Evogene Ltd.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Evagen's first quarter 2022 results conference call. All participants are at present in listen-only mode. Following management's formal presentation, instructions will be given for the question and answer session. For operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded on May 26, 2022. Before we begin, I would like to caution that certain statements made during this earnings conference call by Evigen's management will constitute forward-looking statements that relate to future events, risks, and uncertainties regarding business strategy, operations, and future performance and results of Evigen. I encourage you to review Evigen's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and read the note regarding forward-looking statements in today's earnings release, which states that statements made in the earnings release and in a similar way on this earnings conference call that are not historical facts may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. For example, Evagen is using forward-looking statements in this call when it discusses expected tasks to value creation, including potential fundraisings at the subsidiary level and untapping value and its subsidiaries' expected trials and their expected results Studies, products, advancements, commercializations, launches, pipelines, milestones, potential collaborations, target markets, and other plans for 2022 and beyond. Expected cash burn rate, the potential advantages of its technology, and its anticipated entry into new fields of activity. All forward-looking statements made herein speak only of the date of the announcements of the results. Many of the factors that impact whether forward-looking statements will come true are beyond the control of Evogen and may cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results. Evogen is under no obligation to update policy or alter our forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as otherwise required by law. We expressly disclaim any obligation to do so. More detailed information about the risk factors potentially adversely impacting our performance can be found in our reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. I now hand over to Ofer Chaviz, CEO of Evogen. Ofer?

Thank you, and good day, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today for the first quarter 2022 conference call. I will begin the call introducing some of the recent changes we have made to strengthen management. Following that, I want to talk a little about Evogen's underlying computational predictive biology platform, our three AI technology engines, and the business ecosystems built around each tech engine. I will then address the matter of funding mainly for our subsidiaries, and following that, I will provide an update on the subsidiaries' activities and recent milestones met. Elran Hafer, the CEO of Biomica, is joining us today and will give additional color on Biomica's activity, as we have made a significant advancement there. Joining me today also is Mr. Yaron Eldad, Evogen's new CFO, and this appointment represents part of our recent changes to our management team. Yaron brings significant CFO experience to Evogen, having filled various CFO positions over the last 25 years in both public and private technology, as well as biotechnology companies. I trust Yaron will prove to be a key asset to Evogen and its subsidiaries. Yaron will address you in a few minutes and cover the Evogen financials. We also recently appointed Sassi Matsliach as the Executive Vice President in charge of corporate development, and he will be responsible for Evogen's relationship management with its subsidiaries. Sassi has held various positions within Evogen since 2011. most recently as Evogen's Vice President for Legal Affairs and Corporate Secretary. I congratulate him on this promotion, and I know he will be excellent in his new role. Finally, joining Evogen's management team, we appointed Liat Feugel as Vice President Human Resource, having held various positions at Evogen since 2015, including most recently Director of Human Resource. Liat has proven her capabilities over the years, and this is a key appointment which will ensure we retain leading talent here at Evogen, especially at a time of a very tight labor market globally, including in Israel. I believe that for a disruptive company at the crossroads of life science and leading-edge technologies, it is critical that we attract and retain the best people. I congratulate Jeroen, Sasi, and Liat on their new positions and wish Avogen Management the best success. And now, to introduce some of the continued improvements we have made to our technology and business processes. As I previously mentioned, we are uniquely positioned at the crossroads between big data, AI, and life sciences, which is known as computational biology. Evogen's goal is to revolutionize the development process of new and novel life science-based products via our cutting-edge technologies. Our three tech engines relying on our computational predictive biology platform are the driving force behind our activities, and they serve as the underlying competitive advantage of each of our subsidiaries. These are MicroBoost AI targeting to support the development of product based on microbes, Campus AI targeting to support the development of product based on small molecules, and Generator AI targeting to support the development of product based on genetic elements. Each engine addresses multiple development challenges and aims to solve the problem of finding the right product candidate out of a multitude of potentials, like finding a needle in a high-tech. Our aim is to increase the probability of product success while reducing development time, failure risk, and cost. Over the years, I have been asked, why don't you license out your technology? Our goal is to maximize the value we can capture from our technology through the end product developed by its use, rather than become a simple technological service company. In other words, we feel that licensing out our solution without taking a share in the upside of the end product leaves significant value on the table. Based on this understanding, we have built around each of our tech engines and continue to build a