We're here now to discuss another of our coverage companies, Cibus, ticker CBUS on the NASDAQ, which we have rated at a buy with a $2,350 price target. Cibus is an agricultural biotechnology company advancing gene-edited crop traits in economically important crops like canola, rice, and soy. These traits are created through their Rapid Trait Development System. With us today from Cibus is the Founder and interim CEO of Cibus, Peter Beetham. Thanks for joining us today, Peter.
My pleasure.
You guys are focusing on the development of gene-edited traits. Can you explain to investors the difference between a gene-edited trait and a GMO, and how have your recent regulatory determinations for your products confirmed that these are definitively not GMO?
Thanks, Matt. Thanks for the time today. I really appreciate it. The big difference between a GMO and what we do in gene editing is the fact that a GMO is a transgene. There are a lot of products out there, a lot of GMO products. What they've done over the years is taken a gene from another organism and transferred it into a crop to create a new characteristic or what we call a trait in the industry. That transgenic process has been deemed as GMO around the world. We don't do that. In gene editing, we're able to go in and essentially make tiny changes using the spelling changes, we call it, of the DNA using tools that are essentially using the DNA repair system of an organism. It happens naturally.
What has happened over the last, pretty much over the last decade, is regulators around the world have understood that when you gene edit a crop or gene edit an organism, that it is indistinguishable from what occurs in nature. We always term the phrase, it's a little bit like the red squiggly line under Microsoft Word where you do a spelling. We've made a spelling error, and you right-click on that with your mouse, and it corrects it to the spelling that you want. Essentially, what we do with our Rapid Trait Development System at Cibus is that red squiggly line. It's a very cool way of being able to go into a genome and essentially edit the gene, and then that forms a process using DNA repair that allows you to create a new characteristic or a new trait.
Very different to the GMO process. I look at GMOs like the Windows 95 technology. It was great in 1995, but we're in 2025 now. Regulatory determinations around the world have recognized that. Just recently, we got approval in Ecuador. We've also got approvals in many countries around the world, including North America and South America. The EU, which is very exciting, in March went through the process of getting the final votes for what they call the trialogue, where the Commission, the Parliament, and the Council in the EU get together to really formulate the full legislation document. Things are really moving very quickly. Thanks, Matt.
Yeah, yeah. Great, Peter. So your Rapid Trait Development System allows rapid development of gene-edited traits. What technology do you use, and how does your method allow for these extremely precise edits?
What I said before was the little red squiggly line underneath the right click. That gives you the precision. As part of the Rapid Trait Development System, we use what we call a small snippet of DNA we call the gene repair oligonucleotide, which is a mouthful. What that allows us to do is, at a single cell level, put in reagents that go into the cell and only there for a short amount of time. While they are there, they align with the genome and allow you to make spelling changes in the genome with a lot of precision. That is one of the things that really differentiates us from other gene editing companies. Our precision and ability to do multiple changes within genes, but also multiple genes within a genome, is very different and unique to Cibus.
Great. In the vein of the Rapid Trait Development System, rapid is a key word in this system. Can you explain how you're leveraging the RTDS to create these traits rapidly in a manner where timelines are predictable? How is this an improvement on existing methods in agronomic trait development, which is pretty consistently a long process?
Yeah, thanks, Matt. I'll give it some context because speed is everything when it comes to getting traits onto the market. What's been happening with conventional plant breeding programs around the world has been a really long process. Selection within populations of genetics is what's allowed us to bring forward some of the best crops and the best genetics for planting on literally hundreds of millions of acres. In some cases, that may take 10 - 30 years. Basically, you're in the decade timeline. If you think about GMO, that's the same. Some of the transgenic traits have taken 10 - 15 years to get to market and in some cases cost over $100 million to actually get to market. It was really slow. It was very expensive, and it was really contained within a very small group of companies.
