Mike Kandris
Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Your line is now open
Thank you, Moriah, and thank you everyone for joining us today. I'm excited to be with you this morning to review the transformation PEI is undertaking to successfully reposition the company to produce profitable sustainable results. In the third quarter, we generated net income of $14.9 million and adjusted EBITDA of $34.1 million. On the call today, I'd like to cover three areas. First, I'll provide an overview of the company. Second, I'd like to explore in greater detail the industry and markets. And finally, I'd like to provide some additional details around our growth strategy. For the overview, I feel it is important to emphasize that we have leveraged our strengths to transform PEI into a leading producer of specialty alcohols and essential ingredients. In addition to renewable fuel, we are focused on three key markets: health home and beauty; food and beverage; and essential ingredients. These are stable growth markets generating strong demand for our products that we sell to blue-chip customers and well-known household brands. Although, most people, when they consider alcohol, think of either beverage or renewable fuel, these are the highest and lowest grades respectively. There are actually many grades in between and a diverse number of applications in which they are used. At our Pekin, Illinois campus, we produce multiple grades of alcohol that are then used in various consumer products that touch our lives on a daily basis. These include products that we consume, like spirits, medicines and vinegar; products that we use in applications like cleaning supplies, paint and fertilizer; and products applied topically like perfumes or hand sanitizers, which uses United States Pharmacopeia-grade alcohol. USP-grade alcohol has certainly been in the news since March, as it is used in hand sanitizers, disinfectants and cleaning supplies. We have been providing USP-grade product for hand sanitizer for a long time and our customers know we follow strict guidelines and are uniquely positioned to meet the precise consumer product specifications for each grade of alcohol we sell. Few other manufacturing facilities have this capability. It is an advantage that we use to strengthen and deepen our customer base, including major food, beverage and consumer product companies. As mentioned last quarter, we are finalizing the refurbishment of our existing Grain Neutral Spirit or GNS system located at our wet mill. When complete, it will produce an additional 30 million gallons of our highest quality product, which is the core ingredient used in the production of distilled spirits. Combined with the 110 million annualized gallons we are producing today, by the end of 2020, we will have increased our total annual capacity of specialty alcohol to 140 million gallons, the majority of which will meet or exceed USP specifications. This will be an increase of 65% compared to annual capacity of 85 million gallons in 2019. In addition to specialty alcohol and renewable fuel, we also produce essential ingredients for use in high-protein applications for beef, dairy, aquaculture and poultry feeds; and in food like edible oils for consumption by people and pets. As an example, we produce a high-value distillers yeast, an important ingredient used in the production of pet and human food. Our unique product is in great demand given its protein and flavor-enhancing characteristics. Our yeast is produced in an AIB International-inspected facility and is Kosher-certified. To put our refined business focus in context, I would like to remind everyone of our history, especially for those investors who may be new to our story. Pacific Ethanol was founded 17 years ago as a West Coast renewable fuel company to meet the demand for low-carbon renewable fuel. We subsequently expanded our operations regionally by acquiring production in the Midwest and broadened our offerings with the addition of high-protein feed products and distillers yeast for sales into the food industry. We further diversified into specialty alcohol sector in July of 2017 with our acquisition of Illinois Corn Processing that we refer to as ICP. ICP is adjacent to our Pekin wet mill, dry mill and yeast plant, and in fact, is separated only by a service road. We have now integrated the facilities into a single campus, creating significant synergies including favorable logistics that allow us to ship product by rail, truck or barge. Through this unique combination, we can more efficiently produce specialty alcohol, high-protein feed, distillers yeast and renewable fuel. And having established a more diversified platform, we were able to adapt to changes in markets to meet changing customer needs. This is evidenced by a change in both the amount of specialty alcohol sold and a material reduction in the amount of renewable fuel produced and sold. In the first nine months of 2020, specialty alcohols contributed approximately 45% of our revenues compared with only 15% for all of 2019. This excludes sales of third-party renewable fuel marketed by our Kinergy subsidiary. Equally, it has minimized our exposure to markets that have recently seen overproduction and demand destruction. Let's now review the