Green Plains Inc. (NASDAQ:GPRE) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call February 8, 2023 9:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Phil Boggs - Executive Vice President, Investor Relations
Todd Becker - President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Jim Stark - Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Craig Irwin - Roth Capital Partners
Jordan Levy - Truist Securities
Manav Gupta - UBS
Kristen Owen - Oppenheimer
Eric Stine - Craig-Hallum
Salvator Tiano - Bank of America
Operator
Good morning, and welcome to the Green Plains Inc., and Green Plains Partners Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Following the company's prepared remarks, instructions will be provided for Q&A. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode.
I will now turn the call over to your host, Phil Boggs, Executive Vice President, Investor Relations. Mr. Boggs, please go ahead.
Phil Boggs
Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to Green Plains Inc., and Green Plains Partners fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings call.
Participants on today's call are Todd Becker, President and Chief Executive Officer, Jim Stark, Chief Financial Officer; and Leslie Van Der Meulen, EVP of Product Marketing and Innovation. There is a slide presentation available, and you can find it on the Investor page under the Events and Presentations link on both corporate websites.
During this call, we will be making forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could materially differ because of factors discussed in today's press releases and the comments made during this conference call and in the Risk Factors section of our Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements.
Now I'd like to turn the call over to Todd Becker.
Todd Becker
Thanks Phil, and good morning, everyone. We have a lot to talk about, so let's get started.
The fourth quarter margins were improved off the lows we experienced during the prior quarter, but we are still faced with some challenging headwinds due to weakness in ethanol margins in the quarter, which happened very quickly over a few days. This industry has such great potential and we continue to have a small imbalance in production versus demand that weighs heavily on margins.
In addition, the pricing structure, in our opinion, remains broken where very little margin there -- excuse me -- very little volume in the market each day on the close prices a million barrels a day of production. This pricing mechanism needs to be addressed in the future.