Yield10 Bioscience Inc (YTEN) 2022 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Greetings, and welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2022 Financial Results and Business Update Conference Call for Yield10 Bioscience. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference call over to your host, Yield10 Vice President of Planning and Corporate Communications, Lynne Brum.

Thank you, Doug. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Yield10 Bioscience Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Conference Call. Joining me on the call today are President and CEO, Dr. Oliver Peoples; Vice President of Research and Chief Science Officer, Dr. Kristi Snell; and Chief Accounting Officer, Chuck Haaser. Earlier this afternoon, Yield10 issued our fourth quarter 2022 financial results. This press release as well as slides that accompany today's presentation are available on the Investor Relations Events section of our website at yield10bio.com.

Let's now turn to Slide 2. Please note that as part of our discussion today, management will be making forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and therefore, you should not place undue reliance on them. Investors are also cautioned that statements that are not strictly historical constitute forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. These risks include risks and uncertainties detailed in Yield10's filing with the SEC including today's 10-K. The company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this conference call.

I'll now turn the call over to Oli.

Thanks, Lynne. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining our call. In 2022, we made solid progress on our commercial plan to launch Camelina as a platform crop with a near-term focus on the biofuel feedstock market. Today, we'll provide an update on our business, including recent accomplishments, the market opportunity in the biofuel market, our progress towards developing herbicide-tolerant Camelina varieties or plan to begin scale-up of omega-3 Camelina, present 2022 financials and summarize key milestones. We will then open the call to questions.

Let's turn to Slide 3. Our business model is to develop a lead Camelina varieties, contract production of Camelina grain with farmers and supply customers in the renewable and food space under offtake agreements. With our current elite varieties and early commercialization and our 2 proprietary value-added Camelina seed products in development, we are positioned to establish and grow a large seed products business. Our lead product is low carbon feedstock oil to meet the increased demand from the biofuel sector.

We are expanding the Camelina seed available for growers working to execute additional production contracts and continue to progress partner outreach to secure partnerships and offtake agreements to carve out a commercial footprint in this market. We believe this will be followed by the launch of omega-3 Camelina to produce high-value omega-3 oils for the pharmaceutical, nutrition feed markets. And longer term, we are developing PHA bioplastic Camelina to supply the growing demand for biodegradable zero-waste plastic packaging. Together, these products represent a significant revenue opportunity for Yield10.

Let's now turn to Slide 4. We're making solid progress executing our plan to establish our Camelina seed products business targeting biofuels. On the business development side, our team has been engaging with potential supply chain partners, supporting our vision for a capital-light business model. In January, we announced the signing of an MOU with Mitsubishi to establish a partnership for supply, offtake and marketing of Camelina oil as a feedstock oil for biofuels where their interest is focused on used feedstock supply for sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF.

In February, we announced the signing of an MOU with American Airlines to collaborate to develop the value chain for Camelina for SAF. American Airlines represents a potential offtake customer and is committed to sustainability and we're looking forward to working with both Mitsubishi and American in the months ahead. In addition, we are announcing today that we have signed an agreement with a privately-owned integrated crusher/biorefiner customer for offtake of Camelina grain in the key target growing region. This new relationship is important for both parties to establish a regional Camelina supply chain from YTEN seed through the sale of biofuel.

Another benefit is that this business is located in a key growing region and has helped us to expand relationships with growers and will allow us to have a location to crush Camelina grain at small scale. We view this as important to ensure grain is removed from farms and growers are paid in a timely manner. This partner prefers that we don't mention them by name at this time and we've agreed to respect that request. As 2023 progresses, we expect to continue discussions with multiple additional entities in the biofuel value chain, which will enable Yield10 to establish a network of alliances to supply Camelina feedstock oil to biofuels.

In our role as a grain originator and performance trait developer, we're continuing to scale up seed to enable contract growing in thousands of acres in the near-term with the ramp-up of acres accelerating with the introduction of herbicide-tolerant elite Camelina varieties. We believe this will lead to hundreds of thousands and then the first million acres of annual production. In the fall of 2022, we secured multiple grower contracts for contract planting of winter Camelina for grain and seed production, primarily in the areas of Southern Canada and Idaho.

