constraints in guaranteeing their schedule.
They're gonna wanna be absolutely certain of that date before they promise to guarantee it with that price and damages.
Understood, Ben. This last one from me. With respect to the Verity Tracking effort, how much investment is going into this? Like, how big is the team, et cetera? Any color on that would be helpful.
It's a relatively small investment. It's one of these things where I wish, you know, I shouldn't say this even out loud. I wish we would've thought of this years ago and done it. We could have really cool, super-duper, you know, valuable business from it, but it's one of these things where it's a small investment, a lot of leverage. It's a software-oriented thing. It isn't like a heavy capital asset investment, so it's in a few million dollars kind of a thing as we develop this.
Okay. I mean, it looks like there are a lot of opportunities for you guys, you know, with you know, even with the RNG effort and a lot of the things you are sort of building for yourselves, these are potential services that you could provide other folks with as well. I mean-
Yeah.
Is that how you are thinking of maybe leveraging all these efforts into additional revenue opportunities?
It is. You see it also in how we're putting together our partnerships, like with Juhl Energy. They do a great job and they're hungry, they wanna grow, and they're really good at working in the Midwest, and they're creative. They got good financial partners. They got good technical partners, good technology partners. Same thing true with our wastewater treatment, the folks we work with there, they get this as to why this is important. This point that I keep making about if we wanna decarbonize the world, it's focused on electricity. Let's focus on getting rid of our 60% plus of fossil-based electricity and turn it into renewable, and let's do something about the gas. This latter one, the gas, is the reason we're doing renewable natural gas. We originally started doing it because we're gonna just supply it up to our Luverne plant.
We can make more money selling it to California, so we're gonna do that for a while. You know what? It's available to us to use it any time, and it has a massively negative CI score. We think biogas is gonna be incredibly important in the future because that is the only practical way to get rid of fossil-based methane. We think we're quite bullish on those opportunities. The way we think about it, though, is we can take that green value and transform it into liquids. That's a different paradigm, and that's how we think about it. Whenever we're looking at a site, whether it's an ethanol plant site, acquiring an ethanol plant, working with an ethanol partner, anaerobic digestion is gonna be part of it.
It might not be manure digestion, but shoot, if we just took the residual carbohydrate waste and fermented those with anaerobic digestion, we'd get to zero carbon footprint for the biogas that's produced. That's valuable.
Right. Understood. That's all I have, Matt. Thank you so much.
You bet.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Poe Fratt from Noble Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Hey, Poe.
Thanks, G. Thanks, Gigi. Hey, Pat, how are you?
Doing great. Thanks.
Other than a very busy man. You did a great job of laying out, you know, the a lot of progress that you made. I'd like to focus on Lynn's comments just about, you know, being pre-revenue. You look at quarterly cash burn and maybe even on an annual basis. Lynn, can you just highlight what will be, you know, present in the fourth quarter financials as far as capital? The Butamax is not gonna be there. Highlight the corporate burn rate too, if you wouldn't mind.
Yeah. I think our corporate burn rate's around $6 million a quarter. You know, we're looking at $24 million for the corporate. That excludes the cost of goods sold at Luverne. In terms of capital investments in the next quarter, it'll be similar. The larger investments associated with getting going with site mobilization, site acquisition, everything will be into 2022 for Net-Zero 1.
Would you be able to quantify that as far as what you might expect over the first half of 2022, Lynn?
Not at this point. I wouldn't wanna throw those numbers around loosely.
Yeah.
They’re gonna be like long lead. We’ve talked in the past about long lead equipment items, and there’ll be some site work, stuff like that, but it’s not the big drop of money. That’s sometime later once we have date certain of delivery of the plant and the guarantees in place and the financing in place. We gotta unfold that still, but it’s looking good. By the way, the reason that I had Lynn make sure that he mentions we’re a pre-revenue company is ’cause I keep getting questions from investors where they go, “Well, you aren’t making any. You know, you don’t have any material revenues.” Well, no kidding. We keep telling people we shut down ethanol. Ethanol wasn’t our main business, and we are about focusing our efforts on building out future capacity and technologies. That’s why.
