Good day. Welcome to the Vertex Energy fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on a touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Ragozzino, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, welcome to Vertex Energy's fourth quarter and full year 2022 results conference call. Leading the call today are Chairman and CEO, Ben Cowart, Chief Financial Officer, Chris Carlson, and Chief Operating Officer, James Rhame. Also attending the call are Chief Strategy Officer, Alvaro Ruiz, Vice President, Bart Rice, and Vice President of Black Oil Operations, John Strickland. I want to remind you that management's commentary and responses to questions on today's conference call may include forward-looking statements, which, by their nature, are uncertain and outside of the company's control. Although these forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, actual results may differ materially. For a discussion of some of the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ, please refer to the Risk Factors section of Vertex Energy's latest annual and quarterly filings with the SEC. Please note that you can find reconciliations of the historical non-GAAP financial measures discussed during our call in the press release issued today. Today's call will begin with remarks from Ben Cowart, followed by an operational review from James Rhame, and financial review from Chris Carlson. At the conclusion of the prepared remarks, we will open the line for questions. I'll turn the call over to Ben. Thank you, John, and good morning to those joining us on the call today. This morning, we issued a press release detailing our financial and operating results for the fourth quarter of 2022. We are pleased to report the continued safe and reliable operations with the improved financial and operating results which exceeded our prior expectations. We feel these results reflect the true earnings potential of our conventional fuels business at the Mobile refinery facility, which contributed the majority of our fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA of $75.2 million. Reported results benefited significantly for continued strength in conventional fuels refining margins, increased market exposure following the expiration of our prior hedge positions beginning on September 30. Attractive refining yields of high-margin distillate products following the turnaround were performed in the third quarter. Operationally, we reported strong throughput volumes of approximately 78,000 bbl per day for the quarter, 5.4% ahead of our midpoint of our prior guidance issued in November. Our product yield profile and premium pricing for diesel and jet fuels drove a strong capture rate of 61%, which exceeded our prior outlook of 52% and generated very attractive refining profitability on a per-barrel basis. We made notable progress on several strategic initiatives aimed at streamlining our business. First, we continue to expand our team by adding experienced talent throughout our key areas of the business. Secondly, we recently completed the sale of our Heartland UMO business, enhancing our ability further to prioritize the optimization of our current refining business. Third, we have continued advancement of our construction of our RD conversion project for own schedule mechanical completion by end of March, with carefully planned start of early second quarter of this year. I'm proud of our employees and contractors who worked together for the results achieved for 2022. The transition from our legacy operations to the advantaged position we find ourselves in today would not be possible without the team's relentless pursuit of our goals while keeping safe and reliable operations as our highest priority. With that, I'd like to hand the call over to James Rhame, our Chief Operating Officer, who will provide a detailed update on our operations during the quarter, including a more detailed update on the status of our renewable diesel conversion project in Mobile. James. Thank you, Ben. Good morning, everyone. I will begin with a brief report on our health, safety, and environmental performance. During the fourth quarter of 2022, our Mobile operations had zero OSHA recordables, zero environmental recordable, and zero process safety events. Our legacy operations saw two OSHA recordables, both minor in nature, with zero environmental recordable. Moving on to operational performance, beginning with our legacy business. Our Columbus refinery maintained safe and reliable operations during the fourth quarter and through the close of the recently announced divestiture. This is to the credit of our former Heartland employees and clearly demonstrates the quality of the team running those operations. We are proud of their contribution and grateful for the opportunity to have worked with them over the last eight years. In Louisiana, our Marrero operations also saw continued progress in improving plant reliability and performance in the fourth quarter. Achieving strong run rates and 106% capacity utilization at the refinery. Mobile performed well despite challenging