Terrific. Well, good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us. My name is Duffy Fischer. I'm the chemicals analyst at Goldman Sachs. Adam Samuelson, our agribusiness analyst, had to step away from the conference to head back to New York, so he apologizes for not being here. But I'll step in and kinda moderate. We're very happy to welcome Green Plains CEO Todd Becker to the stage with us today to talk a little bit about biofuels and kinda the transformation that they're undertaking. Todd has been at Green Plains for a decade and a half. He's kinda seen it go from what I kinda call a more commodity corn into ethanol, you know, into blended fuel to now trying to do some exciting things around, you know, sugars and, you know, oils. And I'll kinda let him take the ball and run with that a little bit, but again, thank you all for joining us today. So Todd, maybe to start us off, walk us through the transformation that you're trying to take the company on today, again, going from kind of a more basic corn into ethanol, now trying to do three or four different pillars and take advantage of some of the need for the world, you know, in different biofuels, different, you know, carbon sequestration plans. And maybe just, you know, bridge us in a waterfall manner, maybe off kinda where the assets were in 2022, where you're taking the assets, and kind of what will contribute to Green Plains in that period. Yeah, we kicked off a technology-based transformation a couple years ago. We knew that it would take us probably three-five years to get it done, and our goal was to get it all kind of completed in 2025 and kick off from there. And it's really around four pillars, around protein, oil, sugar, and decarbonization, and each of those have—we're at a different stage in each of those pieces, and really what it is is taking a business that was traditionally volatile, unpredictable, and non-recurring cash flows into more of a less volatility, predictable, and recurring cash flows and coming through those four pillars, while understanding that the decarbonization of alcohol and ethanol is actually gonna play a bigger role than we probably thought at the beginning of this transformation of how to allocate capital a little bit. You know, when we kicked it off, we thought the first thing we wanted to do was get more out of that kernel of corn that we were crushing every day, cracking open, much like you crack open a barrel of oil. And within there, there's different high-quality ingredients, and we weren't really able to get that as an industry, and our purchase of a technology company allowed us to open up several of those different areas. The first one we started with was getting higher quality co-products from something that was more of a commodity-based co-product around a low, low-quality proteins and animal feed into higher quality proteins because that's really what... When we think about the transition away from commodity production and thinking about more like a wet milling business that some of the bigger guys have that earn a much bigger margin from that same raw material, we kicked it off really by unleashing the power of protein, and we're in the middle of that transformation. It's taking us a little bit longer just because we can't get permits as fast as we thought, and the supply chain is still somewhat difficult around gear and electrical gear and those type of things. But we have five converted. We have one ready to go when we can get the permit, and we're gonna and we have a joint venture that's coming on this quarter as well, and the biggest protein system that's ever been built around cracking open this kernel of corn as well. So it's high-quality proteins going after first, pet food, aquafeed at the 50% protein level, and now we're increasing it to the 60% protein. We'll get into that. On the oil side, really getting more low-carbon oils out of a corn kernel. It's a waste feedstock, so it has significant CI benefit when you look at things like renewable diesel and then moving into jet fuel, and with the IRA, which I'm sure we'll get into a little bit as well, it's a favorable feedstock. And we continue to see those yields go higher and getting more and more out of that, and there's still more to go, and I think that's a bit of Pandora's box. On the sugar side, that's the most important part of what we're trying to do, which is, which is make dextrose- Mm-hmm ... instead of alcohol, and those margins are significantly better by multiples than what you'll ever earn off of making alcohol today and getting into products, everything from food to industrial products. When you think about the sugar economy that, that we're in today and, and going into even in the future around fermentation and, and those type of things, more and more dextrose is going to be needed, and there's limited capability to grow that in the traditional way, and so we have a technology that unlocks that. Then the last thing is around decarbonization. You know, I when we started out, we didn't really know which was gonna be the most valuable. We knew sugar was probably gonna be the most valuable