Welcome to Gevo's fourth quarter 2020 earnings conference call. My name is Carmen, and I'll be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. Please note that today's 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. Thank you for joining Gevo's fourth quarter 2020 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, and Carolyn Romero, Gevo's Chief Accounting Officer. Earlier today, we issued a press release that outlines the topics we plan to discuss today. 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 business development plans and operating activities for 2021 and beyond.
These forward-looking statements are based on management's current beliefs, expectations and assumptions, and are subject to significant risks and uncertainty, 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, 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, then Carolyn will review Gevo's financial results for the fourth quarter of 2020. Following the presentation, we will open up the call for questions. I'll now turn the call over to Pat.
Thanks, Geoff. Hello, everyone. I'm going to keep this relatively short today because tomorrow we're doing another fireside chat. Those who join us will hear Lynn and I discuss more information around the financing, projects, how to think about them, et cetera. Back to reporting on this year. We've had quite a change from a year ago. I'm going to run through a partial list. Now, we sold out the capacity to a large commercial plant using take-or-pay contracts that are suitable for use in backing of project debt financings. Now, these contracts add up to more than 45 million gallons per year of hydrocarbons. That offtake caused us to think bigger sooner. We also paid off all the Whitebox debt. We advanced the development of our renewable natural gas project.
We figured out how to make net zero hydrocarbon products by using a mix of renewable energy with our process. Of course, that's targeted for our net zero plant targeted for Lake Preston, South Dakota. We have $530 million of cash on the balance sheet and no material debt. That money should enable us to develop multiple plants and make the full equity investment in our Net-Zero 1 plant rather than being dependent upon a third party. We also have the cash in the balance sheet that should allow us to sponsor significant equity investments in future net zero plants, such as Net-Zero 2 or Net-Zero 3 projects. We've worked with Citigroup to figure out. They have figured out and vetted a potential bond offering that we may use to finance our debt for the Net-Zero 1 project.
That's taken a lot of work to actually work through that, and they have a really attractive solution in line. We have work to do to get ready for it still. We shut down our ethanol plant. It lost money given that the market wasn't very good, and it wasn't a strategic focus for us. We've been told by some new investors that they now understand that we aren't an ethanol company. Well, that's good. That eliminates confusion. We aren't an ethanol company. We're all about the renewable energy into energy-dense liquids, hydrocarbons, Net-Zero footprint. We developed our customer pipeline. It's grown quite a lot from last year, and it's grown even more since. Importantly, we proved that we can establish pricing and take-or-pay contracts that works for our customers and ourselves and results in meaningful take-or-pay contracts.
These take-or-pay contracts are backed by the balance sheets or letters of credit from our customers. That's a big deal and a big accomplishment. We announced our Net-Zero 1 project. This project, slated for Lake Preston, South Dakota, would produce roughly 400 million pounds per year of value-added protein-rich animal feed, roughly 30 million pounds of corn oil, 45 million gallons per year of energy-dense liquid hydrocarbons. These hydrocarbons are drop-in gasoline and jet fuel products that, when burned, have a Net-Zero greenhouse gas emission across the whole of their life cycle, measuring all the way from capturing the CO2 from the atmosphere, accounting for the farming and agriculture, accounting for all the energy sources, the transportation of the products. The hydrocarbon products produced at our plant are expected to be more than minus 70 in their carbon footprint score.
When burned as a fuel for transportation, the whole cycle would be Net-Zero according to the leading science-based life cycle model called GREET that's been developed by Argonne National Laboratory. How does it get to Net-Zero? It's all about two things. Paying attention to how things are grown. That is the growing practices such as low-till and no-till, along with precision agricultural techniques where farmers only apply the chemicals that are needed, not excess. Two, eliminating dirty electricity and fossil-based natural gas from our production processes. Net-Zero is being designed to be off the grid from dependence on fossil-based energy.
