All right. Green Plains is undergoing an ambitious transformation from a pure-play ethanol company into a biorefinery platform with a number of value-added income streams, including corn oil, high-protein feed ingredients, clean sugar, and sustainable aviation fuel. The evolution creates the opportunity for GPRE to redefine its earnings and cash flow potential while improving earnings predictability. We're pleased to be joined by CEO Todd Becker, who's led the company for more than 15 years, and is the architect of GPRE's strategic transformation, and CFO Jim Stark, who has spent more than a decade with GPRE, including nearly two years in the CFO role, leveraging his financial acumen in support of the company's strategic initiatives. Greatly appreciate you both being here with us. Thanks. Appreciate it. Thanks, Andrew. I actually think someone told me that you're, like, you know, at an anniversary of your start time. Yeah, yeah. 17 years from today. So that was when we started this thing. Is that right? Wow. The public company was October 15th, 2008 with a $30 million market cap. There we go. We've come a long way. Grown it from nothing. I guess where I wanted to start is about the evolution that the company has been on over the last couple years. I think it's kind of four years since you kind of laid out the whole strategy. So can you maybe start by assessing the progress so far relative to, you know, kind of your expectations? Where are the areas that you're farthest along, maybe haven't made as much progress as you had hoped? How would you frame that? Yeah. So we kicked off our transformation about four years ago, and it was really about value-added ingredients and upscaling products that we can make by grinding a kernel of corn. And as transformations ebb and flow, as you go through these, things happen that maybe are a bit unexpected. And so while we kicked it off with high-quality ingredients like proteins and sugars and oils, along comes the IRA, which gave us a little bit of a different stance on go forward as well. So in combination of all of that, all of a sudden decarbonization became a very topical part of our transformation, especially with the fact that the value of our assets, and especially starting even next year on some of our assets, rethinking how we allocate capital, although, you know, we aggressively allocated capital into the protein markets and have our first sugar unit coming on as we speak. But really over these last four years, while we've ebbed and flowed, we always were on track to 2025, really beginning of the new company with everything coming online. So we've got five protein units that are company-owned. We've got our joint venture with Tharaldson, the biggest protein unit in the world that's been built with this technology. It's literally making product today as we speak. We've started it up. Got our sugar unit in commissioning mode right now, and we'll get into that. Really we've made our progress towards 2025. While the numbers have moved around a little bit on contribution from what and where because of the IRA, we still remain on track to our 2025 guidance. So regarding, like, that was gonna be my second question. It's kind of as you think about the, I think it was $500+ million in 2025, I believe, or run rate kind of post-2025. Well, that was everybody else's number. Our number was $250 million-$300 million. Okay. Sorry. You know, so while we laid this out, we said, like, baseload of $250 million-$300 million with a zero contribution from ethanol. Sure. A little bit, you know, it would be higher than that, closer to some of those numbers, but we've seen the vegetable oil markets drop, but we've seen the carbon markets go up. So from our standpoint, we remain on track to that with significant upside in many of the different areas that we had, so. Okay. That's perfect. And so as you kind of ramp some of these initiatives, the legacy ethanol business is still an important part with some of the other initiatives building. So, it's been a challenging ethanol market, certainly. What is your expectation for ethanol margins over the balance of the year? Kind of what are the key variables and drivers that you're watching? I'd say, you know, since it is my 17-year anniversary, it's been a challenging ethanol market on and off for 17 years, but we still remain producing the lowest one of the lowest carbon fuels in the world. And in any given year, it's been pretty good for us. And we remain, you know, committed to the fact that we are gonna make a lot of fuel. And the next step is really making a lot of low-carbon fuels because of decarbonization that's gonna happen under some of the tax credits and the pipelines that are being built in the United States. And so as we look out for the rest of this year, you know, we had a very strong first quarter on exports. So the demand for our product is very high. We have some really good driving demand starting to pick up as we get into summer driving season. The first quarter doldrums were exceptionally weak. Typically, we've seen a little bit stronger markets in the first quarter, but overall for everybody, across most of the industry, unless you have a single one-off plant in the perfect location in the middle of Iowa, you did okay. But any kind of multi-plant owner, so weaker markets. And we're coming out of those winter doldrums. We've seen margins rally quite nicely, and we still believe that there's a significant way to go. Demand remains good. Driving demand was excellent. Again, just reported this morning with EIA data. Exports, like I said, 450 million gal in the first quarter, which is on track to a record potential record year led by Canada and Europe and the U.K. and the Netherlands and Colombia and places like that that are really taking our product mainly because of the competitiveness we are to other fuels in the world. So, you know, we think for the rest of the year, strong