Gevo, Inc. Q2 FY2025 Earnings Call

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's call to discuss Gevo's second quarter 2025 results. I'm Eric Frey, Vice President of Finance and Strategy at Gevo. With me today, we have Patrick Gruber, our Chief Executive Officer; Leke Agiri, our Chief Financial Officer; Chris Ryan, our President and Chief Operating Officer; and Paul Bloom, our Chief Business Officer. Earlier today, we issued a press release that outlines our second quarter 2025 results and some of the topics we plan to discuss. A copy of the press release is available on our website at www.gevo.com. Please be advised that our remarks today, including answers to your questions, contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to be materially different from those currently anticipated. Those statements include projections about the timing, development, engineering, financing, and construction of our alcohol-to-jet projects, our future carbon credit sales, our Gevo North Dakota and RNG plants, and other activities described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are incorporated by reference. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. In addition, we may provide certain non-GAAP financial information on this call. The relevant definitions and GAAP reconciliations may be found in our earnings release, which can be found on our website at www.gevo.com in the Investor Relations section. Following the prepared remarks, we'll open the call for questions. I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call is open to the media, and we're providing a simultaneous webcast to the public. A replay of this call and other past events will be available via the company's Investor Relations page at www.gevo.com.

Thanks, Eric. We had a really nice quarter. It's great to have turned the corner on adjusted EBITDA. Our financial results this quarter and for the first 6 months of the year are consistent with our expectations for the year. But you know what, we achieved them faster than we anticipated. It surprised us, making good progress. The key achievements in addition to being adjusted EBITDA positive and incrementally net profitable include successfully selling voluntary carbon credits generated at our North Dakota site with carbon capture sequestration, also the selling of tax credits, and the excellent ethanol and RNG operations, all of this while never losing sight on our long-term objectives of successfully financing and deploying renewable resource-based jet fuel plants. Our existing operations have provided us with a step up in adjusted EBITDA, while at the same time, providing the ingredients to deploy those jet fuel plants. Putting things into context. One, it's clear to all that it takes time to finance and build some synthetic aviation fuel, the jet fuel, the SAF plants. Let me make a few observations on this point. Making jet fuel in the U.S. from abundant cost-effective raw materials that are growing domestically makes a lot of sense. There's a finite amount of jet fuel on a barrel of oil, and jet fuel demand is increasing. In the U.S. alone, jet fuel demand is expected to increase an additional 2.3 billion gallons per year over the next 10 years, according to projections from the U.S. EIA. However, the U.S. is not building new refineries. In fact, we are shutting them down and converting them for other products. So where will the future jet fuel come from? Imports? Well, that doesn't make a lot of sense to serve our domestic energy needs. We view the renewable jet from corn starch carbohydrates, in other words, the sugars can be achieved at a cost of production similar to petroleum-based jet fuel, once fully scaled up and operating and it can deliver the added market-driven attribute of a low or even negative net carbon footprint. With our business system, it is possible to achieve both a low carbon footprint and a low cost. This opportunity is absolutely huge in our view, and we continue to pursue it. Two, we are very focused on our alcohol-to-jet 30 million-gallon plant design, targeting its first deployment to our North Dakota site. Our North Dakota site is particularly attractive because of the great ethanol and protein operation there as well as the carbon capture assets. We're in the midst of translating our ATJ 60, that's a 60 million-gallon plant design to the ATJ 30 design. With the knowledge we have gained by engineering the heck out of these plants, we believe that we can make great reductions in project deployment costs, both technical and financial. A 30 million-gallon ATJ plant, we need about 50 million gallons of ethanol as a feedstock. This is a practical size where the economies of scale work. Smaller plants in this would be expected to be severely disadvantaged in cost price. Our ATJ 60 project targeted for Lake Preston is plugging along, albeit slowly. We've been working with the DOE and our customers, and we are waiting to see what happens with the carbon dioxide pipeline. It will take its natural course. We are done with the engineering on it and have shifted resources to the ATJ 30 plant. The overall strategy for Gevo is to use our current base of assets to improve profitability, increase carbon credit sales and tax credit sales while deploying ATJ plants. We see improved operations and associated profitability as giving us solid footing to launch ATJ projects and achieve our long-run goal. ATJ continues to be the major path for growth, and selling carbon abatement as a co-product is key.

