Evogene Ltd. Q4 2025 Earnings Call - Strategic pivot to ChemPass AI targeting small-molecule drug and ag-chemical discovery

Unknown, Conference Call Moderator, Evogene Ltd.: Welcome to Evogene’s fourth quarter 2025 results conference call. All participants are at present in listen-only mode. Following management’s formal presentation, we will open the question-and-answer session. You may send questions via chat. Please type your name and company before your question. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded March 5, 2026. Before we begin, I would like to caution that certain statements made during this earning conference call by Evogene’s management will constitute forward-looking statements that relate to future events. This presentation contains forward-looking statements relating to future events, Evogene Ltd., the company, may from time to time make other statements regarding our outlook or expectations for future financial or operating results and/or other matters regarding or affecting us that are considered forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, the PSLRA, and other securities laws as amended.

Statements that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of such words as believe, expect, anticipate, should, planned, estimate, intend, and potential, or words of similar meaning. We are using forward-looking statements in this presentation when we discussed our value drivers, commercialization efforts and timing, product development and launches, estimate market sizes and milestones, pipeline, as well as our capabilities and technology. Such statements are based on current expectations, estimates, projections, and assumptions, describe opinions about future events, involve certain risks and uncertainties, which are difficult to predict and are not guarantees of future performance. Readers are cautioned that certain important factors may affect the company’s actual results and could cause such results to differ materially from any forward-looking statement that may be made in this presentation.

Therefore, actual future results, performance or achievements and trends in the future may differ materially from what is expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements due to a variety of factors, many of which are beyond our control, including without limitation, the aftermath of the recent war between Israel and each of the terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran and other regional terrorist groups supported by Iran, and any destabilizations in Israel, neighboring territories, or the Middle East region, and those described in greater detail in Evogene’s annual report on Form 20-F and in other information Evogene’s files and furnished with the Israel Securities Authority and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including those factors under the heading Risk Factors.

Expect, as required by applicable security laws, we disclaim any obligation or commitment to update any information contained in this presentation or to publicly release the results of any revisions to any statements that may be made to reflect future events or development or changes in expectations, estimates, projections, and assumptions. The information contained herein does not constitute a prospectus or other offering document, nor does it constitute or form part of any invitation or offer to sell, or any solicitation of any invitation or offer to purchase or subscribe for any securities of Evogene or the company. Nor shall the information or any part of it, or the fact of its distribution, form the basis of, or be relied on in connection with, any action, contract, commitment, or relating thereto, or the securities of Evogene or the company.

The trademarks include herein are the property of the owners thereof and are used for reference purposes only. Such use should not be construed as an endorsement of our product or services. With us on the line will be Ofer Haviv, President and CEO of Evogene, and Yaron Eldad, CFO of Evogene. Now I will turn the call over to Ofer Haviv. Mr. Haviv, please go ahead.

Ofer Haviv, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evogene Ltd.: Thank you for joining Evogene’s fourth quarter and annual 2025 analyst call. In today’s call, I would like to focus on the significant progress Evogene has made over the past year and to outline the strategic transformation we initiated to position the company for long-term value creation. Following my remarks, our CFO, Yaron Eldad, will present the financial results. We will then open the call for questions. During 2025, following a comprehensive review of our technology, markets, and capital allocation, we made deliberate choice to sharpen our focus and execution. This transformation was guided by a strong objective to direct Evogene’s resources where we believe we can create the greatest sustainable value. Today, our mission is clear and focused: to design novel, highly potent small molecules optimized across multiple parameters for drug development and our chemicals. By utilizing ChemPass AI, our computational generative AI engine.

For this purpose, we implemented two core strategic decisions. First, we focused our technology development on a single computational engine, ChemPass AI. Second, we streamlined our business activities to concentrate exclusively on two high-impact markets where ChemPass AI offers strong differentiation. Human health, centered on small molecules drugs, and agriculture, focused on novel ag chemicals. These decisions led to determined actions across the company. We dedicated our computational capabilities to ChemPass AI, discontinued non-core activities, divested misaligned assets, resized the organization, and established a business development team aligned with our refined strategy. I would like to elaborate on ChemPass AI and emphasize its competitive advantage for small molecules generation. ChemPass AI is designed to generate novel, highly active molecules while meeting the complex parameters required to meaningfully increase the probability of downstream development success. ChemPass AI competitive advantage lies in the powerful combination of the following two capabilities.

