Burcon Nutrascience Corporation

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Bercon NutriScience Corporation's fiscal year 2024 third quarter results ended December 31st, 2023. Joining us today are Kip Underwood, Bercon's chief executive officer, and Jade Cheng, the company's chief financial officer. Following their remarks, we will open up the call for your questions. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star, then zero. Then, before we conclude today's call, I'll provide the company's safe harbor statement with important cautions regarding the forward-looking statements made during this call. Now, I would like to turn the conference over to the CEO of Bercon, Mr. Kip Underwood. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We are excited to report that during fiscal 2024 third quarter and year-to-date, we showcased robust execution and value creation for Bercon, marked by the achievement of three key milestones. First, we entered into a production agreement with our partner manufacturer, establishing commercial capability by integrating Bercon's proprietary process into their production facilities. Second, we were able to validate the hemp protein process through water trials. Third, we have validated customer interest in both our hemp seed isolate product as well as our pea and canola offerings. We will review these milestones in more detail on the call today. We continue to see opportunities for Berkons proteins in the market today. The growth of the plant-based beverage segment is strong. with consumers demanding plant-based foods that they both enjoy and are planet-friendly. Consumers are seeking better plant-based products that we believe will drive the need for new, improved plant-based protein offerings. We expect Bercon's new-to-the-world hemp seed and sunflower proteins to meet this demand and support the next generation of innovative food and beverage products. We have made significant strides in the execution of our Bercon 2.0 business plan. We have validated potential customer demand with both former Merit customers and new prospects. We have established a supply chain capable of bringing our products to market, and we have reaffirmed the differentiation of our products compared to competitive alternatives. Bercon is in an excellent position to accelerate our plan to bring our best-in-class protein ingredients to market. We firmly believe that 2024 will be a transformative year for Bercon, and I look forward to sharing Bercon's plan with you on the call today. Before that, I'd first like to turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Jay Ching, to provide a brief overview of the financial results for the quarter. after which I will return to provide my remarks and discuss our bullish business outlook for the fiscal year. We will open the call to questions following our remarks. Jade, please go ahead.

Thanks, Kip. Earlier today, our financial results for the third quarter of fiscal 2024 were issued in a news release and filed with CDAR, as well as posted to the investor relations section of our website. We reported a net loss of $2 million, or $0.02 per basic and diluted share for the current quarter, as compared to $16.3 million, or $0.15 per basic and diluted share in the same year-ago quarter. The decrease is due almost entirely to the impairment losses and share of loss and merit recorded in the third quarter of last year. Growth R&D expenditures went down by $200,000 from $1.2 million in the third quarter of last year to $1 million in the current quarter. The decrease is due to a reduction of intellectual property expenses as a result of Berkon's patent portfolio optimization efforts, as well as to lower stock-based compensation expense. DNA expenses this quarter did not change significantly from the same year-ago quarter. While there were reductions in expenses due to our cash conservation efforts, such as investor relations and costs related to the former US listing, professional fees increased due to consulting costs incurred for our strategic plan that have contributed to uncovering additional value and identifying further opportunities for our technologies. At December 31st, 2023, Our cash resources were $675,000 compared to $1.5 million at March 31, 2023. During this quarter, Bercon met the conditions for the second tranche of the large-scale loan facility. After December 31, Bercon drew down $1 million from the loan facility. We expect our current cash resources to fund our operations to April 2024 and further to January 2025 if the loan facility is fully drawn. These dates may potentially be extended if the company receives funding or generates revenues from other sources, including, but not limited to, hemp protein sales, government funding, pilot time processing, and scale-up validation services. With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to our CEO, Kip Underwood. Kip?