And in the first quarter, we kicked off our campaign to recruit growers in our target regions through Camelina spring and fall planting. Our goal is to supply the most sought-after Camelina varieties in the industry based on our seed traits bringing differentiation to those varieties. Ease of crop integration to crop rotations, yield and economic return are the primary drivers to grow adoption. And our focus on herbicide and disease tolerance as well as novel performance of traits is intended to deliver a robust versatile high-yielding Camelina crop. On the top right side of the slide, you can see a photo taken a few weeks ago of seed scale-up of spring E3902 herbicide-tolerant Camelina.

The progress we're making the seed scale-up as well as the steps we are taking to deregulate the trait with USDA-APHIS and to obtain label amendments will enable us to be able to participate in the launch of this new variety. Kristi will describe in more detail our advances in the Camelina product development.

Let's now turn to Slide 5. And as you can see in this slide, Yield10 is a very strong focus on biofuel feedstock oil in the near-term. There have been several tailwinds for increasing vegetable oil production to produce decarbonizing biofuels. Let's turn to Slide 6 of feedstock demand. Investments to convert refineries from petroleum to biofuels in the U.S. alone has created demand for an additional 6 billion gallons of feedstock oil in the near-term, even before we consider demand in other regions. This new demand will have to be met mostly from increased use of vegetable oil. These investments are necessary to meet regulations under California low carbon fuel standard, LCFS, and similar standards extended to other states in Canada.

The feedstock oil created by these new refineries has also resulted in investments in expanded oilseed crushing. Production of soybean and canola alone cannot meet this growing demand for biofuel and still support food production. And this in turn has created the market growth for the oilseed crops and particular oilseed cover crops. Based on this, we see the potential for at least 45 million acres of Camelina production.

Turning to Slide 7. We believe Camelina represents an ideal option for the biofuel market. Camelina can utilize the same farming, storage and processing assets as other oilseed crops. It is a good combination of seed oil levels that produces a high-quality protein meal. We have both spring and winter varieties to enable new crops rotations to use acres, which are less productive for soybean and canola and double cropping to use land that would otherwise lie hollow. Furthermore, the Camelina plant is amenable to biotech tools. Therefore, we can use it as a platform to increase -- crop to increase its productivity and for producing high-value products, all of which provides a good value for us as a proposition and farmer.

Let's turn to Slide 8. The key to making Camelina a meaningful source of new feedstock oil for the biofuel market is largely driven by grower adoption of Camelina as an integral part of their crop rotations. As seen on this slide, we, like others in the oilseed cover cropping space, placed a strong emphasis on building partnerships with the growers. Grower adoption will be largely driven by the ease of integration into their existing crop and weed control cycle. Adoption will also be driven by the revenue. And here, we have a strong emphasis on increasing the harvest value of the crop, and growers also want to know there will be opportunities for further continuous improvement, hence our emphasis on the technology pipeline.

Finally, growers want to see that the value chain is in place to ensure that Camelina grain has a clear path to market. In a nutshell, we plan to make it straightforward and profitable for our growers to produce Camelina grain for Yield10. Let's turn to Slide 9. There are 3 components of the biofuel value chain for Camelina. The first is high-quality Camelina seed for contract farming. And this is where Yield10 has capabilities to build unique differentiation. The second component is logistics and seed crushing and the third is refining to produce renewable diesel or SAF. Of course, fuel customers also play a role as they commit to the use of sustainable fuels, producing demand for the product.

Our vision for the business is to contract with growers for large-scale production and build a network of alliances for contracted offtake of the grain for biofuels and meal for animal feed. Our MOUs with Mitsubishi and American Airlines demonstrate the potential we're establishing downstream alliances, committed to accelerating the ramp-up of Camelina acres to supply the biofuel market. Although low key, it is significant, in fact, very significant that we have signed an offtake agreement with a privately-owned crusher biorefiner in a key target region as this provides us with a customer for Camelina grain offtake.

With this agreement in place, we can avoid some of the challenges of scaling the grain origination business and line contract production with the offtake. When we contract with growers, they want to be assured that the grain can be moved off their farms quickly after harvest. Please turn to Slide 10. Not surprising, given the global demand for new sources of feedstock oils over the past several years, this has been meaningful investment in the development of new oilseed crops targeting the biofuel market. The new crops and commercialization for this market are pennycress, Carinata and Camelina. As the development of these crops has progressed, they have attracted the attention of investment and the investment of seed companies, oil crushers and energy companies.

