and welcome to the Future Fuel second quarter results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Rose Sparks, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the Future Fuel second quarter 2026 results conference call. Leading the call today are Chairman and CEO Roeland Polet and I'm Rose Sparks, the company's Chief Financial Officer. After the close of U.S. trading yesterday, we issued a press release detailing our second quarter operational and financial results. This release is publicly available in the investor relations section of our corporate website at www.futurefuelcorporation.com. I would like to remind you that management's commentary and responses to questions on today's conference call may include forward-looking statements which, by their nature, are uncertain and outside the company's control. Although these forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, actual results could differ materially. For a discussion of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ, Please refer to the risk factors section of our latest reports filed with the SEC. Additionally, please note that you can find reconciliations of all historical non-GAAP financial measures mentioned on this call in the press release issued this morning. Today's call will begin with prepared remarks from Roeland Polet, who will provide a business update, followed by my review of our second quarter financial performance. At the conclusion of these prepared remarks, We will open the line for questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to Roeland.

Thank you, Rose, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today. Again, I am Roeland Polet, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Future Fuel. I joined the company nearly two years ago following more than 35 years in the specialty chemicals industry, including senior leadership roles at global manufacturing companies such as Valspar, Felonies, and DHM Furmanish. Since joining Future Fuel in the late 2024, I've had the privilege of working alongside more than 500 dedicated employees to position the business for a new chapter of profitable growth and long-term value creation. Over that period, we have strengthened the foundation of the company, sharpened our strategic priorities, and developed a clear roadmap for the future, which I will be discussing in greater detail today. This is Future Fuel's first quarterly results conference call with investors in more than a decade. With that in mind, my remarks today will serve as a reintroduction of the company, who we are, what we do, how we are competitively differentiated, and the opportunities we see to create meaningful shareholder value over time. Going forward, our leadership team is committed to providing shareholders with great The resumption of quarterly investor conference calls is an important step in that commitment and reflects our intention to engage more consistently with the investment community. With that introduction, and given that this is our first conference call together, let's begin with a high-level overview of our business for those less acquainted with us. FutureFuel is a 100% U.S.-based manufacturing manufacture operating through two distinct businesses, Specialty Chemicals and Biofuels. Both are supported by our approximately 2,200 acre manufacturing complex in Batesville, Arkansas, where we combine product development, engineering, and commercial production on one integrated campus. The Batesville site has supported complex chemical manufacturing for approximately 50 years and represents an established operating platform that will be difficult to replicate where it's built today, given factors of scale, permitting, and production unit complexity. Our chemicals business has two primary areas of focus, custom chemicals manufacturing for third parties, together with proprietary specialty chemicals manufacturing. In custom manufacturing, we work closely with customers to develop scale and commercially produce specialized products on the long-term production agreements. Our proprietary portfolio involves the production of our formulations using our own IP, which are then sold into a variety of different applications. The total production capacity of our chemicals operations is approximately 250 million pounds annually. Our biofuels business and manufactures biodiesel from the same Batesville complex, which has approximately 60 million gallons of annual biodiesel production capacity. The business benefits from significant feedstock optionality, which allows us to optimize production economics. While biodiesel economics differ from those of our specialty chemical segments and are more influenced by commodity and regulatory conditions, the biofuel segment serves as a complementary business Specialty Chemicals Focus, Serving the Future Optimized, the Batesville Complex, while facilitating economies of scale. Next, let's walk through our unique value