Cibus, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the CBUS 1Q25 earnings call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please also note, today's event is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Carlo Bruce, Interim Chief Financial Officer. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you and good afternoon. I would like to thank you for taking time to join us for CBIS first quarter 2025 financial results and business update conference call and webcast. Presenting with me today is Peter Beetham, co-founder, interim chief executive officer, president and COO. Greg Gochel, our chief scientific officer, will also be on today's call for participation during the Q&A session. Before we begin the call, I'd like to remind everyone that statements made on the call and webcast, including those regarding future financial results and future operational goals and industry prospects, are forward-looking and may be subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the call. Please refer to CBIS SSE filings for a list of associated risks. This conference call is being webcast. The webcast link, along with our press release and corporate presentation are available on the investor relations section of cbus.com to assist you in your analysis of our business. And with that, I would now like to turn the call over to you, Peter.

Thanks, Carlo, and good afternoon, everyone. We believe the first quarter of 2025 continues to demonstrate clear validation of our commercial strategy and the transformative potential of our RTDS technology platform. Our first quarter press releases have confirmed our ability to deliver time-bound and predictable results. This, alongside what has been favourable regulatory decisions, is resonating across multiple fronts, expanding and attracting commercial interest from some of our current customers while also attracting many new prospective partners. Phoebus is uniquely positioned at an important inflection point in the agricultural industry. Our proprietary RTDS gene editing process has established a new paradigm for trait development, one that is time-bound and predictable, enabling us to edit a customer's elite germplasm and return it with specific traits in under 12 months. This standardized platform is being recognized as a fundamental breakthrough that intersects with agriculture's important plant breeding programs. These programs are the engine room of genetic innovation for the seed industry. We believe this is unlike anything agriculture has seen before, creating a dependable model for trait development and commercialization for gene editing that's resonating strongly with our customers, partners, and more broadly, across the whole industry. What's particularly encouraging is how our time-bound and predictable message is attracting significant new interest in development projects, especially in disease resistance traits. We continue to show great progress with confirmed edits for different modes of action in the disease trait category that is unique and highly valuable for multiple crops in global markets. This validation from the market affirms our strategic direction and the value proposition of our technology as we focus on achieving our key milestones for 2025. Let me start with rice. Throughout 2024, we established a strong foundation in our rice platform, securing agreements with four major rice seed companies, representing approximately 40% of our estimated accessible rice acres across North and Latin America. The momentum continues to build as we advance toward commercialization. This momentum is carried forward from last year's field trials where we achieved a milestone with field trial results for stacked gene-edited herbicide tolerance traits in rice. This year in March, we expanded this opportunity for additional stacked HT traits in rice where trials are planned for the 2025 season. Last year's trials represent the first known trial using stacked gene-edited herbicide tolerance traits in rice for improved weed management. A huge breakthrough that further differentiates our offering and stands to bring significant value to farmers. This is of particular importance given the global need for weed management solutions that enable rice farmers to manage these challenges more efficiently. We are working hard to advance partnerships to do just that. A great example of our efforts is our strategic collaboration with RTG Corporation Limited and Orbar LLC to provide the herbicide Clefidim as part of our weed management solution for U.S. rice farmers using the HT3 trait as a means to further our commercialization strategy. With our registrations lining up, we remain on track for our anticipated 2027 commercial launch. The momentum we're seeing in Latin America is particularly exciting as these markets have historically lacked access to advanced weed management solutions in rice. This represents a transformative opportunity both for farmers in these regions and for SEVIS as an innovator that is helping deliver value-added solutions to the market. We also expect to initiate our first trait validation trials in Latin America later this year with delivery of initial traits to a Latin American customer anticipated by year end. The broader message here is clear. Our rights commercialization strategy is progressing according to plan, with trace integrated into multiple customers' germplasm that is adapted to diverse geographies. This represents a significant market opportunity for CBIS as we approach commercialization. So now turning to our disease resistance work. Disease, in our case, sclerotinia or white mold. This program continues to be a standout area of our progress, building on our breakthrough achievements in 2024, where we successfully completed edits in canola for four different modes of action for sclerotinia resistance and observed positive field trial results for our second mode of action. We've continued to advance this critical platform. In March 2025, we announced positive greenhouse data for canola plants containing a third mode of action for serotonin resistance. This represents a significant milestone in our multi-layered approach to create durable disease resistance, very similar to how antiviral cocktails create lasting protection against diseases in humans like HIV. Our sclerotinia resistance trait in canola now offers multiple modes of action to provide durable resistance and enable farmers to improve yields and lower input costs by reducing their reliance on fungicides. This is particularly critical as sclerotinia, or white mold, is a fungal pathogen that causes significant disease in oilseed crops and most leggings, reducing