The Stock
It's been another wild ride for Origin Materials (NASDAQ: ORGN) stock. With markets closed for the July 4th holiday on Monday, the trading week was abbreviated to four days this past week. So, including the Friday past, ORGN is up 9.16% over the past five trading days. The weekly performance looks good, especially after flirting with (but not quite reaching) the previous 52-week low of $4.65 & being down 13.97% over the past month and -18.81% year to date.
The next foreseeable catalyst for the stock perhaps is startup of the Origin 1 facility in Sarnia, Ontario where construction is winding up. Just how close the facility is to being completed remains to be seen, but all progress milestones have been achieved ahead of schedule since the reports started coming out in November 2021.
Speaking of construction updates, the company delivers these at every quarterly earnings call. While no official date has been released yet, if the date is inline with last year's, the Q2 2022 earnings call should come sometime in August 2022. A press release announcing the exact date usually comes out about two weeks before the actual call.
Official Company Updates
So far, July has begun with no press releases from the company. However, they did share a recent webinar co-CEOs John Bissell and Rich Riley did with Raymond James analyst Pavel Molchanov. The presentation is 53 minutes long and definitely worth a listen.
To access the webinar, follow this link - https://raymondjames.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_XJUBIrwmQiCnHoCIZnYIrA
Just as construction milestones for Origin 1 have been completed ahead of schedule, the startup of the facility is widely speculated to be ahead of schedule due to second bullet point listed on the Raymond James introduction - "The first production facility is being built in Sarnia, Ontario, with startup expected in late 2022." Officially, according the Origin management's Q1 Earnings Call slide deck, startup of O1 is not scheduled until Q1 2023.
Additionally, Riley joined a podcast sponsored by his alma mater - The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, to talk decarbonization and the role Origin Materials will play. To hear that interview, here is the link - https://open.spotify.com/episode/0HALqR3bDgYApPUvr71IqS?si=95b63021beff455f&nd=1
Hiring Frenzy
The company continues its hiring spree as it fills out positions for its flagship commercial facility in Sarnia and beyond. Perhaps most notably, an executive assistant based in Geismar, Louisiana (the site of the Origin 2 facility) has been hired. She announced on her LinkedIn page that her role will be "executive assistant to Roman Wolff." This marks the first Origin Materials employee in Ascension Parish.
As of now, by my unofficial LinkedIn tally, Origin Materials now has 129 employees. To illustrate how their headcount is growing, here are prior employee numbers:
End of Q1 2021 - 41
End of Q4 2021 - 85
Stay tuned for more updates on Origin Materials. I will certainly post anything interesting I find in the meantime.