The first, generating novel molecules based on vast chemical territories, the second, ensuring they meet demanding multiple parameters requirement from day one. Our platform goes far beyond the chemical space the industry traditionally explores. Based on 38 billion molecules universe, ChemPass AI foundation model navigates vast, diverse chemical domains that others simply cannot access. This enables us to design truly original molecular structures with strong biological potential and highly defensible intellectual property, opening the door to breakthrough products and new IP landscape. At the same time, precision is built into every molecules we create. Our AI engine simultaneously optimize a wide range of critical chemical, biological, and physical parameters, tailoring each compound to the exact constraints and success criteria of the specific target product.

The result is not just innovations, but synthesizable active molecules engineered from the outset to meet real development requirements, dramatically increasing the probability of real-world commercial success. This differentiation is supported by proprietary technological advancement developed by our internal team, guided by world-class scientific advisors, and reinforced through multiple collaborations with leading technology companies, including Google Cloud, with whom we are currently engaged in our second collaboration. Our first announced collaboration with Google Cloud was successfully completed in mid-2025 with a first-in-class foundation model for the generation of novel molecular product candidates optimized for multiple parameters. By processing a database of 38 billion structures, we tripled our benchmarks for accuracy, delivering 90% design precision. Building on this, we were pleased to announce our second collaboration with Google Cloud initiated this February.

We are now integrating advanced AI agents into Campus AI using Google Cloud Vertex AI to decrease manual errors and automate complex scientific workflows, aiming to improve our novel small molecule candidates probability of development success. This move toward autonomous discovery is key to advancing and scaling our capabilities for the support of future partnerships across the pharma and agriculture industries. To summarize the uniqueness of Evogene’s offering, our product candidates combine three powerful capabilities. Novel molecules generated based on vast and diverse chemical space, Simultaneous optimizations for multi-parameters requirements from the outset, highly potent molecules optimized through targeted experimental validation. We don’t just design novel chemistry, we generate novel chemistry that performs. Campus AI is built on fully integrated, partnership-driven workflow, forming our business model, expressed in collaboration and in-house development toward proprietary product candidate.

Our partners are engaged at every stage, from joint strategic review through rigorous experimental validation and collaborative evaluation. Each project is custom-designed to align precisely with its specific scientific and strategic objectives. I view this collaborative structure as a key strategic advantage for us, both in enhancing the likelihood of advancing proprietary candidate molecules with the highest potential to become successful products, and in positioning Evogene as a true development partner, enabling participation in the product’s future revenue stream. This brings me to this slide demonstrating the implementation of our business model, summarizing Evogene’s current achievements, of which I’m very proud. In human health, we are advancing multiple partnered drug discovery programs with biotechnology companies and academic institutions. In these partnerships, ChemPass AI is driving discovery and optimization of candidates that are progressing into testing with our partners.

To date, we have publicly disclosed four such collaborations. We expect such activity to scale with additional collaborations. These achievements were made within a very short timeframe of several months. We aim to present similar advancement during the remainder of 2026 and beyond. You are invited to visit Evogene’s website and review our company’s presentation for additional details on each of these collaborations. In agriculture, our subsidiary, AgPlenus, continues to apply ChemPass AI to development of novel herbicides and fungicides. The maturity and robustness of the platform are reflected through our strategic collaboration with Bayer and Corteva, alongside a differentiated internal pipeline. We expect continued growth through the expansion of those collaborations and the formations of new partnerships. In our future quarterly analyst call, I expect to go deeper into these business engagements and update on new ones.

To complete my part in today’s call, I would like to send a clear message. The generation of proprietary small molecule product candidates is our mission. With ChemPass AI, our well-differentiated generative AI engine, disciplined capital allocation focused on two high-potential markets, and strong strategic partnerships, we believe Evogene is now positioned on a defined, more focused path toward sustainable value creation. Our business aim for short and mid-term is to become the partner of choice for small molecule discovery and optimization with pharma and big biotech companies for drug development, and with multinational agriculture companies for ag chemical development. For the long term, Evogene aims to develop its own product pipeline, benefiting from the competitive edge of our proprietary technology. This is Evogene, combining cutting-edge AI with deep scientific expertise to generate real-world innovation. Thank you for your time and attention.

