Yield10 Bioscience, Inc. (NASDAQ:YTEN) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript May 10, 2023

Yield10 Bioscience, Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.76 EPS, expectations were $-0.63.

Operator: Welcome to the First Quarter 2023 Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call for Yield10 Bioscience. During the call, participants will be in a listen-only mode. The presenters will address questions from analysts today. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference call over to your host, Yield10 Vice President of Planning and Corporate Communications, Lynne Brum.

Lynne Brum: Thank you, Maria, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Yield10 Bioscience first quarter 2023 conference call. Joining me on the call today are President and CEO, Dr. Oliver Peoples; Vice President of Research and Chief Science Officer, Dr. Kristi Snell; and Chief Accounting Officer, Chuck Haaser. Earlier this afternoon, Yield10 issued our first quarter 2023 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 yield10bio.com. Let’s turn to Slide 2. 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 are not strictly historical constitute forward-looking statements. And such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These risks include risks and uncertainties detailed in Yield10’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. I’ll turn the call over to Oli.

Oliver Peoples: Thanks, Lynne. Good afternoon everyone and thanks for joining our call. I’m pleased to report that we are making solid progress across the business as we operationalize our commercial plan to launch Camelina as a platform crop with a year-term focus on the biofuel feed stock market. Today, we’ll provide an update on our business, including recent accomplishments, the market opportunity and trends driving the biofuel market. Our progress developing herbicide tolerant Camelina varieties, our plan to scale-up EPA Omega 3 Camelina present first quarter financials and summarize key milestones. We will then open the call up to questions. Let’s turn to Slide 3, advancing the business. Commercial launch of our Camelina seed products business is underway, targeting the biofuel feedstock market.

We are expecting our first grain revenue later in 2023 from the grain produced for our winter 2022, 2023 and spring 2023 grower contracts. I’m also happy to report that our team has met our target for signing up spring grower contracts. Seed delivery and planting has either been completed or will be completed in the next week or so. The photo on the top right side of the slide shows the planting under grower site in Alberta. Our team reported that our winter Camelina, last fall, has demonstrated excellent cold tolerance over the season and is resuming growth now that the warmer weather has returned. Both crops will be harvested in third quarter and we are committed to ensuring green offtake to crush, refine our customers. On the business development side, our team continues to engage with potential supply chain partners.

Last week, we signed a letter of intent with Marathon Petroleum for an investment and offtake agreement for Camelina production in a specific growing region. Discussion to finalize terms for definitive offtake and investment agreements are in place – are in progress, sorry. In exchange for a period of exclusivity for that region, Marathon paid Yield10 1 million in the form of [indiscernible] note. In first quarter, we announced the signing of an MOU with Mitsubishi to establish a partnership for supply offtake in marketing of Camelina Oil as a feedstock oil for biofuels for sustainable aviation fuel or SAF, and we continue to progress those offtake discussions. We also announced the signing of an MOU with American Airlines to collaborate to develop the value chain for Camelina or SAF and we are delighted with the efforts they are making to assist us.

We look forward to continuing to work with Marathon, Mitsubishi and American in the months ahead. Early in the year, we also signed an agreement with a privately owned integrated crusher/biorefiner customer for offtake of Camelina grain. This business is located in the key commercial launch growing region and provides a complete seat to biofuel value chain allowing us to scale Camelina. As 2023 progresses, we plan to continue discussions with additional partner prospects with the goal of creating the option to establish a network of alliances, supply Camelina feedstock oil for this market. In our role as a grain originator, we are continuing to scale up seed to enable contract growing in thousands of acres in the near-term with the ramp up [indiscernible] towards accelerating with the introduction of herbicide tolerant Camelina varieties.

Our herbicide tolerant technology will provide multiple benefits to growers and we believe this will lead to hundreds of thousands and then the first million acres of annual production. Our goal is to supply the best-in-class Camelina varieties industry providing ease of crop integration at the current crop rotations and highest on farm returns. Let’s start to Slide 4. The Camelina biofuel feedstock oil focus. Investments to convert refineries from petroleum to biofuels in the U.S. alone has created demand for an additional 6 billion gallons of feedstock oil in the near-term. We believe this demand for renewable diesel, as well as SAF could lead to potential for at least 45 million acres of Camelina production in North America. Over our last few investor calls, we have mentioned growing tailwinds increasing vegetable oil production or decarbonizing biofuels.

