Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Origin Materials, Third quarter 2021 Earnings call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded after the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. . I would now like to turn the conference over to Ashish Gupta, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and welcome everyone to Origin Materials, Third Quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Joining the call today from Origin Materials, our Co-CEO Rich Riley, Co-CEO and co-founder John Bissell, and CFO Nate Whaley. Ahead of this call, Origin issued its third quarter press release and presentation, which we will refer to today. These can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website at originmaterials.com. Please note that on this call, we will be making forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions which are subject to risks and uncertainties. These statements reflect our views only as of today, should not be relied upon as representative of our views as of any subsequent date. And we undertake no obligation to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. For further discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our financial results. Please refer to our filings with the SEC, including our quarterly report on Form 10-Q. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe are useful as supplemental measures of Origin Materials performance. These non-GAAP measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or in isolation from GAAP results. You will find additional disclosures regarding the non-GAAP financial measures discussed on today's call. The press release issued this afternoon, and our filings with the SEC. Each of which is posted on our website. The webcast of this call will also be available on the Investor Relations section of our Company website. With that, I will turn the call over to Rich.

Thank you, Ashish, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. For today's presentation, we will be referring to the slide or posted to the Investor Relations section of our website earlier this afternoon. I will start by reviewing Q3 highlights, then discuss important industry announcements and provide a commercial update. I will then turn it over to John who will discuss construction progress on Origin 1 and Origin 2, Nate will wrap up with a financial overview. We will begin on Slide 3. We continue to make steady progress against our strategic initiatives. First, we were pleased to complete installation of the key production modules at Origin 1, 6 months ahead of our plan, announced in April 2021. In addition, we are reaffirming our expectations as to capital budget and production timelines for Origin 1 and Origin 2. Second, our customer demand has quadrupled since our announcement to become a public Company in February with off-take and capacity reservations increasing by over $700 million since the second quarter call in August to $4.2 billion as of today. And third, we remain well-capitalized with $459 million in cash and equivalents on hand. We reaffirm our expectation that the capital projects for Origin 1 and Origin 2 can be fully funded from our existing cash on hand and previously indicated traditional project financing sources. Now I would like to give a brief overview on the Company for those who are new to the story. Origin was founded with the mission to help solve climate change by enabling the world's transition to sustainable materials. Our patented drop-in core technology, economics, and carbon impact have gained the support of a growing list of major global brands and investors, including the known Nestle Waters, PepsiCo, Ford Motor Company, Mitsubishi Gas Chemical, Kolon Industries, PrimaLoft,…

Thanks. I'm going to begin on slide 6 and provide an update on Origin 1 and Origin 2. First, since selecting Worley as an engineering partner in Q3 2021, Origin has updated its payment schedule for Origin 1 after incorporating detailed feedback from equipment suppliers and contractors while reaffirming the total Origin 1 project budget and schedule. Additionally, Origin is reaffirming the previously disclosed capital budgets and production timelines for Origin 2. Capital budget continue to include substantial communities for unforeseen events as is appropriate for projects of this size and phase. We continue to monitor construction costs and timelines to assess the impact of macroeconomic movements such as inflation and supply chain disruptions. And while we have seen the escalation of costs and extension of scheduled for more commodity items such as carbon steel backfills, and electrical equipment. Those escalations and extensions remain inside of our previously disclosed budget and off of the critical path to the Origin 1 schedule. For Origin 1, we expect to incur capital costs later than our prior projections, but we continue to expect the construction of Origin 1 to be completed by the end of 2022. The lifting and installation of previously fabricated key production equipment modules was completed in October 2021, 6 months ahead of our plan, announced in April 2021 and 2 months ahead of the accelerated schedule we announced last quarter. As such, we expect piping fabrication that begin by the end of Q1 2022, one quarter ahead of our prior schedule. For those that aren't deeply embroiled and building an operating plant during your day job. There's a significant amount of piping and electrical work that goes into construction plants of this sort. I like to think of it as the vascular system of the plant. And then that…

