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spk04: Welcome to the first quarter 2021 financial results and business update conference call for Yield 10 Bioscience. During the call, participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presenters will address questions from analysts today. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference call over to your host, Yield 10 Vice President of Planning and Corporate Communications, Lynn Brum.
spk00: Thank you, Paul, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the YIELD 10 Bioscience First Quarter 2021 Conference Call. Joining me on the call today are President and CEO, Dr. Oliver Peoples, Vice President of Research and Chief Science Officer, Dr. Christy Snell, and Chief Accounting Officer, Chuck Hazzard. Earlier this afternoon, YIELD 10 issued our First Quarter 2021 financial results. This press release, as well as slides that accompany today's presentation, are available on the Investor Relations Events section of our website at yelpennbio.com. Let's turn to slide two. Please note that as part of our discussion today, management will be making forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore you should not place undue reliance on them. Investors are also cautioned that statements that are not strictly historical constitute forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These risks include risks and certainties detailed in YieldTen's filings with the SEC. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this conference call. Now I turn the call over to Ali.
spk02: Thanks, Lynn. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining our call. Since the start of 2021, we have made strong progress advancing YieldTen's business. Today I'll provide an update on how our business plans are progressing. Christy will highlight our recent R&D accomplishments, after which I'll review the first quarter financials and summarize our key milestones for 2021 and beyond. Then we will open the call for questions. Let's turn to slide three. I will focus here on several key accomplishments that set us on the path to crystallize our strategic vision for Yield 10, utilizing camelina as a platform crop to produce fuel, food, and PHA bioplastic. Earlier this year, we reported achieving a key proof of concept milestone for producing PHA bioplastic in field-grown camelina. We are scaling up the two best PHA camelina lines with up to 6% PHA by seed weight in our 2021 field test program. We plan to use seed from this for larger scale planting in 2022 and initial PHA product prototyping. We engaged a leading US seed company to perform seed scale-up of our CRISPR-edited E3902 oil content line, spring double haploid line, and a disease-resistant elite camelina line. This cycle of seed scale-up was enabled by plantings we conducted in California over this past winter. With permitting substantially complete, we've begun planting for spring 2021 field tire program in the U.S. and Canada. In January, the first U.S. patent was granted to Rothamsted Research for co-producing DHA plus EPA omega-3 oil in Camelina. In April, USDA has confirmed that our new CRISPR-edited C3007 Camelina lines are exempt from regulation under 7 CFR Part 340 under the SECURE rule, a new crop regulatory framework in the U.S., In the first quarter, a U.S. patent was granted to the University of Missouri, covering modifications to C3007 genes to increase olive content and oilseed crops. We have an exclusive license to this technology. We also strengthened the balance sheet in early 2021, which we anticipate will support the achievement of value-building milestones into 2023. Let's start with slide four. This slide illustrates how we are translating science innovation to revenue growth. Using our technology platform, the Trade Factory, we've discovered and evaluated multiple genes for increasing crop seed yield, seed oil content, and for making new oil seed products. As a result, we now have 21 patent families in prosecution and two new recently issued U.S. patents. Our technology success enables two distinct revenue opportunities, improved camelina varieties for our camelina products business and trade licensing to major seed companies for use in other crops. Let's turn to slide five. Let me share with you why we're excited about the oil set Camelina and our product targets. Camelina seed has a good oil and protein composition and has been used for human food production for over 100 years. This crop can be used as a rotation crop in the northwest of Canada, and its fast 90 to 100 day growth cycle makes it attractive as a relay or cover crop in the Midwest for double cropping with corn and soybeans, another way to increase farm revenues vegetable oil, and food production. With our ability to accelerate its development by genetically reprogramming the seed to improve its field performance and produce higher value products, we believe there is tremendous upside for camelina as a major crop. Let's start to slide six. We plan the sequential launch of products from our camelina platform, each enabling increased farm and product revenue