Green Plains Inc (GPRE) 2008 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Greetings and welcome to the Green Plains Renewable Energy fourth quarter and 2008 financial results conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. (Operator Instructions).

As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Jim Stark, Vice President of Investor Relations for Green Plains Renewable Energy.

Thank you. Mr. Stark, you may begin.

Thank you, Melissa. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are here to discuss our 2008 financial results and other recent developments. On the call today are Todd Becker, President and CEO of Green Plains; and Jerry Peters, our CFO.

Before we begin I would like to inform you that a number of forward-looking statements will be made during this presentation. Forward-looking statements are any statements that are not historical facts. These forward-looking statements are based on the current expectations of Green Plains and there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct.

Because forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, Green Plains' actual results could differ materially from these results. Information about factors that could cause such differences can be found in yesterday's earnings press release on page 3 and in our SEC filings.

The information presented today is time-sensitive and is accurate only as of the time hereof. If any portion of this presentation is rebroadcast, retransmitted or redistributed at a later date, Green Plains will not be reviewing or updating material that is contained herein.

Now I would like to turn the call over to Todd Becker, our CEO.

Thank you, Jim. Good morning, everyone. Glad all of you could join us today. We are delighted to be here to walk you through our earnings release and to discuss other developments regarding our business.

First I will start with a brief overview of our announced earnings. But before I begin and for the benefit of any first-time listeners on the call, I would like to state who we are and what we do.

Green Plains is a vertically integrated ethanol producer based in Omaha, Nebraska. We currently have an ethanol production capacity of approximately 330 million gallons per year. We also operate an independent third party ethanol marketing business.

Recently, we acquired a majority interest in a biofuel terminal operator, Blendstar, based in Houston, Texas. We also operate a full-service agribusiness segment with eight grain elevators and grain storage capacity of approximately 22 million bushels. including agronomy, seed, fertilizer, feed and fuel distribution businesses.

Now for our financial results. Revenues for the fourth quarter of 2008 totaled $186.9 million. We had a net loss of $1.8 million or $0.08 per share for the period. These results included merger-related expenses of $2.7 million, most of which were non-cash expenses, from the merger between Green Plains and VBV on October 15, 2008. Excluding these charges, Green Plains net income was $900,000 or $0.04 per share for the quarter.

For the nine months ended December 31, 2008, we had revenues of $188.8 million and reported a net loss of $6.9 million or $0.56 a share. Reporting a loss associated with preproduction period was expected and is typical for a development stage company during plant construction.

Going forward, we believe we have established a low-cost operation and noted operational excellent and a focus on cost discipline is important in a commodity processing business such as ours. We believe we have assembled a management team with the breadth of industry experience both in energy and agribusiness to maintain a low-cost structure without ever sacrificing quality.

Largely as a result of the completion of the VBV merger, we had approximately $65 million in cash and equivalents as of December 31, 2008. We closed the year with a strong balance sheet and liquidity position, which provides us with the working capital needed to effectively manage our business segments during difficult times. We feel we are positioned to take advantage of opportunities for future growth but remained focus on building long-term value for our shareholders as a diversified ethanol company.

Jerry Peters, our CFO, will get into more detail on our financials a little later in the call.

We achieved several milestones in 2008. Since July we concluded the merger of VBV and started ethanol -- or started operations at three new ethanol plants, increasing our expected operating capacity to 330 million gallons per year. These accomplishments significantly increased our production capacity and has positioned Green Plains as a significant player in the biofuels industry.

We moved quickly through the start-up phase of operations and now can focus on optimizing the efficiency of each of the new plants. We expect to utilize our marketing and distribution platform for ethanol production and at the same time focus on comprehensive risk management to meet the challenges of the marketplace.

While we were not profitable on a GAAP basis in the fourth quarter of 2008, we believe we have achieved solid financial results during a very challenging industry environment while completing a merger and starting up three ethanol plants. These results are a testament to our diversified income stream, especially our Agribusiness segment which exceeded our expectations for the quarter.

In addition, I would like to thank our dedicated employees who worked diligently to overcome this challenging environment.

Now I'd like to walk through some other recent highlights of Green Plains. We completed the merger with VBV on October 15, 2008. At closing VBV's two ethanol plants and its ethanol marketing distribution business were combined with Green Plains Ethanol Production grain, agronomy, feed and petroleum businesses.

