PureCycle Technologies, Inc. Q2 FY2023 Earnings Call

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the PureCycle Technologies Second Quarter 2023 Corporate Update Call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I'll now like to hand the conference over to Charlie Place, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Anton. Welcome to PureCycle Technologies second quarter 2023 corporate update conference call. I'm Charlie Place, Director of Investor Relations for PureCycle and joining me on the call today are Dustin Olson, our Chief Executive Officer; Larry Somma, our Chief Financial Officer; and Dan Coombs, our Executive Chairman. This morning, we will be highlighting our corporate developments for the second quarter and subsequent to quarter end. The presentation we will be going through on this call will also be found on the Investor tab at our website. Many of the statements made today will be forward-looking and are based on management's beliefs and assumptions and information currently available to management at this time. These statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which may be beyond our control, including those set forth in our Safe Harbor provisions for forward-looking statements that can be found at the end of our second quarter 2023 corporate update press release and our quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed yesterday evening as well as in other reports on file with the SEC that provides further detail about the risks related to our business. Additionally, please note that the company's actual results may differ materially from those anticipated and except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement. Our remarks today may also include preliminary non-GAAP estimates and are subject to risks and uncertainties including among others things, changes in connection with quarter end and year-end adjustments. Any variation between the PureCycle's actual results and the preliminary financial data set forth herein may be material. You are welcome to follow along with our slide deck or if joining us by phone you can access it at any time on purecycle.com. We are excited to share updates from the previous quarter with you. I will now turn it over to Dustin Olson, PureCycle's Chief Executive Officer. Dustin?

