Earnings Call Transcript - CBUS Q2 2024

Wade King, CFO

Thank you and good afternoon. This is Wade King, the Chief Financial Officer of Cibus. I would like to thank you for taking time to join us for Cibus’ Second Quarter Of 2024 Financial Results and Corporate Update Conference Call and Webcast. Presenting with me today is Rory Riggs, our Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman; and Peter Beetham, Co-Founder, President and Chief Operating Officer. Before we begin the call, 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 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 Cibus’ SEC filings for a list of associated risks. This conference call is being webcast. The webcast link, along with our press release and corporate presentation, are available on the Investor Relations section of cibus.com to assist in your analysis of the business. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Riggs. Go ahead, Rory.

Rory Riggs, CEO

Thanks, Wade. I would like to begin this call with a high-level update on our business activities in this quarter and in this year. Following my remarks, Peter will walk you through our recent developments in more detail. In addition, he will review the value proposition for all of our developed traits and discuss how we’re doing on our expected 2024 milestones to help you understand why we are so excited about our progress. Wade will then finish with a discussion of the financials. I’d like to start by reviewing the business we created last year when we merged Cibus and Calyxt. When we merged, we were the two leading gene-editing companies in terms of owning the foundational patents and technology for gene-editing in agriculture. These cover exclusive proprietary use of the foundational intellectual property in the agricultural gene-editing industry, including our GRON Editing Technology Platform, the exclusive use of TALENs in agriculture, and in certain geographies, the exclusive use of CRISPR Technology in agriculture. When we created this gene-editing powerhouse, we had a stated mission to become the leading independent gene-edited trait developer for the major crops: canola, rice, soybean, wheat, and corn. Selling GMO-based traits to seed companies is a huge industry in which seed companies annually pay billions of dollars in royalties to trait developers for specific traits. These attributes are genetic expressions in a plant that are associated with a specific plant attribute, such as herbicide tolerance or disease resistance. A great example of our trait strategy is the traits we have developed for herbicide tolerance. Herbicide tolerant traits are the mainstay of the GMO trait industry. The principal attribute of a herbicide tolerant trait is that the trait enables plants to survive when a farmer sprays herbicides on the plant. In other words, these traits enable farmers to kill the weeds with herbicides without killing the crop. The GMO herbicide tolerant traits were developed using foreign materials from other plants, and as such, they face severe regulations or banning, which virtually stops GMO trait innovation in crops such as rice and wheat. The difference is that with our gene editing technology, we can develop herbicide tolerant traits without using any foreign materials, and that our traits are indistinguishable from those developed using conventional breeding. This is why, globally, regulations are changing to regulate traits from our technology as traits from conventional breeding. This is why we’re excited about the prospects for our rice and wheat crop platform. We can now develop families of herbicide-resistant traits in crops that did not have GMO traits. In addition, gene editing has created opportunities in areas that have been difficult to develop using GMO technology because of the complexity required to develop specific traits. Disease resistant traits are a perfect example of complex traits. In disease resistant traits, we were initially focused on Sclerotinia white mold disease, which is critically important in canola and soybean. These are traits that have a direct, positive impact on farming yield, cost, and efficiency. The promise of gene editing is that it can address areas like disease resistance. This is why traits that make plants resistant