Thank you, Pat. We did indeed have an excellent second quarter. Now here are the numbers. We ended the quarter with $127 million in cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash. During the second quarter, combined operating revenue, interest, and investment income was $44.7 million. Our income from operations was $5.8 million, and our non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA was $17.3 million. Gevo North Dakota generated income from operations of $17.1 million and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA of $24.2 million. Gevo RNG generated income from operations of $1.5 million and non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA of $2.6 million. And finally, net income per share attributed to Gevo was $0.01 per share for the second quarter. Here is some more color. Our second quarter results include a one-time catch-up recognition of our clean fuel production credits over the last 2 quarters since amongst other things, we closed the sale of $22 million of our CFPC credits in the second quarter. Going forward, our results will reflect the CFPC credits that we generated in the period being reported. Our first quarter results did not include 1 month of Gevo, North Dakota operations since we bought the facility at the end of January. It did not include any carbon dioxide removal credit sales, and it did not recognize generation of and proceeds from the sale of the clean fuel production tax credit. So as a result, we think our combined first and second quarter results more closely represent where we are. For the 6 months ended June 30, 2025, our net income grew by $20 million and our non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA grew by $32 million compared to the same period last year. We see this as recurring step change growth, which we expect will continue to grow from there. We are thrilled with our second quarter performance, both operationally and financially. We believe our businesses are well positioned for sustained success and strategic for the execution of our growth plans.

Thanks, Leke. During the second quarter, we started our carbon business and sold over $1 million worth of carbon dioxide removal credits or CDRs. In addition, we were recently featured in NASDAQ's 2024 sustainability report for our supply of high-integrity carbon removal credits from Gevo, North Dakota. We believe this new co-product business could add a significant stream of new stable revenue for us as we are able to immediately supply a growing global marketplace with high-integrity credits. We anticipate growing CDR credit sales to $3 million to $5 million by the end of this year and estimate long-term sales of this new co-product could exceed $30 million per year from our current production volumes, which could be significantly expanded in the future. We think the optionality to sell carbon separately from the fuel provides us with a unique advantage. As our business expands, we like having the ability to balance returns by separating and shifting carbon attributes from volatile low carbon fuel markets to selling CDRs in potentially more stable, higher-value markets. For some additional background, bio-based carbon dioxide is a co-product of ethanol fermentation that can be efficiently captured for use in industrial applications, carbonated beverages, petroleum processing, or permanently stored in the appropriate geological formations to generate carbon dioxide removal credits. The high-integrity CDR credits we are currently selling are known as corps or CO2 removal credits. These credits are certified by Puro.earth and can be purchased by customers and retired immediately to offset the effect of emissions. The Gevo, North Dakota facility has the appropriate geological formation and operational Class VI well for carbon capture and sequestration with a total estimated sequestration capacity of up to 1 million metric tons of CO2 per year. Our facility was also the first Puro.earth certified CO2 storage facility in the United States. Our credits are certified by Puro.earth under its strict standards for 1,000-plus years of permanence and other key quality parameters required by customers. Our research tells us that in total, the marketplace for carbon dioxide removal credits has exceeded $10 billion in the past few years, reflecting nearly 40 million tons of CO2 removals. We look forward to increasing our participation in this market as it continues to expand. We also began our business of selling clean fuel production tax credits. Clean fuel production credits or CFPCs are also known as the 45Z tax credit. We expect to generate cash from the production sale and transfer of these credits to third-party taxpayers. On June 30 of this year, we entered into our first tax credit transfer agreement for $22 million worth of credits to a third party. We are one of the first companies to monetize these credits, and we anticipate finalizing additional tax credit transfer agreements with third-party taxpayers this year to sell out our anticipated volume of credits for the balance of 2025. Based on our production of low-carbon ethanol and RNG, we expect our clean fuel production credits to benefit our net income and adjusted EBITDA by more than $10 million per quarter going forward. For clarity, these sales do not show up on the revenue line, but due to the applicable accounting standards, instead show up as a reduction to our cost of goods sold line on the income statement. I'll conclude with some brief remarks on our technology platforms, which are driving innovation for our expected growth. First, Verity is our wholly owned subsidiary that is developing a software platform for traceability, compliance reporting, and the monetization of carbon intensity across the agriculture and renewable fuels business system. Verity is earning revenue now and is in growth mode. In July, LANXESS, a $2.4 billion agricultural solutions company spanning 34 states that connects thousands of farmers, announced the partnership with Verity to track and trace their 2025 soybean crop for premium market opportunities and a first-of-its-kind carbon intensity supply chain program for ethanol production. These supply chains are complex, involving extensive data and have significant compliance requirements. Verity aims to help farmers and partners like LANXESS easily obtain high-quality, verifiable results, and our innovative solutions are starting to pay dividends for Gevo and our customers. Next, we continue to make good progress on developing Gevo's proprietary ethanol to olefins technology with our development partners, LG Chem and Axens. Gevo's ETO technology targets the lowest capital and operating cost to convert ethanol into olefins that can be used for renewable fuels and chemicals, including SAF and biopropylene. As of today, Gevo has approximately 80 active global patent assets in our ETO intellectual property portfolio. Finally, our long-term growth is supported by a strong intellectual property portfolio, including our SAF platform, ETO technology, isobutanol portfolio, and carbon tracking solutions. We hold over 400 patent assets globally, many granted recently as we've refined our ATJ30 and ATJ60 designs, and we continue to secure new patents as our innovations progress. Let's now go to Chris to talk about operations.