proposition and why we win in the markets we serve. Our primary competitive advantage is the scale, integration, and technical depth of our Batesville Complex. When a chemical customer comes to us, we provide Laboratories, Engineering Resources, Flexible Manufacturing Units, Wastewater Treatment, Logistic Infrastructure, Permits, and Experienced Technical Teams. Our platform allows customers to move from development to commercial production with fewer handoffs, lower execution risk, and more capital efficient production options. We offer a one-stop-shop solution that is difficult to replicate within the continental United States, positioning us as an attractive reshoring play for chemicals customers who want to avoid supply chain risk associated with sourcing key formulations from overseas partners. While the integration of the basal asset is itself a major draw for customers, Our deep technical expertise and experienced, skilled workforce are another integral piece of our overall value proposition. At Batesville, our teams manage production, raw material procurement, production quality and formulation consistency across batch and continuous processes. We have built a strong reputation for being the go-to production partner on complex technical demanding programs that customers may not be able to manufacture efficiently themselves. In regard to our value proposition, it centers on reducing technical, operational, and supply chain risk for the customer. A typical relationship begins with customer bringing us a molecule, process, or manufacturing challenge. We then evaluate the chemistry, safety requirements, production economics and equipment needs, then work through development and scale-up before entering commercial production. As we demonstrate value, the relationship may expand through additional volumes, longer contracts, new products, or customer-funded capacity. Because changing manufacturers can require re-qualifications, audits, process transfer, and production risk, customer programs are often multi-year engagements, creating long-term stickiness within the customer base. To that end, the average relationship of our top customers in 2025 was more than 15 to 20 years, highlighting the long-term nature and stickiness of our customer relationships. Before I walk us through what's next for Future Fuel, it is important to provide some perspective around the challenges we faced over the last several years, how we've responded to those challenges, and why we were excited about what comes next for the organization. In the years leading up to 2026, there were three primary factors that impacted our operational and financial performance. Plant and production reliability, regulatory certainty around biofuels economics, and elevated raw material input costs. Beginning with plant reliability, over the past two years, we have made strides to improve the plant process, enhancing the site safety, and driving higher site utilization through executing on a number of high-impact capital projects. As I'll discuss shortly, we were encouraged by the improvement utilization of Batesville in the first half of the year. Second, with respect to the regulatory environment, we, together with the broader biofuels industry, were granted much needed relief with a new set of two RFS volume mandates issued by the EPA in March of 2026. Under the new mandates, the EPA established the highest blending in the program's history, targeting a 60% increase over 2025. To meet the 2027 volume targets, existing U.S. domestic biofuels production levels are expected to reach peak capacity, which we expect will benefit us. Further, also, during the first quarter of 2026, the U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service issued regulations providing expanded guidance on the 45Z credit, integrating changes from the Budget Reconciliation Act of 2025. The rule was expected to help level the competitive environment for biodiesel by reducing the tax credit for SAF from $1.75 per gallon to $1 per gallon, effective January 1, 2026. requiring that all feedstocks be sourced from North America and requiring for biomass-based diesel and extending the 45-seat credit for additional two years through year-end 2029. Rose will speak more on how this benefits our business model shortly. Finally, while both plant reliability and regulatory environment have improved meaningfully for us, Raw material input costs remain elevated, which remains an area of focus for us. Looking ahead, our value creation roadmap centers on three key pillars, including commercial growth, operational excellence, and a return centric approach to capital allocation. Within our commercial growth pillar, our first priority is to increase penetration of key existing accounts, as well as scale production volumes across The Betel Complex. We are focused on expanding the specialty chemicals pipeline, converting development projects into commercial production, and securing