Amyris, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMRS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Laurence Alexander: Okay. Great. And then

John Melo: The only thing I would add on is €“ the only thing I would add is that the sum of those three parts are about $335 million, $340 million over the next 3 years in expected earn-out payments. And based on our track record with DSM and what we see and how the milestones or earn-outs are actually structured, I would expect us to have a very high probability of attaining the majority of that.

Laurence Alexander: Okay. Alright. No, that’s very helpful. And John, this is not your first down-cycle. And so I am curious about your thinking about two areas. One, why the Fit-to-Win target didn’t change in response to the changing macro conditions? And secondly, how you are protecting your R&D position in this what’s a fairly severe simplification initiative?

John Melo: Both great questions. So, let me first deal with the R&D, that’s probably the most straightforward one. You have been with me, I think for three major cycles at least. And in all of them, we protected the R&D investment and I can tell you that as of today, we are committed to in protecting the R&D investment, so no significant change to the R&D investment. I think like in the Fit-to-Win, we grabbed quite a bit of what was really the underlying operational opportunities that we had. I think there is incremental, right. So, we didn’t change the $150 million, but there is incremental and it’s really coming out of the portfolio review and some of the assets that we will be divesting the non-core assets. But we did not add that.

So, I wanted to avoid potential double counting. I wanted to stay very clean. We have $150 million that is part of Fit-to-Win, no change. And that’s part and that $150 million is still in place because it relates to most of the core assets that we are retaining going forward. There is more to be had, but that more will come from the impact of divestments that we are in the process of executing. So, I hope that helps, Laurence, in how we are thinking about it.

Laurence Alexander: Okay. Great. And then just the last one. I appreciate you don’t want to get too far over your skis on sort of things that were kind of hard to time. But can you give us a sense for what the current backlog of potential other molecule licensing deals are in discussions, what the flavor is? And in particular, I guess I am just curious, is Givaudan kind of a unique white whale or do you €“ are you seeing sort of a shift in the industrial community where companies are coming to you with more significant propositions than you have seen before? Can you just give a sense for what’s €“ not in terms of timing, but just kind of what the tenor is and the range of discussions?

John Melo: Yes. No, and you know the market and value chain extremely well, Laurence. So, I €“ what I would tell you is there is a significant shift, and it is €“ and who the people are that are coming to us, right. Historically, it would be the DSMs, it would be the suppliers to the end markets that were interested in accessing new sources of chemistry. We still see some of those. But if I look at the inbound inquiries right now, it’s probably a third from players you would know well that are looking for potentially new intermediate chemistry to replace their current feedstock for specialty and high-value chemistry, okay. That’s €“ and you probably could imagine who those players are. But the other two-thirds is where the surprise is.