canola yields by 7% to 15%, with individual plant level yield losses being as great as 50% per infection. We're now preparing to conduct field trials for our third and fourth modes of action in canola in North America this summer, along with testing our first stacked disease resistance trait in controlled environment growth chambers. So let me now turn to the soybean platform. Our soybean platform reached a significant milestone in January when we successfully edited a soybean cell for our HC2 trait, achieving editing rates to enable expanded platform development. This achievement represents a critical step forward in our soybean strategy and positions us to continue pursuing both the HC2 trait and white mold resistance in soybeans. potentially accessing a substantial market estimated at 125 million accessible acres with annual trade royalties per acre potentially in the range of $10 to $15. While we continue to work diligently toward a fully operational soybean platform, the success achieved early in the year validates our approach and technical capabilities. We expect to achieve HD2 edits in soybean plants later this year, building upon our successful cell edits from earlier this year. The company continues to work diligently toward a fully operational soybean platform. Soybean gene editing of complex traits like white mold resistance remains an area of significant commercial interest, and we continue to advance discussions with current and prospective partners who recognise the value of our time-bound and predictable approach to trait development. Which now brings me to our Sustainable Ingredients Program. Within our Sustainable Ingredients Program, we've advanced our bio-based fermentation, bio-fragrance products, and now anticipate entering into commercialisation agreements with consumer packaged goods partners this year. This quarter, we successfully completed the first stage scale-up of two biofragrance products. This important advance affirms our expectations in realizing nominal revenues from this program later in 2025. In addition, our partner-funded project with a large multinational CPG company also continues to progress well. leverages our core crop gene editing capabilities to develop sustainable low-carbon ingredients, helping major global companies advance their sustainability objectives. So let's turn to regulatory. On the regulatory front, we achieved several historic milestones this quarter that strengthen our commercialization pathway. In February, the California Rice Commission's Rice Certification Committee approved our field research proposal, marking the first authorization for planting gene-edited rice in California. Additionally, on March 14th this year, EU member states endorsed the EU Council's negotiating mandate on the regulation of plants obtained by new genomic techniques, or NGTs, enabling a three-way, or trilogue, discussions with the EU Parliament EU Commission and EU Council to finalize legislation. In April 2025, the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock in Ecuador determined that SEBAS's HT1 and HT3 rice traits are equivalent to those developed through conventional breeding. This was a really important determination for our RTDS technologies as Ecuador strictly prohibits the commercial planting of transgenic or GMO crops. This determination confirms rice plants containing SEBAS's HD1 and HD3 traits may proceed with registration and commercialization in Ecuador in accordance with the provisions of the Organic Law of Agrobiodiversity, Seeds and Promotion of Sustainable Agriculture and its Regulations, known as LOASFAS. And just two weeks ago, we were excited to announce that the USDA APHIS has designated two of our disease resistance trait products under development for canola as not regulated. This favorable designation confirms that our traits do not meet the definition of a regulated article, enabling us to proceed with product development without restrictions associated with regulated articles in the U.S., This USDA designation is especially significant as it further validates our RTDS technology platform that enables targeted genetic changes without integrating recombinant DNA. The U.S. has long been a leader in regulatory modernization, and this designation represents yet another example of how regulatory frameworks have evolved and continue to evolve to support the promise of gene editing technologies. These regulatory developments across multiple geographies significantly strengthen the commercial opportunity for our trade pipeline and serve as important catalysts for our crop trade development business. So now let's look ahead to 2025. We have several important milestones we're focused on while simultaneously optimizing our operations. Expansion of commercial relationships with light-seed companies across North and South America. First trait validation trials in Latin America with delivery of initial traits to customers by year-end. Field trials for sclerotinia resistance in canola for third and fourth modes of action and trials of our first stacked disease resistance trait in controlled environment growth changes. Initial field trial data for our HT2 trait in canola, continued development toward an operational soybean platform, and advancement of our biofragrance work with expected nominal revenues later this year. As we pursue these strategic priorities, we're laser focused on optimizing our operations and significantly reducing our cash burn rate in 2025. We're taking a disciplined approach to resource allocation, prioritizing investments in near-term commercial opportunities with developed and advanced traits, while ensuring we have the financial flexibility to execute on our strategic priorities and extend our runway. This balanced approach to growth and fiscal discipline positions us to maximize shareholder value as we approach key commercial milestones. Our gene editing technologies and focus on productivity traits hold great promise for the future of farming, enabling crops to be more adaptable to a changing environment and the changing demands of a global food supply chain. As demonstrated by our progress this quarter and over the past year, the opportunities for our gene edited traits aren't in the distant future, they're materialising and expanding now. With our trace moving into customer germplasm, showing promising results in field trials, and a more harmonized global regulatory environment emerging for gene-edited trace, we are uniquely positioned within the agricultural gene-editing industry to capture significant value for our shareholders. And with that, I'll hand over the call to Carlo for a financial update. Carlo?