Calyxt, Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to CAELIC's second quarter 2022 earnings results conference call and webcast. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be open for questions. If you have a question, please press the star key followed by the one key on your touch-tone phone. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star key followed by the two key. If you are using speaker equipment, please lift the handset before making your selections. This conference is being recorded today, August 4, 2022. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Bill Koschak, Calix Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, and good afternoon. This is Bill Koschak, the Chief Financial Officer of Calix. I would like to thank you for taking time to join us for Calix. second quarter 2022 earnings results conference call and webcast. Presenting with me today is Michael A. Carr, our president and chief executive officer. A press release detailing these results crossed the wire after today's market closed and is available on our company's website, calyxt.com. Before we begin the formal presentation, 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's 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 Calix's SEC filings for a list of associated risks. This presentation also includes a discussion of adjusted net loss and adjusted net loss per share. Both are non-GAAP financial measures. In Calix's press release and its filings with the SEC, each of which is posted on our website at calix.com, You will find additional disclosure regarding these non-GAAP financial measures. References to these non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to GAAP financial measures and should not be considered a substitute for results that are presented in accordance with GAAP. Lastly, this conference call is being webcast. The webcast link is available in the investor relations section of calix.com. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Michael for his opening remarks. Michael?

Thank you, Bill. And thank you for joining us on Calix earnings and corporate update call today. Throughout the second quarter of 2022, the Calix team tangibly advanced each area of the business, including progressing our development and sale of customer demand-driven plant-based chemistries, the procurement of infrastructure partners to greatly expand our manufacturing capabilities, and technology and plant trait licensing. Throughout the quarter, Calix continued to work on scaling and standardizing production in its pilot biofactory system and building out related capabilities. I am proud of the significant progress we have made in a short period of time. It is a testament to our new strategic direction being on track. Today, I will specifically walk you through our progress over the past few months and then have Bill provide a financial update. We are focused on advancing discussions and relationships with new customers in the cosmeceutical, nutraceutical, and pharmaceutical industries. All are large and innovative industries with customers that have current business needs to source sustainable and finite plant-based chemistries. These potential customers are also known to be fast adopters of innovation and are actively seeking to reduce their carbon footprints. In the second quarter, Calix received nine new chemistries from potential customers for evaluation, bringing the total number of chemistries cumulatively evaluated for development with our Plattspring platform and for production in our biofactory to 95. Of these 95 chemistries, 31 have met CALIC's target product profile or TPP criteria. We plan to further evaluate and discuss these chemistries with the potential customers. Importantly, the evaluated chemistries include several that were identified by potential customers as having been unsuccessfully attempted by others in the synthetic biology industry. This speaks to the unique technology and approach of Calix to engineer plant metabolism to produce innovative and high-value plant-based chemistries for use in customers' materials and products. Leveraging the 31 customer demand-driven chemistries that have passed our TPP criteria, Calix is currently negotiating term sheets with several potential customers the development of a select number of those plant-based chemistries as a reminder we are targeting two to four customer demand driven compounds for development by year end we are also pleased to share that calyx is performing a pilot project for potential high value chemistry for a large global consumer packaged goods company we expect to deliver an engineered solution in early 2023 This could form the basis for potential engagement to complete development and produce the chemistry for that company. Other companies in the space may also be interested in this chemistry. In the second quarter, we also initiated conversations with multiple potential infrastructure partners. I'm pleased to report that we have exchanged a term sheet with one of them in our advancing discussions with others. These potential infrastructure partners offer a global footprint and capabilities to enable Calix to increase speed to scale, they have capacities from pilot to commercial scale production these potential partnerships have the potential to enable the development and production of chemistries at industrial scale for customers in our key and markets importantly our progress with these infrastructure partners not only supports future deals but also brings value to ongoing customer conversations of note i can report the genuine interest of these potential infrastructure partners in working with Calix and that they understand and appreciate that we are going after hard to solve, high value, and potentially high margin chemistries. This asset light approach enables the deployment of our capital to the development of a robust customer base and accelerates the speed at which we can bring chemistries to potential customers instead of deploying that capital on large scale manufacturing. In addition to our focus on our plant spring driven product development for biofactory production, we are also canvassing a wide range of potential licensees for both our technology and our historically developed plant traits, and we have made important progress on this front. Since we refocused our licensing business in late 2021, including the strategic hire of Pete Ball, our technology licensing leader, We have developed our strategy for maximizing potential revenue from the licensing of our technology and our plant traits as announced last quarter. In a few months, we have successfully procured term sheets for the licensing of our patents and for the license of our plant traits. For plant traits specifically, there's been significant interest in Calix's high fiber wheat trait for breads, pastas, and other wheat applications, as well as Calix's second generation high oleic soybean trait for heart healthy oil applications. These term sheet discussions with potential licensees are continuing to advance. I attribute this substantial progress to the right team, the right technology, and at an opportune time. Our potential licensees see the value in our offerings, especially in these times of global supply chain issues and food insecurity. Our project with a large food ingredient manufacturer who contracted with us to develop a soybean intended to produce a replacement for palm oil remains on track for completion in the first quarter of 2024. This manufacturer is funding our development costs over the term of the agreement and holds an option for future development and commercialization. Given world events, Calix has recently received inbound interest from other manufacturers and users of palm oil. And incidentally, Calix was included in a recent Wall Street Journal article about this very topic and the potential for Calix to provide solutions. We continue to anticipate that ongoing issues with global inflation in food and other products will drive further interest in additional palm oil alternatives. This includes our cosmeceutical end market, and Calix is particularly well suited to bring forward solutions based upon our proprietary technology and expertise in plant-based synthetic biology. I'd like to now turn the call over to Bill, who will cover our second quarter financial results. Bill?