Earnings Labs

Dyadic International, Inc. (DYAI)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Mar 13, 2014

$0.75

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for holding. Welcome to Dyadic International’s Year End 2013 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. My name is Danielle, and I will be your conference coordinator today. As a reminder, please note that today’s call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to introduce your host for today’s call, Michael Faby, Dyadic’s Chief Financial Officer.

Michael Faby

Management

Thank you, Danielle. Good afternoon. And thank you for joining today’s conference call to discuss Dyadic’s financial and operating results for the year ended December 31, 2013, which we’ve reported on the press release issued earlier this afternoon. The press release and Dyadic’s year end financial statements have been posted to both the Dyadic and OTC Markets websites. I’m joined today by Dyadic’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark Emalfarb and our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Danai Brooks. On today’s call Mark and Danai will cover operating highlights, business development and corporate strategy, and I will review our financial results in a bit more detail. We will then give you an opportunity to ask questions. Each caller will be allowed one question and one follow-up question in order to provide all callers an opportunity to participate. If the time permits, the operator will allow additional questions from those who have already spoken. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that certain statements made in this conference call maybe forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties that could cause Dyadic’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Some of the factors that could cause actual results to be materially different are detailed under risk factor discussion in Dyadic’s filings with the OTC markets groups including Dyadic’s initial information and disclosure statement filed on March 11, 2014. Dyadic expressly disclaims any intent or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements except as required by law. I will now turn the call over to our Chairman, President and CEO, Mark Emalfarb.

Mark A. Emalfarb

Management

Thank you, Mike, and I want to thank all of you for joining us on today’s call. Dyadic has made significant progress in 2013 by further growing our business both in terms of growing product revenues, improving operations, new product development processes and in licensing and in further developing our C1 technology. In April, we signed a broad license deal with BASF. On the same day BASF announced the C1 license with Dyadic. They also cut a deal with Direvo, a gene engineering firm and acquired Henkel’s detergent enzyme business. Later in the year, BASF bought Verenium in their gene discovery platform. A rich source of genes, they may use Dyadic C1 technology to develop and produce many of its future BASF products. BASF is clearly making a strong push into the traditional industrial enzyme space. We are excited that BASF has chosen our C1 technology platform to help grow its various business units. Additionally, we believe BASF will spend significant resources to continue to make C1 growth more productive and capable of producing a wider variety of enzymes for their business at lower cost. As we highlighted previously, Dyadic is receiving and expect to continue to receive funded R&D projects and potential milestone payments from BASF in 2014 and beyond. The first new C1 based BASF products are several years away. Also in April, Dyadic hired a new Chief Operating Officer, Danai Brooks, will add significant operational and industry experience to our management team. During the past year, Danai has initiated a number of important initiatives within the Company in R&D and a new product development for an industrial enzyme business. Additionally, Danai has been very active in our licensing efforts with potential third parties in a variety of areas including the area of cellulosic sugars, industrial enzyme and…

Danai E. Brooks

Management

Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. I’m going to spend some time updating you on our R&D operations and business development initiatives. Over the past several months we have put significant effort towards expanding our internal research and development capabilities and resources. We completed a significant expansion of our lab in the Netherlands and closed our facility in North Carolina. We have also nearly completed preparations to launch our next-generation pulp and paper and textile product line, the FibreZyme G4 series. Business development dialogue remains active and our projects with BASF and others are pushing forward. With our C1 technology it is possible to produce dedicated and relatively pure enzymes and the new enzyme product will give improved dough and bread quality and increased bioavailability of health components that are naturally present in flour. The project is scheduled to last for 30 months. Dyadic is involved in two projects focused algae; the EU funded project, MIRACLES and the Dutch funded project, AlgaePARC Biorefinery. Microalgae, our promising feedstock for sustainable supply of commodities and specialties for both food and non-food products, the project will develop dedicated enzyme products to enable and/or improve the extraction of valuable compounds such as fatty acids and proteins from algae. Both projects are scheduled to last for four years. Additional information on these four public private partnerships will be communicated over the next several weeks. Our program with the Technical University of Munich is targeted toward over-expressing [indiscernible]. We expect that project to last approximately six months. Finally, we’ve begun our second healthcare related research project to develop a therapeutic protein using C1 platform technology. Using C1 has the potential to lower production cost and help minimize several bottlenecks for pharmaceutical development by offering direct, linear scaling from a lab to commercial manufacturing. Let me…

