Aemetis Unveils Five-Year Plan Targeting $1 Billion of Revenue by 2025

CUPERTINO, CA, March 01, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire -- Aemetis, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMTX), a leading producer of below zero carbon intensity dairy Renewable Natural Gas and developer of the “Carbon Zero” renewable jet/diesel biorefineries using negative carbon intensity hydrogen, has rolled out a new five-year plan that positions the company to generate $1.07 billion of revenues and $325 million of adjusted EBITDA in year 2025.  

The Revenues plan is a CAGR of 35% and the EBITDA growth plan is a CAGR of 109% for the years 2021 to 2025.

The Aemetis five-year plan is being presented today during the 2021 Credit Suisse Virtual Energy Conference, including a one hour presentation on Tuesday, March 2 at 4 pm Eastern time by Eric McAfee, the Chairman and CEO of Aemetis.  The presentation also will be filed today with the SEC under Form S-8.

The conference presentation by Mr. McAfee will include a question and answer session with two Credit Suisse renewable energy stock analysts focused on negative carbon intensity Renewable Natural Gas, renewable jet/diesel fuel produced using cellulosic negative carbon intensity hydrogen, and other below-zero-carbon projects that Aemetis is building to maximize the value of the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard and federal Renewable Fuel Standard. 

“We are pleased with the improving external environment for the Aemetis negative carbon intensity projects that already have been in project development, engineering and permitting for several years and are now generating revenue and EBITDA growth,” said Eric McAfee, Chairman and CEO of Aemetis. “As a leader in the fast-growing negative carbon intensity transportation fuels industry, most of our senior management team and board members have been executing on the Aemetis mission for up to 15 years. We believe that we have the team, technology and platform in place to execute on this five-year plan.  The $1 billion of revenues in year 2025 represents less than one percent of the addressable market for our negative carbon intensity RNG and renewable fuels, especially considering increasing demand for negative carbon intensity electricity from Renewable Natural Gas to power the expected rapid growth of electric vehicles with estimated -416 carbon intensity dairy RNG from our projects.”

The majority of the Company’s revenue growth is expected to come from California dairy Renewable Natural Gas and the Aemetis “Carbon Zero” renewable jet/diesel plants using negative carbon intensity cellulosic hydrogen produced from waste almond orchard wood in Central California.  

The Aemetis Dairy RNG project plan shows revenues growing from $9 million in 2021 to $175 million in 2025, while Dairy RNG project EBITDA expands from $4 million in 2021 to $141 million in 2025.  Aemetis has been awarded $23 million of grants related to dairy RNG and related gas cleanup and utility pipeline interconnection units, including a $1 million grant to install an RNG dispensing station to fuel RNG trucks at the Keyes plant.

The Aemetis “Carbon Zero” renewable jet/diesel plants utilizing estimated -80 negative carbon intensity cellulosic hydrogen are planned to grow to $467 million revenues and EBITDA of $136 million in year 2025.

The use of negative carbon intensity waste materials as inputs to produce Renewable Natural Gas and Renewable Jet/Diesel is an optimization of the operations and profit margins of the existing Keyes 65 million gallon ethanol plant that is operating at nearly full capacity.  

To achieve growth in revenues and EBITDA, the use of byproducts from the Keyes plant as inputs for production of renewable fuels provides significant expansion to meet increasing market needs for LCFS, RFS, IRS 45Q and other credits related to low carbon transportation fuels (including electricity for electric trucks and other EV’s).

The Dairy RNG and Jet/Diesel projects are the result of the Company’s focus on maximizing the profitability of its California ethanol plant.  Negative carbon intensity (estimated -416) Dairy RNG replaces high carbon intensity petroleum natural gas in the Keyes plant, enabling significant reductions in carbon intensity of the ethanol produced, thereby creating a larger number of LCFS credits.

