Danimer Scientific Inc (DNMR) 2021 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Greetings, and welcome to the Danimer Scientific Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Russ Zukowski, Vice President of Corporate Finance. Thank you, Russ. You may begin.

Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today for our third quarter 2021 earnings call. Hosting the call today are Danimer's CEO, Steve Croskrey; and CFO, Jad Dowdy. Phil Van Trump, our Chief Science and Technology Officer, will also be joining us for Q&A. During our discussion today, we will be referring to our earnings presentation, which is available on the Investor Relations section of our website at danimerscientific.com.

On Slide 2, please note that we may discuss forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements include, among other things, future results of operations, capacity, production and demand levels that could differ in a material way from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof, except as required by law.

Today's presentation also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in the earnings presentation. I will now turn the call over to Steve.

Thank you, Russ. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Today, we will discuss our third quarter results and some exciting business updates. The third quarter of 2021 marked another period of continued progress on our path to deliver best-in-class solutions for biodegradable packaging and other products which address the global plastic waste crisis.

During the quarter, we made progress on several key objectives, including the initial integration of our recent acquisition of Novomer, contributed application development work, increased production of PLA-based products and we continue to negotiate both development and supply agreements with our blue-chip customers. We remain on schedule with the scaling up of our Kentucky Phase I operations as well as the construction of our Kentucky Phase II operations. And we are happy to announce that we now plan to break ground on our state-of-the-art greenfield facility in Bainbridge, Georgia ahead of schedule later this month.

In looking at our customer relationships and business developments, we have several exciting updates. We continue to see an increase in demand for our products during the third quarter, and we are making progress on both supply and development agreements for a wide array of product applications, including coatings, lids, films, fibers and utensils and other injection molded items. Our partner, WinCup PHA straws made with Danimer Signature Nodax-based resins are now being sold in CVS stores across the country. In addition, WinCup recently announced its sponsorship of the Atlanta Falcons introducing PHA straws to the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta beginning in August of this year. WinCup also recently applauded to the city of Fort Myers Beach, Florida for voting to amend the city's ban on traditional plastic straws to allow for more biodegradable solutions. Following the vote, WinCup will not be able to distribute straws in the community to better protect the areas, beaches and waterways.

Furthermore, one of our straw inverters is making progress in scaling up their production for a previously mentioned QSR customer, with their expected goal of hitting full stride in Q1 of 2022. We are excited by the positive reception to our Nodax-based straws and have found that many of our Stock customers also went Nodax-based lids and cups, so they can offer a complete biodegradable solution.

Separately, our partnership with Kemira is progressing well. We have already conducted successful product trials with aqueous coatings and continue to develop our relationship. Also recently, we announced a long-term collaboration with Total Corbion PLA and securing PLA supply to spur production of PHA-based resins for our growing blue-chip customer base. Additionally, this alliance secured supply for our expected anchor tender at our Georgia greenfield facility. Growing commercial scale production of PHA remains a core focus of our business. However, PLA is an important input in many of our Nodax-based formulations. Partnering with Total Corbion PLA provides an ideal solution to support the long-term growth opportunities ahead while ensuring our short-term customer needs remain fulfilled.

We have a couple of promising developments on the R&D side to touch on as well. In our prudent efforts to evaluate or radio feedstocks for use in the commercial scale production of our Signature Nodax polymer, we are pleased to receive a research grant from the United Soybean Board in September to expand research in the use of high-oleic soybean oil for biodegradable plastic production. This grant represents a continuation of our collaboration with the United Soybean Board after we successfully completed a 1-year project to develop a practical model for production, and the second phase of the project will now focus on scaling up soybean oil potential use in manufacturing at a commercial level.

Additionally, during the quarter, we opened the Danimer conversion lab in Georgia to help us make the process of conducting customer product trials more efficient. As a reminder, our application development process is iterative. Typically, we send sample material to a converter who processes it and then gives us feedback. We then modify the material and send another sample until a final acceptable result is achieved. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have not been allowed to attend as many trials in person, and converters have oftentimes delayed trials due to employee constraints. Our new lab in Georgia contains manufacturing equipment where we can simulate our customer trials on site without the back and forth approach in the initial iterations, speeding up the process to provide our customers with a final product that is acceptable for use in their commercial production.