For the most part, we view the oilseed crops and players as fellow travelers to address this very high and growing demand for feedstock oils. But uniquely among them, however, Yield10 elected early on to use all of the tools in the crop development toolbox to enhance the value of Camelina as a preferred crop for farmers. And to our knowledge, we are furthest ahead with advanced weed control technology. Among the players commercializing Camelina, we believe we are well-positioned due to our technology platform, which enabled us to make significant improvements to the integration of Camelina into crop rotations, increased yield, grain value and grow our revenue over time.

I will now pass the call over to Kristi.

Thanks, Oli, and good afternoon, everyone. Please turn to Slide 11. We are executing our early commercial activity to close cooperation with our growers with a focus on 3 Camelina varieties. These include the genome-edited spring E3902 Camelina variety, as well as 2 winter Camelina varieties WDH2 and WDH3, which were produced by our team using a plant breeding procedure. We are also using these 3 core Camelina varieties as a chassis for deploying herbicide tolerance suite for weed control in the spring and winter Camelina.

Please turn to Slide 12. Our winter variety field testing program includes well over 20 sites denoted with the blue pins on the map of the U.S. and Canada. Winter Camelina plants are planted in the fall and established themselves prior to going dormant in the winter. In the spring, when temperatures rise consistently above freezing and the snow melts, the plants will resume growth, flower and are expected to be ready for harvest in early to midsummer depending on planting latitude and local climate conditions.

Our work over the winter is designed to collect agronomy data on winter Camelina to help guide growing best practices. We have also planted several demonstration fields, which will be suitable for building visibility for the crop and hosting grower events in 2023. The yellow pins on the map show the winter contra-season locations of our spring Camelina herbicide tolerance field studies for over-the-top weed control. We reported in February that we have confirmed herbicide tolerance in the second planting of our lead spring Camelina lines in these studies and are scaling up seed for more expensive planting and trialing in spring 2023.

Let's turn to Slide 13. Growers want broadleaf and grassy weed control for Camelina. The photo on the top right-hand corner of the slide shows our lead commercial quality Camelina event a few weeks after challenging with commercial level sprays of our broadleaf herbicide. This herbicide tolerant event is in our elite proprietary E3902 background. In 2022, we made significant progress testing for herbicide tolerance in spring Camelina. We executed 2 field tests showing tolerance to over-the-top herbicides grades for broadleaf weed control. And we confirmed that our Camelina varieties are tolerant to spray application of (inaudible), a product used for grassy weed control.

This spring, we plan to conduct a larger scale fieldwork for product development purposes for our herbicide-tolerant spring Camelina. We have also developed winter lines that have demonstrated broadleaf herbicide tolerance and greenhouse tests. In winter 2023, 2024, we plan to conduct our first field test of these lines. On the regulatory front, in 2022, we submitted a request for Regulatory Status Review, or RSR, to USDA-APHIS under the SECURE rule and their response is pending. In 2023, we also anticipate the filing of herbicide label amendments for Camelina.

Later this year, we look forward to being able to provide a time frame for the U.S. launch of herbicide-tolerant Camelina, which is primarily dependent on completing the regulatory requirements of the USDA-APHIS and EPA. In the meantime, we will continue generating field data and scaling up seed inventory. Let's turn to Slide 14. To tap into the large acreage potential of Camelina, the crop needs to have tolerance to herbicide residues that may persist in the soil from previous applications on other crops. We continue to make solid progress on this goal. In February, we reported that we have developed multiple E3902 spring Camelina lines with stacked herbicide tolerance traits and that these plants showed tolerance not only to spray application of broadleaf herbicide, but also to Group 2 herbicides.

Group 2 herbicides, such as IMIs and SUs, which persist in soil for months following application are commonly used to control weeds in cereal and other crops. The photo on the top right-hand corner of the slide shows an example greenhouse test in which a stacked herbicide tolerance event was healthy when treated with Group 2 herbicide where the control line died with a similar treatment. Based on our proof-of-concept [we resolved], we plan to conduct our first research field tests of stacked herbicide-tolerant E3902 spring Camelina in our spring 2023 field test programs.

