Alto Ingredients Inc (ALTO) 2008 Q2 法說會逐字稿

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  • Operator

  • Welcome to the second quarter 2008 Pacific Ethanol, Inc., earnings conference call.

  • My name is Erica and I will be your coordinator for today.

  • At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode.

  • We will be facilitating a question and answer session toward the end of this conference.

  • (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS)

  • I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today's call, Mr.

  • Gregory Pettit, with Hill & Knowlton.

  • Please proceed, sir.

  • - IR

  • Good morning.

  • Before we get started I'd like to point out that there are slides to accompany this conference call available on the company's home page, pacificethanol.net.

  • And after the call -- about an hour and a half after the call there will be replays available both web-based and telephonic, and information on how to access those replays are available on the company's home page.

  • This call contains forward-looking statements, including statements concerning future conditions in the ethanol marketing and production industries and concerning the company's future business, financial condition, operating strategies and operational and legal risks.

  • The company uses words like believe expect, may, will, could, seek, estimate, continue, anticipate, intend, goal, future, plan or variations of those terms and other similar expressions, including their use in the negative to identify forward-looking statements.

  • Respective investors should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements which speak only as to the company's expectations as to the date of these materials.

  • These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties including those identified under risk factors in the most recently filed of the company's annual report on 10K or registration statement as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

  • Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, actual conditions in the ethanol market and production industries and actual conditions and results in the company's business could differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements.

  • In addition, none of the events anticipated in the forward-looking statements may actually occur.

  • Any of these different outcomes could cause the value of the securities including the price of the company's common stock to decline substantially, except as required by law, the company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statements after the date of this call, either to conform any statement to reflect the actual results or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

  • And with that I would like to turn the call over CEO and President, Neil Koehler.

  • - President, CEO

  • Thank you, Gregory, and welcome everyone to Pacific Ethanol's investor call to discuss our financial results for the second quarter and year to date for the period ending June 30th, 2008.

  • I am joined today by Joe Hansen, our Chief Financial Officer.

  • I will make a few opening remarks followed by Joe walking us through the numbers.

  • After a closing comment or two on the market environment, Joe and I will be available for Q&A.

  • For the second quarter we achieved record sales of $198 million, an increase of 74%, compared to $113.8 million in the second quarter of 2007.

  • In the second quarter of 2008, we sold a record 66.8 million-gallons, a 52% increase compared to the 43.9 million-gallons in the second quarter of 2007.

  • We reported a net loss of $10.5 million after preferred dividends or $0.23 per share.

  • Our gross profit was $.4 million compared to $11.1 million in the second quarter of 2007.

  • Gross profit through the first six months of 2008 was $16.1 million compared to $26.5 million in the first six months of 2007.

  • EBITDA in the second quarter was negative $.8 million compared to positive $3.5 million in the second quarter of 2007.

  • EBITDA for the first six months of 2008 was $11.7 million, compared to $8.3 million in the first six months of 2007.

  • Rapidly increasing corn and natural gas costs in the quarter coupled with a somewhat difficult start up of our Magic Valley ethanol facility in Burley, Idaho, negatively impacted earnings in the quarter.

  • Even with a difficult second quarter we had positive operating performance over the first six months of 2008 in what we all know has been a challenging market environment.

  • We made great progress in the quarter in strengthening our working capital to position.

  • We received $32.4 million of new equity into the business in May.

  • And two weeks ago announced a new $40 million revolving credit facility for Kinergy, our ethanol marketing subsidiary, This replaces the smaller Comerica line and provides valuable liquidity to Kinergy as our marketing continues to grow alongside our production.

  • We are pleased to announce we signed an ethanol marketing agreement with Calgon Renewable Fuels in Pixley, California, a 55-million gallon per year facility that began production this month.

  • We are also pleased to announce that we have begun commissioning our Stockton ethanol facility and continue to be on schedule for a start up this quarter.

  • With the completion of the Stockton plant we will achieve our goal of earning 220-million gallons of annual operating capacity in 2008.

