Greetings, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the REX American Resources Fiscal 2023 First Quarter Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we'll conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press the one followed by the four on your telephone. If at any time during the conference you need to reach an operator, please press star zero. Now I'd 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 2023 first 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 risks 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 the forward-looking statements are described in today's news announcement and in the company's filing 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.
I have joining me on the call today, Stuart Rose, Executive Chairman of the Board, and Zafar Rizvi, Chief Executive Officer. Sales for the first quarter increased by 9.5%, as we experienced higher volume for ethanol, dried distillers grains, and corn oil. Ethanol sales for the quarter were based upon 71.5 million gallons this year, versus 64.5 million last year. Higher volumes were partially offset by lower ethanol selling prices, as the price per gallon went from $2.28 - $2.21. We report a gross profit of $15 million this year versus a gross profit of $11.9 million in the prior year. Meanwhile, the SG&A increased for the first quarter from $5.2 million - $10.6 million.
There was a trade-off between these two line items between the years, as we currently classify freight costs we pay to an outside vendor as SG&A expense. We incurred charges of $5.1 million for that this year. In the prior year, more contracts called for the buyer to pay these fees, and it was netted out of the ethanol price. We had income of $1.5 million from our unconsolidated equity investment in this year's first quarter versus $2 million in the prior year. We reported interest and other income of $2.8 million versus $174,000 in the prior year, as we benefited from higher interest rates on our cash and short-term investments. We reported a tax provision of $2 million this year versus a provision of $1.8 million in the prior year.
This led to net income attributable to REX shareholders of $5.2 million for both this year and the prior year first quarter. Net income per share attributable to REX shareholders was $0.30 for this year versus $0.29 in the prior year. Stuart, I now turn the call over to you.
Thank you, Doug. Going forward, business improved at the end of the quarter and continues to improve. Currently, we're running at a rate of earnings per share that is higher than the first quarter, we hope that trend continues. It's been a great improvement over the beginning of the first quarter. We have $270 million in consolidated cash and short-term investments. Our plans with that cash. First of all, our cash flow is a little. We report a tax rate higher, we actually report a tax rate higher than our, than what we pay due to tax credits that we've carried forward.
Our cash flow continues to improve both by earnings and by a lower rate than the stated rate on the GAAP earnings per share. In terms of going forward, as Doug mentioned, we're benefiting right now from higher interest rates. We have the $270 million earning, significantly more than previously, as you can see in the first quarter. We're also working hard, which Zafar will talk about, on carbon capture, both at our One Earth plant and what he has signed up or what our company has signed up with Summit. There's no guarantees. We are moving forward on this and have great hopes that it will be a great contributor to our company in the future.
We also continue to have our buyback plan in place. We use this on dips, and it's been something that's helped stabilize the stock a little bit, I believe, when the stock has dropped. The last thing, we continue to look for opportunities, not just in ethanol, but in carbon capture, and we have nothing other than what Zafar is gonna talk about going on right now. There could be there's always a chance that something will come along, and we do have the cash right now to take advantage of it should we see it. I'll now turn the call over to Zafar Rizvi, our Chief Executive Officer.
Thank you, Stuart. Good morning, everyone. As I mentioned in our previous call, at the early stage of the quarter, we were facing challenging operating environment. Later in the quarter, we saw improvements, which resulted in a profitable first quarter. On the other hand, drought has created a strong corn basis, particularly at the Marion South Dakota location.
We are pleased with the availability of corn in the Gibson City, Illinois area. Because of growth in domestic export from Illinois, the corn bases are beginning to strengthen. According to EIA, May 24th report, ethanol stock and production has dropped during the last few weeks due to planned shutdowns of ethanol facilities and increase in blending because of higher consumption of gasoline. We have also seen natural gas price drop considerably, which has a positive impact on the financial results. As a result, all of these correct factors, If we continue to source corn at a reasonable price, and we don't face any major logistic problems, we believe we will have better financial results in the second quarter than the first quarter of 2023, as Stuart mentioned earlier. The May 2023, as USDA report, was also very positive.
