Biofuel company Kior announced on its earnings call that it would be turning on its production plant in Columbus, Ohio next month. This is on schedule, and the stock got a quick bump before returning to where it had been pre-announcement.  When I spoke with Cowen analyst Rob Stone a few months back we discussed his model for Kior, and he noted that there’s a long time horizon for valuing Kior. So much so that his discounted cash flow model runs out to 2032. This makes it highly sensitive to the discount rate and any glitches in milestones like turning on production plants on time and at the correct yields. It’s this final issue—the question of yield and separation—that impacted Amyris as it tried to scale up but struggled to produce biofuels at the targeted rate. No company has successfully produced cellulosic biofuel at scale, and only time will tell if Kior can succeed at the engineering feat.