driving demand. Hopefully, the industry maintains some semblance of discipline on production, which is always. Sure. Always a key. But generally speaking, we're set up better than last year. We finished a strong last year as a company. You know, we probably could have done a little bit better, but overall, I think we're setting up somewhat similar, even better, a better fundamental case versus last year, especially with these exports. They're not slowing down. They're definitely not slowing down, especially in some of these bigger markets. How does Brazil play into your kind of export expectations? They're obviously an on-again, off-again kind of customer over longer periods of time. So is that a realistic possibility to export ethanol to Brazil? What's the size of that opportunity maybe? How would you just think about that? Yeah. I mean, it's the market today isn't necessarily open. We're out where the harvest closed a little bit. But when we look at the last half of the year and we look at the demand out of Brazil and we look at the supply capability of that industry down there, we believe that that market will be open for us sometime in the last half of the year. It might be small amounts of time, but it's enough to really make a difference. You know, every 100 million or 200 million gal of extra export demand really does make a difference in this balance sheet when we look at the stocks numbers that we have. Our view is in the last half of the year, Brazil should open up for us mainly because of the lack of supply they're gonna have as they close out their year. Can you share from a basis perspective, a corn price perspective, kind of what you're seeing now versus especially on basis, what you're seeing now versus prior, and kind of how on a go forward basis you're thinking about from minimum cost perspective that coming into the plants? There's plenty of corn. That's all I can tell you. There's plenty of corn in the world today. There's gonna be plenty of corn in the world for the next five years. I mean, whether we have a weather event somewhere, maybe that'll be the case. But generally speaking, you know, we're gonna get the crop planted. We get it planted every year. And this year we should. We'll be no exception, quite frankly. Yields, you know, we have record yield dialed in for the balance sheet this year. The USDA came out with about a 180, 181 yield. We'll see if that happens. So stock, you know, we could get a little bit tighter, but generally speaking, there's not a problem to buy corn every single day. The market structure is set up for us. Even domestically and both globally, there's just so much in the world today. And I think that's not gonna be any problem for us. We're a little bit behind in the east on planting, so we'll see what happens there in the Eastern Corn Belt. Western Corn Belt will get it in, and we'll make significant progress this week again. We are a little bit behind last year, but overall, farmer catches up very quickly, and they love to plant corn, just so you know. I mean, that's the key, is this farmer knows how to grow corn, loves to plant corn. And at this number, $4.50-$5 corn, they're gonna take a shot at continuing to get as many acres as they can. Now, we'll see if we get those extra acres in. But actually, where it's been dry is where we typically get the extra acres in, in northern part of the Corn Belt, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota. They've been wide open to get it planted. And that's where we usually find extra acres. So we'll see what happens. And otherwise, they'll just gonna plant beans, whatever they can't plant either, so. But so then you think we end up north of whatever the $90 million? I think it'll be I think 90 is a good number to start with. Could we pick up a little bit of extra acres? Possibly. But I don't think we're gonna lose a bunch of acres unless it just keeps raining. And then, then they can kind of switch between corn and beans a little bit, but they will go as hard as they can to plant this corn crop. Got it. Okay. Moving to the corn oil side, obviously, there's been a bit of a roller coaster for the vegetable oil complex. You talked about kind of how expectations have evolved a little bit yourself. But how, how do you think about the outlook for corn oil prices, what that could contribute to your EBITDA build, you know, over time and, and maybe the demand runway as renewable diesel ramps? Yeah. And I mean, we've seen corn oil prices come down and veg oils overall come down significantly from the 70s into the 40s and even into the 30s with some of the basis. You know, RBD was trading at 500 under futures, so on soy oil. So it is a very weak setup for veg oils right now. You know, $0.30 off the highs for us is $100 million a year. And $100 million a year, put a multiple on that divided by our share count, you can see why we probably were a little bit weaker from this point of our stock price because it is right off the top. And so, you know, our view is veg oils will continue to remain weak right now. Now, there was some talk on this on this tariff, being put in place on used cooking oil out of China. Our view internally was probably not going to happen. It's, you know, it's easy to tax an EV at 100%. When we were already taxing them at 20%-30% and the market was closed, it's much harder to tax feed and food feedstuffs and foodstuffs. And I think from that perspective, I, I don't think we're gonna see much action, because we need China as a as an outlet as well for our agricultural products. So I think very our view was probably not gonna get much traction on, on that. But hey, you never know. I mean, this is this is a crazy year with, with, with the, with the election. But overall, our view is, is veg oils will remain weak for a little while longer. We'll see what happens when the big plants in California open up. Martinez and Rodeo, that's 100,000 