to disease is such an important focus for Cibus. Agricultural trait royalties are very similar to the massive royalties paid in the pharmaceutical industry for technology associated with each drug. There are virtually no drug producers in the pharmaceutical industry, nor seed companies for the major crops that do not pay significant royalties to third parties for licensed technology for their products. This is our business model. Using our proprietary technologies, we can develop complex seed traits in a fraction of the time and cost of conventional or GMO breeding, and with our technologies, we are able to accelerate the path toward commercialization. When we announced our merger, we established major milestones to track our progress in becoming the leading trait developer to seed companies in these major crops. We divided our milestones into three categories. First, new crops. We track milestones that follow our progress in developing new crop platforms and technologies. This means providing updates on a recent development of an operational platform for wheat, our expected soybean platform in 2024, and our recent patent expansions for new technologies. Second, new traits. We track milestones that follow our progress in developing new productivity traits and assigning agreements with seed companies. This means providing updates on the developments within our trait portfolio and the commercialization of these traits, such as our advances in commercializing herbicide tolerant traits in rice and the progress in our advanced traits for disease and herbicide tolerance in other crops. Third, regulatory. We track milestones that follow our progress in gaining regulatory approvals for gene editing. Here, we have been tracking regulatory procedures for gene editing on a global basis, such as the recent Canadian approval, the approval in the U.K., and the positive parliamentary vote in February. I’m disappointed in the delay in the final regulatory approval in the EU. Post the parliamentary vote, the EU process continues positively, and other countries globally, like Canada and the U.K., are continuing to adapt their regulation for gene-edited traits to be similar to traits developed using conventional breeding. We continue to see a groundswell of support internationally for gene editing to be the technology that will be critical in solving the world’s challenges to address food scarcity and the next generation. Most importantly, we are really excited because we have continued to meet our milestones. We are rapidly establishing ourselves as the leading trait innovator and developer that is addressing unique needs within these major crops. Reflecting on our recent accomplishments, the second quarter was another strong quarter for our commercial and technological progress. It caps what has been a great first half for Cibus, and frankly, a great launch of an important new company. Peter will take a deeper dive for the recent progress, but I want to highlight a couple of key accomplishments supporting our trait portfolio. In the second quarter, we successfully completed edits in our important third mode of action for our Sclerotinia-resistant trait, and successfully completed an initial edit for our first mode of action for a nutrient-use-efficiency trait. Both of these are extremely important as we broaden our opportunity set for new traits. Commercially, we are making great progress in launching our herbicide tolerant trait platform in rice. In this quarter, we signed an agreement with FEDEARROZ, one of the largest rice seed companies in Latin America, which brings our rice partnerships to four leading companies in the U.S. and Latin America, including Interoc in South America and Loveland Products, a new subseries of nutrients in the U.S. In addition, we recently reported important field data in support of tag-gene-edited tolerant traits in rice. Building our herbicide-tolerant platform in rice is important to us. We expect in 2024 and 2025 to continue to expand our presence in the Americas and in Asia, both in companies working with us and in new traits. These milestones will continue to demonstrate our progress commercially and our momentum in developing new traits and new technologies. With that, I’ll pass the call over to Peter.

