Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Origin Materials Fourth 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 fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Joining the call today from Origin Materials are Co-CEO, Rich Riley; Co-CEO and Co-Founder, John Bissell; and CFO, Nate Whaley. Ahead of this call, Origin issued its fourth 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 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 as of today, should not be relied upon as representative of our views 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 last quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed on November 12, 2021 and our annual report on Form 10-K to be filed next week. 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 in our 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 slides were posted to the Investor Relations section of our website earlier this afternoon. I will start by reviewing Q4 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 the financial overview. We will begin on Slide 3. We continue to make steady progress against our strategic initiatives and are maintaining our expectations for the capital budget and production timelines for both Origin 1 and Origin 2. First, we remain well capitalized on budget and on track for completion of Origin 1 by the end of 2022, having achieved several construction milestones during the fourth quarter. Origin 2 remains on track to be operational by mid-2025. We recently announced the selection of Geismar, Louisiana is the site location for Origin 2 subject to the finalization of certain economic incentives. State and local incentives are estimated to be more than $100 million, in addition to a municipal tax exempt bond allocation from the State of Louisiana of $400 million. Today, we are also pleased to announce the selection of Hunt, Guillot & Associates, as our owners engineer for Origin 2. Second, our customer demand has more than quintupled since our announcement to become a public company in February of last year. With uptake in capacity reservations increasing by over $1.4 billion since the third quarter call in November to $5.6 billion as of today. And third, we remain well capitalized with approximately $445 million in cash and cash equivalents on hand. We are maintaining our expectation that the capital projects for Origin 1 and Origin…

Thanks, Rich. I'm going to begin on Slide 7 and provide an update on Origin 1 and Origin 2. For Origin 1, our first plant construction in Sarnia, Ontario. We remain well capitalized and on track for completion by the end of 2022. We continue to execute on our construction timeline, achieving several project milestones ahead of schedule further derisking our overall project schedule. As we disclosed on our third quarter call in October 2021, we completed the installation of key production modules that contain equipment used for the conversion of biomass feedstock into high value chemicals, 6 months ahead of the plan announced in April 2021. The end kind of operator module system was placed and bolted 3 months ahead of schedule in accordance with the accelerated target Origin provided in November 2021. As I mentioned last quarter, the end kind of operator module system is used for recovery and regeneration of the aqueous phase of our process, an important part of how we recycle water in the plant. We've continue to make progress in 2022, installation of structural elements and interconnecting piping the main plant production modules within progress largely completed. The foundational work for the majority of the auxiliary process building contain farms is also complete. Piping fabrication, which began earlier this year is more than 3 months ahead of the plan announced in April and faster than the pulled forward target that we laid out for you on our third quarter earnings call in November, further derisking our schedule. If you refer to Slide 10, you will see a picture of a large delivery of carbon steel pipe and structural steel which we utilize to fabricate pipe modules in shop during the cold winter months. A process that we expect to continue for several months as…

Thanks, John. I will begin with some commentary on our fourth quarter results, our financing expectations for Origin 1 and Origin 2, and finish with our 2022 Outlook. Speaking to Slide 18, fourth quarter operating expenses were $7.8 million, compared to $5.5 million during the same period in the prior year. Full year operating expenses were $26.9 million. Adjusted EBITDA loss was $6.6 million for the fourth quarter, compared with a loss of $3.8 million in the same period in the prior year. Full year adjusted EBITDA loss was $20 million. And finally, net income was $5.2 million for the fourth quarter, compared to a net loss of $23.5 million in the same period in the prior year. Full year net income was $42.1 million. Turning to our balance sheet. Origin ended the fourth quarter with $444.6 million in cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities. We are pleased to maintain our expectation of fully funding the construction of both plants using our existing balance sheet, cash and cash equivalents of previously indicated traditional financing sources. The financing of Origin 2, the State of Louisiana pending finalization is expected to award Private Activity Bond volume cap allocation to us in the amount of $400 million. Private Activity Bonds are tax exempt bonds authorized by the state and local governments for the financing of qualified projects with private capital. We also expect to receive more than $100 million in pending state and local incentives. We continue to consult with leading financial institutions that specialize in financing capital projects such as Origin 2 and are pleased to reaffirm our financing assumptions for Origin 2 remained reasonable and achievable. The $400 million Private Activity Bond allocation from the State of Louisiana provides a strong foundation for the financing of Origin 2. And in combination with certain 2021 infrastructure Investment and Jobs act provision could enable the debt financing of Origin 2 using entirely tax-exempt bonds. We also continue to work with these institutions on other forms of traditional private financing and federal loan programs, including through the USDA and the Department of Energy. As we mentioned on our Q3 call in November, inflationary pressures remain a focal point. Based on our most recent analysis, we continue to expect construction cost to remain within our overall capital budget. And as discussed previously, we projected approximately $100 million of excess cash beyond the capital budget for Origin 1 and Origin 2, in addition to contingencies already included in our capital project budgets. However, we acknowledged the situation remains fluid, we look to update our cost estimates, such that we can communicate any changes to the market as appropriate, as we continue to make progress towards our targeted 2025 completion date. To wrap up with our initial outlook for the full year 2022, we are providing guidance for capital expenditures of up to $155 million and an adjusted EBITDA loss of up to $36 million. With that, I'll turn it back to Rich for closing remarks.