opportunity for us, but when we look at allocation of capital, we're seeing decarbonization, especially in Nebraska, early decarbonization, be potentially even greater than anything we ever thought. Because when you look at the ability to take our carbon, put it on a pipeline, sequester it in geologic formations, the first one will happen probably in Nebraska. Well, it will happen in Nebraska, in 2025 because the pipeline is already built, that we've moved our assets to. And when you look at where we're going with our carbon, it's into Wyoming. They have primacy already, and they've just started to much faster than the EPA could ever do, they just started to approve Class VI wells in Wyoming, which tells you this is not a... It's not gonna be an if anymore. It's just a matter of when. Yeah. If we can get that pipeline operating, we believe that'll be in 2025. We're just getting ready to order our compression equipment. That's the best, one of the best returns 'cause of the IRA. Mm-hmm. If you would've asked me several years ago, you know, "Is decarbonization and sustainable aviation fuel really gonna happen out of alcohol?" I would've said, "No way. Can't get it done," then along comes the IRA. So when you kinda add all those things up together, the 2025 margin structure, and starting a little bit in 2024, is gonna be much greater than we ever thought we would be able to achieve just making alcohol. Okay... And is there a way, like a walking around number in your head? You know, again, three-five years ago, you took one bushel of corn, you converted it into some dollar value of DDGS and ethanol and whatever the 10-year average was for that. How much of an uplift, you know, if the dream works and kinda all the processes work, you know, as you hope them to, that you, you know, what's the uplift on a, a bushel of corn conversion once we're done with all this? Yeah, if I put it into a gallon perspective, which is how we think about it, if you go back in time when we started the company, earning $0.15-$0.20 a gallon on an every year basis through the traditional. And we really, at that point, didn't get much out of our oil at all, our corn oil at all. That was – that was traditionally what you were able to earn on an asset that cost you about $1.80 a gallon to build. Okay. Maybe some years you'd earn $0.50 a gallon, some years you earn $0.05 a gallon. It was really very volatile. Some years it was negative. So if we'd started there, $0.15-$0.20 long-term margin structures, oil on top of that for the last couple of years has been showing kinda $0.10-$0.17 a gallon uplift. Protein, when we built the original protein systems, that's $0.12-$0.15 a gallon uplift on top of what you would earn in just making traditional ethanol. On the sugar side, that's really what we're focused on. That is about $0.80-$1 a gallon uplift. Our first system will come on this year, and then we're just finishing up this month to mechanical completion, and we'll start sometime in February, March, really gearing that up for some April deliveries of our first product. That will show the market the true value of our asset base and the true value of our technology. So that's, that's $0.80-$1 a gallon uplift. We can't move as fast as protein- Right ... because it just, you know, it's we wanna make sure we don't overflow the market, but generally speaking, the market continues to grow for that type of product. And then decarbonization, I mean, the first step in a Nebraska asset, for example, where the pipeline is in place- Mm-hmm ... you know, that's gonna earn somewhere around $0.40-$0.50 a gallon during the first years of the IRA, when we look at the 45Z credits that are available, transitioning to a 45Q later on. But the 45Z credit, the faster you can decarbonize and bury carbon and sequester- Mm-hmm ... the more money you're gonna make for paybacks. I mean, it's gonna cost us about $90-$100 million to buy the compression and install the compression equipment. Okay. That payback is less than a year once you, once you, through the IRA, through the 45Z, through sequestration... And And that's without California credits and without fuel credits to bury it in, in Wyoming. And like I said, the biggest thing that we saw, which, which would tell you that this is going to happen, is states with primacy, Wyoming, North Dakota, are starting to issue Class VI permits, and we just saw the administration say that Louisiana is gonna be able to have primacy as well. So you're gonna have three states that, that does not have to get tied up in the EPA red tape. Mm-hmm. You're seeing not much is being approved- Yeah ... out of EPA for Class VI, but all of a sudden, Wyoming- Yeah ... you know, last, last month just starts approving Class VIs, and we expect the ones that we're gonna go into... They're not our Class VI wells, but we expect- Right ... the ones that we're gonna go into to be approved this quarter. Okay. That's gonna be really-- That'll be a very big benchmark for our company 'cause we're one of the largest producers in Nebraska. Mm-hmm. And then he who sits in Nebraska on this pipeline that's built already, only needs