Welcome to Q3 2015 Gevo Incorporated Earnings Conference Call. My name is Katie and I will be operator for today's call. [Operator Instructions]. I will now turn the call over to Mike Willis, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Willis, you may begin.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining Gevo’s third quarter 2015 conference call. I’m Mike Willis, Gevo’s Chief Financial Officer, and with me today is Pat Gruber, our Chief Executive Officer. Earlier this afternoon we issued a press release which outlines the topics that we plan to discuss today. A copy of this release is available on our website at www.gevo.com. I would like to remind our listeners that this conference call is open to the media and we are providing a simultaneous webcast of this call to the public. A replay of our discussion will be available on our website later today. On the call today and on this webcast, you will hear discussions of non-GAAP financial measures. Non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information presented in accordance with GAAP. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is contained in the press release distributed today, which is posted on our website. We will also provide certain forward-looking statements about events and circumstances that have not yet occurred, including projections of Gevo’s operating activities for the remainder of 2015 and beyond. These statements are based on management's current beliefs, expectations and assumptions, and are subject to significant risks and uncertainty, including those disclosed in Gevo's most recent annual report on Form 10-K, as amended which was filed with the SEC on April 2, 2015 and in subsequent reports and other filings made with the SEC by Gevo. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements speak only as of today's date, and Gevo disclaims any obligation to update information contained in these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Please refer to Gevo's SEC filings for detailed discussions of the relevant risks and uncertainties. On today's call, Pat will begin with a review of our recent business developments. I will then review our financial results for the third quarter of 2015. Following the presentation, we will open the call up for questions. I will now turn the call over to Pat.

Thanks Mike. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us on our quarterly call. On this call I will be talking about game changing events this past quarter, that is the settlement with Butamax as well as our plans for increasing production and selling more isobutanol. I will also touch on the markets. First the Butamax settlement. We reached a very good settlement, that ended all litigation and patent office fights. And that provides Gevo to all markets. As we discussed previously, in this settlement we have each given a license to each other to practice and to sublicense under our respected patents. We did not license the knowhow, the biocatalysts themselves, or importantly our trade secrets. Butamax and we each expect to have separate technology packages to license based on our own needs and processes. As part of the settlement agreement, we have agreed to leverage each other’s skills developing and selling into certain markets. For Gevo, it was important for us to have the royalty free access to markets we expect to be primarily targeting for the foreseeable future; that is jet fuel, marine and off-road gasoline blend stocks, isooctane, paraxylene et cetera. For Butamax, it was important to have royalty free access to gasoline blend stocks for on-road use and some other market segments. Each of us recognizes that the other was doing a lot of work on approvals and development efforts in certain market segments. Gevo is working on jet, Butamax is working on using isobutanol as on-road gasoline blend stock. That said, we agreed that annually we could each sell up to 30 million gallons’ royalty free into any market, including the Jet and on-road gasoline markets. And to put that in perspective, we estimate that these 30 million gallons could be worth more than $100…

Thank you, Pat. Gevo reported revenue in the third quarter of 2015 of $8 million, as compared to $10.1 million in the same period in 2014. The decrease in revenue during 2015 is primarily a result of the production and sale of approximately $7.6 million of ethanol, isobutanol and distiller's grains at the Luverne plant, as compared to $9.2 million in the third quarter of 2014. This decrease was primarily a result of lower ethanol prices experienced in the third quarter of 2015 versus the same period in 2014. During the third quarter of 2015, hydrocarbon revenues were $0.2 million, as compared to $0.8 million in the same period in 2014. This decrease was primarily result of a temporary halt in production at Gevo's demonstration plant located in Silsbee, Texas from June to August of 2015 while we renegotiated the contract with South Hampton Resources, the operator of the plant. We restarted hydrocarbon production at the demo plant in August and are back to producing isobutanol derived hydrocarbons at similar levels as compared to what was being produced prior to the Halton operations of the facility. Gevo also continued to generate revenue of $0.3 million during the third quarter of 2015, primarily associated with the ongoing research agreement with the Northwest Alternative Resource Alliance or NARA, where we expect to see produce cellulose and jet fuel using Gevo's isobutanol and hydrocarbon's technologies for a test flight to be ultimately flown with Alaska Airlines in 2016. Cost of goods sold decreased to $10.6 million in the third quarter of 2015 versus $11.8 million in the same period in 2014, due to the decreases in a variety of production cost Luverne plant, including a decrease of $0.4 million in repairs and maintenance expense. Gross loss was $2.6 million for the third quarter…

