Todd Becker
Analyst · Roth Capital Partners. Your line is now open.
I think the problem right now is this curve is in – this ethanol margin curve is in the area with that, if I run slower, I burn more cash because variable contribution margin for us, as we reduce our OpEx even at $0.28 a gallon, that’s not – not a lot of that’s driven by – it’s just driven by watching some of the things that we've been doing, making better decisions, getting better contracts, those types of things. The slower I run, the more money I actually burn. So, now we’re getting into the 20s instead of the 30s on our OpEx per gallon and going into the low 20s, the more I run, the more cash at these levels that we would actually burn. So, you know, it’s going to be up to a different part of the industry to run slower because that’s for what happened to us in the first quarter of this year, Craig. We ran slower and we lost more, running slower to try and get the industry back in balance, get the industry decide to take advantage of that and run harder and just offset everything the Great Plains did with our Project 24 program. There’s really only one way to run these plants today, unless margins get so negative where variable contribution is negative, and at that point, we can always look at it, but today, the harder I run or the slower I run, I will – we will actually burn more cash and that’s – we’re not going to do that for our shareholders anymore, especially in the position – financial position that we’re in today, which is to really move Project 24 as fast as we can. We’re trying accelerate it, as fast as we can so that when we get into 2020, we’re getting very close to those levels, especially by the second quarter that we will be basically just having to run all day every day, hammer down. And the difference though, if you think about it is, let’s say, even last year when we’re at $0.32 and if in 2020 we’re at $0.24, $0.08 a gallon over, you know, 1.1 billion gallon that’s a $190 million to $100 million of additional cash that we get just by running even at the same margin structure. So, while I like to say that Green Plains is going to do the work for the industry going forward, that’s not going to be our responsibility for much longer.