Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Arcadia Biosciences Q1 2016 Financial Results and Business Highlights Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I’d now like to turn the conference over to your host, Steve Brandwein, Interim Chief Financial Officer. You may begin.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Arcadia Biosciences first quarter earnings conference call. I’m joined this afternoon by Roger Salameh, our Interim President and CEO. We are going to cover two areas in today’s call. First, I’ll review first quarter financial results, and then Roger will provide an update on the business. We, of course, will conclude the call with your questions. This call is being webcast and you can refer to our press release and slides at www.arcadiabio.com. Before we start, if I could ask you to refer to slide 2, I’ll remind you that we’ll be making forward-looking statements on this call based on current expectations and currently available information. However, since these statements are based on factors that involve risks and uncertainties, the company’s actual performance and results may differ materially from those described or implied today. You can review our safe harbor language in both our most recently filed 10-Q and again on slide 2 of the presentation. So let’s turn then to our financial results, a summary of which is provided on slide 3. Overall, our 2016 first quarter performance reflects solid progress when compared to the same period last year. Our net loss for the first quarter was $5.2 million compared to a loss for the same period last year of $5.8 million, an improvement of $600,000 or 11%. Net loss attributable to common stakeholders improved by $2.5 million, as last year included certain expenses associated with preferred shares that were redeemed with our IPO in May and warrants reissued when we reincorporated the company prior to the IPO. Net loss per share attributable to common stockholders improved to a loss of $0.12 compared to a loss of $3.71 in quarter one of 2015. Of course, 2015 results were prior…

Thank you, Steve, and thanks to everyone who’s joining on the call today. Let me begin by providing an update on the status of our senior leadership transition. As you may have seen in the press release issued earlier today, we announced that Raj Ketkar will join the company as President and CEO later this month. Raj has spent more than 30 years of his career in a variety of business operations and strategy roles for Monsanto and has demonstrated success in agricultural trait commercialization around the globe. Most notably, as Managing Director of Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech in India, Raj led the launch of Bt cotton, the country’s first and most successful agricultural biotechnology trait. I will be taking on a new role with Arcadia as Chief Operating Officer reporting to Raj, and with a new CEO in place, we can now turn to getting the permanent CFO search back underway. Speaking for myself and the rest of the management team, we’re extremely excited to welcome Raj to the company. We believe he will be instrumental in helping us grow the business to generate significant value for our customers and our shareholders. So with that, let me turn to some achievements of this past quarter starting with slide 6. We continued to make significant progress with our HB4 stress tolerant soybeans through our Verdeca joint venture. With the successful completion of the regulatory process in Argentina, we submitted for regulatory approval in Uruguay, and we are working on additional submissions in key soybean production and import countries, which I will cover in more detail shortly. We have further expanded our presence in the corn seed trait market. In March, we announced a new collaboration with Beck’s Hybrids, the largest family-owned retail corn seed company in the US, to develop and commercialize…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Brett Wong with Piper Jaffray.

First, I just need to ask you, given the Verdeca partnership and activity you’re doing back in Argentina, can you speak to the recent government rulings around delivery systems there and the expected resolution in the rulings?

I think it’s an important one, it’s one that we’re certainly keeping an eye on, but before I address recent developments, let me just maybe take you back to the concept of how we organized Verdeca and why we did what we did with Bioceres. I think that there’s tremendous value in Bioceres being an Argentine company and a company that’s owned by 300 of the biggest soybean farmers in South America. I think that brings leverage and brings frankly a shared interest for us, for Bioceres, and for those growers. Similarly, how we’ve structured our relationships with our breeding partners and these are the Don Marios and the TMDs of the world is to give them a shared financial interest in terms of developing, being able to capture the value that we create for the grower in Argentina, Brazil, and elsewhere in South America. I think structurally how we’ve done those plays in our favor. So that’s the Arcadia side of the transaction. You know what I’m about to say next is just my personal opinion and probably built upon a couple of conversations. I think there’s a fair bit of arm wrestling right now between someone like Monsanto, who has a very successful product, and growers around not necessarily value-sharing overall, but frankly around the level of what that value share is and at what stage of the crop season that comes or doesn’t come. I think and partly I hope that some of that gets resolved by the time that our products get to market. It’s certainly an important situation, and it’s certainly something we’re keeping an eye on, but I think that it will reach some resolution which I believe will be favorable for a technology company like Arcadia by the time our products get there.