It's expected to be 15.26 billion bushels and 181.5 bushel per acres. If this happened, we will see that if this realized, it could have very positive impact on future earnings, as we all know, we have a long way to go yet. Ethanol export in, was dropped this quarter, first quarter, 20 to 2023, were 354 million gallon, compared to 394 million gallons, same period last year. DDG export through March 2023 were 2.4 million metric tons compared to 2.88 million metric tons, a decrease of approximately 400,000 metric tons compared to the same period of 2022. Let me provide you an update on carbon sequestration project and sustainability report.
We are very pleased to announce our inaugural sustainability report, highlighting what we have accomplished while addressing the sustainability, economy, and our social responsibilities at large. We are delighted to partner with Summit Carbon Solutions, a developer of the world's largest carbon pipeline for the NuGen facility in South Dakota. Our goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions perfectly aligned with Summit Carbon Solutions expertise. At the One Earth Energy sequestration location in Gibson City, we continue to complete the paperwork for different government permits and requirements of agency, while we are waiting for EPA to approve Class VI permit for carbon injection. This is highly technical, very time-consuming project, and it depends on several local, state, and federal agencies' approval. Those decisions are behind our control, which has meant we are moving forward a bit slower than we would like to.
We are, however, pleased about the big milestone we have reached so far. We submitted the Class VI permit for three wells, order long lead equipment, expect to build a modular express compressor plant, will be delivered by the end of 2023, with construction around the modular unit will start in 2024. We are also in the process, as I mentioned previously, in evaluating whether to increase the ethanol capacity of One Earth Energy in the Gibson City, Illinois, to 200 million gallons a year instead of 175 million, as I mentioned in the previous call. The current capacity is approximately 150 million gallons a year.
The Clean Fuel Production Credit Section 45Z, which is related to reduced fuel carbon intensity score, could provide as much as $1 a gallon, depending on the carbon intensity of the ethanol produced and sold. That could continue to enhance the strong position of our company. We also continue to evaluate other project that would improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon intensity. We believe completion of these project will lead to a greater benefit under the Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress. In summary, we are pleased to announce a profitable quarter, good progress on our carbon sequestration project, a plan to increase ethanol production at One Earth Energy to 200 million gallons to maximize 45Z benefit, and a NuGen facility signed a carbon offtake agreement with Summit Carbon Solutions.
If we continue to make progress, we will be ready to provide low carbon ethanol and byproducts with the social impact of reducing carbon in the atmosphere and the financial impact that if that improves company performance for our shareholders. Once again, we could not achieve this milestone without the hard work and dedication of our colleagues. We are very appreciative of their efforts on achieving these positive results. I will give the floor back to Stuart Rose for additional comments. Thanks, Stuart.
Thanks, Zafar. In conclusion, we have great plans, as shown by our numbers. We drastically outperform the other public companies in the industry, as far as I know. Great locations, including a great carbon capture, possible location in Illinois, which will be our own project. We also now have a partnership with Summit for our South Dakota plant. We have great opportunities going forward, but the most important thing, and I talk about it all the time, is we have the best people in ethanol, and now we're leveraging those great people to take advantage of the opportunities in carbon capture. If things go right, hopefully, we can do great things in carbon capture.
Best business in the world is a business that can be socially responsible and also have great returns for our shareholders. That's our goal. We work towards that. Zafar and his team works towards that every day. I'll now leave the floor open to questions.
Thank you. If you'd like to register a question, please press the one followed by the four on your telephone. You will hear a three-tone prompt to acknowledge your request. If your question has been answered and you would like to withdraw your registration, please press the one followed by the three. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift your handset before entering your request. Once again, that's one, four to register for a question. One brief moment for the first question. We have a question from Jordan Levy with Truist Securities. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hey, morning, guys. It's Mo on for Jordan. Thanks for taking my questions. Well, congrats on the solid results. Yeah, maybe pivot to pricing. Can you talk about how the corn pricing is tracking recently, and what is your visibility into the summer, fall season for pricing? Presumably, it's a better harvest year. How should we think about that? Thanks.