Thank you, Nate. To close, I'm incredibly proud of what the Origin team accomplished in 2021 and encouraged by the strong momentum that we continue to see for our industry-leading technology in 2022, as the world moves aggressively to a zero carbon future. I would like to thank all of our customers for their commitments to Origin, our team, and construction and engineering partners for their contribution to our company's success, and our shareholders for their continuous support. And with that, I would like to ask the operator to open the line for questions.

The first question is from Steve Byrne from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

This is filling in for Steve. Thanks for taking my questions. So the first thing I want to understand a little bit better is, if you can provide more color on what products Mitsui and Minafin would like to - are planning on producing from your CMS, if you have any more details, that you can share.

Yes. Thanks for the question. We can't disclose more than we've already shared in the slides and in our press release. But we're very excited about our partnership with Minafin. As you may know, they are a significant fine chemicals producer and an example of us partnering with a company that can take our products into even higher value and very specialized applications across a wide range of industries, including pharmaceutical, agricultural, cosmetics and automotive. And so it's a very broad partnership and we're collaborating across multiple products.

Okay, great. And with respect to the second plant in Geismar, I was wondering the access that you mentioned that you were going to have to pipelines for hydrogen and other inputs. Would you consider and would it allow you, for example, to make to go further down the value chain make other building blocks for PET? Or are you going to produce just CMS and you're going to use that access more to sell to customers nearby?

Yes. It's a great question. Thanks. Generally speaking, we view the Geismar plant is one that's going to go all the way through to and so it won't just be producing CMF, it will also be doing the downstream conversion of CMF into the PET related intermediates. And that's as you picked up, that's why access - ready access to those kind of additional reagents is really quite valuable for that plant.

Great. And just one last one on the $100 million incentives from the state. Are these going to be provide over the life of the project or over the duration of the construction? What is the timeline for these?

Yes, no, great question and glad you asked. It's a combination of both. We're looking for, first, I should just reiterate John's comment that we're really appreciative of the State of Louisiana, Baton Rouge area chamber and Ascension Parish for their partnership. But both the projects for the incentives, rather are a combination of both over the lifetime of the plant and during the construction. So we're tremendously excited about that. As well as Rich pointed out earlier, the $400 million of Private Activity Bond allocation, which we think is just a tremendous foundation for the financing.

The next question is from Frank Mitsch from Fermium Research. Please go ahead.

And I really appreciate the color, especially on the site selection. Because as you mentioned, John, we were kind of thinking that was going to be located in an old pulp and paper mill. But obviously Geismar is a Chemical hotbed. I was struck by the increase in the offtake agreements and capacity reservations up another $1.2 billion. I'm curious as to how you think about the margins, the potential margins of that business. If I think about where the price of oil was even just when we had our conference call, 3 months or so ago, to where it is today, and where it may go. How do we think about the margins on some of this additional new business?

Thanks, Frank. The $1.4 billion is certainly a very strong quarter in terms of adding to our demand. And we continue to see pricing evolve in a favorable direction, as we go through time, and the deals we're doing are meet or exceed the revenue and margin expectations in our financial projections. And so I would say, things continued to develop favorably. And we continue to sign deals across a wide range of geographies and markets this quarter with Minafin we talked about, Mitsui which is a massive player, especially in Japan, but globally. And then also a major retail partner, which represents our first new retail partnership. And so we continue to see strong demand and strong pricing.

Got you. Understood. And speaking of the financial projections that you'd laid out in the past, I noticed that 2022, you anticipated when you rolled out to spend about $126 million of CapEx, you're looking at $135 million. Obviously, '21 came in a little bit lighter, but is there anything else that we should read into the upsizing of your 2022 capital expectations?

No, not at all. The upsizing of 2022 really reflects just a deferral of costs that we expected we might incur when we rolled out the original 2021 projections. So this is really just reflective of actual terms we've gotten from our contractors, progress we're making on Origin 2 as we progress through now from site selection, which we've just announced through the FPL design gates. So everything is just is moving along, where we've reaffirmed our overall project budgets. So everything is moving along exactly as we foresaw.

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

This is Emily Keck on for Bob. With demand now exceeding $5.6 billion, would you guys be able to provide any color on the breakdown between offtake agreements and capacity reservations? And then how that ratio might have changed since the third quarter?

Hi, Emily. We are not providing that breakdown. At this time, we continue to believe that our overall number is the most accurate representation of demand. But I will say that we continue to make progress on converting capacity reservations into offtake agreements. And I remain very confident that we will have sufficient offtake agreements in place, and plenty of time for the financing of Origin 2.

Okay, great. And then one more question. I think that in the slides you guys mentioned, the Origin 2 site in Geismar as being subject to the finalization of economic incentives. Do you know what the timeline looks like, for when we might learn more there?