barrels of vegetable oil demand a day. That is 2.5. Well, the ethanol industry produces the equivalent of about 40,000 barrels a day of DCO. And this is 100,000 barrels a day of soybean oil or vegetable oil demand coming out in California. It's just a massive giant sucking sound. But we'll see what happens with all these other imports from around the world and what what's gonna really make it in here or not. Generally speaking, you know, our view is that, we'll probably remain on the defensive side in veg oil prices. Now, the only thing I could say is that, you know, the great unwind happened. We're buying meal and selling oil, and we see the oil share is really low relative to history. So maybe we see a bounce because of that. But then we saw a weak basis even as we bounced off of those lows. So it's generally speaking, the cash markets will remain weak. You've talked about at various points in time in various corn oil markets, potential offtake agreements and things like that. I mean, where we sit today and with that perspective, does it become more or less attractive to try to have a little bit more visibility there or, or not so much? I think the turning point on at least for corn oil and used cooking oil will be next year when the biodiesel tax credit is gone. We'll see if it's gone. Right now, it's supposed to be gone, but you never know whatever happens at the end of every year. But the biodiesel tax credit goes away, and we move into more of the IRA type programs where we are favored as a feedstock from a carbon intensity standpoint. Corn oil distillers' corn oil is favored as a feedstock, so is used cooking oil over soybean oil. And there is no tax credit next year, so it is actually a producer credit. So we'll see how that all transfers around relative to demand for our product. But I think next year will be the true test of what a low CI product can earn in these type of markets as we get into 2025 and the IRA kicks in. At that point, you would evaluate or whatever. It doesn't make sense now, obviously, given that dynamic, but. No, let's get Rodeo and Martinez online. Let's get that giant sucking sound. Let's see what people need for low-carbon feedstocks, and then we'll assess from there. But that's really we're excited about that because we produce about 353 million-350 million pounds of corn oil per year. And we see some technologies that are gonna unlock some of those yields over the next coming years. There's more corn distillers' corn oil available in this corn kernel. It's just been Pandora's box in order to unlock it. And we're doing some things with Fluid Quip and our technology group that we're starting to see and make progress to try to unlock the rest of what's in that as well as our partnership with Shell on the fiber conversion technology, which unlocks all of the corn oil that's left in the kernel of corn. So we've only been able to get about 1 lb of about 1.8 lbs in a bushel available. And the Shell technology, along with some things we're doing at Fluid Quip, we believe we can start to unlock much higher yields. And that's the most valuable product we make. Even at $0.40 a lb, it's an $800 a ton product. Wow. That's amazing. Okay. So, moving over to the higher protein feed initiatives, the Sequence brand, you're at, I guess the question is if you could talk about the demand environment for that product. I think you're at 10% of the 60% protein on the way to 20%-30%. Where are you seeing that from an end market perspective, across the business? Kind of how does that mix look, and how does that evolve as we kind of get towards the end of the year? So the first quarter of the year, we saw a compression of all proteins. And, and that was much like 2021. I think we saw it then as well where distillers grains traded very high, which is a kind of a low-value protein. But then soybean meal collapsed, and then corn gluten meal collapsed on top of that. And all proteins in the world compressed during the first quarter, which weighed on everybody's margins. Second quarter, what we've seen is, is a bit of a recovery. Now you've seen distillers grains go to 150, and, and you've got meal at 370. So you've got a nice spread against, against meal again, which we saw that widen back out. And then you've seen corn gluten meal also rally off the lows about $100 a ton. So those just give it a little bit of time, and those markets will start to even out. So that's really good for how we're thinking about the remainder of the year. Our 50 Pro demand continues to remain strong, but we really built our system so we can make Sequence, which is now our branded 60% protein product because it does have some unique characteristics that we control in fermentation. And we're starting to see good demand for that product. We're at about 10% going into the Middle East right now. We think another 10%-15% will go into South America, into the aquaculture markets. And then we think we're gonna grow from there into the North American pet market as well with the 60% and Sequence product. And we could do some things and work with customers on tastes and texture and profiles and those type of things and feed conversion ratios. We're really getting great demand. We finally got some major, major, demand-based, customers. Some of the labels were something that we had to had to get approved. Takes a long time. But we're through most of our trials with both aquaculture and pet. And, and we believe that that demand is going to start showing up even over the next kind of 30-90 days. But we're right now, we're about a little over 10% committed on the product. And, and, and we're right on track to where we thought we would be, 20%-30%. First of all, when we started this initiative, we didn't even think we were gonna hit this 60 Pro+ market for three to five years. And we hit it in three to five months, so we were ahead of ourselves. The customer takes three years for