The Aemetis Carbon Zero jet and diesel plant design commercializes patented technology exclusive to Aemetis for the production of renewable jet fuel and renewable diesel for aviation and commercial truck markets.  The Aemetis “Carbon Zero 1” plant has a planned capacity of 45 million gallons per year and will be located at the 142-acre Riverbank Industrial Complex, a former US Army ammunitions plant in Riverbank, California.

Aemetis recently announced a $2 billion bid process to airlines and fuel blenders for the Carbon Zero 1 plant. 

The Carbon Zero process converts renewable waste biomass such as waste orchard wood into renewable hydrogen, then uses the hydrogen along with zero carbon sources of electricity (solar, hydro-electric, wind) and low carbon feedstocks to produce zero carbon and drop-in fuels.  The jet and diesel fuels may be used in today’s airplane, truck, and ship fleets without significant changes in fueling infrastructure or engines.

The Aemetis “Carbon Zero” renewable jet/diesel plant at the former Riverbank Army Ammunition facility increases the profitability of the Keyes ethanol plant in two ways:  the most valuable high-volume use of corn oil from the Keyes plant is to produce renewable diesel and jet fuel.  In addition, expensive corn brought 2,000 miles from the Midwest to produce ethanol at the Keyes plant can be replaced by local, negative carbon intensity sugars extracted from orchard waste wood.  

Extracting negative carbon intensity sugars from below zero carbon intensity waste orchard wood (estimated CI of -100) from the more than 1 million acres of almonds and walnuts in the Central Valley enables valuable cellulosic ethanol to be produced at the Keyes plant as cellulosic sugars replace expensive corn sugars to feed yeast and produce ethanol.  

The economics of cellulosic sugars are highly compelling, since every 10% reduction of corn use and replacement with cellulosic sugars from orchard waste wood results in more than $30 million per year of additional EBITDA at Aemetis due to higher value cellulosic ethanol at an estimated 90% lower feedstock cost from waste wood.  As the sugar extraction process is commercialized, further updates to the five year plan will be provided, since none of the economics of the sugar extraction process and the production of cellulosic ethanol is included in the Five-Year Plan disclosed today.

Prior to the February 2021 grant of a patent exclusively licensed to Aemetis, the sugar extraction process has not been widely adopted due to formerly high cost of extraction and removal of sugars from orchard wood leaves 50% or more of the wood as a byproduct, mostly in the form of low value lignin.  

The Aemetis “Carbon Zero” renewable jet/diesel plant design takes advantage of the availability of more than 1.6 million tons per year of orchard waste wood in the Central Valley by first extracting the C6 and C5 cellulosic sugars (which are tanker trucked to the nearby Keyes ethanol plant to produce cellulosic ethanol).  

Then, patented gasification technology exclusively licensed in California to Aemetis converts the remaining waste wood into below zero carbon intensity renewable cellulosic hydrogen (estimated -80 negative carbon intensity).

Renewable hydrogen is a valuable product to power Electric Vehicles, and Aemetis is well positioned to become a large producer of renewable hydrogen for transportation. However, a 4 billion gallon diesel market already exists in California and other states are adopting the California LCFS policies to create low carbon trading markets.  In the Aemetis “Carbon Zero” plants, cellulosic Hydrogen is used to hydrotreat the corn oil from the Keyes plant and other sources to produce renewable jet and diesel.  

Using an estimated -80 carbon intensity cellulosic hydrogen instead of +170 CI petroleum hydrogen, the profitability of renewable diesel and jet fuel produced from cellulosic hydrogen and low CI non-food corn oil from the Keyes ethanol plant is increased significantly. 

By completing carbon reduction upgrades and expansions of its current operating ethanol and biodiesel plants, the Company expects to generate annual revenue in ethanol and biodiesel of approximately $426 million by 2025, up from about $227 million of expected revenue in 2021, an increase of 87%.  

Aemetis expects that this revenue acceleration will come from full operation and expansion of the biodiesel plant as well as completion of system upgrades currently in process at the Keyes ethanol plant.  