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And it looks like our first question comes from Colin Rusch from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Can you just walk us through the sequencing of improved data and analytics on the performance of the process, and how you see that coming out relative to these licensing agreements? I’m assuming that as you collect more data on the process, you're going to be able to drive better deals on the license agreements?

Yes, so in this last year, in 2015 in our production runs, we're doing -- the permutations have been working extremely well, extremely efficiently, high yield. We're down to the incremental improvements and people see that and see that how our licensees that we’re working with already recognize that the amount of improvement we’ve made was done much faster than they would have believed. So that's good. And when we're adding in the distillation column systems and adding in some fermentation to make yeast on site, that’s just like math and engineering. There is no technology involved per se. So they get that part too. So already it’s accelerating what we're doing. And so I think as this all gets implemented, we'll be standing here sometime at the end of first quarter early second quarter or next year, when it’s all the capital is built, the thing is running and you can just point to the plant, the economics. We can pull up the data. They can watch it run and watch it run economically, rather than having to do a calculation and anticipate engineering. And that matters a lot.

Okay perfect. And then in terms of what you control now on the ethanol production and stemming some of the cash burn there, what are the variables that you guys are working on near-term to kind of manage that a little more aggressively?

Not too much. We have things like funnel extraction along the docket, but right now we want to focus our capital obviously on the isobutanol side rather than the ethanol side. So nothing too substantive on the ethanol side.

Okay perfect and then just one final one. Obviously Pat, you've got a long history of commercializing bio-based technology processes. Can you just talk a little bit about the talent levels in the firm right now and how you see that going forward as you kind of turn the corner here with the litigation and start growing the organization again. What's the global talent? Where you at from a talent pool right now internally and how should we think about that going forward?

Yes, we're at fighting strength. So whenever you do these kind of technologies and you have to work through the problems of scale ups and then solving the problem, especially when something where we are retrofitting a plant like we did in Luverne, and then dealing with all the litigations stuff. That takes a hack of a lot horsepower. It's not quite a year ago. In the first quarter of 2015, we let a large part of the team go, and I would call that a right sizing as the team. Right now we’re at a -- the strength of our development folk is right. And so we’re making great progress. Probably it’s very, very fast progress. So as we go forward and ramp up the business, we’ll do some additions and prime additions under the business development side as we ramp up more isobutanol volumes and also as we get engaged in more and more licensing, we’ll be adding some engineering expertise as well. But in terms of the overall capability, we have Chris Ryan who is our Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operating Officer and he is very, very good, has been through this before and lot of us are experienced with it, as you pointed out. So we’re solid.

And our next question comes from Amit Dayal from Rodman & Renshaw. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Lot of positives this past quarter guys. Congratulations on all those developments. In relation to your ValvTect announcement last night; could you give us some color in terms of timing and supply volumes, et cetera related to this opportunity that we can potentially see form around these for you guys over the next one or two quarters?

Well over the next one or two quarter -- well, yes. So putting it in perspective. So first of all, ValvTect. ValvTect is a brand name who supplies the marine industry, particularly at marinas and the product that they serve up are additives that go into gasoline to make gasoline itself work better for both. So we’re actually kind of a natural alliance partner for them in that we have a new blend factor that works extremely well. We each want to be associated with each other, and of course they already have a network and all contacts just in the systems to reach out to 700 plus marinas. And of course that's actually part of the battle when you’re doing new production introductions. It’s how you get access to all those folk. Well, this is what we can get by working closely with ValvTect. Both win, is what the anticipation would be. Over the next couple of quarters though our isobutanol is -- we have made isobutanol. $It's in inventory. We already have allocated it out. So we’ll do some more distributing. We won’t be ramping up to more isobutanol until we get our distillation comps installed at the end of first quarter, beginning of the second quarter. So Mike, you want to add comments here.