acceptance, literally, two years to grow salmon. You got to get through pet food labeling and pet food, those groups there on quality control and, and, and feed the animal. Let's see how the animal likes it as well. So we're through all of that now. So now it's just a matter of into the next contracting season, what are we gonna be able to win? What is our inclusion rates going to be? And we know that the labels are already approved for our products now. I guess what is the feedback from the customers and the testing and things like that? It sounds like you're pleased with how that has met kind of the metrics and the performance that you would have wanted. So I guess when you think about contracting and how much you'll win, etc., what's the, I guess, what's the governor? What's the toggle? It's time now. That's really, really all it is. It's just time. It's time and inclusion rates. You know, we're in negotiations with all of those different species. You know, one, the inclusion rates, and the testing went very, very well. The feed conversion rate ratios went well. We had one customer say we got a little nervous. They called us up, and it's a true story. They said, "We got to stop feeding your product," which gave us a bit of pause because our fish are growing too fast. That was actually a really good thing. So and we can't make this up, by the way. But, so that's a good thing, actually. So now then they have to reformulate to figure out how to use our products because remember, if you cut 30 days off of growing a salmon, that's massive return for the feeder, right? Because it takes two years. Take one month off. Take 15 days for a trout, which takes nine to 12 months. That's just a massive uplift in return. And that's what they're getting with our product today. And we're even making progress on the next generation of this product as well, which is embedding, you know, peptide technologies into there to actually make it tastier for the pet, for your pet or for the aquaculture market. And those are things that we've worked on with Novozymes over the last several years as well. So we've made significant progress there. That's why we call it Sequence because we can sequence certain things on top of it. We can basically start to layer in different, different things within this formula by using fermentation. That's the uniqueness of this product. Again, you're not seeing it yet because the sales are just starting. But, but our view is that that's really where it will differentiate ourselves in the in the global protein markets. Can you remind us as we go from kind of your base feed to the 50 to the Sequence and the 60 Pro, yeah, what that does to the margin structure? Yeah. So what we basically said when we started this journey is every $100 a ton was worth about $0.06 a gal uplift to our margin structure. And when we looked at it just off the top, we said, "How do we justify the investment?" Well, the investment is, you know, $200 a ton premium over soybean meal over distillers. The soybean meal, that's $0.12-$0.15 a gal. Another $200 premium over soybean meal to the traditional spread was actually higher than that. To corn gluten meal is another $0.12-$0.15 a gal. That's $0.25-$0.30 a gal uplift on whatever we produce, which is recurring, predictable, and not very volatile from that perspective. But we've seen those spreads even wider. When we started our investment, we had high-protein soybean meal was $300 over DDGs, and corn gluten meal was $300 over soybean meal. We've seen those compress a little bit. But what we have at Green Plains is at 60% protein and higher is really the first plant-based protein product in volume that's we'll probably produce four- to we could produce 4 00,000 to 500,000 tons of this product in volume available so people can formulate around it. But we'll just have to watch and see the ebb and flows. You know, we have an avalanche of soybean meal coming in later this year. So we'll have to wait and see how that hits the market with all the soy crush capacity that's coming on this year. And will that disappear? How long will that take to clear the market? Our view and my view is while everybody's, we're very worried about this avalanche of soybean meal, you know, the markets are very efficient, and the market does need protein. And it will find a home. It always does find a home. There won't be. It won't be sitting around. We might see some weakness to start, but we'll clear the market on that as well. Can you talk about how you think about the JV opportunities? Because you have Tharaldson coming on or, you know, in the process right now. You know, what is the appetite to do a bunch more of those, I guess? I mean, I know this is the biggest, you know, and so there's a volume dynamic, and that's a really attractive component. But that would seem like a really attractive opportunity, low-cost capital. So yeah. How do you think about it? So we think we're at a strategic advantage with owning and controlling these technologies with Fluid Quip, and they continue to innovate through many of these different technologies. We did the first JV with Tharaldson. It's a big plant. It's one of the biggest plants in the United States from an ethanol production standpoint. And we think there's other opportunities. What happened, though, as we were talking to other people about JVs and partnering was the IRA came along. And if they're looking at their own allocation of capital, they're going to allocate to carbon reduction and try to go after that to start before they allocate to a protein uplift. But that's domestically. But internationally and globally, we are in discussions all of the time to apply our technology in multiple different types of JVs around the world, whether it's going to be in the U.K., whether it's going to be in Europe, whether it's going to be in Brazil, South America, wherever. You know, I mean, there's a lot of ethanol plants around