Let’s now turn to Slide 5. to recap two recent policy announcements that underscore the potential for Camelina for this market. First, the European Parliament last week reached an agreement named the ReFuelEU Aviation proposal. This agreement embodies a set of new rules to require aviation fuel suppliers to supply a minimum share of SAF at EU airports starting at 2% of overall fuel, it’s around 1 million gallons per day starting in 2024, and rising to 6% in 2030 and 70% in 2050. While this initiative [indiscernible] EU members, it demonstrates global momentum behind decarbonizing transportation fuels and another potential source of demand for feedstock oils. And last week, the Canadian regulatory body, CFIA published its long awaited guidance on genome-edited crops.

CFIA indicated that they will treat most genome-edited crops as non-regulated, as long as the plant does not contain any foreign DNA. The new rule does note that for any new traits for herbicide tolerance even if it produces in genome-editing will need to be submitted for CFIA review. [Indiscernible] was anticipated by the ag community. Overall, another very positive announcement for crop innovators like yield 10. Please turn to Slide 6, oilseed cover crop development approaches. There are multiple new oilseed crops in commercial development for the biofuel market including Pennycress, [indiscernible] and Camelina. The common technology in [indiscernible] has been access to public germplasm, [live selection] [ph], and breeding. We are committed to that approach, but have also invested significantly in developing proprietary advanced trade technologies to create a path to high performance elite Camelina germplasm.

In addition to herbicide tolerance, our unique capabilities to identify and test new performance traits to stack traits leveraging the improved regulatory environment in the U.S. and Canada provide us path to further performance differentiation for our varieties. In the early days of ag biotech, a single gene trade was a large differentiator and essential to remain in the commodity [row crop] [ph] seed business as evidenced by the sub sector consolidation. The Big 5 Monsanto, DuPont, Bayer, Syngenta and the like, then dominated the sector and for the more recent consolidation, we created the top 2 Corteva and Bayer with Syngenta third and BASF becoming the leader in canola. Today, elite germplasm with multiple gene stacks of corn and soybean provide high barriers to entry and are the key differentiators for the seed companies.

So, we believe we are uniquely positioned based on our advanced trade technologies to deliver continuous improvements drive grow revenue and secure production acres over time. Now, let’s turn to Slide 7. Camelina based biofuel feedstocks. Grower adoption of Camelina as a seamless integral part of the crop rotation is key to making Camelina a meaningful source of feedstock oil. Increasing harvest value of the grain to drive grow revenue is also critical. So, we’re placing strong emphasis in technology innovation to provide growers with continuous improvement in the crop. Finally growers want to see that the value chain is in place to ensure that Camelina grain has a clear path to market. Simply put, we are planning to make straightforward and profitable for our growers to produce Camelina grain for Yield10.

Let’s now turn to Slide 9, establishing the Camelina value chain. There are three components of the biofuel value chain for Catalina. The first is high quality Camelina seed and contract farming. This is where Yield10 has the capabilities to build unique differentiation in our Camelina seed genetics. The second component is logistics and seed crushing. And the third is refining to produce renewable diesel or SAF. New customers such as American Airlines can also play a role as they commit to the use of sustainable fuels. Our vision for the business is to contract with growers for large scale production and build a network of alliances for contracted offtake of the grain for biofuels with the deal going into animal feed. Our LOI with Marathon, as well as our MOUs with Mitsubishi and American demonstrate the potential for establishing downstream efficiencies committed to accelerating the ramp up of Camelina acres to supply the biofuel market and provide support to inhibitors like Yield10.

I will now pass the call over to Kristi.

Kristi Snell: Thanks, Oli, and good afternoon everyone. Please turn to Slide 9. We are executing on our early commercial activities in close co-operation with our growers with the focus on three Camelina varieties. These include the genome-edited spring E3902 Camelina variety, as well as two winter Camelina varieties, WDH2 and WDH3, which were produced by our team using a plant reading procedure. We are also using these three core Camelina varieties as a chassis for deploying herbicide tolerance traits for weed control into spring and winter Camelina. Please turn to Slide 10. Our winter variety field testing program includes well over 20 sites denoted with the blue pins on the map of the U.S. and Canada. In our March call, we indicated that we obtained confirmation of the performance of our herbicide tolerant spring Camelina, the application of an over the top broad leaf herbicide in U.S. Contra-season trials performed at locations indicated by the yellow pins on the slides.