  • As California refiners begin to increase ethanol blending in California, we are well positioned with new supplies of locally produced ethanol to meet the growing demand.

  • As we add new equity production and marketed balance from third parties, we continue to expand our distribution capabilities, making us a preferred supplier in our markets.

  • We continue to be very focused on lowering costs, improving efficiencies and developing technology to both enhance corn ethanol production and extend into next generation ethanol production.

  • Our SG&A has declined in both absolute dollars and as a percentage of sales.

  • Our industry leading collaboration with Pursuit Dynamics of the UK to improve starch conversion efficiencies is show progress and testing continues.

  • We are optimistic that this technology will result in our achieving sustainable yield improvements.

  • With our cellulose technology partner, Bio-Gasol, of Denmark, we expect to finalize our workplan with the DOE in the fourth quarter for our 2.7-million-gallon demonstration cellulose plant located at our Colombia site in Portland, Oregon.

  • We are committed to our existing strategy of integrating cellulose ethanol production into our corn ethanol platform to position us for significant future growth with second generation ethanol technology.

  • With that, I would like to now turn it over to Joe to run through the financial details of our second quarter 2008 results.

  • - CFO

  • Thank you, Neil.

  • And good morning, everyone.

  • Slide two, contains a list of the items we will cover during this call.

  • Slide three is a summary income statement for the second quarter.

  • Our net sales increased to $198 million in Q2 2008, from $113.8 million in Q2 2007, a 74% year-over-year increase.

  • Year to date, our net sales increased to $359.5 million from $213 million in the first half of 2007, or an increase of 69%.

  • Slide four, shows our net sales and gallons sold.

  • We sold 66.8 million gallons of ethanol in Q2 2008, up 52% from 43.9 million-gallons in Q2 2007, and also up 13% over the prior quarter.

  • For the first half of the year, we sold 126 million-gallons of ethanol, up 52% from 82.8 million-gallons in the first six months of 2007.

  • Our third party purchases and marketing activity represented 52% of our gallons sold in the second quarter and 56% of our gallons sold on a year to date basis.

  • As we bring our Stockton plant online we may see production further increase in the share of gallons shoulder.

  • Over the long run, however, we expect our third party marketing volume will continue to make up a significant portion of our total ethanol sales.

  • Going to slide five, we show a disappointing gross profit margin in Q2 of 2008, hurt by significantly higher corn and natural gas costs, erosion in our coproduct return, and cost associated with the start up of our Magic Valley facility.

  • Our gross profit was $.4 million, or .2% of as a percentage of sales in Q2 2008, compared to gross profit of $11.1 million, or 9.8% as percentage of sales in Q2 2007.

  • During the quarter, we maintained a positive gross profit on a cash basis in both our production and marketing operations.

  • Note that our gross profit includes our plant's depreciation expense of approximately $4.1 million for the quarter.

  • For the first half of 2008, we had gross profit of $16.1 million, or 4.5%, as a percentage of sales compared to gross profit of $26.5 million, or 12.4% as a percentage of sales in the first half of 2007.

  • Returning to the income statement summary on slide three, our SG&A fell slightly in Q2 2008 and for the first half of the year, compared to the same periods a year ago.

  • As we have previously stated, we expect our SG&A expenses to continue to decrease on a per gallon and percentage basis relative to sales.

  • We recorded a net loss of $8.3 million in Q2 2008, compared to net income of $2.2 million in Q2 2007, primarily due to factors related to the swing in gross profit discussed earlier.

  • Year to date we have a net loss of $43.5 million compared to net income of $5.1 million during the same period last year.

  • Recall that our results for the first quarter of this year included a net goodwill impairment charge of $38.6 million, related to the acquisition value of Front Range Energy.

  • Excluding the impact of the goodwill impairment, we had a net loss of $4.9 million for the first six months of the year.

  • The quarter also included $2.6 million of income from Oregon business energy tax credits, for which our Columbia ethanol plant qualifies.