Thanks, Jake. We have made significant progress along all three of our strategic imperatives, identifying alternative revenue streams, getting closer to customers, and gaining influence over the manufacture of our products. We are focused on the execution of our strategic plan. Relative to the production of our ingredients, we cleared two important milestones during the quarter. As a result of strong customer demand, for our hemp seed protein isolate, HPS Food and Ingredients and Bercon expedited our commercialization plans for hemp. Bercon entered into a production agreement with its partner manufacturer to produce its hemp seed protein. As part of our Capital Light business model, we are leveraging the existing infrastructure of our contract manufacturer and integrating Bercon's proprietary processing equipment to build out the capability to produce Bercon's portfolio of high-purity protein ingredients. Developing this supply chain capability was a key priority for us this quarter. Our team worked closely with our partner manufacturer to validate our hemp seed protein process through water test runs. We are encouraged by the commercial progress made to date. Establishing commercial capability is critical to the execution of our Bercon 2.0 plan. It is a go-to-market plan that offers us both speed and optionality, two things we must have in order to succeed. With the flexibility to produce various protein ingredients through our contact manufacturer, we have an opportunity to accelerate our Bercon 2.0 plan. In regard to customer interest in sales, feedback for Bercon's hemp seed protein isolate continues to be positive. Following the successful launch of our hemp seed protein isolate last summer, we have prioritized customer engagement, working closely with customers to provide technical support, and now have developed a robust sales funnel. A handful of customers who have completed their evaluation of our hemp seed protein isolate are interested in moving forward with purchasing commercial quantities. Our 95% hemp seed protein isolate is neutral in flavor, off-white in color, and has the nutrition and functional profile that makes it an ideal protein ingredient in various food and beverage applications. We expect our hemp seed protein to be an ideal fit in lifestyle nutrition products, such as ready-to-mix protein powders and protein nutrition bars. According to research and markets, the global hemp foods market is expected to double in the next five years. We anticipate our 95% hemp protein to be the main ingredient in a number of food applications, including dairy alternatives, ready-to-drink beverages, baked goods, and many others. According to the research firm Mintel, hemp is a hero ingredient that consumers seek out for its nutritional and sustainability value. 32% of U.S. consumers are interested in hemp as an alternative to dairy protein. We expect our 95% hemp seed protein to potentially capture a sizable market share of this growing hemp foods market. Commercial production for hemp protein is expected to start this quarter. We intend on fulfilling customer demand for our hemp protein as well as bringing to market our other commercially proven protein ingredients such as pea and canola. The third key milestone achieved in the quarter was the validation of demand for our pea and canola products from former Merritt customers. We have conducted conversations with many former Merritt customers as well as new prospective buyers. The overall interest in our pea and canola products has surpassed all our expectations, with nearly 100% expressing interest in evaluating and or purchasing products produced with Bercon's pea and canola technologies. In fact, many companies are having difficulty identifying replacement ingredients with equal performance in their end consumer food products. We are excited to receive this level of direct customer feedback and are actively exploring how to meet a portion of this demand. To support our balance sheet, we were pleased to announce that we have entered into an agreement with Bercon's largest shareholders to access the second $5 million tranche of a $10 million loan. Subsequent to the quarter end, we drew down the first million of the second $5 million tranche. For significant additional non-dilutive funding, Bercon and its consortium partners have been working closely with Protein Industries Canada to secure co-investment on a $7 million project aimed to commercialize Bercon's hemp and sunflower proteins. We are working through the final stage of the funding process and expect to get approval for this co-investment from Protein Industries Canada in the coming weeks. Collectively, the second tranche loan, non-dilutive government funding, and anticipated hemp sales revenue this year are expected to extend Berkon's cash runway well into 2025. We firmly believe that 2024 will be a transformative year for Bercon. Looking ahead, we have a real opportunity to accelerate our Bercon 2.0 business plan to launch and sell multiple protein products in parallel. Our focus this year is to commercially produce and sell our hemp seed protein isolate to fulfill the growing customer demand. HPS and Bercon continue to work with customers to incorporate our 95% hemp seed protein isolate into product formulations. We expect hemp sales to begin in the coming months as we scale up commercial production. As well, we expect to launch additional proteins later this year, which could include Bercon sunflower and pea proteins through our partner manufacturer. With an established supply chain, we believe we can bring to market our next generation of high purity premium protein ingredients. The milestones we cleared this quarter all point back to our three strategic imperatives for Bercon 2.0, which are to identify additional sources of revenue, get closer to customers, and have more influence over the manufacturer of Bercon's proteins. We continue to adhere to our overarching strategic goals and execute against them with the vision of becoming a market-leading protein ingredient company. We took significant steps this quarter to solidify our commercial production capabilities. Building out our supply chain via a capital-wide approach is the cornerstone of our Bercon 2.0 strategy. The market feedback has been nothing short of encouraging. There is real demand for Bercon's proteins, and now we have the capabilities to fulfill that demand. Our team is focused on bringing our proteins to the global market, where we believe our products will thrive and capture a part of the growing multi-billion dollar addressable market. We are more optimistic than ever and look forward to updating everyone on our commercial progress on the next call. With that, I would like to now open the call up to questions. Operator, can you please provide the appropriate instructions?

