Aemetis, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMTX) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Derrick Whitfield: That’s great, and I completely agree with you on the SAF macro backdrop. With my follow-up, I know that you were expecting your first ITC to close in late Q2 or early Q3. Could you offer your latest thoughts on timing of when it will close and note if there are any meaningful remaining hurdles to clear?

Eric McAfee: Yes, current guidance is in the next month or so. I feel very comfortable that as of today, that’s conservative guidance and there’s been a team working on this of at least a half dozen law firms and accounting firms and a bunch of other people, consultants, et cetera for many months. And we’re reaching the end of that process. So we’re looking forward to a $50 million plus closing. We believe it will certainly be one of the largest ever done in the United States, maybe the first large transaction in the United States. So dealing in that environment of uncertainty has required the work of a lot of industry leading tax lawyers and accountants. And so I think we’ve gotten that guidance in place. I would thank the IRS for their June 21 guidance, 264 pages. Tremendous amount of work by the IRS, and it was very, very helpful in bringing this transaction to a near close where we’re at today and hopefully closing here in the next month or so.

Derrick Whitfield: That’s great. Thanks for your time.

Eric McAfee: Thank you, Derrick.

Operator: Your next question is coming from Jordan Levy with Truist. Please pose your question. Your line is live.

Jordan Levy: Hey all and appreciate all the details. Maybe just on the tallow business in India. Just curious if we could get a little more detail on how you expect that to progress. I think you discussed that you’re in negotiations for some space in California ports and that sort of thing. So anything there on timing or realizing of revenues out of that?

Eric McAfee: We are very well positioned for production in India. That’s not really been our constraint. The constraint has been tankage at the ports. Tallow requires a heated tank and then the actual carbon intensity pathway in California is about a six month process to get the tallow in the plant to do the 90 days of testing and all the other things required for that process. So we are steadily moving forward and I feel very solid about the ability to get the tankage in place. We’re actually in contract process there. And then in terms of customers, we have pretty much every renewable diesel producer in California or our neighboring state, Nevada, who are excellent candidates for this. And so we have one particular refinery that is looking to take all of our capacity.

So we do not have a projected shipment date yet, but we hope to have that in place by the end of this quarter and be looking at revenues in the fourth quarter. Shipments, of course, from India take a little time and then you’ve got to post it through the storage tank into our customer before it’s really revenue. But we are targeting to have fourth quarter revenue and we’ll see whether that flow starts. We of course, if we sell the one customer with pretty much all of our capacity would be looking to scale this up rather quickly. And so really the scale up speed is what we’re focusing on. And I think once we get the tankage in place, we’ll be in a much better position to start the shipments.

Jordan Levy: Thanks for that. Maybe shifting over to the RNG side. Just curious now that you have seven digesters online. You’ve built a lot of scale on that business. How has the reception, I guess been from the dairy owners in that area? Either the ones that are already part of the business or that you’re looking to add on to the business and what’s your confidence level? And I think the 65 dairy target in the five year plan?

Eric McAfee: Andy spent a lot of time with dairy. So Andy, why don’t you give us an update on that?