  • We also recorded a net commodity derivative loss of $.9 million for the quarter, this figure is comprised of derivative losses of $.2 million related to hedge positions that settled during the quarter and $.7 million of unrealized mark to market losses on open positions that will settle in future periods.

  • In addition, we recorded a noncash gain of $1 million to reflect the change in the fair value of interest rate hedges against our senior debt facility.

  • As mentioned in prior periods, this is to record the change in fair value of our interest rate hedges from the end of March.

  • After deducting preferred stock dividend of $1.4 million and a deemed dividend on preferred stock of $.8 million, our net loss available to common shareholders is $10.5 million for Q2 2008, or $0.23 per share.

  • Year to date, our net loss available to common shareholders is $46.7 million or $1.08 per share of which $38.6 million or $0.89 per share respectively is related to the net goodwill impairment charge.

  • Going to slide six, EBITDA was negative $.8 million for the quarter, down from a positive $3.5 million in Q2 2007, primarily due to compressed gross margins from ethanol production.

  • For the first half of the year, EBITDA was $11.7 million, up from $8.3 million in the first half of 2007.

  • On slide seven, we summarized our commodity price performance.

  • Our production gallons increased significantly in Q2 2008, on both a sequential and year-over-year basis, with the start up of our Magic Valley plant, while third party sales remained steady.

  • Our average selling price of ethanol was $2.55 per gallon during the quarter, up 10% from $2.32 in the same quarter a year ago and also up 11% from $2.30 in Q1 2008.

  • Year to date, our average sales price was $2.43 per gallon, up 6% from $2.29 per gallon in the same period last year.

  • During the Q2, our delivered cost of corn was $6.73 per bushel, up 59% from $4.23 per bushel in Q2 2007, and also up 26% from our Q1 2008 delivered cost of $5.33.

  • Our corn bases averaged $0.75 giving us a CBOT equivalent corn cost of $5.98 per bushel compared to the average CBOT market price of $6.29 during the quarter.

  • Our lack of fixed price positions in corn at the beginning of the second quarter caused us to absorb virtually all of the increase in the market price of corn.

  • Corn price -- excuse me, corn basis was up $0.64 a year ago, due to rising mileage based rail fuel surcharges, but down slightly from $0.77 in the prior quarter.

  • Year to date, our delivered corn costs has averaged $6.15 per bushel, up 58% from $3.90 per bushel in the same period a year ago.

  • Our basis averaged $0.76 in the first half of the year versus $0.62 last year.

  • Our coproduct return fell to a disappointing 21.7% in the second quarter.

  • This metric was pressured by significantly rising corn prices during the quarter, and as we indicated on our prior call, a relatively high ratio of fixed priced sales contracts that are in place through the third quarter of this year.

  • Further, although we have a portion of our wet distillers grains sales index to dry distillers grain prices, DDG also failed to keep pace with rising corn prices during the second quarter.

  • Our coproduct return in Q2 2008 is down from 26.5% in Q2 2007 and 26.4% recorded in the previous quarter.

  • Year to date, we realized the coproduct return of 23.4%, down from 28.5% in the same period last year.

  • The net impact of ethanol, corn and coproduct metrics resulted in a weak production commodity margin of $0.49 per gallon for the quarter.

  • The production margin is down significantly from $1.10 per gallon in Q2 2007 and $0.91 per gallon in the prior quarter.

  • Year-to-date, our production commodity margin averaged $0.64 per gallon, versus $1.21 per gallon in the same period last year.

  • At quarter end, we had forward fixed price ethanol sales contracts with a dollar value of $39.8 million, as well as 43.9 million-gallons of forward index based ethanol sales.

  • Our forward corn purchase commitments consists of $.4 million of fixed price contracts, as well as 3.8 million-bushels of forward index based purchase contracts.

  • Referring to the balance sheet of slide eight, our cash and liquid securities balance of $35 million, was down from $51.2 million at the end of the first quarter.

