Greetings and welcome to the REX American Resources Fiscal 2021 Third Quarter Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press one followed by four on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Doug Bruggeman, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for joining REX American Resources fiscal 2021 third quarter conference call. We'll get to our presentation and comments momentarily as well as your question and answer session, but first I'll review the safe harbor disclosure. In addition to historical facts or statements of current conditions, today's conference call contains forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements reflect the company's current expectations and beliefs, but are not guarantees of future performance. As such, actual results may vary materially from expectations. The risks and uncertainties associated with forward-looking statements are described in today's news announcement and in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the company's reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q. REX American Resources assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements.
Joining me on the call today are Stuart Rose, Executive Chairman of the Board, and Zafar Rizvi, Chief Executive Officer. I will first review our financial performance and then turn the call over to Stuart for his comments. REX is very pleased to report on our strong third quarter results. As you will note in the press release, we have now discontinued the refined coal operations as we are no longer able to earn tax credits beginning on November 18, 2021 and have classified it as discontinued operations. We now have just one reportable segment of ethanol and byproducts. Sales for the quarter increased by 63% as we experienced higher pricing for ethanol, distillers grains, and corn oil. Ethanol sales for the quarter were based upon 69 million gallons this year versus 74.6 million last year.
The reduced gallons were primarily due to limited corn supply at the beginning of the quarter, which abated once the current year corn harvest began. We report a gross profit of $25.2 million from continuing operations versus a gross profit of $18.9 million in the prior year. For the current year quarter, improved selling prices were offset somewhat by higher corn and natural gas pricing. Ethanol pricing improved by 76%, dried distillers grains improved by 43%, and corn oil pricing improved by 146% for this year's quarter over the prior year quarter. Corn cost increased by 97%, and natural gas pricing increased by 119% for this year's quarter compared to the prior year. SG&A increased for the third quarter to $6.3 million from $4.3 million in the prior year.
This primarily represents increased incentive compensation based upon higher earnings in the current year and increased railcar lease costs. We had income of $349,000 from our unconsolidated equity investment in this year's third quarter versus income of $1.2 million in the prior year. Interest and another income decreased to approximately $35,000 versus $537,000 in the prior year, primarily reflecting the lower interest rate environment. As mentioned above, since the refined coal operation is now classified as discontinued operations, its results and historical results are now reflected on one line on the income statement, including the tax benefits from this business. We reported $2 million of net income reportable to REX shareholders from discontinued operations for the third quarter.
This also resulted in us reporting a tax provision of $4.3 million for the third quarter of this year versus a provision of $5 million in the prior year from our continuing operations. These factors led to net income attributable to REX shareholders from continuing operations of $13.3 million for this year's third quarter versus $9 million in the prior year, a 47% improvement. Our net income per share from continuing operations attributable to REX shareholders was $2.23 for this year versus $1.47 in the prior year. Total net income per share attributable to REX shareholders, including the discontinued operations, was $2.56 for the quarter versus $1.44 in the prior year. Stuart, I'll now turn the call over to you.
Doug, is Stuart there still?
Zafar, why don't you go ahead.
Sorry, I'm on now. Going forward, we're currently running at a significantly higher rate of earnings per share in the quarter than the quarter that we currently reported. Crush spreads have risen greatly, even with higher input prices of corn and natural gas. Zafar Rizvi will discuss this later in his section. Refined coal operations, as Doug said, ended in the middle of November. After tax, it was profitable all the way up to the end. Tax credits that we have not used yet will carry forward for up to 20 years, will help our cash flow significantly over the next few years, assuming we continue to make good earnings. The sequestration project is moving forward, carbon sequestration.
Zafar Rizvi, again, will discuss that in his section. Cash balance right now has risen to $219 million, up significantly from year-end of $108.7 million. We currently, based on current operations, we again expect that to rise over this quarter. Uses include buybacks. We bought back almost 67,000 shares in the quarter. We're working on our carbon capture project, which Zafar will talk about. We continue to look for top quality ethanol plants. We've tried, but we've nothing that's imminent at this time. We know of nothing that's top quality that is up for sale at a price we would consider buying it for. We are open to considering other alternative energy projects and carbon capture opportunities.
We'll see what happens in those areas. Again, our cash balance, as you can see on the balance sheet, $219 million. Zafar will now discuss the operations.