Thanks a lot, Charlie. Thank you, everybody, for joining the call. Q2 was the most exciting and rewarding quarter in PureCycle's history. Ironton is operational. This is the moment that we've worked toward for the last decade. We shared a lot of moments together from receiving the Procter & Gamble license, building the feedstock evaluation unit, financing Ironton, going public, and now proving the technology at scale. This is a key moment for our future. The first plant is always the most challenging and the most special, but now we have a fundamental understanding of how we grow reliably into new regions, reduce our cost structure, build bigger plants, and get more efficient on capital projects. With this progress, we can now start realizing PureCycle's potential. Remember, PureCycle takes the world's most popular and least recycled plastic polypropylene and converts it into a premium ultra-pure product. Our technology capitalizes on strong feedstock flexibility, a low variable cost, and produces a high-value product. The world needs technology like this. The world needs a story like this; consumers all around the world are begging our industry to find solutions like this, PureCycle is the answer. As you know, we accomplished the first two bondholder milestones and for the first time produced pellets at commercial scale. We are well positioned to accomplish the remaining milestones. Ironton is running and raising production rates every day. I wish I could have been there. I wish you could have been there when we first produced our pellets; it was a remarkable achievement for everyone and a tangible product of the hard work we've all put in. Everyone on-site will remember that moment for the rest of their lives. During the day, we cut a quick video to capture the moment, and I was clearly excited. I was excited for two reasons: one, because I knew how much it meant for our team, our partners, and our shareholders to see the fruits of their labor finally come to reality. But probably more importantly for this group because it represented that our technology works at scale. For us, when the polymer moved through the system, we knew the fundamental technology would work. Moving to the first pellets was a major step. We pushed polymer through every key process and proved the technology works at scale. If you take a step back and just look at our fundamentals, our process is mixing polymer with solvent, extracting contaminants from polymer, and then removing solvent from the polymer. These are the core principles of our technology and where the tech risk was most critical. In each of these steps, our process worked extremely well. We have good technical data to support the merits of each step. This is a big deal. For the last decade, tech risk was the biggest obstacle; this is now off the table and set the stage for our global growth plan. During the startup, we ran into glitches. This was expected. We've talked about it before. There are a lot of details around a facility like this, and you just have to work through each piece of equipment to both learn how to run them and then fix whatever issues pop up. In some respects, it's about the equipment. Does it work properly? Was it installed properly? Will it handle the process properly? Can it handle interruptions properly? But it's also about the team. Does the team have the capacity, the determination, and the grit to stay focused to keep solving these problems? We do, in a big way. Not only has our team grown tremendously over the past four months since mechanical completion, we've also shown that we have the talent to successfully solve problems. After completing the first pellets run in June, we effectively used July to work through a series of commissioning details. As you start to run, you'll find a collection of issues that you just need to address. Some of them you can work on while the equipment is running, but some of them require the equipment to be cycled down. During our commissioning, we iterated through these improvements. This work improved our overall operational consistency and efficiency and paved the way for continued strong operations in the future. We will continue to address the plant operations every day with a systemic, methodical, and purposeful approach. This is the definition of operational excellence; every day you grind to improve the facility utilization by improving the robustness of our processes and operations. With respect to commercial activities, we're on track. We've established a good feedstock purchasing pattern with numerous third parties and have adequate feedstock available. We currently have over 10 million pounds of feedstock in inventory; with about 50% prepared and ready for purification. We have built a substantial amount of optionality into our system. Our sales group has also been working closely with our core partners on specific applications for first products and we have been delivering several technical training seminars to our distribution partners. Our product is in high demand, and we are ready to get the volume moving. As our production increases, we will continue to expand our sales to new customers in new regions. And while we already have our core Ironton volume committed and ready to go, we can now be opportunistic with some of our production and plan to seed the market and prepare sales channels for all future plants, Augusta, Europe, and in Asia. As you look across the four key areas of operation, preprocessing, which we call PreP, utilities, purification, and born digital, and consider the commissioning that we've completed, we are very pleased with the progress we've made. We've accomplished a lot, and as we moved through commissioning, there are a few specifics that I would like to mention. For PreP operations that convert bailed plastic into feedstock ready to be purified, all of the technology has been tested and commissioned. It took quite some time to grind through the start-up and get things positioned across each piece of equipment. But PreP reliability is improving every day, and efficiency improvement activities are ongoing. Across the last quarter, we've been running a lot of different types of bales and generally have had good success here. We're in close communication with the third-party suppliers to improve the bail quality where it's needed. We have also identified several small projects that could improve the overall cost efficiency of the operation. We're evaluating these at this time. For utilities, while there's been a lot of work to get there, the area is fully commissioned in operations and has achieved benchmark rates across the system. This is the heart of our plan, and achieving strong reliability is essential to our operations. Heat control is an important aspect of scale-up and in an area where we historically had problems at the FEU, this is working well now, and we feel good about the temperature control. For purification, we discussed this quite a bit already, but we're there. We've tested the core unit operations. They work well. The core tech is sound and tested. We've worked through a number of teething issues, and we fixed and fine-tuned a lot of equipment. There were a number of minor issues that needed to be worked through, program updates, external sensor replacements, minor adjustments to equipment, but they all have to be right. Not only have we learned a lot about Ironton, but all of this will be applied to future plants as well. It will help us build faster, build cheaper, and start up more predictably. One of the areas where I'm particularly proud is with our Ironton staff. As you might recall, when asked about what are you most worried about with respect to start-up? I almost always answered with the learning curve of our team. While the last two months have been a lot of work, time, and effort, the commitment by our team has built an incredible strength for our company. We now know how to operate this plant. We are now more confident in the ability to predict operational performance, and we're starting to see around the corner. Lastly, with respect to digital, this has been a big lift. I knew that when we decided to incorporate the born digital package, it was going to be more work at the beginning to get right. But I also knew that this would set the stage for everything else in the future. It's been true on both fronts. I remember early in the project, it was really difficult to get the basic controls to operate. The first time we tried to put solvent into the system, it took approximately three weeks to get lined out. But then we learned, and we fixed, we improved, and we applied our Born Digital capability. And when we restarted the operations recently, it took less than one day to get the plant optimized on temperature and pressure. This is a good indication of both the power of Born Digital as well as the growth of our team. With respect to technology, we are excited. We recognize that it isn't easy to see the technology progress without actually being in Ironton and watching the day-to-day project progress and watching the data. So we pulled the original Investor Day presentation to show the progress across each section. Look, the big picture is clear. For our technology to be successful, we have to be able to mix solvent, extract contaminants, and remove solvent. Each of these steps is really working well. Here are a few of the details across each section and a few problems that we've worked through. The first and last steps are all about extrusion. And our extruders are working really well. The heating, cooling, and pumping capabilities are very good, and the capacity appears to track to design. We're happy with the relationship with Krauss Maffei, the level of support they've provided and the quality of their machines. We've always viewed our mixing and extraction steps as one of the most critical. It's traditionally difficult to scale mixing, and mixing a solvent with a viscous polymer was expected to be challenging, but our plant has achieved the success. This is a key step because the better we mix polymer with solvent, the better the solvent will be removing contaminants. Good contaminant removal means superior product quality. Filtering and purifying steps are working well now. There's still minor mechanical items to work through, but they will not impact plant operations. The commissioning has been challenging because we had one faulty piece of equipment in a critical step that needed to be repaired. It was built by the drawings, but after startup, we learned the design needed a small improvement. We used this time to upgrade the equipment, and it's working well now. Removing and recovering solvent is a critical piece of our process. I'm very excited about this section. This allows us to be both cost-effective and also a good environmental steward. Our final two steps are dedicated to this effort. Both work very well. In fact, while it takes some time to generate a statistically significant data set, our early indications show that our solvent removal is 15% to 40% more effective than the original design. This means that PureCycle is expected to generate pellets with even better odor performance than originally planned. One of the most critical adjustments that we made to the process was with respect to piping in this system. During the first startup, we noticed that the flow rate through the system was hindered and would have been rate limited below the maximum capacity of the original design. However, our team brainstormed the situation, developed a novel solution, and then implemented it in late July. The results were really good, and the rate limit appears to be removed. This has been a really interesting process for all of us, and for the most part, pretty traditional. Many of us have been part of big projects, startups, new plant operations, and scale-up efforts. It's basically going the way we expect it. Projects like this are always more challenging in the early days as you tease and work out the kinks. And then they start working. We're very methodical with our commissioning process. And while this did take some time, what we've experienced isn't unusual, and there's no doubt that these efforts have paved the way for strong future operations. At this time, I would like to invite Dan Coombs to the call. As you know, Dan is the Chairman of our Board. Dan is a 45-year veteran of the industry and has gone through a lot of projects, startups, and has worked in plants for years. He has been very helpful for me through this process. Quite frankly, he's also spent a lot of time in Ironton with all of us. Through our discussions, I thought that his perspective could be very helpful today. Dan?

