Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Evogene’s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2019 Results Conference Call. All participants are present in a listen-only mode. Following management’s formal presentation, instructions will be given for the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded March 4, 2020. Before we begin, I would like to caution that certain statements made during this earnings conference call by Evogene’s management will constitute forward-looking statements that relate to future events, risks and uncertainties regarding business strategy, operations and future performance and results of Evogene. I encourage you to review Evogene’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and read the note regarding forward-looking statements in their earnings releases, which states that statements made in these earnings releases and in the similar way on this earnings conference call that are not historical facts may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All forward-looking statements made herein speak only as of the date of the announcement of results. Many of the factors that impact, whether forward-looking statements will come true, are beyond the control of Evogene and may cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results. Evogene is under no obligation to update publicly or alter our forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as otherwise required by law. We expressly disclaim any obligation to do so. More detailed information about the risk factors potentially adversely impacting our performance can be found in our reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. That said I would now like to turn the call over to Ofer Haviv, Evogene’s CEO. Ofer, please go ahead.

Thank you and good day everyone. We appreciate you joining us today for our fourth quarter and full year 2019 conference call. Joining me today is Ms. Dorit Kreiner, our CFO. I will begin my comments today with a few opening words regarding Evogene’s value proposition as we emerge from a pivotal year in the company's history. I will then review the activities and accomplishments of our subsidiaries in 2019 and discuss some anticipated milestones for 2020. Following my comments, the Dorit will summarize Evogene’s financial results for the fourth quarter and the full year 2019. We will then open the call for your questions. Let's begin. 2019 has been a turning point in the life of the company. During the year, we completed our organizational change as was presented at the beginning of 2018. This entailed establishing five subsidiaries each utilizing Evogene’s unique computational biology capabilities in order to create novel products in different life-science-based markets including human health, agriculture, industrial applications. The completion of the organizational change placed us at the competitive position to translate the value of our capabilities in computational biology to novel products in the upcoming years. Our computational biology technology, the unique CPB platform, leverages the revolutions in big data and artificial intelligence while incorporating a deep understanding of biology. The CPB platform disrupts conventional life-science product development methodology currently challenged by inefficiencies by computationally design the core components, the heart of life-science products, microbes, small molecules and genes. The uniqueness of our computational design approach stems from our ability to successfully address multiple product attributes at the beginning of the discovery process of relevant core components rather than one at a time during the development phase. This is expected to reduce both time and cost, but much more importantly increase the probability of…

Thank you, Ofer. I will begin by reviewing our cash balance. Evogene continues to maintain a strong financial position for its activities, with approximately $47 million in cash, cash related accounts and bank deposits as of December 31,2019. Cash usage amounted to approximately $17.6 million during 2019 and $5.2 million during the fourth quarter of 2019, in range with its cash usage estimate for 2019 of $16 million to $18 million. $17.6 million of Evogene’s consolidated cash is appropriated to its subsidiary, Lavie Bio, including a $10 million investment received from Corteva during the third quarter of 2019. For the full year of 2020, we estimate that our cash usage, excluding Lavie Bio and without any funds raised by our subsidiaries or payments from a significant collaboration, will be within the range of $14 million to $16 million. This cash use is mostly appropriated to Evogene’s subsidiaries, mainly Biomica, AgPlenus, Canonic and Evogene’s expenses as a public company such as D&O insurance and others. Evogene does not have bank debt. Let's now turn to the statement of operations. As discussed in prior calls Evogene’s revenue to-date has consisted primarily of research and development revenues. These revenues represent R&D cost reimbursement and milestone payments under our various collaboration agreements as reflected in the cost of revenues. The majority of these agreements also provide for royalties or other forms of revenue sharing from successfully developed products. R&D expenses mostly represent product development activities of the Company and its subsidiaries, which include computational work, lab & greenhouse assays, field-trials and pre-clinical studies carried out by third parties. R&D expenses for 2019 were $15.8 million in comparison to $14.7 million in 2018. R&D expenses for the fourth quarter of 2019 were approximately $5 million in comparison to approximately $4 million in the fourth quarter of 2018. The increase in R&D expenses during the quarter is attributed to payments made to third parties for pre-clinical studies conducted for Biomica and field trials conducted in target locations for Lavie Bio, as well as the acquisition of a genomic-unique seed collection for Canonic. Operating loss for 2019 was approximately $21 million in comparison to $20 million in 2018. Operating loss for the fourth quarter of 2019 was $6.9 million in comparison to $5.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2018. The loss in 2019 decreased to approximately $19 million in comparison to a loss of approximately $21 million in 2018. The loss for the fourth quarter of 2019 was $6.7 million in comparison to a loss of $5.8 million during fourth quarter of 2018. With that said, we would now like to open-up the call for any questions you may have. Operator?

