CBUS March 17, 2026

Cibus Q4 2025 Earnings Call - Rice royalties and regulatory wins set up 2027 launches, runway tight into late Q3 2026

Summary

Cibus says 2025 was a turning point, citing technical gains, regulatory progress and initial commercial receipts that collectively position the company to begin royalty generation from gene-edited rice in Latin America in 2027, with U.S. and India expansion slated for later years. Management is pushing a dual path, commercializing herbicide-tolerant rice while scaling a biofragrance yeast platform that produced the company’s first customer payment in Q4 2025.

The bullish roadmap is concrete in parts, and aspirational in others. Cibus lists seven rice customers tied to a stated $200 million potential annual royalty pool, selection to a UK Defra consortium, an EU NGT political agreement as a major catalyst, and platform improvements that increased rice editing efficiency tenfold. At the same time the balance sheet matters: cash after a January 2026 raise funds operations only into late Q3 2026, leaving execution risk around commercialization, regulatory approvals, and additional financing.

Key Takeaways

  • Cibus calls 2025 a landmark year, driven by converging technology, commercialization, scale, and regulatory momentum.
  • Seven rice customers represent a stated potential annual royalty opportunity of over $200 million, focused initially on herbicide-tolerant traits.
  • Management expects initial commercial entry for rice in Latin America in 2027, U.S. expansion in 2028, and India/Asia closer to 2030.
  • Cibus executed a non-binding LOI with Interoc to commercialize herbicide-tolerant rice in Ecuador and Colombia in 2027, and has transferred edited material for registration and obtained an import permit.
  • The company received its first customer payment from its sustainable ingredients biofragrance program after completing pre-commercial pilot runs in Q3 2025, and targets commercial scale production later in 2026 pending formulations.
  • Cibus estimates the biofragrance opportunity could translate into $20 million to $40 million of annual royalties when fully commercialized, and says the yeast platform can be extended to additional fragrances.
  • Technical progress: the company reported an approximate tenfold improvement in rice editing efficiency in 2025, enabled by reagent, culture, delivery, regeneration optimizations, plus AI/ML and automation enhancements.
  • Pipeline highlights include canola HT2 herbicide trait with positive field results, multi-mode Sclerotinia resistance work, pod shatter reduction in winter oilseed rape, and funded collaborations such as John Innes Centre on nutrient use efficiency.
  • Crop expansion signals: single cell regeneration success in wheat opens the door to full RTDS editing in that crop, and soybean editing rates have improved enabling expanded development.
  • Regulatory momentum: EU New Genomic Techniques political agreement, UK Precision Bred Organisms framework live with Cibus PBO filings submitted, USDA APHIS delivered 17 positive determinations, and several Latin American regulators including Ecuador and Peru have treated gene edits as similar to conventional varieties.
  • Commercial model remains edit-centric, Cibus says edits are the product, with licensing and royalty framework retained even for ongoing editing service relationships.
  • Customer reach in Latin America includes CIAT/FLAR, Semillano, Semillas del Huila, RTDC and pursuit of access to Brazil and Argentina; India engagement includes Agribiome and RTDC, with meetings with major seed companies and a former agriculture minister.
  • Scale targets: management is targeting 5 to 7 million acres in the Americas for initial rice adoption, with India representing a much larger 120 million-acre opportunity longer term.
  • Balance sheet and cost control: cash and equivalents were $9.9 million at December 31, 2025, the company raised $22.3 million in January 2026, and expects current funds to fund operations into late Q3 2026; 2025 cost reductions were about $10 million.
  • Execution and risk points: key near-term milestones to watch are Interoc deal finalization, chemical registrations and field results in Latin America, EU plenary vote timing, scaling of biofragrance commercialization, and securing additional financing beyond late Q3 2026.

Full Transcript

Operator: Good afternoon, and welcome to the Cibus fourth quarter 2025 results conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please also note today’s event is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Carlo Broos, Chief Financial Officer. Sir, please go ahead.

Carlo Broos, Chief Financial Officer, Cibus: Thank you and good afternoon. I would like to thank you for taking time to join us for Cibus’s fourth quarter 2025 financial results and business update conference call and webcast. Presenting with me today is Peter Beetham, Co-founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and COO, and Greg Gocal, Co-founder and our Chief Scientific Officer. Before we begin the call, I’d like to remind everyone that statements made on the call and webcast, including those regarding future financial results and future operational goals and industry prospects, are forward-looking and may be subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the call. Please refer to Cibus’ SEC filings for a list of associated risks. This conference call is being webcast.