I'm sorry, could you repeat that again? I just didn't hear properly.
Oh, yeah. Can you maybe talk about the corn pricing? How should we think about the pricing is trending into the summer, fall months? Thank you.
Okay. I think, as you know, as I mentioned, that the corn bases are continue to strengthen. Even in Illinois, which is, they are exporting to other on western states, including South Dakota and Kansas and other sites. I think we probably, it's going to increase the price as it seems to be, but it's. On the other hand, we have seen that China cancel some of those orders, and that's the reason price dropped, but the bases are still very strong. We have seen somewhere $0.65-$0.90 plus basis. Does that answer your question?
Okay, great. Thanks. Yeah. Yes. Appreciate the color.
It's gonna be tough. Corn is gonna be tough, but Zafar's done an excellent job and his team in managing to get the corn and still get the corn at a price where our ethanol plants can be profitable. Hopefully, if we get a good rainy season and last year was drought in South Dakota. If we can get a good rainy season, we can get back to normal basis, get back to paying normal over or under basis, but presently, we're paying significantly over basis. Any other questions?
We do have a question from Robert Maltbie, with Singular Research. Please go ahead. Your line's open.
Hey, guys.
Hi, Robert.
Great quarter. I'm subbing for Chris, who can't be with us at the moment. We had an overflow from our conference. It's good to see so much interest in the small and microcap space. Probably had about 500 investors on the call. He's a bit tied up, and here I am, and he's giving me some notes to follow up. Congrats on the quarter. It's good to see a small cap light up the tape here, and a day dominated and a market dominated by the big caps. Congrats on that. My questions are twofold.
One, could you elucidate a little bit more on the opportunity and the carbon capture as per earnings accretion, revenue growth over the, you know, the longer term, and how much of a contributor will that be? The second part is, wow, you have by my quick calculations still about $15 a share in cash. My question is, At what point would you consider, you know, a large dividend or, you know, some type of a return of capital to shareholders of that cash? Thank you.
Thanks for the questions, Robert. First, in terms of carbon capture, we have hopes, but there's no guarantees. The law allows for, I believe it's $85 a ton in direct pay from the government, and 45 C could be $1 a gallon. Our plant, the one plant that we're doing, independent of Summit, will, after expansion, produce about 200 million gallons. You can do the arithmetic, but there's no guarantees of anything. This is a couple year, maybe a year and a half, two years off at the earliest. We don't want you to go crazy with your numbers or anything like that, but you can see there's great potential there. In terms of the cash and the...
We do, and I think we're and you followed us a long time, we probably are the kings of spending our cash in buying back stocks. I don't think I know of no company on the New York Stock Exchange that has bought back a larger percent of their stock. When you're a small cap stock and you generate cash like we do, you usually have one of two choices, to pay a dividend or buy back stock. It's always been my feeling, buying back stock is a lot smarter because it reduces the earnings per share, or excuse me, the number of shares outstanding, and drastically, and has the potential, if we're making money, to drastically increase the earnings per share. Whereas a dividend, it just goes, and it doesn't have the potential to increase earnings per share.
That's our chosen method, and that's what we have preferred to do with our cash. Any other questions?
Thank you. We have a question from David Locke with Old Dominion Investments. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. Good morning. How are you?
Good. Good, thank you.
A couple completely unrelated questions. The first one is, have you guys given any guidance for how much capital you're gonna need for the plant expansion and for the carbon capture project?
I think, as I mentioned previously and just now in my prepared remarks, we are still evaluating the, you know, we are trying to expand from 150 million to 200 million instead of 175 million. When you put those bids to the different people and getting information and that, then you realize that it will be better to do 175 million than 200 million. We are still analyzing and budgeting those numbers, but at this time I really cannot pin it on.