Our winter program also includes agronomy trials with winter Camelina. One such study involves planting winter Camelina side-by-side with winter weed, which is the benchmark crop for winter planting. The cold hardiness of our winter Camelina was found to be better or equivalent to winter weed in this trial. As the season progresses, we’ll plan to post photos of our winter Camelina fields on our website. Please turn to Slide 11. We are conducting our spring 2023 field testing program at 13 sites in the U.S. and Canada. The trials include additional field testing and seed scale up of our lead spring herbicide tolerant Camelina line. In addition, we have generated candidate stack herbicide tolerant Camelina events for first field testing. We will evaluate the data from these Camelina lines to enable the selection of lead and backup Camelina lines for subsequent seed, scale-up, and field testing.

We also remain encouraged by the performance of our yield traits and have included C3004 and C3007 in our 2023 field test. We are not only interested in what these novel trades can do to increase seed yield or oil content alone, but we also plan to evaluate these traits in stacked combinations. Let’s turn to Slide 12. There has been a profound change in the regulatory environment for crop innovations, driven by the impact of gene-editing and an appreciation for the space deployment of new traits and crops for over 30 years. These deployment of herbicide tolerance in Camelina will involve the completion of a series of performance, regulatory, and seed scale up milestones to enable the commercial launch of these new varieties in U.S. On this slide, we have identified the major development milestones and track these for spring herbicide tolerance E3902 Camelina, as well as for our winter herbicide tolerant lines based on WDH2 and WDH3.

For our spring variety, we have checked the box for generating the herbicide tolerance events and have selected our lead and back-up Clines for seed scale up. We filed our RSR package for broad leaf herbicide tolerance to USDA-APHIS under the secure rule, a step we took last year in parallel with starting early development of herbicide tolerant Camelina. We have followed these activities with an application to EPA to request the label amendment for a broad leaf herbicide to allow its use on Camelina. This application was submitted to EPA by a third-party manufacturer of the herbicide chemistry. We believe these applications at USDA and EPA will be reviewed during 2023 to early 2024. Finally, we will perform comparative analyses of seed from herbicide tolerant Camelina with those from conventional Camelina to demonstrate compositional equivalency.

This is necessary to sell the high protein Camelina meal remaining after crushing the seed into the animal feed market. Here we plan to sample and collect compositional data from seeds harvested from our 2023 spring trials. We plan to determine compositional equivalency of seed to allow sale of meal first using a self-determination process and then with the voluntary submission to FDA that is reviewed by the agency. I believe our team has a good handle on the process and the timeline to launch, which will be driven by the timing completing regulatory reviews in conjunction with building sufficient seed inventory for launch. Let’s turn to Slide 13. We know that growers want broad leaf and grassy weed control for Camelina. As you may recall from our field trial activities, we have successfully completed two cycles of testing our Camelina for herbicide tolerance.

This herbicide tolerant event is in our elite proprietary E3902 background. We also successfully tested our Camelina for tolerance to [indiscernible], a product used to control grassy weeds. On the regulatory front, we filed an RSR package to USDA-APHIS for deployment of a well-studied broad leaf herbicide trait in Camelina in 2022. In the first quarter of 2023, we supported the submission of a label amendment to EPA by a third-party company to allow the use of its broad leaf herbicide on Camelina, the response from both agencies is pending. This spring, we plan to conduct larger scale field work for product development purposes for our herbicide tolerant spring Camelina and to collect data for compositional analysis of seed. We have also developed winter lines that have demonstrated broad leaf herbicide tolerance and greenhouse test.

In winter 2023, 2024, we plan to conduct our first field test of these lines. Let’s turn to Slide 14. To tap into the large acreage potential of Camelina, the crop needs to have plants to herbicide residues that may persist in the soil from previous applications on other crops. We continue to make solid progress on this goal. In the first quarter, we reported to meet that we have developed multiple E3902 spring Camelina lines with stacked herbicide tolerance traits and that these plants showed tolerance not only to spray application of broad leaf herbicides, but also to group 2 herbicides. Group 2 herbicides as IMIs and SUs, which can persist in soil for months following applications are commonly used to control weeds and cereals and other crops.

The photo on the slide shows an example greenhouse test in which a stacked herbicide tolerant event was healthy when treated with group 2 herbicides, where the control line died with a similar treatment. Based on our proof-of-concept results, we are conducting our first research field tests of stacked herbicide tolerant E3902 spring Camelina in our spring 2023 field test program. Our team is also making progress deploying stacked herbicide tolerance traits in our winter varieties. We anticipate our first research field test of stacked herbicide tolerant winter lines will begin in winter 2023. With our product development efforts moving ahead at a good pace, we filed an RSR for stacked herbicide tolerance, Camelina in the first quarter of 2023 that paved the way for commercial introduction of these stacked herbicide tolerant varieties.