per acre, which we expect to drive farmer adoption. We estimate that our two differentiated proprietary products, Omega-3 oils and PHA bioplastics, have the potential to drive 2030 annual revenue product potential of up to $4.2 billion. However, in order to get there, we plan to establish the operating foundation of the business, starting with Elite Camelina, followed by the higher value Omega-3 Camelina to drive revenue, margins, and cash flow. Today, we will focus on these two activities. In parallel, we will continue the development work of the commercial PHA Camelina lines. Our internal projections indicate that we should then be able to commercialize the PHA Camelina based on cash flow from the business. For elite Camelina used to produce oil and meal, we see the potential for $300 to $500 in product revenue per acre as yields and oil content are improved, and a market in the hundreds of millions by 2030. We expect the markets for oil and meal will be supplied in the future using co-products from PHA camelina based on its higher overall value. For omega-3 camelina, based on the higher value for aquaculture and nutraceutical markets, we see a potential for doubling the product value per acre to about $600 to $900. This is a high-value opportunity requiring a limited acreage. We estimate 300,000 to 700,000 acres of omega-3 camulina production would enable revenue in the range of 180 to 630 million, a strong foundation for yield-tenance growth. For PHA bioplastic, we would aim to produce a higher-value product mix of PHA bioplastics, oil, and meal. Given the magnitude of the plastics replacement opportunity, success with this product is expected to drive tens of millions of acres of adoption. And we projected by 2030, we could have two to four million acres with revenue potential up to $3.6 billion. Let's start to slide seven. Here, our strategic goal is to establish the Cameluna products business operations and develop elite varieties for the future deployment of the omega-3 and PHA traits. This effort will require us to make new hires in the areas of seed operations, regulatory affairs, and business development. We are executing multi-acre seed scale-up of the E3902, DH12, and disease-resistant lines, as well as engaging contractors with seed scale-up planned for the fall-winter 2021 season for planting in 2022. For guidance purposes, each acre of seed produced for planting can enable the planting of 100 to 250 acres of camelina for production. In business development, we are reaching out to growers, crushers, and oil and meal end-users These include renewable diesel companies, as well as salmon feed and farming players in North and South America. Renewable diesel may provide some tailwinds for this activity. Let's turn to slide eight. Low carbon fuel standards are driving an emerging opportunity for the use of oil from elite camelina in the renewable fuel space. Let me be clear, we will not be buying or subsidizing acres on behalf of energy companies, and we'll look to secure offtake agreements prior to moving to larger acreage production. According to a recent report in Biodiesel Magazine, there may be as much as 5.5 billion gallons of new or potential capacity in the U.S., which would translate to approximately 45 billion pounds of vegetable oil feedstock demand. It's worth noting the oil company names and the list of participants in this activity. These may be potential partners for Yuletan. This new demand will face headwinds from the food, beef, fuel debate as a disconnect between U.S. vegetable oil supply and demand grows. And this is where we may be able to take advantage of the short growth cycle of camelina and its potential for double cropping with soybean. The oil from soybean plus the oil from camelina in the same 12-month period could bring oil production per acre above 1,100 pounds per acre, more than double the oil from soybean alone. Co-products from soybean and camelina seed crushing are protein meal for feed and food. It's early days for yield 10 in this space and we plan to provide updates as we make progress. Let's turn to slide nine. Omega-3 camelina opportunity is the first and furthest along of our two high-value sustainable products. The omega-3 fatty acids, EP and DHE, are essential in human diets for development, health, and wellness, and come primarily from fish. Farmed salmon, an excellent source of omega-3s, is currently growing at 7% per year and accounts for over 75% of salmon consumed. Aquaculture feed currently relies on a dwindling supply of omega-3 fish oil produced from ocean-harvested fish. New new to surrogate markets for omega-3s are adding pressure for this scarce resource, creating a fish oil supply-demand disconnect. We believe we can serve this market based on the agreement with the Rothamsted Institute for the EPA plus DHA omega-3 chemoline oil technology signed late last year. Our longer-term vision is to establish Camelina as the gold standard sustainable vegan aqua feed source for farm salmon production, including essential EPA, DHA, omega-3 oils, high-quality protein, and other feed ingredients. Let's turn to slide 