Peter Beetham, President and COO

Thank you, Rory, and good afternoon to everyone. It really has been a transformative first half of 2024 for Cibus, marking significant progress in our commercial development, our trait pipeline, and the global regulatory landscape. I’d like to re-emphasize how far our business has come. While it can be challenging to appreciate the arduous path towards generating an annual recurring royalty stream, we believe we are really close. Importantly, we continue to move our customers’ genetics through the development phase, and I would like to start by explaining how we see commercial development at Cibus. Commercial development at Cibus is defined by our ability to make gene edits in customer crop genetics that provide them with a new desirable characteristic or trait, and to confirm our edits with multiple field trials. For each trait, field trials validating their effectiveness are a critical element and an important milestone toward ultimate commercialization. In each case, our traits in the fields are compared with the customer’s seeds without the trait. These first-hand observations of the trait’s effectiveness are invaluable to our commercialization process. We’ve experienced this with each of our developed traits, with customers signing on after first reviewing our field test results. You can see some photos of this on our website with one of our herbicide traits in rice. It’s a clear example demonstrating the performance of our gene-edited herbicide tolerant crops. On one side, you see a crop that has survived the herbicide application while the weeds do not, and on the other side, you see the control crop that didn’t contain our edits and the crop was devastated by the herbicide. Excitingly, earlier this week we announced yet another milestone in rice where we initiated the first stacked gene-edited traits for herbicide tolerance. In this case, we reported that trait effectiveness was also promising after initial field trials. These traits can provide an excellent weed management solution that creates value for Cibus, seed company customers, and more profit and sustainable options for farmers. Today, I’d like to focus on a couple of key areas of achievement: first, being the further expansion of our developed rice platform and customer base, as Rory just mentioned, and the second being breakthroughs in canola, where we confirmed edits in canola for our advanced traits: Sclerotinia resistance, also known as white mold disease, and herbicide tolerance, HT2. So let’s start with the progress on our rice platform. We’ve gained significant commercial momentum in rice and are experiencing increasing customer demand for our HT1 and HT3 traits, which coincided with our reporting of successful field trials back in January 2024, underscoring the significant market opportunity we see in rice. In addition, this last quarter, we have observed initial trials showing the amazing opportunity to further weed management solutions with the stacked gene-edited traits I mentioned earlier. As we’ve discussed before, rice represents a major opportunity given the industry’s continued challenges in developing conventional herbicide tolerance systems. Remember, the widespread adoption of herbicide tolerant GMO traits in over 95% of canola, soybean, and corn crops highlights both the potential for similar uptake in rice farming and the limitations of current agricultural technologies. We are working with our rice customers to enable the launch of our HT traits in rice as early as 2027. Our current partnerships could provide access to 6 million rice acres and an annual royalty opportunity target we currently estimate at approximately $120 million. The United States and Latin American markets are our primary focus for rice but we have a developing strategic partnership for Asia as well. In addition to our momentum in rice, we continue to make progress in canola. We are doing important field trials in canola and winter oilseed rape in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. In addition, we’ve successfully made significant progress in our advanced trait pipeline, which I’ll turn to now. Advanced traits in canola include disease resistance, new herbicide tolerance and Nutrient Use Efficiency (NUE). The enormous commercial opportunities of these three trait areas are not only the clear value of productivity and sustainability, but these traits also represent a significant opportunity to be expanded to other crops like soybean. This quarter, we successfully completed our edit milestones in our canola franchise with a third mode of action for our Sclerotinia or white mold resistance trait. It’s an incredibly important step to provide durable resistance to this disease in canola and other crops, including soybean. With the editing complete, the plants containing these edits will be evaluated in controlled environment growth rooms with results expected later this year. For our herbicide tolerance trait, HT2, we’ve completed another generation of edits in canola and anticipate greenhouse results later this year. We believe this trait, once available, has the potential in multiple crops to be the first gene-edited trait to achieve 100 million acres of yearly use, representing one of our largest opportunities. As a further reminder, Sclerotinia and HT2 are multi-crop traits, meaning that the efficacy we expect to achieve in canola would translate to other crops, including soybean, and eventually the company would have the opportunity to earn royalties across multiple crops for the same trait. We also achieved an important milestone with the initial editing for Cibus’ first Nutrient Use Efficiency (NUE) trait in canola. We believe this to be the first NUE gene edit in a major crop in North America. This is a significant milestone not just for our company, but for the entire agricultural industry, as there is mounting pressure on crop production to use fewer fertilizers produced using fossil fuels. Let me explain why this is so important. NUE traits are part of a very large category of traits relevant to all crops. These traits have the potential to make fertilizer use more efficient on a global basis without compromising the yield that farmers expect and rely on. In essence, NUE traits would provide a solution to optimize farmers’ agricultural practices while maintaining productivity. This achievement is also significant because it represents our first use of the trait machine process to operationalize a third-party developed trait. This demonstrates our company’s ability as a development partner to take gene edits identified by third parties and successfully make edits in our platforms to develop a trait. In addition to the achievements within our pipeline of developed and advanced traits, we continue to make progress with our crop platforms. Earlier this year, we successfully completed our crop platform in wheat, providing us access to the largest global grain crop as measured in planted acres. This enables us to develop productivity and sustainability traits addressing major challenges for wheat farmers worldwide. Since achieving this breakthrough in wheat, we have been actively engaged in discussions with potential seed company partners, with herbicide tolerance and disease resistance traits being a key focus of those discussions. Based on these discussions, we believe we are on track to enter into initial development and commercial agreements related to wheat this year. We also expect to initiate the first edit toward developing traits for wheat. Finally, our advanced soybean platform is another exciting opportunity for us and, as I’ve mentioned before, one of the more challenging endeavors in plant biology. We are making steady progress and we still anticipate this platform will be operational with initial editing completed by the end of 2024. That achievement would allow us to penetrate the vast soybean market, which encompasses over 200 million addressable acres. But it’s more than just about market size. We expect our soybean platform to serve as the foundation for our sustainable ingredients business, which is a key component of our company’s long-term growth strategy. We see significant opportunity in being able to develop sustainable, low-carbon ingredients and materials for the consumer packaged goods industry. Our goal with this business is to create products that do not negatively impact the environment during production, use, or disposal. And with that, I’ll pass the call to Wade to briefly review our financials.