Michael J. Faby

Management

Thank you Danai. Before reviewing the year-end financial results, I'd like to refer you again to our press release and financial statements which are posted on the Dyadic and OTC Markets websites. I will begin with a review of the income statement. Total revenue increased 10% for the year ended December 31, 2013 to $17.1 million as compared to $15.6 million for the entire year. Net product related revenue increased 25% to $9.8 million for 2013 as compared to $7.8 million for 2012. In addition to sales growth our product related business has an increasingly global footprint with 47% of our sales in Europe, 35% in North America and 17% in Asia. License fee revenue for the year increased by $500,000 due to the licensing agreement Dyadic entered into with BASF in the second quarter of 2013. The agreement called for BASF to pay an aggregate $6.0 million upfront as compared to a $5.5 million upfront license fee that Abengoa paid for an expansion of their non-exclusive C1 license in 2012. Research and development revenue for the year decreased 42% to $1.3 million compared to $2.3 million for 2012. The decrease was the result of delays in the start of certain external research and development projects, and the reallocation of research and development resources from externally funded projects to new product development initiatives. These initiatives are internally funded, and are expected to accelerate the continued enhancement and improvements to our C1 Platform Technology. For 2013 cost of good sold was approximately $9.1 million, or 82% of total revenue excluding license fees, as compared to approximately $7.6 million, or 75.4% of total revenue excluding license fees, for last year, an increase of approximately $1.5 million. We have excluded license fee revenue from the percentages above because license fee does not have…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And we will take our first question from Joe Levatino [ph].

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes, my question is about this trial, this case against your previous legal council. Is this thing, is there a real business benefit to pursuing this thing, it’s seems to me that perhaps just thinking of valuable time?

Michael J. Faby

Management

Yes, I mean obviously one can say that you either should or shouldn’t pursue something, but we’re pursuing damages in excess of $200 million. And we think that’s infact….

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

I am sorry. Did I hear $200 million?

Michael J. Faby

Management

In excess of $200 million and our lawyers are on a contingency, and they fully believe in the case ask do we. And we think that there is a good possibility we recover a significant amount of money. So, we look at it as a business….

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, well, it sounds good. Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

.:

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes, hello quick question for Mark or anyone else. So I guess related to the startup down in Kansas, we haven’t grown – do you have a Dyadic representative staff there – on site there at this time.

Mark A. Emalfarb

Management

No, we do not have a representative on-site there. It’s not something that is necessary. Abengoa has been producing enzymes with C1 for several years now or…

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. So as if some would point that in my part does that – have you gotten any feedback how close they are already going to at least say a 50% operating mode there?

Mark A. Emalfarb

Management

Well, in fact I spoke to them today, because I knew was get out that question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay.

Mark A. Emalfarb

Management

And basically they have already initiated starting up the plant, and they extract in Q2 to start producing their first cellulosic ethanol, which would include that point using C1 enzyme. So, they are very close to getting up and running on a basis that will include our enzymes. And I am sure by the end of the year that we run again significant portion of what they’re doing, but that depends on how well it goes and those scale up and things go I can tell you with 50% or not, but the good news is sometime in Q2 they will be producing sales to ethanol using Dyadic C1 enzymes that what we’ve been told.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. I hope sooner or greater they’re linear as it could be physiologically it would be a big plus for the stack going to the back through full listing status as well and gaining more credibility. Thanks a lot Mark. Good luck.

Mark A. Emalfarb

Management

Thank you.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) We’ll go next to Richard Deutsch. Richard Deutsch – Ladenburg Thalmann: Thank you. Yeah, there is a lot of things I usually can ask exploring all the great things about the company, but I wanted to come to something that I believe is really been holding the stock down quite a bit below where the value seems to indicate with other issues. And I really applaud very much your looking for a talent in your management that you mentioned in terms of hiring search firm, but the thing that I think would be very helpful also that’s well within your preview is to improve your corporate governance. Mark you are the founder, major shareholder, CEO, Chairman of the Board and President. Your broad, friends and business associates that you hand pick. And this isn’t other company now and it’s growing on a worldwide basis and your science is basically unchallenged, your licenses are extraordinarily impressive, the commercialization for your license fees after several years of development are progressing to actual execution levels right now, that you’ve spoken about. But you and I have spoken about this in the past. But I wanted to know, from you publically what your commitment is to improving the corporate governance by bringing in some top notch well connected board of directors members that could help you strategize and connect and move this company forward and I would like to hear, what your thoughts are on this.