weather conditions and increased site activity around the RD conversion. Fourth quarter throughput volumes at the Mobile refinery averaged 77,964 bbl per day, or 104% of stated operating capacity, exceeding our initial guidance of 74,000 bbl per day and slightly ahead of our updated guidance of 77,000 bbl per day issued in January. We continue to process a crude diet consisting of WTI, LLS, and local light sweet crudes. Total production of finished high-value light products such as gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel represented approximately 74% of total fourth-quarter production versus 69% in the third quarter of 2022, reflecting improved performance following the previously disclosed catalyst change in our distillate and reforming units. Our fuels-only gross profit per barrel during the quarter was $20.50, driving a capture rate of 60.6% of the benchmark Gulf Coast 2-1-1 crack spread, slightly ahead of our guidance of 50%-54%. The strength in our reported fuels-only gross profit per barrel and resulting capture rate versus the benchmark is a direct function of the strength we continue to see in refining margins for diesel and jet fuel, which contributed to the strong per-barrel profitability reported. On a RIN-adjusted basis, which we believe provides an additional layer of clarity around the per-barrel refining economics for our conventional fuels business, gross profit per barrel was $16.54. Now turning to our renewable diesel conversion project. I'm pleased to report that the development and construction activities are advancing as planned, keeping the project on schedule for targeted mechanical completion by the end of the first quarter, with anticipated initial production to follow early in the second quarter of this year. Our budgeted total project CapEx has been adjusted slightly from the $90 million-$100 million range that was reported to $110 million-$115 million. The upward cost revisions reflect three primary drivers: extremely tight local labor market, incremental rental equipment, and scaffolding costs necessary to ensure adherence to all site safety protocols, along with some additional supply chain-related costs, which we chose to pay in order to keep the project on schedule. Despite inflationary pressures and supply chain complexity, we remain laser-focused on a safe, reliable, and timely execution of the project. Progress toward these goals we are proud to report continues without compromise due to the cohesive efforts of all employees and contractors involved in the project. Notable milestones include the safe shutdown of the hydrocracker unit, completed as planned on January 6. With over 55% of the outage-related work completed, our crews have logged in excess of 290,000 work hours thus far, with zero reportable incidents to date. A performance of which I'm very pleased to share. While we have an understandable bias in our pride over our team's performance, the significance of what our legacy and mobile teams have accomplished throughout 2022 cannot be overstated. Continued prioritization of our strict safety standards and relentless focus on achieving our goals by each individual team member is something I'd like to take time to personally acknowledge and commend. With that, I'd like to hand the call over to Chris Carlson, Chief Financial Officer, who will review our financial results for the quarter as well as provide an outlook for the first quarter of this year. Thank you, James, and welcome to those joining us on the call today. For the three months ended December 31st, 2022, Vertex reported net income of $44.4 million or $0.56 per share on a fully diluted basis versus a net loss of $5.3 million or $0.09 per share on a fully diluted basis in the fourth quarter 2021. We reported adjusted EBITDA of $75.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 versus $9.5 million in the prior year period. On a standalone basis, the Mobile refinery generated $78.6 million of adjusted EBITDA during the quarter versus a $500,000 loss in adjusted EBITDA during the third quarter of 2022. Our legacy operations in the Black Oil and Recovery segment contributed $3.9 million adjusted EBITDA. Overall, fourth quarter results benefited from a continuation of consistent operational reliability and resulting throughput volumes, continued strength in refined product margins, reflecting the robust conventional fuels market fundamentals we continue to see. The fourth quarter financial results include a loss related to continued backwardation in the crude and products markets in the amount of $9.6 million. A return to Contango during the quarter helped offset a substantial portion of this charge relative to what we have seen in the prior two quarters, where backwardation charges came in at $17.9 million and $23.2 million, respectively. As of December 31st, 2022, the company had total liquidity, including restricted cash of $146.2 million versus $122.4 million at the end of the prior quarter. Vertex had total net debt outstanding of $214.1 million at the end of the fourth quarter of 2022, including lease obligations of $100.1 million, implying a net debt to trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA ratio of 1.3x as of December 31st, 2022. We continue to remain fully exposed to current robust refining margins, with no fixed price hedge contracts currently in place. Subsequent to quarter end, we successfully closed on the planned divestiture of our Heartland UMO facility for total gross proceeds of $90 million. We are extremely pleased with the results of this sale as we originally purchased this asset for $8.3 million in stock back in 2014. The net proceeds of $85 million are largely being used to finance the significant working capital requirement associated with our planned RD production, with volumes of soybean oil feedstock currently being purchased in preparation of our April production startup. A portion of the proceeds are also being directed towards the repayment of our $165 million term loan, which carries a 15.25% interest rate. We were able to make a prepayment of $11 million of the term loan, saving over $1.5 million in future interest expense on the loan through year-end 2023. Looking to the first quarter of 2023, we anticipate total throughput volumes at Mobile to be between 69,000 bbl and 72,000 bbl per day, reflective of the shutdown in the hydrocracker to accommodate completion of the RD conversion project by the end of the quarter. OpEx per barrel is expected to be $3.85-$4 per barrel for the quarter. Our capture rate on the benchmark Gulf Coast 2-1-1 crack spread is forecast to be approximately 50%-54%. We anticipate total capital expenditures for the first quarter to be between $30 million-$35 million. I'd now like to turn the call back to Ben Cowart to provide some final comments before we open it up for Q&A. Thank you, Chris. The fourth quarter of 2022 sets a bar for financial and operating performance which I'm extremely proud of. We continue to be encouraged by the fundamental outlook for refining margins on both the conventional and the renewable fuel side of the business. As we approach the startup of our renewable fuels production in April, we look forward to establishing Vertex as an important player in the rapidly developing renewable fuels market. We remain extremely enthusiastic about the outlook for potential profitability in this business, knowing each player in this market faces widely differing circumstances that ultimately determine their individual performance. Therefore, we anticipate updating the market with a detailed look at our expectations for this business as we build confidence in our ability to accurately forecast and deliver on these expectations. Until then, we will continue to take a very measured, thoughtful, and prudent approach to each decision we face as the RD business ramps. On the conventional side of our business, the macro environment continues to be extremely robust. Product margins for lighter distillate products, including diesel and jet fuel, continue to maintain historically elevated levels, fueled by the tight refining capacity and domestic inventory levels well below historic averages. As a result, we expect to continue to see strong financial performance on that side of the business. I'd like to thank all of you for joining us on this call this morning, and I look forward to being able to deliver another positive update on our next quarter performance. With that, we will open the line for questions. Operator? Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, we ask that you please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Today's first question comes from Manav Gupta with UBS. Please go ahead. Guys, congrats on a great quarter. My first question is, you acquired the asset on April 1. You are showing a material improvement in capture in the last couple of quarters. Throughput has gone up. Help us understand some of the changes you have brought about which are allowing you to learn from this experience and improve the performance of this asset. A follow-up on this one is, help us also understand once the RD project actually goes into the picture, does it change the throughput or does it change the clean product yield? If you could walk us through some of those parameters. Good morning, Manav. This is James. I'll answer that. What occurred and allowed us to increase the capture rate in the fourth quarter were really three things. During the third quarter, as you remember, we changed our reformer catalyst, which was at end of life and was affecting yields. While we did change both the reformer and the distillate hydrotreater, we increased the capacity of catalysts that we were able to put in there, which we were able to capture that improvement in yields between the aged catalyst and the improvements we made inside the reactor space. Those are the two main things. The other one that I would also say is we bought the site, and this site was one that had many Very good projects that we could go execute that were relatively simple, that focused on distillate, maximum distillate strategy, and that's what we've been doing. Everywhere from crude selection to how we're running