the world that make these distillers' grains and want uplift of their value. That's going to be something that Fluid Quip has already footholds in all of these countries. They sell their technology around the world. We're in Brazil with some of our protein technology already, as well as their FlexPlant technology, the global leading technology where you can take a sugar plant when it's not being used and put corn in there and make ethanol out of that as well. That all of a sudden makes protein. So, I mean, our view is that it's going to be a global opportunity. First, Fluid Quip sells the technology, or we partner with other people, maybe on a non-GMO product around the world as well because we did produce a non-GMO product in Nebraska. It's not like we did a lot of that, but that has some really great results coming out of our trials in Norway as well. And you've seen there's some published reports that it is an absolute winner so far in these feeding trials for salmon in Norway. So are you having those conversations now? Is it farther out just because priority of capital allocation with the IRA that you? Yeah. For us, it's priority of capital allocation. I mean, we, you know, there's only so much. As we always say, our aspirations are always bigger than our balance sheet. But, you know, from the standpoint of what Fluid Quip can do and owning and controlling this technology, it's also selling technology too. And that's an undervalued and underappreciated asset that we own today. And I think globally over the next kind of three to five years, people will understand the value of why we bought into that technology provider and why we own most of it today. And then leading into, you know, the sugar technology is the most valuable thing, I think, that we possess. Let's talk about that. Yes. The first plant is coming online, I believe, as we speak. Yeah. Can you give us an update kind of on where that stands? What are the next checkpoints? And then kind of the contribution ramp as you talk about, food grade certification and continuing to build that over time. Yeah. So for those that don't know, we bought Fluid Quip Technologies. Everybody thought we bought them for the protein technology and got the sugar technology. It was actually the opposite. We bought them to control sugar, Clean Sugar Technology, and we got protein as what we'd say is the icing on the cake. But we have a technology that basically can now divert part of our corn grind at a dry grind facility, which typically dextrose has made at a wet mill. We can now divert some of our grind and make clean sugar and make dextrose, what is a food in an industrial-grade dextrose. And so we're literally built the first serial number one plant, but it's most of the unit operations came from somewhere else. Nothing was invented per se other than a few little parts of it that are totally proprietary and cannot be recreated. But what we're able to do is divert some of our grind at a traditional ethanol plant and upscale that into a dextrose product, both refined and unrefined. We're now in startup mode in Shenandoah. It's the first one ever built in the world. It's a 250 million lb facility. It'll grind about a third of Shenandoah. It will take about a third of what we did in Shenandoah, Iowa, to make ethanol. We'll make dextrose out of it. We just about 30 days ago finished the project, and now we've been in commissioning. And anybody knows commissioning on a serial number one is always fun and interesting and exciting. Basically to date, you know, we've been able to make unrefined 95 dextrose, which, by the way, is a product today. You can actually go find it on our competitors' websites if you want to look at it. So we're now have been able to make that. And now what we'll move now is to how do we get to a water-white refined dextrose. And, and as we kind of turn on each of these unit operations, we find you know, we find things we need to probably fix, something from the manufacturer, maybe something from the construction, maybe a leak in a pipe, whatever it's going to be. So it's going to continually be a, a process over the next kind of 30-60-90 days. We always said it was that we didn't want to rush the scale up of turning this on. But there is no question in our mind. It's a matter of if we're going to make it, but when we're going to make our water-white. And as soon as we make our water-white clear dextrose syrup, then we will go for our food grade certification. We have enough demand to buy the whole plant for next year, if not 2x or 3x the amount of demand that's showing up at our door. We are in negotiations and finalizing contracts as we speak for some industrial uses right now. And then food grade is coming later in the year as we are able to get our certification. But we'll be in food grade evaluations as soon as we can make the product. We have already made food grade in our York facility, and that's already qualified, you know, where we are, it's much smaller, older, not even as modern, not even close to being as modern. We know we'll get food grade certified. It's just a matter of time now, but we didn't want to rush it. You know, we learned a lot of lessons in starting up protein. You know, the first protein facility, we thought we'd just turn it on, set it, and forget it. And it's just this time we just decided that let's just take the time we need. Now, let's not overpromise anything. Let's just get this plant up and running and turn it on the right way so that when we get to our final product, which will be food grade 95DE and 43DE, which should come in the next, you know, what we think 30-90 days, somewhere in there, then we'll know where we want to build plant number two and how we want to scale this technology. The uplift in margin is exceptional. I mean, you take an ethanol plant, let's just use zero or $0.10 a gal, take your pick, it doesn't matter, contribution. When you turn on sugar, it's an immediate $0.67-$0.80/gal uplift on that same corn kernel if you would instead of converting it into alcohol. So we own it. We control it. We control the IP. It's closely held. We're not selling the technology to anybody. Now, we have people around the world that have asked us, "Will I sell the technology? Will we sell the technology?" Well, I always start it as no, but then I say, "Well, if you're sitting in somewhere that I can never get to and you can't restrict your area, then maybe I will." And actually, we have people that are interested in that. There's demand for dextrose around the world today. And today, it's growing way faster than supply, in our opinion. 