laterals to- Yeah ...to access it, is going to be at a much advantaged place for the next several years versus where others are going to build pipelines. And we're on others in Iowa as well, but it'll just take- Yeah ... several years later. Then obviously, today, you're doing most stuff with retrofitting, using existing production assets. You know, you just run through those numbers. What does a greenfield look like? I mean, one, would it be a different structure than what you had traditionally, where you're just going back and retrofitting? What does that $1.80 feel like if you did kind of a new greenfield? I think all in. You know, we've been looking at that because capital allocation is how we're focused on kind of the next couple of years, and we have significant ability to grow our asset base. We're really focused in Nebraska, and because of our advantaged position that we have at three of our assets, and we said to ourselves: "What could we do there to potentially take care of or take advantage of this 45Z- Mm-hmm ... and the IRA for the next couple of years, and when can you get it online?" So we looked at everything from expanding a plant, which is probably, you know, not that much different than building these days. You used to be able to expand a plant for $0.50-$1 a gallon. I'd say it's at least $1.50-$2 a gallon just to expand a plant. Mm ... and overall, over $2 a gallon, maybe $2.50 a gallon, to actually build something new, greenfield. Okay. And then if there's that hybrid in between, where maybe we have an asset like York, Nebraska, we've looked at that. It's probably the best location in all of Nebraska, and it probably has our worst asset that we have- Okay ... as a company. So we say to ourselves: "Should we try and take advantage of being the fact that we'll be early pipeline shippers?" And, and so somewhere in between $1.50-$3 a gallon is where you could probably build today, but with the 45Z credit, you could pay that plant off in probably three years, just on the 45Z credit alone- Okay ... without any other things that have to happen. So we have a really good position, and I'm not sure anybody's gonna build greenfields today. Mm-hmm. I mean, we certainly have enough capacity in this industry. I think it's gonna come through expansions or maybe like a York, which just needs to be upgraded, that, that we have. Mm-hmm. But the money is there to pay it back. But if you were gonna design... And we've looked at that because Fluid Quip, the company that we own, designs low-carbon ethanol plants in Brazil, low-carbon distillation, low-energy distillation, and we've looked at doing something in the U.S. as well. You would do it differently. Okay. You would, you would really focus on your CI score, your carbon density score, if you're gonna build a new plant. Okay. You look at your boilers, your natural gas boilers, maybe move them to electric boilers. There's things to do to go at every point... This is really interesting. Every point of carbon that you can reduce from your traditional carbon score under 45Z is worth $0.02 a gallon. One point, two points of... two cents a gallon. So... you know, when you talk about reducing just 10 points, it's $0.20 a gallon. Right. When you go look back in history- That's better than margin. ... yeah, that's better than a traditional margin. Yeah. So advantage Nebraska right now, and it's advantage Green Plains, 'cause we're one of the largest shippers. Okay. And with such competitive economics, what are the odds that, again, like when ethanol first came out, you know, whatever, 15, you know, we way overbuilt the industry. Can others use similar type technologies and do similar things, and all of a sudden you find yourself in kind of an oversupplied situation with where you're trying to take it around the four pillars? It's really gonna come through... You may not be oversupplied, because if you decarbonize this alcohol, then you're gonna get alcohol-to-jet. You are gonna get SAF. And the administration gave some positive guidance around the GREET model. It won't be GREET to the same extent that we see GREET today, but it'll be... They can't help themselves but to hit ethanol occasionally- Yeah ... from the environmental standpoint. They seem to have take the pressure from the enviro side versus the truth. I'm not sure the truth sometimes matters from that perspective. But we already make a low carbon fuel. Decarbonizing it through sequestration will make it lower. Mm-hmm. If we can prove that this 30... 