the unit and making sure that yields or matter, we're paying attention to those. That answered that question. In the end, you also saw the amount of crude throughput that we had, and we were able to make sure that we didn't lose yields during the crude throughput also. Did that answer the first question then I'll go to the next one? That did answer the first question. All right. All right, what's gonna change? Number one, in the first quarter, you'll see slightly down on crude performance, and that's primarily because I don't have a hydrocracker up to absorb hydrogen. Therefore, I've got to limit my fuel system that's there. Once the hydrocracker comes up, the capture rate will change and actually what you do see is we're back to what the capture rate was from our initial purchase, because of the benefits we saw in the fourth quarter. What will occur is now I no longer have VGO going to a hydrocracker, making roughly 8,000 bbl a day, 8,000-9,000 bbl of diesel. I'll be selling VGO out on the open market as a result. All of that affects capture rate. I will run the same amount of crude once I get the RD unit up. I'm sorry, I should have added that in too, Manav. Our crude rate will be consistent with what it was prior to, you know, prior to taking the OFA s down for the conversion. Perfect. The VGO, which is selling at a massive premium, the yield of VGO goes up. Is that right? That's correct. It goes from, you know, let me give you some rough numbers 10,000 bbl a day-ish to about 20,000 bbl a day. Perfect. My very quick follow-up here is, we recently saw another Louisiana project get an excellent valuation from a European major, almost $6 a gal. Is this something you could be open to if a European or U.S. major approaches you with that kind of valuation? Would you be open to that kind of a deal, or do you want to do this on your own? I'll turn it over after that. Manav, good morning, and thanks for being on the call. This is Ben. We've taken note, there's two projects now that have set a value on RD production. You know, for us, we have planned to go down this path on our own and if necessary, but we've also legally bifurcated our renewable business on site, in the event that, you know, our whole value is exceeded by someone of interest, at least for a portion of that business. We will, you know, we will be prepared to look at those opportunities. We're very excited, you know, to own 100% of this business today based on the performance of the rest of the company and our ability to continue down this path. Perfect. Thanks. Congrats on a great quarter, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question today comes from Donovan Schafer with Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. You know, I'll second the first analyst comment, just that, you know, the results broadly seem quite positive. I think the only, you know what I mean? the only thing is there is this sort of incremental negative thing, if you could call it that, is the higher CapEx. You know, you provided some explanation, you know, it corroborates with what we're seeing generally, tight labor market. You know, of course it makes sense that you're making it a priority to stay on schedule. Of course, supply chain stuff, that could mean a higher, you know, higher sort of expediting costs. My question is, like, if we can dig down just a tiny bit more on that. You know, sometimes, Let's just say for instance, tight labor market. You know, you can pay up more, and that means you get your hands on people, but you are in a very, kind of rural area. You know, you talked about, employees at the Fossil fuel refinery being third generation folks. Sometimes, you know, there's a difference between having to pay up for something versus just not even being able to get it, you know, period, or say with expediting or something. I'm trying to, you know, really hone in on kind of, is there anything in the nature of those, what's behind the cost overruns that could give you that would incrementally cause some potential of a further delay? I know you're still on track, like, as of now, like, as of today, of course, you're on track. Say you're waiting on, you know, 10 large components and you've had to expedite three of them because you found out there's a delay. Is it the type of thing where, well, therefore, you know, you could potentially learn about delays in the other seven? Then you might have to expedite those, but, you know, sometimes, you know, maybe you can't. Is there anything in the attributes or the aspects of what's underneath that would give a basis for a little bit of caution or a little bit of reservation around there? Just really digging into that. Yeah. Yeah. No, thank you for the question. We have every single piece of hardware on site today to finish the project. That's first on hardware. The supply chain, even though we did pay to maintain schedule, every one of those components, our team on site was really focused on making sure every little valve, and I say little, these aren't little, these are big high pressure valves, were on the ground as we took feed out. As