Good afternoon, and welcome to the Cibus Fourth Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Also note, today’s event is being recorded. At this time, I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Carlo Broos, Interim Chief Financial Officer. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you and good afternoon. I would like to thank you for taking the time to join us for Cibus fourth quarter 2024 financial results and business update conference call and webcast. Presenting with me today is Peter Beetham, Co-Founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President and COO; Greg Gocal our Chief Scientific Officer will also be on today’s call for participation during the Q&A session. 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 you in your analysis of our business. With that, I would like now to turn the call over to Peter.

Thanks Carlo, and good afternoon, everyone. Before diving into our results and business update, I'd like to address our recent leadership transition. As the Co-Founder of Cibus, Ms. Rory Riggs, our Chairman and Greg Gocal, our Chief Scientific Officer and having served as president and CRO since 2021 and CEO for the seven years prior to that, I'm deeply committed to our mission and vision. Leadership transitions can be significant moments for any company. Our strategic direction remains on track. I also want to acknowledge Rory's unwavering dedication to Cibus that has spanned more than two decades since its formation. Rory has been instrumental in building Cibus, investing behind our strategy and evolving its technologies into what they are today, a cutting edge agricultural company poised to transform the development and commercialization of crop traits. As he has stressed previously, Cibus is at an important inflection point as we continue our transformation from an agricultural trait development company to a commercial trait company. Cibus is a leader in developing gene edited productivity traits that address critical productivity and sustainability challenges for farmers such as diseases and pests, which the United Nations estimates costs to the global economy of approximately $300 billion annually. Importantly, Cibus is not a seed company. Rather, we are a technology company that uses gene editing to develop and license traits to seed companies in exchange for annual royalties on seed sales. A key differentiator of our technology compared to existing modern plant breeding technologies like GMO is that the traits developed using our Rapid Trait Development System or RTDS are indistinguishable from traits developed via conventional breeding methodologies. Notably in pending EU legislation, which I will speak more about later as there was some recent great news about the progress, they use the term conventional life.…

Thank you, Peter. Looking at our financials for the fourth quarter, cash and cash equivalents were $14.4 million as of December 31, 2024, taking into account the $21.6 million net proceeds received thus far in 2025 from the registered direct offering in January and the impact of cost saving initiatives and without giving effect to potential financing transactions that Cibus is pursuing, Cibus expects that existing cash and cash equivalents will fund planned operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements into late third quarter of 2025. Moving to our income statement, R&D expense was $12.4 million for the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to $14.2 million in the year ago period. The decrease of $1.8 million was primarily due to lower non-cash stock compensation expense and the Strategic Realignment and reduction in force announced during the fourth quarter of 2023, which delivered decrease in personnel, cost and supplies. SG&A expense was $6.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to $6.8 million in the year ago period. Net loss was $25.8 million for the fourth quarter Of 2024 compared to net loss of $277.2 million in the year ago period. The prior year period included a non-cash goodwill impairment charge of $249 million and when excluding this charge, we are pleased that our net loss has improved approximately $2 million year-over-year driven by the cost reduction efforts we implemented in the quarter. For additional details about the financials for the fourth quarter and full year of 2024, please refer to our press release and filings with the SEC. That concludes our financial discussion. Peter now back to you for your closing remarks.

Thanks Carlo. It really has been an exciting 12 months here at Cibus. As we've discussed, the past year has been pivotal for Cibus in so many ways. We saw substantial progress across our key platforms and traits, particularly in rice Sclerotinia resistance, and we continue to make progress towards an operational soybean platform. The global regulatory environment continues to evolve favorably, which we expect will continue to encourage our customers to embrace our technologies. Our gene editing technologies and focus on productivity traits holds great promise to the future of farming because they enable crops to be more adaptable for a changing environment and the changing demands of a global food supply chain. As global agriculture faces unprecedented challenges, our RTDS technologies have the potential to help the industry rapidly and reliably adapt in ways that traditional breeding methods or GMO approaches simply cannot match. I want to emphasize again that the opportunities for our gene edited traits aren't years away, they are materializing right now. Agricultural timelines are inherently long, as many in the industry are well aware, but we believe we're on the precipice of moving up the J curve where this opportunity really starts to take off. Without traits moving into customer germplasm and showing promising results in field trials, along with crops containing our traits already on the path to commercialization, we are positioned to capture significant value as regulatory frameworks continue their positive evolution in the second half of this decade. So thanks so much for your attention and interest. We're really looking forward to updating you again next quarter as we continue to hit our milestones and advance our mission. This concludes our remarks. Operator could you please open the call for questions? Thank you.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And the first question will come from Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