Thanks, Paul. Let me review some key operating results for the second quarter. Our team at Gevo, North Dakota continues to keep the plant running well, and the production numbers through second quarter support that point. In the second quarter, we ground 5.7 million bushels of corn to produce 17 million gallons of low-carbon fuel-grade ethanol. And that's around 3 gallons per bushel yield, which is good. That also equates to about a 67 million-gallon per year run rate on ethanol. We produced 52,000 tons of high-protein animal feed and over 5 million pounds of distillers corn oil, which is about 1 pound of oil per bushel of corn ground. In our carbon capture and storage business, we sequestered over 40,000 metric tons of CO2 in the second quarter. That CO2 being sequestered is a small fraction of the capacity of the reservoir that we sit on top of in North Dakota. We have a lot of extra capacity to sequester CO2, and we're actively talking to third parties to do that. All these numbers equate to approximately equal amounts by weight of ethanol, high-protein feed, and CO2 with some corn oil on top. This is a good diversification for our business. At our RNG business in Northwest Iowa, where we have partnered with 3 dairy farms, we produced about 92,000 million BTUs of renewable natural gas during the second quarter. And we continue to optimize that process to push production higher. This year has been a great year for growing corn. This year's harvest in the United States is projected to be another record year, and that's great for us, but the farmers really need to see some new uses for corn. That brings me to our synthetic aviation fuel or SAF platform. We've been building our SAF platform because we see a substantial and expanding market ahead, one where we believe Gevo is strongly positioned to lead. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration data, U.S. jet fuel demand is projected to rise by more than 2 billion gallons per year over the next decade. We have a great opportunity to help meet that demand with domestic production using agriculture and rural communities as the backbone to do that. At Gevo, we've developed a template for doing that using ethanol as a feedstock to produce SAF or jet fuel in a modular plant. It would only take a few dozen of our ATJ facilities to process roughly 3.5 billion gallons of ethanol into more than 2 billion gallons of competitively priced domestically produced jet fuel, channeling billions of dollars in investment into rural agricultural communities and creating a new use for corn, which the agricultural industry really needs. It's worth noting that traditional fossil-based jet fuel makes up only about 9% of the output from traditional U.S. refineries, whereas the ATJ process that we've designed can produce more than 90% jet fuel from its production stream. To capture this opportunity, we've created 3 standardized plant designs. We call them ATJ30, ATJ60, and ATJ150, all convert low-carbon ethanol into SAF. Gevo, North Dakota stands out as a promising ATJ30 location, thanks to our existing carbon capture and storage infrastructure and reservoir, access to low-cost, low-carbon ethanol, and the large acreage we have at our site. We have leveraged our ATJ design from South Dakota and our engineers are busy editing it for the ATJ30 design to be deployed at our site in North Dakota. For ATJ60, this project in South Dakota, we remain in active discussions with the U.S. Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office to advance the $1.63 billion loan guarantee for our South Dakota project, and we're pacing our development spend to align with the financing timeline. In the future, once our ATJ process is operational, we intend to expand the business by leveraging our SaaS platform and proprietary systems through multiple business models, including joint ventures, licensing, and build-own-operate. With about 180 existing brownfield ethanol plants in the United States, plus additional greenfield sites domestically and worldwide, we see significant potential for scaling.

Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Paul and Leke. You guys did a good job of hitting the highlights. Let's go ahead and open it up for questions.

Our first question comes from Dushyant Ailani with Jefferies.

This is Whitney Motalema on for Dushyant. Impressive results this quarter, especially on the early monetization of CDR and CFPC credits. So on the CFPC monetization, while ethanol-related CFPCs have been monetized, biogas credits haven't yet. So what's holding back that monetization piece? And when do you expect to see such activity?

We have already included that information. Leke, could you provide some more details? Regarding CFPCs for ethanol, we haven't previously observed any others from ethanol. Please go ahead, Leke.

Yes. So the 45Z, the clean fuel production tax credit for ethanol production was what we monetized in the sale, the $22 million sale to a private party that was announced. The transaction was consummated with also making use of the relevant insurance policy to make sure residual risks are actually being managed on behalf of Gevo and also on the buyer party. What we do expect, especially now that the big beautiful bill has passed and effectively hopefully rendered the discussions around retroactive change in tax law issues. We believe that issue is actually officially sort of addressed with the passing of the bill. Expectation is ethanol facilities that actually qualify for 45Z or CFTC, the market should heat up and you're going to start seeing some of that sale. But we are one of the first parties to actually get a chance to execute the transaction. And as we articulated, we are also in the process of monetizing the rest of our clean fuel production tax credit for this year. What we should also highlight is we have a pathway as part of the execution of actually selling our current tax credit for 2025, we have a pathway that we've identified to also be able to place our credits for 2026.

Okay. And then can we expect a similar cadence for the RNG business?

That is exactly right. In fact, the deal construct and the transaction structure for our ethanol facility is very similar for RNG facility. So the rest of the tax credits that we are going to monetize for the rest of the year is for our ethanol and our RNG facility. And the same thing for 2026 going forward.

Congrats on a really positive quarter. I think a lot of people are surprised with how the financials are showing up now. With respect to the CFPC, the 45Z credits guys, the $10 million benefit per quarter, is that sort of a base case? What kind of variance should we expect on that at least for the next few quarters as far as you have visibility?

Leke, why don't you go ahead and answer that?

The short answer to your question is that the $10 million figure is actually a conservative estimate. As you're likely aware, the monetization of any production tax credit depends on the actual production of the facility. We believe that if there are no concerns, which we currently do not have, we could actually generate more than $10 million in tax credits per quarter. So, while we've disclosed a cautious outlook, we actually expect to exceed $10 million in credit generation every quarter. This number is derived from the 45Z credits generated by our ethanol facility and our RNG facility.

And then the last thing for you guys, all you analysts, do me a favor and make sure that you heard the point about this goes to a credit against cost of goods sold, not the revenue line. Don't be doing your modeling by showing these credits as a revenue item. They're not. That's not how the accounting treatment works. It's a credit towards the cost of goods sold.

Understood. Yes. I got that. And then the path to $30 million in CDR sales, Pat, can you just share, is that going to be driven by just better capacity utilization for the sequestration business? Or are there other avenues that get you from the $3 million to $5 million this year and then towards the $30 million in the future?

Yes, I'm going to let Paul answer this. And go ahead, Paul. Go ahead, answer.

Sure. So when we think about this going forward, we're just getting started, obviously, in the CDR market. And the bulk of our carbon capture and sequestration, the CCS value is going into low carbon fuel markets today. So we'll be shifting that as we see the market develop into the CDR sales. And then long term, right, as we get there, meaning the next 2 years or so, we're going to be trying to grow that as much as we can, but it's really about focusing on putting our carbon value as much carbon value in our SAF really. The whole thing is predicated by the high quality in this market. And that's where we think if you look at the overall market, we talked a little bit about how it’s growing. It’s grown to 40 million metric tons, over $10 billion in sales. If you do the quick math on that, that puts you at about $250 a metric ton for average carbon removal credits. But we know that there's a wide range of where that value is. So the way that we believe that you go after this value is to have the highest quality credits, the highest quality information. That's really where PURO standards come in, and we're using the leading crediting platform for engineered carbon removals and putting those into the market. So that's kind of our path as we go forward here, shifting from more volatile low carbon fuel markets into something that we think can provide more returns and less volatility in CDRs.