10. We are positioning this technology to enable revenue and margin growth between the launch of our LEET and PHA Camelina lines. This technology is at a high resident readiness level and provides a significant market opportunity to bring a land-based drop-in replacement for fish oil to the aquaculture market with additional potential in nutraceuticals. The technology developed by Rothamsted with 20% EPA plus DHA fatty acid in oil already exceeds the profile of Northern Hemisphere fish oil. Professor Napier and his collaborators have conducted multiple years of field trials and fish feeding studies. Furthermore, clinical studies with the Camelina EPA DHA oil have shown it to be equivalent to fish oil from the human diet, and oddly enough, without the fishy taste, which opens up additional opportunities in nutraceuticals with a very low cost basis. Let's turn to slide 11. We've been focused on developing the commercialization strategy for omega-3 oil in South America for the salmon feed market in Chile. Outreach to prospective value chain partners and end users is underway in both Argentina and Chile, and we are charting a regulatory path forward to enable the commercialization of oil and meal. The Rothamsted team also continues to make progress. A U.S. patent was granted to Rothamsted earlier this year covering the coal production of DHA and EPA in Camelina. The Rothamsted team plans to further scale off of the LEAP omega-3 Camelina line in 2021. And later this week, Professor Napier is presenting a paper at the American Oil Chemist's annual meeting, providing an overview of the development of omega-3 technology. In addition, one of his collaborators is presenting a poster on the human studies. We look forward to keeping you posted as we progress along the path toward commercialization of this exciting technology. Let's turn to slide 12. We currently have four non-exclusive research license agreements in place with ag majors, each evaluating our traits and our target crop. with the option to negotiate a commercial license. The arrows in the slide indicate the term of the research license agreements. In reviewing our priorities for 2021, we decided to defer further internal trade development work in corn and plan to seek partners for development of performance traits in these crops. Related to the grain platform, we are seeing higher interest from the ag sector in new crop traits. This may be driven in part by higher commodity prices and their unique technology approach. We also believe there's a growing recognition that although CRISPR genome editing and the improved regulatory environment are very positive drivers for ag biotech, the major challenge remains the efficient identification of high-value gene traits. I will now turn the call over to Christy.
spk01: Thanks, Olly. Hello, everyone. 2021 is off to a good start. Our research team has made good progress with activities supporting regulatory permitting, field trial contracting, and the startup planning of our 2021 field testing program. We have also made progress on seed scale-up for our Elite Camelina Alliance. With the spring program moving ahead, we are also taking in the steps needed to secure additional field testing and seed scale-up in contra-season locations for fall 2021. Now let's turn to slide 13. As the Camelina products business opportunity became clearer, we began working to deploy herbicide tolerance and disease resistant traits to create elite varieties as we developed the crop for commercialization. These are now a high priority as they are important for large scale adoption and provide value add for the farmer in terms of cost, convenience, yield protection, and farm revenue. Based on discussions with regulatory authorities and experts, we believe that we can take advantage of the new, more favorable regulatory environment in North America. Here, we are working to rapidly deploy well-known herbicide-tolerant gene traits previously approved in other crops with a long history of safe use and approval. As you know, we are also progressing a number of performance traits aimed at increasing seed yield and oil content. These will provide benefits for farm revenue, oil and meal cost of goods sold, and will lower the carbon intensity score of the oil for renewable diesel. Given the potential for a disconnect in vegetable oil supply and demand, our oil concentrates may become of increasing interest to third parties. These traits include the E3902 line currently being scaled, as well as C3007 and a C3020 new oil trait from the grain platform. As we fully develop our elite camelina varieties, they will provide a high-performance seed chassis for the commercial omega-3 and PHA bioplastic traits. Collectively, the combination of traits in elite camelina varieties with value-added products will enable crop diversification, increase farm revenue, and provide low-cost, sustainable solutions to businesses and consumers. Now let's turn to slide 14. As Ali mentioned, we have engaged a weeding seed company to perform seed scale-up of three Camelina lines. E3902, a CRISPR-edited high-oil line. DH12, a doubled haploid