This is the last session of our two-day conference. We are with Green Plains CEO, Todd Becker. Thank you very much for coming again.
Thank you.
I guess we can go straight into the question and answer session. You know, I want to start with the near term stuff, and especially you reported almost a month ago, I believe, three or four weeks. What are we seeing with regard to ethanol margin and ethanol price and so forth?
Yeah, in a typical fashion of the U.S. ethanol industry, when we have a good thing, it likes to reverse itself quickly for a while, and then we'll get it back good again. So I think we're in the middle of the winter doldrums and building stocks, building inventories, getting ready for summer driving season, and during that time, we see a compression of margins, at least in the U.S. ethanol industry. But I think really broadly across the whole ag space, we've seen a compression. Overall, we're just kind of participating in some of that. You know, we have... What we do have is now a molecule because of what's happened, that's the cheapest molecule, really, liquid fuel on the planet today.
So when I look back in the history of the, of the ethanol industry, and I think about the times that we've been in these, in these places, what, what is similar? Cheapest molecule on the planet, cheapest octane on the planet. I think it's actually the cheapest agricultural product on the planet, quite frankly, from a, you know, weight perspective. We are competitive to the world, and if you kind of even go a little bit further out, we're competitive to be exported to Brazil from a competitive fashion at these prices.
Mm.
So if we kind of look at the curve, all of it is setting up for a very interesting March, April, when we kind of come out of these winter doldrums. You know, our view is and our desk's view is we kind of peak out mid-March, and then we start to have those draws come out with better demand. Gas demand remains strong even through the winter. Weather is fantastic, by the way, so people are just continuing to drive. We all know what it's like to fly these days.
So, you know, the winter doldrums will continue even though it doesn't seem like winter in the Midwest, the winter doldrums will continue, I think, through mid-March, and then we'll kind of get ourselves hopefully back on track by summer, by the driving season starting around April and start to see draws come out. But fundamental, fundamental structure of the market right now is has been bearish on price of ethanol, and we've seen corn kind of come off its lows a little bit from what we just saw the other day. So all that is setting up for... We've been under pressure for a little bit, really, since the last call.
Great. And I guess you mentioned demand is not actually as bad. People are still driving, and it seems to me one of the issues for the increase in inventories we've been seeing is that production has been very sustainably high since September. Obviously, we had that cold snap again in January, but absent that, which took a toll for a couple of weeks, it's been exceptionally strong. And what is driving that? Is it perhaps the low corn prices that are allowing marginal, smaller refineries, you know, plants to run harder?
We went through a period of time, as you saw, our last half of the year was stronger than the first half, as we all know. You know, we generated about $100 million in the last half of the year in EBITDA, and in those environments, we start to see every nook and cranny try to come back to the market. And we've seen some new... Well, I say old capacity, but now newer capacity try to start back up. Seems a new entrant, but a entrant, but a mild winter like this and a, like, perfect temperature, an ethanol plant can run very hard. So what we normally see is very strong run rates anyways.
So look, I think what's important is every time we bump up against that 1.1 million barrel a day run rate, it's just not possible to maintain that. We just... That's kind of max that we can go today. So when we look at it, we see gas demand at 8.5 million barrels, which is 850,000 barrels of ethanol, maybe 900. We see exports at maybe 100-150 million barrels, or 150 thousand barrels a day as well. So we're... But we're not in parity just yet. We're just at 1,060 or 1.06 million barrels per day of production, 1.08 million some days, 1.04 million some other days.
You know, we're just making a little bit too much every single day, and when you make just a little bit too much every single day, you build stocks.
Yes.
And that's kind of what's happening in ethanol today, and yet, interesting is, watch the weeks where we build in the Gulf, like along those, along the pads, along the coast. Those are all getting set up for export. So there's big growth in stocks in the export markets, but today there's also some big growth in stocks in the Argo, Chicago market, too. So it's just the perfect storm for where we're at today, but, you know, we'll see what happens when the weather warms up, cooling capacity industry, and probably doesn't sustain itself all the way through, you know, May, June, July, as the temperatures warm up.