So the way to think of it is that we produce, what, 165,000 tons, 167,000 tons or something like that of carbon dioxide. The projections and discussion of revenue from CDRs is related to that. We have 1 million tons of capacity that's not contemplated in the numbers that Paul threw out.

Right, right. Understood. That was helpful. And then now that there's clarity on the 45Z credits, et cetera, and the regulatory environment is very favorable. Can we expect some maybe faster movement on the ATJ30 or ATJ60 projects? Any color on that, Patrick, would help, I guess, investors just get a sense of how that part of the business may shape up in the next 12 to 18 months?

I will make a comment first, and then I'll pass it to Chris. The last eight months have been quite uncertain. There’s a lot of concern about what will happen next, and people are leaning towards negativity. However, we have performed well, which reflects positively on the administration's support for our efforts. We're focused on producing ATJ in a way that remains competitive with Petro, and as far as I know, no one else is doing this. At the same time, we can still reduce our carbon footprint. Our main task now is to finalize the engineering for the ATJ30 and secure financing, which is the critical step. Regarding the ATJ60 project, we plan to collaborate with the DOE, but it's a significant capital investment, and we need clarity on the Summit pipeline before proceeding. We won’t build it without a clear understanding because it's unwise to construct a plant with economic disadvantages. Chris, do you want to add anything?

So yes, thanks, Pat. The good thing is we started with the ATJ60 design that we made for Lake Preston, and we took that and basically copied it, pasted it into the North Dakota site. So right now, our engineers are working on editing that. So the good news is that goes a lot faster than if we didn't have that ATJ60 design. So the good thing is it is going faster. The reality is it takes time to do that editing and then actually build a plant of this size. It takes a few years. But yes, we're looking for every opportunity we can to speed things up and cut costs.

Our next question comes from Peter Gastreich with Water Tower Research.

Peter Gastreich from Water Tower here. Congratulations on your results and for executing your strategy ahead of expectations. It's impressive to see the impact of North Dakota and the strong EBITDA figure. I have a couple of questions. The first is about the options for North Dakota expansion and the next steps. I understand that the project economics for ATJ were not intended to rely on 45Z. However, I would like to know if the outcome of 45Z and the Big Beautiful Bill influences your thinking regarding capital allocation in North Dakota and your options there, such as expanding low-carbon ethanol capacity versus pursuing ATJ30 or other potential projects.

The tax credit is set to expire at the end of 2029, which means our ATJ plant has limited time to benefit from it once operational. We are also exploring potential opportunities from the recent legislation related to accelerated depreciation credits and similar incentives. However, the specific aspect of the 45Z section for ETJ will not have a significant impact on our plans, and that has been our consistent stance. Ethanol certainly plays a role in our considerations, and we aim to maximize whatever benefits we can. We have a variety of related projects in progress. Chris, would you like to add anything?

Yes. I mean that site in North Dakota is a great site for doing a lot of projects and potential expansion because you got the CCS there, and we have 500 acres of land. And we've got plenty of eager farmers ready to supply more corn. So you put all that together, and there are opportunities that we're looking at that but they're shorter-term opportunities that could take advantage of the 45Z. So it's too early to really talk about those, but we're looking at all potential opportunities.

We've got a million tons of capacity down there per year that we need to utilize and take advantage of. We're fully committed to this. Regarding jet fuel, I would have preferred to see its extension beyond 2029, which would have been more beneficial. However, I’m pleased that it's been extended for an additional two years, as this is certainly helpful for our business. We're reinvesting those funds into expanding biofuel initiatives here in the U.S., pursuing advanced biofuel opportunities, progressing into hydrocarbons, and establishing infrastructure for CO2. Keep in mind that CO2 will be necessary in North Dakota for enhanced oil recovery in the coming years, so we need to develop that infrastructure. We are excited to be part of that effort, and it will be quite interesting moving forward. It’s a fantastic site, and our team has done an excellent job. The Gevo North Dakota team has really excelled, and it’s been enjoyable to see their progress.