With gene editing and with our Rapid Trait Development System, we've been able to leverage the knowledge that we've built over a number of years at Cibus to be time-bound and predictable. When you think about timelines for a plant breeding program, getting that new trait or that new characteristic into a crop, you mentioned canola and rice and soy as our three major crops, getting it back to our customers and our partners within 12 months is a game changer. As I've said before, with gene editing, when you're able to do that and create a new characteristic and get it back in 12 months, it really provides an engine room for plant genomics or plant genetics. A lot of seed companies are coming to us now because they understand that we can be time-bound and predictable.
Great. Currently, you guys are a pre-revenue company, and your future revenues from your crop traits that you are developing right now are planned to come from royalties. Can you explain how developing these gene-edited traits and making these corrections to the red squiggly line in Microsoft Word can lead to a royalty business in agriculture?
Yes, I can. Thank you. Let me again frame this a little bit because I think when you think about traits that we're developing for companies, when you think of Cibus, you should think of productivity traits. We are all about major crops and looking at improving yields and productivity of every acre available. As I said before, there are hundreds of millions of acres out there. Soy, for example, has over 250 million acres just in North America and South America. These are large acreage crops that need to be more productive. We want to make every acre more productive. Why I tell you that is because as a royalty business, we're going to provide traits, these new characteristics to seed companies that they will take to market.
It is a very capital-light business where we will share in the premium or the value that we bring to that marketplace with the trait. A part of that premium is what we collect as a royalty, which we net to Cibus. On our website, on our investor deck, there is a whole list of how we look at that and the value there. Just to give you an idea, we are looking at net to Cibus somewhere between $10-$15 for some of our traits that are involved in weed management, for example. You get to 10 million acres. It is very easy to do the math that every year you are able to collect that royalty per acre from the seed companies providing that value. The value is generated by, as I said, improving productivity.
In this case, it's actually reducing the inputs with herbicides. You create value for the farmer. The farmer doesn't have to use as much herbicide, so application costs go down, and that input is cheaper. If you share in that value with the farmer, the seed company, and then the trait provider, which is Cibus, you can create quite a bit of value for all of us.
Got it. Great. And just to clarify, when you are providing this value, you're providing it to Cibus one, the farmer two, and the seed company three.
Correct.
Can you just give a brief overview of each of the traits you have already developed and are currently developing and what the statuses are of each of those traits? I will give you a little bit on that, and then I have a follow-up.
Okay. Thanks, Matt. I think that let me start with what we call developed traits, both canola or what's known as winter oilseed rape in Europe and rice. In rice, we have two herbicide-tolerant traits, which is really a weed management solution. Being able to spray herbicide to kill all the weeds, but your rice survives. The rice is tolerant to that particular herbicide. It is a really efficient way to do weed management. There are two traits we've developed. We are looking actually at adding more traits into that portfolio, but currently, we have two that we can go individually or stack. That is the developed side of the traits with rice. On the canola front, we have what's called pod shatter reduction.
We have been able to put a trait into canola that at harvest, the pods, which are like peas in a pod, can shatter. You can lose yield. By having a tighter pod, it makes the harvest easier and more, and you do not have that loss. You preserve your yield. They are the three really fully developed traits that we have put into partners' genetics, and we have done a number of field trials, and they are coming on stream in 2027 and 2028. Additionally, we have traits that are advanced but not fully developed yet. They are things like additional herbicide tolerance, which we call HD2, but we also have what I think is one of the more exciting trait categories, disease tolerance. We have focused on sclerotinia, white mold, and we have that coming now in canola and also winter oilseed rape.
We are looking forward to also bringing it forward in soy, both the herbicide tolerance and the sclerotinia tolerance in soy.
Got it. Briefly, can you just explain to investors why farmers would want to pay more for each of these individual traits and what the value add there is for each of them?
Absolutely. I think that farming is a very lucrative business if you can manage your inputs, and also that leads to good yields. Genetics are really the engine room for that. When farmers go to buy their seed as part of their input, they then have to buy fertilizer. They buy crop protection products like herbicides, fungicides, insecticides. Farmers have a very good understanding of how much money they spend per acre to control weeds, for example. In the case of rice in the Mid-South, they may spend as much as $120 per acre. If you can reduce that cost, that improves their margins. Their margins are slim. If you can improve or reduce their cost and use less chemistry, there is also a time factor there of actually the application.