The Keyes ethanol plant upgrades enable the ethanol plant to operate using zero petroleum natural gas by converting the existing ethanol dehydration unit (that uses molecular sieves powered by petroleum natural gas) to electricity-based equipment by installing the Mitsubishi ZEBREX ceramic dehydration technology to separate ethanol and water.  The Keyes plant upgrades include mechanical vapor recompression to re-use steam and high efficiency heat exchangers, powered by a zero carbon intensity solar array with battery storage.

Aemetis has received $16.8 million of grant funding to support its carbon reduction upgrades at the Keyes plant and $23 million to support the estimated -416 carbon intensity dairy RNG project.  Supporters includethe USDA, the US Forest Service, the California Energy Commission, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and PG&E’s energy efficiency program.

About Aemetis

Aemetis has a mission to transform renewable energy with below zero carbon intensity transportation fuels. Aemetis has launched the “Carbon Zero” production process to decarbonize the transportation sector using today’s infrastructure. 

Aemetis Carbon Zero plants produce below zero carbon intensity fuels that can immediately “drop in” to be used in airplane, truck and ship fleets.  Aemetis below-zero and low carbon fuels have substantially reduced carbon intensity compared to standard petroleum fossil-based fuels across their lifecycle. 

Headquartered in Cupertino, California, Aemetis is a renewable natural gas, renewable fuel and bioproducts company focused on the acquisition, development and commercialization of innovative technologies that replace traditional petroleum-based products.  Founded in 2006, Aemetis has completed Phase 1 and is expanding a California biogas digester network and pipeline system to convert dairy waste gas into Renewable Natural Gas (RNG).  Aemetis owns and operates a 65 million gallon per year ethanol production facility in California’s Central Valley near Modesto that supplies about 80 dairies with animal feed.  Aemetis also owns and operates a 50 million gallon per year production facility on the East Coast of India producing high quality distilled biodiesel and refined glycerin for customers in India and Europe.  Aemetis is developing the Carbon Zero 1 plant in Riverbank, California to convert renewable hydrogen from waste orchard wood and renewable electricity from solar and hydroelectric sources into renewable jet fuel, renewable diesel, as well as cellulosic ethanol and renewable hydrogen.  Aemetis holds a portfolio of patents and related technology licenses for the production of renewable fuels and bioproducts.  For additional information about Aemetis, please visit www.aemetis.com.

Safe Harbor Statement 

This news release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our assumptions, projections, expectations, targets, intentions or beliefs about future events or other statements that are not historical facts.  Forward-looking statements in this news release include, without limitation, statements relating to our five-year growth plan, future growth in revenue, net income and adjusted EBITDA, market size for our products, expansion into new markets, our ability to commercialize and scale the licensed patented technology, the ability to obtain sufficiently low Carbon Intensity scores to achieve below zero carbon intensity transportation fuels, the development of the Aemetis Biogas Central California Dairy Project, the development of the Aemetis Carbon Zero 1 plant at the Riverbank site, the upgrades to the Aemetis Keyes ethanol plant, and the ability to access the funding required to execute on project construction and operations.  Words or phrases such as “anticipates,” “may,” “will,” “should,” “believes,” “estimates,” “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “predicts,” “projects,” “showing signs,” “targets,” “will likely result,” “will continue,” “enable” or similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.  These forward-looking statements are based on current assumptions and predictions and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties.  Actual results or events could differ materially from those set forth or implied by such forward-looking statements and related assumptions due to certain factors, including, without limitation, competition in the ethanol, biodiesel and other industries in which we operate, commodity market risks including those that may result from current weather conditions, financial market risks, customer adoption, counter-party risks, risks associated with changes to federal policy or regulation, and other risks detailed in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), including our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019, and in our subsequent filings with the SEC.  We are not obligated, and do not intend, to update any of these forward-looking statements at any time unless an update is required by applicable securities laws.

External Investor Relations

Contact:

Kirin Smith

PCG Advisory Group

(646) 863-6519

ksmith@pcgadvisory.com

Company Investor Relations/

Media Contact:

Todd Waltz

 (408) 213-0940

investors@aemetis.com