'Cause we got 30 points of carbon score. Yeah. That's $0.60 a gallon. Just think about that. Just by sequestering alone is 30 points of carbon, $0.60 a gallon. When you look at, they're gonna penalize a little bit, I think, but it's not gonna be enough to really matter, and I think what's gonna happen here is that any decarbonized alcohol in the U.S., once we get the updated guidance on GREET for SAF, will be, will be then moved into jet fuel. And the demand for jet fuel is so deep from that perspective, from SAF re- versus motor fuel. What's really interesting is, even though you might read some of the negatives around aviation fuel that's out there, some of the hit pieces that it might be put out there, it's coming. Yeah. And as soon as we decarbonize, there is technology out there that can convert this decarbonized alcohol all the way through to an approved drop-in jet fuel. Mm-hmm. That'll be the transformative demand that is needed, where I think you then can suck up all the other... If you're gonna build something new- Yeah ... it would just, you've just gotta build it around your low carbon side- Okay ... so that you can get into jet fuel, because that's it, we're being pulled. Yeah. Like, we pushed our way into motor fuel, right? Right. We, through regulation and everything else, we just pushed our way in, and not sure that we were really welcome. Yeah. But it is decarbonizing our... It did decarbonize and help our motor fuels, but this time we're getting pulled- Yeah ... from all over the world- Okay ... and all over industries. Yeah. I think that's the difference this time when we think about the next five years. Mm-hmm. Like I said, if you would've asked me five years or three years ago, SAF from alcohol, not a chance. Okay. If you ask me now, absolutely gonna happen because of IRA and 45Z. Yeah. Okay, okay. I definitely wanna come back to some of the technology stuff and some of the future, but I also wanna hit kind of on the core today business, if we could. So looking at ethanol, if you would just kinda touch on where you've seen, you know, the margin environment go for the last, you know, couple months. Where do you think we sit supply/demand as we kinda enter into 2024? Kinda how healthy do you think the industry is, the core ethanol industry? Yeah, I mean, the last couple of weeks have been pretty brutal on the margins... has been a bit more brutal on the margins than we expected, and we saw some inventory builds. But up until that point, what's really interesting about these inventory builds and these demand numbers is that every time you go back and you look at, like, November just came out- Mm-hmm ... demand was better and production was lower. So the EIA is not getting it right. Okay. I think we're seeing that a little bit right now, even this week, when, you know, as soon as they get to 1,100 or 1.1 million barrels a day of U.S. ethanol, we don't stay there very long. Mm-hmm. 1, the industry is older and doesn't have the capability to run that, nor do we actually believe the numbers were actually over that. So we adjusted back, but we still see stocks somewhat more steady. But we're in a better situation going into winter this year than last year, mainly because we had such a good warm winter, and people are- Yeah ... still driving a lot. Now, we'll see what happens with some of these snowstorms that are supposed to come over, over MLK, but generally speaking, I think we're set up well. You know, but the industry does have a little bit more capacity this year than they did last year, and we'll see how that plays out. But it is getting older, so the harder you run, you can't run for very long. Yeah. I think generally speaking, in 2024, you know, it might be a bit of a rough January, February, but. Okay ... I think when we come out of that, if the weather's good and driving demand is good, and we've seen the higher blends, and especially where we're at relative to the price of gasoline, ethanol is at about a $0.60 discount. Mm-hmm. When we get to those wider levels, we see expanded blends. So we'll start to see potentially, you know, some of the higher blends come on as we start getting into driving season. Yeah ... especially if we're gonna remain at this, this discount to RBOB. And, so I think we're setting ourselves up well, although January, February is gonna be that traditional- Yeah ... rougher period of time. And I think we'll see some plants start to slow down during that period, and then from there, I think we'll get our stocks back into where we need to be. But we were in really good shape a couple weeks ago. Mm-hmm. We're still in pretty good shape relative to traditional levels, but overall, we need a little bit of work to get done, and we started to see that. We started to see some response to that yesterday, and we've really in the first probably couple of weeks that we've seen margins start to really expand back, but we got a long way to go. Okay. And if we set MSC aside, how would you analyze your cost position, you know, on core ethanol vis-à-vis competitors in North America? Yeah, I mean, look, when we bought a lot of plants over the last 15 years that we would call the misfit toys that we had to fix. And so while we were able to do that from a cost per gallon standpoint, you know, what we really focus on in 2023, and it's really a tale of two halves, was getting our plants back kinda running really, really well. And there was a lot of work that we had to get done in 2023, and the first half suffered. Because of that, we saw 93% run rate of our plants in the third quarter. I think we'll see better than that. We saw better than at least that in the fourth quarter, like we had told the market. So our plants are definitely running better. When the denominator's