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Dyadic International, Inc. (DYAI)

Q3 2014 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 13, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and thank you for holding. Welcome to Dyadic International Third Quarter 2014 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. My name is Anne and I will be your conference coordinator today. As a reminder, please note today’s call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to introduce your host for today’s call, Michael Faby, Dyadics Vice President of Finance.

Michael Faby - Vice President, Finance

Management

Thank you, Anne. Good afternoon and thank you for joining today’s conference call to discuss Dyadic’s financial and operating results for the third quarter of 2014, which we have reported in a press release issued earlier this afternoon. The press release and Dyadic’s quarterly financial statements have been posted to both the Dyadic and OTC Markets websites. I am joined today by Dyadic’s Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark Emalfarb; our Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Danai Brooks; Tom Dubinski, our Chief Financial Officer. On today’s call, Mark and Danai will cover operating highlights, business development and corporate strategy, and Tom will review our financial results in more detail. We will 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 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 financial results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Dyadic expressly disclaims any intent or obligation to update 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 Emalfarb - Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

Thank you, Mike. And I want to thank all of you for joining us on today’s call. Over the past three months, we have continued to make progress in a variety of fronts. In our ongoing BASF research project, we have received our first milestone payment. We also received a $500,000 milestone payment from Abengoa and look forward to receiving future royalty payments as they begin to produce cellulosic ethanol at their 25 million gallon Hugoton, Kansas plant. Earlier today in our Q3 press release, we also announced as a subsequent event, that we have extended our funded research project with Sanofi Pasteur to develop a vaccine using Dyadic’s proprietary C1 expression system. Our business performance continues to improve, particularly with margin improvements in our industrial enzyme business. From a scientific perspective, since expanding our Dutch research center, we were seeing accelerated advancements and achievements into continuing development of our C1 expression system. A few weeks ago, Abengoa Bioenergy had its grand opening at their 25 million gallon cellulosic ethanol plant in Hugoton, Kansas. We would like to congratulate Abengoa on that opening of their plant and the success that Abengoa has had with that. Also, we would like to congratulate them on the commercial success they have had with Dyadic C1 enzyme technology, not just for the commercialization of their end-to-end technology from biomass to cellulosic sugars which can be used to not only produce cellulosic ethanol, but also these cellulosic sugars are expected to be used to produce a growing number of bio-based products. Abengoa has reportedly produced these C1 enzymes in 500,000 liter fermenters, the largest in the industry. As part of the grand opening of the facility, Abengoa’s CEO made the following statements about their C1 enzyme technology. The proprietary enzymatic hydrolysis technology utilized commercially at…

Danai Brooks - Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Management

Thank you, Mark. And I will focus today on new business opportunities, our technology advances, new product development and the performance of our industrial enzyme business. On new business development opportunities, we continue to focus on opportunities in both our existing markets and new emerging markets. Over the past several months in addition to ongoing efforts in the U.S. and Europe Dyadic senior milligram has travelled to China, Japan, Brazil and Thailand to pursue very tangible new opportunities. With newly hired expertise in the fields of biofuels and biopharmaceuticals we have been able to expand our footprint in both sectors. To further Mark’s comments on biopharmaceuticals, we are working to develop our C1 expression system into a platform to produce vaccines, antibodies and other therapeutic proteins. With heightened global concern over potential epidemic outbreaks of infectious disease there is a critical need for the capability to develop and produce vaccines and other biologic drugs quickly in very large scale. Since C1 has the potential to generate new cell lines more rapidly and has an 18-year track record of industrial scale production and up to 500,000 liter fermenters, it has the potential to surpass existing drug production systems used to manufacture biologics in terms of scale, productivity, efficiency and improved response time. One step in this process of developing C1 in this rural platform to produce vaccines and other therapeutic proteins at global scale is our funded work with Sanofi Pasteur. We are also talking to other parties to try and accelerate the development of C1 platform to fight epidemic outbreaks such Ebola and other infectious diseases both through commercial and government funded programs. Currently we have 16 projects running at our lab in the Netherlands, 10 of which were begun in the past year. Year-over-year our R&D revenue was up…

Tom Dubinski - Chief Financial Officer

Management

Thank you, Danai. Before reviewing the third quarter financial results, I would like to take a moment to remind you to please visit our website or the OTC Markets website to review our press release and the financial statements. Total revenue for the quarter was up $400,000 or 9.4% primarily reflecting favorable licensing revenue of $700,000 broken down between $0.5 million from Abengoa and $200,000 from BASF, and R&D revenue of $200,000. Partially offsetting this favorability was lower product-related revenue of $0.5 million, which primarily reflects comparison with the third quarter of 2013 that included a significant sales rebound in our animal feed and brewing business due to the impact of the Asian bird flu and product shortage concerns. Total revenue for the nine-month period was down $3.2 million or 24.5% primarily due to licensing revenue of $700,000 in 2014 and the $0.5 million BASF licensing payment received in 2013 for the same period. The BASF licensing revenue in 2013 was totaled $6 million. The remaining $1 million payment was received in Q4 of 2013. Excluding licensing revenue, product-related and R&D revenue are favorable $1.1 million or 13.8% reflecting growth in our animal feed, brewing, starch and alcohol businesses in R&D project activities. Gross profit for the quarter increased $900,000 or 130.6% due to 100% margin licensing revenue of $700,000 and continued improvement in manufacturing efficiencies, primarily higher fermentation and recovery yields of $100,000 and R&D project revenue growth of $100,000. As Danai pointed out, our product-related revenues have improved to 30% versus 8.8% in Q3 of 2013. Gross profit for the nine-month period decreased $2.9 million or 45.6% due to the reduction in the 100% margin licensing revenue of $4.3 million partially offset by improvement in manufacturing efficiencies primarily higher fermentation and recovery yields of $900,000 and R&D project…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) We will take our first question from Richard Deutsch from Ladenburg Thalmann.