Our team is also making progress deploying stacked herbicide tolerance traits in our other winter varieties. We anticipate our first research field tests of stacked herbicide-tolerant winter lines will begin in winter 2023. With our product development efforts moving ahead at a good pace, we also plan to initiate the regulatory process for stacked herbicide tolerance Camelina this year to pave the way for commercial introduction of these stack herbicide tolerant varieties.

Please turn to Slide 15. With our work in broadleaf and Group 2 herbicide tolerance well underway, we've assessed additional herbicide tolerance traits for deployment in Camelina. As an outcome of this, we recently signed an exclusive option to a novel HPPD trait producing tolerance to HPPD residues in soil. HPPD is widely used for weed control and corn and soy rotations. Deployment of this trait in Camelina would open additional winter acreage in Camelina in the Midwest. We anticipate incorporating this trait into our herbicide tolerance program in 2023. We also have more than 10 new traits in development as highlighted in light green on the table.

We have reported encouraging yield data on many of these traits over the last 3 years. We anticipate deploying combinations of these yield traits in our HT Camelina as a strategy to create a pipeline of elite, high-yielding commercial Camelina varieties. Let's turn to Slide 16. We continue to make progress on our 2 future scheme product traits. In 2022, our collaborators at Rothamsted Research conducted seed scale-up and field trials of omega-3 Camelina in the U.K. Their field test is shown in a drone photo on this slide.

As noted in our third quarter call, we have prioritized development of EPA omega-3. The seed generated in the 2022 field work is being transferred to us and we expect to plant at acre scale to further ramp up seed production in 2023. We continue to believe that a land-based source of omega-3 will be a high-value Camelina product. In the PHA bioplastic area, our efforts to focus on optimizing the PHA trait to enable PHA bioplastic production in Camelina seed, which even process or produce 3 products: PHA bioplastic, biofuel feedstock oil and protein meal. Our R&D team is conducting activities related to trait optimization.

As I wrap up, I'd like to acknowledge the efforts of the Yield10 R&D team for positioning Yield10 on the forefront of technology deployment in Camelina. In the year ahead, we look forward to field testing of our best commercial quality herbicide tolerance Camelina line, advancing omega-3 and securing regulatory clearances for our lead Camelina products.

I'll now hand the call over to Chuck.

Thanks, Kristi, and good afternoon, everyone. Let's turn to Slide 17. We ended 2022 with $4.3 million in cash and cash equivalents and investments, and we expect that our cash on hand, together with the expected remaining revenue from our current government grant, will support our operations into the second quarter of 2023. We continue to have no debt on our balance sheet. Our net operating cash used for operating activities was $3.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2022 as compared to $2.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. And for the full year 2022, total net cash used in operating activities was $11.4 million.

For 2023, we expect total net cash usage will be in the range of $13 million to $14 million to fund our operations, including our product development activities related to developing herbicide tolerance and omega-3 Camelina, as well as our early commercial activity related to supporting the adoption of Camelina for the biofuel space. Further, in 2023, we expect to report our first Camelina product revenue from Camelina grain sales to our offtake customer.

Now, let's turn to the fourth quarter 2022 operating results. For the fourth quarter of 2022, the company reported a net loss after taxes of $3.3 million as compared to a net loss after taxes of $3 million for the fourth quarter of 2021. Total research grant revenues in the fourth quarter of 2022 were $0.1 million in comparison to $0.2 million in the fourth quarter of last year. In the fourth quarter of 2022, R&D expenses were $1.9 million as compared to $1.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2021, and G&A expenses were $1.4 million in the fourth quarter of this year as compared to $1.5 million in the fourth quarter of last year.

For the full year ending December 31, 2022, grant revenue was $0.5 million. Our R&D expenses totaled $7.8 million and G&A expenses totaled $6.2 million. Our net loss after taxes was $13.6 million or $2.76 per share. For more details on our financial results, please refer to the earnings release and our 10-K.

Oli, back to you.