Simultaneously at closing NTR, a leading international developer and operator of renewable energy and sustainable waste management projects and majority equity holder of VBV prior to the merger, invested $60 million in Green Plains' common stock at a price of $10 per share. With this investment NTR is our largest shareholder.

Our ethanol plant in Bluffton, Indiana announced first grind on September 11, 2008. The plant in Obion, Tennessee announced first grind on November 9, 2008. With no further construction project, our Ethanol Production segment is fully operational with four plants and an expecting operating capacity at 330 million gallons per year.

We initiated in-house ethanol and distillers grains marketing programs effective September 30, 2008. We began to directly market the ethanol produced at our Shenandoah ethanol plant. In early 2009, we expanded our in-house marketing activities to include all of our ethanol production effectively terminating all external ethanol marketing arrangements for our own ethanol production.

In addition, we entered into our third agreement to provide third party marketing services. Green Plains now provides ethanol marketing services to third party providers, with expected operating capacity of over 305 million gallons per year.

On January 20, 2009, we acquired a majority interest in Houston-based biofuels terminal operator, Blendstar LLC. The transaction involved a membership interest purchase, whereby Green Plains acquires 51% of Blendstar from an affiliate of NTR for $9 million. Blendstar currently operates terminal facilities in Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Nashville, Knoxville, Louisville and Birmingham. Additionally Blendstar has announced commitments to build terminals in Collins, Mississippi and Shreveport, Louisiana.

In November, we announced a formation of a joint venture called BioProcessAlgae LLC to commercialize algae production technology. In addition to Green Plains, the other partners in the venture are CLARCOR Inc., BioProcess H20 LLC, and NTR. BioProcessAlgae LLC received a grant from the Iowa Office of Energy Independence for approximately $2.2 million to build a pilot project at Green Plains ethanol plant in Shenandoah.

Now I would like to turn the presentation over to our CFO, Jerry Peters, who will provide greater details about the financial results.

Thank you, Todd. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today.

We are very pleased with our 2008 results and I will discuss the specifics in a moment.

First, I want to provide you a brief explanation of the accounting that is required for our merger with VBV. It is complex, but I will try to be brief and provide you with the highlights.

The merger was accounted for as a reverse acquisition. That means that from the standpoint of our financial statements, it was treated as VBV acquiring Green Plains. So for purposes of reporting earnings for the period, the earnings of Green Plains prior to the merger are not reported or included.

Since the legacy operations of Green Plains before the merger were significant, and for information purposes, the news release includes the summary of the previously reported premerger earnings of Green Plains. This information is labeled Supplemental Historical Financial Data of the Predecessor Company, and shows net income of $13.7 million or $1.81 per share for the nine-month period that ended August 31, 2008.

The reported financial results for 2008 include the legacy operations of Green Plains since the date of the merger. Again, October 15 of 2008. With the closing of the merger in October, we determined that a change to our calendar year end would be beneficial for our investors as they are trying to compare our financial reports to others in our peer group. Since VBV was on a March 31 year-end, our current earnings report and our filings with the SEC will reflect the transition period from April 1 to December 31, 2008.

Another impact of the reverse acquisition accounting affects the balance sheet. With VBV considered the acquiring company, under purchase accounting we start with VBV's balance sheet and add Green Plains assets and liabilities. That addition is completed, based on the stock price from the merger which was $10 per share.

Turning to the specific 2008 financial results, I will focus my comments on the final quarter of 2008 since those results are the most relevant to Green Plains, going forward.

We reported consolidated revenues of $187 million and a net loss of $1.8 million or $0.08 per share for the quarter. That amount included approximately $2.7 million for merger-related expenses of which $1.9 million were non-cash. Excluding these charges, Green Plains had net income of $900,000 or about $0.04 per share.

Remember, our earnings for the quarter would include the two legacy Green Plains plants, Shenandoah and Superior as well as our grain company since October 15. The Obion plant came online in November and the Bluffton plant was online for its first full quarter. Now our experience has been that although the plants can achieve full production levels pretty quickly, the efficiencies are less than optimum for a few months. And as a result, the first quarter of operations for a new plant, especially in this margin environment, is not up to our expectations going forward. And in fact, we have seen improved efficiency at each of the new plants in 2009.