We are putting in a water treatment plant that is expected to generate enough biogas to meet the thermal demands of the plant and provide enough excess gas so we can generate about 30% of our own electricity with a combined heat and power unit. We plan on meeting the need for the other 70% of our electricity from a related wind project that we are developing with Juhl Energy. We don't want dirty electricity that's typical of the grid in this country. We don't want it. We also expect to use our green electricity to generate green hydrogen for our production processes. We haven't decided yet if we'll make excess hydrogen to take to the marketplace. Our negotiating power has strengthened as well. This means that strategics approach us differently now.
We expect that if and when we work with strategics, we'll be able to make a more balanced deal. That's a major change from our previous position when we had our hat in our hands. Yeah, several parties are in discussion with us. No, we can't give more detail at this point. What's going to happen this coming year in 2021? We expect to sign more take-or-pay customer contracts in support of Net-Zero 2 and Net-Zero 3. We already have attractive production sites chosen and optioned or under LOI. We expect to announce the specifics for these sites after we announce the next set of offtake contracts. We expect that Net-Zero 2 and Net-Zero 3 would look a lot like Net-Zero 1. We expect to start construction of our renewable natural gas project with a size of 355,000 million BTUs.
This project would take manure from more than 20,000 dairy cows and convert it to renewable natural gas. This project will cost about $75 million, and we project a return of more than 30% IRR using conservative estimates. The project is expected to come online and start generating profit in the fourth quarter of next year. In the near term, the gas will be sold to the California market. Once Net-Zero 1 starts up, we may take a portion of that gas up there to drive the carbon scores even lower, or maybe we just keep on supplying the California market. That's a future economic optimization question. In order to close the project finance deal for Net-Zero 1, we need to have the capital cost estimates to the ±10% or so level. This engineering work and design work is underway.
Our engineering partners have upwards of 50 people working on our design and capital costs. We are grateful to have the money to do it properly. The capital cost of Net-Zero 1 is currently expected to be about $650 million, inclusive of the production plants, water treatment plants, and energy complex. On a fully installed project finance basis, the project total would be roughly $800 million because of the interest during construction and the reserves and such that are required to do a debt financing.
The IRR for this $800 million project is expected to be better than about 20%. We need to get the engineering design work done and pin down the capital cost to the appropriate precision to enable the debt financing of Net-Zero 1. That's a prerequisite. We have to know what it is plus or minus 10% before we could do a debt deal.
This will take to the end of 2021 to complete and get it right. We'd expect to close a bond deal in the first half of 2022. It's possible that the capital cost of Net-Zero 1 project could go up or down, depending upon adjustments to scope of equipment cost or what we work through in the design of that plant. Well, that's what all this design work is about right now, pinning down the capital cost and the very best optimal processes that deliver the returns we want. Net-Zero 1 is expected to take about two years to build. This is normal. It's a big capital deployment. One good thing is that the engineering and design cycle for Net-Zero 2 and Net-Zero 3 will be much, much shorter. We expect that those plants will be based upon Net-Zero 1.
It shouldn't be lost on anyone that our business is significantly de-risked. We have money to execute our plans in a real sense. Yeah, it's quite a change from last year. Last year, we had to raise money to keep the lights on. Our team did well developing the business, advancing the technology. Now, if we raise more money, the purpose will be to take more of the large cash flow streams we expect from our Net-Zero projects or from an RNG project. Tomorrow, Lynn Smull and I will be doing a fireside chat with Water Tower Research, where we will be discussing project economics and financing for both Net-Zero 1 project and the RNG project. We will be answering a whole bunch of investor questions. Information on registration can be found in the investor section of our website, investors.gevo.com.
I will turn the call over to Carolyn, who will take us through the financials. Carolyn?