Thanks, John. I'll begin with some commentary on our third quarter results to provide a financing update for Origin 2 and finish with our 2021 outlook. Speaking to slide 16, third quarter operating expenses were $7.1 million compared to $2 million during the same period in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $5.7 million for the third quarter compared to a loss of $1.9 million in the prior period. And finally, net income was $27.9 million for the third quarter compared to a net loss of 3.1 million in the same period in the prior year. Turning to our balance sheet, Origin ended the third quarter with $459 million in cash and cash equivalents. We are pleased to reaffirm our expectation of fully funding the construction of both plants using our existing balance sheet cash and cash equivalents, and previously indicated traditional financing sources. Leading financial institutions that have expertise in financing similarly sized capital projects continue to confirm that our financing assumptions for Origin 2 are reasonable and executable. As discussed previously, we anticipate having approximately $100 million of excess cash beyond the capital budgets for Origin 1 and Origin 2 for any unforeseen contingencies in addition to contingencies already included in our capital project budgets. Finally, we have received many questions on inflationary pressures. As John mentioned earlier, we are continually updating our cost estimates in real-time. And based on the current inputs we've received from vendors and suppliers, I'm pleased to report, projected construction costs are still within the overall capital budget. Wrapping up with our full-year 2021 outlook, we continue to expect an adjusted EBITDA loss of up to $25 million. Capital expenditures are expected to be approximately $45 million, which is less than our prior outlook due to payment schedule refinements since selecting an engineering partner. With that said, consistent with John 's overview and update on our construction progress of Origin 1 and Origin 2, I would reiterate the refinement of our payment schedule has no impact on the total capital expenditures and the pace of construction progress is on schedule. With that, I'll turn it back to Rich for closing remarks.

Thank you, Nate. I would like to close by thanking our customers for their commitment to Origin, our team, and construction and engineering partners for their contributions to our Company's success, and our shareholders for their continued support. And with that, thank you, everyone. We appreciate your time today. I would like to ask the operator to open the line for questions.

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. . You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. The first question is from Frank Mitsch, from Pharmion Research. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, folks and congrats on the progress on Origin 1, really enjoyed looking at the pictures. And also was struck by the site selection on Origin 2, you noted that you're down to 3. Can you talk about just in generalities what tax incentives you may have received in that process?

Sir, Frank this is Nate Whaley. First, just to remember the tax incentives and state local government support are all comes typically as during site selection and once the site has ultimately been selected. So we don't have anything to concretely report at this point, but look forward to continuing to update everybody as we make it through site selection.

But investors should anticipate that you are getting some a fair amount of government support. I would imagine.

Absolutely.

Okay. Alright. Terrific. And look forward to more there. And obviously congrats on the up sizing of the contracts up to over $4 billion. And you announced the venture with Kolon Industries, and one of the areas that you are looking at is getting to PEF. I was just wondering if you have a timeline or just in generalities, how do you envision that partnership going?

Yes. Thanks, Frank, this is Rich. I'll start and maybe John can add, but very excited to partner with Kolon, a leading Korean chemicals and materials Company for those that may not be familiar with it. And it's a meaningful partnership in terms of contract to buy materials. But also, as you mentioned, to do development work aim at commercializing PEF, which is a polymer with a very attractive combination of performance characteristics for packaging and other applications, enhanced barrier properties, degradability, and other qualities. And we really think of it as a next-generation PET. And Kolon has very deep expertise in novel FTCA based polymers, including PEF. So we are excited to partner with them on this next-generation material.

Great and is this something. Sorry, go ahead, John. Sorry.

Yes, no problem. I was just going to say Frank, I think from our perspective, that PEF is an incredibly interesting polymer and the key with PEF is it's -- it's just had too much costs baked into the process of producing it. And our view was that with our platform, we can not only bring their carbon footprint down for a polymer like PEF, as we can and just like with PET, what we can also bring the cost of producing PEF way down by supplying our intermediate term to that non - .

Well impressive progress folks keep up the good work. Thanks.

Thank you.

The next question is from Steve Byrne from Bank of America to please go ahead.

I was interested in the $4.2 billion of capacity, reservations and softwares. Can you talk any more about -- is that over a certain number of years, is that CMF based, how much of it is based on tolling all the way to PET? Can you provide a little more color on exactly what is that?

