Fuel Forward: The Digest’s 2019 Enhanced Multi-Slide Guide to Renewable Energy Group

Cynthia J. Warner, REG CEO: Thank you, Todd, and good afternoon to those on the call. I will discuss our first quarter operating highlights, and then Chad will cover financial results. Then I will come back to discuss our outlook.

We indicated in the guidance we provided in March that the first quarter would be a challenging margin environment, and it was. Those first quarter challenges were further exacerbated by extreme weather conditions in the Midwest, fog in the Gulf, flooding in the Midwest, and the fire at the ITC terminal at Deer Park, Texas, all of which impacted production and logistics at some of our plants.

Despite these challenges, our underlying operational performance in terms of production and gallons sold was strong. As you can see on Slide 4, we sold 162 million gallons of fuel. This was 20% higher than the first quarter of 2018. We produced 117 million gallons in the first quarter, a 10% increase year-over-year. Specifically, we produced 20 million gallons of renewable diesel at Geismar, a production rate which is 14% higher than the prior year quarter.