30-90 days plus food grade certification plus agreements. You expect all that to be completed by the end of the year? Oh, yeah. Definitely. So you would be kind of ready to rock for. Yeah. We don't want to miss the contracting season either, so we're pushing real hard as well. We want to make sure that, you know, this contracting season for food grade food companies, they'd actually do that. And as you probably know, and so with this September, October, we want to have a very clear path to getting something ready for then so that we can be in contracting season and we don't miss it. But 250 million lbs is just not a lot of dextrose in a $1 5 billion market. Right. So when you think kind of longer term about your ambitions, you're talking about a second plan, but I guess bigger picture, longer term, what type of player in this space do you want to be? I want to be a profitable player where we can make the most amount of money that we can. So, I mean, that's what I want to be. So we understand that if we bring it on too fast, we could definitely compress margins. We don't want to do that. The only other project that was announced was a project in Fort Dodge for 250 million lb. That's literally the only other dextrose project announced since we started. You know, so, you know, our view is we'll bring on the first plant. The second plant should be somewhere between 500 million lbs-750 million lbs. We'll get to a billion. Our long-term goal is to get to 2 billion lbs-3 billion lbs, which is really only the equivalent of about 200 million gal-300 million gal of ethanol converted. But 2 billion lbs-3 billion lbs, at the equivalent of 200 million gal-300 million gal of ethanol at $0.67-$0.80 a pound, we'll take that we'll take that all day long from a from a return standpoint. And, you know, we're close, but, it's definitely disruptive. There's no doubt about it. We're being watched very closely by the four what we call the oligopoly, the four incumbents. And they watch it closely, but you know what? They have all the demand they can take today and growing. I mean, industrial demand for dextrose and some of these biological, chemical, those those type of biologic or green chemicals that are happening in a fermenter and things that are happening in a fermenter are really changing the way that that the market is thinking about dextrose. So whether it's from, some of the, some of the seltzer drinks that are out there all the way through, you know, some of the products in in gummy bears all the way into, you know, things like, enzymes and chemicals, there's just demand that's growing faster than supply. So I I don't think they're really worried about us, nor should they be. And we're not going to certainly not going to ruin the margin structure, but we want to go after some we we want to go after some of that margin structure. It's frustrating. We sit in Omaha, and there's a a plant 30 mi north of Omaha in a little town called Blair. And they grind that same kernel of corn, and they make a lot more money than we do grinding that same kernel of corn in Shenandoah. And that's what we're going to go after. Got it. Okay, and then moving on to SAF and carbon, maybe on the recent announcement on the modeling guidelines around the 40B, just as that sets the stage, will Green Plains be able to participate in kind of SAF via alcohol-to-jet based on that policy? And what was your take on how that came out, where it might go? Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because, you know, the ethanol industry and the biofuels industry never want to say anything positive when it comes out. But I would tell you that when you look at what happened in this recent modeling, it was actually very favorable to what we're doing as an industry and as a company. If you sequester carbon, you get 30 CI points. That gets you now qualified under a certain level for SAF without farmer carbon, without FarmSmart, the climate-smart practices on the farm. So we actually got a really favorable ruling from the standpoint of they reduced our indirect land use penalty. That was the start of it. Then from there, they got us to a point by doing that. Now as we reduce 30 carbon points just by sequestering carbon in a pipeline into geologic formations, we now qualify for SAF, you know, for alcohol-to-jet. You don't need FarmSmart to qualify now if you have a sequestration program, which I think is really important, which is a really important point, which really puts us into, you know, our plants in Nebraska that are going to be on a pipeline operating sometime next year and very early pipeline project. And we have the what we believe will be if the largest or if not second largest amount of decarbonized alcohol that's made in the United States today and the earliest. And we think it's an advantage to our asset base. We'll probably look to allocate some capital to get a little bit more out of that asset base in Nebraska. But the economics are excellent. The 45Z tax credit is in place. We want to capitalize on that to start. The 45Q is 12 years of direct pay on top of that with the 40B guidance and then the alcohol-to-jet guidance. I think ultimately we see sometime in the last half of this decade alcohol-to-jet plants being