I have previously told you, by the time feed out, we'd have most of it on the ground, and I think we had all but a handful of components, and every one of those have arrived. That's on the supply chain. On the people side, I think we've seen what the market has performed and what everyone else is seeing in the market. We could have made some different choices there and not got the quality of people we had and not paid, but we have had very, very good quality work and performance by our contractors on site. That's hats off to them. They've brought the A-team for us, and they've done very well. With that, we are now in the process of destaffing the project as we're coming down from our peak. If I was ramping up, I would be worried, but that's not where we are on the project at this stage. We are ramping down from peak manpower requirements. Okay? Okay. That's great. Okay. That's very helpful. As a follow-up question, just, for the $9.6 million, you know, loss on the hedge roll or backwardation, I wanna make sure I'm understanding that clearly. My impression is that this is a bit different from the initial hedges you guys had in place sort of in prior quarters, where this is really more about the implicit commodity price exposure, that it's almost sort of a working capital exposure. You know, you're buying the crude one day, but those exact barrels of crude that you're buying, you wanna kinda lock in that margin when they go in the feeder, you know, when they go into the process. Then there's, you know, some amount of lag or delay before they come out the other side. Is the $9.6 million, you know, is that an explicit hedging that's tied to that specific exposure? Or alternatively, is it even hedging or is it more sort of an implied hedge, just that if you're not hedging, you just have that exposure? You're highlighting the impact of that exposure as commodity prices move in the interim between when you get crude in and refined product out. Yeah. Hey, this is Chris. I mean, you kind of laid it out well in your explanation. Yes, it's a combination of the impact of the inventory that we have on hand and the changing in the commodity markets, which are in a backwardation position today. We're seeing it go back and forth a little bit, but it's still backwardated at the moment. Okay. In the release, in the adjusted EBITDA, you know, reconciliation, it calls it, you know, gain loss on hedge roll, you know, parentheses backwardation. When you say hedge roll, you're using that just more broadly, kind of, you know. There's not actually, like, hedge contracts in place. It's more the impact of that exposure. Is that right? No, to clarify that, there are hedge contracts in place. Okay ... intermediation agreement on our inventory. Okay. It's kind of effectively a mix of both in a way, or there's a certain amount of netting and figuring it out? It is. It's a combination of both. I see. I see. Okay, great. Thank you. I'll take the rest offline. Congratulations, guys. Thank you. Donovan. Thank you. Our next question comes from Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, guys. Great results. I appreciate you taking my questions. To begin, you know, just operating expenses, the $3.85-$4, is this sort of the range for the near term, and how will this change with RD coming online soon? This is James. Thanks. I'll answer that question. Our costs are competitive if we go in comparison on per barrel basis. We're continuing to look at that, and we'll always look at what our costs are. As a one refiner site and without some of the conversion, you know, we have what we believe this cost is competitive if we go back through the history of the site. With RD, what will occur on that per barrel basis, we may split the pie up as the RD, once it's up, takes its share of the cost of the site, but the size of the pie will not change. It will be the same amount with both the RD operating now as a separate business. We will bifurcate it in that manner. Does that answer your question? I'm. Yeah. I'll add just to make sure it's clear, we already carry the burden of running the hydrocracker in those costs. Yeah. As we bring RD on, we don't anticipate our operating costs to change very much. It will be kind of bifurcated as we discussed earlier. Yes, yes. Thank you. It's clear now. Thank you. Appreciate that, Ben and James. Just with respect to the RD, another question I have is, are we deploying the pretreatment unit in this initial ramp, or is that coming later? If it's coming later, you know, what's the timeline for that and, you know, CapEx, et cetera, that you expect to incur related to that? Yeah. Thank you. This is James again. I'll answer that. We've been looking real hard at pretreatment and how does it fit and what is the best path forward for that. However, in this process of our investigation, we have found a commercial arrangement with a pretreatment facility that's at a cost below our capital hurdle rate. Even though it's not settled yet, we believe it's a path towards settle that commercial arrangement that would tell us we would not have to. It'd be economically