Yield10 Bioscience, Inc. (NASDAQ:YTEN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Ben Klieve: Got it. Okay. That’s very helpful, thank you. Two other questions for me, one on the research agreement side; so I didn’t catch any comments on the existing research agreements in your prepared remarks. Do you have any updates there, most notably on the Bayer agreement?

Oliver Peoples: Yeah, so we had a conversation with Bayer very late last year. This year data, we can’t share it with you. Unfortunately that trait, which I can’t say anything about it actually, actually go over the two years, the combination of the two years meant that it did not meet their criteria for progressing in the context of the other traits they’re progressing at this time in soybean. So as part of that that conversation, they continue to be interested in all the traits and evaluating them, but right now because we’ve focused really the business on the biofuels and Camelina going forward, we’ve mostly been spending our time on developing Camelina traits of which Kristi mentioned a long list. For the most part, those are Camelina genes, and we’re very excited, obviously, about the potential of those in the biofuel space.

So we really did deemphasize it two or three years ago. This sort of the sort of trade licensing would still exist. The issue is we just don’t have the bandwidth to spend time on it. And quite frankly, with what we’re now seeing in Camelina a clear path to not only a 100,000 of acres, but millions of acres, I think we need to stay very focused on that going forward.

Ben Klieve: Yeah, no, certainly. But that’s helpful update. And then, one other update, on the balance sheet the calculate out the quick math on the cash burn and the cash balance at the end of the year, the ATM you haven’t placed. Can you comment on if you’ve been using that and if so, the magnitude of which that’s been utilized thus far?

Oliver Peoples: Yes, I think we haven’t commented on that yet, and I think what we’ll say is that obviously, we are well aware of the financial situation. We are working in financing options in conjunction with the partnering discussions that are ongoing. Some of whom have been described already, some of whom have not. And so obviously our goal is to — is to resolve those things in a positive way for our shareholders as we move forward in the next several weeks.

Ben Klieve: Got it. Okay. Very good. That all very helpful. Thanks for taking my questions. I’ll get back in line.

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

Anthony Vendetti: Yes, thank you. So, just follow up on some of the questions before. So just in terms of your MOUs, your Memorandum of Understandings with Mitsubishi and American Airlines, if as you’re looking at things and Oli you mentioned walking slow, so you can run fast, what do you need to do to ramp up your production to meet these potential contracts? How long would it take for you to do that? A little bit about, how you’re allocating, but just maybe give us an understanding of what it would take for these to, to ramp up to meet these potential contracts.

Oliver Peoples: Yeah, so, so when you talk to large players, and I’m just going to use this very generically, I think what you’re really looking at is how quickly can you get to tens of millions of gallons of biofuel feet start going into a refinery. And so I think that’s the way we view it. So, roughly, depending on how — what assumptions you make, 50 million gallons is probably a million acres something like that. So, that’s the scale that the industry, and I don’t mean any particular person that we may be involved with is interested in, but people tend to be looking at this and asking the question, not how do I get 20,000 gallons, but how do I get 20 million, 50 million, a 100 million gallons and when you start talking about 20 million and these numbers get big in a hurry.