Thank you, Dustin. I'll try to give you some perspective on project completion, commissioning, and start-up from my 45 years of industry experience. I will discuss how and why such observations are relevant for this project from that industry perspective. Typical commissioning periods for complex technical facilities similar to this one take between three and six months. New technology generally takes more time and effort to commission and start up compared to proven technology. This project reached mechanical completion on April 24. We are 3.5 months past mechanical completion. Given the novel nature of our process, getting to this point inside the early portion of industry commissioning norms is a strong result and a successful outcome. The commissioning and early operations phase of a facility are really about understanding and addressing any key issues that might keep the plant from consistently producing at full capacity. Safety is always the top focus during this stage. We believe that safety leads, and results follow. Commissioning success is driven by safety and finding and fixing issues. Any plant that contains miles of pipe and thousands of complex instruments, controls, and pieces of equipment will have some issues that require quick solutions. Our plan was no different. The majority of our issues were normal equipment and control issues common to any startup. There are many reasons that we've made such good progress since mechanical completion. First, is our talented team of people at Ironton and within the company; second, our dedicated and committed partners; third, our born digital philosophy; and fourth, our capability of finding solutions. I've been part of many projects and the results of this team are as good as any I've seen. Project startups follow an S-curve. It's not linear, so it's always slow at the start when leaving the gate, and then it goes faster. However, there is nothing normal about the team in Ironton. It is rare to see a team so singularly focused and aligned on a mission. PureCycle hired a mixture of operators, craftsmen, engineers, scientists, finance, and business people to form this company. Most of our people have had excellent experience with industry leaders. This gave us a jump on setting up robust processes for safety, environment, training, quality, reliability, and operations in general. All PCT people are committed and focused on the mission to solve plastics waste. They're proud to talk about what they do with their families and the community. This sense of pride and mission are key to our teamwork and drive this team to win. Not only did we find excellent people, but these people also work remarkably well together. In my many years within the industry, I've worked with a lot of top teams on big projects and managed a lot of plants. This team is as good as any I have worked with in my career. They look for ways to help each other. They look for ways to solve problems rather than make excuses. They check their egos at the door, and they listen and cooperate with each other. They make personal sacrifices to support the mission. They're committed to safe operation and making PCT successful. Our team is a key reason why we are making the progress that we're making. I could not be prouder of this team or the opportunity to participate alongside them to bring this technology to the market. Dustin, thank you for letting me share my thoughts about this project.

