Earnings Labs

Codexis, Inc. (CDXS)

Q2 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 15, 2013

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Codexis’ Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. This call is being webcast live on the Investors section of Codexis’ website at codexis.com. This call is property of Codexis and any recording, reproduction or transmission of this call without expressed written consent of Codexis is strictly prohibited. As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. You may listen to a webcast replay of this call by going to the Investors section of Codexis’ website. I would now like to turn the call over to Doug Sheehy, Codexis’ Senior Vice President and General Counsel. Please proceed.

Doug Sheehy

Management

Thank you and good afternoon. We announced our fiscal second quarter financial results on August 9th. The press release is available on the Investors page of our website at codexis.com. With me today are John Nicols, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and David O'Toole, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. During the course of today’s call, management will make a number of forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include our forecast for 2013 pharmaceutical revenue, product revenue, atorvastatin revenue, product gross margins, total gross margins for pharmaceutical revenue and total cash burn. Actions that Codexis may take to protect its interest under the Dyadic license agreement, our ability to maintain rights under the Dyadic license agreement, our ability to earn milestone payments under our joint development agreement with a market-leading food ingredients company, the ability of our collaboration with Purolite to allow for the reuse of our enzymes at commercial scale and to target more manufacturing customers, the future launch of immobilized transaminases kits, our belief that CodeXyme cellulase enzymes and CodeXol detergent alcohol will perform at commercial scale and decrease manufacturing costs, our ability to secure additional partnerships that will expand our pipelines and our ability to secure funding partners for CodeXyme cellulase enzymes and CodeXol detergent alcohols. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ significantly from those projected. Given these risks and uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Please refer to our quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 9, 2013 for some of the important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements made on the call. Except as required by law, we disclaim any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after this call. Now, I’d like to hand the call over to John Nicols.

John Nicols

Management

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. First, let me address the delay of our previously scheduled earnings call from last Wednesday to today. The only reason we delayed this call was the receipt of a letter from Dyadic on July 30th, alleging that Codexis is in breach of the Dyadic license agreement. Instead of preparing for this call last week, we focused our efforts on getting our quarterly report on file with the SEC in light of the Dyadic letter. As we announced last week, we believe that we are not in breach of the Dyadic license agreement and that the Dyadic letter is unjustified and without any legal or factual basis. We are still considering all available remedies to protect Codexis’ interest under the Dyadic license agreement. Moving to our second quarter results, Codexis remains on track to deliver our step-out profit contribution year in our core biocatalysis business in 2013. Though 2Q had relatively low sales as expected and as we guided you in our prior quarter call, we continue to project full year 2013 biocatalysis revenues in excess of $35 million with an average contribution margin of 50%, delivering on that would put us at least 60% ahead of last year's biocatalysis contribution margins of $10.9 million. The biocatalysis profit growth is coming from a diversity of sources. We added nine new service projects in the second quarter. Three of those projects are with new clients, who have never worked a service project with us prior. These new service projects provide profitable revenue cover for our R&D costs in the short run while adding to the list of potential new commercial biocatalyst products, should the project’s concepts advance in the longer run. Sales to Merck doubled in the second quarter of 2013 versus the same…

David O'Toole

Management

Thanks John. As we have previously disclosed for our first quarter of 2013 results, we will not be presenting year-over-year comparisons for the first three quarters of 2013. We do not believe that these comparisons are an appropriate measure of the company’s financial performance due to the termination of the collaborative research agreement with Shell affective August 31, 2012, and the resulting loss of associated collaborative research and development revenue. As such, all comparisons given here are on a quarter-over-quarter basis, comparing the second quarter of 2013 sequentially with the company’s first quarter of 2013 financial results. For the second quarter 2013, we reported total revenues of $7 million, a 39% decrease from $11.5 million in the first quarter of 2013. Revenues for the six months ended June 30, 2013 were $18.5 million. Product revenue for the second quarter of 2013 was $5 million, a 45% decrease from $9.1 million in the first quarter of 2013. The decrease in product revenue was primarily due to continued weakness in our generic product business, which I will discuss in more detail later. Product revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2013 was $14.1 million. Product gross margin for the second quarter of 2013 was 27%, compared to 38% in the first quarter of 2013. Product gross margin for the six months ended June 30, 2013 was 34%. Collaborative research and development revenue which consist of license payments, R&D services, milestone payments and royalties was $2 million for the second quarter of 2013, a decrease of 14% from $2.3 million in the first quarter of 2013. Research and development expenses in the second quarter of 2013 were $8.6 million, an increase of 18% from $7.3 million for the first quarter of 2013. Selling, general and administrative expenses in the second quarter were…