With this, I conclude my part and will now hand the call to our CFO, Yaron Eldad, to present the financial results.

Yaron Eldad, Chief Financial Officer, Evogene Ltd.: As part of the company’s updated strategic plan, management implemented an organizational realignment and cost reduction initiative. The effects of these measures are reflected in the significant decrease in operating expenses net, which declined to approximately $13.8 million for the year ended 2025, compared to approximately $22 million in 2024. The impact is also evident in the fourth quarter results, with total operating expenses net of approximately $3.2 million, compared to approximately $4.3 million in the corresponding period of 2024. The company expects this reduced expense level to be sustained in future periods. In 2025, Lavie Bio Ltd., a subsidiary of Evogene Ltd., focused on agriculture biologicals, completed the sale of the majority of its operations to ICL.

As a result of this transaction, Lavie Bio no longer maintains employees, and its operation expense level has decreased significantly. Lavie Bio anticipates distributing the majority of its remaining cash to its shareholders, including Evogene, during 2026. During 2025, as part of the company’s updated strategic plan, we scaled down Biomica’s operations and research and development activities and reduced its personnel to a minimal level. In early 2026, Biomica entered into a license agreement with Lishan Pharmaceuticals for its lead oncology candidate, BMC128. Following this transaction, Biomica does not expect to conduct further material operational activities and anticipates distributing the majority of its remaining cash to its shareholders, including Evogene.

With respect to AgPlenus, we integrated AgPlenus, our ag chemical subsidiary, into the core operations of Evogene, with the objective of maximizing the value of our ChemPass AI platform for the development of novel ag chemical products. In alignment with the company’s updated organizational structure, AgPlenus was resized and streamlined to reflect the revised approach operating model. During 2025, due to a significant decline in demand for castor seeds, Casterra Ag ceased its operations in Kenya, reduced its headcount and overall expense level, and is currently focusing its activities on the Brazilian market. As a result of these developments, Casterra recorded an impairment of approximately $2.2 million related to its seed inventory. This impairment is presented within cost of sales in the consolidated financial statements in a separate line item.

In February 2026, Evogene entered into a warrant inducement agreement with an existing investor, providing the immediate exercise in full of its August 2024 Series A and Series B warrants, resulting in gross proceeds to the company of approximately $3.4 million before deducting of placement agent fees and other offering expenses. In consideration for such exercise, the investor will receive in a private placement, new unregistered Series A-1 and Series B-1 warrants to purchase up to an aggregate of 5,076,924 ordinary shares. The new warrants are exercisable immediately at an exercise price of $1.25 per ordinary share. Cash position. As of December 31, 2025, Evogene held consolidated cash equivalents, and short-term bank deposits of approximately $13 million.

The consolidated cash usage during the fourth quarter of 2025 was approximately $3 million. Excluding Lavie Bio and Biomica, Evogene and its other subsidiaries used approximately $2.4 million in cash during the fourth quarter of 2025. Revenues for 2025 totaled approximately $3.9 million compared to approximately $5.6 million in the same period the previous year, reflecting a decrease of approximately $1.7 million. The decrease was primarily driven by lower revenue re-recognized from AgPlenus’ activity, which included one-time payment during the first quarter of 2024, and revenues recognized from the collaboration agreement with Corteva that was completed during 2024. Revenues for the fourth quarter of 2025 were approximately $0.3 million, a decrease compared to approximately $1.5 million in the same period last year.

The decrease was mainly due to reduced seed sales generated by Casterra during the fourth quarter of 2025. Cost of revenues for the year ending 2025 was approximately $4.1 million compared to approximately $2.4 million in the previous year. The increase was primarily attributable to an inventory impairment of approximately $2.2 million recorded by Casterra during the fourth quarter of 2025, mainly due to its decision to cease its operations in Kenya, as noted above. Cost of revenues for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $2.3 million compared to $0.7 million in the fourth quarter of the previous year. The increase in quarterly cost of revenues was mainly driven by the same inventory impairment of Casterra as noted above.