Okay. Sorry, just next question, one more question, please, about Verity. So including the new soybean tracking partnership that you just mentioned from last month, how many customers do you now have for Verity? And also just if you're able to share any broad color on your recent discussions with prospects there. What are your prospects of seeing some more announcements this year on Verity customers?

Paul, why don't you take that question?

Sure. We're really excited about the Verity growth here, and it's great to have the tool working out with a customer like LANXESS. Right now, we've got a handful of ethanol plants, 5 ethanol customers today that we've got agreements with on Verity. We think this is going to grow sizably because what Verity is really doing is simplifying that carbon accounting system that you need for tax credits, for voluntary carbon credits. So we think it's got a nice growth portfolio or perspective going forward. But what we're going to be doing next is really making sure that we can demonstrate everything that Verity does at our Gevo, North Dakota site. So this will be really helpful for us. As you can see, we've got a lot of complexity in the business moving between voluntary credits, compliance credits, and tax credits. And so nothing better than to use Verity to demonstrate how we can simplify our lives, which is what Verity really does for the customer. So really excited about the growth potential and making it all real in North Dakota for us.

I want to mention the process of verifying our tax credits. We haven't seen anyone else utilize a 45Z like we have, especially with the insurance component involved. The effort it required was substantial, and we've developed a valuable skill from it that we plan to leverage. Regarding the carbon removal credits, they should be viewed as voluntary credits that people will purchase. This market is currently expanding and our credits are of the highest standard, with CO2 being permanently sequestered and measurable. We can quantify the tons of CO2 being captured, which is significant. This achievement has allowed us to receive the PURO certification, making us the first in the country to obtain such recognition. This is important because it represents legitimate carbon removal that people are willing to pay for voluntarily. We aim to grow this co-product in the future and Paul's team is actively engaged in this, as it’s a major opportunity.

Our next question comes from Dirk Whitfield with Texas Capital.

Congrats as well on a strong quarter and update. With respect to the CDR market, thanks for the detail included in the release. I wanted to see if you could maybe help characterize the depth and durability of the market? And separately, could you speak to the contract structure and if these were sold to a single counterparty or multiple?

The answer is yes. So go ahead, Paul, and address it where you can, understanding that you'll have some restrictions on the details of the contracts, but otherwise, feel free to share.

Yes. Look, I mean, this is a new and developing market. So we're learning this and getting into it, and we're pretty excited that we've already made a lot of progress here. And so as you think about these markets, we're finding out that there are some that are traditional kind of more spot sales. And then there are multiyear type agreements, and this is where we're headed with a lot of the new business that we're planning to put on where customers, once they find out what high quality that you've got and the high integrity credits that you're providing, there's a lot of work that goes into that and a lot of diligence. So finding a high-quality credit supplier to make sure that they bought down the risk and they can really show what they're doing for their products is a big deal, and we can do that. And so this is where we're headed with more longer-term contracts. But I would say the spot market for the CDRs is getting interesting. If you go back and remember the numbers that I said with 40 million metric tons of credits that have been sold so far in the CDR market, only about a little over 2% of that has actually been delivered. So the thing that we're watching closely is that as other projects may have been sold out, they may be projects that aren't really working today. They haven't started to deliver. Now a lot of these projects probably will start to deliver, but we're already delivering. So we think that there's going to be an interesting spot market developing, and we're here to be able to supply those credits as needed.

Great. For my follow-up, I wanted to focus on Gevo, North Dakota. With the optionality your team has with ethanol sales, I wanted to ask if you could speak to how you're thinking about marketing and optimizing revenue from the low-carbon ethanol between the voluntary market in California, Oregon, and Canada.

That's a great question. What I think you should do guys is have a tag team between Chris and Paul.

Yes. Actually, Pat, I think, Paul, this is a great question stemming from the last one. So go ahead, Paul.