  • We used cash during the quarter primarily to fund construction of our Stockton plant, support the working capital needs of our ethanol production facilities, and also support our Kinergy division where working capital availability under it's line of credit with Comerica was limited.

  • Subsequent to the end of the second quarter, we replaced Kinergy's $17.5 million Comerica line of credit with a $40 million line of credit with Wachovia, potentially expandable to $45 million, providing us with additional working capital flexibility.

  • We are nearing the completion of this phase of our construction program.

  • Our construction loan facility has a remaining availability of $74 million.

  • Since the end of the Q2 we have contributed an additional $1.6 million in equity to complete the required equity contribution for our Stockton plant.

  • During the third quarter we expect total cash -- excuse me, cash outflow of approximately $50 million, related to completing construction at the Stockton plant, all of which will be funded from existing availability under our senior debt facility.

  • The final $24 million remaining from our debt facility will be drawn upon completion and performance testing of the Stockton plant and will essentially be a return of our equity.

  • That concludes the summary of the financial results for Q2.

  • Before we go back to Neil for further comments and the Q&A, I would like to go to slides nine and 10 to summarize is status of operating assets and plants under construction.

  • Slide nine shows our operating plants consisting of Madera, Columbia, Magic Valley and 42% ownership in Front Range Energy.

  • Overall, our operating plants produced at a rate of about 7% over design basis during Q2 2008.

  • As the production margin environment continues to remain very challenging, we have reduced our operating rates closer design capacity in the third quarter, and will continue to adjust our production rates to match market conditions.

  • Slide 10 shows the progress of construction at the Stockton plant which is nearing completion.

  • This concludes my remarks.

  • I would now turn it over to Neil for further discussion before he opens up the lines for questions.

  • - President, CEO

  • Thanks, Joe.

  • I want just to take a minute to update you on the views of the ethanol marketplace.

  • Corn prices have declined significantly in the last number of weeks, ethanol prices have declined as well with all commodity prices, but there has been some margin improvement in ethanol production economics..

  • Tight margins and credit markets have both slowed the completion of new production capacity and the run rates of some existing capacity.

  • Virtually no new construction has been initiated this year.

  • Very favorable ethanol blending economics continue to increase the demand for ethanol.

  • With a 50% increase in domestic production year-over-year, supply is pushing demand, which along with high corn prices has contributed to margin compression.

  • As we move through 2008 into 2009, new plant openings are slowing in the industry, while ethanol demand will continue to accelerate.

  • We still believe that production margins improve significantly, as this will be necessary to encourage a new round of production expansion needed to meet future demand.

  • In spite of the negative propaganda campaign by the grocery manufacturer's association, the policies support for ethanol remains solid.

  • We are encouraged by the EPA denial of the Texas waiver request from the renewable fuel standard.

  • EPA administrator Johnson summed it up succinctly in his press conference last week by stating that "the RFS remains an important tool in our ongoing efforts to reduce America's greenhouse gas emissions and lessen our dependence on foreign oil in aggressive yet practical ways." We agree, and stand ready to do our part as company to deliver increasing supplies of cost competitive, low carbon ethanol fuel to the transportation fuel market.

  • And Erica, at this time, please open up the lines for questions.

  • Operator

  • (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS) All questions must be submitted at this time in order for it to be registered.

  • Questions will be taken in the order received.

  • (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS) Our first question comes from the line of Joe Gomes with Oppenheimer.

  • Please proceed.

  • - Analyst

  • Good morning.

  • Neil, I was wondering if you could provide detail on the Pursuit Dynamic test, more than above than it looks promising?

  • - President, CEO

  • I -- we like to be fairly circumspect in terms of these sorts of projects until we have more definitive results.

  • But I can say that we have run a first phase of testing, where we ran the equipment continuously for a week's period of time and we saw yield improvements anywhere from zero to 12%.