The webcast link, along with our press release and corporate presentation, are available on the investor relations section of cibus.com to assist you in your analysis of our business. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Peter.

Peter Beetham, Co-founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and COO, Cibus: Thanks, Carlo, and good afternoon, everyone. By any measure, 2025 was a landmark year for Cibus. Not because of any single headline, but because of a convergence of key themes that are shaping the trajectory of the gene editing industry. Technology leadership, commercialization progress, scale, and regulatory momentum all arriving at the same time. We have seven rice customers representing over $200 million in potential annual royalty opportunity. We received our first customer payment from our sustainable ingredients program. We were selected by the UK government as a technology partner for its farming innovation program. In a watershed moment, the EU finally reached political agreement on New Genomic Techniques legislation, something we’ve been helping to shape for many years. Gene editing is no longer an experiment. We believe it’s the future of innovation in farming, food, and agriculture.

Cibus has been positioned ahead of this innovation curve for a long time, and we have shifted to a commercially driven company with a powerful technology engine. What makes this current moment particularly exciting is the intersection of our technology readiness and a change in how we believe seed companies are thinking about gene editing. For years, speed and scale were obstacles. Seed companies were interested, but the technology wasn’t predictable enough to fit into their breeding programs. Our advancements in creating a more streamlined business with time-bound, predictable trait development have changed that equation. We can take a customer’s elite germplasm, make a specific edit, and return it to them within 12-15 months. Because of that progress, we’re beginning to see something important. Seed companies don’t necessarily just want access to a trait, they want to get more deeply integrated with our technologies.

This is a natural evolution of what we mean when we say that Cibus can be an extension of our customers’ breeding programs. We receive their elite genetics, we make the edits, and we return improved material on a predictable schedule that allows for commercial planning and coordination that better align to their seed improvement and market growth strategies. Increasingly, the conversations we’re having with potential customers are about ongoing genomic editing relationships. Not just one trait in one crop, but the possibility of a broader engagement throughout their entire portfolio, where Cibus can serve as a gene editing engine for their plant breeding capabilities. This is highlighting opportunities beyond traditional trait licensing, particularly in high-growth markets like India and Asia and Latin America, where we see potential for what I’d describe as outsourced gene editing, partners accessing our editing capabilities on an ongoing basis.

As we explore these potential relationships, we are maintaining our core licensing and royalty framework surrounding the edits we make. The edits are the product. Cibus edits the genome in elite genetics, and those edits are connected to royalties. Regardless of whether a partner comes to us for a single trait or for a comprehensive editing program, the value we create resides in the edits themselves, and we retain that value through our intellectual property and licensing structure. That is how we intend to build a durable, recurring cash flow that drives long-term shareholder value.

Whether we are talking about trait licensing, editing services, or some combination thereof, the roads lead to the same payoff, an annual stream of royalties on the edits Cibus makes. Now turning to our rice program, which remains the foundation for near-term revenue generation and the clearest example of our core trait business model I just described. Remember, our seven rice customers across the United States and Latin America represents an incredible $200 million in potential annual royalty opportunity through our herbicide-tolerant traits. Importantly, we remain on track for initial market entry in Latin America in 2027, followed by the potential U.S. expansion in 2028 and entry into India and Asia closer to 2030. Perhaps the most significant development was with Interoc.

In January, we executed a non-binding LOI establishing a framework for commercialization of herbicide-tolerant rice across key Latin American markets, starting with Ecuador and Colombia in 2027 and expanding into Peru, Central America, and the Caribbean. We’ve transferred some edited material back to Interoc for registration work. We have recently received an import permit so we can return their elite rice genetics with two herbicide-tolerant traits, and we expect to advance negotiations towards a definitive commercial agreement late in 2026. In addition, over the past year, we’ve demonstrated important progress in rice, particularly Latin America. Remember, this is a market that historically lacked access to advanced weed management solutions, and the demand for what we’re offering is strong.