additional volumes from existing customers. We will also pursue new custom manufacturing contracts and expand our proprietary chemicals portfolio into adjacent products and markets where our technical capabilities and our existing infrastructure provide a clear advantage. However, our objective is not simply to add volume. We intend to pursue programs that accelerate our shift towards higher value-added sales mix, whereby we capture rateable growth in margin realization within durable, reoccurring revenue streams. By applying greater commercial discipline, we can concentrate our resources on the customers and opportunities with strongest potential to deliver profitable growth through the cycle. Within our operational excellence pillar, we will seek to improve cost efficiency, utilization, safety, reliability across the Batesville complex. Higher sales volumes create value only when we can manufacture those volumes safely, consistently, and at an appropriate unit cost. We are therefore focused on plant reliability, production, scheduling, procurement, energy efficiency, maintenance practices, and process productivity. We also intend to make operating performance more measurable and transparent by tracking metrics such as capacity utilization, plant uptime, safety performance, and unit product costs. We can and will identify opportunities for improvement and hold the organization accountable for those improvement results. Finally, with respect to our capital allocation pillar, organic reinvestment will remain the top priority where products are supported by identifiable Where appropriate, we will continue to seek customer-funded capacity expansions while strengthening long-term commercial relationships. We will also evaluate complementary acquisition, particularly opportunities to add intellectual property, proprietary products, or specialized capabilities that can be integrated into our base-world platform. Any acquisition must strengthen our competitive position and meet disciplined financial return requirements. Beyond reinvestment and acquisitions, we will continue to evaluate cash dividends and optimistic share repurchases as part of a balanced approach to returning capital to shareholders. Taken together, each of the pillars of our strategic roadmap are designed to drive higher sales volumes, more efficient operations, and stronger returns on invested capital. By growing selectively, operating more efficiently, and allocating capital with discipline, we intend to produce more consistent earnings, cash generation, and long-term shareholder value. Turning now to review of our second quarter results. The second quarter marked a return to profitable growth for Future Fuel, a performance driven by strengthening end market demand, improved production economics, continued cost discipline and enhanced optimization of our Batesville plant. At a strategic level, we remain highly focused on driving safe, reliable operations across the organization while continuing to pursue customer co-investment in new capacity and capabilities as we seek to further accelerate growth within our core specialty chemical contract manufacturing markets. As before, we remain on pace to deliver positive adjusted EBITDA for the full year in 2026. At an operational level, total production increased 26% on a year-over-year basis in the second quarter, supported by broad-based demand growth across our specialty chemicals and biofuels end markets. Both segments generated positive gross profit per unit sold in the period and continue to exhibit strong operational momentum entering the second half of 2026. Total chemical segment production increased 34% year-over-year in the second quarter as increased demand across the energy and industrial end markets drove broad-based strength in both performance and custom chemical manufacturing. Chemical's gross profit was $5 million in the second quarter versus $1.1 million in the year-ago period, reflecting improved volume throughput and stronger margin realization. Fire fuel segment production increased 21% year-over-year in the second quarter, despite the impact of a more than three-week biodiesel plant outage during the period as improved regulatory clarity and mandated renewable fuel production targets for 2026 and 2027 incentivized domestic production. Biofuels gross profit was $10.1 million in the second quarter versus gross loss of $13.5 million in the year-ago period. reflecting improved plant reliability, higher throughputs, better production economics, including a timing benefit related to ongoing biofuels hedging activities. Our biodiesel production continues to ramp higher with third quarter production rates expected to exceed second quarter levels. Looking ahead, demand continues to remain robust across our chemicals and biofuels segment. While elevated input costs may continue to represent a near-term headwind, Thank you, Roeland, and good morning again to all those joining us.

