Bioceres Crop Solutions Corp.

Hello and welcome to BIOS's Crop Solutions Fiscal Second Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference call. My name is Drew and I'll be your operator today. If you would like to ask a question during today's call, please press star followed by one. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. I would now like to turn the call over to Paula Savanti, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to everybody. Thank you for joining. Presenting today during the call will be Federico Trucco, our Chief Executive Officer, and Enrique Lopez Lecube, our Chief Financial Officer. Both will be available for the Q&A session. Before we proceed, I would like to make the following Safe Harbor statement. Today's call will contain forward-looking statements, and I refer you to the forward-looking statement section of today's earnings release and presentation. as well as the recent filings with the SEC. We assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect new or changed circumstances. This conference call is being webcast, and the webcast link is available at Biocities Crop Solutions' Investor Relations website. At this time, I will turn the call over to our CEO, Federico Trucco. Thank you.

Thank you, Paula, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to our second quarter's earnings call. Please turn to slide three from the deck for a quick overview of this period's business and financial highlights. As we have anticipated during our prior earnings call, our growth momentum has been momentarily interrupted by unusually severe drought conditions in Argentina. that extended throughout the entire planting window for summer crops. Although we are flat when compared to last year's revenue for the quarter, we are down by 7% year over year for the period on a pro forma basis after including pro farms operations. This circumstantial decline interrupts a run of seven consecutive quarters of top line growth and profitability expansion. which we expect to resume in the second half of the fiscal year as weather conditions have turned more favorable in our key commercial regions. On a less circumstantial and more permanent front, the severe drought conditions in Argentina have allowed us to put HB4 technology to the test like never before. And the performance of HB4 wheat has been outstanding in all fronts. In environments yielding less than two tons per hectare, HV4 weed has outperformed commercial materials by an average yield improvement of 43%. HV4 soil is on track despite unusually difficult planting conditions in Argentina. Half of the current seed multiplication area was planted with new generation varieties. which will help us quickly rotate the existing portfolio and improve performance compared to the earlier materials an important milestone on the hv4 soy front was the initiation of the multiplication program with farmers in brazil which we expect to give us enough seed for an initial 10 000 hectares in the upcoming season we have closed our previously announced acquisition of wheat breeding assets in Australia, where we expect to expand on the H3-4 opportunity after Latin America. We'll discuss all these highlights in greater detail throughout the presentation, but let us first better magnify the severity of the drought experienced in Argentina. And for that, please turn to the next slide. Drought in Argentina was of historical proportions due to two main factors. Its length, extending throughout the winter and past the entire summer crop planting window, and its reach, affecting a very large part of the agriculturally productive area of the country. Wheat output was slashed by 50% compared to the prior year. and the planting of summer crops displaced by 20 to 30 percent outside of the optimal planting window with an irreversible decline in total crop area and an expected production decline well above 20 percent compared to the year before. Enrique will now describe sort of the financial implications of these droughts, and then I will provide detailed information on HB4 performance, which obviously has experienced a unique year in terms of the severity of the weather event. Enrique.