Thank you, Pat. Gevo reported revenue in the fourth quarter of 2020 of $0.5 million as compared to $6.9 million in the same period in 2019. During the fourth quarter of 2020, hydrocarbon revenue was $0.4 million, compared with $1.0 million in the same period in 2019. Hydrocarbon sales decreased because of the lower shipments of finished products from our demonstration plant at the South Hampton Resources Inc. facility in Silsbee, Texas. During the fourth quarter of 2020, revenue derived at the Luverne facility from ethanol sales and related products was $5,000 compared to $5.9 million during the same period in 2019. As a result of COVID-19, and in response to unfavorable commodity environment, we terminated our production of ethanol and distillers' grain back in March of 2020, which resulted in lower sales for the fourth quarter.
Cost of goods sold was $2.0 million in the fourth quarter of 2020 versus $9.4 million in the same period in 2019. Cost of goods sold included approximately $0.9 million associated with production of IBA and related products and maintenance of the Luverne facility, and approximately $1.1 million in depreciation expense. Gross loss was $1.4 million for the fourth quarter of 2020 versus $2.5 million for the fourth quarter of 2019.
Research and Development expense increased by $1.7 million during the fourth quarter of 2020 compared with the same period in 2019, due primarily to an increase in consulting and personnel expenses. Selling, General, and Administrative expense increased by $0.2 million during the fourth quarter of 2020 compared with the same period in 2019, due primarily to an increase in consulting and personnel costs, offset by a decrease in investor relations and marketing costs.
For the fourth quarter of 2020, we reported a loss from operations of $7 million, compared to $6.2 million for the same period in 2019. In the fourth quarter of 2020, cash EBITDA loss, a non-GAAP measure that is calculated by adding back depreciation and non-cash stock-based compensation to GAAP loss from operations, was $5.1 million, compared to $4.0 million in the same quarter of 2019. Interest expense for the fourth quarter of 2020 was $0.5 million, a slight decrease compared to the same period in 2019 as a result of lower amortization of original issue discounts and debt issuance costs, and the conversion of $2.0 million of 2020/2021 Notes to common stock during July of 2020. During December 2020, we converted the remaining $12.7 million of 2020/21 Notes into common stock.
For the fourth quarter of 2020, we reported a net loss of $18.1 million, or a loss of $0.15 per share based on a weighted average shares outstanding of 120,017,120. This compares to a loss of $6.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2019, or a loss of $0.50 per share based on weighted average shares outstanding of 13,659,944. During the fourth quarter of 2020, we incurred a $1.4 million non-cash loss related to the conversion of $12.7 million of 2020/2021 Notes into common stock. During the 30 months ended December 31, 2020, we recognized a non-cash loss totaling $8.6 million due to changes in the fair value of our 2020/2021 Notes embedded derivative liability, resulting from the increase in the price of our common stock prior to the conversion of the $12.7 million of the 2020/2021 Notes.
Adding back these non-cash losses resulted in a non-GAAP adjusted net loss of $8.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2020, or a non-GAAP adjusted net loss per share of $0.07 based on a weighted average shares outstanding of 120,017,120. This compares to a non-GAAP adjusted net loss of $6.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2019, or a non-GAAP adjusted net loss per share of $0.50 per share based on a weighted average shares outstanding of 13,659,944. I will turn it back over to Pat to wrap things up.
Thanks, Carolyn. Let's open up the call for questions. Operator?
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that is star one to get in the queue and ask a question. To remove yourself from the queue, press the pound or hash key. Again, star one to get in the queue. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question is from Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright. Your question, please.
Thank you. Hi, Pat, Good afternoon everyone. Appreciate you taking my question.
Hey, Amit.
Good. Thank you, Pat. I've saved some of my questions around the project for the call tomorrow. Just in terms of the timeline you've provided, one, the first half of 2022 for the financial close of Net-Zero 1. Is this sort of a typical timeline for something like this? Could this potentially be accelerated if things fall in place for you as you expect?
I would say that the critical timeline runs through getting the engineering estimates done. We ought to know what the capital cost is and what we're asking for in terms of debt support. You got to have that pinned down or you can't do a debt financing. We also have to have a bunch of the permitting stuff done and all kinds of things. That timeframe to get that stuff done, we're working on getting it done by the end of this year, and in which case then we should be able to do the bond offering in the early part of next year. Because that's talking about a year from now, or it could be less than a year from now, right? It's so far out, there's uncertainty around it, so the lawyers advise me to give it a wide range. First half of the year. Boom.
