Benson Hill, Inc. (NYSE:BHIL) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Benson Hill, Inc. (NYSE:BHIL) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript March 14, 2024

Benson Hill, Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.20065 EPS, expectations were $-0.17. Benson Hill, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good morning. Thank you for attending Benson Hill's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Drew, and I'll be your moderator. All lines are on mute for the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. [Operator Instructions] I want to pass the conference over to your host, Tana Murphy, Acting Investor Relations Leader with Benson Hill. Tana, please go ahead.

Tana Murphy: Thank you, and good morning. We appreciate you joining us to review our fourth quarter and full year 2023 financial results and outlook. Joining me today are Deanie Elsner, Benson Hill's Chief Executive Officer; and Dean Freeman, our Chief Financial Officer. We also have Susan Keefe, our incoming Chief Financial Officer, listening in. Susan begins her role with Benson Hill on March 29. Earlier this morning we filed our fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings release. Our 10-K will be filed after the market closes today. These documents and an investor presentation we will reference during the prepared remarks will be available in the Investors section of the Benson Hill website. Comments today from management will contain forward-looking statements, including Benson Hill's expectations of future financial and business performance, industry commentary and a high-level outlook for 2024.

Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions and are not guarantees of performance. We caution you to consider the risk factors that could materially cause results to differ from those in the forward-looking statements. Such factors include those referenced in the cautionary notes included in our Form 10-Ks Form 10-Qs, press release and investor presentation and other SEC filings. Also, during this presentation, we will discuss specific non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation to GAAP is available in our earnings release and investor presentation. I will now turn the call over to Deanie.

Deanie Elsner: Thanks, Tana. And good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to review our fourth quarter and full year 2023 results and to discuss the steps we're taking to transform our business. Let me start by introducing our incoming CFO, Susan Keefe. We're excited that Susan is joining the Benson Hill team. She brings a wealth of experience working with technology-focused companies both start-ups and mature organizations in the public and private sectors. Her knowledge of biosciences and technology, strategic partnerships, innovation pipeline development and licensing will be a great asset in our work ahead. We've been working a three-part plan to strengthen our balance sheet and position Benson Hill for the incredible opportunities before us: first, implementing our cost-cutting initiatives under the expanded Liquidity Improvement Plan; second, diversifying our portfolio to enter attractive soy segments; and third, delivering strategic partnerships to execute our asset-light strategy.

Today, I will walk you through the significant progress we've made on each of those fronts and explain why Benson Hill is well positioned to lead the pace of innovation in soy protein. Let's start with an update on the expanded liquidity improvement plan. As you may recall, last October, we identified key milestones designed to strengthen our balance sheet and to improve our cash position. I'm very pleased to report that these significant milestones have been achieved. We've divested our soy processing assets, including the sale of our Seymour facility for $36 million and the sale of our Creston facility for $72 million. We've restructured our organization, enabling us to deliver significant cost savings. Our team has now reduced recurring OpEx and CapEx by more than 33%, in line with previously communicated targets.

These actions enabled us to fully retire our senior term loan representing approximately $120 million in debt plus interest and fees. We ended the year with approximately $49 million in cash, in line with our expectations. Dean will further address our 2023 results and outlook for 2024 in his section. In the coming months, we expect to continue driving efficiencies, reducing operating costs and looking for ways to optimize our capital structure. With our senior term loan now retired, our team is entirely focused on the opportunities ahead of us. The second pillar of our plan was to diversify our portfolio and enter attractive new soy market segments. Here, we've made enormous progress. Our advantage stems from the trifecta of our proven soy technology platform, our CropOS innovation engine, our Crop Accelerator speed breeding facility and our proprietary soy germplasm portfolio.

Our differentiated germplasm along with layers of genomic data, secures our first-mover advantage because it represents literally decades of soybean breeding for animal feed. Over the last six months, we conducted extensive diligence with end users and potential partners on every aspect of our strategy, including our innovation pipeline, our value creation, our shift to an asset-light business model and our broad acre ramp-up. We validated that Benson Hill is competitively advantaged and ready today to serve the largest soybean markets in the animal feed industry, and we are well positioned to expand into the growing biofuel markets in the future. Benson Hill has built the most advanced soy genetics toolbox in the industry to simultaneously improve both protein and yield.