elite line. and a third line, which is a disease-resistant elite line. Seed scale-up of these lines in the spring 2021 season is expected to enable future planning at the 100 to 1,000 acre scale for subsequent larger scale planting, as well as for producing oil and meal for customer sampling. There is lead time involved for planning contra-season seed scale-up. Therefore, we are working to engage contractors for additional seed scale-up activities in fall-winter 2021. In the first quarter, we focused on contracting and permitting for our 2021 field trials for sites in the US and Canada. This activity is substantially complete and planting has already begun at some of the sites. In our field program this year, we will be planting elite camelina germplasm varieties and camelina with novel yield and oil traits. In addition, we will scale up our two best PHA camelina prototype lines. Our team is also focused on developing elite commercial camelina varieties with herbicide tolerance, disease resistance, and improved seed yield and oil content. These lines will serve as platform camelina varieties for nutritional oils and PHA traits. Our current scale-up work with PHA Camelina lines will allow us to expand acreage for growth going forward and to make pilot material for testing and product applications. We are also working on developing commercial events for the PHA Camelina trait to enable large acreage deployment. We continue to support our partners evaluating traits in our other commercial crops and are also seeing increased interest from current and potential partners for new traits from our grain platform to evaluate in their crops of interest. In-house, we continue to leverage grain in support of our Camelina activities with the new oil content trait C3020 going into field trials this year. I would like to thank our team for their hard work in 2021 and for staying focused on our priorities. This has positioned us to meet proof points for elite Camelina line development progress our PHA trade, and to further develop our Camelina technology for specialty products. Ali, back to you.
spk02: Thanks, Christy. Please turn to slide 15 and let's cover a few financial highlights. We ended first quarter 2021 with $22.7 million in cash, cash equivalents, and investments. During first quarter 2021, we raised net proceeds of $12 million from a public offering of common stock, as well as $3.9 million from the exercise of warrants. better aligning our balance sheet with our business strategy. We have no debt. Our net operating cash usage was 2.6 million for the first quarter of 2021. We expect our cash on hand together with the expected revenue from our current government grant to support our operations into early 2023. We estimate that our net operating cash usage for the full year of 2021 will be within the range of 10 to 11 million. This includes estimates for our contracted and planned seed scale-up activities, as well as planned hires and other support in business development, regulatory affairs, and seed operations, as we direct this investment towards executing our business plan. Let's now review the first quarter of 2021 operating results. The company reported a net loss of 2.6 million for the first quarter of 2021, compared to a net loss of 3.6 million for the first quarter of 2020. Total research grant revenues in the first quarter of 2021 were $196,000 versus $179,000 in the first quarter of 2020. In the first quarter of 2021, research and development expenses were $1.3 million compared to $1.5 million in the first quarter of 2020. General and admin expenses were $1.4 million in the first quarter of 2021, level with G&A expenses in the first quarter of 2020. For more details on our financial results, please refer to the earnings release. Now let's turn to slide 16, the upcoming milestones. In 2021, we will continue to focus on the following milestones. Executing our 2021 field testing and seed scale-up program. Everything is substantially complete, and with planting underway, we are on track. Continue to expand the elite camelina germplasm collection. Progressing the business plan for camelina products, which will include working to access year-round or contra-season seed scale-up capabilities, and obtaining the regulatory permits to transfer certain Camelina lines to South America. Advancing the commercial launch plan for Camelina Omega-3 oils in South America, where we have recently engaged a seed service provider and business development support. Broadening our capabilities, particularly in regulatory affairs, seed operations, and business development, either through hiring or other arrangements. securing strategic industry collaborations to address market opportunities across the value chain, enabled by our traits and products, and securing revenue based on generating commercial trade licenses. As we continue to expand our intellectual property portfolio, which is crucial for a small company, and the three recent patent grants are integral to this effort. Now I'd like to turn the call back over to Lynn for questions.
spk00: Thanks, Ollie. Paul, we're now ready for questions.