So good afternoon. Could you maybe just start by unpacking a little bit what the EU decision means in terms of the milestones or timeline for you to have commercial products with a customer in Europe? And also can you give a flavor for how the changes in the regulatory landscape over the last 18 months have changed the customer interest in looking at alternative revenue structures with you to incentivize you to scale up faster or move faster or kind of how or is there anything that they are looking for from you to have such discussions?

Well, thanks so much for your question, Lawrence. I really appreciate. This is such an important aspect of our business and I think that I really can't underestimate the importance of the process in Europe on the regulatory front. What happened on March 14 was where the EU Council have been working over the last few months to really understand how to advance the EU trilogue discussions and this is really to complete the text of the new genomic techniques. As I mentioned in my remarks, where this ends up is that allows them to do improve the final adoption of text that the Parliament approved last year. What's important to really understand about that is the parliament has already voted. The text is not changing apart from a few amendments that the EU Council now ratified as part of their discussion. So the implications of this are not just in Europe. There are trade and cultivation implications and a lot of the jurisdictions around the world look to the EU for guidance on how new technologies, in this case new genomic technologies like gene editing are going to advance in a lot of seed companies breeding programs around the world. So we know that a lot of our customers have been looking to this to accelerate their programs, understanding that when you think about plant breeding program, making sure that you have a clear path to cultivation, as well as some of the major companies that trade grain around the world look to it for guidance on trade. So, I think there's, like I said, you can't underestimate how important this is to the whole gene editing world we live in right now. And I'm going to ask Greg to make a couple of additional comments.

Yes. Thanks Peter, and thanks for the question, Lawrence. So remember that what Cibus does is, is non-transgenic in process and product, so non-GMO and conventional like as the legislation indicates. So independent of whether we're developing productivity traits, our five traits in three crops, or whether we're developing other edits or purposes that are towards sustainable ingredients, all of those and a clear path through the grain trade are really helpful to what we're trying to accomplish.

And then just secondly, can you just talk a little bit about the, sort of the degree to which the current draft of the EU law lets people patent the genetic modifications. And from your perspective, in terms of your discussions with customers, in terms of the speed of demand pull through, is it better or worse that those changes be patentable or not?

So the good news. Thanks, Lawrence, because I think that's a really good follow-on question because one of the amendments that was discussed was around patenting, and this is a clear message from the council is that they see this as transparency. And so what they are advocating for is that as you bring a product to market as a seed company, that you're transparent about the patterns that are behind that. So it's a little different to where they started and the good news is for us, I think they ended up in a very strong position of making sure that there was transparency for the seed industry in Europe to conform to IP coverage, intellectual property coverage and I think it's a very strong position they ended up in.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you, Laurence.

The next question will come from Austin Moeller with Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Just my first question. Given the progress on HT2 greenhouse data going to the field, fermentation biofragrance products and the third mode of action for white mold and canola, has the timing of the commercialization dates for any of the products in your investor deck changed at all from last quarter? Is everything on track?

So Austin, thanks for that question. I think let me focus on the first part of your question on HT2 trait. I think the field trials this summer are going to be very important for making sure we stay on track. Everything you've mentioned today is we are staying on track is the key message. So what's, I think when you think about what Lawrence just asked on the European regulatory part of the importance of that is the acceleration of a lot of our customers of thinking how to get products on the market as fast as possible. So as we expand our efforts in the different modes of action in Sclerotinia or white mold resistance, there is a keen interest to really accelerate a lot of that work in both our Canola, winter oilseed rape program. And so this is a really important year for both HT2 and Sclerotinia tolerance for canola and winter oilseed rape. I'll leave it there and see if Greg has anything he wants to add.