The gains we've achieved for the genetics we acquired in 2019 have surpassed our expectations and outpaced the industry. In January of this year, we announced advancements across our entire portfolio of Ultra High Protein low oligosaccharides or UHP-LO varieties, including introgression of an herbicide tolerance trait to provide the seamless weed control farmers expect for large acre adoption. We are on track to significantly expand our seed portfolio from 22 to 35 varieties by 2025 with a pipeline that's in the final stages of lab and field testing, giving us a massive time advantage that can further deepen our competitive moat. But what is perhaps most exciting is the feedback we've heard from end users about the UHP-LO products that we have available today.

Animal feed industry experts have confirmed that the soybeans we harvested in 2023 will be a game changer for animal diets. In fact, they said that if they could design their Holy Grail product, this would be it. First, with 20% higher protein than commodity meal, with competitive yield performance, enabling better feed conversion, less soybean meal required and more room for other ingredients. Second, 92% fewer hard-to-digest oligosaccharide carbohydrates, enabling better gut health, better digestibility and 27% more available energy to be used by the animal. And going forward, an improved amino acid profile leading to less reliance on synthetic amino acids. In the feed industry, every bit of margin matters. Feed is the primary cost in animal production.

The reduced cost and improved sustainability benefits of the Benson Hill soy products can unlock impressive savings for animal producers. This is true value creation through innovation. Shadow pricing estimates indicate that our breeding efforts over the last three years have tripled the value creation of our UHP-LO soy varieties. We are now repeating feeding studies initially conducted in 2020 to validate these improvements and initial results give us confidence that the value proposition can be achieved. Looking beyond our UHP-LO varieties, we will increase focus on other products in our portfolio that optimize the protein oil complex. Our COVAL varieties combined heart healthy, high oleic oil for the food market with high protein, low oligosaccharide meal for the feed market.

Varieties further out in our pipeline, combine high-volume commodity oil for the emerging biofuel market with lower oligosaccharide meal. This represents substantial additional growth and profit potential. The last pillar of our plan is to secure strategic partners to execute our strategy. Here, too, we've made exciting progress. Across the value chain, we're finding that organizations recognize the shift underway. The current commodity soy system is not designed to provide choice for end users. Benson Hill has designed a system to provide both choice and a voice the end user what changes the dynamic. Seed decisions can be driven not simply by what input traits farmer prefers but by what output traits the end-user demands. This unlocks a new dimension of growth for those who are positioned to be part of it.

We have validated that by focusing on the needs of the end user first, we can create compelling value to incentivize all players from the seed company to the farmer to the customer. Our new asset-light business model encompasses strategic partnerships to leverage the scale and maturity of the existing value chain. Licensing technology is well established in the agriculture industry. In fact, Benson Hill, and before that, Schillinger, has been licensing high-protein, non-GMO varieties for specific food markets like tofu for years. We have long-standing relationships with multiple feed distributors that present significant share, licensing the best-performing non-GMO soybean variety on the market. What's different going forward is the scale of the end market we intend to serve and the magnitude of value we can create by leveraging our existing infrastructure.

Scaling for the animal feed markets is actually quite straightforward. The market is large, but not highly fragmented. Every potential partner, whether an animal producer or a seed company represents millions of acres. Given the response we've received from the animal industry and the nature of the offtake discussions underway, we anticipate that the demand will outstrip the supply of our UHP-LO parent seed, which will be our rate limiting factor over the next two years. During that time, we expect to establish strategic partnerships and offtake agreements with animal producers to further demonstrate the value proposition of our soybeans. In addition, we expect to expand licensing agreements with seed companies to expand our go-to-market reach.

A number of initiatives have already been advanced to lay the groundwork for these partnerships. For example, we've doubled the size of our seed licensing and distribution network in the past 12 months. Most of these seed companies will be testing our latest varieties in the field this year and we're validating the agronomic characteristics of our varieties through an extensive network of universities and independent testing centers. Over the next two years, we will also conduct additional animal feed studies for multiple market segments within swine, poultry and aqua. As I reflect on the scope and complexity of what the team has achieved in just a few short months, I'm confident and excited about what we expect to accomplish going forward.