higher, your cost position gets better, right? I mean, so when our denominator is higher on our production levels, our cost position gets better. We're never gonna be... Some of our plants are in the top 5 or 10%, some of our plants are in the top 50%. What we're trying to do is reposition our asset base, that, we wanna get those more consistent run rates, denominators higher, and, and get our position continuing to move up, and that's either gonna come through... You know, one of the things we did is we sold probably our, our worst, positioned plant in Atkinson from our standpoint- Mm-hmm. really dragged down some, and dragged down our average cents per gallon on operating costs. So we'll look at our asset base to say, "What do we need to reposition? Is there things we need to sell? Are there things we need to buy? Do we need to reposition a little bit? Or do we need to make them bigger to get our denominators bigger to drive down our operating costs per gallon?" When you take a look at the justification to do that- Mm. like I pointed out to you, especially in Nebraska, you know, the, it's, you're gonna get paid back very, very quickly- Okay ... for anything that you do. So, you know, we're continuing to work on it. We're not happy about the first half of 2023, but as we start to get into 2024, we're much happier- Okay ... with the way that we're running our business. Okay. And if we don't get the uptake for ethanol into things like SAF, and let's say electric vehicles continue to take a little bit of market share, and gasoline demand comes down over, let's say, the next five years, what happens between the blend wall and the mandate in your view, if that gets inverted? What, what does the industry do then, or, or what's your suspicion what the industry will end up doing? Well, I mean, notwithstanding the fact that we believe SAF will come out of alcohol- Sure ... let's just say leave that, leave that out for a second, we are going to have to blend more of our fuel into the fuel tank. And we saw, we saw the eight governors in the Midwest that have been pressing the EPA and pressing the White House to go E15 year-round, and I think that's, that's happening as we speak, so we'll get some of that demand. Look, 1%, maybe a 12% blend-... instead of a 10% blend- Mm-hmm ... takes care of everything. Okay. When you look at 2% more, that's really the excess capacity. But in any given day, we really start to see sniffing around on exports again. Mm-hmm. So if you just think about what we do when you got base demand of about 850,000 barrels a day- Mm-hmm ... of just blendstock blending into the fuel, some days we're 800,000, some days we're 900,000 barrels a day. We're exporting about 80,000-100,000 barrels a day right now, and we're averaging production about 1,020. So we're a little bit over, but we're not very far away, and when we're at $0.60 discount to gasoline, we start to see expanded blends. And right now, actually, what's more interesting is the way that Brazil is positioned against the United States, we're starting to see sniffing around again from traditional exporters that we haven't seen for a while- Mm-hmm ... where we would export to, and that could clear any that will continue to clear any excesses. It's the first time probably, you know, in about a year- Yeah ... that we've been positioned well against Brazil to go to reclaim some market share. Okay. And, because of the way that the sugar harvest happened. Okay. Let's jump back into kinda some of the exciting stuff. I think that's most of what I wanted on ethanol. Maybe if you would, with your four pillars, if you risk-weighted them versus the opportunity for Green Plains-... how would you rank them as far as the opportunity? You know, if I was gonna come do some work on you- Yeah. You know, what, what's the order that you would suggest that I do the work on those four pillars? I think the first, if you would've asked me a couple years ago, it'd be different. Mm-hmm. But I think the first one you have to do work on with us is 2025 carbon in Nebraska. When you just look at the three assets we have, on paper today, when we're sequestering carbon, it's about $120 million a year, just from the 45Z credit, not including LCFS, not including the value of our carbon credits as well, which, you know, we don't really know where that's gonna happen. It could be $30, it could be $50, it could be $100. They're very high-quality, gold standard carbon credits. Mm. So right now, we're even setting ourselves up for how are we gonna monetize, because we will generate a carbon credit ourselves- Mm ... and on top of 45Z and on top of hitting some LCFS, Low Carbon Fuel Standard markets. So you gotta do the work on that. I think people have ignored that- Mm ... up to now. They didn't even want... people don't really wanna hear about it because nobody actually believes that, you know, you're gonna be sequestering carbon. But with Wyoming approving Class VI wells and the fact... Just Google the Nebraska Pipeline. I for certain reasons, I can't say the name of it- Mm ... but you'll find it very quickly. Yeah. Google the Nebraska Pipeline. We have