Yes. Those are our routine approvals that go through, whether it's the Governor's office or the state and local jurisdictions that will be finalized over the coming months.

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

Thanks for taking the question. So you had a pretty exhaustive search, obviously for the site for Plant 2. Just curious how that may be changes or increases your confidence in terms of looking beyond Plant 2? Because obviously, given the demand you're talking about, it won't be too long before you have to start thinking and you probably already are thinking about Plant 3. And then, just curious, I mean Geismar, obviously pretty generous incentives the municipal bond availability there. Just curious kind of what you found at other locations as you went through the process?

Yes, Eric. And thanks for the question. So as you surmised having gone through now with a relatively fine tooth comb, a lot of the sites in the areas of interest for us in North America, we saw a lots of sites that were, I would say not just good enough, but really quite nice sites. And for us, fortunately the last quarter or two has been more about which - of the site is absolutely the best site for Origin 2 plant, rather than struggling to try to find an acceptable side. There are lots and lots of really good sites out there. So and even though the site market evolves year-by-year and we're really, really confident that there is going to be plenty of space for us to build a bunch of Origin, threes and fours and fives and sixes. So I think, I really enjoyed that site search. And I'd say, it did increase our confidence in the ready availability of sites that we've set our specs. And yes, so thanks for the question. Appreciate it.

Yes. And I would assume. I mean, part of that, it's obviously whether it's co-located or just location with all the factors that you're thinking about. But I mean, there would also be incentives, maybe not quite where they are for guys where maybe they are. But I mean, is that a fair assumption as well, I would think.

All right. Sorry, thanks for asking the second part of your question.

That's okay. All right.

Yes. So generally speaking, we did see, I'd say a pretty robust incentives response across you know, there's obviously you don't chase down the incentives for all of the 40 and more sites that we have looked at, right. It's really later in the process that you drive incentives, discussions more so in a more concrete way. So I wouldn't say we got a mapping of literally the incentives for all of those different sites. But I think the sites that we dove down on and we really did see quite a generous incentives, often the packages could look quite different. And so, it wasn't just straight apples to apples comparison across each of these items instead of packages. But there was - there is a lot of desire to have decarbonization projects as part of the various regions. So we often were, I would say, considered a special and quite unique and extraordinarily desirable project for each of the regions in the sites that we were looking at, which I think really, one, makes sense in our macro environment and two, bodes well for future discussions in this topic.

Yes, absolutely. Okay. Well, maybe last question for me, whenever I - whenever you give that number that grows every quarter in terms of demand. What I keep coming back to is just scarcity value. And just curious how that kind of plays into the customer discussions. And then how that also plays into something that Rich just talked about for a previous question, just moving customers from capacity arrangements to actual offtakes?

Yes. So we as you can see in the numbers, we continue to see exceptional customer demand and it's grown from a year ago, primarily in the packaging space to now include apparel and automotive and textiles and a wide range of industrial partnerships and new this quarter, major retail partnership. And then it also expands geographically. As we announced major partnerships in Asia and Europe. And so we continue to see strong growth. There is - customers see those numbers too and can see that there is a incredible demand. And I think that does drive some urgency in terms of getting materials. But fundamentally, our customers and potential customers are really trying to hit their net zero and sustainability goals. And many of them find that we are one of the best if not only ways to address this portion of it, which is the emissions footprint that comes from the products they make. And so we just continue to see really strong demand and are excited to keep moving into additional categories, additional products and additional geographies.

The next question is from Graham Price from Raymond James. Please go ahead.

And thanks for taking my questions. Looking through the slide deck, it looks like the operating metrics for Origin 2 on Slide 20 are unchanged. I was just wondering if there was any upside to those contribution estimates kind of based on, now that you have the Geismar site selected or whether those are fairly agnostic to site selection?

Yes. Thanks for asking the question. Generally speaking, there will be updates as a result of Geismar specifically. Generally I'd say, they shouldn't be dramatic update in any way, shape or form. Frankly speaking, there is a process when we say we reaffirm something that generally means that we've looked into it a little bit and updated some information. And so at this point, we selected the phased relatively recently and don't feel like we've gone through enough of our process to really fine tune those numbers beyond what we've provided previously. So at this point, I think it's reasonable to think of them is probably similar. We don't expect there to be something dramatically different.

Got it. Understood. And then I guess, quickly for my follow-up. Just as a reminder, once Origin 1 starts up how long is it expected to reach for that to reach full capacity?

Yes, so rather than thinking about in terms of full capacity, we think about it in terms of meeting our projections we provided, thus far. We have - we think it will meet those projections quite handily. And so we're pretty comfortable there. In general plants like this can take quarter - a couple of quarters to come up to full capacity, but it's on a plant by plant basis. We're comfortable that we're going to meet the projections that we've laid out.

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to Rich Riley for any closing remarks.

Thank you all for joining us today, and we look forward to continuing to update everyone on our progress.

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.