Thanks, Chuck. Let's turn to Slide 18. This is an exciting time for Yield10. Over the last few months, our team has made significant progress and we've established agreements across the biofuel value chain. We're also excited by the discussions we have had with the growers and their interest in putting their increasing interest in fitting Camelina production into the rotations. These factors, together with the breadth of interest from additional value chain partner prospects, are all good reasons to be excited about the future of our business.

We've executed on the development and scale up of new Camelina varieties for commercial production, advanced discussions with companies committed to the biofuel space and committed to our commercial path forward with omega-3 Camelina. We are approaching the scaling of our Camelina grain production business using our current elite varieties tactically over the next 1 to 2 years with a strong focus on building the relationships with growers and demonstrating the full value chain with our partners. We believe that this will position us to accelerate the adoption of Camelina to hundreds of thousands of acres as new varieties with robust weed control become available.

Essentially, we plan to work slow so we can run fast based on building a solid foundation over the next couple of years. As 2023 unfolds, we will continue to focus on executing our key milestones, including expanding our commercial activities, target R&D and sustainable aviation fuel markets, engage with growers to introduce the benefits of growing Camelina, execute on seed production and building inventory for future grower contracts, to address the commercial launch plan for Camelina omega-3 oils and advance the optimization of our PHA bioplastic trait. We're very busy in business development (inaudible) to prospective partners across the entire value chain with a goal of executing strategic industry collaborations and we'll continue to expand our intellectual property portfolio.

With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Lynne for questions.

Thanks, Oli. Doug, we're ready for questions.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Ben Klieve with Lake Street.

Congratulations on signing up the offtake agreement here. First, a couple of questions I have pertaining to that. Oli, I'm hoping you can clarify a little bit about kind of the business of this entity. I know you can't name names, but I'm a little confused at the description of it being a processor and biorefiner, I believe, was how it was phrased in the presentation. Is this a grain processing company? Is this an energy company? Is it some combination of both? And who is the -- and of those options, who is your exact customer?

Yes. So basically, this is a -- so I think if you look at this value chain, of course, at small scale, I mean they're all aware of the challenges of other players in this space who went out and contracted lots of acres without anywhere for the grain to go and there's been examples of that. So we've obviously elected to avoid that. So this customer basically happens to be a refiner who happens to have their own seed crushing assets. And so there's sort of an integrated refining operation, which is pretty unique. It's a very good location for us. They basically will be taking the grain processing it, selling the meal and obviously using the oil in their own refining, which will then go into the biofuels market.

So it's a very unique situation, very -- a great party that we're very happy to be working with. And what it really does is it leaves us to take care of the scaling of this business from that 1,000 acres we did last year. So obviously, that -- I can't tell you quite what the scale is. But obviously, to a scale, it becomes much more meaningful. And obviously, we're very excited about it.

Yes. I understand that we sell. That's certainly an interesting model I have and congratulations on finding a partner of that caliber. The question is scale then the other question I have is that as you're working to scale your inventory with these MOUs in place now with an offtake agreement, how are you allocating harvested grain into -- and the grain going for -- going into revenue versus grain going into further seed development versus grain getting processed for kind of R&D purposes. I mean there's not much yet, it's going to scale dramatically. But in the early, early, early stages, how are you thinking about the math there?

I think -- so first of all, I think what we did this year is I think with the existing varieties, we've obviously -- we believe we produced enough seed to handle the next 2 to 3 years. So we'll have that kind of look, if you like. And the scales we're anticipating scale progressing to with our herbicide tolerance. So I think we've kind of -- we literally have backed that inventory or we plan to back that inventory. And so that really takes that piece of the puzzle off the table. I think the second of it, we basically plan to obviously dispose of as much as we can to the customers. We don't want to be sitting in grain and we don't want to be doing small-scale crushing when we don't really have to.

I mean Camelina oil is a pretty known quantity at this point. There are some questions, but the analytical -- analysis you have to do on oil to determine whether it suits a particular biofuel end user is not that large. And so there's no real reason to sort of spend a lot of money and use up a lot of the grain that we're producing in sort of pilot crushing operations. Our goal would be to sort of wait until that it's much more meaningful where we have a party that's wanted to sign offtake and pay for in advance and have them also pay for the development of that. There's no real reason for us to invest in that.