three of our assets on it. That is, that is built already. It will be operating in 2025, and you have to do the work on it because it's just for our three assets in Nebraska, with just the 45Z is $120 million a year. I think that's as much as or more than we're gonna make on all of our assets- Mm-hmm ... traditionally through some decarbonization efforts. So that's where I would do... That's where I'd start. Okay. The second place I would go, being a chemicals analyst that you are, would be to look at our dextrose- Mm ... and look at how much, first, industrial use of dextrose is growing, especially around renewable chemicals and those type of things. Everything from enzymes to other things that are gonna get made from dextrose, that get made today from dextrose that's expanding. So I'd definitely do work around that. Look, we own and control this technology. We own the IP. We're the only ones that can do it today, and we're building the first one in Shenandoah, Iowa, ever done, first of its kind, serial number one. But it's traditional, off-the-shelf technology that we just basically redesigned for use in a dry mill instead of a wet mill. If you're from agriculture, that's traditionally front-end fractionation versus back-end fractionation. That opportunity for us is the biggest margin opportunity that no government programs, nothing involved. It just goes straight on. You crack open this kernel of corn. Instead of making alcohol, you're gonna make dextrose, $0.80-$1 a gallon, traditionally uplift equivalent. That's why wet mills make so much money. You know, the Cargill- Mm ... the ADMs, the Ingredions, the Tate & Lyles. When you look at their margin structure, it's much better than a dry mill ethanol plant. Yeah. We're going after that margin structure, but this dextrose is gonna be used in everything, to alcohol drinks, all the way through enzymes and chemicals, and the demand is there for this product today. And the great thing is, we buy a lot of product from a lot of these companies- Mm ... that need dextrose. So if you want Green Plains to buy the product from you, you're gonna be, it's gonna be bilateral. You're gonna buy our dextrose from us as well. Sure. That, that makes those products. We've set those up as well. Anyways, just a quick update on that. We should be mechanically complete this month. Okay. We are gonna commission it over the next couple of months. After that, we should be shipping our first product, you know, sometime in April, and that will show that is the day that we believe that's the reinvention of our company from a standpoint of higher value margin opportunity. It's gonna take us a while, but like I said, we own and control it, and it's a product in demand today. We have people that want the product. Mm-hmm. It's a little bit... Again, when we started protein, we pushed our way in, and now we have people calling us because the world is dextrose short- Yeah ... in our opinion. And, and there's so many new renewable chemicals that are coming online that need dextrose to be fed into fermentation. Okay. That's where I would do our work next. Look, protein is- Yeah ... is well, well-documented what we're gonna do there. We're making 50 Pro today. We're making a transition in 2024 to ship 60 Pro. We've made 60 Pro. Nobody else in the world has been able to do that. It's both gonna be chemical or three things: chemical, biological, and mechanical processes. We own and control that, and we're shipping our first products really more in bulk this quarter, but we really wanna ramp it up. We have line of sight on good demand. We've just gotta get people to commit, but it's more global than it is domestic. Okay. Okay. And you mentioned your dextrose was mechanically complete this month. Can you walk us through kinda all the projects you're working on? You know, where are they as far as the process goes, and what gets added in 2024? Yeah ... just from your build-out? So look, first, when we think about the order that I gave you, on the carbon side, and we're gonna order our equipment, hopefully this quarter, for decarbonization of Nebraska. Our compression equipment, we're finalizing what we need. You know, what's interesting is that when you went back a year ago, the wait time on compression equipment was crazy, right? Mm. 'Cause everybody said, "I gotta have compression. The pipelines are gonna get built." We've seen now that wait time compress significantly, and so you don't really have to worry about compression equipment today. So when we think about capital allocation, that's already financed. We're not gonna use any capital off our balance sheet to get that, so it's not gonna take any balance sheet capacity from the standpoint of cash to get that done. Okay. And then hopefully, that's gonna get delivered later in the year, and then we get it up and running for 2025. So that's gonna be the first capital. The second capital is right now we're finishing up both dextrose, so there'll be some capital out on that, not a lot left. And then our Tharaldson JV, which will be the biggest protein system we've built- Yeah ... in North Dakota, at one of the biggest