That's the answer. Do I want it sooner? Hell yeah, I want it sooner. I want it done. I'm the most impatient person on Earth when it comes to it.
Understood, Pat. Thank you for that. Then our model currently for Net-Zero 1 has some level of utilization coming online by 2024. Is that a reasonable assumption?
Amit, say that again. I missed the first part of the question.
Yeah. I was just saying our financial model right now that is published publicly, we have you doing some level of utilization from Net-Zero 1 coming online by 2024.
Yeah.
Is that still a reasonable assumption?
It is. That's the right assumption.
Okay, perfect.
Yeah. In other words, even if we finance in the first half of the year, we still plan on getting the plant online in 2024. We've obviously built ourselves some slack in there, and this is one of these things where you got to do the design right and get it right. That allows you to plan right, secure equipment properly. It could be that we could build things in modules, which shortens up the construction timelines. That's the sort of stuff we're figuring out. Yeah, we are aiming at that first part of 2024 like you have in your model.
Okay, understood. With respect to Net-Zero 2 and Net-Zero 3, you're obviously considering those options right now. Clarity on this probably comes in 2022, or could we see more clarity on progress around these efforts earlier than 2022?
I would expect that we have progress in 2021 on those things. We'll get the contract signed. We'll have the sites. I would expect to have the Net-Zero 2 site and customers announced in 2021. Do I think we'd get a Net-Zero 3 in that timeframe? I think it's pretty much probable. We all heard Tim Cesarek talk a few weeks ago in the fireside chat, and he threw out the number he could see us doing six plants in short order. That's true, but we got to go through the work and duties. I can see us having multiple plants in play at the same time. The firms we're working with on the engineering side and constructing side, they're capable of execution on that kind of scale.
The trick is you've got to get that design right because it leverages over into the Net-Zero 2 and Net-Zero 3. We can't be changing things or messing around with things. People will often ask me, "Why not just take over an ethanol plant?" Anybody know where the pipe diagrams are for that plant? It's like, we got to go learn that? Are you kidding me? Each one is individually different. What we want to do is make it as cookie-cutting as possible so we can accelerate these timelines. That's what we're shooting for, and we're pretty stubborn about it because we think it is the best way to generate the most cash for the company over the long run because we want those cash flow streams. They're worth a lot of money.
Understood. Just looking at the burn rate for 2021, what should we expect in terms of all these efforts that you're putting in place to get the permitting and engineering, et cetera, done? What should be the burn rate for 2021 that we should think about?
I think for the burn rate for Gevo, Inc. is in the $25 million-ish range, something like that. We'll have project stuff that's capitalized, and that'll show up differently as a cash number. We'll have to give guidance on that, I suppose, at some point. It's kind of your normal project stuff that's in that kind of a bucket. We're adding staff, for example, and more people to go do things. That would show up. We wind up with probably $25 million, $26 million of burn at the corporate level. That's the G&A, R&D including the engineering stuff, the actual corporate engineering. Project stuff, permitting, project-focused work, that's all going to be in a capitalization bucket for the project as a development expense.
Understood. Yep. Just one last one for me, Pat. On the renewable natural gas opportunity, the initial effort seems to be just for your upcoming facility and your own consumption, et cetera, to lower your carbon intensity. Could this develop into a larger sort of ambition for the company in terms of actual revenue scaling beyond what your initial efforts are?
That's a very interesting question, a very insightful question, actually. What's happened is that we started working on the RNG project in northwest Iowa because we were thinking about putting that RNG over to Luverne. The demand for our products outgrew the scale of Luverne, and we would've had to redo a whole bunch of permits in Minnesota and all kinds of stuff that would've dragged out our timelines. We started thinking about that greenfield plant at Net-Zero 1, and as we started thinking it through, we realized we could make Net-Zero 1 energy sufficient, generate our own biogas on-site. Well, that diminished the need for that northwest Iowa RNG. On the other hand, we had already done a whole bunch of the development work. The way we think of it is this.