Yes. As we sell a significant portion of our carbon capture and storage (CCS) value in the low carbon fuel markets, we need to establish a pathway. We are currently in the process of creating these pathways. We already have pathways that include both CCS and those that do not, giving us options. We can either integrate this into the low carbon fuel market or isolate the CCS value and place it in the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) market. This is the flexibility we are exploring. When analyzing these markets, we must consider timing. As carbon credit prices rise in specific low carbon fuel markets, we want to capitalize on those opportunities. Therefore, we collaborate with our marketing partner to pursue these avenues in order to generate returns on fuel and also to start building up our profile for the separated CDR value. We are assessing which approach will yield the best return, whether we include that CCS value in the fuel or separate it and sell it in the CDR market. It's a balancing act at the moment, but our current focus is more on the low carbon fuel markets. As we develop our CDR sales, we aim to establish a robust mix and potentially increase CDR offerings if we can achieve lower volatility and higher returns in that market. There are many options available, and we'll see how things evolve.

Great question. And maybe one last, if I could. With respect to your CCS site, could you speak to the market opportunity you guys see to accommodate third-party volumes and the amount of capacity you feel comfortable offering up to the market?

Yes, we can comment on it. Who wants to take that one? Chris or Paul?

Yes, this is an interesting topic as we consider our future expansion. The more ethanol we produce, the more CO2 we generate, with a one-to-one ratio. It's important for us to ensure we have sufficient capacity. Additionally, we are exploring the possibility of integrating CO2 from third parties. We've discussed options like a virtual pipeline using CO2 transportation by rail and other opportunities to partner with sites close to ours for CO2 sequestration. With the increasing demand for clean energy in areas such as data centers and other growth sectors, our location offers significant potential. Ultimately, our focus is on identifying projects that provide the best returns while ensuring we have enough capacity for our own requirements.

Yes, one of the things I appreciate about Gevo in North Dakota is the vast amount of land we own, which exceeds 500 acres. It's an excellent operation with abundant corn resources, a strong workforce, and a supportive farming community. The people here are great, and the business climate is excellent. The energy and agricultural sectors are closely connected, and everyone understands the importance of their interrelation. North Dakota is both an energy-producing and food-producing state, making it a fantastic location for us. I'm pleased we have this site now, even if I wish we had acquired it sooner. The marketplace that Paul's team is building around CDRs and credits is extremely important because selling co-products is crucial to our economic strategy. It's essential to avoid becoming overly dependent on government credits, which can be unstable. Instead, establishing a legitimate marketplace is vital, and our association with Verity plays a significant role in certifying the value chain and raw material sourcing. We believe this gives us an advantage over others. Our site is unique; we are the only ones there, which simplifies diligence significantly. Given the complexity of the process, I'm grateful it hasn't been more complicated. We believe we have a distinct opportunity to offer a premium product in carbon abatement. I'm excited to see how my team capitalizes on that, as it requires a fresh perspective. Regarding the ATJ30, as Amit inquired about, we will move forward as quickly as possible, but we need to ensure our preparations are in order. Chris emphasized the importance of completing the engineering for ATJ30, which we expect to come with significantly lower capital costs. I think those costs can be quite manageable, but I'm not certain if they will be feasible for Gevo alone, which adds an element of interest. The situation in North Dakota is a different playing field, and it doesn't detract from the ongoing development of the ATJ60 plant in Lake Preston. That project still has its path to follow as we work through details with the DOE and customers, along with Summit. It's crucial to understand that we possess a vast array of technology. This is not just about purchasing an ATJ process off the shelf; many can handle individual operations. An integrated approach is necessary, and that's what my team excels at—we know how to build and operate plants. We were the first to utilize ATJ technology, and we were the ones who certified and qualified it. We continue to engage in this market, albeit at a smaller scale with demonstration plants. This is central to Gevo's identity involving chemistry, which has a long history and will continue to influence our future alcohol and ETO processes. We're optimistic about potential cost savings moving forward. The engineering insights we've gained from the ATJ60 are being applied to the ATJ30, and we believe this will yield positive results as well. Additionally, we're developing a platform that can be replicated elsewhere, which is an exciting prospect. We're eager to move forward with it. Apologies for the lengthy explanation, but I felt it was important to share.

I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to Pat Gruber for closing remarks.

It has been an outstanding quarter, and it occurred faster than we anticipated. We are an unusual company as we are developers with a significant amount of technology, and we have achieved a slight profitability of $0.01 per share, which is certainly positive. We expect our EBITDA to continue to grow sustainably. Overall, it’s looking very promising. We are building a solid foundation, which provides us with the flexibility to explore the options available to us. Thank you all for being here. I appreciate it.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.