Moolec Science SA

Good morning and welcome to Mulex Science's third quarter 2024 conference call. My name is Bill Zima of ICR, Strategic Communications and Advisory. During this conference call, all participant lines will be muted until the management's remarks when there will be a question and answer session. Please also note that today's session is being recorded. Today, MULEC announced its third quarter fiscal year 2024 business highlights. The document is now available on the Competence Investor Relations website at ir.mulecscience.com. This morning, you will hear from Gaston Palladini, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Mulek Science, together with José López Lecoubet, Chief Financial Officer, and Amit Dhingra, Chief Science Officer. In today's call, we will be referring to a presentation that is available on the company's investor relations website. Moving to slide two, this conference call is mainly for informational purposes, and during this call, the company will be making forward-looking statements regarding future events and results, which are not historical facts and include but are not limited to statements about the company's beliefs and expectations. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Further information regarding these and other risks are included in the company's annual report on Form 20F, followed by the SEC, also available on the company's Investor Relations website. Now, moving to slide three, I would like to turn the call over to MULEX CEO Gaston. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Bill, and good morning to everyone. It's a pleasure to once again provide our latest business update. Today's agenda will address three main topics. First, I will highlight on our outstanding progress on Piggy Soy. Second, Amit Dhingra, Mulek Chief Science Officer, will walk you through our highlights on Safflower Platform. And finally, José López de Cube, our Chief Financial Officer, will present our financial highlights from Q3. Let's move now to the next slide. I want to share with you how proud I am of our team consistent execution on all fronts. Today, I would like to hone in on our news breaking success on the regulatory pathway with our achievement on Biggie Soy. I cannot simply describe how big of an accomplishment it is to be the first company in the industry to obtain regulatory approval of this kind from the USDA APHIS. As I said before in the press release from this particular topic, MULEC is unlocking the power of plants by leveraging science to overcome climate change and global food security concerns. I am very proud of the MULEC team creating value for the shareholders and the planet at the same time, while rewriting the history of biotechnology. With this approval, USDA APHIS RSR has deemed piggy soy unlikely to pose increased plant pest risk related to non-ingenuine soybeans, thus giving MULEC a green light to move and ship our product without individual permits relating to the APHIS regulation. For those new to the story, MULEC developed a unique and patented soybean platform technology under the trademark piggy soy. Our scientific team has achieved a high level of expression of animal meat proteins in soybeans, where the seeds exhibited porcine protein expression level up to 26.6% over total soybean protein. Now turn to the next slide so we can share with you why we understand Piggy Soy is relevant for our planet. In MULAC, we work daily with the mission to create food ingredients that can make a positive impact on the food industry environmental footprint and further strengthen food security. First of all, the industry is already growing soybeans in order to feed pigs that are then slaughtered to produce processed meat products. and cuts of meat. Roughly one acre of traditional soybean can feed 10 pigs used for livestock. To produce this livestock, it is estimated that more than 60,000 liter of water are required and that the process produce around 550 kilogram of CO2 equivalent emissions. Now talking about mullet, in contrast, if we achieve to farm one acre of piggy soy, this acre could potentially produce pork meat proteins equivalent to the same 10 pigs as well, while not requiring any additional water to produce them and will not produce extra CO2 emissions. Is that amazing? Turn with me to the next slide to see what we understand is piggy soy value proposition. I would like to give you one perspective on the attractive value presented by our piggy soy platform and why we are confident it is a market potential going forward. This is currently how the industry works. As highlighted in the previous slide, the industry consumes a significant amount of soybeans used as animal feed to support livestock, later slaughtered for meat. The industry is also using traditional soy protein ingredients. which are genetic soy commodity plants used as meat extender or fillers in the processed meat product, such as sausages, burger, nuggets, meatballs, dumplings, and so on. By the way, these kind of products represent 70% of the trillion dollar global meat market. It's huge, $700 billion. market. These traditional soy protein ingredients contain no meat flavors and other meat properties when compared to meat and need to be mixed with extra ingredients, mostly chemical, colorant, and flavoring in order to provide different functionalities to processed meat products. By the way, I am very well acquainted with this traditional meat industry since I am part of the fourth generation of one of the largest processed meat players in South America, Paladini. So now let's talk about Mule and what Mule will offer. Mule will leverage commodity supply chains, introducing science at the beginning of the value chain as new ingredients for food companies. Remember, we started with seeds. And how we will do this? Well, piggy soy will be a unique product used as a meat replacement, as an ingredient with a higher level of nutrition, could potentially boost the same iron content, flavor and color as true meat. As a result, food processors could replace part or eventually all additives used for coloring and flavoring, as well as real meat from slaughterhouses. Now I leave you with Amit Dhingra, MULEC Chief Science Officer. We will provide an overview of MULEC science and picky soy milestones on top of the subflower platform highlights. Amit, over to you.

Thank you, Gaston, and good morning to everyone. As critical as our regulatory approval milestone is, we continue to work on commercializing our product. I want to emphasize our team's excellent track record of effectively delivering on scientific and product development milestones. From the discovery stage in 2020 to the plan transformation stage, regulatory approval applications and patent applications, we have consistently produced results and continue to build our IP portfolio and file regulatory applications in other territories. With the approval from the USDA office, we started field trials at three different locations in May 2024 with fourth generation seeds. Everything is progressing on schedule and as planned originally. Starting next year, we will strategize the breeding of the selected events and scale up the production in two to four years. The commercialization process will likely begin in 2027, 2028. We look forward to updating you on our progress and implementation of our plans in subsequent business updates. Moving on to the next slide, I would like to highlight our recent achievements for Mulex's staff flower platform. in terms of product development and intellectual property. Moving on to slide 10. I will begin with our team's progress on gamma linoleic acid safflower oil or GLASO. This nutritional oil has many varied applications. such as dietary supplements and functional foods, cosmetic and personal care, pharmaceutical industry, food and beverage, animal nutrition, and others. We are proud to share that our Glasso is now in the pre-commercialization stages. In February of 2024, we started trial production of Glasso at our toll processor facility as we optimized, processed, and produced roughly five tons of material we developed pre-commercial collaborations. We began planting in April and May 2024. We have successfully contracted 600 acres of production with key growers to plant glass of seeds for crushing purposes. We have additionally contracted another 60 acres, which have been planted for seed production. We expect to produce roughly 200 to 400 tons of safflower during this production season. Shortly before the year ends, we plan to harvest, crush, and market our 2024 Glasso seeds as we engage with potential customers and partners. Now to the next slide. I would like to highlight our exciting progress on SPC2 product. Two U.S. patents were granted for SPC2. These patents extend the protection of our technology and processes that were used to increase the expression levels in safflower seeds until 2041. Building up on our intellectual property portfolio is one of the strategic pillars at Moblec. To protect our leading-edge innovations in the coming years, we continue to pursue patents for all technologies and processes across strategic geographies. Now, I'd like to turn the presentation over to my colleague, Jose, for the financial overview. Thank you very much.