During the quarter, we sold 61.5 million gallons of ethanol at an average price of $1.73 per gallon. And we sold 174,000 tons on an equivalent dry basis of distiller's grains at an average price of $125 per ton.

Our average corn costs per bushel were $4.33. Of course commodity prices were very volatile during 2008. But we remain focused on managing our margins at each of our plants, locking in margins when market conditions allow.

Todd said our Agribusiness segment had an excellent quarter with operating income of $4.4 million. This segment results are seasonal, driven in the December quarter by the harvest activities in our market territory. We believe this segment has excellent potential for us and represents a key source of diversification to our operations.

We are also breaking out our Marketing and Distribution segment which consists largely of Green Plains Trade Group beginning with this quarter. Prior to January of 2009, the segment had no external operating profits since its activities were limited to marketing our own ethanol and distiller's grain production. All of the revenues Trade Group realizes for these plants are passed back to the Production segment with no margin.

Beginning in January we are marketing ethanol for third parties. So as of -- and as of the 1st of April we will be responsible for the sale of a combined 305 million gallons annually for three third party ethanol plants. Of course, that margin should be visible beginning in the first quarter of 2009.

From a cash-flow standpoint, during the quarter we generated $6.5 million of cash flow. And our definition of cash flow is based on Earnings Before Interest Income Taxes Depreciation and Amortization, or EBITDA. We use EBITDA to compare the financial performance of our segments and to internally manage those business segments.

But I would like to remind you, though, that EBITDA is a non-GAAP financial measure and would direct your attention to information included in the news release, including a reconciliation to our GAAP net income.

So our EBITDA of $6.5 million for the quarter we think is a reasonable start. Again, as we bring the efficiency of our new plants up to their capability, we would expect that amount to improve, given a reasonable marching environment.

Our balance sheet is in good shape with over $85 million in total working capital including approximately $65 million in cash at the end of the period. As our business is ramped up we've seen inventories and receivables grow, but we are focused on monitoring our counterparty risks and constantly pushing our receivables collection to convert these assets to cash as quickly as possible. As a result of the merger and our previous performance, we believe we have sufficient liquidity to get through tough times when margins may be tight and to take advantage of opportunities that may arise.

I'm going to step back for a second. I know it is difficult to get a sense of the present scope of Green Plains operations from these fourth quarter numbers with the plant startups and the merger accounting that was present in those numbers. I'd like to just take a few moments and provide a rough calculation of potential revenue for the Company for 2009 and this will be from our existing operations only.

With 635 million gallons per year of ethanol to sell, and again that is from the combination of our 330 million gallons of production combined with 305 million of under our marketing contracts, and assuming, say, $1.50 per gallon for that ethanol -- and by the way that's not a prediction on ethanol prices -- but that would equate to about $950 million of gross revenue for the Company for a normal annual run rate.

Now adding distiller's grains as well as the revenues that we expect to generate from our Agribusiness segment, we would expect 2009 revenues to be somewhere above $1.2 billion. So we are very excited about 2009. We believe it will be very challenging but hopefully very rewarding.

Now I would like to turn the call back over to Todd for further comment.

Thanks, Jerry.

We believe our success particularly in the current environment is driven by effective commodity risk management. This critical function is one of our core competencies. We utilize a sophisticated real-time margin management system designed to capture and lock in the best possible prices for commodity inputs and outputs at each of our plants.

Even with tight margins, we have found opportunities to lock in margins at all four of our plants for the next quarter. Our traders, marketers and risk managers work together constantly to lock in an acceptable EBITDA margin. Our fundamental focus is on EBITDA per gallon margin management.

In our Agribusiness segment, revenues are seasonal and typically peak during the spring planting season when farmers are purchasing seeded chemical, fertilizer and agronomy services and then, again, during fall harvest. Green Plains grain had a very good harvest quarter and we look forward to building on this success in 2009. We are focusing our efforts on expanding this part of the platform as we look to handle more grain and sell more fertilizer, chemicals, seed and fuel.

We currently have over 20 million bushels of grain storage capacity which gives us an advantage over a pure play ethanol operator when managing risk and supply.