So basically you’re of the opinion that there will be a resolution that supports payment, a royalty payment for technology versus not.

I believe that. I believe that very firmly, Brett. And I think there’s a bit of arm wrestling right now around the scope of that payment, maybe the timing of when that payment gets made. And as best as I can tell, growers want more optionality around when those payments are made and I think an agreement will be reached.

Then maybe you can provide a little more color on this new partnership with Beck’s. It’s definitely an interesting one and any more help you can do to shine some light on the partnership is great.

I mean as you may well know, Beck’s is one of the most respected names in the corn seed business in the United States, and we’ve had a long-going discussion to get to an agreement that I think really epidermises the way we want to approach things as a company, and frankly I think the way Beck’s wanted to approach things as a company, which is Arcadia has probably one of the best pipelines for yield and stress tolerance in the industry and has expertise around regulatory approvals in the US and elsewhere, certainly very heavily in the US. And that Beck’s could leverage that expertise while, honestly, what we could do is leverage their product development, infrastructure, marketing, and commercial sales infrastructure, and co-share to be defined specific set of projects, and then co-sharing the value that those products create with US growers. It’s I think a really nice example of how too nimble and small companies can get to agreement on something fairly quickly and create a win-win for both companies.

And on that same line, just talking a bit more about Beck’s and Dow and how those partnerships kind of work together or are there exclusive rights for each one of them kind of discuss that ...?

Sure. I probably should have guessed that question from the first question. The way it’s structured and we don’t really talk about this, but it’s important to understand, things that we develop with Dow, we can develop with Dow either exclusively and this goes both ways, for Dow and for Arcadia, either exclusively or non-exclusively. The same goes for Beck’s. And each of those, if you think – I think about it from a purely Arcadia perspective, it gives Arcadia optionality around multiple work streams that frankly have their own disadvantages – advantages and disadvantages. For Arcadia, it gives us functionality – it gives us optionality on how we manage some of our trait development. I think for Beck’s, particularly for Beck’s, it gives them access to a pipeline that can be made either exclusive or non-exclusive. There’s no specific governance around exclusivity, same thing for Dow. But honestly and I think this comes as no surprise, they bring different things. Beck’s has a really fascinating intense focus on key states in the corn-belt. Dow has a much more global view. Dow brings a crop protection package, I think, that we could marry up with the yield and stress traits that we’re bringing along. So really each party brings something different. We’re delighted to be in partnership with both companies. We think there’s something positive in each of those and we hope over the next few years we can return the same sort of value to them as we believe they will bring to us.

One just one last one for me, I know I’ve been on here too long already. But can you just talk to your expected test usage in 2016 as now you’re a quarter through or a bit more than that, do you expect a similar burn rate to last year or are there additional opportunities that you see this year that will require additional expense?

I think Steve do you want to...

I think and I’ve talked to this before that we’re sort of at the point now where our sort of overhead structure is what it is, what we expect it to be. And I’m not expecting there is going to be any material increase at all in our spend. So I think you can look at what our overhead structure is and sort of anticipate that we’re sort of where we need to be. There’s going to be the occasional one-off from time to time as there was in the first quarter, but in broad terms we’re not anticipating any material change.

Our next question comes from the line of Chris Parkinson of Credit Suisse.

This is actually Graham Wells on for Chris. First off, congrats on the solid Q. Just a couple of questions for you guys. You kind of started off in the Q&A talking about the whole issue of value capture in Latin America. But I’m interested on the same theme, but in India given issues we’ve seen there over GM traits and then also given the choice of CEO, whether you have any opinions or any color you can give on kind of what your outlook is there for value capture for your traits.