Our partnership with CIAT or FLAR, which works with the Latin American Fund for Irrigated Rice and participates in the Hybrid Rice Consortium for Latin America, gives us access to rice farmers across the region through a partner that has launched varieties in 17 countries. As we have previously mentioned, we also have signed agreements with Semillano and Semillas del Huila, two important Colombian rice seed companies, and completed delivery of rice lines with our HT3 trait to an existing U.S. customer. Beyond the current partners that include our long-term herbicide partner, RTDC, we are pursuing initial access to the Brazilian market, one of the most significant rice geographies in Latin America, and potentially Argentina as well, representing substantial additional acreage opportunities. In India, we continue to work with Agribiome and RTDC to build seed company relationships where rice cultivation is approximately 120 million acres.

Greg recently traveled to India and met with a number of leading seed companies and even the former Minister of Agriculture. The demand there is significant. In some areas, farmers are growing two rice crops in a year, and India’s regulatory acceptance of gene editing demonstrated by the recent first planting of gene-edited rice in the country. This positions India as a leading future market. We’re initially targeting a commercial launch in India around 2030, and we’ll keep you updated as we progress. On the development side, we’re also expanding our trait portfolio in rice. Following successful 2024 field trial results for stacked gene-edited herbicide-tolerant traits, in March 2025, we expand out our efforts to include additional trait stacking to broaden weed management for crop protection.

Stepping back, in just over a year, we’ve built a rice program that spans three continents and targets the world’s most important rice-growing regions. That trajectory happened because our technologies deliver something seed companies have never had before, time-bound, predictable trait development in their elite germplasm. That’s worth emphasizing as it is a central component to the value proposition that Cibus is delivering to customers. Another great example of how this trait portfolio model works in practice is through our collaboration with John Innes Centre on nutrient use efficiency. That partnership is a funded program where we’re applying our technologies to their breakthrough trait with potential to apply this across our entire crop portfolio. Different structure, same endpoint, elite germplasm, Cibus technologies, Cibus edits, Cibus royalties.

Turning to sustainable ingredients, our biofragrance program uses our trait development capabilities applied to yeast fermentation to produce sustainable low-carbon fragrance ingredients for a leading global CPG partner. Under a multi-year collaboration, we completed pre-commercial pilot runs for two biofragrance products in Q3 2025, demonstrating technical readiness for commercial scale. In Q4, that translated into our first payment. We believe that this is just the tip of the iceberg in the global fragrance market, which is estimated to be valued at over $65 billion. We’re working to expand this partnership into a broader agreement, and we’re targeting commercial scale production later this year. With the timeline dependent on finalizing of product formulations with our partner. When fully commercialized, we believe that these natural biofragrance partnerships represent a $20-$40 million annual royalty opportunity to Cibus.

Excitingly, we believe we can target additional fragrances using the same yeast platform. Beyond biofragrances, we continue to advance our partner-funded crop-based lauric oil program as part of the broader portfolio. The biofragrance program serves as an important commercial bridge as our rice royalty stream builds, and it demonstrates the versatility of our platform. The same core gene editing capability that’s developing herbicide tolerance in rice has the potential to create value in the consumer products industry. Now, regulatory. As part of this perfect storm of progress, we’ve seen very positive developments occur in the regulation of gene editing in significant jurisdictions around the world. At Cibus, we have been patient because we understood that the global regulatory framework would determine how fast this industry scales. In December, the EU reached political agreement on New Genomic Techniques legislation. This was a watershed moment.

Europe represents approximately 100 million acres of greenfield opportunity because GMO technologies have been restricted for decades. The European Parliament plenary session is expected in late April. This is the next big milestone we’re watching very closely. This comes on the heels of the UK’s Precision Bred Organisms framework going live last November. We submitted our first PBO filings in January, and in February, we were selected for a Defra-funded consortium applying our RTDS technologies to light leaf spot resistance in oilseed rape. Being chosen by a national government as a technology partner is a powerful independent validation. Across the Americas, the momentum continues. California authorized gene-edited rice for planting for the first time. Ecuador confirmed our traits are equivalent to those developed using conventional breeding. USDA APHIS has now given us 17 positive determinations.

Just last week, Peru also confirmed gene-edited products will be considered similar to conventional rice varieties. This regulatory harmonization is accelerating commercial conversations globally. With that great news, I will pass the call over to Greg to discuss our opportunity pipeline traits and programs. Greg?