R&D expenses, net of non-refundable grants for the year 2025 were approximately $8 million, a decrease of approximately $4.5 million compared to $12.5 million in the year 2024. The decrease was primarily due to reduced R&D expenses in Biomica, Casterra and AgPlenus. In the fourth quarter of 2025, R&D expenses were approximately $1.8 million, down from approximately $2.7 million in the same period of 2024. This decrease is mainly attributed to decreased expenses in Biomica. Sales and marketing expenses for the year 2025 were approximately $1.5 million, a decrease of approximately $0.5 million compared to approximately $2 million in the same period last year. The decrease was mainly due to reductions in Evogene and Biomica’s personnel cost.

Sales and marketing expenses for the fourth quarter of 2025 and 2024 were approximately $0.3 million and $0.4 million respectively. General and administrative expenses for the year 2025 decreased to approximately $4.3 million from approximately $7 million in the same period last year. This decrease is mainly attributable to expenses recorded during the year 2024, related to a provision for doubtful debt for one of Casterra’s seed suppliers, as well as transaction costs associated with Evogene’s fundraising in August 2024. Additional decrease is attributable to a reduction in Biomica’s activity and personnel costs during 2025.

General and administrative expenses for the fourth quarter of 2025 decreased to approximately $0.9 million compared to approximately $1.3 million in the same period of the previous year, primarily due to decreased expenses in Evogene and Biomica, as mentioned above. Operating loss for 2025 was approximately $14 million, a significant decrease from approximately $18.8 million in the same period of the previous year, mainly due to decreased operating expenses, partially offset by the decreased revenues as mentioned above, and the higher cost of revenues, mainly due to an inventory impairment of approximately $2.2 million recorded by Casterra in the fourth quarter of 2025.

The operating loss for the fourth quarter of 2025 was approximately $5.2 million, an increase from approximately $3.5 million in the same period of the previous year, primarily due to the decreased revenues and increased cost of revenues mentioned above, partially offset by decreased operating expenses. Financing income net for the year 2025 was approximately $0.6 million compared to approximately $4 million in the previous year. The decrease in financing income net was mainly associated with accounting treatment of pre-funded warrants and warrants issued in August 2024 fundraising.

As a result, during the 12 months of 2025, the company recorded financial income net related to pre-funded warrants and warrants of approximately $458,000 as compared to a financial income of approximately $3.4 million in the same period of 2024. Financing expenses net for the fourth quarter of 2025 were approximately $0.2 million compared to a financing income net of approximately $4.5 million in the same period of the previous year. The decrease in financing income is mainly associated with accounting treatment of pre-funded warrants and warrants issued in the August 2024 fundraising, as mentioned above.

Income from discontinued operations net for the 12 months of 2025 was approximately $5.7 million compared to a loss of approximately $3.2 million in the same period of 2024. For the fourth quarter of 2025, loss from discontinued operations net was approximately $16,000 compared to a loss of approximately $1 million in the fourth quarter of the previous year. These amounts primarily reflect the financial results of Lavie Bio’s operations, as well as expenses related to the development and maintenance of MicroBoost AI for AG, which are presented as a single line item in the consolidated statements of profit and loss.

Following the sale of the majority of Lavie Bio’s assets, as well as Evogene’s MicroBoost AI for AG to ICL, the company recognized a gain on sale of approximately $6.4 million, which is also included in the income from discontinued operations net for the year of 2025. All prior period amounts have been reclassified to conform to this presentation. Net loss for the 12 months of 2025 was approximately $7.8 million compared to approximately $18.1 million in the same period last year. The $10.3 million decrease in net loss was primarily due to decreased operating expenses and an income derived from discontinued operations due to the asset sale to ICL net, partially offset by reduced revenues, higher cost of revenues, and a decreased financing income net.

The net loss for the fourth quarter of 2025 was approximately $5.4 million compared to net loss of approximately $5,000 in the same period last year. This increase in net loss was primarily due to decreased financial income, decreased revenues, and increased cost of revenues, partially offset by decreased operating expenses, as mentioned above. Operator.

Unknown, Conference Call Moderator, Evogene Ltd.: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. In order to send a question, use the chat button located in the bottom of your screen. Please type your full name and your company’s name before the question. There is a siren in Israel. We will be back in a few minutes. There is a siren in Israel. We will be back in a few minutes.