Mark A. Emalfarb

Management

First of all I would like to thank you for the complements because the existing board, the people, and in fact achieving all those wonderful things you just sited we’ve done. So I think the board has done a great job. I comment them. We are actively looking for alternative board members either to add to the board that we have currently or to replace one or more of the board members. And I’ve told you this in the past and told the public that, and that’s where we’re at right now. And we in fact have had discussions with several potential board members and some have fallen to the crack that’s effecting once you come on board. But the company would not allow him, because they are actively involved in spaces like pharmaceutical industries and some of the major companies in this country or in the world for that matter and they wanted to join the board but unfortunately they’ve lost this all. But there would be a conflict of interest in that case we’re pursuing therapeutic proteins, vaccines and antibodies in that space. So we are looking and we are talking to people, and we are evaluating whether we will hire a headhunter or use the same headhunter on other one, but that position is well, for those positions. Richard Deutsch – Ladenburg Thalmann: Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

I’m showing no further questions at this time. And I will now turn the call back to Mr. Emalfarb for closing comments.

Mark A. Emalfarb

Management

All right. I want to thank all of you for being shareholders. I guess there is another question.

Operator

Operator

We again have a follow-up from Joe Levatino.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes, I want to follow-up briefly on what the last gentleman’s point. When he delineated Mark your list of titles are and I’m a retailer investor, I’ve been invested in our company for a number of years. I watched this thing closely and I come to certain conclusions. And I came to the conclusion that this gentleman is so verbalized very well and that has to do with management. And I think, what you said very well is that this is a public company with a worldwide presence and developing the significant footprint. And I just have the feeling that the management of the company is closely held and it doesn’t seem to me to be acting like a public company with a worldwide footprint, that’s my point. I don’t know if it’s a question here, but if you want to address it, I’d appreciate it?

Mark A. Emalfarb

Management

Well, I mean we do have a worldwide footprint, so apparently we are acting that way. We have a Poland research and development facility, we have license fees all over the globe and Abengoa which is in same St Louis and in Spain, we’re working this Sanofi, Baxter and a French company. We are working with BASF, the largest chemical company in earth. So I think we have a global footprint. I think we are acting as a global company. We have customers in 35 countries around the world. I think Mike pointed out a third of that business is in Europe, basically a little more a third of it is in the U.S. 17% or 20% within Asia. So I think we are actually are global, we are acting as a global company. I think that the customers that we do business with appreciate the way that they are treated and respected and collaborated with. And I think, that we are working towards getting at least to begin on a thing, we just got into OTCQX, but took a lot of time and effort to get done, but we diligently worked on that. We are working towards becoming a fully reporting company, which is moving towards the direction that you and other people have asked about. So all within the fact that we haven’t put on other Board members that we haven’t find the right people for the right set, which we are working on which I just mentioned and we want the right people to do the right things for the right reasons, because for the long-term, I want to grow this business and we were severely set back and we had put to this company on a solid foundation and footing which until we got down with BASF and they haven’t do expansion last in 2012 and BASF in last May, we didn’t have the capabilities or the resources to do the things we are starting to do not. So we don’t want to put our shareholders our employees, our collaborators at risk, so we thought it was more important to actually build the business, build the foundation and now we are moving forward and doing the things you are asking us to do which we would have done in fact we had the resources in the past.

Danai E. Brooks

Management

It’s Danai, just want to add to the role of markets since I am COO and Chairman of the company. He is running a company, another company for 35 years, he is highly respected in the industry, he has built the company and a technology platform to where it is today, he works with his management team and delegates to them, he have a lot of inputs and how they run the business. It’s definitely not a one man show in terms of how this business is run. He listens to his Board through, he is very active in the operations of this company and Mark is really the heart and soul and brain of Dyadic. There is no reason why he should not be the CEO and the Chairman of the Board, it shouldn’t be a question.

Operator

Operator

And Joe, do you have anything further?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

No I wasn’t questioning the Mark’s qualification or his right or whatever to be your Chairman and CEO. I think he is a remarkable leader and persistent beyond belief. It’s just that as I have been watching his progress, it just seems to me that there is a spark that will ignite from some place and I’m just wondering where that going to come from?

Mark A. Emalfarb

Management

So I think there is a couple of more question, if you would like to ask us.

Operator

Operator

We’ll go to John McMillin.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Alright, Mark, John, here; two quick questions, which market do you think you will have the biggest growth potential and then on a site question secondly, I’m very new to the story, can you comment maybe just briefly on your patent portfolio?