Greg Gocal, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Cibus: Thank you, Peter. I’ll keep my remarks focused on the key tactical milestones that support both our priority programs and our broader opportunity pipeline. What I’d add from the lab side is some perspective on the scientific results that help drive our progress. In rice, in 2025, we realized an order-of-magnitude improvement in our editing efficiency that translates to regenerated edited plants. We’ve optimized the reagents, cell culture conditions, the delivery mechanics, and the regeneration process. We continue to push those boundaries with our strategic use of AI and machine learning toward identifying the right targets faster, predicting precise edit outcomes with greater confidence, and feeding those learnings back into each successive campaign. Combined with our semi-automated workflows and robotic assistance, the trait machine process is becoming faster, more scalable, and more efficient. That’s what’s enabling us to take on the kind of broader relationships Peter described.

The throughput and the consistency to serve as our partner’s ongoing editing capability. Turning to our opportunity pipeline, I wanted to highlight our significant 2025 technical progress across programs that are all available for partnership and represent meaningful future value. Starting with our canola traits, our second-generation herbicide-tolerant trait, HT2, delivered positive field trial results in North America last year, confirming both acceptable herbicide resistance and similar yield to the unedited parent. It’s important to remember that HT2 validates the path for developing not only for that particular chemistry, but for any chemistry in this family, and is a trait that can be stacked with other herbicide-resistant systems. For Sclerotinia resistance, bioassays for plants bearing two of our modes of action continue to demonstrate enhanced resistance, and our collaboration with Biographica using their AI platform has identified several new potential gene-editing targets.

Our RTDS platform gives us the precision to go after multiple modes of action for the same disease. That’s something conventional approaches simply cannot do at our speed. It’s important to note that both HT2 and Sclerotinia resistance have multi-crop, multi-geography potential. In the UK, we completed our second year of field trials for pod shatter reduction in winter oilseed rape, showing encouraging performance in several customers’ germplasm. With the PBO legislation now in effect, our gene-edited material can now be grown like conventional germplasm, and we’ve submitted our first PBO filing. The Defra-funded Light Leaf Spot consortium is a tremendous validation for our technology’s ability to target resistance to another key disease in winter oilseed rape. 12 industry and academic partners with Cibus selected as the gene editing technology partner.

What makes this technically exciting is that we’re applying our RTDS platform to develop durable disease resistance, a more complex challenge than herbicide tolerance, and one that demonstrates the increasing sophistication of what our gene editing system can deliver. On nutrient use efficiency, we continue our funded collaboration with the John Innes Centre on a breakthrough trait that has the potential to create significant commercial opportunities across our entire crop portfolio. This addresses the global fertilizer efficiency challenge, where only about one-third of the fertilizer applied in the field is typically available to be absorbed by plants. This is a complex biological system that requires targeted specific edits. Exactly the kind of problem our platform was designed to solve. On the wheat platform, we previously disclosed in 2024 successfully regenerated plants from single cells in a wheat cultivar.

Single cell regeneration is the gateway to applying our full RTDS editing capability in a new crop. Once we can do that, the entire trait development process for that crop opens up. That, in turn, spurs opportunities for further partner-funded development in one of the world’s most cultivated crops. As the European regulatory landscape becomes clearer, we’re seeing increased interest. Similarly, in soybean, in early 2025, the company achieved sufficiently high editing rates, enabling expanded development of its soybean platform in conjunction with partner-funded and/or supported programs. The key message I want to leave you with is this. Our RTDS platform is performing across multiple crops and increasingly complex traits. Every one of these pipeline programs is available for partnership, and together they represent significant optionality for the business.

Our technical foundation, combined with growing regulatory evolution, positions us well to advance high-value traits through partnerships while maintaining focused execution on high-priority revenue drivers. With that, I’ll hand the call over to Carlo for the financial update. Carlo?

Carlo Broos, Chief Financial Officer, Cibus: Thank you, Greg. Looking at our financials for the fourth quarter, our cash and cash equivalents as of December 31, 2025 was $9.9 million. In January 2026, we raised $22.3 million in gross proceeds from our public offering. This capital raise meaningfully extends our runway and supports continued advancement of our rice program and sustainable ingredients work as we move toward our near-term revenue milestones. Taking into account the impact of implemented cost-saving initiatives, including those implemented last week, and without giving effect to potential future financing transactions that Cibus is pursuing, we expect that existing cash and cash equivalents is sufficient to fund planned operating expenses and capital expenditure requirements into late third quarter of 2026.