Yeah, and, you know, that, that was actually my next topic, the export market. I mean, especially earlier in 2023, that was a very big driver of ethanol margins, in part because of Canada. Do we have-- I don't know if we have the final tally for 2023 ethanol exports in the U.S., but also, what are your expectations for 2024?
As strong or stronger. Canada continues to remain a very, very strong market. We're pricing into many markets around the world we didn't price into last year. We are $1 under gasoline today. Most people say ethanol can never go $1 under gasoline, and I would argue that I've been around long enough to see that happen, and it happened again. Right now, I think when you look at the export opportunity for 2024, the way we're priced against gasoline, we're very competitive in the world again today. We're competitive against Brazil, and again, we're so competitive against Brazil, come about midyear on the strip, we price into Brazil, and that hasn't happened for a while. So just tells you there's a lot of opportunity.
Get a little bit of a glitch in production, and all of a sudden we're back in action again. But it is the height of the winter doldrums, as we say.
So it seems you're mentioning this price competitive, competitiveness versus some other options, and, I guess, what can close the gap with gasoline prices? You know, blend rates have been over 10% for months, if not a year now, 10.5, 10.6. Can they just move a little bit higher? Is there room or are they, you know, allowing more E15, which seems to be happening, could that actually take the U.S. average towards 11% or 11.5%?
Oh, I think we're going to push towards that over the next couple of years, 11%, 11.5%. Take that on top of exports. And look, again, at $1 under gas, any kind of move on stock draws, we'll start to see that boomerang very fast and it'll start to see U.S. close that gap. If you're a blender in the United States today, or really anywhere around the world, but specifically the United States, $1 under gasoline ethanol plus a $0.40 or $0.50 RIN, you're still earning a $1.50 blend margin on that piece of the sale. So that's about $0.15 a gallon extra margin on the total gallon that you get. And when you look at all that, it's max blend time at these numbers. So we'll see how that hits.
As soon as the consumer starts to kind of get out of winter and start driving a little bit more in some of the markets that actually have winter this year, we'll start to see all that gas demand pick up as well. And that's really what closes the gap. But when we're $1 under gasoline, it's typically not a sell, it's typically a buy opportunity for ethanol, and the world knows that as well.
Since you brought up the situation, the competitiveness with Brazil price, and that's something I'm less familiar with, but how does the price discount work, and could it—how does the arbitrage close? The U.S. is a net exporter of ethanol, so perhaps there are some markets where other—you can see more demand versus Brazilian ethanol.
Yeah, we've seen demand, you know, in the traditional Brazil markets. Don't forget, when we look at kind of sugar prices as well, they've kind of hung in there in all of this, too. So you're still really looking at a market that wants to still make sugar relative to ethanol down in Brazil. So you know, white, white sugar cash markets for white sugar are very, very strong. And when that happens, it's still... You know, ethanol still gets made, but they'll still kind of err towards, towards more sugar production at a cane ethanol plant. But when you look at it, markets like from anywhere from E.U. to Southeast Asia to anywhere in the world, we're just competitive today. But even more important, again, we're competitive to export into Brazil.
When that window opened the last time, we had a... It was a really interesting margin environment time. We just got to get through kind of the next 30-60 days and-
When was that the window open last time?
It's been several years-
Yeah.
... when the Brazilian window was open for U.S. to export there, so it's been quite a while.
Okay. Perfect. So moving a little bit more to the feedstock side, you know, corn prices already had weakened, but then February, they came down another $0.30. In fact, till a few days ago, they were down $0.40-$0.45 for the month, till a short rebound that we had these days. Obviously, on our spreadsheet, that's great for your margin, but that's not always the reality that you'll pass this. You'll see this flow through your P&L immediately. When should we expect this further raw material deflation to work?