Thank you, Dan. We're lucky to have you, and we appreciate all of your support. While most of the company was focused on getting Ironton operational, we did move the needle forward with respect to our growth strategy. With respect to Augusta, we closed the key documents to secure the land, which now clears the way for us to begin site work activities. We expect this work to start in Q4 and continue through Q2 of 2025. As you recall, there were several concerns with respect to securing the Augusta land in the last two quarters that is now resolved. Now that Ironton is operational, we have clear access to land, and our project can accelerate. We're incredibly excited about the future plant in Augusta and the recycling capacity that we can bring online. Europe is also on track. We closed the tender process for Antwerp, have commenced both engineering and permitting activities. We expect to close the permitting process in 2024. Our JVs also continue to move forward. Both Mitsui and SK Geocentric sent teams to Ironton for site tours that supported the development of both projects. We intend to establish inventory locations in Antwerp and in Singapore in order to seed future sales for Europe and Asia. We will use the flexibility in the Ironton contracts to make volume available for export. We will add inventory in Antwerp and then, one to two quarters later, plan to move to Singapore. We're currently developing the internal work processes and third-party contracts to establish this operation. I will now turn it over to our CFO, Larry Somma for a financial update.

Thank you, Dustin. I'm really pleased with the financial progress that we made during the quarter. At the end of May, the Augusta Economic Development Authority formally approved our plan of financing for one line in Augusta, which officially closed the forbearance that had previously been in place. Subsequent to that, on June 30, we executed an economic development agreement related to our plans to construct the Augusta facility. Pursuant to the EDA, PureCycle expects to receive certain property tax abatement benefits as well as certain other incentives, including site infrastructure development assistance. We are excited about our plans for Augusta. And with the technology risk removed with pellet production in Ironton, we expect to accelerate our project financing efforts as we believe that removing the tech risk will improve our cost of funding. We have also continued our efforts to raise funds as we have interested parties for the remainder of our PreP certification equipment. We are hopeful to provide details soon, but in the interim, we were able to extend the maturity of our undrawn revolving line of credit with Celebrity Capital from June 30, 2024, to March 31, 2025. Our objective has always been to ensure sufficient capital to advance our strategic initiatives, while allowing ourselves the time needed to execute a capital-efficient project financing plan for Augusta. We ended the quarter with just over $366 million in cash and available liquidity, which includes $150 million of unused borrowing capacity on our line of credit. As a reminder, during the quarter, we closed two non-dilutive financing transactions for a net amount of $47.6 million. Our corporate and preoperational employee cash used was $9.9 million during the second quarter, which was an increase from the prior quarter primarily due to the delayed payment of a portion of our 2022 bonuses compared to the previous quarter. We used $12.5 million of cash during the quarter for normal corporate operations such as insurance, Ironton start-up working capital, professional fees, and various other expenses. Additionally, we continue to make investments in our Ironton, Augusta, and PreP facilities, which were funded primarily from the nondilutive financing transactions. Now let me comment on our budget for completing the Ironton project. As noted in our 10-Q filing last night, PureCycle anticipated as of June 30 that the remaining investments in 2023 to complete the Ironton facility could range from $10 million to $22.5 million. This range is dependent upon various contract contingencies and their ultimate resolution. We believe that we can recapture funds from some of the contractors on the project. But the most important point is that we've already spent or forecasted the need for a total of $22 million, which means that any positive resolution to contract contingencies should be favorable to our future cash forecast. Now I'm going to return the call to Dustin for his final comments.