  • If you look across the individual formenters, there were some issues in terms of operations that we are addressing to make sure that we can run the thing in the equipment in a more continual manner, and we're working that out now, and expect over the quarter to have more definitive results and know exactly how we will be implementing this across this Boardman facility and the other ethanol plants.

  • - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • Great.

  • In the Burley start up, Joe in his comments mentioned had difficult start up there, could you provide more detail on that and what kind of impact on volume it might have had in the quarter?

  • - President, CEO

  • We have been fortunate on our first two start ups to have very flawless and really incredibly quick and efficient start ups.

  • With the Magic Valley facility, we had some equipment issue, specifically a liquification tank at the front end failed at start up, we had to shut the plant down and had to fix that.

  • We were fixing it on the fly, it had some impact on yield at Magic Valley, probably cost us overall based on earlier projections abut a half a month's production at Magic Valley, and also there were some ancillary costs involved in additional chemicals used to overcome the front end problems that we had so we could continue to run.

  • And logistical costs in terms of hauling ethanol from other areas to cover contractual commitments.

  • So a combination of lost gallons which obviously impacted some profitability in gross margin, as well as added costs dealing with the start up.

  • But it is running efficiently now.

  • - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • And one last one, can you kind of give us an idea of your conversion costs?

  • I know some of the're ethanol guys do that in terms of this is all the other factors of production outside of the corn.

  • - President, CEO

  • We don't break that out in specific detail, but I think, Joe, you know from our business model, our conversion costs are pretty efficient due to our using on average 30% less energy, Obviously our corn costs is going to be higher, that's going to be offset by higher product sales, but on the variable costs at the production level pretty standard with the exception of our energy costs being lower than would be typical of a dry mill distillers grain in the midwest.

  • - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • I will get back in queue, thanks.

  • - President, CEO

  • Thank you.

  • Operator

  • Our next question comes from the line of Jinming Liu with Ardour Capital.

  • Please proceed.

  • - Analyst

  • Good morning.

  • Hi.

  • I have a -- can you share with us the information about forward contract with corn and ethanol for say third quarter?

  • - President, CEO

  • In our Q that will come out later you will see what positions that we have.

  • But as I think we stated in our last call we have very little corn coverage going into this quarter, and we have little coming into this last quarter, that our conscious decision in terms of risk management given the if you look at if forward curves on ethanol and corn, it's very difficult to take fixed price ethanol contracts, be able to to forward purchase corn and have a margin that we think is adequate.

  • So we have been certainly much more matched, I mean open to both the ethanol and corn markets.

  • And to the extent that we have fixed priced ethanol purchases we have matched that with or sales with purchases on third party and with corn on the production side.

  • But you will see from the numbers that our positions are relatively open as we enter the third quarter.

  • - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • Thanks.

  • Operator

  • Our next question comes from the line of Michael Cohen with Pacific American Securities.

  • Please proceed.

  • - Analyst

  • Good morning.

  • I have a couple of questions about your shifting capital structure, specifically related to the referred stock.

  • The series A came off if the last six months and series B came on, is that correct?

  • - President, CEO

  • That is correct.

  • - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • Could you tell me who the owners of the series A was?

  • And it looks like the series B is insiders, and I was wondering is there anyone other than insiders who have the series B?

  • - President, CEO

  • Series A was cascade investment, and as you observed they have converted all of that to common share.

  • That actually is having an impact of saving us on dividend payments relative to the series B, smaller amount of dividend payments overall.

  • Series B is largely it is exclusively insiders, with the largest bulk of that coming from Lyles United, who is affiliated with Lyles the construction company of our plants --

  • - Analyst

  • -- exclusively cascade?

  • - President, CEO

  • That is correct.

  • - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • Thank you very much.

  • Operator

  • Our next question comes from the line of Ian Horowitz with Soleil Securities.

  • Please proceed.

  • - Analyst

  • Hey, good morning, guys.

  • Just a couple of questions, the SG&A looks like it's down pretty significantly.

  • And I know Joe talked about down as a gallon -- percentage of gallons.