As we talked on the conference call, ethanol has gone down faster than corn.
Yeah.
At $1 under gasoline, corn goes down $0.40 . You know, ethanol has gone down, you know, faster than that. So, the margin hasn't expanded with the corn break. Then the corn has come up. Once we broke $4 in corn recently, you know, it went down into $3, mid-$3.90s. We have bounced back now to $4.20. So in the last several days, maybe over the last week, we've rallied the corn market $0.25 , and ethanol has continued to lose steam against that. So while we broke it, it's come back and, and that's really driven, I think, by the record. I mean, we're a max speculative short from the funds in the agricultural markets. As you come into summer season, I don't think they want to stay completely max short.
Although it's been the right trade, it probably still is the right trade. But I think what they'll do is they'll start to give the farmer the opportunity, because I think the farmer is max long against that. You know, the farmer in both U.S. and anywhere around the world, and corn has a lot of corn stocks to sell. So I don't know that rallies will be sustainable. They're probably more short-lived as the funds transfer their short into the farmer selling into it, and the farmer is going to get a chance to the U.S. producer is going to get a chance to maybe sell some of the corn at a bit of a higher price here. It's just a typical transfer of ownership.
As I always say, the farmer stops the rally in corn, and China stops the break. That's kind of... But China is not there, or wasn't there to stop the break this time. So it's really up to the farmer now if we want to stop the rally. As I said, I don't know, a couple of months ago, every single agricultural product needed to be sold. There's nothing bullish in agriculture today on the crop side. There's so much of everything in the world. And that's okay, but the problem is the products on the other side of all of these businesses that use agricultural raw materials are weak as well.
Yeah. Yeah, perfect. Moving to a little bit, the bigger picture theme and your transformation. One of the main things is obviously you're trying to make more high-protein meal, and it seems there that the ramp-up has been a little bit slower, perhaps on production, probably on sales, when we look at what we're discussing, say, 12 months ago. Why has this happened, and what kind of played a little bit different versus your expectations, at least in 2023?
Yeah, I mean, we have five plants running. We have Tharaldson JV literally ramping up as we speak. We've turned on the systems. We're making—we're starting to turn on the corn oil system. It's just a gradual ramp-up, so that's happening. You know, what we've seen is, you know, part of it's problem of permitting, part of it, part of it's a little bit of cost, but where we're at today, just on what we're running today, is 850-950 tons a day, which gets you to about 330,000 tons just from our system. Tharaldson brings on another 100,000 tons.
That's 430,000 tons, and that's at our traditional 3.5 yield per bushel of corn, which we—that was—everything was outlined on that, a little bit less than that. So where we'll now see a bit more of a ramp-up is we're starting to get. Two of our plants are consistently running over 4 lbs per bushel, and that's just, that's just gravy. It just gives U.S., you know, it's, it's a fantastic use of our, our efficiency of our capital that we've spent. So that's happening as we speak, and on top of that, you know, we'll talk about 60% protein in a second. But, you know, yeah, it's a little bit slower. You know, we thought we'd have a permit in different places. We don't. We have—we do have equipment bought.
I think while what it's given U.S. the opportunity to do is look at the tech the first-generation technology that we've put in place, and we have improvements ready to go. CapEx is capital expense with any business, no matter what project you are. Especially in agriculture, you want to build anything, it's more expensive, takes longer, and labor is extremely difficult, and with higher interest rates, everything just got more expensive. So what we built in, you know, the middle of Nebraska for $55 million or $60 million, to replace that same asset today, literally carbon copy, it's probably $72 million-$78 million today just on inflation alone. It has not subsided in construction. Cost of construction, labor, timing, ability to procure, and just overall cost. Even though we've seen steel come down, that has not translated into cheaper construction costs.