Thank you, Larry. Look, we continued to execute on both near- and long-term goals. We completed the first two milestones with the bondholders. The questions regarding PureCycle's core technology have been addressed and answered. We closed the AEDA land transaction on the 30th of June, which paves the way for our North American growth strategy. We extended the $150 million revolving line of credit through March 31, 2025, and closed two nondilutive financing transactions for a net amount of $47.9 million. We continue to set the stage and advance our international projects in Antwerp, Belgium, Ulsan, South Korea, and Japan. We look forward to updating the market with respect to the upcoming milestones achieved and completing the start-up process of our flagship Ironton facility and the Augusta financing process as soon as possible. Thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. At this time, we'd like to open the call to questions.

Thank you. We will now conduct the question-and-answer session. Our first question comes from Hassan Ahmed from Alembic Global Advisors. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Dustin and Larry. First, a comment followed by a question. Look, I mean, historically, there were a bunch of cynics out there with regards to the PCT story. And the cynical stuff that they would talk about was whether or not the technology works, whether it's scalable or not. So clearly, you guys have proven them wrong with commercial production starting and the like. So that's obviously the comment that I had to make. But in terms of my question, as far as your core technology goes, the core technology working at scale, I mean, as I sort of sit through your presentation, it seems that there wasn't really a whole lot of redesigning that you guys had to do, right? I mean, maybe some slight redesign with regards to the mixing and extraction side of things, maybe some on the purification step and the separation step. So the question is, would these sort of minor redesigns; and b, the lessons learned and time-saving and potentially budget-saving for future projects because of these potential findings?

Thank you, Hassan. I appreciate your thoughts. You're right in your assessment. When scaling a new technology, there's always a chance of encountering issues that could require significant time or capital expenditure to resolve. However, during the startup of the facility, we didn't face major problems, just some minor ones that I'll address shortly. The essential technology revolves around mixing, removing contaminants, and extracting solvents. We executed these processes effectively, which we are very enthusiastic about. Regarding the minor issues we encountered, there were several typical startup challenges. For any new system, you might expect certain control valves to malfunction or regulators to be improperly set. We experienced a situation where we had to shut down the entire utilities plant to initiate a new program, akin to rebooting a computer, which took time with a plant of this size. We also faced some issues with equipment piping, as we encountered a higher pressure drop than anticipated. We redesigned the piping and successfully implemented the changes in July, which was a significant technical achievement for our team. Another issue was a minor design flaw with one of our Johnson Screens in a core operation, which allowed some processes to leak, necessitating a shutdown to make corrections. Thankfully, those challenges are now resolved. Throughout the commissioning process, rather than rushing to achieve minor rates, we chose to prepare the plant for full operational capacity. We addressed various issues and have since been running efficiently. In terms of lessons learned, scaling technology often brings unexpected challenges, even with a solid foundational understanding. While our competency development has been impressive, especially highlighted by Dan, we have gained significant insights that will assist us in future startups, ensuring they proceed more swiftly. Our experiences have also identified opportunities to reduce capital expenditures and enhance capacity with minimal impact on the plant. Thus, I'm optimistic about our capital costs moving forward. Despite the current inflationary pressures, we have a chance to lower costs and potentially increase capacity in future facilities. Thank you for your question, Hassan.

Very, very helpful. And a quick follow-up. Can you talk a bit about how you feel the commercial scale sort of facility has performed relative to the FEU?

It's performing better than the FEU. We knew that from the beginning. We've incorporated many design elements into the commercial plant that weren't present in the FEU, and the equipment we've installed is of significantly higher quality. One particular aspect worth mentioning is the devolatization of our final product pellet. This upgrade is very important as it helps eliminate contaminants from the overall product and also minimizes the odor of the final output. We've discussed this extensively. Previously, people would smell the FEU pellets and think they were good, and the tests confirmed that perception. However, the performance of our final pellet is even superior to the FEU. I'm genuinely excited about this. With my extensive experience across various industries, I know that odor is often a crucial factor. I believe this will present us with great sales opportunities in the future.