As I wrap up, I’d like to acknowledge the efforts of the Yield10 R&D teams to positioning Yield10 on the forefront of technology deployment in Camelina. In the months ahead, we look forward to field testing of our best commercial quality herbicide tolerant Camelina lines, advancing omega-3 oils, and securing regulatory clearances for our elite Camelina products. I’ll now hand the call over to Chuck.

Chuck Haaser: Thanks, Kristi, and good afternoon everyone. Let’s turn to Slide 17. We ended the first quarter of 2023 with 1.8 million in cash and cash equivalents. Earlier this month, we added to our cash position based on receiving $1 million from Marathon Petroleum in connection with an LOI and we raised approximately 2.7 million net proceeds from our registered direct offering. We expect that our cash on hand support our operations into the third quarter of 2023. Our net operating cash used for operating activities was 2.7 million for the first quarter of 2023 as compared to 3.1 million for the first quarter of last year. For 2023, we expect total net cash usage in the range of 12.5 million to 13.0 million to fund our operations.

This represents a revision from our last call based on a recent review of our plans for 2023. Also in 2023, we expect to report our first Camelina product revenue from Camelina grain sales to our offtake customer. Now let’s review the first quarter 2023 operating results. For the first quarter of 2023, the company reported a net loss after taxes of 3.8 million, as compared to a net loss after taxes of 3.3 million for the first quarter of 2022. Total research grant revenues in the first quarter of 2023 were 0.1 million and this was consistent with the first quarter of 2022. As of March 31, we completed our work under the 5-year sub award under the Michigan State [BOE grant] [ph]. And in the first quarter of 2023, R&D expenses were 2.2 million as compared to 1.8 million in the first quarter of 2022 and our G&A expenses were 1.7 million in the first quarter of this year, which was consistent with the first quarter of last year.

For more details on our financial results, please refer to the earnings release. Oli, back to you.

Oliver Peoples: Thanks, Chuck. Let’s now turn to Slide 18, upcoming milestones. This is an exciting time for Yield10. Over the last few months, our team has made significant progress and we’ve established agreements across the biofuel value chain. We’re excited to work with the teams at Marathon and Mitsubishi in the months ahead on developing definitive offtake and investment agreements. We are also excited by the discussions we’ve had with growers, including their enthusiasm to gain access to our HT varieties as soon as they are commercially available because they see additional benefits for their crop rotations. These factors together with the growing interest from additional value chain partner prospects, are all good reasons to be excited about the future of our business.

We’ve executed on the development and scale of new Camelina varieties for commercial production, advanced discussions with companies committed to the biofuel space and have committed to our commercial path forward with Omega 3, Camelina. We are approaching the scaling of our Camelina grain production business using our current lead varieties tactically over the next 1 to 2 years with a strong focus in building the relationships of course and demonstrating the full value chain for our partners. We believe this will position us to accelerate the adoption of Camelina onto hundreds of thousands of acres as our new varieties with robust weed control become available. Essentially, we plan to walk slow so we can run fast based on building a solid foundation over the next couple of years.

As 2023 progresses, we will continue to focus on executing our key milestones, including working with Marathon and Mitsubishi to finalize investment and offtake agreements, engaging with American Airlines to support the Camelina value chain or SAF, expanding our commercial activities targeting renewable diesel and SAF markets, engaging with growers to reduce the benefits of growing Camelina and expand our grower network, building seed inventory of [carton and HT varieties] [ph] for future grower contracts. We’ll also progress the commercial launch plan for Camelina Omega-3 oils. Continue business development without reach to prospective partners across the entire value chain with the goal of executing strategic industry collaborations. And we’ll continue to expand their intellectual property portfolio.

With that, I’d like to turn the call back over to Lynne for questions.

Lynne Brum: Thanks, Oli. Maria, we’re ready for questions.

Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Ben Klieve with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Operator: Our next question comes from Anthony Vendetti with Maxim Group. Please proceed with your question.

Operator: Our next question comes from Sameer Joshi with H.C. Wainwright. Please proceed with your question.

Operator: We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Lynne Brum for closing comments. Go ahead.

Lynne Brum: Thanks, Maria. And I’ll now turn the call to Oli for his closing remarks.

Oliver Peoples: Yes. So, I’d like to personally thank all of you for joining us for the call tonight. And especially our shareholders for your continued support. I want to thank everyone at Yield10 for contributions that are keeping us on track to reach our commercial and product development goals. Have a nice evening, everyone. Thank you.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.