Now moving on to our Novomer integration update. As we discussed on our last earnings call, in August, we closed on our acquisition of Novomer, a leading developer of thermal catalytic conversion technology that produces high-performing, carbon-efficient, cost-effective polymers and chemicals, including Rinnovo, a type of PHA. We are pleased to report that our integration is progressing in line with our plan, and we are on track to realize the benefits of the acquisition, enhancing the strength of product applications we can develop due to the complementary nature of Rinnovo when combined with Nodax. Importantly, Novomer's technology will enable us to significantly lower our production costs and capital expenditure per pound produced while also providing improved barrier properties in some of our packaging products.

As part of our effort to explore technology that can help us lower our manufacturing costs, we announced a new partnership with Chevron Phillips Chemical in September to collaborate on the development of a loop slurry reactor design for the manufacture of Rinnovo. Through this collaboration, we will evaluate the use of CPChem's loop slurry reactor design, a technology that originally transformed polyolefin production to evaluate the feasibility of incorporating a continuous reactor system in the manufacturing process for Rinnovo. If the testing is successful, we expect this reactor design to increase the utilization of future manufacturing plants, driving higher production volumes and lowering overall cost per unit.

Now looking at our facility expansions, we are making significant progress on our previously announced expansion plans. We remain well positioned to further scale production of Nodax towards our expectation of reaching 100% of our Kentucky Phase I facilities annual run rate capacity by the end of 2021. Since our debottlenecking initiatives at Phase I were completed earlier this year, we have found that all of our step functions in downstream processing are operating, on average, at nearly twice the speed of our original plan with the exception of brand capacity, which is running below our expectations. With that said, we have a plan in place to remediate this issue, which should allow us to achieve our production targets by the end of the year.

Furthermore, we expect to have excess based food brand capacity coming online in February, which we believe will more than make up for any shortfall. Our production of PHA, or Nodax, is an intermediate step in our overall manufacturing process. In October, at our Phase I facility, our net PHA production was approximately 70% of capacity, up from 62% during the second quarter and over 50% in the first quarter.

Our Kentucky Phase II construction is progressing ahead of schedule, and we have included Slides 5 through 7 in our presentation to provide you with an aerial view of our progress in 2021. As a reminder, phase II construction at our Kentucky facility commenced in December of 2020 and is expected to come online in the second quarter of 2022, ultimately providing us with an expected 45 million pounds of finished product capacity. Completion of both phases will collectively bring our nameplate finished product capacity up to an expected 65 million pounds per year at our Kentucky facility.

At our new state-of-the-art greenfield facility in Bainbridge, Georgia, we are excited to break ground on construction in the latter half of November. We have already placed orders for several of the long lead time items needed to complete our construction plans. Our primary rationale for beginning the construction process ahead of our initial schedule is to lock in previous price quotes, avoiding significant inflation in the cost of certain construction materials and to avoid labor constraints. Additionally, as our Phase 2 subcontractors come off the job at Kentucky, they will be able to transition immediately to the greenfield facility in Georgia. We intend to expect the fermenters and extrusion facilities to come online by mid-2023.

As it relates to our plans for our Rinnovo plant, we are evaluating several attractive locations for site selection and potential partners to collaborate with as we add this capacity. Upon completion of Kentucky Phase II greenfield facility and the Rinnovo plant, we expect to have an overall PHA finished product nameplate capacity of approximately 390 million pounds, inclusive of 60 million pounds of stand-alone Rinnovo. We are excited by our progress to date on our capacity expansions and look forward to updating you further on our progress next quarter.

With that, let me turn the call over to Jad for an update on our financial results.

Thank you, Steve. I'll speak to Slide 8. We closed out our third quarter of the year with PHA representing a growing share of our revenue. I'll discuss our third quarter results, followed by some color on the full year 2021.

Revenues for the third quarter of 2021 grew to $13.4 million compared to $12.8 million in the third quarter last year. This increase was primarily driven by the ongoing scale-up of PHA production for Phase I of the Winchester, Kentucky facility that we brought online in 2020. In the third quarter, we derived 32% of our revenues from sales of Nodax-based resins compared to 12% in the third quarter of 2020. While demand for PLA remains strong, PLA revenue for the third quarter of 2021 decreased year-over-year due to the timing of customer purchases.