To join the question queue, you may press star, then 1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. The first question comes from Daniel Sharabani with Saard Investments. Please go ahead.

Yes, good afternoon from Montreal, and thank you, Kip. It seems that you really developed the mechanism to show real progress going forward. And I'd like to ask you two quick questions. When do you believe it to be realistic that we can monetize on all these great successes that you're having now to see, in your opinion, when you feel there'll be a nice cash flow coming from operations? Do you think it's going to be end of 2024 or sooner? And also, the second question is, any updates on the sale of merit? It was such an exciting period where we were going to make a bid for the plant, and this was supposed to be last March, and so far we haven't heard very much. So do you have any updates, and what would be the best scenario for Bercon? Thank you very much.

Thank you, Daniel, for both questions. So let me tackle the first of, I think, top of mind for everyone. When does Berkheim begin to see revenue, and when can we achieve cash flow positive? So what we can say is we are laying the groundwork. Key to us becoming cash flow positive really is the establishing of a supply team, which we spoke to, the understanding of downstream demand from our customers, which we have validated, and now it's up to us to produce, launch, and sell those products to the market. So with those efforts, we should see revenue inside 2024 for our hemp protein product. Relative to merit, the first thing I want to say about merit is anything that happens with the merit assets is additive to our Bercon 2.0 plan. Our capital light model does not need, does not include any financial benefit from the merit assets. What is also true is the merit assets are still for sale. And we believe there's a variety of ways that Bercon can play a role with those. Because in the end, we know there's market demand, we know the product's differentiated, and we know the facility was purpose-built for Bercon's technology. Given that, we believe there's a range of ways that we could participate and have a financial benefit from that arrangement. On one end of the spectrum would be to run, buy, or own in some form or fashion. We could partially own. We could license the technology to somebody else, and they could run and pull a royalty stream out. Or we could actually, if somebody else bought the facility to repurpose, we could actually contract manufacture inside the facility that's purpose-built for our product. So we see a continuum of opportunity with the merit facility. We see it is all additive to our current plan, and our cap-life plan is truly independent of that, right? So we execute our plan. and let the receiver drive the merit timeline, and then when that situation resolves itself, we will be ready, regardless of the outcome.

Thank you. Good luck, and we're rooting for you.

Thank you. We appreciate that.

The next question comes from Bruce Lazenby, private investor. Please go ahead.

Yeah, Kip, I like the two points you just covered, but maybe a little bit more directly. Can you give us some ballpark? I know forward-looking is always a challenge, but everybody does it. Are we talking in 2024 possible tens of thousands of revenue, hundreds of thousands, millions? And the second question goes back to the merit thing. It's been a while. I mean, I'm familiar with receiverships. They take a while. But is this about to be resolved, or is this going to be in limbo for another several quarters?

Well, I'll tackle the second one first. We're not in position to predict what the receiver is going to do or not do, right? It's certainly, you're right, it will be a year as of early March when the assets went into receivership. So what we can do is what we can control, which is stay close to the receiver in dialogue, understand the process, and then have and be ready, have plans ready to act regardless of how it turns out. And that's the part we can control, and that's our focus, right? Right. Relative to cash flow and revenue, I think what we can say is we're very excited about our hemp seed protein launch. We're excited to move into production and sales. And those sales, I think, inside of 24 will be significant relative to Burkina's annual spend.

Close enough. Thank you.