Importantly, our streamlined focus is also contributing to our extended runway, and we’re pleased to have reduced operating expenses by approximately $10 million across R&D and SG&A for the full year of 2025. Moving to our operating results for the fourth quarter. Research and development expense was $9.4 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2025, compared to $12.4 million in the year ago period. This $3 million decrease is primarily due to cost reduction initiatives that we have implemented as part of our streamlined operational focus. Selling, general, and administrative expense was $5.1 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2025, compared to $6.8 million in the year ago period. The $1.7 million decrease is also primarily due to cost reduction initiatives.

Royalty liability interest expense, related parties, was $9.4 million for the quarter, compared to $8.2 million in the year ago period. The $1.2 million increase is due to the recognition of interest expense on the royalty liability. Non-operating income net was nominal for the quarter compared to income of $0.4 million in the year ago period. The decrease was driven by the fair value adjustment of the company’s liability classified common warrants. Net loss was $31.9 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2025, compared to $25.8 million in the year ago period. During 2025, we completed consolidation of operations from our Oberlin facility into our San Diego headquarters and wound down operations at our Roseville, Minnesota facility.

These actions, along with workforce reductions, demonstrate tangible progress toward our goal of reducing annual net cash usage to approximately $30 million or less in 2026. This disciplined approach to capital allocation, combined with the January raise, extends our cash runway while positioning us to capture the significant Biofragrance revenue opportunity ahead and meaningful commercial expansion from rice traits expected beginning in 2027. With that financial overview, let me turn it back to Peter for closing remarks.

Peter Beetham, Co-founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and COO, Cibus: Thank you, Carlo and Greg. Let me close by putting this year in context. Cibus has been the consistent force in precision gene editing. We’ve built the technologies from the ground up with scalable and accelerated processes. We’ve engaged with many global regulators to provide technical guidance. We’ve established the customer relationship, and now those investments are compounding. 2026 is all about execution and momentum. Here is what we’re focused on. On rice, we’re expanding customer relationships across the Americas and India, advancing toward a definitive commercial agreement with Interoc, and pursuing discussions that could open Brazil and Argentina. We expect to report on field results from Latin America later this year, along with progress on chemistry registrations supporting our 2027 commercial launch targets.

On sustainable ingredients, we’re formalizing our expanded partnership, targeting commercial scale production, and I believe we’ll be in a position to announce additional details on this program in the near term. This is a real revenue stream that’s growing, and it demonstrates the breadth and broad potential of what our platform can deliver. On regulatory, the EU plenary vote expected in late April is one of the next major catalysts. That clarity is already re-energizing conversations with European partners and creating new opportunities. More broadly, I’m excited about the evolution of our commercial model. The fact that we’re bringing herbicide-tolerant rice to a crop that feeds billions of people is exciting, not just for shareholders, but for global agriculture’s future. I continue to see Cibus as a coiled spring, and I’m so proud to be leading this team into what I believe will be a transformative year.

Operator, we’re now ready to take questions.

Operator: Thank you. If you’d like to ask a question, press star one on your keypad. To leave the queue at any time, press star two. Once again, that is star one to ask a question. We’ll take our first question from Matthew Venezia with AGP. Your line is open.

Matthew Venezia, Analyst, AGP: Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my questions and congrats on the progress. Firstly, I wanted to ask about the EU NGT framework. I know this is a long time coming, but does this change the company’s thought towards CapEx, toward the canola WOSR program in the future at all? I know that that’s a crop that’s probably bigger in Europe than over in the Americas.

Peter Beetham, Co-founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and COO, Cibus: Matt, thanks so much for the question. You know, the EU regulatory progress is really a watershed moment. You know, it has been the gold standard in regulatory globally for a lot of plant breeding work. In the past, it was GMO, but now we’re opening up the whole gene editing world. You know, essentially we’re going global, which is amazing. You can tell why I’m excited about this is ’cause it’s taken a long time, and that has been some of our frustration, but it really does open up opportunities. You know, for example, Europe is 100 million acres of greenfield opportunity. They’ve never had traits through genetics with novel traits before. Here, this opportunity opens up.