built. But nothing happens in that space until you decarbonize the alcohol. Nobody's going to build an alcohol-to-jet plant thinking that we're going to bring a bunch of Brazilian ethanol up here to make jet fuel in the United States. We're going to build an alcohol-to-jet plant in the United States when that first carbon pipeline starts operating and people know they can buy decarbonized alcohol along with projects in North Dakota. And there's some geologies in Ohio and Illinois. There's a couple of projects, great projects that are there as well that some of the industry is working on. So once the market knows and it's going to be much bigger players in Green Plains, it's going to build sustainable aviation fuel or ATJ plants. Once they know they have supply, and we're getting calls today to talk to people about that supply for next year to lock it in now because they have to get approvals on projects. These are $5 a gal type CapEx, maybe $4 gal-$5 a gal type CapEx. So you want to build a $500 million gal SAF plant? That's, you know, that's $2 billion. You know, that's not that's above our pay grade at Green Plains, but we will be happy to supply them with decarbonized alcohol at a premium. So, but it just, you know, when you look at the conversion, if they if they want to do 600 million gal of of SAF from alcohol, you got to have 1 billion gal of ethanol production to do that because you get the conversion ratio as well. So, so generally speaking, I mean, it is one of the biggest things that I think is underappreciated about our company today is mid-2025 will start sequestering carbon at some point, and it's going to generate about $100 million of free cash flow a year on a $100 million investment just because of our position in Nebraska. So when you think about, I guess, how would you stack up where you would expect the feedstock to kind of stack up versus some of the others? And when you think about demand, I mean, you talked about the 30, you know, CI point reduction and some of those things. But I guess when you think about the demand build for SAF, how do you think about your CI score relative to some of the other kind of feedstocks and kind of how that sequences the demand build or what needs to happen for that? Well, alcohol is alcohol and veg oils are veg oils. I mean, I think there's a very different half of feedstocks that are very different than alcohol. It's just where we are. And I think from a, you know, Jim, you may have a comment on that. Well, I think when you look at the pathway, if the administration's calling for 3 billion gal of renewables to be blended in, you've got renewable jet that can take that pathway but would probably consider that there's less likely because of the limitation of feedstock. There's a limited supply of animal fats and tallows and used cooking oil and even our DCO. But when you think about the pathway for corn ethanol, we probably have a better pathway because we already buy the 5.2 billion bushels of corn from farmers. We make more ethanol than we need today. So if all of a sudden we could grab half of the gallons of demand for renewable jet, through alcohol-to-jet, that could disappear 2 billion gal-2.5 billion gal of ethanol out of the system. Then we don't have enough ethanol. We need to start thinking about exports, blending, domestic blending, and going into SAF. So our view is we stack up nicely. Yeah, that you've got the last piece. Really, the first piece for us is to decarbonize. And those advantages start to come to us as soon as that decarbonization happens. We've got 45Z, 45Q's in place today. That's automatic for us. And then the advent of there are LCFS markets that we can take advantage of with our low carbon ethanol as well. But then that, as Todd mentioned, that's going to put these bigger entities that want to continue to control the supply of jet fuel to the airline industry, they're going to be highly interested in wanting to make sure they make the investments to get that alcohol-to-jet going. You've talked about a number of potential kind of strategic actions, I guess, in terms of pivoting the asset base, selling plants, expanding capacity, maybe reprioritizing some of the initiatives, I guess. Can you just kind of share your thinking or the framework behind which you're approaching that piece of the longer-term strategy? I mean, we've been at it for a while, right? And so we know that the traditional fuel-grade ethanol market has been no less than a challenge over the last 15 years. We have our ebbs and flows and highs and lows and everything in between, but we survived all that. So, when we look at the future of where we're going, it's first and foremost upscaling our products. Where can we go get recurring, predictable non-volatile cash flows? We know we can get it in protein. You know, that's just taking time. We know we can get it in sugar. We know today we can get it in decarbonizing our alcohol. And so when we think about how to allocate capital, what's the best and highest use of our money? And where do we invest behind our asset base? So if we have an asset that does not have a carbon plan that cannot be necessarily decarbonized, it may not fit the way we want to look at it unless we could make or put protein or sugar there. So we're evaluating all of our assets and also looking at our. We just believe that we're in such an excellent position in Nebraska today with three plants there, two that are very large scale. One is one of the oldest plants in the world, but we'll still make ethanol there every day. And we're going to even invest some money to lower our carbon score there as well. We think we're just such an advantage there. So when we are looking at the investments that we're going to make next, we will build more protein. We're not going to stop that. I would never take that back. I think we need more of it as we go through because I think our Sequence product and