In this last 18 months, we learned how to be developers for renewable natural gas. We are going in the renewable natural gas business. That's just a fact. We're going to be doing that. This 355,000 million BTUs is initially going to go to California. That's where we're going to sell it. There'll be a time in the future, once the Net-Zero plant starts up, or maybe when we start Luverne back up, or maybe when we get to our Net-Zero 2 or 3 site, we can use that natural gas there too, if we need to. It gives us optionality that I kind of like. It shouldn't be lost on anybody that we do in fact have the capability to develop projects when not everyone can. We see how to get it done and how to monetize it.
If we sell to California, which we plan on doing in the early days, good. The plant's paid back right quick. That's really attractive. That's a good thing. It's one of these very interesting games. When I think of Gevo, I think of renewable energy transformed to energy-dense liquids. That's no joke. We're wiping out the fossil-based footprint by displacing fossil-based natural gas. More of it's better. We could actually drive if we took that gas up to Net-Zero 1, we could make a large negative greenhouse gas emission liquid transportation fuel. That's kind of astounding.
All right. Understood. That's all I have. Thank you so much. I'll see you on the quarter, Gevo.
Sure.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Poe Fratt with Noble Capital Markets. Your question, please.
Yeah, good afternoon, Pat.
Hey, Poe.
Hey. If I could just get one quick one out of the way, what's your current share count right now?
I believe it's 198 million shares.
Okay, it hasn't changed much since the end of January.
No, it hasn't changed at all since the end of January.
Yeah, no, I was thinking maybe some of the warrants might have been exercised because I think you still had some warrants out there.
Right?
Yeah. You know what? The number that I have is still the same old number on my slides that show up for Carolyn.
Yeah. They're the same.
Yeah, the same.
Just one. On the RNG, Pat, you said $70 million-$75 million as far as CapEx. You're working on the financing. Have you figured out, is it 70/30 as far as debt equity? How much equity are you going to end up putting into that plant?
Okay. We're going to talk about this tomorrow at the fireside chat, but here's the preview, is we don't have to put any more cash into it. We already did the development work. In fact, we're going to get a rebate, so to speak, in that when we close that deal, we'll get money back. It's already kind of a done deal, and the financing's arranged. We'll be talking more about that tomorrow when Lynn's on here.
He's the guy who did a great job getting it all organized and getting it financed. That cash flow, we should be seeing that. It'll be meaningful cash flow by the fourth quarter. We'll start seeing some of it early next year. Construction starts, like we're going to break ground, like it's getting organized right now. Getting organized. Very soon we'll be breaking ground.
We'll do an announcement and we'll have to see what kind of ribbon-cutting ceremony and stuff like that, or a groundbreaking ceremony and things like that. Lynn's done a great job of getting it all organized. Chris Ryan has done a great job at figuring how to do development of RNG and get it done. It's good. It creates a different business opportunity for us.
Yeah, just two quick ones. Do you have an estimate on how much cash you might be able to get out of that once the financing's done? Then also the startup, is it first quarter of 2022 or fourth quarter of 2022?
Hello? Who is that?
Oh, that's Lynn. Sorry.
Oh, Lynn. It's okay. Go ahead.
Yeah. We'll start up in first quarter. The cash is a little bit back-end loaded because of the way the LCFS credit system works. We're expecting cash distributions out of the project in the order of $10 million on very conservative assumptions around carbon score and the cost to complete. We think we can do a lot better on the capital cost.
What's the range of outcomes, do you think? I know we took a really conservative approach as we did it for ourselves because we're thinking about really long term and how to use it with net zero plans. If we just sold to California and it all worked well, what's that $10 million turn into?