Our Marketing and Distribution segment diversifies our revenue by providing independent third party marketing services, which adds an important dimension to our vertical integration strategy. This segment is positioned for significant growth. Combined with our own ethanol production, we are currently producing marketing and/or distributing 635 million gallons of ethanol per year or approximately 6% of the nation's total ethanol demand.

To wrap up today, I wanted to give a few comments on the future of ethanol in the United States. We are still optimistic about the prospects for the industry. There are several recent events that we feel give a great potential for the future.

The first is the formation of Growth Energy. This progressive energy group is leading the way, setting the industry agenda going forward. Green Plains was the founding member of this organization and believe this group is proactive in pushing for a broad support for expanded use of ethanol and gasoline, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, decreasing our dependence on foreign oil and creating American jobs at home.

Growth Energy has asked the EPA to approve not mandate the use of ethanol blended with gasoline up to 15%. We feel it is a shame the American consumer is forced to use 90% oil when there is a home-grown alternative that is clean grain, high-tech, scientifically proven and tested and available now.

The second is a recent University of Nebraska study, showing ethanol produced from corn can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 59%, relative to gasoline. The study has taken new data from the most modern ethanol plants which make up most of the ethanol production today, including those that Green Plains operates.

The third important point is the move of oil refiners into ethanol production. Even though they are buying distressed asset it is a validation that ethanol is here to stay and is becoming a permanent part of the fuel supply chain.

Finally to comment on the recent distress plaguing the industry. We believe the underlying fundamentals that the industry was built on are still [intact]. Ethanol is the fuel extender. Ethanol is one of the best sources of octane available today. Ethanol is clean burning. Ethanol reduces our dependence on foreign oil, and ethanol provides jobs and helped rejuvenate rural economies over the last several years.

It is one of the only fully operating renewable energy industries in the world today. In order to get the second and third generation technologies, first generation corn to ethanol must succeed. We are building a platform at Green Plains Renewable Energy that we believe is the right formula to succeed in this industry.

I'd like to thank everybody for calling in today. Now I would like to ask Melissa to start the Q&A.

(Operator Instructions). [Hersh Patton], a private investor.

Good morning. First I'd like to congratulate all of you at the management team in your success over the last 18 months.

My first question is going back, if not for the merger at GPRE, doing the math, you would have probably made somewhere around $1.91 per share for 2008.

I guess I haven't done the math that would break out our earnings on that kind of a basis. Again we made $1.81 through three quarters of 2008 under the -- for the predecessor company.

Okay. Follow-up. You are perhaps one of the last ethanol producers that are publicly traded that's not in either bankruptcy or at the brink. Noting VeraSun, Evatane, and Pacific Ethanol, for example. They all have numerous analysts following them, yet you have none.

What does your plans in the future, because you've been under the radar screen, of how to get yourself recognized as a primary player in the ethanol industry?

Actually flying under the radar screen has been somewhat of a plan. We were building our enterprise. We're building our platform. We think going forward, we are going to have an aggressive investor relations campaign and we have hired an investor relations person to take charge at our organization for that.

We feel like we wanted to prove out our platform. And we think we have a couple more quarters to go while we are continuing to grow our business. And again we are just starting to tell our story and we think we have a really exciting story to tell on the future of ethanol.

And finally, this is to me a kind of a golden opportunity for you in the supply and demand side because of all the major players that -- in the -- including many small player co-op producers that have stopped production. What's your feelings on that on the supply and demand side in the future?

Well, look, the industry is going through a consolidation period. We are seeing new industry players come in and other industry players go out. It is typical of an evolution of a start-up industry, and we think consolidation will continue to happen at all levels of our industry.

Well-positioned plants will still do well. And we continue to focus our efforts on our plants and our platforms. So we think this is kind of a natural evolution for the industry. And I don't think it is over yet.

Thank you. That is it for me.

Ian Horowitz with Soleil Securities Group.

I guess I'm one of those analysts that aren't paying attention too much, eh?

That's okay. You are on the call today.

Jerry, quick question. CapEx for '09, is it fairly de minimis?

We are really not giving any guidance for '09, but I would say at least to that level it is de minimis. You know we have got new ethanol plants. Probably the largest level of CapEx would be over in our grain company but even that is a fairly de minimis number.

But this is all -- with the ethanol side I would assume it's just last-minute polishes to getting it to full production and on the green side it's mostly maintenance. There's no new greenfield or construction -- situations going on right now, is there?