specialty alcohols markets that PEI serves. While it represents a more niche market, specialty alcohol is integral to the production of adverse number of end products driven by consumer demand rather than regulatory mandate. Specialty alcohol prices typically exceed prices for renewable fuel, which provides an opportunity to earn higher margins than in the fuel market. Several factors materially contribute to the reason for these premiums. Chiefly, these products require additional equipment and processes both for production and quality assurance as well as technical know-how. Further, customers are focused first and foremost on quality and consistency. And finally, specialty alcohols are not quoted commodities like fuel, and generally do not trade in the spot market. Consequently, our customer contracts tend to be longer-term arrangements with negotiated fixed prices based on customer requirements for volume and quality. To put the pricing in perspective, historically the higher the quality of the product, the higher the price relative to renewable fuel, there are, of course, periodic exceptions to this. A perfect example is pricing for alcohols used to make hand sanitizers and disinfectants. As demand materially outstripped supply in the first months of the COVID pandemic, spot prices for this product significantly exceeded prices for more premium products. While the hand sanitizer segment of the market continues to be highly dynamic, spot demand has decreased and so too prices have come off the peak seen in the second quarter. Nevertheless, specialty alcohol premiums to renewable fuel currently remain greater than historic averages contributing to our optimistic outlook for 2021 and beyond. To this point, there are two particular market drivers I'd like to mention that give rise to our optimism. The first is the increasing use of alcohol-based sanitizers as a result of COVID-19. We have seen significant increases in demand for specialty alcohols that go into sanitizers and disinfectants such as Germex and Lysol that are being used in hospitals, restaurants, offices, and schools. We believe that when everyone starts to go back to the office or dining out or even concerts, sanitizer and disinfectant demand will remain strong because people will use these products frequently outside of their homes and businesses will be required to provide sanitary social environments. With continuing need for sanitizer products, we expect the demand will continue to have strong tailwinds. A second long-standing tailwind is the continued growth in distilled spirits consumption. As I discussed earlier, we are adding 30 million gallons of GNS production capacity in the fourth quarter to meet this rising demand. To wrap-up on markets, I'd like to affirm that we will continue to produce and market renewable fuel. While the last few years in the renewable fuel market have been challenging, we are now seeing some signs of improvement. Turning to our growth strategy. In the near-term, we are broadening our addressable market by obtaining enhanced certifications. In October, we obtained our ISO 9001 certification. That is the world's most widely recognized quality management system certification. We also are pursuing two additional certifications; ICH Q7 which sets forth good manufacturing practices for active pharmaceutical ingredients; and Excipact, which sets standards for excipient safety and quality. We expect final audits for both these certifications by the end of 2020. We have committed significant human and financial resources to obtain the highest certifications available. With the consultation and support of our customers, we are further differentiating our offerings to strengthen our quality assurance programs and procedures. This will be important domestically as the market raises the bar on product quality requirements and internationally to provide product to a growing export market. In addition there are many attractive investment opportunities in our portfolio that we can now undertake with the support of our strengthened balance sheet. For example we are investing in the expansion of the capacity of our yeast facility increasing its annual production by approximately 15%. We are starting the project this quarter and expect to complete it in Q3 of 2021. The project will require relatively low capital investment of $5.5 million and is expected to produce a payback in less than two years. We also are actively pursuing a strategic realignment plan through selling or repurposing our Western renewable fuel plants. We took the first step with our announced sale of 134 acres the rail loop and grain-handling assets at our Magic Valley plant in Burley Idaho for $10 million. The sale is expected to close on or before the end of this month and the proceeds will be used to prepay debt. We are pleased we were able to monetize idled assets at an accretive value. We will retain the alcohol production facility and terminal on the remaining 25 acres and we'll provide grain-handling operations and maintenance services to the acquirer of the grain-handling assets. We will continue to update you on other initiatives to repurpose or sell our Western assets. I'll now turn the call over to Bryon to review the financial results in further detail. Bryon?