ethanol plants in the country, and that'll be finishing up this quarter as well, mechanically complete. Mm-hmm. So we got a lot of things just kinda finishing and getting ready to kick off. When we think about from there, we're waiting for a permit to build another MSC, another protein system. Mm. It's gonna take a little bit of capital to upgrade into 60 Pro. As we learned, you know, there's these plants are not set up perfectly, so we'll put a little... But again, that's minor. Okay. And so then from there, you know, we're really gonna have to figure out where sugar number two is gonna go, a real big sugar system. What we did in Shenandoah is a nice-sized business, 200-250 million pounds of sugar- Mm ... which, by the way, is a big stream. But for us, we can go a lot bigger than that. The market's 15-16 billion pounds a year- Yeah ... is how big the dextrose market is. It's just in the U.S., not internationally. And so we're looking at where should... Maybe in a plant that can't... It's harder to decarbonize, like a Madison or an Obion. Yeah. If you put sugar there, you don't need carbon. I mean, basically, at that point, you're really not sequestering carbon anymore anyways. Right ... 'cause you're using that carbon. If you look at the sugar molecule, it has carbon in it. Yeah. So you don't actually emit carbon when you're making dextrose. So I would say we'll have to figure out probably this quarter, where dextrose number two goes. Okay. It'll be a bigger system that converts a bigger plant- Mm-hmm ... at more scale. You still wanna have some alcohol at that plant- Yeah ... 'cause you wanna send your, you know, some of the waste streams back into fermentation. Yeah, yeah. But I would say that's probably where we're gonna go next. And then oil is, you know, oil is gonna be this Pandora's box through technology that we can try to get the rest of the oil out of the corn kernel. Mm-hmm. What we're doing in our joint venture that we have with Shell in York, that's another thing to watch closely. That should start up this year, and that is basically, like, at the simplest terms, dropping a corn kernel into an extractor- Mm ... and it just blows it apart. All you get out, you get all the oil, all the protein, and all the sugars, as well as the glycerol. Okay. Yeah. That's gonna get started up in the first half of this year as well. Okay. So when you think about it, starting a new protein system, biggest in the world, starting a new sugar system, serial number one, and starting up the joint venture that we have with Shell on our combination of our MSC technology from Fluid Quip- Yeah ... and their SFCT, which is fiber conversion technology. Mm-hmm. Putting those two together could be truly transformational to technology of processing agricultural products- Yeah ... 'cause it's, it's feedstock-agnostic at that point. Okay. You could drop a soybean in, a wheat kernel in, a corn kernel in. Mm-hmm. At the simplest form, you're gonna send streams in and just blow apart everything that's left. Okay. That'll be something... I would encourage you to watch that sometime this year as well- Okay ... 'cause it, when we announced it a couple of years ago, the future is today, this year. Okay. So... ... And then as you pull out some of the higher quality products, you know, from the DDGS, basically, what happens to the residual DDGS? Does it become less valuable, do you think, or- No, that's the crazy thing. We haven't seen any drop in value because people weren't buying our product for protein. Okay. It's more of a fiber product. They were just buying it just to kind of use it as a filler in many of their animal feeds or as a corn replacement. Mm-hmm. But it really wasn't focused on necessarily protein values, it's more about fat and other things. So we haven't seen anywhere yet- Okay ... a drop in the value of our product because the volatility of that product as an industry is all over the place. Right. I mean, you have such volatility in what this industry puts out on that byproduct, and so the market never really paid you for it. Yeah. So all we've done is taken that volatility and made a much smoother line that gives our customers that buy this lower-quality product just a consistent product every day. Okay. Actually, we're even moving into the fiber markets, which is even a higher value because of what we've been able to do. Okay. We're starting to look at fiber markets that. There's a good demand for fiber in all different types of industries. So yeah, I mean, we've been able to smooth that curve out, but no reduction or no degradation of value of the traditional product, which was that was the big worry of investors. Yeah ... and shareholders that they said, "Well, that's gonna be worth a lot less." It hasn't been worth really more- Right ... not, not one penny less, quite frankly. But also, maybe to push back, if I own a feedlot, and let's say you get up and I'm buying your DDGS, you know, and you've stripped out the protein that I wasn't paying for ostensibly, will I see lesser results on my feedlot because I don't have that protein in now? No, there was... You know, there was really