Wade King, CFO

Thank you, Peter. Looking at our financials for the second quarter, cash and cash equivalents were $30 million as of June 30, 2024. Moving to our income statement, I would like to start by noting that the second quarter of 2024 isn’t directly comparable to that of the prior year’s second quarter of 2023, given the merger with Calyxt that closed inter-quarter at the end of May 2023. Specifically, the prior year period only reflects one month of our combined company results. Please keep this in mind as I make reference to the prior year results. R&D expense was $13 million for the second quarter of 2024, compared to $8.4 million in the year-ago period. The increase was primarily related to increased lab supplies and facility expenses, an increase in employee headcount, and an increase in stock-based compensation expense for restricted stock award grants. These expenses were partially offset by $1.3 million in one-time expenses due to the closing of the merger transaction in the year-ago period. SG&A expense was $9.3 million for the second quarter of 2024, compared to $11.1 million in the year-ago period. The decrease of $1.8 million is primarily related to $6.5 million in one-time expenses due to the closing of the merger transaction in the year-ago period. This was partially offset by an increase in headcount, increased consulting and legal fees, and an increase in stock-based compensation expense for restricted stock award grants. Royalty liability interest expense, a non-cash item, was $8.7 million for the second quarter of 2024, compared to $2.6 million last year, an increase of $6.1 million. This was related to the liability assumed in the May 31, 2023 merger with Cibus Global, LLC. Net loss was $28.5 million for the second quarter of 2024, compared to a net loss of $20.5 million in the year-ago period. For additional details about our financials for the second quarter of 2024, please refer to our press release and filings for the SEC. That concludes our financial discussion. Rory, now back to you for your closing remarks.

Rory Riggs, CEO

Thanks, Wade and Peter. As we explained, this quarter has been very important for a number of reasons. This has been an important period for building our weed management platform in rice. We ended the quarter with four leading seed company customers in rice, representing approximately 40% of the addressable acres. In addition, with our recent field studies for stacked traits, we’ve begun to build our product offering to establish ourselves as the leading weed management solution in the important rice industry. The progress in advanced traits is key, because they are the backbone of our current trade offering in canola, where we have 10 customers. In addition, these traits are expected to be the backbone of our product offerings in soybeans. This concludes our remarks, Operator. Could you open the call for questions?

Operator, Operator

Certainly. We will take our first question from Scott Fortune with ROTH Capital. Please go ahead.

Nick Anderson, Analyst

Hey. Good afternoon. This is Nick off for Scott. Congrats on the quarter. The first one for me…

Rory Riggs, CEO

Thanks.

Nick Anderson, Analyst

… just on the soybean side, getting up to speed there, wanted to unpack that market opportunity a little more and just the timing around monetizing and maybe reaching some of the other milestones you’ve mentioned achieving in that segment. Just a little more color on the soybean side would be helpful. Thank you.

Rory Riggs, CEO

Thanks, that's great. We are making progress on our single-cell conversion and we're very close to achieving it. While we can't predict the exact timing, we are confident that it will happen in 2024. When it does, it will open up numerous opportunities. Firstly, it's a highly concentrated crop with 200 million acres, and we believe the top four players are very interested in collaborating with us on Sclerotinia and NUE, with Sclerotinia being particularly important. We expect that as we get our pipeline approved and validated, we will begin signing agreements with each partner one by one, acquiring their germplasm. We're already partnering with GDM, the largest company in Latin America, which has shown interest in our crops, and we aim to start editing their crops by the end of this year to collaborate with them next year on developing a soybean platform. Additionally, there is a significant trend among consumer packaged goods companies to modify their composite oils, which are resilient yet challenging sources. We've also increased the funding we receive to develop an alternative for lauric oils, making the soybean platform key to this effort. We believe that soybean is vital due to the large acreage and the value of addressing Sclerotinia. Furthermore, establishing a new industry focused on sustainable ingredients presents a tremendous opportunity, and we are excited about the simultaneous progress in both areas. Was that helpful?

Nick Anderson, Analyst

Yes. Helpful. Thank you. Second one for me, just kind of piggybacking on the sustainable ingredients side. Wanted to unpack that opportunity a little bit more. You mentioned targeting your launch in 2025, but can you just give us a little more color about what you believe this segment could look like longer term, and if there’s any additional investment needed to kind of get this program up and running?