We reported a gross loss of approximately $230,000 in the third quarter of this year and gross profit of $3.6 million in the third quarter of 2020. Adjusted gross profit, which excludes depreciation, stock-based compensation and rent related to our manufacturing operations, was $2.6 million compared to $4.6 million in the third quarter of last year. Adjusted gross margin was 19.7% compared to 35.8% in the third quarter of last year, primarily due to elevated fixed cost absorption as production continued to scale up at the Kentucky facility. In both periods, the average cost per pound of PHA-based product sold was significantly higher than PLA-based products sold as a result of this elevated fixed cost absorption. As we have mentioned previously, we expect our average cost per unit at our existing facilities to improve as production scales.

R&D and SG&A expenses, excluding depreciation and amortization, stock-based compensation and onetime items were $9.2 million in the third quarter of 2021 compared to $4.1 million in the third quarter of 2020, mainly due to an increase in headcount and salaries to support our future growth plans as well as increases in costs associated with having a larger asset base such as property taxes and property and liability insurance. Public company expenses added approximately $1.7 million of incremental costs for the third quarter of 2021, which we did not incur in the third quarter of last year and included them such as D&O insurance, increased public company auditing and accounting costs and stock readiness fees. In addition, we incurred approximately $750,000 of R&D and operating expenses as a result of consolidating Novomer in our third quarter financial results, which we did not incur in the prior year quarter.

Third quarter adjusted EBITDA loss as reconciled in the appendix was $7.4 million as compared to a loss of $500,000 in the same period last year, attributable to the factors I just discussed. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $6.6 million in the third quarter of 2021 compared to a gain of $500,000 in the second quarter of 2020. We added back our rent expense because it is primarily related to a sale leaseback agreement associated with the Kentucky facility, and thus, is essentially a replacement of depreciation and interest expenses.

Turning to Slide 9, I'll provide an update on our outlook for the full year 2021. We continue to expect that the increased availability from the completed Phase I capacity expansion and the successful completion of our debottlenecking initiatives in Q2 should allow us to significantly scale up production as we move into year-end. While we believe demand for our products will remain strong for the foreseeable future, we continue to see impacts to our customers' product launch time lines through the global supply chain challenges such as shortages of containerized shipping and trucking, COVID constraints and supply issues for materials including items such as paper and ink. We're confident these challenges ultimately will be resolved by our customers and Danimer.

We continue to expect adjusted EBITDA and cash flow from operations to benefit in 2021 from operational efficiencies as the Kentucky facility increases utilization levels. We expect total operating cost to be approximately $31 million for 2021, including the post-acquisition period from Novomer and excluding D&A and stock-based compensation and onetime items. Additionally, we expect 0 cash taxes for the year.

For the full year of 2021, we now expect capital expenditures to be in the range of $200 million to $210 million almost entirely due to: one, accelerated investments related to the earlier groundbreaking of our greenfield construction to get ahead of further potential construction material inflation costs; and two, Phase II construction is moving faster than previously anticipated. This CapEx range is also inclusive of investments associated with Novomer for the post-acquisition period.

Looking at our balance sheet. Our total long-term debt was approximately $29.9 million at quarter end and includes $21 million of low interest new market tax credit loans that we expect to be forgiven 2026. Our cash position continues to support our planned capacity expansion to 2021, and we are actively evaluating financing options for our planned capital expenditures into 2022 and beyond.

Now I will turn the call back to Steve for closing remarks.

Thank you, Jad. In conclusion, we are confident in the trajectory of our business as we move forward. We are extremely pleased with our team's efforts to execute our growth strategy and to continuously build upon the strength of our core competency and product application development as we look to capture a growing share of the outsized demand for bioplastics. We are helping our customers fulfill their ESG commitments, and at the same time, we are marching towards our goal of reducing plastic waste in the environment and help you to build a curricular economy that we believe will benefit generations to come. We are excited by our progress year-to-date and believe we are still in the very early innings of an immense opportunity for long-term growth and value creation. Thank you for your time today. We will now open the line for questions.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Laurence Alexander with Jefferies.

I have two questions. First, on the partnership with Total. Can you give a sense for -- can you give a little bit more detail on the benefits? Who is committed to what and how this differs from a regular purchase agreement?

Sure, Laurence. Thank you for the question. Basically, our partnership with Total is long term, and both parties are committed to the supply and offtake of the material.