Any change to either the capacity or cost for Net-Zero 1 at this point?
Not yet. You know, I keep asking that question too, Poe, because I look at all the world with COVID and supply chains, and the same thing Amit asked, and I got no data that says anything's different yet. We keep making progress, so this is a good thing. If there was something that was a disaster, I'd have heard about it already. So.
Yeah. I was looking at it from the other side, Pat, that I thought that you would introduce the concept that maybe 45 million-50 million gallons per year might be a little too small for, you know, potentially gaining some-
Oh.
You know, efficiencies. I was just looking at-
Yeah.
You know, whether you actually upsized the Net-Zero 1 yet or, you know, sort of where that stands.
Okay. Let me comment on that. What Poe's referring to is that, you know, we've always been talking about Net-Zero 1 at 45 million gallons of hydrocarbons, 340 million pounds of high protein animal feed products and 30 million pounds of oil. That's good. You know what? We could. If that thing gets engineered, that site at Net-Zero could handle two of those plants. The other sites that we're choosing all could handle two of those plants. You do a lot of. There's the capital cost, yes. When you're carbon copying, you save a heck of a lot of money. When you're building things on skids or building on, you know, skid production facilities, which is possible to do, and you're sticking to kind of carbon copies, that can be very interesting.
None of this is lost on us. Of course, when you maximize capacity at a site, you do spread out your fixed costs 'cause it's still the same team who can run both, you know, that 90 million gallons versus 45. None of that is lost on us. Then you start thinking, "Hmm, that's interesting. What if we have an ethanol plant plus an isobutanol plant on site?" Once you have dehydrated ethanol to ethylene and made butenes out of it, guess what? It's the same process to take a butene from isobutanol and a butene mixture from ethylene. It too is the same plant. None of this is lost on us. We just haven't gone into detail yet about how this will unfold.
In the early days here, you're right, Poe, that, you know, we sold out 54 million gallons under contract so far. We'll get much more sold out, I think, here shortly and be able to talk about it. You can see that the interest from Chevron, there's a bunch of people who are interested. The chunks and bites are getting bigger. Because we're still requiring someone to backstop them on a financial basis, that makes it not for the faint of heart on the customer side. It is interesting. I think we are gonna wind up bigger. I just don't know when we're gonna be able to pull that trigger, and we do need diversity of site as well.
We just gotta go through the work and figure out which choices make the most sense given the full set of circumstances of customers, partners, sites, economics, the whole bit.
Great. Pat, if I heard it correctly, then you're still looking at the similar size, but maybe call it co-location so that you get some of the, whether it's input synergies or the, you know, the wind, the biogas and the, you know, wastewater.
Right.
You're able to tap into sort of the, if you will, the plumbing a little more efficiently and so that reduces your incremental costs.
I think that's a fair assumption. The reason I say it that way is if I wanna hold timelines and get big faster, then I should stick with the current size we've already spent a year engineering. If I change it. Guess what happens? I got another freaking long period of time to engineer stuff again. The idea is do what you said, is leverage it. Now, we could also take the approach. The hydrocarbon plants, mind you, are a little bit different. They're easier to scale 'cause we have a bunch of work that's been done by Axens already that we can leverage. That'll be. That's a little bit different. Of course then ethanol comes into the mix. When we look at ethanol, there's a lot of ethanol plants that we can see make a lot of sense.
Our phone has been ringing, and we do expect to have additional partners. Don't have a timeline yet. The key is about decarbonization. How can we leverage all these things and make them all work synergistically, get them deployed quickly? 'Cause I think there is a benefit in getting lots of decarbonized hydrocarbons out into the marketplace sooner rather than later. That's the game afoot in what we're working on. Lynn mentioned that we'll be putting out guidance eventually here. I don't know when it is, but it's not very far away, meaning, you know, it's within, I don't know, I hate even to say. Relatively soon, we put out guidance for the billion gallon plan, who, what, where, how, and all the rest.