Unknown, Conference Call Operator, Evogene Ltd.: Thank you for standing by. The first question, can you speak to the terms of the BMC128 license agreement with Lishan Pharmaceuticals?

Ofer Haviv, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evogene Ltd.: Hi, this is Ofer, and sorry for asking you to wait. It’s not a regular time here in Israel, but everybody that participate in the call is now in the same place at Evogene offices. With respect to this question, what I can disclose is that the agreement with Lishan is include a milestone payment, which is expected based on advancing the BMC128 in the pipeline or if there will be any commercial transaction that will generate a value for Lishan. We will participate in this amount and of course, a revenue sharing from revenue the end product will generate.

This is what we can disclose and, you know, in, in pharma, the numbers could be quite significant. When this milestone will occur, at least we hope so, it will be quite significant for Evogene. It could be quite significant for Biomica and Evogene as a major shareholder in Biomica, is expected to benefit from it. We can move to the next slide to the next question.

Unknown, Conference Call Operator, Evogene Ltd.: Can you speak to the magnitude of cash potentially coming in from Lavie Bio and Biomica? To summarize, can you highlight investor catalyst over the coming 12 month?

Ofer Haviv, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evogene Ltd.: With respect to the cash expected from Biomica and Lavie Bio. We disclosed the financial terms of the acquisition of the majority of Lavie Bio activity and selling MicroBoost to ICL. What we are expected is that the cash that Evogene will have after this dividend distribution will satisfy our need for at least mid next year, maybe even more. In the current term operation, and the expectation is that even without additional financial transaction, we have sufficient cash for a little bit more than a year and a half.

And with respect to the catalyst that might took place. I think that I tried to describe it in my part. You can envision three type of catalyst. The first one, additional technology collaboration with companies such as Google. What I can share is that we are talking with some other company in the same size like Google, where we are looking for a different opportunity to work together and leverage their assets and knowledge to the field where we active. And each time that such a thing has happened, it’s really push the limitation that we are addressing with our technology to further and further. This is quite important.

Of course, it attract the attention of potential partners, because it’s increased the evidence that what we are offering is something very unique, if all of this mega company is working with us. So this is one type of catalyst. The second type of catalyst is additional collaboration agreement with pharma companies or or with the biotech companies, we are going to use ChemPass AI to identify small molecules, which bind to the protein of interest, addressing a multi-parameter criteria, novel chemical structure and with high potency. If in the first set of collaboration that we engage was with small biotech company in an institution.

Now we are targeting for a more high and bigger type of companies. We are also expecting that at least some of those transaction will inject cash to the company, to Evogene even in the early stage, covering our expenses. This is the first type of a catalyst we can think of. The second type of catalyst you can think of, and the third is again, collaboration agreement, but this time with the ag chemical companies. We are talking with some companies in this field.

The ag and industry in the last few years didn’t have a positive performance or in the market and this has had a negative effect on their willingness and appetite to enter into a collaboration. Things start to change now, and understanding that there is a clear need for innovation increase. Also I think that the performance that AgPlenus was achieved in the last year, hopefully will help us to engage in some significant collaboration agreement with the potential partners in this industry. To summarize, 3 type of catalyst: technology collaboration with companies like Google and others, then collaboration with midsize biotech and pharma companies, and collaboration with a ag chemical company.

This is the main catalyst I’m expecting to share coming from the core business of Evogene as we see it today. We also have some other activity such as Casterra and some other legacy activity. I prefer not to refer to them today because it’s very important for me to make sure that it’s very clear that what is the strategic avenue Evogene decided to go through and ’cause I truly believe this is represent the highest potential for our shareholders for the next few years.

Unknown, Conference Call Operator, Evogene Ltd.: There are no further questions at this time. Mr. Haviv, would you like to make a concluding statement?

Ofer Haviv, President and Chief Executive Officer, Evogene Ltd.: Yes. I would like to thank everybody that participate in today conference call. We are here in Evogene committed to achieve our targets. I can assure you that all Evogene employee are working or from home or even coming to our offices, and I’m looking forward to continue to update you and share with you additional great announcement like in the last quarter. Thank you.

Unknown, Conference Call Operator, Evogene Ltd.: Thank you. This concludes Evogene’s fourth quarter 2025 results conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may go ahead and disconnect.