Very helpful. Thank you so much.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Noah Kaye from Oppenheimer & Co. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking the questions and for the update. Clearly, the team has been living on this 24/7, and it is really helpful for us to see where you're at currently. And so my first question is kind of a two-parter that actually feeds from the last question, which is, first, around product quality and second around product run rates, right? So you mentioned the odor, but just so we all understand. Are the pellets that are coming out of the facility now of the quality that would get commercial acceptance from your customers? And if those attributes are actually better than contemplated in the agreements, what does that mean for customer demand?

Yes. We feel really good about the product quality, Noah. Anytime you start up a facility like this, you're going to have some periods at the beginning where you have construction debris and different items that you have to clean out through the pipe, rust that's developing inside the pipe. And when we look at the products, we had some of that at the beginning. But the core component that we've been watching is the odor performance, and that's been performing very well. With respect to the marketability of the product, yes, we feel very good about that. With respect to the ability to, let's say, upsell that from an odor perspective, we'll have to see how that goes, Noah. I anticipate a lot of interest in our product in markets that we haven't traditionally chased from an odor perspective, but we'll have to see how that plays out over time.

Not to show your hand too much, but can you talk a little bit more about that? What does having lower odor mean in terms of expanding your markets?

One easy example is automotive. No one wants to deal with the unpleasant new car smell, which often comes from fossil-based plastics inside vehicles. If we can perform better than fossil-based polypropylene regarding odor, which preliminary results suggest we can, it will provide us an advantage in automotive applications such as dashboards, pillars, and consoles. I believe this is a significant opportunity for us.

Really interesting. So into product run rate, you mentioned you recently initiated the restart. So I'm guessing that where you sit today is a fairly low run rate relative to rated capacity. But can you walk us through where you sit and how you see this ramping? You reiterated commitment to a full month of 50% production by end of September. So obviously, you have conviction there. But just help us walk through what you're seeing now and what you expect?

Yes. It's important to note that in July, we were much more focused on fixing these items that were hanging us up a little bit so that we could reach full run rate. And what I'll tell you now is that we're touching the 40%, 45% level of capacity, and we haven't seen real top-end constraints yet. So as we get into August, I anticipate us pushing above the 50% level and working to knock out those next milestones.

It's great to hear. For the last question, there was a mention in the release about the expected margins being in line with the previously provided budget. There are many variables in the cost structure and the revenue stack, but what gives you confidence in achieving target margins as you scale over the coming months?

Well, let's talk about cost, and then we'll talk about revenue. On the cost side, I think we're seeing indications, although they're early, that our variable cost structure is going to look good, if not a little bit favorable to the original budget. I think that we're finding efficiencies as we optimize the plant to pull down the utility cost. And so I think that's going to be good. Another core component to cost is feedstock, and we're finding feedstock. The feedstock market has been down quite a bit this year relative to the last couple of years. And so we'll take full advantage of that. And quite frankly, given our flexibility on feed, I think that we'll have a notch better than others buying in the mechanical recycling market. So I feel good about that. The other item that we really haven't talked much about is on the revenue side. And while there are a lot of puts and takes on the overall deck, especially with respect to Ironton, we have a couple of things. One, we've got an increasing amount of feedstock plus contracts that we're applying to Ironton, which is going to help quite a lot. But more important to that is how we believe that we can value sell. We've run several different feedstocks in the plant so far, a couple of different grades of PIR, we even ran a little bit of PCR. We focus more on PIR because of its consistency, and it just allowed us to watch the data a bit closer. But the key thing is that the feeds that we ran in the plant so far, they all basically act the same which gives us a lot of confidence on the PCR front. And so most of the contracts that we have in place are mandating like a minimum of 50% PCR, but we know that the market is very excited about more PCR. And so the higher the PCR that we can put to the market, I think the better we'll be able to value sell our product. And so I feel good about the revenue side. The polypropylene market in general is down a bit, Noah. And so that's something that we have to watch. But I think that our product is in a league of its own. And I think it's going to carry a lot of weight in the market. Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Aadit Shrestha from Stifel. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, and thanks for taking my question. Just could we get an update on the general timeline of maybe the key milestones? I know you've talked about the 50% utilization, you'll meet that by September, but it looks like other things may have shifted a bit. When do you expect the performance test completion to occur?