best for us not to invest in a pretreatment facility as of today. Okay. Is this local to you guys, or are you getting this from another state or something? Yes, there's actually two of these facilities. They're relatively local to our Mobile refinery. Okay. Understood. Just one last one for me. Congrats on the sale on the UMO business. Just wondering what is remaining of that business, and what do you expect to do with anything that is remaining for the UMO side of things? Yeah. Thank you, Amit Dayal, for coming into the call and just the coverage work and what you guys have done over the years. We're very pleased with the sale of Heartland. We're very excited about our legacy business that remains. It's, you know, it's three times bigger, maybe a little more than that, than what we were doing at Heartland, and very fitting to what we're focused on in the Gulf region. We will continue to combine our Mobile operations with all the work that we're doing on our UMO collections and refining. We see some real synergies and upside as we move that business forward. It's just a refining of our focus to the Gulf and, you know, really focused a continued focus on low carbon products, and the molecules that come from our legacy business are becoming more and more valuable. You know, we're gonna really dial that business in. Understood, Ben. Thank you so much. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Hoffman at Stifel. Please go ahead. Hey, team Vertex. Thanks for taking the call. I echo everybody's comments. It's nice to see this plant hit its strides for you, given some of the bumps initially. You have a working capital arrangement. I'm sorry, Ben, go ahead. I just want to thank you. You've been here a long time, you know, fighting the fight with us. I was looking forward to sharing this moment with you and appreciate all the work you've done. Yeah. It's been 15 years, Ben, so. Hey, I owe that to you, man. Go ahead with your question. I apologize for interrupting. Okay. No, no, not at all. You have a working capital arrangement with Macquarie that hasn't kicked in yet. What needs to happen next for that to kick in? When it does, you know, of the $85 million net proceeds, you've got $74 million you're using for working capital. Can I peel that back and that goes to paying down more debt and get some more of that 15% money off your balance sheet? Yeah. Hey, Michael, it's Chris. Yeah, I mean, we're in the probably at the 50-yard line of working through the next agreement with our lender for the soybean oil product. Should be a lot simpler than the first one. You know, as far as, you know, cash, once we get into that deal, yes, we will have a little bit more cash that will come back to us. You know, the uses of that are gonna be to continue to finish out the RD project, which is almost done. You know, as noted, we'll focus on a healthier balance sheet, and we will look at opportunities where we can to reduce debt. Okay. I mean, at 15%, you're really in the cost of equity territory, so it'd be nice to see that come down. Q- on-Q, sequentially, from 3Q to 4Q, there's a $34 million reduction in inventory. Can you talk us through what was going on there and what should we see as the trend for 1Q versus 4Q? Yeah. The real story there in the inventory is the value. The cost of the commodities, you know, Brent, diesel, etc., came down, what? $10-$15 a barrel. That obviously reduced the financing requirement quarter-over-quarter. Okay. It wasn't a drawdown on it as well physically. Actual volume drawdown. Total volume is consistent, just the underlying mark -to- market's changed. Yes. It's just the dollars involved. That's right. Okay. You'll see that fluctuate as commodities go up and down. Okay. Then, you alluded to the press release. You put a boiler point in about hedging, not currently hedging today, but future could. I presume you would approach hedging differently than you did last year for the second and the third quarter. Could you talk a little bit about if you did it, how you would think about it? What and what's sort of the approach you would take if you chose to hedge? Yeah. I'll take that question, Michael. Keep in mind, you know, there's certain things like Chris mentioned on intermediation that is just, you know, normal housekeeping with inventory. That's really not what was reflective in our second and third quarter hedge decision. We were hedging the crack spread. When you look at that 2-1-1 crack spread, you know, we were locking that in, you know, for the purpose of protecting the limited cash we had and making a safe passage to our RD project and, you know, delivering long term on what our goals and objectives were. Obviously, hindsight's always 20/20, and we clearly see, you know, that for what it is. As we look forward, you know, we have the capacity in the company and the credit capacity, to hedge as necessary. We have a team and, you know, a deep bench today that looks at the markets and looks at, you know, what our exposures are, and we'll make those decisions as we go. We believe, as we indicated, that the market is very