Today, I will provide a high-level overview of our second quarter financial performance, including a discussion of our balance sheet and liquidity profile at quarter end. Please note that the prior year comparisons have been adjusted to conform to the weighted average method of inventory costing adopted by the company January 1, 2026. Total revenue was $78.7 million in the second quarter of 2026, an increase of 120.7%. compared to $35.7 million in the second quarter of 2025. The increase in revenue was driven by higher throughputs and improved revenue volume mix and higher average pricing in both the chemical and biofuel segments. Total volume growth was 40.4% during the second quarter of 2026, while average blended price increased by 80.2%. Total gross profit was 15 million during the second quarter of 2026 versus a gross loss of 12.4 million during the second quarter of 2025. Second quarter gross profit benefited by 9.1 million related to the sale of physical inventory at prices above hedge levels, which fully offset realized derivative losses of 9.1 million recognized during the first quarter of 2026. Gross profit was benefited by unrealized derivative gains of $3.2 million during the second quarter of 2026. Excluding the derivative impacts, the year-over-year improvement in gross profit was driven by higher throughputs, improved price realization in both chemicals and biofuels segments. We reported net income of $11.4 million during the second quarter of 2026 versus a net loss of $14.2 million in the second quarter of 2025. Adjusted EBITDA was 11.8 million during the second quarter of 2026 versus a loss of 11.4 million during the second quarter of 2025. Turning to the chemical segment, chemical segment revenue increased 25.8 million during the second quarter of 2026 compared to 16.6 million in the second quarter of 2025. The increase was primarily driven by a 49% increase in volume product mix effects and a 6% benefit from higher average prices. Custom chemical revenue increased $18.5 million during the second quarter, up 30% from $14.3 million last year, primarily due to higher volumes of products sold to energy customers. Performance chemical revenue of $7.3 million during the second quarter was up from $2.4 million last year, primarily due to increased volumes for a new customer that began production during the fourth quarter of 2025. Chemical segment gross profit was $5 million during the second quarter of 2026 and improvement from $1.1 million in the second quarter of 2025. The improvement was driven by increased sales volumes in the energy market, including the new product revenue brought online in the fourth quarter of 2025, as well as increased fixed price absorption driven by the improved biofuel volumes. Market conditions within the chemical segment continued to improve during the second quarter as demonstrated by improved capacity utilization, higher pricing, and a growing pipeline of project activity. During the last 12 months, we've increased total chemical production capacity by 12% and expect to achieve continued improved operating leverage as production scales from current levels. Chemical segment capacity utilization improved to 65% during the second quarter of 2026, up from 54% in the prior year period. Biofuel segment revenue increased $52.9 million during the second quarter of 2026 compared to $19.1 million in the same period last year. The increase was primarily driven by increased regulatory clarity surrounding the Clean Fuel Production Credit and record high RVO levels. Biofuel segment gross profit for the second quarter of 2026 was $10.1 million compared to a gross loss of $13.5 million in the prior year period. reflecting meaningful improvement driven by higher sales volumes and stronger price realization. While we continue to benefit from significant fee stock optionality, elevated input costs have partially offset the favorable pricing environment for finished products. As previously disclosed, we recognized a $9 million hedging loss in the first quarter of 2026, and second quarter results reflect corresponding benefits of a similar magnitude as the underlying physical inventory was sold and those previously recognized hedging costs were recovered. Market conditions within the biofuel segment continued to improve during the second quarter of 2026 given a favorable regulatory environment. Biofuel capacity utilization improved to 56% during the second quarter and sales volumes are expected to further improve during the second half of 2026 given improved regulatory clarity. Input costs for soybean oil and other raw materials used in the production of biofuels remain elevated, which is expected to have a continued near-term impact on biofuels gross profit per gallon sold. Turning the discussion to cash flow, balance sheet, and liquidity, net cash flow from operations was $18.8 million in the second quarter of 2026 compared to $5.2 million in the prior year period. Capital expenditures were $8 million in the second quarter, including $2.9 million of maintenance related expenditures and $5.1 million of discretionary programs. In the first six months of 2026, capital expenditures were $13.4 million, including $4.1 million and $9.3 million related to maintenance and discretionary programs respectively. Of the discretionary capital expenditures in the second quarter and the first six months of 2026, approximately $1.9 million and $3.5 million, respectively, were customer-funded investments related to capacity expansions in new customer programs. As of June 30, 2026, the company had total cash and cash equivalents of $34.3 million up from $22.4 million at March 31, 2026, and a $35 million revolving credit facility with no outstanding borrowing. The increase in total cash between the first quarter of 2026 and the second quarter of 2026 was related to the reported operating profit in the second quarter of 2026 and customer funding related to custom chemical contract, partially offset by increased working capital requirements. related to new program activity and capital expenditures to support growth. During the second quarter, we secured a four-year agreement with the third party to monetize section 45Z clean fuel production and small producer tax credits, consistent with our continued focus on balance sheet optimization. During the second half of 2026, we expect to receive $22 million in gross proceeds from the monetization of credits including approximately $3 million in the third quarter and $19 million in the fourth quarter. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we are now ready for the question and answer portion of our call.