It’s a multi-layered question. Let me just start with the choice of CEO. I think for us and for the Board, for the management team and for the Board, having Raj join the company [I consider had a great coup]. This is someone who has experience in terms of commercial launch and value capture, not only in what has traditionally been sort of easy places to do so, say North America for example, but in more challenging environments like for example India where Raj and the Monsanto Mahyco team had to basically develop very novel value capture strategies from the ground up. So I think it is a great coup for Arcadia to have Raj on board. Super excited about that and ready to learn and execute every day. I think value capture has different flavors in different environments and frankly for different crops. The way we have tackled it at Acadia traditionally is to create an incentive for our breeding partner to participate in the value capture mechanism. In some instances with other trait providers basically there was no value capture for the seed partner; they captured value on having that trait coupled with their lead germplasma and they captured value on the germplasma premium. For us at Arcadia, we’re basically incenting our partners and that’s a model we’ve approached so far. We think it’s as robust enough and flexible enough to apply in different places. We think that that model works. But just stepping away from value capture has a financial construct; I think it all really at the end of the day for me starts with products. If you have products that are delivering real value on the ground and doing it in multiple environments year after year, folks in the distribution chain and the value chain will be incented to be your partner. And what I mean, I mean all the way from the grower, all the way back out to the consolidator at the bin. Everyone would want to participate in a value that’s created. There are some dynamics, some specifics for us to work through over how much value gets distributed in that value chain. But honestly, Graham, I think for me it all starts with making home run products and that’s what we’re focused on. And when we bring those to market, we’ll figure out a way, we’ll create a big enough pod to figure out a way to share value with folks who contribute to our success.

And then coming to the segueing from the idea of kind of creating a product that will deliver value consistently across different types of environments, given the very dry conditions we’ve seen in Southeast Asia, I was wondering if you could kind of provide some commentary on field trials that you have for some of your products out there, particularly anything on Water Use Efficiency or Nitrogen Use Efficiency in the context of the drought and if there’s anything to report there.

I’m not sure I have anything to report now with respect to 2016. But let me just take you back to the rice, NUE rice trials that we’ve done. So we’ve done those trials now in four years, in four – in two different – actually in two different geographies, in South America and in Africa, in two different rice types, in two different rice type environment. There is paddy rice and upland rice. This is why I’m really excited about NUE rice, because we literally put these rice plants in every conceivable environment over four years and multiple locations and the data remain remarkably consistent. This is the most consistent yield data I’ve ever seen in my 20 plus years in the industry. I think the consistency of that phenotype is going to be important for our customers and our customers’ customers, because it will define the value that we will be able to create and it all starts with creating value. If we create it, then we will find a way to capture. I should say part of the reason I say we don’t have data on 2016 is because those trials have not been implemented in Asia yet, planting season is upon us now. So we’ll know more about that with respect to these, for example, NUE or salt tolerant rice later in the year.

And if I can just sneak one last question and this one is kind of more stepping back and thinking about the Arcadia story. And as you kind of reflected over the last year and look ahead in terms of the partnerships you guys have been able to sign, where do you feel you are as opposed relative to what your initial objectives were? Do you think that you’re ahead of schedule or behind schedule? And as you think about partnerships moving forward, is it kind of just more of the same in terms of your strategy on that front or are there any new things that you’ve learned so far that you’d apply going forward?

It’s an excellent question, it’s part of what the exercise that we started late last year really was about. I think I don’t want to oversimplify this next statement. I think what’s really exciting for the company right now is we have multiple products that are in advance stage of development, any one of which frankly can take us to profitability. And the evolution that we started late last year and completed early this year is about migrating us from pipeline development, if you will to more product development and pre-commercialization. I think that if I have to characterize the kinds of relationships that we’ll continue to build on a go forward basis, more of those would be about commercial development and breeding type relationships that can help us accelerate product commercialization versus ones that are about basic research and pipeline development. Generally speaking, I think that’s the flavor that I could sort of put on this.

There are no further questions in the queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to Roger Salameh for closing remarks.