Yeah. Look, we feel really good about the milestones. I think we'll be ramping above 50% within the next period of a short period of time. I think we'll have a shot at achieving the milestone in August. And if not, we'll close that milestone in September. With respect to the final performance test, look, this is really the game that we have been going for. All of the work that we did in July was really about achieving this because it gives us a lot more flexibility in the overall system. And so we haven't really set a target date for that. I think that in the September, October timeframe is very reasonable for us to touch that test. Remember, it's a five-day test at 100% rates. And as we ramp up to get to that position, we'll know if we see any incremental constraints and look to work around them. But right now, with what we see across the system, I see no reason that's going to stop us from getting it done in September, October.

All right. Thank you. And just to follow up. Do you see any other process technology issues from startup that need to be resolved or any other things that may pop up that we're not necessarily seeing right now?

Well, I mean that's kind of a crystal ball question. I mean, the short answer is I have no doubt that we will have other challenges in front of us as we move forward. That's the nature of this business; it's the nature of introducing a novel technology, and that's what we've seen all the way through. What I'm confident in is our team and our ability to solve problems. So do we see other items that are out there now? Yeah, some nuisance things around the edges. But again, the core technology that really represents the power of the technology is working really well. And we're going to leverage that, pivot on that, and continue to grow. So I'm really optimistic that the majority of the heavy-hitting headaches are behind us, and we're going to be moving forward with pace now.

Thank you for taking my questions and good luck.

Yeah. Thank you so much. See you next time.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Eric Stine from Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. I was just hoping to follow up on an earlier question about lessons learned as you bring Ironton online and at scale, any change to your thought on optimal plant size, I believe it's 130 million, is your expectation? And then also just curious, as you move forward and look at international markets, is there anything in those markets that would dictate a different plant size?

Look, I think that we've had a lot of theoretical discussions about what the optimal plant size would be. I think that when you helicopter up a little bit and think about the market holistically, I think there are cases to be made for smaller plants, and I think there are cases to be made for bigger plants. Obviously when you get into the bigger plants, you have the opportunity to spread the cost out across higher capacity, and that helps you overall CapEx per pound, and you can often offer quite a bit of feedstock flexibility by targeting one feed to a specific line and optimize that way. With respect to smaller plants, I mean there's a lot of smaller markets out there that would love to have a facility like this that could reduce their dependency on imports from other regions. And so we're paying attention to both. I think from a technology perspective, what we're seeing is that since the core technology is so robust and effective, I think the ability to scale the inside components of our plant is pretty straightforward. We're going to have to look at the details, and I'm not prepared to make a comment on what we think future plant sizes could be today. But I think that we should be very optimistic about that. I think that once you've got a good handle on your core internal technology, then it's really just about operating a bit on the edges to increase capacity. So some natural constraints that we're going to have initially are extruder capacity, okay? We'll probably hit constraints there before anywhere else. But you can always add an extruder, or you can always build a bigger extruder for future lines. We're not seeing mixing constraints. We're not seeing extraction constraints at this point. We're not seeing solubility management constraints. Those are good. And once you have clean control of that core portion of the technology, it allows you to think about scaling differently. So do I think that we could have a much bigger plant out there someday? Absolutely. And what impact will that be on our overall CapEx per pound? It will certainly drop it. And I think that when it comes to the overall position for us in the market in the long run, I think that's where PureCycle becomes very powerful because once we know the technology works and we can operate it reliably like we're learning in Ironton, then it's going to be all about how can you get the CapEx per pound in control so that you can grow economically more sustainably. And I think that we are in a great position today to do that.

Got it. That's helpful. And maybe last one for me. Just on the feedstock side, obviously, you've done a lot of work in the US. But just curious, I know it's still somewhat early, but curious the work that you've done or work that your partners have done in some of these international markets as those projects approach?

Yes, this is one of the benefits of thinking and expanding globally early on. When we start to open up our operations, it encourages people to reach out to us. In every region we've discussed for global growth, we have potential feedstock partners who are contacting us. For instance, when we were considering our move into Europe, we frequently heard that finding feedstock would be challenging because there wasn't enough available; it was all being used up. However, just weeks after announcing our location in Antwerp, we received indications of oversubscription for a single line, and we are well on track to secure enough subscriptions for two lines. Fundamentally, our technology is flexible regarding the type of feedstock we can work with, which sets us apart from almost all other players in the market. Consequently, feedstock suppliers and aggregators view us as an opportunity to place materials they have been trying to sell for years. Thus, our technology actually attracts feedstock from the market rather than constricting it.