Well, the range is about $9 million-$16 million, depending on the carbon intensity score. The returns can vary from 30% to the high 60s, depending on those things as well as the CapEx.
Does that help you, Poe?
Yeah, no. I think you'd had like $20 million in it, or you'd had about $20 million outlays before everything.
We don't need to put any more cash into it because we've already spent about $8 million on the development, including equipment and engineering and such, and we'll pull that back out. We have zero net cash coming out off of the balance sheet to complete the construction of the RNG project.
Okay, great. Can you give me a budget for your feed work? Either a cost estimate or a budgeting on how much you're going to spend on the feed work?
For Net-Zero 1, that's $15 million.
Okay. Pat, it was helpful you gave sort of the soft cost and the hard cost. The hard cost of Net-Zero 1 are $650 million, and then the soft costs are about $150 million as it stands right now.
Right.
You need to get that cost estimate to ±10%. Are you currently at ±50%? I saw a footnote on your presentation that said it was ±50%. Can you help me reconcile that goal versus where you are now?
Yeah. Different parts of the process are at different statuses. As we started thinking about how to build out Net-Zero 1 and get ourselves off the dirty fossil footprint of energy, we, realizing that, gosh, we should throw a water treatment plant in. We got to go do that and figure that out. How do you integrate it? What's the best way to maximize the protein and oil? We've worked on a deal there with a partner we'll announce later and had to figure that out. What we do is we say things like that as plus 50%. Some parts of the process are already, they're pretty well nailed down. Other parts we're still going, is it this chunk like this, and where does it lay out, and how does it interact with the rest of it?
It's the putting of the pieces together that creates the uncertainty and to get it right. We also, this is actually the work entails, actually getting bids on equipment and figuring out the real costs. That's a non-trivial thing. This is a giant plant. That has to be done as well. It's a mixed bag is what we got here. The trick of it is that we want to pin down the scope. That's good. That's extremely helpful. We have inside our battery limits. Inside our battery limits for everybody listening means think of it as inside our fence lines, under our control, part of the plant, part of the build. Things that are outside the battery limits would be things external to us. There still might be some costs we have to pay attention to.
For instance, we'll be doing a wind farm in partnership with Juhl Energy. That's separate with different financing. Inside our battery limits, well, we got a water treatment plant, we got a protein plant, we're going to be taking out vegetable oil, large amounts of it. We want all that stuff because that offsets the acquisition cost of corn, right? It's correlated. It's an internal hedge kind of a thing. It's worth a lot of money.
We got the hydrocarbon stuff. We're partnered with Axens on much of that because they've built a whole bunch of these kind of plants where you take the petrochemical-based butylene into hydrocarbons. Well, that's real similar to what we're doing, except where we're starting with isobutanol. You got to make isobutanol and isobutylene, once you go from there, then it works. Well, great, they've done 120 of these plants before.
Sorry, 25 of these plants before. That's all good. It's all about putting all the big pieces together and figuring it out, and it just takes time, and that's where we're at. It's not a, we're at this part. It's a mixed bag. Different parts, different places we're working through.
Okay. Maybe I'll ask a cash burn question a little bit differently and just have you determined how much actual equity you're going to put into Net-Zero 1? What that figure is actually going to be? Is it still a moving target because of the capital cost estimates haven't been completely finalized?
At the CEO level, I just simplify it and say we're doing 100% of the equity at Net-Zero 1, unless someone makes us one hell of a sweet deal. In which case, we'd share that cash flow stream. Now, remember, we're greedy. We view that cash flow stream as roughly $100 million a year of EBITDA at the project level. Why would we share it? I get that people, a strategic would add value. Well, yes and no. It depends on what the deal is. I liken it like this. I live in Colorado, and I'm a baker. I'm baking a cake at high altitude. It's tricky. I got all my ingredients. I don't need extra cooks in my baking kitchen right now helping me bake.