spk04: Thank you will now be conducting a question and answer session, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad the confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star to if you'd like to remove your question from the queue one moment, please, while we pull for questions. Thank you. Our first question comes from Anthony Vendetti with Maxim Group. Please proceed with your question.
spk05: Thanks. Olly, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about these Camelina lines, the CRISPR-edited ones, and just talk about where you're at with that opportunity. You have exclusive license to this technology. What's the timeline, next steps?
spk02: What could we look at in the next – Yeah, so basically, you know, there's a number of oil content trays that we're working on. One is E3902, the one we're scaling up. That's actually – that was all developed in-house by Christy and her team. And it's actually already received, you know, approval from the USDA for this non-regulated – are exempt from regulation depending on the particular words used by the regulatory authorities on any given day of the week. So the good thing is it essentially doesn't require to be treated as a regulatory product. So we have successfully scaled that, you know, done field trials with that for two years with a 5% oil increase. And when you begin to look at these markets, the growing demand for vegetable oil, obviously traits that increase oil content and seed without impairing yield actually have considerable value. So that's one. The C3007 is in license from the University of Missouri. It's a little complex because there's multiple copies of it. And what we're really doing is trying to optimize the combination of edits that are required to actually define that outcome. And then the third one that's progressing out of our green platform is an entirely new discovery. But again, Christy and her team have actually engineered Camelina to overproduce this particular gene product and discovered that it actually increases oil by 10%. And a good way to think about Camelina, a 10% increase in oil given the higher value in oil is about the same value as a 10% increase in CGL. And obviously, these are things that we think can be important, not only in Camelina, but potentially in other oil seed crops as well.
spk05: just as a follow-up though so how how how will yield 10 monetize this with within the next 12 to 24 months how do you how do you see the progression and the opportunities for yield 10. yeah so right now i mean i think we you know for the first time we you know you see in our presentation we talk uh
spk02: and dedicate a whole slide to this whole renewable diesel driver. Now, that's been coming for a while, but I think it's becoming much clearer. It's actually creating a significant, you know, supply-demand disconnect. So, obviously, you know, to meet that demand, the petroleum-based diesel companies are literally going to have to source low-carbon intensity renewable feedstocks from that, primarily from vegetable oil. I think the The story around using waste pan and everything is kind of going to be used up. So this is all going to have to come from additional supply of vegetable oil, which opens the door to camelina as a potential source of oil feedstock for that application. Now, keep in mind, the fuel space is very cost sensitive. And so although we are looking at this, the reason we're scaling up these seeds this year and plan to scale them up further over the winter is to be able to plant much larger acreages as we move ahead, pending, you know, the execution of agreements for offtake with some of the companies in that space. And so, you know, we're positioning ourselves to go forward and scale this up to generate revenue. But, of course, we're not going to do this at risk on behalf of oil companies. That just doesn't make any sense to us.
spk05: Sure. So in the interim, last question before I return it to the queue is – Are there any additional grants that you see here on the horizon in the next three to six months? Anything new that you're working on?
spk02: So, you know, I think we're always working on new grant applications. And one thing that's really, I think, interesting with the new administration is certainly you're seeing a much greater emphasis on carbon management, climate change, low-carbon technologies, carbon sequestration. And ultimately, the importance of agriculture in that area is potentially very, very large. So we're well aware of what's going on. And we do routinely look for additional funding opportunities. We don't typically disclose what we've applied for until such times as we get feedback from the agencies. So we know that there's opportunities out there. And as we've done in the past, we plan to seek non-dilutive financing where we can get it.
spk05: Sure. Okay, great. I will turn it back over to the queue. Thank you very much.
spk01: Thanks, Anthony.
spk04: Thank you. Our next question comes from Amit Dial with HC Wayne. Please proceed with your question.
spk03: Thank you. Hi, guys. With respect to the field trials for 2021, what are the targets or results we are aiming for? Any color, what kind of improvements we might be looking for?