Oh absolutely not. There's no greenfield projects like that. Of course, we have our ethanol -- or our algae project where we will spend a little bit of money to try to develop an algae reactor at our Shenandoah plant. But that again is a pretty small project.

Ian, we are also going to expand our Blendstar platform in 2009. We have announced two facilities in Collins and Bossier City. And we will look for other opportunities to expand that platform, but those funds are available in that company today.

So the CapEx of Blendstar will come out of your balance sheet or it will be a --?

That CapEx comes out of Blendstar's balance sheet which is consolidated, will be consolidated with ours going forward. But they have adequate cash today to continue their buildout plans.

Okay. I've got it. And Todd, did you imply that you've locked in ethanol margins at a positive EBITDA [basis] for the first calendar quarter of '09?

Yes. We reported in our press release and you'll see in our K, we were able to lock some ethanol margins, approximately 8 or 9%. What we do is we look at the rolling next 12 months. Over the next 12 months we had, as of December 31, we had about 10% of our ethanol margins locked in on a positive EBITDA basis. And we have seen opportunities since the first of the year to continue to do that.

And what does the spot market look like for you -- I mean not just saying that you play solely in the spot, but what does the spot market look like around your plants right now?

We have seen some -- in the last few days we've seen an expansion of EBITDA margins. And remember, one of our key points is that we are a low-cost operator with low overhead and kind of low corporate SG&A. So we keep our costs low.

What we have seen around our ethanol plants over the last five days is an expansion to anywhere from $0.12 in Iowa to $0.15 to $0.18 out in our Eastern plants over the last couple of days with corn going down and ethanol is not going down quite as much. Margins contracted for a little bit here, but we are kind of back out into that $0.14 to $0.17 EBITDA range, based on our models, which is typically different because of our low cost of SG&A per gallon.

Are you concerned that when we see these green belt VeraSun plants turned back on after -- close to the auction -- that this margin will disappear in terms of -- due to the supply demand? (Multiple Speakers).

We are not as concerned mainly because if you take a look at who bought the largest piece of the VeraSun auction, they have internalized what they've -- what we have seen demand of greater than that. So I would expect that some of that VeraSun will just become internalized into the [Bolero]. But again, I don't know what their plan is.

I think in general though what we have seen, Ian, is if you look at the spread between gasoline and ethanol, it has come in from what was out to $0.50 back into $0.10 to $0.12. And we are starting to see expanded blending in nonmandated areas and a return of the discretionary blending. So I think it is good timing for -- if plants are going to come on, we are still confident that there's enough demand for it.

And again we are starting to see expanded demand from the nonmandated blending markets because of the collapse of the ethanol in our (inaudible) spread.

Last question. Either of you guys want to take a stab at '09 foreign acres?

Well there's a -- the analysts' range are 81 million to 88 million. What we are seeing, at least in our grain company is really unchanged from last year and possibly an expansion. Especially if they get in early to the field. I think that will be key and crucial.

We are not on the low end of the range of that number. We are somewhere between 85 million and 88 million acres is kind of what our thought process is today, going forward. Mainly because of the wide open activity, because of the end of the winter season, beginning of spring we are seeing some good spreading activity at our [granary] businesses already and field work has started. So if we can get into the fields early, I think the farmer will plant a lot of corn.

Great. Thanks.

(Operator Instructions). Richard Dearnly with Longport Partners.

Good morning. Could you talk about what your ethanol margins were in the fourth quarter from just Great Plains? You know ex the merger accounting adjustments?

Really, with the merger accounting we had -- we blended all of the information into the consolidated group. So I really can't break out the Green Plains component of that.

We also don't break out plant-by-plant profitability. We make (Multiple Speakers).

I was just trying to get a feeling for what ethanol -- what the math in ethanol looked like in the fourth quarter, generally speaking. And then part B would be since you said you -- you are expecting increasing EBITDA in a reasonable margin environment.

Is the reasonable margin environment now or do things have to improve from either the first quarter or the last five days, which you mentioned? Is the last five days a reasonable environment or was the first quarter of this year a reasonable environment?

I will take a stab at both of those questions. With regard to Q4 of 2008, it was probably one of the most challenging industry environments that ethanol has seen. They really compressed margin structure.

