Enviva Responds to Short-Seller Report
BETHESDA, Md., October 12, 2022 – Enviva Inc. (NYSE: EVA) (“Enviva,” “we,” “us,” the “Company,” or “our”), the world’s leading producer of sustainably sourced wood pellet, today issued the following statement in response to allegations made in a report by a self-proclaimed short seller.
The report contains numerous errors, repeats previous unsupported speculation and gross mischaracterizations, and draws specious, misleading conclusions. The short position on the Company increased substantially in the weeks leading up to the distribution of the spurious report, with almost 4 million shares currently shorted. While the Company acknowledges the role of short selling in creating balance in the public markets, it strongly condemns the unscrupulous practice of “short and distort” campaigns in which short sellers intentionally publish false and misleading claims to needlessly alarm investors and manipulate the market for their own profit.
Enviva remains steadfast in its continued and unwavering commitment to maintaining the highest standards of corporate governance, integrity, sustainability, forest stewardship, and continuous improvement. Additionally, Enviva recently updated full-year 2022 financial guidance, which included leverage expectations and the reaffirmation of dividend expectations, in an October 3, 2022 press release, demonstrating the Company’s continued expectation of generating strong, durable, and growing cash flows. As stated in that press release, as Enviva looks forward to 2023 and 2024, it continues to be very well-positioned for robust cash-flow growth, even in an environment with potential recessionary pressures.
Tracts in the working forest landscape of the U.S. South are harvested for many forest-related products, including telephone poles, dimensional lumber, manufactured wood products, furniture, paper products, and packaging materials. As the Company has explained before, Enviva augments the productivity of these working forests by purchasing residuals from the harvest and turning them into a renewable energy feedstock that replaces fossil fuels in electricity generation, heat generation, and other hard-to-abate sectors such as sustainable aviation fuel. When companies like Enviva are not present to purchase these residuals, the material most often is left on the tract to decay or is intentionally burned. As the Company has further explained before, notwithstanding select instances where we take an above-average percentage of a stand to support forest health, among other reasons, forests in the U.S. South are neither grown nor harvested for wood pellet production.
Harvesting does not equate to deforestation. In fact, the sustainable forestry and harvesting practices employed in the U.S. South are a significant contributor to healthy, stable forests. According to the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. forest area has been stable for over 100 years, despite the U.S. population more than tripling during that timeframe, and the overall area of forests in the U.S. South has been expanding since the early 1980s. Specific to Enviva, the forest inventory of standing timber in our catchment area has increased by 21% since we began operations.
About Enviva
Enviva is the world’s largest producer of wood pellets, a renewable and sustainable energy source produced by aggregating a natural resource, wood fiber, and processing it into a transportable form, wood pellets. Enviva owns and operates ten plants with a combined production capacity of approximately 6.2 million metric tons per year in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Mississippi, and is constructing its eleventh plant, in Epes, Alabama. The Epes plant is projected to add 1.1 million MTPY — approximately an 18% increase — to Enviva’s production capacity, and is expected to be the world’s largest wood pellet production plant once constructed. Enviva sells most of its wood pellets through long-term, take-or-pay off-take contracts with creditworthy customers in the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Japan, helping to accelerate the energy transition and to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors like steel, cement, lime, chemicals, and aviation fuels. Enviva exports its wood pellets to global markets through its deep-water marine terminals at the Port of Chesapeake, Virginia, the Port of Wilmington, North Carolina, and the Port of Pascagoula, Mississippi, and from third-party deep-water marine terminals in Savannah, Georgia, Mobile, Alabama, and Panama City, Florida.
To learn more about Enviva, please visit our website at www.envivabiomass.com. Follow Enviva on social media @Enviva.
Cautionary Note Concerning Forward-Looking Statements
The information included herein and in any oral statements made in connection herewith include “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements, other than statements of present or historical fact included herein, regarding Enviva’s strategy, future operations, financial position, estimated revenues and losses, projected costs, prospects, plans, and objectives of management are forward-looking statements. When used herein, including any oral statements made in connection herewith, the words “could,” “should,” “will,” “may,” “believe,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “estimate,” “expect,” “project,” the negative of such terms, and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain such identifying words. These forward-looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and assumptions about future events and are based on currently available information as to the outcome and timing of future events. Except as otherwise required by applicable law, Enviva disclaims any duty to revise or update any forward-looking statements, all of which are expressly qualified by the statements in this section, to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof. Enviva cautions you that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, most of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond the control of Enviva. These risks include, but are not limited to: (i) the volume and quality of products that we are able to produce or source and sell, which could be adversely affected by, among other things, operating or technical difficulties at our wood pellet production plants or deep-water marine terminals; (ii) the prices at which we are able to sell our products; (iii) our ability to successfully negotiate, complete, and integrate acquisitions, including the associated contracts, or to realize the anticipated benefits of such acquisitions; (iv) failure of our customers, vendors, and shipping partners to pay or perform their contractual obligations to us; (v) our inability to successfully execute our project development, capacity, expansion, and new facility construction activities on time and within budget; (vi) the creditworthiness of our contract counterparties; (vii) the amount of low-cost wood fiber that we are able to procure and process, which could be adversely affected by, among other things, disruptions in supply or operating or financial difficulties suffered by our suppliers; (viii) changes in the price and availability of natural gas, coal, or other sources of energy; (ix) changes in prevailing economic and market conditions; (x) inclement or hazardous environmental conditions, including extreme precipitation, temperatures, and flooding; (xi) fires, explosions, or other accidents; (xii) changes in domestic and foreign laws and regulations (or the interpretation thereof) related to renewable or low-carbon energy, the forestry products industry, the international shipping industry, or power, heat, or combined heat and power generators; (xiii) changes in domestic and foreign tax laws and regulations affecting the taxation of our business and investors; (xiv) changes in the regulatory treatment of biomass in core and emerging markets; (xv) our inability to acquire or maintain necessary permits or rights for our production, transportation, or terminaling operations; (xvi) changes in the price and availability of transportation; (xvii) changes in foreign currency exchange or interest rates, and the failure of our hedging arrangements to effectively reduce our exposure to related risks; (xviii) risks related to our indebtedness, including the levels and maturity date of such indebtedness; (xix) our failure to maintain effective quality control systems at our wood pellet production plants and deep-water marine terminals, which could lead to the rejection of our products by our customers; (xx) changes in the quality specifications for our products that are required by our customers; (xxi) labor disputes, unionization, or similar collective actions; (xxii) our inability to hire, train, or retain qualified personnel to manage and operate our business and newly acquired assets; (xxiii) the possibility of cyber and malware attacks; (xxiv) our inability to borrow funds and access capital markets; (xxv) viral contagions or pandemic diseases, such as COVID-19; and (xxvi) overall domestic and global political and economic conditions, including the imposition of tariffs or trade or other economic sanctions, political instability or armed conflict, including the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, rising inflation levels and government efforts to reduce inflation, or a prolonged recession.
Should one or more of the risks or uncertainties described herein and in any oral statements made in connection therewith occur, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results and plans could different materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning these and other factors that may impact Enviva’s expectations and projections can be found in Enviva’s periodic filings with the SEC. Enviva’s SEC filings are available publicly on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.