I think we're going to make breakthroughs as well to even get higher higher, protein concentrations. We're already starting to see that and the ability to do that with some of the things that we're doing as well. So, you know, we're not stopping there at all and then and then scaling scaling sugar at some point. You know, we always said the first sugar plant's paid for, the second's not. So when we look at capital, we got to say, you know, we're if that truly is where we're going to go to go after those highest margins that are available, that's going to that's going to be a big allocation of capital. Maybe if we can't, you know, get a permit in the state of Minnesota, it's like, you know, three or four years from now, you might be able to start construction. Illinois, we finally got a permit in Illinois, but then the IRA came along. So we're just going to make more alcohol to start and use that capital to just invest behind the IRA. But then we'll come back into Illinois and build that protein facility. So there's going to be things that we have in flow, but we're always looking at our asset base. We're also looking at the fact we want to acquire. We are thinking about, are there things that we can acquire because of our ability to layer on technologies, but also the fact that, you know, we do have access to capital as well. We do have a public currency. So we're not done growing this company at all. And today, you know, when we look at it, we think we're, you know, when markets are always ebbing and flowing, they will recover. This sector has been under pressure, and we're part of that being under pressure. The veg oil markets, we'd like to see a recovery there. But overall, you know, we think the products that we make are very valuable, and the decarbonization hasn't even started yet. And the value that we can get from that. Then, we only have another minute or so, but you touched on this a little bit from a funding perspective. I mean, how do you think, can you just talk about the balance sheet? Can you talk about what you have allocated where in terms of a funding perspective and the go-forward opportunities? I mean, right now in our balance sheet, you know, continues to remain strong. We always try to stay in a strong liquidity position. We had about $280 million of cash or so plus $250 million of available capacity on top of the fact that, margins have gotten better since the conference call as well. So we ebb and flow a little bit there as well. But we're looking at, now refinancing some of the debt we have in the balance sheet. When you everybody loved the SOFR plus 400 when they got it. Now, no, everybody hates SOFR plus 400 or 500. But, you know, so there's some opportunities, I think, to get some longer tenor debt a lot cheaper than what we have today. So we're focused on that. Should we look at some assets and reallocating those assets to do something else as well? And then, and then from there, it's, you know, how what capital can we generate from free cash flow? I mean, we really don't our intent is not to to issue a bunch of equity to do any of these things. It's we do have debt capacity available if we can get the right structure in place. And then also, you know, we're really excited about 2025 when we kind of get through this this market, get ethanol margins a little bit better and trying to get into a full year of 60 Pro, a full year of of carbon, a full year of sugar, and and start to really generate those those free cash flows. And all of that is unencumbered to be invested in the business. We have a question from here. So I want to just ask that real quick. I know we're out of time, but your view on the premium that's available on low carbon ethanol when used as a SAF feedstock? Well, nobody's using it yet. So but I, you know, I think, there's definitely calls coming. We feel like it's a little bit of, déjà vu from the corn oil days when everybody was calling and we were we were the, we were the supplier that everybody wanted to talk to. It's it's happening again in the low carbon alcohol because in order to get FID from on some of these companies, they want to build, jet plants. They need to start to secure supply. So we think there's an opportunity there. We don't really know what kind of premium yet. I will just tell you this is that I think it's when you look at the carbon credit, a biogenic high-quality carbon credit, it's actually we think it's actually the more valuable than LCFS today. And we haven't even seen the value of that in any size scope or scale. So we're going to produce 750,000 tons of carbon credits next year when we start up high-quality gold standard biogenic carbon. And it's not going to be the mom and pops that are going to buy the credit when you fly on your airplane and you pay the extra money. It's going to be the Googles and the Facebooks and the Metas and the Microsofts and anybody that's committed to decarbonization. Those are high-quality credits that they can't buy in the world and 750,000 tons of credits that we're going to possess sometime middle of next year available on the market. It'll be the first true test of the value of a carbon credit, I think, of a high-quality carbon credit. And when you look at LCFS today under $50 and you look at carbon credits probably over $50 today, who cares about an LCFS market, quite frankly? I mean, sorry, Jim, but who cares about an LCFS market, quite frankly? The 45Z today, if you sequester carbon, that is a national low carbon fuel standard. And we're going to be very early adopters and very early participants of that. And that's what we think will be the advantage. And we don't know the true value of that yet, but the value of decarbonized alcohol we believe will be a premium to non-decarbonized alcohol. Perfect. I think we'll go ahead and end it there. Something to look forward to, that's for sure. Thank you very much. Thank you. Sorry, after you. Thank you.