Two other questions for me. One, on the research agreement side. So I didn't catch any comments on the existing research agreements in your prepared remarks. Do you have any updates there, most notably on the Bayer agreement?

Yes. So we had a conversation with Bayer very late last year. This year data, we can't share it with you. Unfortunately, that trait, which I can't say anything about it actually. Actually, over the 2 years, the combination of the 2 years meant that it did not meet their criteria for progressing in the context of the other traits we're progressing at this time in soybean. So as part of that conversation, they continue to be interested in all the traits and evaluating them. But right now, we -- because we focused really the business on the biofuels and Camelina going forward, we've mostly been spending our time on developing Camelina traits of which Kristi mentioned a long list.

For the most part, those are Camelina genes and we're very excited, obviously, about the potential of those in the biofuel space. So we really did deemphasize it 2 or 3 years ago that sort of the trade licensing would still exist. The issue is we just don't have the bandwidth to spend time on it. And quite frankly, with what we're now seeing in Camelina, a clear path to not only 100,000 of acres, but millions of acres, I think we need to stay very focused on that going forward.

No, certainly. But that's a helpful update. And then one other update on the balance sheet. The -- you talked about the quick math on the cash burn and the cash balance at the end of the year, the ATM you have in place, can you comment on that? You've been using that and if so, the magnitude of which that's been utilized thus far?

Yes. So I thought we haven't commented on that yet. I think what we will say is that, obviously, we are well aware of the financial situation. We are working and financing options in conjunction with the partnering discussions that are ongoing, some of whom have been described already, some of whom have not. And so obviously, our goal is to resolve those things in a positive way for our shareholders as we move forward in the next several weeks.

That's all very helpful.

Our next question comes from the line of Anthony Vendetti with Maxim Group.

So just to follow up on some of the questions before. So just in terms of your MOUs, your memorandum of understanding with Mitsubishi and American Airlines, if -- as you're looking at things and, Oli, you mentioned walking slow so you can run fast. What do you need to do to ramp up your production to meet these potential contracts? How long would it take for you to do that, a little bit about how you're allocating, but just maybe give us an understanding of what it would take for these to ramp up to meet these potential contracts?

Yes. So when you talk to large players and I'm just going to use this very generically. I think what you're really looking at is how quickly can you get to tens of millions of gallons of biofuel feedstock going into a refinery. And so I think that's the way we view it. So roughly, depending on how you -- what assumptions you made, 50 million gallons is probably 1 million acres, something like that. So that's the scale that the industry and I don't mean any particular person that we may be involved with is interested in. But people tend to be looking at this and asking the question, not how do I get 20,000 gallons, but how do I get 20 million, 50 million, 100 million gallons.

And when you start talking about 20 million and these numbers get big in a hurry. So really, I also mentioned the sort of walking slow to run fast. It's pretty clear to us at this stage the demand is there. The key now is to actually make sure that we build that grower trust and we build the relationships with growers in such a way and as that -- as we bring in these advanced technologies, they're essentially primed, if you like, pre-primed to really ramp up fairly quickly. And I would say in that regard, we've been -- we added to our seed operations team late last year.

And we're very excited about what we're hearing from growers in general keeping in mind that previous attempts to launch Camelina really didn't have any advanced technology in them. But in fact, there was tens of thousands of acres in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Montana planted. The growers challenge was, of course, a, the herbicide and weed control was a problem. But, b, the market, the market for these crops in the biodiesel space sort of dried up. So I think what we are finding is people like the crop. They like it a lot. They are very anxious to be able to grow it.

And then when we talk about basically over-the-top or essentially broadleaf and grassy weed control, that level of excitement only increases. And then when you talk about the stack where they would have to be -- essentially, the way to think about it is most of these farms in that region, they'll grow a lot of [pulse seeds and weed] and what have you. And that basically means there's a lot of Class 2 herbicides. So probably over half of the farmer is just not available because it has these residues on it at the end of the growing season. So we do believe that the ramp-up will come with the herbicide technology, no question.

Okay. And then I know it might be hard to gauge. But are there milestones that you need to reach for the MOU to go to a definitive agreement?