We had a lot of merger-related costs that went into our numbers during that time period. But we also had two plant startups. One, that was basically fully on for the quarter, but was still coming up to speed, and one that came on in the middle of the quarter at the two large Eastern plants and the Western plants had some margins locked in.

But again it was one of the more challenging quarters that we have seen since the industry has started and as you can see by the results of a broad range of players. Going forward, when we talk about a reasonable margin environment, we look at what does it take to service our debt and where can we lock margins away to make sure we cover that plus enough to operate our Company and start to achieve returns for our shareholders.

We have seen several opportunities since the beginning of the year to lock margins away -- anywhere ranging from $0.10 to $0.20 a gallon EBITDA and when we see those opportunities we try to move fast, and locked them in. And that is why we have the team of people that we have in this company.

We don't focus on the real narrow margin times, but we wait for the opportunities that present themselves to us and we move on those opportunities.

Go forward, we don't really give any go forward guidance on where margins are going to go. But we are optimistic that we can see improvements from here in the last half of 2009 as demand continues to increase and the possibility of a larger blending, more blending with regard to the possibility of taking it up to anywhere from 12 to 15% on an approved blending mandate. Or not [non] mandates, but approved blending from the EPA.

So again we -- it is a commodity business. It ebbs and flows with the cycles and when it gives you the opportunity to lock stuff away, having a strong balance sheet is a key point here, which allows us then to put the forward margin crush on and have that locked in when we get there.

And what -- given the acquisition in the first quarter of this year, what would you guess your run rate interest expense is going to be going forward?

Our run rate interest expense alone is we expect in that we think about it as a cents per gallon. And, Jerry, do you have that number?

We've got about $325 million of debt on the balance sheet right now and I think most of that is floating. So probably about 5 to 6% is a reasonable interest rate to use on that.

Okay. Do you expect you are going to leave it floating or hedged somehow?

We are always looking for opportunities to lock in the different pieces of our margin and that is one of them. We would like to continue to lock those interest rates in at current levels if possible. The difficulty is there is some trade-off on the yield curve as you would expect.

Yes. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions). Shelly Smith with Shenandoah Chamber and Industry.

My question is about the algae project. I think it has great potential to diversify the ethanol industry and also maybe revolutionize the renewable fuels industry. Do you guys have a timeline on when the project might begin?

Yes we are working right now on securing all of our equipment in the engineering and it looks like a timeframe that we're targeting to get our pilot plant up and running in Shenandoah is June, July and August. Somewhere in those 90 -- somewhere in that 90 day period is when we expect to have our pilot plant up and running. If all goes on plan, as we are focused right now.

Great.

Operator, do we have any more questions?

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. Actually we have one more question that just came in from Terry Ryan, a private investor.

I was wondering about shareholders. Is there any chance we are going to get dividends or get paid back without selling shares?

At this stage it's early in our life and we really don't believe the dividends are something that we will be engaged in over -- at least over the coming 12 months. That is obviously a Board decision, but right now liquidity is key to us. And so we want to keep that cash on our balance sheet and be prepared for tough times as well as good opportunities.

So I wouldn't look for dividends in the near future.

There are no further questions (Multiple Speakers).

If there's one more we will see if we can take that if you want. The project.

[Len Mao] with [Riverbend].

The outstanding shares that show on like if you look at GPRE on NASDAQ or whatever. Why does that still reflect the shares from before the merger and not a new share account? I'm not -- .

That's been -- we have been working on the different bulletin board sites to try to get the -- or the different Web sites to try to get that updated for several months now post merger. But it seems like that gets picked up as you file the SEC documents and earnings releases. So we did make a different point to include that in the earnings release.

At December 31, we had 24,659,000 shares outstanding. And so, hopefully, that will be updated on those sites in the very near future with this press release going out.

I know it doesn't affect your bottom line. I'm not that familiar with stock. This is the only one I've got, but just thought it was odd that five months in we are still showing the same share account. Thank you. Appreciate it.

You bet.

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

We would like to thank everybody for participating on our call today. We're very excited about the future of Green Plains Renewable Energy. We think we are building a platform that will sustain us during this period of growth in our industry and look forward to having more calls with you in the future and sharing our story with you.

Thanks for everybody coming on today and have a nice day. Thank you.

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