In fact, it's more expensive, and right now, gear, electrical gear is still out 84 weeks. So if you want to order... If anybody, it doesn't matter, just Green Plains, but if you wanna, if you wanna build something, and you need, you need any type of gear from a Siemens or anybody like that, it's 84 weeks to get gear. That's just unheard. It used to be 30 weeks, and so that, that also holds things back as well.
Yeah.
So you gotta decide what cycle will you be in in 84 weeks when your gear shows up, 'cause it takes you six weeks to put it in as well. So all of those things have, have come into play. We still want to build another system within our system of plants or with a partner. We're looking to do that. Getting permits are, you know, always a challenge. We're looking at opportunities to deploy this last bit of capital, and then we move into other areas that... You know, we're competing for capital. It's not infinite on our balance sheet. So we have a very hard competition for capital between protein, oil, sugar, and decarbonization. Decarbonization is funded, so we don't really have to worry about there.
But we're also have some really big events coming also in, in the dextrose side as well, which I'm sure we'll get into, but, you know, yeah, we're--we're definitely behind. But the products, you know, where we'll make it up a little bit is in yield, and where we'll make it up a little bit is, is as, as we move and commercialize into, into higher proteins.
Sure. And yeah, with regard to that commercialization, when you... I'm sure there were internal targets that obviously we don't get to see every day, but you, when you-- we see at the 2023 volumes sold, were they in line with what you expected? Did they trail these volumes, and how do you see things playing out in-
So they're a little bit lower because of our own internal production problems we had in the first half of the year. Running at 95% capacity at our plants in the last half of the year helped U.S. catch up a little bit, but we didn't hit the targets we wanted to, mainly because of some of the turnarounds, longer turnarounds we had at our plants, and then the one plant Wood River that was shut down for almost a whole quarter or so. So that hurt our targets. Everything is running today. All five protein systems are running. There's one coming out. All of our plants are running today. So when we look at that, we're optimistic in 2024 that those targets will come back into play, and we're also getting better yields as well, so we're starting to see that.
So yeah, I mean, we would like to make more last year. We'd like to make more last quarter. But, you know, these are, they're sophisticated machines, but, you know, generally speaking, we are, we are getting more and more out of them every day.
Okay, perfect. Yeah, moving into dextrose. So I think the startup of Shenandoah is in Q1, right? Which we're already two-thirds in.
Yeah.
So, one can tell U.S. with regards to-
What we said is we're gonna ship product. We believe we'll have our first product ready to ship in the first half of April.
Okay.
We're starting to check out systems now. Our gear is here. Actually, it's in, it's installed, it's ready to go.
Mechanically complete?
Just about.
Okay.
We have a little bit of piping left. So what happened is, in the middle of winter, and it got cold in Iowa, all of our pipers, pipefitters, went south, and they never came back. So it's like, it's when you're in a construction in the middle of winter and it gets really, really cold, you lose them. So we had to bring in a whole another crew. It delayed U.S. a little bit, but we caught up. We paid to catch up, but we caught up, and we're just about done. That's really the last bit of it. Got our load outs to do, but other than that, this will be a slow ramp-up, though. I mean, we're not gonna ramp. We can't turn it all on at once.
You know, we gotta, we gotta make sure the wastewater is correct, everything's balanced. It'll be a slow ramp-up through the year.
Right.
But I think the key component will be shipping that first load, and the market will know that we're here. And the market actually is getting excited about it. We're getting calls from people for 2025 and 2026 now to say, "We know you're starting up soon. Now we want to talk to you." So we are extremely optimistic about the dextrose opportunity. When you look at all of the margins that have degraded over this last year, whether it's soy, RD, ethanol even, whether it's, you know, any of these other businesses that we've seen margins degrade, the one thing we haven't seen margins degrade in is a wet mill and dextrose.