To your point, one of the major crops there is winter oilseed rape. For us at Cibus, we’ve been developing a platform and a production system in winter oilseed rape that is really efficient. This is, you know, what I was saying in the earlier remarks is when things come together like they have for us, all of a sudden we are in the situation where the EU regulatory fits, we’ve got a production system, we can do it in a time-bound and predictable way, and we can cut years off timelines in plant breeding programs. What we’re seeing is really a lot of interest from the major seed companies in Europe, but also that opens up the rest of the world. With that, I’ll hand it off to Greg ’cause I’m sure he’s got a few extra comments.

Greg Gocal, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Cibus: Yeah. Thanks, Peter, and thanks for the question, Matt. Just a couple of extra comments. As you know, we’ve been running field trials for pod shatter in the UK for the last couple of years, and we see that there’s excellent performance of that trait in customer material, where some of those customers feed the EU market and are using the regulatory system in the UK to be able to advance that material more quickly. The last thing I’ll highlight is the light leaf spot collaboration or Defra-funded consortium, where we’re the gene editing partner, but many of the seed companies involved are seed companies that are core within Europe.

Matthew Venezia, Analyst, AGP: Got it. Thank you guys for that. Next, I just wanted to ask if you could take us through the next steps to commercialization in Latin America for rice and what the milestones will look like that you will report to the street as that process gets closer when we get into late 2026 and into 2027.

Peter Beetham, Co-founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and COO, Cibus: Thanks, Matt. Let me give you the context of where we are on our commercialization path, because this goes back to understanding that Cibus has been able to build a process in rice in elite genetics. What I mean by elite genetics is the genetics that are really at the coal face of breeding programs. Our partnerships, our 7 partnerships in the Americas, the 5 in Latin America, the genetics that we’re working on and have worked on, are their best genetics, their elite genetics. The first step in that process is getting that material in and editing that material and getting it back to them within this 12- to 15-month timeframe. We’ve been able to do that already.

We’ve made those edits in the elite genetics, and that is the first step in that path to commercialization. Also, earlier this year, we were really, you know, excited to work with Interoc, who’s been a great partner for us, on a letter of intent with regards to the full commercialization of the first two traits, HT3 and HT1, starting out in Ecuador and Colombia. We came to agreement with that, and that is opening up the path to launch in 2027. They’ll take on the road of chemical registration for the herbicide to overtop of our traits in those countries.

The material that we’ll report on during the year is the progress on that chemical registration and also the trait work that we’re doing in their elite genetics and getting ready over the next winter to go into launch into 2027.

Matthew Venezia, Analyst, AGP: Great. Thank you guys for taking my questions, and congrats again on the progress. I’ll hop back in the queue.

Peter Beetham, Co-founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and COO, Cibus: Thanks, Matt.

Operator: We’ll move next to Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: Good afternoon. I just wanted to touch on a couple of things. Can you give a sense for the kind of the trend line for the total number of acres touched by your technology? Maybe 25 versus 26 versus 27, if you have any kind of rough framework on that.

Peter Beetham, Co-founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and COO, Cibus: Thanks, Lawrence. Let me go back to where I was with Latin America. I think the key here is that we’re targeting 5-7 million acres in the Americas. You know, within each of the companies that we deal with, they take up a portion of those acres. Over the first 3 years, we’ll see that growth and that scale to those number of acres with the 2 traits. You know, that’s the exciting part for me is that, you know, once you’re in that market, it is the stickiest business in the world because they’re going to continue to take those elite materials into that marketplace and expand into those acres.

That, as I mentioned in my remarks, you know, that represents potential of over $200 million annually for us. Building to that is gonna take a couple of years through that process. I think that is just the rice acres in Latin America and the US to start. What we also, you know, achieved in 2025 was the development of a relationship with Agribiome, with RTDC support to look at the Indian market, which is a much bigger market obviously, which is 120 million acres. We’re not gonna see in the first few years royalties come out of India. It’ll be towards the, you know, end of the decade in 2029, 2030 that we’ll start to see that progress.

that opens up, you know, again, potentially another $200 million of annual royalties. I think it’s, you know, Lawrence, to your question, it starts once you get into the market, and that’s our goal in Latin America in 2027, it really builds over the first 3-4 years.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: Okay. Now secondly, can you help me with a couple of things around scale? First, given the progress you’ve made the last couple of years on the gene editing platform, if, you know, following the EU regulations, potential partners are coming to you with gene edits as a service, what would be the kind of maximum throughput that you could do without doing a significant increase in your R&D expense or other investments?