Okay. Great. And secondly, for the Kentucky I facility, given the -- what you now know about the order book, likely mix and current trends in raw material costs, can the facility in the first half of next year hit your original benchmarks for margins and free cash flow generation on a kind of unit basis? Just Kentucky I on a stand-alone basis.

Laurence, could you repeat the question? Actually, we got part of it cut off here.

Sure. So given what you know about customer, the order book, likely product mix, raw material cost changes, should Kentucky I, once it is hitting the full operating rates in the first half of next year, will it be able to hit your original targets for margins and free cash flow generation on a kind of unit basis economics? I mean, will that -- just -- can you just give us a sense of how well that facility looks to be tracking against what you originally thought?

Laurence, the Phase I and Phase II facilities, even though we're calling at Phase I and Phase II, it's really one plant. So it will be hard to bifurcate that because we've already hired the folks for -- a lot of the folks for Phase II, and we're going to be continuing to hire through next year. So you can't really separate the 2 out like that. But given what we know on the operations side, if we hit the volume numbers, we expect the kind of performance that we planned for.

Our next question is from John Tanwanteng with CJS Securities.

Steve, I got dropped in the beginning of the call, and I might have missed this, but did you give an update on the total expected sellout that you have in the pipeline right now for Phase II and Phase III? I think as of the last call, you had a couple of customers lined up for Phase III. Just wondering if that's changed at all? And have you increased that?

Thanks, Jon. No, we did not. We have not updated that, and there's no change at this point in time. We are having some great conversations with some of our customers, though, about that. I will just anecdotally tell you, one customer that hasn't been previously discussed but it's been a long-time customer recently told us that they have 100 million pounds of business that they want to convert to PHA. Now that kind of thing takes a long time even just to negotiate the agreement to do the development work, but it's really an exciting step, I guess, in continuing to build that long-term demand that we see out on the horizon.

Okay. Great. And then you didn't give an ASP number this quarter, though you usually do. I'm wondering if you could supply that. And also, the volume of PHA products in the quarter or maybe an average utilization rate compared to the nameplate capacity.

Sure. So the ASP, we have decided that we're not going to continue to provide that due to competitive reasons. We've only provided that in the first place to correct misinformation in the market and so we're not going to continue that in the future. But we were up slightly on a year-over-year basis and up slightly on a quarter-over-quarter basis. And thank you for asking the second question because I think I might have misread the script on the utilization in Q3 or in Q2. Q2 utilization was 47% and Q3 utilization was 62%.

Got it. And that's on average, right? And you mentioned October being 70%, I think.

And then -- October was 70%, correct. I was just going to say, as I mentioned earlier, we -- what we've figured out is that all the step functions in Phase I are operating and downstream processing or operating near twice as fast as what's required with the exception of drying. And what we've discovered there is that different grades are drying at different speeds. And we have a fix in place, and we expect to be at that 100% run rate by the end of the year.

Our next question is from Thomas Boyes with Cowen and Company.

Great. Just to follow-up on that one point. So is really the drying, the kind of the key thing that needs to be solved between now and the end of the year that's going to get you to 100%? Is there any other gating factors or things that you've identified?

No, Thomas. Thank you. And drying is the only thing that we're not hitting at 100%. We're running on average between 50% and 125% of plan on drying. So that's the last thing that needs to be resolved. And we're very confident in some steps that we have in place. And as I said on the read-through, the path to the Phase II drying capacity that is coming online in February, so we'll have more than made up for any shortage by that time.

Perfect. And maybe just because we were talking about that ASPs, canola, I believe, was like $0.47 per pound last quarter in 2Q and with the expectation that maybe that gets appreciated by like $0.10 through the end of the year. Is that still, I think, a good number looking forward? What was it this quarter?

Yes. Right now, our canola oil price is $0.58, Thomas. We expect that to -- well, we know it will go to around $0.80 next quarter. The good news here on the supply and the spot pricing is that it has finally leveled off, and we see signs of it now decreasing out in the future. So we continue to work on alternate feedstocks. But one of the things that's happened there is some of the more traditional vegetable oils that we were looking at have sort of -- have not completely closed the gap with canola oil in terms of the cost, but have narrowed that gap. So maybe a little less interesting to make that switch, but we're continuing to work on that. But long term, we're focusing on nonfood (inaudible) that we could implement. Now that will take longer because you actually have to intend to develop a value chain. But that's where we're at right now.