no need for that- Okay ... relative. It was such small amounts, right? Okay. So there really wasn't a big need for that anyways. And in a DDGS, you weren't, again, you never bought it for protein. Yeah. You got your protein- Okay. It was a very inefficient source of protein. It just kind of moved through the animal. Yeah. It didn't really convert into much- Mm-hmm ... and so they bought other things for protein, much different than what they would pay for us. Okay. They actually like... If you look at different animals, if you look at the animal species of poultry, they liked it for the fat, so stripping out the oil has kind of lowered our ability to sell in poultry, but they- Yeah ... it hasn't really dropped off much. Fair. Okay. But when you get into more like dairy and you get into swine or you get into- Mm-hmm ... into cattle, there's very, they just... It's a filler. Okay. It's always been a filler product, but a replacement for corn. Okay. More of a filler. When you need protein, you go to things like soy. More interestingly enough, though, is now those guys are buying our 50 and 60 Pro products- Okay ... to substitute now for their soy products- Okay ... in certain, in certain diets. That's how we were able to make inroads with our new products. Okay. And you'd mentioned something that hits my chemical industry quite a lot, you know, the shortage of compressors or at least very long lead time, a lot of inflation that we've seen in CapEx projects. What's been your experience? Because you have been building stuff over the last couple of years. You've still got stuff on the docket. What is kind of the run rate for inflation in larger CapEx projects you've seen? Yeah, we haven't seen... Look, I mean, cost of people haven't come down, so- Okay ... and getting good construction crews is still hard to do. I think we're starting to see this big build that we saw in soy crushing and soybeans, that's starting to at least slow down a little bit. Mm-hmm. So we're starting to see at least a bit of a release of things like pipe fitters and other things like that. The big thing when you're building something is gear. Your MSC, your gear, your electrical gear is 80 weeks plus. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So if you need something in the next, you know, 6 months to build something, you're not getting it with gear. Yeah. We're literally, literally, right now, for our sugar system in Shenandoah, Iowa, we're tracking every movement of the truck that has our gear on it from Mexico. Okay ... getting through the border. You know, we were worried about that. That's gonna come through the border. We are literally tracking the movement of electrical gear. If that's the biggest... and everything else you can get done. It's still high cost- Yeah ... but, gear is 84 weeks today. Okay. You know, anything, any kind of good gear. You want dumb gear? Sure, you could probably get it made. You want smart gear, which is what you want to put in your plants these days, it's a year and a half. It's just cra- and it's not sto- and Siemens has very tight controls, and it's not- Yeah ... getting any better. Okay, okay. We're running out of time here. I always ask everybody around ag, so I haven't forward sold all the corn on our farms yet. What's your price for corn next year? Yeah, I mean, there's nothing good in agricultural prices today, in my opinion. I think people underestimated Argentina's return to the market, especially in soy, and I think you're seeing that in margins already. What you saw was soy crush margins have come down and are just flat through most of the year today. They've come down to more traditional levels. Then we saw, you know, the lollapalooza that's been happening for the last several years in soybean crushing. But I think the- don't- I won't take a collection in front of any of them. It's still a pretty good business to be in. But overall, look, I mean, you know, the U.S. farmer, the ingenuity of the U.S. farmer and the ability to make more per acre is not going to stop anytime soon. We're gonna get more bushels per acre of everything we produce. Mother Nature plays cruel jokes on all of us, as you understand, as we get into too hot, too dry, or too wet or too cold. Yeah. Mother Nature seems to, you know, play cruel tricks on the longs. Mm-hmm. We're starting to see it already. Look, I, I think next year is where we're priced at around $5 for the December corn for next year. Okay. We have a chance to hit, to go back to the low 4s. Okay. Any kind of rallies right now, the path of least resistance for anything in agriculture is lower. Yeah ... because the world can react very, very quickly, and we're gonna grow more per acre with better technologies that we have from all of the seed companies. So, sell the rallies... is what I would say. Anytime you see a big rally in agricultural products, probably meant to be sold. Perfect. Well, Todd, thank you so much for coming down and spending some time with us. Great story, so, so hopefully we can deliver and, you know, help improve the world a little bit, but thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you.