Peter Beetham, Co-founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and COO, Cibus: This is the great thing about building it from the ground up. The team here has done a wonderful job of combining cell biology with automation, and also the genotyping and automation. It doesn’t take an enormous team to run through, you know, genetics pretty quickly. There’s some real synergies and we’re seeing that, you know, one of the experiments we tried essentially was at Oberlin, which paid huge dividends because that really changed our production system to be more like manufacturing. Why I’m telling you that, Laurence, is because that’s what drives the scale and scalability. Then you put on top of that automation and experience we’ve had now, you add in AI and, you know, we see some real efficiencies coming in the next year or so.

As we’ve reported over the last six months particularly, we’ve really refined and streamlined our business, and that has been our major focus, is building a system that we can scale to address the editing services as people come to us. That’s the exciting part of, you know, global regulatory opening up, seeing companies come towards us with some really great ideas. You know, Greg mentioned Innovate UK. That’s a really good example. We’ve also worked with John Innes Centre with, you know, nutrient use efficiency, which, you know, allows farmers to use less fertilizer. There’s some really great things coming. I’ll hand to Greg ’cause he’s in charge a lot of the scale-up.

Greg Gocal, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Cibus: Thanks Laurence for your question, and a couple of things to add to Peter’s comment. Remember, because we’re focused on using single cells from all of the crops that we work on and because we’re working with elite genetics, what we’ve seen both for canola winter oilseed rape as well as for rice so far is that most of the lines that we work with from customers, many seed company customers, those lines are performing well in cell culture. We also are in a place where in addition to the royalty downstream, we’ll get some funding to cover those editing expenses as we make edits for either traits that we’re licensing or traits that we develop ourselves into those materials.

With modest increases in the size of the team, we can manage multiple crops and multiple lines, whether they’re parents for hybrids or whether they’re varieties within the platform for a wide variety of traits. They may be traits that we’re developing. They may be edits that a customer or a partnership wants us to make, or they may be edits that we have a partnership where both the partner and Cibus work together to determine what those edits are. Excellent question and thank you.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: Then separately, can you help with the sort of when people come to you with gene edits as a service, if there’s a kind of known value add, let’s say a certain percentage increase in yield on a kind of you know, with a rolling average crop price to keep it simple, what is a plausible. Like what kind of royalty rates are you discussing with customers now, and how has that changed compared to a few years ago?

Peter Beetham, Co-founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and COO, Cibus: Thanks, Laurence. I think it’s a great question because, you know, what we’re seeing is an uptick in the idea behind getting gene editing done more as a service. What really sets us apart at Cibus is the speed and scalability, as we just talked about. Speed is critical. You know, one of the things that I think has been challenging in the trait market previously is a trait may be handed off to a company, but you go through five or six years of back crossing and testing before it gets to market. What we’re seeing now with gene editing is we can do an elite genetics and hand it back in a year’s time, and that allows them to integrate it into their plant breeding program as an extension.

That, you know, you stay ahead of the yield curve, you stay into the elite genetics, and that allows them to see the value add very quickly. When you can see the value add quickly, the negotiation on a trait royalty is very, you know, favorable for Cibus. You know, we’re in this to help the farmer, we’re in this to help the seed company, and we’re sharing that value together. When you can, if you can see the value add on an accelerated basis, it’s an easier negotiation.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: Just lastly on the fragrances. Similarly, can you give a sense for the scale of how many fragrances you could work on in one year if customers are interested at your current costs run rate?

Peter Beetham, Co-founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and COO, Cibus: Laurence, a great question. You know, we’ve been working on a couple of fragrances to start with. I think what we see is again, acceleration. Once you have a platform to build out, you know, an organism with those edits, and so in our case it’s yeast. Yeast genetics are quick. I think what we’ve been focused on is making sure that all the downstream production work with our partner has been done, and we’ve been able to show that. I think that’s the exciting part, is once you have that, the process, you know, it can be accelerated. You know, we know that there’s probably about 17 fragrances out there that we’d like to go after. We’ve been focused on the first few, but I think we can scale that pretty quickly.

Laurence Alexander, Analyst, Jefferies: Okay, great. Thank you.