Yes, I would say, as you recall, our conference call in September where we walked through the capital improvements and what that’s going to be in terms of isobutanol volumes at Luverne, I would say a big lion’s share of that ramp from the 100,000 comp that we’re talking about in 2015 versus the 750,000 to a 1 million gallons in 2016, a big component of that ramp we expect to be from the marine market. As Pat describes, it is a fragmented market. And so having partner like ValvTect can help in distributing the product to that fragmented market.

Got it. So this is more like second half of 2016 where we will actually see material revenues from this potentially.

Depending on when the equipment is actually installed and how quickly we are ramping up off of that, then you can anticipate some marina sales obviously in Q2 as well.

Okay, got it. And has work started for all the refurbishing needs at Luverne.

It has.

Okay. And in relation to the ASTM related requirements, from a certification point of view, sorry, you commented -- this was expected to happen end of 2015. Now it's pushed out to 2016, early 2016. I know you can't control a lot of this, but do you think it potentially gets delayed further than that? It seems it really does not have too much of a bearing given we’re still ramping up on the production side of things as well, but any risks with this getting delayed further out and how you need to set it up in relation to distribution partners et cetera?

Sure. So related to distribution partners, it's not relevant. That doesn’t matter, because it's still doing best quantities in all the rest. As far as the timeline where we've been, is that there was this army report that guy held up and who is in the OMB [ph] somewhere and then he’s actually turned up and now that finally escapes. Once people got back from vacation in September and then they put it on the committee ballot, the committee ballot is not right now. We don’t know of any issues. We don’t anticipate any issues. We haven’t met anybody who thinks there is any issues. That doesn’t mean there couldn’t be issues that pop up. It will be something, if it did, it would be extraneous and extremely unusual at this point because it's getting massively tested over the last about five to six years or whatever it is. So the date is all in. Once the subcommittee votes and approves it, then we will move to the full ASTM committee. That will be in December is what it’s targeted for, beginning of December. Now once that happens, it’s out for vote for 30 days, right. So that means, the earliest it could be is sometime in January is when it gets final approval. That the earliest. Yet it gets hung up. But suppose there are some concerns someone raises somewhere for some reason, then it would get delayed a bit. But we can't predict that sorts of things. It shouldn't happen. There is no reason to believe it will happen. But this is not something that we control as you pointed out.

Understood. And just lastly, it looks like you indicated that hydrocarbon revenue should bounce back. From a modeling point of view should we looking to kind of bring revenues from that segment back in line with historical levels for the next few quarters?

Correct, there is lumpiness as it relates to that businesses because it’s purely based off of shipments. Same thing occurred with jet fuel. So we did have a little bit of lumpiness historically. But on an average basis, you should see the revenues pop back up to similar, if not even higher levels.

And our next question comes from Thomas Boise [ph] from Cowen. Please go ahead.

Hi, Thomas Boise [ph] on for Jeff Osborne. I just had one question. Given the kind of tough crush spreads for ethanol, how has this kind of effected the ethanol and isobutanol production plans going forward because you seek converting further fermenters to isobutanol down the line if the spread doesn’t improve?

Well, so the quick answer is we'll deploy this first capital first, and get the plant back up and running end of Q1, early Q2. And on the back of that data, depending on what ethanol margins are like, and obviously the contribution margin we're getting on the isobutanol front, that will play a big part and comes out what we do with the plant going forward.

Okay and it looks like we have no further audio questions at this time.

Great, thank you all for joining us on call. Have a good evening. Bye-bye.