We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Hey guys, thanks for the time.

I was curious to circle back on some of the comments you made about the improvements to plant performance and that being kind of a focus over the last couple of years for you guys. I'm curious if you could Kind of contextualize things, I don't know, from endings in a baseball game standpoint, maybe, or whatever analogy you'd prefer. Like, where are we at in that kind of improvement cycle? Are we at where you guys want to be at today? Is there more optimization initiatives to go? Just any context there will be helpful. Yeah, very good.

Yeah, Jeff, I'm a soccer guy. So we're kind of at the first half in injury time with the second half still need to be played. So we've made significant improvements in the last... Let me take a step back. We have about a billion dollars of invested replacement value assets here in Batesville. So we have a significant site with significant capabilities, significant infrastructure that support those capabilities. So we've chosen to invest in the infrastructure around our site, wastewater treatment, the chemical incineration, all the assets that we need, nitrogen, that we need to keep the plant running, the site running. And then our site contains a lot of manufacturing cells that are put here by our customers that need to be supported. So I think we're, I'm not a baseball guy, so I'm not sure about innings, but I'd say we're about 60% of the way, 60 to 70% of the way there on really going after the most important infrastructure to make sure it's secure, to make sure it's dependable. And then our next step will be Got it. Those are helpful details.

And for my follow-up, with respect to 45Z monetization, I wanted to clarify, does that, the agreement that you guys discussed in the release, does that cover essentially all of your expected 45Z generation through 2029? Is there additional monetization to do and any clarity, I guess, on the quantum of monetization throughout that contract period? Thanks.

Hi, Jeff. This is Rose. So yes, the amount that we have quoted is for 2026 and 2025. So there's approximately 3 million that we were able to cash in Q3. And then there will be an additional 19 million on a gross basis that we will cash in December of this year. So that's an annual monetization that will occur each year as we produce product and sell it.

Okay. Perfect. Thank you. I'll hop back in the queue. Thanks, Jeff.

Our next question is from Jason Tilton with Canaccord Genuity.

Good afternoon, everyone. Congrats on the strong results and for hosting the first call and fight sometime. It's an honor to participate. One thing I was curious about, you know, you mentioned focused on some of these very niche, complex, dangerous chemistries that that others maybe don't want to or can't produce on site. Can you elaborate on some of those core competencies that allow you to take on these projects in a safe and compliant manner? And what are some of the ways either through pricing or long term relationships that you're able to extract value from those capabilities?

Yeah. And again, thank you very much for calling in. Our history dates back to, and not to take you back too far, but dates back to the Kodak days. And this plant made photographic chemicals as well as was set up to make sort of precursors to the pharmaceutical industry. So it has a long history and it was permitted to operate very complex chemistries and in certain instances, dangerous chemistries. This was also the site that all chemistries for later on Eastman and all chemistries were proven at this site and were tested at this site to make sure that they can be run. And we have extensive facilities to do that, to be run in the Eastman plant and now in the Future Fuel plant. So it has a history that it's permitted to run complex, dangerous chemistries. There's a lot of permit headspace. The equipment that was installed, and then we have since then reinvested in a lot of this equipment, was installed to handle those complex chemistries. And we're sitting on 2,200 acres in the middle of Arkansas where we have the permit capability and we have the capability to expand even further to drive it. But it really goes back to our history. as a plant that was purpose-built to make complex chemistries. And then I'll add one point to that. Because we're in the middle of Arkansas, we are very self-contained, so we have everything that we need here. We also have the R&D department, the testing department. We have everything that we need in order to support that production.

Great. That's a very helpful overview.

and in the release in the prepared remarks you mentioned an agreement with one of your customers to fund an investment of more than $40 million over the next two years to support incremental capacity. Just wondering if you could maybe share a little bit more about how that relationship's evolved and if that's one of those 15-20 year relationships or maybe it's a bit on the newer side and then more broadly are there other opportunities like this that you're currently evaluating and if so do those have to sort of have happened consecutively. Can there be multiple projects similar to this that you're pursuing at once? Any call would be greatly appreciated.

Yeah, those are great questions. So our business model, we do biodiesel and we run chemicals, right? In our chemicals division, we have some proprietary chemicals that we make for ourselves and we market, but the majority of our business is contract manufacturing. So we're on our site Under our permitting, with the benefit of chemical incineration, with the benefit of oversized wastewater treatment and all that, our customers build plants. We call them plants, but they're really kind of small production cells that they build on our site and take advantage of existing infrastructure that we have here so that lowers capital costs for them, the complex and dangerous chemistry knowledge that we have. That is our business model. And so we made reference to a expansion that we're doing. We're doubling or tripling the capacity in that expansion. But that is our business model with other customers. So we have a long pipeline, a healthy pipeline of customer product combinations that we're now in engineering phases to execute building of plants on our site. that we then will operate on behalf of those customers. And that's exactly what our business model is in chemicals.