Sure. Thanks, Steve. This is Rich. I'll take that one. So the $4.2 billion is really an apples-to-apples number with the $3.5 billion that we announced in August and the $1 billion we had back in February. And so it's the cumulative value of our contracts that include capacity reservations. And off-take agreements and capacity reservations for those who haven't heard us explain it before, are really letters of intent that include the product, the quantity, the price, the duration. They're approved at the highest levels of our customers, and frequently issued joint press releases. And that then gives us time to convert that capacity reservations into a take-or-pay contract, which is a much longer document and is primarily to support the project lending on the plant. But at this time we're not providing more details in terms of how the $4.2 billion is allocated across plants or products.

And the facility you are building in Origin 1 will produce CMF. Am I correct on that? And can you give an update on the selection of the toller that can convert that all the way to paraxylene and or to PET?

Yes, Steve. Thanks for the question. Yes. You're right. The facility that we're building for O1 is really -- principally producing CMF. And the intent there as I think we've talked about before, but it bears repeating is, the intent with Origin 1 is really to produce CMF. At quantity it enabled us to go develop applications other than PET, so it's really going to that variety of applications that are performance improved applications. So that's everything from -- and we've listed some of these illustrative areas in our presentations before, but things like surfactants, other polymers, there are lots of different areas here. And so as a consequence, there -- it's not really 1 tolling facility. At least the way we think about it right now with the way that the applications are working out, it's certainly 1 single tolling facility that is the critical tolling facility because if you're making surfactants, for example, that's a different structural tolling and equipment that's required in order to process CMF into surfactants then it would be to make a polymer of some sort depending on the power of course. There's a network of these. Obviously, we have some intent with the initial material that's being made. We're not going to try to boil the ocean right off the bat on one. And so we have strong intent there. We are to the point that we're starting to disclose that supply chain specifically. But we do have a really, really good idea of exactly how we would like to do that. And we have active relationships with the parties in that supply chain that we think will provide the first products coming out of O1. It's quite well-developed, it's just not something we're disclosing out.

And any additional color on the contracted demand for HTC that you have coming out of Origin 1. Any new uses for that product that are being explored?

Yes Steve, great question about our HTC product. As I mentioned, we're not breaking out the $4.2 billion into a constituent products and plants. But I will say we continue to make great progress with HTC and working with partners across -- across various applications that we've talked about in the past, including as a fuel source, as carbon black replacement, and those kind of applications. So we continue to make good progress and feel good about our HTC product.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next question is from Eric Stine from Craig - Hallum. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. If we -- just thinking about the capacity reservations, just curious, obviously the off-take agreements, as you said, much larger documents, but capacity reservations are also -- are pretty involved. Is there anything and I don't know if you can give a blanket statement on this or not, but is there anything that would trigger that move from a capacity reservation to an off take, whether it's you get a certain amount closer to whether it's Origin 1 or Origin 2 coming online or is it anything that might help that move from one category to the other?

Yes, great question. So there's a few catalysts, but certainly to really secure the materials. And so to take that letter of intent into a firm take-or-pay contract is the ultimate way the customer has -- will be receiving those materials. And as our plans continued to sell rapidly and we continue to believe that will be sold out by the end of next year on both plants., there's a real catalyst for customers to convert those contracts.

Got it. That's helpful. And you mentioned that you think you'll be, by end of next year sold out, in advance of that as some of your customers clearly are global. Any thoughts? Are you to the point where you're potentially starting to sell up plant 3 in plant 4?

So what I can -- what I can say about that is that we are and have been for a while now taking orders on Origin 3. And we'll certainly -- we've into sole intentions to build origins 3, 4, 5 plus. So we will keep entering into contracts with customers as we -- as they have demand for our products, and as the pricing meets or exceeds our financial forecasts, and that's our game plan.

Got you. Maybe last one for me. And this is just kind of something for me to clarify, but I mean, is your goal or does it make any sense to keep any of these plants, some of the volumes open for spot sales or is that just not how this industry works and you would really want to have everything under contract.

It's a good question. I mean, the primary thing we think about when we say sold out, is sold out to support project financing. And so there can frequently be call it 10% to 20% of a plant that would be still available and still somewhat flexible. But what we're focused on is selling out the vast majority of the plants, support the project financing on the construction schedule, and to keep doing that.

Okay. Thank you.