Rory Riggs, CEO

So this is an investment that’s being funded by the corporations. So we’ve been funded. P&G has funded us in this project to date to develop these products, and the intent is to work with the other consumer product companies. So we think the sustainable ingredients is a really big category across many of the consumer product goods. And the other side, they have a fragrance business, and we have a business called Nucelis. We’re very, very good at differentiating essence and editing of yeast and building products from it. And so we’re working very closely with them to hopefully start shipping bio fragrance-like products next year. We think that the whole sustainable ingredients business could be a value of the same size as the rice. It’s a really, really big opportunity and it will happen as soon as we have the soybean platform. We expect they’re making edits in these platforms and fermentation. We’re already making the products and we’re validating our process right now to be in the position to start shipping. And so it’s a big category that will start with fragrances and then move to oils as opposed to soybean.

Nick Anderson, Analyst

Great. That’s it for me. I appreciate the color.

Rory Riggs, CEO

Thanks for taking the time.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We’ll take our next question from Matthew Venezia with Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead.

Matthew Venezia, Analyst

Yes. Hi, guys. Congrats on the quarter. Very good to hear from you all. My one question for today is, are you planning on transferring HT1, HT3 stacked traits to customers only in the stacked version in rice or do you think you would be transferring them separately at all, just like HT1 by itself or HT3 by itself?

Rory Riggs, CEO

That’s a great question. The bread and butter of the herbicide business is having stacked traits. That’s what GMOs made their name. And so if you go into rice and corn, they have probably five different herbicide stacks. And what we’re really saying is that the same thing is going to happen in the non-GMO crops, and we’re going to be leading in that field. And so think of the stacked trait as one where we’ll offer each of the traits individually, and then we’ll start developing stacked traits with each of them individually. And we have four different herbicides we’re working on right now to try to complete the opportunity in stacks that we’d expect to have it available so that, depending on where you are, the farmer and the seed company can sell a seed that has the ability for the farmer to be able to pick the herbicide that works best for them. It’s the way you get it. We’re not so much in the trait businesses, though. It’s the weed management businesses. For the weed management business, you need to offer a seed that has a bunch of different ways for the farmer to manage the weeds. And to do that for the different levels or pre-plant and fair plant, you need the ability to handle a bunch of different ones. And we’re alone in this field, and we’re pretty excited about the ability to lead them by having a whole group of stacked traits. Was that helpful?

Matthew Venezia, Analyst

Yes, Rory. Thanks, Rory. I appreciate you taking the question.

Rory Riggs, CEO

Peter, do you want to add?

Peter Beetham, President and COO

Yeah. Let me add a little bit to that because I think this is such a great question. And it is one of the things that I’m most excited about, being able to bring to the market opportunities for farmers to control their weeds. As Rory said, this is the weed management business. Weeds are a huge headache for farmers globally, and it really saps their productivity. It costs a lot of money to actually use herbicides across the crop. They use diesel or they fly on using aerial sprayers. As I mentioned, it can be as much as $120 per acre just to control weeds. So for us, bringing forward the opportunities, as Rory mentioned, one, it’s exciting for the farmers, but also for the seed companies, providing those offerings. So it helps with regards to weed resistance management and having the multiple stacked traits. And as Rory said, in soy and corn, this has been done for many years, but it has been done with GMOs. So the non-GMO crops like wheat and rice haven’t had those opportunities. So that’s why I think bringing HT3, HT1, and others to the marketplace, not just in the U.S., but Latin America and into the Asian markets, is very exciting that we’ve made so much progress in such a short amount of time.

Matthew Venezia, Analyst

All right. Well, thank you, guys. Much appreciated.

Rory Riggs, CEO

Thank you. Yeah. Great question.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We will take our next question from Austin Moeller with Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Austin Moeller, Analyst

Hi. Good afternoon. My first question here, can you go into detail about what processes will be undertaken in the second half to evaluate those edits made in canola for Sclerotinia and Nutrient Use Efficiency in HT2?

Rory Riggs, CEO

Peter, let me explain. For Sclerotinia and HT2, we have conducted field studies using two different modes of action for Sclerotinia. I'm particularly enthusiastic about our third option, which I believe could be very successful. Right now, we are awaiting greenhouse and growth room data before moving into the field next year. The initial focus will be on analyzing the greenhouse data, which is also applicable to HT1. Following the changes we've made, the next step involves validating these improvements through various assays in the greenhouse. Additionally, considering we have customers interested, we need to determine how quickly we can proceed given their involvement.