Mark A. Emalfarb

Management

Yes, so the good thing about our technology is the platform and Dyadic move across almost every market there is out there today form drugs to vaccines the antibodies and the pharmaceutical space to feed, the food, the textiles, the pulp and paper, to detergents, to biofuels and industrial enzyme space, cosmetics, nutraceutical. But to your question is, there is no bigger opportunity out there that we’re seeing converting biomass into sugar to replace oil, is big as it gets. And I must tell you that I don’t think we get the credit for the fact that Abengoa is going probably the premier company on this planet. It’s involved in turning biomass into sugar and they spend $400 million to demonstrate a 10 year $1 billion investment that they’ve made to do just that. And unlike, Novozymes can pay in $150 million again [indiscernible]. Abengoa paid us to get embed with our technology and they’ve demonstrated and improving and reported showing the slide performances in cost reductions that technology is actually delivered on its promise and we’re very excited about team one and whereas can we go. And we are very excited about having them with the partner and we didn’t have to dilute our shareholders by spending $100 million to do that so. I think we wish to give this board a lot of different credits for the reasons that what we’ve done methodically and that’s just one example. So that’s the biggest opportunity because if you can make sugar out of biomass in large volumes affordably that’s an incredible opportunity, that $1 trillion market. potential or for $10 billion of enzyme that could be sold into that market. And I have seen our patent portfolio, we had broad patents in a variety of countries all over the world,…

Danai E. Brooks

Management

Just want to add one or two things real quick. So I know you’re new to the story, I think the way to think about our end market is biofuels, we have three in big buckets, one is biofuels, one is industrial enzymes which represent is getting into and you can look at other companies like DSM, Novozymes DuPont and enzymes that cover those traditional industrial enzyme markets and then the third end market being pharmaceutical. These three markets have very, very different characteristics to them and we’re approaching them in different ways. But and for example biofuels, until the plants could double or triple our pro forma net income. So that’s a huge opportunity for company our size, industrial enzymes I think we have a plan in place to significantly grow that. In pharmaceutical it’s early stage. We’re trying to provide a new technology, but if this works this could be a massive thing for Dyadic. So I think you have to breakdown the company into those three end markets and analyze them separately as you’re considering it as an investment.

Mark A. Emalfarb

Management

We will take one more question because we have actually done same questions a while ago.

Operator

Operator

Well, we’ll hear from Steve Emerson.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Well, first of all congratulations on your excellent progress, but perhaps I missed some of the several key, I have been waiting for the slide that will show a timeline or possible timeline company objectives as to virtually all well recorded biotechs and in light of this request, I didn’t quite understand the subtle piece of the Sanofi status, have they started to bring the possible production in-house to Sanofi? And on a realistic timeframe, when do you think the possible timing of they are making a decision about licensing?

Mark A. Emalfarb

Management

Let me tackle this. I’ll address the Sanofi item first. We have expressed a protein and clarified it and that Sanofi has not have been able to do in any other expression system. We’ve really broken new ground here using a fungal expression system and direct development. And we’ve done a lot of analysis on test results and we believe we have about four, there they have not internalized this or began manufacturing or anything along those lines, this is a long process to go through the FDA approval et cetera to bring something like this to market. That said, I think we’re making a lot of progress. There is a lot of debate about, which is the right path forward, but everybody involved, very excited about the project and I think we should expect that this is a complicated project has a lot of potential, but I don’t think we can make assertions on when we’ll have next big milestone because this is science and this is cutting-edge. So it may be successful or may not.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

So, is there any few state in our contract with Sanofi or are there any deadline dates or anything at all other than they are paying you research money?

Mark A. Emalfarb

Management

I think in terms of date, we then move forward into clinical trials that’s going to be an important day to look out for, but again that’s not something that we can address in terms of timeline right now.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Along the same kind of thought which is to try to get some dates that are meaningful, do we know when the feed enzyme, what approximate time frame it will be submitted to the European authorities and approximately how long that typically takes?

Mark A. Emalfarb

Management

Just in terms of timeline the only thing we know a full priority is have got a starting plan that’s going to go online very soon, and lot of the other projects, including animal feed project is the multiyear project. so you’re not going to see those in the market this year or next year, see their longer-term project. I think I get some very specific timelines in terms of the new R&D projects that [indiscernible] and that characteristic of a lot of new product development.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. thank you very much. Yes.

Michael J. Faby

Management

I guess one other quick thing, I mean there’s other opportunities in licensing, not necessarily, producing new products that are going to – that are potentially near-term as well. So we have to disaggregate I think bringing new products to market, and also having success in milestones and things like that for new licensing agreement that we’re all working at.

Mark A. Emalfarb

Management

Anyway, to close off, I want to thank all of you for being shareholders and supporters of Dyadic, and for participating in today’s conference call. We look forward to reporting our further progress you – during our first quarter call, in early May. I also want to remind you that our Annual Shareholders Meeting will be held in late June. we will further update you on what is happening.

Operator

Operator

And this concludes our program for today. You may all disconnect.