Yes, I think you covered it. I think we're really excited about what the team has delivered in the last 12 months and in the last quarter, especially with respect to our advanced traits of Sclerotinia resistance and HT2.

Great. And just a follow-up. I understand you expect to raise in Q3 or prior to Q3, but do you expect your current cash balance and consumption to be at sufficient levels, where you can advance all of the traits that you're currently developing?

Yes. Thanks for that, Austin. I think there's no doubt we are working hard to achieve all the milestones that I listed out in our remarks. I think there's a lot of this is progressing really well and we will work to meet our cash requirements. I'll hand it to Carlo to make additional comments.

Yes, thank you, Peter. The only thing I would like to confirm from year end recognizing structured financing in January, over $20 million. When you look at that and then realize that we have this serious reduction of a burn this year, we're confident that we can move forward nicely all the way into late quarter three and can do all the things we have to do and want to do.

Excellent. Thanks for the details. I'll pass it back there.

Thanks Austin.

The next question will come from Sameer Joshi with H. C. Wainwright. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a little bit of related to the previous questions. The sustainable ingredient business, I think you are expecting initial nominal revenues from that. Should we expect like meaningful revenues in 2026 from maybe the biofragrance or maybe one of the partner-based revenues?

So thank you for the question. It's on point because one thing that we haven't discussed a lot previously is our biofragrance work. And I'm excited to share with you that over the last 12 months we have made great progress in that area. It is a fermentation-based product. We've made some really important milestones over the last, even last two to three months on that and so we're very comfortable that we are going to see revenues in 2026 of where we sit today. There is a biofragrance market for that a lot of the large multinational CPG companies are looking forward to and I think that we can meet their needs with some of the biofragrance work we've done. It is the legacy of some of the early work that Greg Gocal and the team have done of understanding how to look at these genetics. And I think that's we've used that platform often to understand how we go about some of our targets for weed management. And so it's been a surprising result if you like, and exciting to see that we're going to see some revenues in 2026.

Interesting. Sounds very promising. On the European regulatory pathway that is likely to open up for you. Are you already in touch with the potential customers there? And also part two of that question, are you also working on crops that are grown in Europe like wheat and barley, and developing traits or platforms for those?

So thanks for that question. It's really important that we stress that five of our winter oilseed rape customers are based in Europe. So we're working closely with European customers already on both Sclerotinia tolerance as well as some other traits. And I think that right now last year we reported that we have a wheat platform and so we're actually suspecting that we will see more interest from Europe now on some of the other crops we have winter oilseed rape, we have a platform in wheat and we do see some opportunities in that area. What I will stress is that Sclerotinia tolerance or disease tolerance in general, being a multi crop trait, is really valuable to markets like Europe. And with that, I'll hand it off to Greg to see if he wants to add a little bit.

Yes, so excellent question, Sameer. And as Peter reinforced, what we've been able to accomplish in terms of a couple this is the second year of field trials that we're doing in the UK for our Pod Shatter trait and we're excited by what we saw last year, but also in terms of future opportunities. So the fact that we have a right Rice platform, we've developed, the Wheat platform enables us potentially to access other crops like barley, but as probably as partnered opportunities, not as things that would be necessarily funded today by Cibus' work.

Understood, thanks for that. And then just maybe on the cost front, the operating costs have come down nicely or that sequentially over the last three quarters. Are the cost cuts already, like, is this the level that we should expect going forward or are you expecting further cost optimizations anymore to be realized?

So let me start off. Thank you for that question. Carlo and myself and Greg, we spend a lot of time making sure we look at our cost structure and so we believe there are some additional savings over time as we refine some of the processes. I think even some of the work that Carlo's been doing in the finance group has allowed us to streamline some of our early processes. And so we continue to work on that. Maybe Carlo wanted to make a…

Yes, one extra bill, Peter. We look at efficiencies in the back office, like better systems. So there I think we were able to further streamline and reduce where we can. But I think that 20% was already impressive. We just delivered.