Peter Beetham, President and COO

Thank you, Rory. It's important to recognize the different mechanisms we have in place for disease resistance. The strength of Cibus lies in our approach, which can be likened to how antivirals are viewed in pharmaceuticals. By utilizing various mechanisms for disease resistance, we can provide crops with lasting protection against diseases like Sclerotinia. We're eager to progress into the latter half of this year with our third mechanism, as Rory mentioned, in our growth chambers and greenhouse to validate the trait. We are confident it will succeed, as we already have promising evidence from our other mechanisms. Integrating all of these together is our next goal, and our customers in the canola sector are very enthusiastic about it. This complexity is characteristic of our work in addressing these intricate traits. When it comes to herbicide tolerance and nitrogen use efficiency, we have assays ready for herbicide tolerance and know how to demonstrate that the crop can withstand specific herbicides. Regarding nitrogen use efficiency, we're making faster progress than anticipated, which is exciting because, as I noted earlier, it's a major global opportunity for us. The initial set of edits for nitrogen use efficiency represents just the beginning, and we look forward to sharing updates on this later this year.

Austin Moeller, Analyst

Great. And just a follow-up. Will the cost-saving initiatives mentioned in the release to conserve capital slow down the rate at which further editing and development work on new traits will be completed and would that move like greenhouse and field testing to the right or not particularly?

Rory Riggs, CEO

No. We have three big platforms: Weeds, disease, and NUE. Following that, our focus right now is really to make sure these get going and these start making money and we can break out of them. And so our focus has really been on theirs. And there’s nothing we’re doing that’s going to stop the growth and building of those. It’s just sort of rationalizing and understanding what we need to build the rest of the business. But the big things we care about, which is getting this herbicide tolerance in rice and wheat is really just a really big category and we already have a bunch of herbicides to work with. And with disease, we have our patterns. It’s really more a development process. Is that helpful?

Austin Moeller, Analyst

Excellent. Thanks for the details.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We will take our next question from Sameer Joshi with H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Sameer Joshi, Analyst

Thank you for taking my question. I have a few clarifications. The presentation was excellent, and the press release is quite detailed. Regarding the sustainable ingredients, you mentioned there will be a significant increase in funding for 2024 and 2025. Is this projected funding, or have you already observed some initial increases?

Rory Riggs, CEO

Could you repeat that just so I can get it clear?

Sameer Joshi, Analyst

Yeah.

Rory Riggs, CEO

About the increase in funding.

Sameer Joshi, Analyst

For the sustainable ingredients sort of milestones, you have a material increase in funding…

Rory Riggs, CEO

Yeah. I think our partners are as excited or more excited than we are. I think that we really have, really, we’re all convinced that, and we’ve made great progress in understanding the edit, that we can modify soybean in a way to really address the profitability if any of these things are trying to change, and we’re really excited about the bio fragrance. And so this increase in funding was just the ability for us to accelerate and be sure we’re ready as the soybean comes right out of that batch.

Peter Beetham, President and COO

I agree with Rory. It's been encouraging over the last six months at Cibus to see a growing interest in plant-based solutions. We have partnerships with companies that are willing to fund our research, which extends beyond just soybeans. There is a genuine demand in the market for sustainable ingredients that align with their sustainability objectives. This includes expanding into areas such as different fuels or oil profiles, as Rory mentioned. Soy serves as an excellent foundation for this. We are also eager to explore other crops, like peanuts, which present opportunities for non-allergenic variants that would benefit human health. There are numerous possibilities in this sector, and we are receiving funding to pursue sustainable ingredient opportunities. This is an exciting area that supports our long-term growth strategy.

Rory Riggs, CEO

Also…

Sameer Joshi, Analyst

Yeah…

Rory Riggs, CEO

As you can see, they’re funding the buy. They’re funding because they want this, and they’re scoping out where do acres and how to build it. So this was a real development plan. And we decided we weren’t going to go after output products unless customers are willing to fund it and build a business around it.

Sameer Joshi, Analyst

Yeah. Yeah. And I also noted, Rory, you say that this opportunity could be as big, if not bigger, than the other businesses as well.

Rory Riggs, CEO

It's really interesting. I think we should consider rice, canola, and wheat, which closely follow soybean. All three are significant platforms, and they have the potential to support our current expense level and, more importantly, to grow the business we believe we can develop.

Sameer Joshi, Analyst

And I think we may have discussed this previously, but the Canadian approval in May of this year. Can you talk about the size and the scale of the market that this opens up for you?