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] The first question is from David Draiman of Draiman Asset Management. Please go ahead.

Hi everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. With regard to Lavie Bio beyond Corteva’s 20% holdings what additional value are they adding to Lavie? Are they bringing the products to – helping to bring the products to commercialization?

Hi, this is Ofer. So Corteva is holding 28% in Lavie Bio and they in order to receive the same equity they invest $1 million and they also transfer all of their holding in their subsidiary in the area of pathological tax zone. By doing so actually they really put their focus on developing the future ag-biological products in significant ways through a Lavie Bio, meaning that there is a real expectation from Corteva that their future product will come from Lavie Bio, R&D pipeline. So knowing this, this is in a way an explanation why and how Corteva can assist Lavie Bio in advancing their product pipeline to the market. As an example in the area of corn and soybean Corteva have a preferred right in the marketing a Lavie Bio product at the market. In addition, they have a board member to participate in all of the Lavie Bio strategic discussion. And of course he contributes a lot to our understanding the market and the market needs. And another example is that in some cases, when they are entering into an opportunity through their network, they might want to present this opportunity to Lavie Bio. So the bottom line because – this in a strategic investment of a Corteva in Lavie Bio, represent a strategic step of Corteva in a, their expectations from Lavie Bio in the future. So they are it's taking a significant role in helping Lavie Bio in developing its product, but much more importantly in the commercial aspects of Lavie Bio activity.

Thanks. The Corteva deal actually is sort of sounds like an excellent demonstration of another company, unlocking the inherent value of subsidiaries that you have are you, is Evogene trying to mimic this sort of strategy with other subsidiaries.

So I think that in my comments for today to the conference, I mentioned that we are in the process of evaluating financial needs of our subsidiaries. Which means that yes, we are looking for additional fundraising for certain of our subsidiaries. There is the, we are evaluating two main direction. The first one is the same type of investment like we made with the Corteva – in Lavie Bio to bring together with Corteva meaning that you're looking for strategically investor, but you're also looking for a financial investors as well. I think that maybe the best outcome from this then ongoing process is that we might enter into some financial round that will include financial investors and strategic investor in the same round. And this is will send a very strong message to the capital market on the value of our additional subsidiaries and like I hope that we send with respect to Lavie Bio.

Terrific. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Good luck with 2020.

Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] The next question from [indiscernible], please go ahead.

Hello Ofer. Thank you for taking my question. I'm looking at the cash usage for 2020 and you say the cash usage will be between $14 million to $16 million without a significant collaboration. Can you give any borders to this, how much money should we save if you sign a significant collaboration. Thank you.

So when we're talking about significance, the first – thank you for this question. Just – we have to emphasize two points. The first one is, as we mentioned that it's not including, significant collaboration but it's also, it's not including fundraising for our subsidiaries. I mean if you're looking at the total cash that the company is looking for the end of the year. So, exactly like what's happened with Corteva we hope that at the end of the year at least certain of our subsidiaries will raise money to support their future activity. But I would like to return to your specific question. When talking about strategic collaboration, I'm talking on it at least few millions of dollars per year, in such a collaboration. So this is the type of collaboration I’m talking about.

Okay. Thank you very much. Good luck.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. Before I ask Mr. Ofer Haviv to go ahead with his closing statement, I would like to remind participants that a replay of this call is scheduled to begin two hours after the conference. In the U.S. please call 1-888-326-9310, in Israel please call 03-925-5904, internationally please call 972-3925-5904. Mr. Haviv, would you like to make your concluding statement?

Yes. Thank you. Thank you all for joining the call today. I look forward to updating you with our progress over the next few months. Thank you and good day.

Thank you. This concludes Evogene’s fourth quarter and full year 2019 results conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may go ahead, and disconnect.