Yes, no, that was good. Thanks for taking my questions and good luck.

Thank you.

The next question will come from Matthew Venezia with Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead.

Hey guys, congrats on the quarter. Thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, I just wanted to ask if you've identified any priority traits and crops that you intend to spend the most resources on in your ramp to commercialization. And I'll give you a sec to answer that before I give you my others.

So I think. Thanks Matt, for the question. It's important to stress that we are really focused on the three crop, five trade platform. So but as you've heard from us over the last couple of quarters as well as today, we're excited about what we're seeing with rice particularly and our advanced traits in canola and winter oil seed rape. So we're very much focused in that area and I think this, I go back to the EU regulatory that really allows us to get confident of some of our timelines commercialization. The other area, I believe is soybean and I think this is an area that we're really very much focused on. The team is doing a great job of progressing towards an operational soybean platform. This as you might imagine, is very interesting. There's a lot of interest on soybeans, particularly in the U.S. And so the traits that we have worked on with Sclerotinia tolerance, disease resistance is something that traditional breeding and GMO just never addressed. And so as you saw earlier this year we announced an AI power gene discovery partnership with Biographica. And so additional focus on understanding the gene targets around disease resistance for canola and winter oilseed rape was one of our areas that we really wanted to put some resource behind. But it really complements our computational biology team. The power of AI is incredible. And understanding what to target and really understanding that we now have a time bound and predictable process in canola to add traits. So they're the areas of real focus for us right now. Matt.

Got it. Thank you. And I have kind of a technical question on the soybean front. I don't know if it's public yet, but given that regeneration from protoplasts has been achieved in the literature before in soybean, but only in certain genotypes should we assume that you guys have achieved regeneration of full plants, just not genotype nonspecifically or just not in some of the genotypes that your customers have sent you? If you could, I guess you or Greg could comment. Thank you.

Yes, of course I'm going to ask Greg to comment on this one too. But I'm going to start off by saying that, regeneration from protoplasts, there is I think at least one scientific publication, sorry from many years ago which was very much genotype specific. What we're focused on is building an operational platform, in other words that meets with our partners needs and with elite genetics. As people may know, soybean is grown across many geographies and so you have to have a lot of different maturity groups of soybean to actually have a commercial relevant genetics background. So that's what we've been focused on looking at multiple ways to get there. What we were excited about was the fact that the team was able to show editing in protoplast at a high level targeting one of our traits that we know the targets for. But with that I'm going to hand it off to Greg to make some comments.

Yes. Thanks Peter and thanks for the question, Matt. So really excited for what the team has delivered over the last year and especially the last quarter for soybean. And to reinforce what we're seeing is a very high rate of editing in soybean at a single cell level. And we have multiple paths that we've seen lots of great progress on towards the traits. We understand all of the edits or the edits for the different modes of action for Sclerotinia as well as for the HT2 trait to be successful.

Got it. Thank you, guys. And in terms of Pod Shatter reduction, I know you had answered about the timelines earlier, but are we still assuming 2026 for the first royalties from Canada and how about from the EU? Does this decision at all push up those timelines a little bit or are we still on track for 2027, 2028 there?

So let me take the last part of your question. Where we sit today. The EU regulatory is a really important aspect of any trace in Canola. Now we've given guidance before between 2026 and 2028 when we see revenues coming from Canola and winter oilseed rape. And so that respect hasn't changed when it comes to Pod Shatter. We continue to move ahead but today this I don't think the European regulatory accelerates any of those timelines.

Got it. Thank you. All right, thanks for taking my questions. I'll hop back in the queue.

Thanks Matt.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

So thank you all for joining today. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks. I just really want to thank everyone for their interest and support of our company. I'm able to represent an amazing team here at Cibus, and I'm so proud of the progress they've made in the last quarter. We have a big year ahead. We have a lot of milestones that we see. We're excited by that. And I would like to just finish and say thank you again for the great questions today and the opportunity to present Cibus to you at our quarterly earnings report. Thank you.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.