Alto Ingredients, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALTO)

Alto Ingredients, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALTO), a leading producer of specialty alcohols and essential ingredients reported its Q4 2020 results. We disclosed we were closing out our long position based on the sub par results. You can see our earnings coverage note here. We participated in the conference call hoping for more color on guidance, like management has done in the past. While the Company did not provide specific 2021 guidance, it did provide some details for gross profit goals for its specialty alcohol division:

“Given the ongoing market demand dynamics and associated volatility in both the hand sanitizer and renewable fuel markets, we believe it’s inappropriate to provide guidance at this time. What we can provide is additional framework related to our specialty alcoholic contracted product. Setting aside the many other variables, including the sale of both our renewable fuel and uncontracted specialty alcohol, we would expect our specialty alcohol contracted sales to contribute at a minimum $60 million in gross profit for 2021.”

The gross profit guidance of $60 million does not imply strong growth, when compared to gross profit of $52.9 million achieved in 2020. We will continue to monitor ALTO’s restructuring process.

The full transcript can be read here. 

Pacific Ethanol Inc (NASDAQ:PEIX) ($5.81; $420.1M market cap), a company that produces and markets low-carbon renewable fuels and alcohol products in the United State, announced it has amended its credit agreement with CoBank:

“The Company, with its borrower subsidiaries, Pacific Ethanol Pekin, LLC and Illinois Corn Processing, LLC paid $24.9 million in connection with the amendments, repaying all term debt and reducing the borrowers’ revolving lines of credit to $30 million in total. At the same time, CoBank and the borrowers agreed to reduce certain reporting requirements and eliminate the requirement of the Chief Restructuring Officer position. With the pay down of the CoBank loans, and previous principal payments on the Company’s senior notes, the Company expects to be net term debt free, meaning its consolidated cash exceeds its remaining term debt, at the end of 2020.”