We have revalidated our technology pipeline, built a new business model, reshape the organization, divested two processing assets, retired debt, reduce costs and lay the groundwork with future partners. The energy and focus of the team is now entirely dedicated to operating the business, securing capital and landing strategic partnerships. Benson Hill is now at an inflection point in 2024 as we evolve the company to drive shareholder value. As I close, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Dan Freeman for his contributions and guidance as CFO of Benson Hill. Dean has been a wonderful partner, and we wish him the best in his next chapter. I'll turn it over to him now to cover the 2023 financial results and things you can watch for in 2024.

Dean?

Dean Freeman: Thanks, Deanie, and good morning, everybody, and thank you for your support and good wishes after the announcement of my transition. It's really been an honor and a great pleasure to be with Benson Hill on this part of the journey. I'm proud of the work we've done in the last two years to position the company for future success. I really enjoyed working with Susan over the last few weeks, and I believe she's an excellent choice as the CFO for Benson Hill's next phase. Okay. Let's talk results. Notably, we met or hit almost all of our key guidance metrics for 2023 despite an increasingly challenging market environment. It was a busy year. We not only focused on developing high-value strategies for the asset-light model, but the team was also laser-focused on executing under our existing business model and aggressively implementing actions under our expanded liquidity improvement plan.

This enabled us to increase revenue, substantially strengthen the balance sheet and lower our cash burn. Looking at the full year results, we reported consolidated revenues of $473 million, a 24% year-over-year improvement driven by a 52% revenue growth in proprietary and 18% growth in non-proprietary grain products, respectively, for the year. Higher revenues at the end of the year were driven by higher volume proprietary grain sales and the sale of noncore technology licenses. Looking beyond revenues, we also met our targets for gross profit at $23 million, more than tripling the prior year's gross profit performance. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $48 million, more than 40% improvement year-over-year. Free cash use of $87 million was a $13 million improvement versus the prior year, but included onetime cash costs of approximately $16 million that sets us up for further improvement going forward and exceeded our cash use targets of $102 million to $107 million.

We ended the year with approximately $49 million in cash and marketable securities. Our year-over-year improvements were largely driven by higher volume proprietary revenues, cost and cash efficiency actions. Let's look at our operating expenses in a bit more detail. For the year, total operating expenses were $128 million. It's important to note that those included approximately $19 million in goodwill impairment that we previously disclosed in the second quarter and approximately $13 million in net charges related to nonrecurring severance and other related costs associated with the asset divestitures, business transformation and cost reduction actions for the execution of our expanded Liquidity Improvement Plan. Turning to 2024. It will truly be a year of transition.

Keep in mind that our reported revenues for 2023 largely came from soy processing assets that we've now divested. 2024 is going to look very different as we plan to gain momentum as a provider of seed innovations for the animal feed market. In 2024, the company's revenues will include the runoff of the previous business model, including the sale of grain and other products associated with our legacy ingredients business. We expect much lower revenue going forward as a result of these recent divestitures. While gross profit will decline proportionally with revenue during the balance of this transition, we expect to substantially improve the quality of our earnings over time as we build out the partnership model. Coupled with further reductions in operating expenses, we expect to see a significant reduction in the losses from continuing operations and further improvements of adjusted EBITDA.

And with the retirement of high-cost debt, coupled with the elimination of highly restricted covenants provides ample optionality for further financing opportunities. In fact, we are in the process of exploring additional financing and strategic alternatives to expand our liquidity through the balance of 2024 and beyond. As we consider key performance factors in 2024, we will be guided by five key areas: one, successful transition of our legacy business model; second, continued improvement of our operating expenses and margins; three, acquisition of strategic partnership and licensing deals; four, optimization of our capital structure; and finally, expansion of our intellectual property and advancement of our technology pipeline. Benson Hill has proven year after year that the team can perform, execute and adapt.

We are seeing substantial demand for innovations created with our core technologies to create a durable runway of growth. With that, I'd like to open up for Q&A.

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