strong, you know, for, you know, our business, in the foreseeable future, and we're gonna maintain the exposure, you know, to the market. I think our shareholders have, kind of expressed, you know, where they're at on that, so we hear them loud and clear. We will also be diligent, to be looking at things that other people may not see and protect our margin as we go. Okay. Fair enough. Where do you stand on feedstock arrangements? April literally is around the corner. You snap your fingers, it's gonna be here. What's the status of feedstock to support production through the facility? Yeah. Bart Rice is here. We'll have him, but I'll talk about operation and let him talk more about who the suppliers. Not the suppliers, but where we are. We are already acquiring feedstock and getting them into the third-party terminals in front of us. Bart and his team have done a fantastic job securing those, and I'll let him speak to that in just a minute. Thanks. Hi, Michael Hoffman. This is Bart Rice. You know, the feedstock piece of the puzzle is the most important for our success. We look at it as one of our most confidential, important avenues as well. We have already lined up logistics with all the big ag companies. Each of those ag companies have already shipped product to us. We have it in tank, in storage in Mobile. We'll be taking this feedstock by boards, by rail. Some by truck. We're going to focus a lot on some of the fats, oils and greases that need to be preprocessed. They have the better CI score. Would extend more value to the company. Our logistics is the key to our success on this feedstock. We're east of the Mississippi River. We've got all the people that have historically been taking their feedstocks right past us to our competitors, and, they're happy to find a home with Vertex now in Mobile. Perfect. That's very helpful. Michael. Michael. Yes. Let me make a point here just, you know, for future reference as we move this business forward. Again, you've been involved with the company for a long time. Feed origination is a strong point for Vertex, and it's how we founded the company, you know, 22 years ago. We're very excited about our ability to move materials, as Bart said, you know, our ability to capture the right feed opportunities, negotiate that at ground level, and then the geographic location advantage we have for a lot of feedstock, will weigh in heavy. We're very, positive and bullish on, you know, the feed side of the business. Okay. What I heard Bart say is there's a focus on getting, my words, dirty oils preprocessed. That's why you're arranging these third-party preprocessing. You'll balance that with the cleaner soybean types as needed. That is correct. We're gonna start up clean, just for smooth operations, then we'll start integrating. Okay. What did base oil selling prices do in the fourth quarter? Yeah. I don't have that information. I've got John Strickland here. It went down some. Not major, but it did go down. Yes. Okay. Okay. Just to be clear, the question was asked earlier, you know, Vertex will seek to maximize and maintain some open profile of maximizing shareholder value. Whatever the best way is to maximize shareholder value, you'll do that, whether it's sell it, keep it, and run it. That's the message. Absolutely. Okay. We have a whole value, no different than our renewable capacity we're bringing online. We, you know, we're gonna look at the best value we add to our shareholders, as you said. Lastly, on the legacy- Go ahead. Sorry, go ahead, Ben. No, no. Go ahead. No. The legacy business is no different than that. We believe we got a line on how that will play out, but, you know, as we've handled inquiries and things, we, you know, we continue to look at what's in our best interest. That's, t hat's leading the decisions that we've made so far. Okay. Well, that you anticipated my last question, which is, I would suspect, given you've got a great VGO business in Marrero, but there are other pieces of legacy that maybe aren't all that relevant going forward, that we could continue to see cleaning up of that portfolio, and we might end up with just the Marrero producing that processing that 60 million gal of used oil into VGO and tying that into the 20,000 bbl a day that you're gonna sell out of Mobile. We will continue to look at each piece of the business, you know, with hold values that we've already started to assign to each one of them. The answer is yes. That's gonna be our approach. Okay, cool. Thanks for making the time for me. Thank you, Michael. Thanks. Our next question today comes from Eric Stine at Craig-Hallum. Please go. Good morning. I'll just sneak with you in here at the end. Morning, Eric. Hey, good morning. I'm hoping we can go back to capture rate. You know, I can appreciate first quarter, obviously with the hydrocracker offline or as part of the RD expansion. You know, I know you don't guide, but any thoughts on what we should think about for the capture rate, you know, 2Q and beyond? I think the best way to think of it, we're not gonna be even though our crude rate may be slightly higher, it will