John Nicols

Management

Thanks David. In summary, we here at Codexis remain very encouraged by the growth prospects for the company in the coming quarters and years ahead. Our biocatalysts business is on track to hit our revenue guidance for the year with significantly improved profitability compared to 2012 and in the coming quarters we expect to announce additional partnerships that will further expand our product pipeline. At the same time, we have achieved a key milestone in our chemicals program by demonstrating with our partner Chemtex that our CodeXyme cellulase enzymes and CodeXol technology can produce detergent alcohols at a commercially relevant scale from cellulosic biomass. Finally, we know we need to provide full clarity and deliver key milestones associated with our attractive CodeXyme business and we are focused on delivering those to you. And with that, I’d like to turn the call back over to the Operator for question-and-answer.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And our first question is from the line of Weston Twigg, Pacific Crest Securities.

Daniel Baksht - Pacific Crest Securities

Analyst

Hi, there. This is Daniel Baksht actually calling in for Wes. Thanks for taking my questions.

John Nicols

Management

Hi, Daniel.

Daniel Baksht - Pacific Crest Securities

Analyst

So, with respect to your pharma business, could you give us some more color on what you expect from your different customers or your overall demand over the next few quarters so that the we can actually model that opportunity?

John Nicols

Management

Sure. This is John. We have a significant diversity of first -- both customers and products that we provide both service revenue, generate some royalty revenue and sell products to in the pharmaceutical area and the -- with the exception of the change in the business relationship with Arch which we spoke about prior quarters and the change in the atorvastatin business that David spoke to earlier in this call. The general growth trajectory for the pharmaceutical revenues are quite solid, certainly double-digit looking forward in a 12-month kind of horizon. Occasionally, it can move quarter to quarter rather significantly. So we had significantly stronger revenues in the first quarter for example than we did in the second quarter. So there is a quarter-to-quarter lumpiness that on an aggregate over a 12-month period will build up to nice double-digit growth for our Pharma revenues and our business model is built to ensure that those -- those revenues on average are delivering the kind of margins that we did in the first half and we are projecting for our full year 2013. Merck is our largest customer in the area of pharmaceuticals and the business relationship and the project list with Merck are growing and is healthy. We have a significant number of other key customers and with the exception of the atorvastatin business, those are in aggregating good shape and we are layering in new projects as I described and other customers that help us to bring that kind of revenue growth to reality going forward.

Daniel Baksht - Pacific Crest Securities

Analyst

This is a follow-up. You mentioned that sales from Merck doubled -- I think I heard year-over-year. Just wondering could you comment on what percentage of revenue Merck currently makes up?

John Nicols

Management

No. We don’t provide that kind of granularity on a customer basis. They are very significant customer in that segment. They are the largest customer. But we don’t provide a specific confidentiality on our -- I don’t think it is a critical reflection of the business any way.

Daniel Baksht - Pacific Crest Securities

Analyst

Okay. Fair enough. Switching gears for the -- on the Dyadic license agreement, in the event that you are not successful in resolving that agreement what would you say is the cost or structure for buying or licensing a similar license with say a Novozymes’ or a DuPont’s if you could comment on that, that will be great?

John Nicols

Management

I made a couple of comment too. We are going to -- certainly we are not going to project the outcome of discussions with the Dyadic and the situation with Dyadic on this call. It’s a very recent development. We are working it as a priority as a company. Second, companies like Novozymes and DuPont are highly unlikely to license to a company like Codexis because their core -- their business has this area as a core area for their companies as well. It would be very difficult for Codexis to rebuild its technology position for CodeXyme, should we lose the Dyadic license.

Daniel Baksht - Pacific Crest Securities

Analyst

Okay. I appreciate the time. That’s all I got. Thanks.

John Nicols

Management

Sure.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) At this time, ladies and gentlemen, I am showing no questions in queue. I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. John Nicols for any closing remarks.

John Nicols

Management

Okay. Thank you, everybody for participating in the call. We look forward to updating you again in early November. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen that concludes today’s conference. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.