business ecosystem. This is primarily in the form of independent subsidiaries, each of which empowers multiple product development or through strategic collaborations focused on the development of a specific product. Each ecosystem is both an interactive and also an iterative process work environment in which the more projects we embark on, the more enriched our databases and analysis capabilities became, contributing to better predictions down the road and improved probability of success for each product on its own. We expect value to be generated through our equity stack in the subsidiaries, or in the case of strategic partnerships, through success-based payments and royalties generated from the end product. To support the expansion of our tech engines ecosystems, we have recently focused on automations of processes that previously required the intervention of a bioinformatics engineer to fully autonomous implementation. This improves speed, reduce errors, and most importantly, allows product developers to get more objective information in the product development process. Looking ahead, we aim to continue to invest in our tech engines, addressing more potential discovery and better solutions to developmental challenges. I would now like to address the matter of funding. As you know, global financial markets are changing in the extreme at the moment, particularly in the U.S., for growth companies, and even more so for companies in the biotech space. Last year, Evogen raised some capital at a much higher market valuation to support today's advancements at our subsidiaries, and thankfully, we continue to maintain a solid cash position, providing stable runway for the coming year. As of March 31, 2022, our consolidated cash Keshek Viva Lens, bank deposit, and marketable security were approximately $44.6 million, which includes $6.6 million held by LaviBio. As I updated last quarter, our 2022 net burn rate is expected to be similar to that of last year, in the range of $26 to $28 million, including LaviBio, and $18 to $20 million, excluding LaviBio, which manages its own cash position. While this gives us a long enough runway, even in the current negative market environment, we continue to work to diversify funding sources at the subsidiary level. Our goal is to accelerate the subsidiary's growth and to strengthen their position as independent companies, As I will discuss in a few moments, we believe that we are at an inflection point stage whereby we are meeting critical milestones and the inherent value of our subsidiaries is becoming increasingly obvious, even if the market value of Evogen doesn't reflect it yet. Evogen's goal is to partner with value-adding companies and investors at the subsidiary level who can correctly value and appreciate the potential from the products that our subsidiaries are developing. This will allow us to demonstrate in a very public way the subsidiaries' very significant untapped value. We are currently in a number of discussions at various levels with potential strategic and financial investors towards potential fundraising and partnering, and to the extent Permissible under securities laws, we intend to provide updates. I will now move on to discuss our subsidiary activities. We will start with Biomica, our subsidiary focused on the development of drug-based on the human microbiome. And as mentioned, I would like to introduce Elran Hever, CEO of Biomica, to the call. Elran, please.

Thank you, Ofer. We are very pleased with Biomica's recent progress, which I want to briefly cover. In April, we announced an agreement with Chiba Medical Center, a global top 10 ranked hospital by Newsweek, for joint microbiome clinical research. Together, we will conduct deep sequencing and high-resolution microbiome analysis of samples obtained from patients with inflammatory bowel disease, IBD. IBD represents an approximately $20 billion market opportunity. And over the past 20 years, multiple studies have shown the pivotal role of gas microbiome in the pathogenesis of IBD. The goal of this joint work will be to identify the potential profiles, biomarkers, and therapeutic entities in order to gain additional and deeper understanding of the human microbiome in IBD patients. Our goal is to use those findings to expand our expertise in this field furthering our ability to support development of new therapeutics. We expect this analysis will be highly complementary to our previous work on IBD. As we updated before, Biomica reported positive preclinical results in our IBD program following the evaluation of BMC333 RAC candidate in DSS-induced colitis model. We demonstrated that BMC-333 ability to significantly reduce intestinal tissue damage from inflammation. We hope to begin the scale-up development process of BMC-333 later this year in preparation for an initial clinical batch production. Last week, we announced that the results from this work will be presented at the Digestive Disease Week DDW 2022 conference by Biomica's CSO, Professor Yehuda Ringel. With regard to our drug candidate, BMC-128, a combination of four microbes for supporting immunotherapy, last year we announced positive preclinical results. In a series of preclinical studies, BMC-128, given in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors immunotherapy, we were able to show significantly improved anti-tumor activity. Earlier this year, we received a clearance from the Israeli Ministry of Health to proceed with the first in-human phase one study, which is set to be held at Rambam Healthcare Campus, the largest healthcare center in northern part of Israel, and we are currently advancing towards the enrollment of the first patient. This phase one study will evaluate the safety and tolerability of BMC-128 in combination with BMS Opdivo in patients with non-small cell lung cancer, melanoma, or RTC, renal cell carcinoma. BMC-128 will be offered to oncology patients who have been found to be non-responsive to immunotherapy treatments. So if BMC-128 shows any clinical signals, that would be a wonderful additional outcome. Earlier this week, we announced that we will be presenting at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting, and that our work was also selected for the 2022 GIRA Advocate Choice Awards. That ends my update, so back to you, Ofer.