Okay, great. Just if I may, you alluded to the fact that you're, you know, the next slug of contracts could, you know, that would sell out Net-Zero 2, you know, might be forthcoming. If that happens by the end of the year, Pat, does that mean that you'll have, you know, Net-Zero 1 and 2 under construction at the same time and sort of very, very parallel tracks, or will they be sequenced a little bit?
They're gonna be sequenced just a bit because I think we've got sites. Well, already have done site development work and are continuing to develop even more sites. We like some of these places. That part's already ongoing. The engineering work, of course, if we're doing a Net-Zero copy, it is literally taking that plant and dropping it down somewhere else. It can go pretty darn fast. I think that practical timeline, and Lynn, you know, we've been talking of what? Seven months delay for our Net-Zero 2, it'd be the earliest? Something like that?
Yeah, six-month lag.
Six-month delay. Just as a matter of getting the permits in place, getting the site work done, getting all the little details done. But yeah, it would be something like that. Remember, we sold out 54 million gallons, so if we get a big bite here, we're gonna be well into Net-Zero 3 at that point. Then we might have even bigger bites. If we have bigger bites, we better hurry up and get on with these ADM plants, you know. Focused on Decatur first.
Lynn talked about, you know, funding for the first time at the Gevo, Inc. level. You refreshed the ATM when you made the Chevron announcement, but you need shareholder approval to expand the share authorization. Can you give me an idea of when you expect to do the shareholder vote? Then two, you know, the timing potential funding, you know, actually raising additional money beyond what cash you have now.
Well, I think, you know, we actually have you know, we're sitting here with $520 million of cash and cash equivalents. We're in pretty good shape. It isn't like we have this burning, "Oh my God, I gotta do something." We don't. That isn't the situation. We did refresh the ATM because it was time to do it, and it made sense to do it and all the rest, and we haven't used it yet. That's all sitting there. We have a lot of interest. The world has changed for us, so it's hard for us to describe. There's no way for me to explain it to everybody. It's not possible.
The world's changed for us, and it's about who's gonna play with us, how are we gonna play, how are we gonna grow, and everyone wants to go big sooner. How are we gonna put this together and make it happen? This is the question in front of us. I get that we could just go do our Net-Zero 1 plant and do another one, Net-Zero 2, Net-Zero 3, and have a nice business, and it'd be very profitable business. I mean, shoot, these Net-Zero plants are looking at cash flow streams of $150 million a year or something. They're good projects.
I wanna grow faster, and I think now with this combination of isobutanol and ethanol to hydrocarbons technologies, the two of them together, we can grow a heck of a lot faster, and that's what we should be focused on, and it makes it for a more efficient deployment of capital. We expect to bring in other partners. We expect to bring in people investing at the project level. That's what the Chevron deal was about. We expect to see people interested at the Gevo level. We expect that, you know, we will have to raise money in the future. You know, we'll see. We're gonna do it judiciously. We've talked in the past about this, you know, and it's like, I'm not real big fan of doing dilutive fundraisings.
We're beyond that stage, I think. It's about accretive stuff. It's about saying, "Here's these projects. We're gonna go raise money, you know, and here's the cash flow streams that are expected to result." It's that kind of a game that has to get played.
Great. Thank you, Lynn. Thank you, Pat. Very helpful.
Thank you. At this time, I'm showing no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Pat Gruber for closing remarks.
Well, thanks everybody for joining us. You know, it's an exciting time for us. This billion gallon plan is the right kind of idea. I'll bet we can, I wanna see us do even more than that. The fact that we're able to work with Axens, get that deal done with them, make progress in the Net-Zero concept, where we're decarbonizing the production systems and being able to prove it, that is, all of it, a big deal, and it applies across the board. It's what is attracting people to us. That, along with the way to count carbon and track corn and all the rest or any other feedstock with Verity Tracking. We're on a good track. I like where we are. We're making great progress. Thank you all for your support.
Thanks for joining us today.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.