  • Is this a dollar amount that we should expect going forward or are we going to see reversion back to previous levels of SG&A?

  • - CFO

  • We expect SG&A to continue to decrease as a percentage of our overall volume.

  • We are continually focused on SG&A and it's become a real focus point here within the company to bring the costs significantly down.

  • - President, CEO

  • I would add, Ian, that on an asset basis you can see it's down slightly quarter over quarter.

  • And that we are still in 2008 obviously in the middle of the bringing on these new plants.

  • So if you look at the amount of gallons we produced in the quarter over the overhead, because naturally we have a significant amount of production that's not on line.

  • Those numbers per gallon are obviously quite high, close to $0.30 a gallon as we bring in all production and hold the dollars constant or even try to drive them down, we will achieve SG&A that is $0.10 a gallon or less.

  • And that is the goal.

  • The biggest reduction obviously is on cents per gallon, we believe there is absolute dollars that we can ring out of the SG&A.

  • - Analyst

  • Great.

  • How are you doing this ringing out of absolute dollars?

  • Are you laying people off?

  • Are you cutting salaries?

  • - President, CEO

  • It's not as much layoff as we have been hiring and in the formative stages of the company when we were growing so rapidly and we had some of the issues around accounting, our professional fees were extremely high.

  • That has been one key area of reducing SG&A is to limit our professional fees and to some extent replace professionals with our own professionals outside professionals with those hired by the company.

  • - Analyst

  • Got it.

  • Joe, can you do me a favor you went over the third quarter spend for Stockton, but I didn't quite -- can you repeat that, please?

  • - CFO

  • Sure.

  • When I said was that our construction loan facility has remaining availability of approximately $74 million.

  • During the quarter, during Q2 we contributed an additional $1.6 million in equity and that completed our required equity contribution for Stockton.

  • During the quarter -- during the third quarter we expect that the total cash outflow will be $50 million to complete the construction at the Stockton plant and all of this is going to be funded under our existing senior debt facility.

  • There is the final $24 million remaining from our debt facility, will be drawn upon completion of the plant and the performance testing of the plant.

  • It's essentially a return of our equity.

  • - President, CEO

  • Ian, that's a important point.

  • We essentially trapped equity that rolled from plant to plant.

  • So as we reached this major milestone of completing these plants, that we are able to return the equity that's been rolling forward from the final top off of our loan, and that then will be equity that returns to our balance sheet.

  • - Analyst

  • I get that.

  • And any estimates for the second half for maintenance CapEx?

  • - President, CEO

  • It's -- these are new plants, it's all within the operating budgets of the plants, so there are no major capital projects at our plants.

  • - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • One last question, and I will get back in queue.

  • We've seen the coproduct correlation erode here, both from coproduct ethanol as well as coproduct (inaudible).

  • Just wondering maybe Neil if you could give us color on why you think this is going on.

  • I know the corn moved quite rapidly and so you can see a disconnect over the short term, but are there local issues going on?

  • Farmers doing changing their feed rations and they doing their purchasing decisions differently?

  • And how are you going to respond to changes?

  • - President, CEO

  • The biggest problem has been, and these are contracts that will all come off at the end of the third quarter, but we went into about a year ago fixed price contracts before the price of corn had gone up, did not have corn bought against a good portion of that.

  • So where you typically see the distiller's grain, it's kind of a natural hedge on corn price, we got into a mix match situation that we are addressing by, we won't be taking fixed price contracts that are not completely hedged against a corn position as we move forward.

  • So that's really a legacy problem that we are working through.

  • Then when we get to the fourth quarter, that will be a very different situation and that we would expect our coproduct return to improve.

  • There also is a natural -- that corn has gone up so quickly, and that the feeders have been under a lot of pressure and have been very aggressive for looking for alternative.

  • There's been a fair amount of new supply of distiller's grain.

  • We have overall seen a relationship between distillers grain, whether it be dry or wet, relative to corn that has certainly declined with the rapidly increasing price of corn.