Peter Beetham, Co-founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and COO, Cibus: Thanks, Laurence.

Operator: We’ll move next to Alex Hantman with Sidoti & Company. Your line is open.

Alex Hantman, Analyst, Sidoti & Company: Good afternoon, and thanks for taking questions. To start, just on the results, the collaboration revenue and earnings came in, you know, a little bit below consensus and what I projected. Could you talk a little bit about what did, you know, and did not convert in the fourth quarter and, you know, maybe anything that didn’t come through that might come through in the next couple of quarters?

Carlo Broos, Chief Financial Officer, Cibus: Thanks, Alex. This is Carlo. A great question. This is really timing. From a cash perspective, we’re absolutely on track. We talked about this before, but this is the revenue recognition really linked to time spent by our people. If you hear about our upcoming numbers, you’ll see that we’re absolutely on track as we spoke before. It’s purely timing, Alex.

Alex Hantman, Analyst, Sidoti & Company: Okay, thanks. Then maybe to follow up on timing, you know, congrats again on the initial commercial Biographica sale. Can we talk a little bit about the, you know, potential to expand with the current customer and, you know, what conversations you’re having with other potential customers and, you know, how we get to that ramp that you gave of $20 million-$40 million a year?

Peter Beetham, Co-founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and COO, Cibus: Thanks, Alex. This is Peter. Thanks for your question. I think that, you know, the opportunities are broad when it comes to our sustainable ingredients program. What we’re seeing in the fragrance side of things is different sectors we can go after. Fragrance is used, you know, very broadly across industries. We’re, you know, we’re obviously always looking at that. We’ve got a strong partner right now, and we’re working closely with them to build out, you know, later this year to full commercial scale, but also to expand that opportunity. It doesn’t preclude us from going and looking more broadly. I think your question is right, you know, very correct in that there is this opportunity that Cibus would love to expand on.

Alex Hantman, Analyst, Sidoti & Company: Great. Thank you. Last one from us, you know, I know you mentioned, you know, current funds until late 2026, third quarter. Could you talk a little bit about, you know, how you’re thinking of financing from here and, you know, your flexibility with that and, you know, just kind of sort of the range of options that you’re thinking about?

Peter Beetham, Co-founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and COO, Cibus: Thanks, Alex. I’m gonna hand this off to Carlo in a minute, but I do wanna say a couple of comments up front because it’s a really important question around how we’re streamlining the business. You know, it is a. The last couple of years have been all about efficiency and running to the near-term revenue. I think the team here has done an excellent job with some tough decisions along the way, some consolidation around facilities, and, you know, streamlining the business has been very much a focus for the management team and a focus across the whole organization. We continue to refine that. We continue to look for synergies in the organization. What we’re also seeing is opportunities ahead of us.

for us, the idea of automation, the idea of really, you know, utilizing the best parts of AI, not only in the science, but also in the back office and the administration, of the company, is allowing us to sort of really manage that cash burn. With that, I’ll hand off to Carlo to add some comments.

Carlo Broos, Chief Financial Officer, Cibus: Yeah. Thank you, Peter. I think you said it well. I think two important things happened in 2025, the streamlining, and now even recently, more streamlining. This allows us to focus on near-term revenues. That’s the big thing. Of course, we had the January financing transaction. Yeah, that all leads to proceeds, as you said, late into the third quarter. For me, most important, this allows us to focus on near-term revenues and eyes on our franchise.

Alex Hantman, Analyst, Sidoti & Company: Great context. Thank you.

Peter Beetham, Co-founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and COO, Cibus: Thanks, Alex.

Operator: Thank you. It does appear that there are no further questions at this time. I would now like to hand back to management for any additional or closing remarks.

Peter Beetham, Co-founder, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and COO, Cibus: Thank you. I’ve only got a couple of closing remarks today. I think we went through the details of the business, and showed that we have had an amazing year. Gene editing in general, the industry is, as I said before, not an experiment. This is happening now, and we are totally commercially driven going forward in 2026. I’d like to thank you all for joining today as well. Some great questions, and I really appreciate that. For the three of us here, we’re really proud to represent the team here at Cibus. We’re really looking forward to a strong future here in 2026, and we’ll keep you updated as we make that progress. Thank you all.

Operator: Thank you. This brings us to the end of today’s meeting. We appreciate your time and participation. You may now disconnect.