spk02: So, obviously, there's a number of things going on in these field trials this year. Obviously, first and foremost, we're scaling up some of these new lines, E3902, DH12, and a disease-resistant Camelina line. The goal there is to secure large amounts of essentially high-quality seeds for subsequent further scale-up in planting. That's going to be one outcome. The second outcome is we continue to look at the performance of our oil content traits and the C3004 trait in particular, given its impact on photosynthesis and plant figure and potentially yield. And then, of course, we are progressing scale-up of the two best PHA Camelina lines. Now, I think we've been very clear with the investor community that we see the PHA Camelina obviously is having enormous potential value, but we've also been pretty clear that it will be the third product launch after the Omega-3 oil. And so we know we've got work to do to develop commercial quality lines. But in the meantime, we're scaling it up for a couple of reasons. One is to enable even larger planting in 2022. And that's really to support for product development work. We do plan to do some basic analysis and extraction PHA from the lines at the end of this year, assuming successful scale up. But the goal is to really begin to develop the system to enable this to be commercialized at very large scale. And the sooner we can begin to generate data on the PHA Camelina, processing a PHA Camelina, but also to begin the regulatory analysis associated with getting it approved for very large-scale planting, obviously the sooner we get that started, the better.
spk03: With respect to your efforts in South America, is there a specific reason why you chose Argentina and Chile for the initial commercialization?
spk02: I'll give you, yes. So the omega-3 oil is a really exciting product. And obviously, you know, Europe has a kind of an odd moratorium on the use of GM feed ingredients in farmed salmon. The Norwegians, for some dubious reason, prefer to harvest polluted fish from the ocean and extract the oil and meal from that and then feed it to salmon. That's completely not sustainable, and it's actually devastating. native caches around Africa and South America. So that's really something that's going to have to stop. But in South America, in Chile in particular, they have a mandate to begin to move away from harvested fish. And that drive is making the industry down there very interested in drop-in replacement alternatives to the harvested fish. And so we really see as a sort of way to launch this outside of the North America where there's still an intellectual property challenge, but also to address the second largest market in the world with the same feed companies that actually are the main suppliers in Norway, which is, if you like, the large production area with about 60% market share, Chile has around 30. The other area we believe we'll be addressing in 2025 is really North America because of the growth of inland aquaculture. where you're seeing people farming salmon in Florida, California, Maine, Indiana, New York State. Something I never thought I'd ever see, but it's actually growing considerably with very large investments going in to create what they call closed-loop aquaculture systems for salmon production.
spk03: Right. Understood. That's interesting. Thank you for that. This last one from me, you know, with respect to the feedstock opportunity with the renewable diesel side of things. Have you started any discussions with any of these, you know, companies that you highlighted in the slides? Are those just names of some players that are looking into the RDA business? Just wanted to get a sense of, you know, where you were with those discussions.
spk02: Yeah, so obviously, you know, I would say there's been outreach to Yield10, and we're responding to it. That's really how this has sort of begun to manifest itself. I mean, so, you know, we'll provide additional color as we go forward here. But what we do see is we see these investments going in. The law in California, now Oregon, Washington State, Canada, and Europe is requiring them to do this. And so a certain amount of their diesel fuel they sell has to be based on low carbon intensity feedstocks. And so, you know, this is something they more or less have to do, which is why the capital investments are going in. But when you look at these oil companies and you look at the scale of this globally, then obviously securing supplies of feedstock for those opportunities are going to become really, really important to these companies.
spk03: Understood. That's a landline. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks a lot.
spk04: Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Lynn Brum for any closing comments.
spk00: Yeah, thanks, Paul. And I'll now turn the call to Ollie for his closing remarks.
spk02: I'd like to personally thank all of you for joining us on the call tonight, and especially our shareholders for your continued support. 2021 is off to a good start with our field trial and seed scale-up activities now well underway. We are focusing on promising market opportunities for oil and meal from our elite camelina, As well as in the Rotham said, omega-3 technology is a sustainable drop in replacement for fish oil. I want to thank everyone at EOTED for setting us on track to reach our goals in 2021. Have a nice evening.
spk04: This concludes today's conference.
spk01: Thank you, everybody.
spk04: This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation. Have a wonderful evening.
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