  • We have the opportunity with the corn coming off so fast to see some lag on the way down, and that also could be a benefit.

  • So we really see both market conditions improving the over all coproduct return as well as our own specific issue of working through the fixed pricing contracts.

  • - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • Great.

  • Thanks, guys.

  • I'll get back in queue.

  • Operator

  • (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS) Our next question comes from the line of Michael -- I'm sorry, Joe Gomes with Oppenheimer.

  • Please proceed.

  • - Analyst

  • What's a good number for use of shares outstanding going forward?

  • - President, CEO

  • The diluted shares for the purpose of our current is about 46.7 million shares, I believe, that's weighted average.

  • When you look on a go forward basis, certainly if you were to take the preferred shares and assume they all converted to common, it would be in the 60 million range or so.

  • - CFO

  • Maybe 50 million range would be more accurate.

  • - Analyst

  • You say 50 million?

  • - CFO

  • Yes, I thought it was --

  • - President, CEO

  • If you assume all the -- which won't happen -- so I'm not sure what you're trying to get to in the question.

  • But it will increase slightly over the next few quarters, but then if you wanted to look at the toldel capitalization of the company and all of the common plus referred as converted to common, that's where you get to, above 60 million.

  • - Analyst

  • More at what the slight increase over the next quarters.

  • - President, CEO

  • 50 million would be a good number to use.

  • - Analyst

  • Okay.

  • And Neil, anything new in the states you guys are operating in on the legislative front in terms of more mandates for biofuels or anything new out there?

  • - President, CEO

  • Well, still very solid support.

  • The Oregon mandate was successfully implemented and continues to move forward and be a real success for the state, both from a fuel supply and cost and economic environmental benefit.

  • The state of Washington is just this year at the end of this year and as of January 1st, implements a 3% requirement that has the -- through some analysis at the state level could be increased to 10%, but we are already seeing the refiners go to a 10% blend in the state of Washington, so that has been a increasing market really coincident with Oregon implementing it's requirement, southern Washington, the Vancouver area, Pasco , those sorts of area converted to 10%.

  • That was followed here a number of months ago by the Tacoma area, most of the refiners now are blending 10% ethanol, and the expectation is that this fall, most of Seattle.

  • So we are seeing some pretty significant growth in the state of Washington.

  • Probably the biggest opportunity is the great state of California, where by 2010 all of the refiners to meet the new regulations will be at a 10% blend level from the current 5.7%.

  • So that is a 700 million-gallon increase in the demand for ethanol in California between now and 2010.

  • Much as we saw sort of an orderly transition out of MTB into ethanol, we are expecting to see the same from 5.7% to 10%.

  • There are some interim rules that allow refiners to increase flexibility starting almost immediately to go to a higher level blend of ethanol than the 5.7% and we know of a number of our customers who are intending to move in that direction yet this year.

  • So we expect that between now and the end of 2009, we will see a pretty steady move to higher level blending in California.

  • From a policy standpoint in the state of California, the big issue now is the implementation of the low carbon fuel standard.

  • Ethenol is clearly providing the most significant CO2 reduction opportunity to meet the 10% CO2 requirement from transportation fuels that the state is looking for.

  • So we expect that to not only back stop the 10% ethanol blending in California, but as we work with EPA and the car manufacturers to move to blends above 10%, California to get additional CO2 reductions will be very eager to move beyond the 10% ethanol blend ratio.

  • So we see significant growth over the next number of years in the state of California due to those policy

  • - Analyst

  • Thank you for the update, Neil.

  • Appreciate it.

  • Operator

  • There are no further questions.

  • I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr.

  • Koehler for closing remarks.

  • - President, CEO

  • Well, thank you all, appreciate everybody's interest and support of our company.

  • And appreciate your time today and look forward to updating you on our next quarterly call.

  • Have a good day.

  • Operator

  • Thank you for your participation in today's conference.

  • This concludes the presentation, everyone have a great day.