Richard Deutsch - Ladenburg Thalmann

Analyst

Thank you for taking my call. You seem to have made a lot of progress in upping your biopharmaceutical targets. Can you give us a little bit of color on what the scientific objectives are in this vaccine in biopharmaceutical research?

Mark Emalfarb

Analyst

Sure. Danai, you want to start that?

Danai Brooks

Analyst

Yes. So, we can’t give specifics on the target for Sanofi, but broadly as a potential platform for C1, we think that C1 can produce in a more productive manner and modify our cell lines more quickly than existing systems, which I think is going to be very well tailored to handling large scale infectious diseases and development of vaccines. So, the timeline is still we are in development phase. It’s going to be sometime before we bring products to market, but currently we are seeking both government and commercial partners to continue to develop the platform in addition to Sanofi.

Richard Deutsch - Ladenburg Thalmann

Analyst

Yes, but you still haven’t detailed for us exactly why C1 seems to be a candidate versus the existing systems?

Mark Emalfarb

Analyst

So, let me chime in there, Rick, to see if I can add a little color to it and give you a little better clarification. So, we think that filament is fungi, have unique attributes compared to other systems like bacteria, which does not glycosylate, so for glycoproteins obviously the filament is fungus would be better. They are more productive. They grow in much shorter times and chose cells, for example. We can grow them at much larger scale. We can create cell lines with their production host right into the discovery. So, when we start cloning genes right off the bat, we are putting right into the production organism that we intend on using. So, we think that we can actually accelerate the timeline of bringing the vaccine to the market, but you have been asked if not more important, if there is an outbreak, you need to be able to produce these in flexible, robust, fermentation facilities all over the world. And as you know, C1 has been produced in Mexico and Spain and Canada and the United States and in Poland and up to 500,000 liters. So, we could produce needs to actually meet the demand if in fact as a short-term need for such a thing. So we think that it could be a phenomenon system for the development and production of these types of diseases and vaccines. So I hope that gives you better clarity as to why we think that C1 is if not the best and one of the best candidates, it’s moving all the molecular tools there, the scalabilities there, the low cost production there, the yields there that can be grown under a variety of different pH and temperatures and conditions. So we just think it’s an ideal organism to move in that direction.

Richard Deutsch - Ladenburg Thalmann

Analyst

How long do you think it will be before we will be able to get an update on the progress?

Mark Emalfarb

Analyst

I don’t know, again it’s hard to say I mean we have just extended. We started last month the extension of the Sanofi project and that’s again it’s under confidentiality and restricted as to what we can say about that. But as we need to develop and come forward and if we actually identify and put deals together with people who we are having discussions with and we will obviously try and report those on a timely manner. I can’t give you a definitive time but this is not a short-term project in order to have vaccines and the technology that’s going to be able to do the things we just talked about. They can change the phase by the way vaccines are developed and produced is a multi-year project.

Richard Deutsch - Ladenburg Thalmann

Analyst

And so your deal with Sanofi restricts you from taking on other research partners?

Mark Emalfarb

Analyst

No it does not.

Richard Deutsch - Ladenburg Thalmann

Analyst

Okay.

Mark Emalfarb

Analyst

And we are actively seeking and are in discussions with a few people on some very interesting possibilities.

Richard Deutsch - Ladenburg Thalmann

Analyst

Okay. And one another quick question here, you have a license fee in the animal feed arena, we have been waiting to hear an update on when they were going to file a statement that would target their licensing in Europe, can you give us any color on whether that’s progressing or not?

Mark Emalfarb

Analyst

Well, obviously it’s progressing. We don’t have a public document that we are aware of that they filed at the moment, so we can’t point you to that. So if and when that comes available we will certainly bring that forth.

Richard Deutsch - Ladenburg Thalmann

Analyst

Alright. Thank you.

Mark Emalfarb

Analyst

And it is just – unfortunately it’s confidential where they are at, at the moment.

Richard Deutsch - Ladenburg Thalmann

Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much.

Mark Emalfarb

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And I am showing no further questions at this time. And we will now turn the call back over to Mr. Emalfarb for closing comments.

Mark Emalfarb - Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Management

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 progress to you during our final year end financial statements coming up this spring and look forward to having positive and interesting results. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our program for today. You may all disconnect.