not be that much different than it is today in the first quarter that we provided guidance on. We'll continue to try to creep the capture rate. However, if you had asked me, I would tell you it would be in the range of where we are for the first quarter for the rest of the year. Okay. maybe just longer term, I mean, where can that go? Obviously, we saw it in this quarter, the capture rate is a, is a huge driver, you know, not necessarily by the end of 2023, but as you look longer term for this business, you know, where do you think that can go, and what are some of the steps that you might take to get there? Yeah, that's a great question because one of the things we've really unlocked at Mobile is the ideas that our people have had there to improve the profitability of the site. So far, every single time that we're there, they're looking at what the next opportunity is and where can we do that cost competitively. I would tell you that we are, you know, right now I can't even predict it because I see some projects in front of us that may take us several years to go execute, they will continue to creep that. You know, my goal is to recover back to where we were in the fourth quarter and beyond, I see that coming from the people. They have been sitting there in a site that was not strategic and now being in a strategic site with a lot of focus and an extremely strong market. They're coming forward with ideas daily. Got you. Very helpful. I guess I'll take the rest offline. No need to ask five, six questions. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. Thank you. Appreciate all your work, bud. Thank you. Our next question comes from Noah Kaye at Oppenheimer. Please go ahead. Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. You know, echo that comment from others. Really nice quarter. Great to see the execution here. You know, with the RD conversion timetable on track, you know, I know we gotta walk before we run in terms of, you know, standing that up. Have seen a number of other projects in the industry doing a sustainable aviation fuel conversions. Maybe can you just talk a little bit about the technical feasibility of doing a SAF project at this refinery, how much you've looked into that, and when you might think about actually doing a project of that nature? Yeah, you know, let's just put it straight. We're very interested in SAF. We're really trying to see what's the best path forward for us, you know, understanding the economics, what is the impact associated with the IRA. As we analyze, what's the best path forward for us, what has the lowest capital with the highest return? What can we use that can either bolt on to the RD project or as a standalone project? We're not prepared for that conversation yet. We are very early in it. You can, as you can guess from the conversation, this is something that's on my agenda and the team's agenda to help determine the best path forward for us. Very good. I think we'll stay tuned for more details on that. I wanna go back to Michael's question earlier about hedging. You know, I thought it was a thoughtful response around how you're approaching hedging. But when you anticipate maybe articulating kind of a standing profile or posture for the company on a go-forward basis, is that something you might actually be able to communicate to investors? Either, you know, we will hedge or, you know, we will hedge x-percent of our exposure? When do you think you might be able to kind of communicate that clearly to folks? Yeah, you know, I can give you a base, you know, for today as we move forward and it's pretty straightforward. You know, we're gonna do r ight by protecting our inventory from market exposure. There's always gonna be paper around that. That's just, you know, standard operating procedures. You know, we have a team in place with the ability to hedge, with a, you know, much deeper view of markets and cracks and a lot of outside consulting that we look to. We are gonna work hard to protect our margins, and provide the upside exposure to, you know, to the market for our shareholders. If we see that turning, then we have the tools to make decisions at that point in time. As of today, as long as, our team, you know, has the view that we have, we're gonna keep our exposure on the crack spreads, and make sure that, we deliver that back to the shareholder. We, we are in a position, if things turn, to protect that margin. Okay, great. Thanks, Ben. I'll take the rest offline. Thank you, Noah. Thank you. Appreciate the help. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks. Thank you, Rocco, and thank you, everybody, you know, for the time, joining the call today. We're very proud of what our team has accomplished. We look forward to our next call. It shouldn't be too long, and we will be available if anyone has any questions. You can reach out through our ir@vertexenergy.com so that we can provide, you know, more comments and answers if there's anything else that we hadn't covered today. Appreciate you joining in. Thank you, sir. This concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.