So all I can tell you is that we are -- we continue through an extensive due diligence process with Mitsubishi, there's been ongoing site visits to, obviously, our facilities and operations in Canada, also to some of our field trials plant, I guess, as well for some of the other field trials that are ongoing this year. There's a site planned there. And obviously, there's a strong desire also to see the winter Camelina that was planted at scale up in that region as well in the Canada region, obviously, because seeing is believing, right? So obviously, most of that is still under snow. And it will probably be under snow for a while. So there's nothing much to see except why.

But yes, no, it's -- we're mainly doing due diligence working through the terms, working through the details of these offtake agreements. In addition, as I said, in addition to Mitsubishi, we have been obviously thrilled with the amount of inbound inquiries we're getting from other oil players. It's clear that there's an unmet need in this space. If you look at the other players, whether it's CoverCress or Nuseed or even the new Vision Bioenergy and our sustainable oils and they're already kind of partnered up with major oil players. And so they're sort of locked on in the process. So we're finding that we're having a very interesting set of business development conversations. Obviously, the goal for us is to bring those to a close in a positive way in the relatively near-term.

Okay. Great.

Doug, do we have another analyst?

Our next question comes from the line of Sameer Joshi with H.C. Wainwright.

Congratulations on the MOU and the agreements. Just a clarification on the herbicide tolerance versus winter field testing programs. Should we expect an additional round of testing to conduct these tests together? I'm looking at Slide 12 and the pins -- the blue and the -- rather, green and yellow pins are in different geographical regions. Wasn't it a plan to use both these traits at the same time?

Yes. Yes. So I think as regards to winters of different variety, so what your -- Slide 13, just looking at the 2 segments.

Slide 12, Oli, and Kristi could jump in.

Yes. So Kristi --yes, Kristi, do you want to speak to this and just try what we're doing here?

Yes. So the blue wall pins, we're testing different varieties of winter Camelina in different locations, primarily centered around possible bio -- or crushing regions. The yellow pins are contra-season field trials for herbicide tolerance. Those are spring line. So they are 2 different programs. There, we're taking advantage of the warmer weather in the south to scale up seed and also do some testing in the -- of our spring lines in the off-season.

Let's talk about winter, what's going on with Winter HT.

With winter HT, yes, we plan to put winter HT in the field for the first time this winter. We have very nice results in the greenhouse for over-the-top spray that -- and we plan to put up both the over-the-top spray and the Group 2 lines and to the field this winter for the first time.

Understood. That's what I was looking for. And then since I have you, Kristi, how long does this RSS -- RSR approval take once you have filed?

Yes. So it has to take about 180 days with their backlog. So we're monitoring the situation and have been communicating with USDA. We feel that it will be approved sometime this year, but it's really too early to say anything else besides that.

Got it. And just one last one. We have seen your MOUs with Mitsubishi, American Airlines and this crusher/biorefiner. Are you also talking to growers? Or will that come at a later stage? Or are the growers the same guys who will -- who are doing -- where the current field trials are going on?

Yes. So right now, Sameer, we're actually -- we have extensive outreach to growers. We're actually building up a log of potential spring acres. I would say, potential spring (inaudible) building that now for a couple of months. It looks very good in terms of what we plan to do. So we'll see how that goes. But we are mainly focused on the spring planting and building a lot of, I would say, interest from growers and then we'll have to decide just how much of this we really want to plant, and we'll probably tie that into, obviously, that offtake agreement so that we marry those 2 things up. We just don't plan to produce more grain than we can essentially get taken care of in terms of processing and conversion to biofuels.

It won't help us so much as progressing the technology -- the new technologies, the advanced traits, herbicide, et cetera. That's going to be a more meaningful impact on the company than just trying to grow acres so that we can tell Wall Street we grew an extra 1,000 acres. That's not really helpful near-term. The main thing is to work closely with these growers to build the relationships and to look at when they plant 160 acres, but when they plant 1,600 acres because these farms and the way they operate, that's ultimately what you want to happen.

There are no further questions in the queue. I'd like to hand the call back over to Lynne Brum.

Okay. Thanks, Doug, and I'll turn the call back to Oli for his closing remarks.

So I'd like to personally thank all of you for joining us on the call tonight, and especially our shareholders for your continued support. I want to thank everybody at Yield10 for their contributions that are keeping us on track to reach our commercial and product development goals. Have a nice evening, everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.