You want to put frosting on it after the thing is baked, hey, welcome to it. We'll look at it, see what the deal is at that time. It could be that we do add additional people into the mix of equity prior to close. It could be that we do, and we're going to want to look at that very carefully. You get them in too early, then you got too many cooks in the kitchen, and that's how you ruin timelines. I like where we're at on that front. Now, Lynn, you can give a little more example of what you're thinking about and what you've modeled.
Sure. The debt work that we've done with Citi has been pretty exhaustive to confirm that we can qualify for private activity bonds issuance. That's a tax-exempt bond issuance. Those markets are very attractive for the types of projects that we're sponsoring, the Net-Zero 1. We expect to be somewhere around two-thirds leverage. At the end of the day, we're expecting that we could be putting in somewhere in the neighborhood of $250 million of equity if we invest 100% of the equity in that project. I'd also note that the returns that Pat cites are oftentimes not giving credit to a range of fees that we would not charge to the project if we're 100% equity. If we're partial equity, we'll charge for licensing fees, operations, and maintenance fees, project management, certain overhead recoveries.
If we're 100% equity consolidated, those fees only come to Gevo and add to the IRRs that are being cited.
Great. That's helpful, Lynn. That $250 million equity, that is a 2022 event, right?
Right.
Do you have an idea sort of where you think you'll end the year, 2021, from a cash perspective? You have $531 million now. Do you have an idea of sort of what you think your cash on hand or on the balance sheet will be at the end of this year?
Well, Poe, I'll just say that we're budgeting the development of Net-Zero 1 as though we're going to complete it and close financing at the end of 2021. That won't happen, but that's the way we're budgeting it, and it's including long lead equipment deposits to maintain that completion schedule that Pat cited earlier in 2024. We're going to probably have about $45 million out the door that we'll recover when we close the financing of Net-Zero 1.
Yep. Okay.
If you're doing our cash, you'd add it up and say, well, you told you it was going to be $15 million to do the feed engineering, right? You told you we'd lay out we budgeted for $45 million outlay, which we may or may not do, but that's what we budgeted for capital equipment, long lead items. We told you that it's like $25, $26 million of corporate G&A-related expenses and all the other work. That's the kind of number subtracted off of $530. That's kind of the number you'd wind up with.
That's really helpful. Pat, is it $15 million on the feed or $50? Sorry.
Fifteen.
15. One-five, right?
One-five.
15. Okay, great.
Yeah. One clarification I want to make, you asked about the phase and stuff and design. Of course, this design, when we're talking about it this way, our process is design. It's about going through the details, the mass and energy balances. These are engineering exercises to figure it out. We're optimizing the process along the way, right? We want to minimize the carbon footprints. We maximize the carbon score that we get. That's how we make the most money. In the design phase, you go through and look at every single unit operation, ask, is it the right one? Does it have the right horsepower on that engine or on that motor? Is it the right pipe size? Is it the right detail? Put it all together. You got to source the equipment and come up with it.
That's why it takes so much work. When we talk about it, we talked about it as engineers to each other here a few minutes ago, but other people listening might not grasp that, of course, we have a process designed. It's about pinning down the exact detail so we can spend money to go buy it. This stuff doesn't come off a shelf. Anyway.
Okay, great. I think, Pat, on the RNG project, you had been sort of saying that the offtake customer might be somebody who would be recognizable.
Yep
significant move. Are you prepared at this point to talk about that, or will we have to wait until the financing's finalized?
Yeah. We got to finalize that contract.
Okay.
Renewable natural gas is worth a lot of money in California right now. That gives us the confidence to just move ahead on the project anyway, and then we'll announce that customer partner when we're ready here.
Okay. Just a couple more, if you wouldn't mind. It looks like you've identified sites for Net-Zero 2 and 3 and then along the lines. One intriguing thing to me was that you added a site on your map in Florida. Can you talk about Florida from the standpoint of?