Thank you, Stuart. Good morning, everyone. As I mentioned in our previous quarterly calls, the operating environment in 2021 improved in the first and second quarter. We saw a decline in the crush margin in the beginning of the third quarter due to several factors. The operating environment began to change. As an early harvest resulted in an increase in the availability of the corn, favorable ethanol and corn oil prices helped to increase the crush margin. Due to availability of corn, we were able to increase the production at our plants, which has resulted in a very profitable quarter, as Doug and Stuart mentioned earlier. We continue to see favorable trends, as Stuart just mentioned, in crush margin, which could result into another profitable quarter.
Both of our majority-owned plants currently are producing at near capacity, although logistic problems are continued to be very challenging and are beginning to get worse due to slowdown of the railroad and availability of DDG containers and trucks. We expect this trend may continue into the first quarter of next year or maybe longer, which could adversely affect production and net income. Let me give you a little bit of progress of our carbon sequestration project. We are, as you know, working with the University of Illinois to drill a carbon sequestration well. We have received the permit from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to drill a test well. The site for drilling has been prepared. Rigs and other materials and equipment have arrived at the site. We expect drilling will start today.
We hope to convert the test well into Class VI well or a monitoring well. The first stage of preparing the Class VI permit application has been using existing information and the USEPA has been notified. The completion of the application process will continue as we begin to receive more information after the test well is completed in January 2022. It will require another several weeks of testing extensive modeling and computer simulation to predict the behavior of CO2 when it's injected. It is a very slow process. This simulation model will determine how much CO2 can be injected at the location, at what rate, and its eventual distribution in the subsurface area. 2D seismic processing is just finished and currently preliminary reports look good at the proposed site.
The process of 3D testing has started. Permitting for 3D usually takes more time than 2Ds as there is more land involved. The 3D require us to enter in the fields and run linear grids across the property after receiving permission from the landowners. A field study of the capture of CO2 and the design of the facilities are underway. The design of the capture CO2 facility is expected to be completed soon. As I have mentioned in the previous calls, this project is still at a very preliminary stage, and we cannot predict yet that we will be successful. In summary, we are pleased to announce once again a very profitable quarter and progress with our carbon sequestration project. We are very appreciative and thankful for the hard work of our colleagues to achieve these results.
I'll give the floor back to Stuart Rose for additional comments. Thanks, Stuart.
Thank you, thanks, Zafar. In conclusion, we had a very good quarter, as we both mentioned. We're in the midst of an even better quarter, a significantly better quarter as crush spreads have risen. We have continued to outperform the industry significantly. We have good plants, good locations, and as Zafar mentioned, we believe we have the best people in the industry and the most capable people in the industry. That's really what sets us apart from what the average plant is currently doing. I'll now leave the floor open to qu estions.
Thank you, If you will like to register a question, please press the one followed by the four on your telephone. Yow will hear a three tone prompt to acknowledge your request. If your question has been answered and you will like to withdraw your registration, please press the one followed by the three. One moment please for the first question.
Our first question comes from the line of Jordan Levy with Truist Securities.
Good evening. Thank you very much.
Please proceed.
Morning, Stuart, Zafar, Doug. I'm curious-
Hi, Jordan.
Hey, thanks for all the commentary in this quarter. I wanted to start out on more of a macro front and see if I could get your thoughts on the activity we've seen as it relates to the significant move higher in ethanol prices we've seen recently, and especially relative to gasoline prices that have come down more in the last couple weeks. You know, what do you think is really driving this dynamic right now? Then going forward, how do you see crush margins set up heading into 2022?
Zafar?
I think that there is several factors, which we see that originally the price of ethanol was going up. The most important is I think the factor was involved in logistics. There's a lot of ethanol was not able to reach to East, and then also in the Chicago market. Due to transportation and logistics problems, and demand was still there, and supply was not able to reach at the location where the people need it most. That's helped to increase the ethanol price. As you have seen that yesterday and today, it's also little bit ethanol price dropped since that time. Logistics problems, as I've mentioned, is still really a continuously problem, happening.
Due to that reason, just today's report shows that production has dropped, but stock is still high and because a lot of people were not able to ship their rail cars or other by transportation, that was causing the price of ethanol was also going up. I think as far as I'm concerned looking at 2022, I think, as you know, we are in a commodity market, and previously I mentioned in my call that we were beginning, you know, to see decline in the crush margin at the call for the third quarter. The things changed so rapidly, and you can see that we end up in a much better ethanol profit margin for the third quarter than we anticipated.
It's very hard to say really what happened in 2020 and going forward. It depends on several factors, including the COVID supply and demand and ethanol and corn pricing and then supply of, you know, blending credit and all those things. It's very hard to predict anything on commodity market.