Once again, if you have a question, please press star, then one. I will now hand the Q&A session over to Paul Lam, Director of Investor Relations, for questions from the webcast. Please go ahead, Paul.

Thank you, Operator. We have a few questions from the webcast. I'd like to start with Joe Sawyer, a private investor. Where will Bercon produce the pea and canola to meet your stated demand? Kip mentioned that the current level of demand for pea and canola has far exceeded expectations. Is the demand equal to that of the former merit facility?

Thanks for the question. What we can say about our supply chain is we've built out a supply chain that allows us to produce to meet our Ford financial plan and establish those in the marketplace. That's the piece we can speak to beyond getting into, you know, confidential overall capacity pieces, but the supply chain we see and the demand we see both enable the full execution of our current financial plan.

Okay. Next, we have several questions from David Gaetjens, but I will summarize. I believe some of them have been answered already, but there is one. David is interested in understanding if there have been any discussions regarding along the licensing of Bercon's technology?

Thank you for the question. And I think those are always ongoing conversations, right? So for us, if we go back to our Bercon 2.0 plan, one of the keys is the optionality. And how do we monetize our intellectual property and provide a return to our shareholders? In any of our technologies we always have, do we build? Do we partner? Do we license? do we sell? And we are always in discussions and evaluation for all four of those. One of the keys to a Bercon 2.0 plan is to get our products into market, under our control, to establish their value, to establish the market, and establish the financial opportunity. In doing so, not only do we get to a place where we have our own revenue and profit, but we also put ourselves in a much better position to license or sell the technology potentially in the future. Thank you for the question.

And next question we have from a private investor. Do you need additional capital to build out your partner manufacturer's facility in order to produce pea and canola proteins? If so, how much additional capital is needed?

We do not need any additional capital to execute our capital-like business model based on the current plan. So we have the capability, the capital, the capacity in line to produce. Certainly, if there was an opportunity to accelerate or move faster or sell more or generate higher overall revenue and profit, we would evaluate that. But at this time, no additional capital to execute our plan.

Okay, Joe Sawyer actually came back with a follow-up question. He wasn't too clear on how Bercon would meet the demand to actually produce pea and canola. Where would there be a facility to meet that demand?

Thanks, Joe. Joe, let me clarify then. So the supply chain we have put together through our partner manufacturer has the capability to produce... our portfolio, so that would include pea, canola, hemp, and sunflower. In addition, it has the capacity to meet our four business plans. So we have capability and capacity to meet our four business plans as it is today. Thanks, Joe.

Joe, I think that answered your question. I am not seeing any additional questions. Maybe I'll give it a few seconds to see if any other questions come up. I think we're good. Operator, can you provide the... Thank you, everyone.

At this time, this concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Underwood for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Operator. First, I would like to thank our team for their efforts over the past quarter and their commitment to Bercon and Bercon's vision. I would also like to personally thank all of our shareholders for their patience and understanding as we execute our Bercon 2.0 plan, which in the end will allow us to capitalize on the next wave of plant-based food growth. Thanks again for your time today. Goodbye, all.

Before we conclude today's call, I would like to take a moment to read the company's safe harbor statement. This call contains forward-looking statements or forward-looking information within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward looking statements or forward looking information involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results, performances, prospects, and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. Forward looking statements or forward looking information can be identified by words such as anticipate, intend, plan, goal, project, estimate, expect, believe, future, likely, can, may, should, could, will, potentially, and similar references to future periods. All statements other than statements of historical fact included during this call are forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that such statement will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements or information. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from Berkon's plans and expectations include the actual results of business negotiations, marketing activities, adverse general economic, market or business conditions, regulatory changes, and other risks and factors detailed herein and from time to time in the filings made by Bercon with securities regulators and stock exchanges, including in the section entitled Risk Factors in Bercon's Annual Information Form Filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators on www.cedar.com. Any forward-looking statement or information only speaks as of the date on which it was made and expect As may be required by applicable securities law, Berkon disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Although Berkon believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, and accordingly, investors should not rely on such statements. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this call is being recorded and the webcast will be available for replay on the company's website starting later this evening. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us today for our presentation. You may now disconnect.