We're really excited that we get to bring into a market like that, that is so, it's so steady because there's not... That's a moat. A true moat has been a wet mill. You can't just go out and build a wet mill. Number one, you can't get the power, you can't get the water, wastewater, you can't get any of that. So they have a true moat. We're gonna break through that a little bit with our dextrose product because nobody's ever done that before. But we have to, we have got to start thinking about where number two is gonna be, 'cause the demand, by far, is absolutely there for everything we're gonna make, and, and even if we bring on another one, the demand will be there as well.
And what's great is this is the first time in Green Plains' history where we get to demand a bilateral contract. Most of the people that we buy from, a lot of our materials, make them in a fermenter. So if you want U.S. to buy your product, you're gonna buy our dextrose to be made in that fermenter or something else that you do. So we're demanding bilateral agreements on everything we buy from companies that already use dextrose, on top of food companies on top of candy companies, on top of other types of industrial uses. You know, building materials actually are a lot of that's made in fermentation. And so, you know, we're talking to those type of companies as well.
That is, when we think about earnings, and we think about what we're doing, protein, oil, and carbon, that would give U.S. steady, recurring, predictable, non-volatile cash flows. I mean, there's gonna be some movement. We know that oil prices have come down. We know that protein prices have contracted a little bit, and that's because of the avalanche coming from soy crush. But generally speaking, the margin, we still have good margins there. We know carbon's coming on. That's all, that's all, you can use that to value the company, where we believe we get market cap, real true market cap, is the disruptive nature of our dextrose business.
Just to understand a little bit better, what we should expect for 2024. So you said dextrose will be a little bit of a slow ramp-up.
We didn't put much in dextrose for 2024-
Okay
... in our numbers.
Like, essentially, how long will it take, you know, first shipment mid April, how long does it take you for you to reach 100% capacity?
It'll take all year to reach 100%.
All year. Okay.
Yeah.
And, uh-
As we ramp, yeah.
You have to check every single system. How simple or I guess, the exact opposite, can a dextrose system ramp-up be? Is it the norm that companies would find issues or, you know-
Well-
... it takes time, but it's going to be straightforward then?
This is serial number one.
Yeah.
We think we've-- You know, you always are optimistic that you've engineered everything that you need to engineer. The piping, the piping runs, the saccharification tanks, all the things that we've done are actually-- They all operate every day in other industries. They all operate in the wet milling space today. We've just designed it, patented it, put the IP around wet, well, dry grind, what we do in an ethanol plant. So none of this is a new... There's nothing been invented. There's not like some new catalyst that we need to figure out, will it work or will it not work? Everything that we're starting up in dextrose, we're gonna say the whole year, excuse me, we're gonna say the whole year, because we don't know. I mean, it could be tomorrow.
I mean, we're not. Well, we know we're only gonna run 50% for a little while just to get used to the systems. But after that, well, it's just a matter of a slow ramp from there. But we are very optimistic because we have a team that we have built, and they're all wet millers. They came to U.S. from all the big wet milling companies, which I've mentioned in the past. They came, and they're either in Shenandoah, they're in Cedar Rapids, they're in Omaha, all on the same path of a disruption that we think we can do, and they all are very...
I ask them all the time: "Is this gonna work?" "It's gonna work." I say, "Okay." I ask the next guy: "Is this gonna work?" "Absolutely, gonna work." So I have great confidence, but, you know, you don't know what you don't know when you turn something on like this. The great thing is, again, it's not some catalyst that we have to scale up in a fermenter that doesn't scale. This is just all very almost off the shelf, except the fact that it's been designed very specifically, and some things have been modified. There's a lot of new IP around it, a lot of patents around it, that we think we're in a really great place.
Perfect. And I'm sure investors will try to focus more on to, you know, in this space, and, it's something that, probably people don't know as well. So, you've mentioned the wet mills, but generally, who would you say are your key competitors from dextrose?
Yeah.
Who are the main producers in this market?
ADM, Cargill, the old Tate & Lyle, Primient, and Ingredion.
The standard wet mill operators?
Standard wet mill operator. Well, they do a lot of other stuff, but they also have big wet mill-
Yes
... operations.