The next question is from Bob Koort from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi this is Emily Cacon for Bob. The first question I wanted to ask is, in which end markets does Origin see the most room for future growth opportunities right now?

Hi Emily, It's Rich. Great question. Just to give everybody some context for the end-market journey that we've been on back in February, our $1 billion of orders were entirely in the packaging space. And today, with $4.2 billion and we have customers in the apparel space and in the automotive space and in the industrial space and our pipeline goes well beyond that. So I can tell you that we continue to think that the apparel and textile space is very promising for us the automotive space is also an incredible one for us. We announced our Drive plus partnership. This quarter we announced our partnership with Kolon and our previous partnerships with Ford and Solvay, which are automotive focused. With the automotive industry tries to de -carbonize, transition to sustainable materials, and remove weight from their vehicles. There's just an incredible opportunity for us there. But our pipeline includes cosmetic companies and toy companies and companies from really across a wide range of industries that we continue to see a lot of engagement from.

Okay, great. And one more question from me. Are there any scenarios that you can see right now where Origin 1 could actually start up ahead of schedule?

Thanks Emily. This is John. I think what we're looking at is even though we've hit a couple of milestones early, we've got the modules lifted and its place for our way. We're anticipating, continue to push through the winter. I think we're making really good progress on that project. We want to be prudent. And at this time, I don't think we're ready to say that we're going to be delivering early on Origin 1. But we really do feel like by getting some of these milestones out of the way, it just takes a lot of risk off of that, it just lets us feel really comfortable that we're going to deliver that pretty easily on time, I think.

That's helpful. Thank you.

The next question is from Pavel Molchanov from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking the question. You referenced the commodity inflationary pressure with regard to steel and the other construction aspects. If we kind of flip that around to think about the commodity inflation across the petrochemical value chain. But at the same time, bio-based feedstocks as well. When you net those things out, are you seeing more appetite for purely from an economic perspective, from the food and beverage manufacturers, for example.

Yeah, Pavel. This is Rich. I would say, the customer demand we feel, feels like it's on a fairly steady increase in terms of demand. And it actually -- it feels in many ways more macro than recent changes in inflation or supply chain disruptions or stuff like that. It really feels driven by these companies commitments to reach net zero in 2030, 2040 and to transition their materials from fossil-based feedstocks to sustainable ones. And so we're really working with them to solve these big challenges that they have. And it feels like the urgency keeps getting more urgent and the willingness to engage and work on this. But it doesn't really feel directly connected with recent changes in inflation or supply chain or things like that.

Yes, that's very clear. Build back better, is there anything in there that is relevant to Origin, either from the advanced manufacturing tax credit perspective or on the demand side of the equation in terms of the actual product?

Yes, it's a good question. Maybe I'll zoom out and just talk about our regulatory efforts overall. So we don't have any specific insights on legislation to share at the moment, but we've been very encouraged with the growing wave will of legislation build back better and others to federal state, local levels here in the U.S. and around the world. And we are becoming more active in this area. And so we're closely tracking the relevant legislation initiatives around the world. And many of them do include substantial investment in production, tax credits, grants, subsidies. There also Summit include excise taxes imposed on fossil-based plastics and other various regulatory schemes that would drive people towards our carbon negative non-fossil technology so that we are optimistic that the build back better legislation will be beneficial for us, as well as the Reduce Act, which is a legislation that would impose a $0.20 per pound tax on certain virgin fossil-based plastic.

Okay. Last question. One of the things that's happened since the call 3 months ago is the reelection of the labor or liberal government in Canada, where of course, Origin 1 is located. Is there anything from Trudeau's post-election agenda that is, again, a rack relevance to your operations there?

Yes. Good question. We haven't seen something that is directly relevant to our Canadian operations at this point. Generally speaking, I'd say the Canadian government has had a pretty consistent -- it may not always -- I will comment on whether it looks consistent from the up better different perspectives from our perspective it has always felt like a pretty consistent push for renewable technologies. And I'd say it's been a friendly environment for us through multiple -- many years of operations there. We're pretty pleased with both the local, state, and the federal government behavior, let's say, and interactions with us on our operations in Canada.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

This concludes the question-and-answer session, as well as today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines now. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.