Okay. The second question is, do you guys have any opinion or thoughts on sustainable aviation fuel, and if that's something that REX could participate in, or to what extent might that just stoke up some demand for, or stoke up some of the supply of U.S. ethanol production?
I think I can say that we are always looking for new cheese. We have done some research. We are in process of talking to some different companies and trying to find out more about SAF. That's the one of the also reason that once this 45Z or carbon sequestration things gone away, by that time the technology will be developed. We will have a 200 million gallon plant at One Earth Energy and then about 150 NuGen. As I understand from my research, it's approximately 2 gallon for each 2 gallon of ethanol is 1 gallon of SAF you can produce.
We are trying to evaluate all those things and looking at the return on investment and analyze also how much investment will be needed to convert those. At this stage, we have no immediate you know, plans, but we are certainly doing a lot of research on it.
Okay.
One thing I can tell you is we're laser focused on carbon capture, and we don't want to take our eye off the ball, and there's a lot of money if we can do it. There's no guarantees, but if we can do it, there's a huge amount of potential income in that area, whereas aviation fuel to date, no one. We don't see anyone. We are looking at it, we have interest in it, but like a lot of things, we wanna see someone else make some money at it before we jump right into it.
Exactly.
Right. Do you think, would you agree that you guys could essentially sort of passively participate in that market to the extent that it develops, just because it's, it should use a substantial amount of ethanol as a feedstock?
We absolutely. Sure. If someone's successful, a lot of these companies are not big ethanol players that are developing that are trying to develop aviation fuel, so they're gonna need a source of ethanol. We'll sell our ethanol to anyone at the highest price. We have every chance to benefit from that if someone is successful.
Yeah.
In fact, we're more likely some people who have contracts to sell their ethanol for other uses. Ours, we have very little, and we don't have, like, We might go a month or two out, but we don't have contracts, so we'd be a perfect place for people to buy ethanol. If they're successful, we'd be a perfect place to supply them their ethanol.
Just on, just on capital allocation, you guys regularly talk on every call about how you're always looking around for plants that might be for sale. I'm assuming that it's very much cheaper to expand capacity at existing plants than it is to buy somebody's existing plants at this point, in terms of just increasing the overall footprint of your company.
Yes. We've come close to buying plants before and have tried very hard to buy plants before. Today, I don't know of any really good plants that can be bought at a reasonable price. I think what you're saying is exactly right. It's much cheaper in today's market to try to expand capacity, that's what Zafar is doing.
Okay. Is there anybody out there that's thinking of building a greenfield plant, or is everything just kind of 25 million gallons here, another 25 million gallons there?
We know of no one, but there could be. Zafar, do you know of anyone that's considering it at this time?
I'm not really aware of that.
I don't know of anyone. It's been a tough market over the years. We've done way better than the industry, but the industry has not done it. It hasn't been as good of investment for everything else, for most of the other players as us. I think most of the other players are doing what we're doing, is concentrating on other ways to make money out of the ethanol instead of opening new ethanol plants. That does not mean we'll never look at opening new ethanol plants. To date, we don't, we have no plans, and I don't know of anyone else.
Yeah. Also, I think we are concentrating to make sure that we reduce our CI score, which is, you know, as I mentioned, we are looking several other project. Our goal is to somehow further reduce our CI score as low as practically possible, and that also needs some investment, and we'd rather spend that money on those which will be more beneficial for 45Z and carbon sequestration, and return on investment will be very quick.
Okay, perfect. Hey, thanks for your time, and good job with the quarter, gentlemen.
Thank you. Thanks for the call.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll turn the call back to Stuart Rose.
Thank you, we'd like to thank everyone for being on the call, and we'll talk to you at the end of next quarter. Thank you very much. Bye.
That does conclude the call for today. We thank you for your participation. I say please disconnect your lines.