Can you get dextrose or, I guess, ultra-clean sugar from any other way?
No. See, that's the great thing about this is we have up to a 40% reduction in our carbon score versus a traditional wet mill. So, you know, while it, we may not get a premium for it, we get market share. So if you're a traditional consumer products company who has... No matter what you think of ESG these days or what do you think about any of that, they still have internal targets they have to meet for decarbonization. They can meet some of those by buying our clean sugar, which is a lower carbon dextrose. We can make it competitively in cost. We strongly believe that, possibly even cheaper, which that's how it was designed. So we think from that standpoint, we'll be very competitive.
It adds a significant bigger margin than we could ever earn making all of our products combined, which is nice. So, and for every pound or gallon of dextrose we make, we make less ethanol every day, so we're a little bit less on the volatility of that. But generally speaking, if you look at the results from those groups and those divisions or those companies, they are not going down, and at least in the wet corn product side. And so, we're trying to dissect it, where they're making all their money because we think that we can be very disruptive. They know we're coming. But even more importantly, that really, the demand is there. So, like, we're not gonna disrupt the margin structure. The customers know we're coming.
I mean, I'm talking like major consumer products companies all the way to major, major industrial chemical companies operating today. None of the new synthetic biology, yeah, that'll come as well, but, but all the people today that buy it today, we believe we have a chance to get into many of those different aspects of their production.
Yeah, and last question here before we shift to carbon capture. So, I think Shenandoah has capacity of around 80 million gal of ethanol per year. How does the ramp of dextrose in 2024 impact this capacity, and how effectively can you swing from one product to the other after you reach full production?
Well, hopefully, we never have to swing back away from dextrose because the margin will never, in our view, will never be as weak or never be below an ethanol margin. I mean, maybe in a month or two here and there, but, when you take a look at what we're building, when we're gonna have about 250 million lbs of capacity, 260 million lbs of capacity to sell, whether it's commercial or dry, you can, however you want to do your math, but, that is about 30% of the grind in Shenandoah. So Shenandoah is an 80 million gal plant. Figure about 25 or 30 million gal of that is gonna get converted.
So we'll have some back-end opportunities to actually we could bring that gallons back if we put some more grind in. So there's a way to actually lift that plant back up, kind of post bringing sugar back. We're not gonna focus on that yet. So we'll probably take about a third of that plant down. And, and you could actually, you could toggle back and forth, but once we're making sugar, we're making sugar. Because we have customers that we're gonna have a single plant. They're gonna want our sugar every day. So I wouldn't imagine that in any environment that I can imagine, for any extended period of time, sugar will be worse margin than, than. And all combined, and don't forget, we still make all the protein and all the oil.
Yeah. So shifting gears to carbon capture. In your earnings call, you mentioned that the, I believe, three Nebraska plants that will be on the, on an undisclosed, let's say, pipeline, can bring $100 million of income per year. Now, initially, I thought that sounded high, but then I crunched the numbers, and it seems possible, depending on 45Z or 45Q.
Yeah.
Can we discuss a little bit the numbers on how do you get to this $100 million?
I'll give you an example of how 45Z works in a 120 million gal ethanol plant.
Yeah.
How about that? So, if a plant has a carbon score of 55, like a traditional plant, maybe in Nebraska. Well, I'll even make it easier. It's 50 carbon score today. You can't realize any value. When you capture the carbon, you reduce your score by 30 points. use that as an example. That is, and then 45Z is $0.02 per gallon per point of reduction. So 30 points is $0.60 a gallon. $0.60 a gallon on a 120 million gal ethanol plant is what? It's $72 million.
Yeah.