Okay, that makes a ton of sense. And this last one for me, you guided to positive adjusted EBITDA in 2026. If you were to sort of fast forward six, seven months and you're talking about your full year results, are there one or two things either on the upside or the downside if results come in above or below expectations? That would be sort of the key things that you can sort of see now that would either drive that upside or that downside relative to expectations.

Yeah, of course, we're like any other company, right, where, you know, we are not impervious to things that happen in the economy or shocks in the economy that will have an effect on us as well. We stick with our guidance towards, you know, profitable year end, you know, having a profitable 2026. And there'll be some, you know, there'll be some lumps in between that we work our way through. If there's a shock in soybean oil that could have a negative effect, the reverse of that is all our inputs in the biodiesel business are commodities. They are at all-time high, so we would expect them to start reverting back to more of the mean values, and that should have a positive effect in our business. We were exposed to the oil and gas industry and the oil and gas complex, so the current geopolitical situation is is somewhat beneficial to that. And if that continues longer, that should be beneficial. Should that go away and oil prices come back down dramatically, that could have some effect on our business, right? So that's kind of how to think about it.

Very, very helpful. Thanks a lot for your time and congrats on the strong results.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question is from Jeff Van Sinderen with B Reilly Security.

Good morning, everyone. You mentioned sort of building out, I guess you would call them production cells for customers on the chemical business. Just wondering if you can give us more color on what you're seeing there. Has there been an increase in incoming requests to build out those cells? What does the timeframe look like around those? And then how do you see that impacting revenue and profitability over the next year or so for the chemical business?

So I will tell you there is something that's very positive about that business, something that could be frustrating about that business, right? So the positive news is that once you build these out, it tends to stay on the site and it doesn't leave. The frustrating part is there's lead times, right? There's one and a half to two-year lead times from, you know, starting the project to finishing the engineering, starting to build, you know, We would have to modify part of our plants and build it and then start production. So I'd say you have to think about lead times around a year and a half to two years from the start of a project to, and we have projects that are currently in the pipeline, so not all projects that we're working on have that full two years. And then once commercialized, a lot of the capital is Allocated by the customer to the projects, or we will recover the capital over the life of a project. And the life of a project, you've got to think about, they usually start at about three years, three-year contracts, and they will often continue on to five to six years, if not longer. We have products that we've been making here for 20 years under those kind of contracts. But They take a little time to ramp up. There's an approval. They're critical processes. But once they are ramped up, they tend to stay here.

Okay, great. And then I guess if we can switch a little bit over to the gross margin outlook and any more color or any sense you can give us on gross margin outlook for the rest of the year. And then overall, what sort of quarterly cadence do you anticipate for the remainder of the year, maybe versus Q2.

Quarterly cadence in terms of maybe you can clarify it a little bit.

Yeah, sure. And just trying to get a sense of, I mean, this, you know, your metrics were really good here. I'm just wondering, do you think we're going to see sequential growth? Do you think, you know, we're going to see gross margins improve further? Just trying to get a sense of any metrics we can, you know, without asking you to give guidance, just any sense.

So maybe to give color, right? So let's go to the biofuels, right? So biofuels, we are running at margins that are higher than what we had anticipated yet. Our inputs remain highly elevated, right? So when you see announcements like I think it was ADM or Cargill bringing on more soybean crush capacity because there's a bit of a shortage in soybean oil, that's good news for us, right? So that at some point needs to translate to lower unit costs or lower costs in soybean oil, right? Record harvests for soybeans that at some point will translate to lower input costs. The margin levels that we enjoy today, we don't see anything on the horizon that will dramatically disrupt that.

And then in biodiesel, the elements that drive that input cost in the biodiesel market would have you believe that there's going to be a reversion back to the mean in terms of the cost.

So there should be some upside, right? We don't have that in our numbers. We're not projecting that. but that's how we kind of think about it.

Okay, that's helpful.

Thanks for taking my questions.

Yeah, welcome. Thanks for calling in.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to hand the floor back over to Roeland Polet for any closing comments.

Yeah, thank you very much everyone for showing an interest in FutureFuel. We believe we have a great business here. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you again for your participation.