Yes. That’s great to hear. Thank you.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Gerry Sweeney from ROTH Capital. Please go ahead.

Good morning, Larry and Dustin. Thanks for taking my call.

Yes. Thanks a lot, Gerry. It’s good to see you again.

I have a question regarding the operational front. Have you sent pellets for certification yet?

We have not sent pellets for certification of the commercial plant yet. But we are in active discussions with all of our key partners for their applications.

Got it. Okay. And then switching gears, Larry hasn't had a chance to talk too much, so I got a question too for him. Obviously, the project financing sounded as though that was kicking back into gear just curious if maybe you could let us know where stands and then in conjunction with that. It sounded as though in your prepared remarks, Augusta was one line. I'm not sure if I heard that right. I'm just curious if there were any changes. And obviously, that fits into project financing as well.

Thanks, Gerry. I'll address the last part, and then I'll hand it over to Larry. Augusta can accommodate eight lines. We have acquired long lead items for two lines, and we are currently considering whether to proceed with one line first and then bring in the second line later or to pursue both simultaneously. This was a key topic in our discussions with the AEDA regarding timing and the package we presented to them. They were quite comfortable with us starting with one line instead of two, which is where that understanding originates. Now I'll let Larry continue with the rest of the response.

Thank you, Gerry, for the good question. From our experience last year in a challenging market, we learned the importance of having a strategy tailored for one group of investors. We have adjusted our approach for our restart by considering various options, ensuring we're not overly reliant on a single strategy. We are currently evaluating three different scenarios for financing. This diversification allows us to select the best long-term option while also working towards a quicker resolution. With the tech risk from Ironton now gone, we have several opportunities to explore, which is exciting for us. However, we recognize the need to proceed cautiously given the market conditions. We will focus on building momentum with key partners. Additionally, as Dustin mentioned, we received approval from the AEDA for financing on one line and are making advancements on long lead items for two lines. This gives us significant flexibility with the AEDA's agreement, allowing us to go to market with multiple scenarios, whether that involves starting with one line or both simultaneously.

Got it. My main question was whether the AEDA gave you approval, which means you're in good shape regardless of whether you proceed with one line or two lines.

That's right. Obviously, two lines at the same time is more revenue and profitability for us. So that will also factor into our thinking.

Got it. Okay. I appreciate it. Thanks for taking my call.

Thanks, Gerry.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Thomas Boyes from TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking the questions. Great to see all of the progress this quarter. First, a quick one on just 100% operating capacity deadline at the end of January, not the performance test. Is it similar to the 50% operating capacity? Is that something where you need to operate the facility 100% for a whole month, for a four-week measurement period? Is it simply just a pound per quarterly nameplate capacity? Just wanted to kind of understand the framework there.

Yes. It's similar to the current milestone, which is just pounds per month requirement by that date.

Got it. And then just a longer-term one. I was wondering if you could talk maybe about the ability to leverage, say, the DOE loan for additional lines of Augusta beyond 1 and 2 because that process obviously takes a good chunk of time.

Yes, we are exploring various financing options. For instance, when it comes to a long-term partner like the Department of Energy, we are definitely considering that as a possible funding source for additional production lines. The idea is to have financing that can be activated for each line sequentially in Augusta, which would mean we wouldn't have to repeat the same process each time we add a new line.

Got it. No, appreciate the color. Thanks.

All right. I am showing no further questions at this time. I will turn the conference back over to Dustin for closing remarks.

Look, I just want to close by first of all, thanking everybody for participating today and asking the great questions, and more importantly, by following us and supporting us along the way. It seems to me like every quarter, we accomplished something newer, bigger, and even more exciting. This quarter was no different. And I mean, given the success that we found with our technology combined with the growth, the quality, and the resolve of our people, today represents a true inflection point for our company. And while we're extremely proud of where we are today, I believe future updates will even be more rewarding. Thank you for joining the PureCycle team and helping us to create a pure planet.

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