That's just the 45Z credit. $72 million, we emit about 300,000, 300, call it 350,000 tons of carbon. That's $200 a ton of carbon revenue-
Yeah
... without LCFS or a carbon credit, which is about another 50. So that's $250 a ton, and then you got to pay a transport fee to get it to where it's gonna go. So net, it's probably gonna still be in that range of, you know, $50 million-$60 million, and take that 2x , which is our 2.5, really, 'cause Shenandoah—'cause York is not, York is still a 45Q plant. It adds up to about $110 million a year net, $110 million-$115 million in net, just by the math of the government program.
Yeah, and this is kind of exactly the math I did. It's nice. You mentioned on a per ton of carbon basis, it would be over $200. I would say, obviously, 45Q is $85, plus, you also have to... Yeah, actually, it would be $85, so clearly less than half the income there. In this case, why would York remain on 45Q and not-
They have a higher carbon CI score to start.
So you wouldn't go on-
You have to assess that 30 drop in carbon.
Yeah.
Would you make more money on Q or Z?
Okay.
So while we can make an investment in York called low energy distillation, which is what we've done in our other plants, and we can get that plant over maybe by the, after about a year, get it equalized with the opportunity, and then it gives U.S. a greater opportunity as well with the York plant. But York just has a, it's an older plant, less efficient, has a much higher CI starting point, so it's actually doesn't. There's no benefit to earn the 45Z greater than the 45Q.
I could ask a lot of follow-ups here-
Yeah.
But, we only have a minute and a half, and I do wanna ask one last one on the strategic review. Because last year, sitting here, I think there was an activist already had approached you, and the idea was that, you know, if you were to receive an offer, you would consider it, as you said, we are all shareholders. So this time, what is different, you know, in the review you announced?
Yeah, I mean, I think we have a continuing dialogue with the our, the activist that's been in our story. You know, I think we came to a conclusion that, you know, conducting a strategic review is not a bad thing. You know, we'll look at all... But nobody wants to sell the c-- If we were gonna sell the company, nobody wants to sell the company too cheap. We all agree with that. And where the stock has gone, you know, maybe it, maybe it's right, the wrong time. But relative to that, there's a lot of other opportunities, whether it's in continued look at joint ventures, partnerships, acquisitions, divestitures. There's a lot going on in our space. There's a lot of opportunities.
We have such high-quality cash flows coming, not reflected in the value of our stock today. To replace our stock today would be easily [30... To replace everything we've built, including the assets we have, would be about $35 a share. That's about replacement. Book value is lower than that, but it's $2 a gallon for every ethanol gallon, plus what we put in protein, plus what we're putting in carbon, not even including the quality of our carbon cash flows that are coming in 2025. So, you know, it, you know, it's a, it's a, it's over the next year. You know, we're gonna... We've agreed that, you know, we're gonna look at this. They're gonna... You can read what we've settled on.
They're gonna go through the next proxy season, and hopefully sometime in between there, we can come to a conclusion that makes sense. Look, nobody's going to sell this company too cheap. It's why would we give this away? There's no reason to do that. And whether it's the right time or wrong time, you know, it's... And it's also not necessarily for sale. I mean, it's also like, what else could we do with this? Should we, you know, should we make this a bigger platform with, with something else? Should we combine opportunities? There's lots of things to do with what we do. We make great low carbon raw materials. We make a great protein, 50 Pro. 60 Pro is an ingredient. It's not just a commodity. It is an, it's an absolute product: nutritional quality, digestibility, high opportunity.
We know we have our low, low-carbon oils, and on top of that, once we prove out, we have sugar. I think that's market cap, and then we start to bring in $100 million a year of carbon earnings. I mean, that's just on paper. You, now you've done the work, you can see that that's just... As soon as it turns on, we start earning the 45Z through 2027. All of a sudden, we have, we have a really interesting opportunity, and so we're gonna explore some opportunities, and what comes out of it, nobody really knows, nor are we gonna say much more about that anyway. So we're just gonna see where it leads.
Okay, perfect. I think we're at the end of the session, so thank you very much, Todd, and thank you everyone for coming to our conference.
Thank you. Appreciate it.