Yeah. Sure. What's happening to us is that as our demand increases, now, remember, we're dealing with people under confidentiality agreements, right? Our customers all talk to us under confidentiality agreements, and then other partners talk to us under confidentiality agreements. We're always restricted in what we can say. However, corn in the Midwest is a sustainable, low-cost way to get these carbohydrate residuals that we can turn into our hydrocarbon products, and we also have good wind resources up there. We got good biogas resources up there. It makes sense. Stuff makes sense up in the Midwest. In Florida, there's several feedstocks that have potential interest. There's molasses type things, and there's sugar residues from various types down there. People have approached us with sites, and so we're going through the work to evaluate them.
You'll see them in other places that popped up on our map, too, where same kind of thing, where people are saying, "Hey, we could supply you with carbohydrates. Would you want to build a site?" We say, "Yeah, you show me the sustainability, you show me the cost, you show me the risk associated with that acquisition of that carbohydrate source, and we'll look at it." The one in Florida has risen to the rank of we got to evaluate it, so it shows up on our map.
Okay, great. Could you help me understand the significance of the MOU that you signed with HCS and how that fits into the overall plan?
Yeah. With HCS, that's Haltermann Carless. Haltermann Carless is a specialty fuel manufacturer. We announced a deal with them where we would be licensing our technology to them for production of hydrocarbons in Speyer, Germany, and it'd be leveraging their site. We will work with them to arrange the isobutanol production in Germany or somewhere along the Rhine River, presumably, or somewhere in Europe. We still have to go do that work. You'll notice in that press release that it talked about jet fuel in Germany, okay? It talked about the size of the project. We'll co-market it to them because we're real particular about how you place the stuff in the market and hold it sustainable and all the rest. Think net zero concept in Europe. The difference in Europe is that you don't have to have the isobutanol plant next to the hydrocarbon plant.
For instance, you can float the stuff down the Rhine River. In the U.S., you can't do that, of course, because you don't get the credits for it. The EPA requires the plants to be integrated in order to get the RFS credits, the RINs. There we can do stuff like that and separate it. Maybe someday here we can separate things. There it seems to be economical and will work, and it's jet fuel aimed at Germany.
Great. You just mentioned one thing that actually I wanted to bring up. RIN prices are going through the roof, it seems like. Can you help me understand whether that impacts any of your development plans?
Impacts our development? Oh, yeah, our development plans. You mean broadly, you mean?
Yeah, plans just broadly, or does it have any impact?
Oh, got you.
on your strategic outlook? I mean.
What we do is we tend to do averages and futures types calculations when we're looking at our own economic projections. RIN price goes up, that's good for us. The way to think of our business is we win if anything green goes up in value. RINs, LCFS, tax credits, we win. That's just more margin to us, right? Oil price goes up, we win. If corn price goes up, you know what's interesting about that is protein price goes up and so does the oil price. That's one. It isn't such a clear cut. It's not a loss, and it might even be a win, depending upon exactly how it happened and under what circumstance. It's one of these very interesting dynamics that we have. We've tried to de-risk the project on all those fronts.
On the RINs, we get 1.6 x the RINs. I mean, this is, again, one of the nuances of making an energy-dense liquid. We get 1.6, ethanol gets one. Why? We're energy-dense, we get 1.6 x. That matters. When you see these RIN prices going up through the roof, now multiply by 1.6. That's what we would get credited to us. It matters.
Great. Thank you so much. Let's look forward to tomorrow's presentation.
Sure.
Thank you. I don't have any further questions in the queue. I would like to turn it back to Pat for his final remarks.
Thank you all for listening to us, and join us for the fireside chat tomorrow. We'll be asking Lynn a bunch of questions, and Shawn Severson will be moderating. I can't help myself, and I'll jump in, I know. Thank you for your support in the company. We appreciate it. We are off to a good start of this year. The things are working and making progress. It's actually such a change and a blessing from last year. Now we are driving to get this done and get this plant online, Net-Zero 1. I want Net-Zero 2 and I want Net-Zero 3 as well. I want that RNG done, and we're going to be evaluating whether to make it even bigger. That's what we're focused on. Thanks for listening today. Bye.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's program. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.