One of the reasons rice is so expensive is they actually fly on the herbicide. Crop dusters come in and fly. You can imagine how expensive that can be. That is where farmers look at that very economically and see that they can improve their profits. They will definitely pay for that premium. They get the yield. They reduce the input costs. They improve their margin.
Got it. The multi-million dollar question. When can we expect your crop traits to begin being planted on farmed acres and thus for royalties to start coming in to Cibus?
One of the things that's taken some time is getting it in the hands of our customers, getting the specifications right and the sales and marketing built. That takes a couple of years. We've handed material back, so it's not like if it's going to happen. It's just a matter of when it's going to happen. The beauty of that is that right now, we're working with a number of organizations, both in the U.S. and Latin America. They'll start to flow in 2027. We're very close. Then build through 2027, 2028, 2029 is really where you see the J-curve build on our royalties that come back to Cibus.
Got it. What are some of the major near-term catalysts for Cibus that investors should be looking out for?
I think the near-term catalysts are announcements of additional customers as we add in new customers in our rice portfolio, advances in the field of what we call our advanced traits like sclerotinia. We continue to share in the marketplace that when we do our field trials, we've tested new modes of action. That's the exciting part on the sclerotinia, because building the different modes of action is important for long-term application of that trait, because diseases evolve, and you want to be able to have multiple modes of action to make it durable. That really is a blockbuster trait. You'll see that coming forward. Other milestones, we're looking at expanding our portfolio. We have a wheat platform. We're looking forward to work with some prospective collaborators on wheat, which is great. They're the things to look out for.
We'll be keeping everyone apprised of launch times in 2027. Before that, broadening our portfolio, broadening our customer base, and reporting on our field trials.
Got it. And very quickly, you guys also have a bio fragrance business. Can you describe a little bit of what that business is and what it's built around and how those future revenues might look?
Thanks, Matt. It's a part of our business that was built around in our discovery process, we use microorganisms to look at finding what to edit. During that process, we discovered that one of our yeast organisms that we use produces a lot of oil. It's called an oleaginous yeast, but it just produces a lot of oil. With the right genetics and the right feedstocks, you can create some, essentially in that oil, a bio fragrance, a very valuable fragrance for the market for large CPG companies. They've got very interested in that. Even though it was a small effort on our behalf, we've got some people out there that are really keen to use these fragrances in a lot of their products.
We're building that as a fermentation product, and we've already done some scale-up work, and we'll see nominal revenues this year in 2025 and then building next year. It's a fairly large opportunity. It's in the tens of millions of dollars royalty per year. Again, it's a royalty, and it's something that we would work with a larger company to be the pull-through and create the demand. It's an exciting area, actually.
Wonderful. In just the last minute or so, is there anything that I missed or anything that you would like to cover just to say to investors in your last minute or so?
Matt, thank you. What I'd like to share is I think there's two big drivers right now of our business, and it really is our ability to be time-bound and predictable and returning material within 12 months. We did a big press release on January this year, and that's created a lot of interest with prospective partners and customers. The second thing is the regulatory. We mentioned that at the top of the discussion. Regulatory is that because you're dealing with major crops, which have these major acreages as well, totaling over 500 million acres, and that allows you to sort of think through if the regulatory agencies are seeing us as indistinguishable from what occurs in nature or part of a plant breeding program, we become the same as conventional. Trade barriers are not there.
Being able to cultivate in areas like the EU and Latin America and Asia and India open up these global markets. They are the two big drivers that have really changed our world. Just in the last quarter, that is opening up and becoming more essentially harmonized around the world. That has been a very exciting transition for us.
All right. Wonderful. Thank you, everyone, for your attention, and thank you, Peter, for joining us today. This is Cibus, ticker CBUS, which we have rated at a buy with a $2,350 price target. Thank you, guys.