One other thing I wanna add, Jordan, is our people have done really well in getting the goods out. We're one of the few companies that actually concentrates on ethanol and not this other stuff that other people are looking at. Because of that, I think our eye is on the ball for these type of times, and Zafar especially. I mean, he works really hard, and our people work really hard at delivering, which right now is a big part of the whole ethanol business. We're able to separate ourselves during these times by just being on the ball by concentrating on the main product.
Absolutely. Appreciate that color, and certainly shows in your results. Maybe just a quick follow-up on the carbon capture side of things. Don't wanna get too far ahead of it knowing, you know, where this project is, but just wanna step back and think big picture, and get your thoughts on, you know, assuming this all goes in the direction that you want it to go in, what is a larger scale sort of investment or a larger scale business line than carbon capture look like to you all?
Zafar?
Yeah. I think the project which we have starting at the One Earth Energy, we estimate close to $35 million-$50 million will cost probably for One Earth Energy is close to that number. As our ultimate goal is to have this area which have a hub for carbon sequestration, and we can bring from other people carbon also for you know for sequestration. It all depends really that how this test well will be able to define that how much carbon sequestration we can do in that particular area which we are located. It looks very promising, and we have great results at this time. I think once the well is start digging, and that will define exactly how much more carbon we can bring in that area.
Primarily somewhere $35 million-$50 million. Then if this is successful, we will probably spend more money to have more wells around on that area. We have plenty land at this time, and we are also trying to get more subsurface area options to confirm, you know, use that land.
Jordan, taking the optimistic case on this, which I want you to understand it's the optimistic case. We have $219 million in cash right now. Our earnings are looking good this quarter. The cash and it generates a significant cash flow, especially because we have tax credits. There's the potential. Again, I'm taking the optimistic case. To store if everything went perfect and we're able to get the land and get the approvals. There's a lot of ifs in there, but there's a potential to store a couple million up to 2 million tons a year of CO2 in the ground, that would be our ultimate goal if everything works right.
Keeping going on the optimistic case, in the bill right now on the House side that just passed, they're talking $80 a ton. So I don't need, and so far we've gone over. There'll be significant more if we're taking other people in, there'll be significantly more expense, but we have the cash flow for it, but you can figure out the numbers at $80 a ton. We're actually able to do 2 million tons in the ground. A million ifs in this. We're not the type of company that blows our horn and says, "This will happen," but we are working really hard to try and make it happen." That's our goals.
I think I will add to that. We also have no debt. We have $200 million cash and no debt. I think the... Yeah. Go ahead, Stuart.
I was gonna say the $200 million is on a consolidated basis, but virtually all of that is available for this project.
Right.
That's great insight. I appreciate the comments, guys, and looking forward to hearing more as this moves along.
Our next question comes from the line of Graham Price with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.
Hi, good. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one I had was on M&A. In your prepared remarks, you mentioned that you could potentially consider other types of alternative energy projects or assets. Just wanted to, you know, get a little more detail on what that could look like.
Well, there's so many things in this House bill that related to carbon capture. For example, they're talking a large number if you can pull carbon out of the air. No one has been able to do that. If you can pull carbon out of the air, you're still gonna need a place to put the carbon. There's just a small example of what could be and what could be done. There's people in the industry, and we look at them doing other things that may be successful, may not be successful. They're not currently making money, but they plan to make money. If they do make money in the industry, we could license their product. They're anxious to license their product.
There's things out there, many things that are potential for us, but to us, the biggest potential and the biggest and we're already our ethanol plant carbon is already considered the cleanest CO2 coming from a plant. It's sitting right in our backyard at one of our plants. That's what we're working towards. That's the biggest thing we're working towards.
Got it. Understood. For my follow-up, I guess now that we're in December, it's pretty safe to say that the EPA's RVO targets won't be coming out here until after the end of the year. Given kind of such a strange situation, what are your views on the legal status of RINs for 2021?
Zafar?
I think as you know that they extended the test, the last test day, so they extended 2020 and 2021 to the compliance year. I think as you can see that from last few days, RINs price continued to drop, and it's now traded yesterday $1.07, $1.08. It's really hard to say what the EPA is going to do, but at least they are not giving more exemptions. They may have extended. I'd rather they let them extend it than to give them exemption. That's it. I really don't know what else I think I can add to it.
Got it. Understood. That's it for me. Thank you for taking my questions.
Thank you.
Any other questions? If there's no other questions, I thank you. Oh, here's another. Go ahead. Any other questions?
Nope. Pardon me, sir. We have no further questions at this time.
Okay. Well, we thank everyone for listening to our call, and we'll look forward to the call actually at the end of the fiscal year. Thank you so much. Bye.
Thanks, everybody.