Our next question is from Laurence Alexander with Jefferies.

Just a question about the brands on Slide 3. What is it -- for brands to be listed, is there kind of a time line like or a reasonable time line for them to hit commercial sort of purchases of your products and putting those in the hands of consumers? I mean, should we be thinking that, say, by 2023 or 2025, all of those brands have -- should be commercial?

Yes. I think by 2022 or 2023, it would be reasonable to assume that most of those brands would have some kind of commercial offering, if not all of them.

Thank you. Our next question comes from John Tanwanteng with CJS Securities.

I just wanted to follow-up on the inflation question. As we head into 2023, 2022, what's your expectation on the ability to pass costs through? And how much do you think your ASPs are going to go up, ballpark?

Well, I'm not going to make an estimate on the ASP, Jon, but we feel comfortable that we can pass most of the inflation that we're seeing through. I guess if there's ever good news in an inflationary environment as everybody is going through the same thing. So it's difficult, but not surprising when you have to pass those on. We've done a couple of things here to mitigate some of the effects of inflation on our business. One in particular, I just want to point out, we have made the decision to break ground on the greenfield this month versus waiting until Q1. And the reason -- there were 2 reasons for that. The 1 reason is that the quotes that we were getting were all scheduled to increase if they weren't accepted within a certain time period. So by starting now, we've been able to lock in about 45% of our purchase equipment costs. So we protect those items from further inflation over the life of this project.

And then secondly, the subcontractors off of Phase II are just now starting to come off the job there or kind of -- they drowning down, if you will, off the job. And if we didn't start soon in Georgia, we would lose them. Now a couple of years ago, if you were doing a project like this, a few month gap between 2 things wouldn't have been a big deal. But in this environment, if there's going to be a 3-month gap between jobs, you're going to lose those contractors. So that was just another motivation to get started a little early, and we believe that will help us hold the timeline as much as possible.

Got it. And just to be clear, was there any inflation in the increase to the $200 million to $210 million this year? Or was that purely just the acceleration in pull forward? Maybe just to follow-up there. What are your expectations for spending in '22?

We haven't provided that guidance yet, Jon, but in that $200 million to $210 million number was almost entirely the pull-in of the greenfield project.

Our next question comes from Thomas Boyes with Cowen and Company.

Great. Appreciate it. I just want to make sure I understood the recent PLA supply agreement. It sounds like -- is this only for applications where it's actually going to be blended with the formulation that includes Nodax? Or would this also include like a neat PLA where you would just be formula that for existing customers?

Yes, good question, Thomas. So this is a really important contract to us because of the tightness in the biopolymer market and in the PLA market itself, so it's a really important part of our long-term strategy here to secure that supply. The real intent of it is to use that material to blend with PHA. As you're aware, we're using quite a bit of other polymers in conjunction with PHA, which allows us to sell basically 2 pounds for every 1 pound of PHA that we produce. But there is nothing to prevent us from using that PLA on a stand-alone basis as well.

Got it. Got it. And then just because there was that prebuy, do you think that same type of dynamic occurs in 4Q? Or is that largely to normalize the (inaudible)?

Yes. Thomas, based on our current forecast, we think that's normalized out already.

Our next question comes from John Tanwanteng with CJS Securities.

Steve, I just wanted to follow-up on your point about your customers being constrained heading to next year. Do you expect that to impact your demand at this point? Or is it too early to tell?

Jon, I think what we're focused on here is the long term, and we see that demand getting bigger and bigger. In the very short term, and I'm not talking about in a year or anything like that, but over the next several months, it is more difficult to do business out there right now, and there's just no way to get around that. So we think that's taking things -- it's taking a little longer just to get things done due to those constraints in the economy but I'm also confident that we'll work around it. One of the things that we've done, which we've been working on for a while with the advent of COVID but is the creation of the Danimer conversion lab to help shorten that acquisition cycle and the development cycle with customers.

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to Steve Croskrey for any closing comments.

Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We're encouraged by our progress and remain excited about our business prospects as we move into 2022. I would like to say thanks to our shareholders and partners for their continued support, and we look forward to updating you in the future.

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.