Rory Riggs, CEO

The market is looking promising. As countries begin to approve it one by one, it’s significant for canola. This process saves time on improvements, and it illustrates how globally approvals are being granted, aligning them with our breeding methods. While the U.K. may be smaller, we are conducting our first field trial there and will soon have results. Each approval reinforces the idea that we are not isolated in this area but are equipped with technology to make edits that will be accepted just like traditional breeding practices. My team is particularly excited about Canada, as they hold our team in high regard.

Peter Beetham, President and COO

Yeah. Excuse me. I’ll just add a little bit to that because I love flying across Canada and seeing how much yellow flowering there is. There are 22 million to 25 million acres of canola in the prairies. And so, but not only that, you’ve also got a really strong wheat market, and soybeans move north as well. So, you’ve got three of our crops that we’re working on, and so Canada is one of our key markets, for sure.

Rory Riggs, CEO

And they do have an environment where Sclerotinia resistance would be pretty important.

Sameer Joshi, Analyst

Great. Great. That’s good to see. And that you have tabs on this market, that’s good to see as well. Last one for maybe Wade. The SG&A expense of $9.3 million on a GAAP basis, it is sequentially higher. Is there a reason for that and should we expect for the next two quarters to four quarters similar levels of SG&A?

Wade King, CFO

I think you’ll see it be pretty consistent looking ahead. Remember, this is the last quarter we’ll be reporting results whereby the comparable period from prior year is a mixed bag given the merger. We expect, frankly, our cash spend to be very consistently $5 million above going forward. And so, you’ve got a good blend of obviously development activity, production activity, and of course, the G&A supporting the fundamentals of the business. But in any event, I think you will see that SG&A spend to be rather consistent looking ahead with, once again, total cash spend approximating $5 million a month.

Sameer Joshi, Analyst

Understood. Thanks for that. Congratulations on all the progress, and good luck.

Rory Riggs, CEO

Thanks. And we’re moving, each of the platforms are doing a pretty good job of signing on customers and pulling along. So, thanks.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We’ll take our next question from Steve Byrne with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Steve Byrne, Analyst

Yes. Thank you. Just curious, what’s the mechanism of action behind this nitrogen or Nutrient Use Efficiency? Is it reducing the nitrogen content in the crop or is this really more root system related better ability to assimilate nutrients that are in the soil?

Rory Riggs, CEO

Peter?

Peter Beetham, President and COO

Thank you, Steve. I want to start by mentioning that we have reported on this as one of our first collaborations with a third-party partner to introduce edits to our canola platform. We are pleased with how quickly we made progress. This initiative is primarily related to nutrient uptake in the crop. There are several methods we plan to explore, and while I won't go into the details today, it's important to note that we are looking beyond just nitrogen. We are considering the entire NPK fertilizer opportunity. Similar to our other complex editing projects, we are examining various ways to improve nutrient usage in crops. Currently, our focus is more on the root system, but we also aim to implement additional edits within the plant to enhance Nutrient Use Efficiency through multiple factors. So, it is indeed an innovative approach that centers around nutrients.

Steve Byrne, Analyst

Very good. And then one question on the Sclerotinia trait. Is there any risk that if you are successful at putting that edit into soybeans, that it might have a different effect on fungal resistance than it does in canola, or are you confident in that ability?

Peter Beetham, President and COO

Well, really, the work that we’ve done in our R&D team, Steve, would actually point to the opposite. That it’s actually a little bit better in soybeans.

Steve Byrne, Analyst

Okay.

Peter Beetham, President and COO

We’re starting some early tests now. It’s necessary to place it in the plant, in the greenhouse, and in the field for evaluation. However, the research we have completed and the tests we’ve conducted provide us with confidence that we will achieve success.

Rory Riggs, CEO

Thank you, men.

Peter Beetham, President and COO

Thanks, Steve.

Operator, Operator

And there are no further questions at this time. I’ll turn the call to the management for any closing remarks.

Rory Riggs, CEO

Thanks. And thanks, everyone, for listening. I think, as I said at the end, we’re most excited about how far we’re moving this rice platform. And it’s such a good example of weed management and the dollar value of it and the size of the rice market. It’s such a big opportunity. And a lot of questions here on advanced traits, and for good reason. Both of our advanced traits are potential $1 billion royalties across the markets, and so how they move and their inflection is really important and so we’re tracking pretty closely how we build those into our platform. So thanks so much, guys, and look forward to next quarter. I’m all done, Operator.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today’s program. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at any time.