Yield10 Bioscience Inc (YTEN) 2020 Q4 法說會逐字稿

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  • Operator

  • Greetings, and welcome to the Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 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.

  • Lynne H. Brum - VP of Planning & Corporate Communications and Secretary

  • Thank you, Hector, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Yield10 Bioscience Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 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 and full year 2020 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.

  • Please turn to Slide 2. Please note, 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 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 filings with the SEC. In fact, I'll note that we filed our 10-K for 2020 this afternoon. 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.

  • Now I'll turn the call over to Oli.

  • Oliver P. Peoples - Co-Founder, President, CEO & Director

  • Thanks, Lynne. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining our call. Throughout 2020 and into early 2021, we have made strong progress advancing Yield10's business. Today, I'll provide an update on this progress. Kristi will highlight our recent R&D accomplishments and activities plan for 2021, after which I'll review the financials and summarize our key milestones for 2021 and beyond. We will then open the call to questions.

  • We got a lot done in 2020 despite the uncertain outlook at this time last year due to COVID-19. But thanks to our team, we proceeded with purpose adapting to the situation as it unfolded throughout the year.

  • Now let's turn to Slide 3, advance the Yield10's business. I will focus here on several key accomplishments that set us up on the path to crystallize our strategic vision for Yield10 and defined our progress for product development aimed at markets with significant revenue potential. We diversified the Board of Directors with the addition of ag industry veteran, Sherri Brown. We significantly strengthened our balance sheet to extend the cash runway to achieve value building milestones. We raised $5.3 million on offerings completed in August 2020. We ended federal year 2020 with $9.7 million in cash. This was followed in January by $12 million raised in the public offering, which included investments from institutions, retail investors and Jack Schuler. There was also $3.9 million in warrant exercises in early 2021.

  • We engaged our first major ag player base in South America, sending a research license with GDM for testing traits in soybean. We advanced the Camelina business by securing exclusive commercialization rights through signing a collaboration agreement with Rothamsted Research for development of DHA+ EPA omega-3 oil technology. The technology aimed at sustainable aquaculture feed is well advanced with multiple years of field trials and salmon feeding studies completed. This platform provides further differentiation for Yield10 in Camelina and has high product revenue potential, filling a gap in our product portfolio between current Camelina seed products and our PHA bioplastic platform currently in development.

  • We obtained a positive response to "Am I Regulated?" letters from USDA-APHIS for CRISPR C3007 in Camelina and canola. In January, we reported the proof-of-concept milestone for producing PHA bioplastic in field-grown Camelina. Having secured an option on the omega-3 technology and achieved proof of concept for PHA production, Yield10 believes it is now in control of 2 high-value, sustainable Camelina product technologies, providing strong market differentiation. And we are now positioned to advance our business forward, utilizing Camelina as a platform crop to produce fuel, food and PHA bioplastic.

  • Now let's turn to Slide 4. Camelina is an emerging crop. We're very excited about Camelina. Camelina is an oilseed crop similar to canola. Today, it is a source of oil and meal for food and feed uses. It is potential both as a rotation crop with wheat policies and canola and as a relay or cover crop with corn and soybean in double cropping systems to decrease nutrient runoff and restore soil carbon. Camelina oil is used as a nutritional oil. It also has potential as a low-carbon index oil for renewable diesel.

  • Going forward, Camelina has high potential as a platform for producing a drop in replacement for omega-3 fish oils and is a disruptive technology for producing PHA bioplastics at low cost.

  • Now let's turn to Slide 5, a market opportunity for Camelina products. We estimate that there is $4.2 billion in annual revenue potential for producing oil, meal and PHA bioplastic in Camelina by 2030. For elite Camelina used to produce oil and meal, we see the potential for $300 to $500 in product revenue per acre, and the market in hundreds of millions by 2030. Although the potential here may be greater than what we are indicating, we believe that higher value omega-3 in PHA bioplastic varieties will eventually be used to supply these current markets. For omega-3 oils, we see a doubling of the value per acre or about $600 to $900 in product revenue, depending on seed yield because of the value in sustainably produced omega-3 oils.

  • I'll note that it takes a rather small commercial acreage of 300,000 to 700,000 acres to get to a level of revenue that would be extremely attractive for Yield10, making it rightsized as the foundation for Yield10's growth.

  • Our PHA bioplastic, we would aim to produce oil meal in PHA for a high-value product mix and at the scale of 2 million to 4 million acres annually and 2030 revenue potential in excess of $1 billion. We believe that this is a unique opportunity for agriculture as it directly links farming with the market, and will likely always be product constrained given the scale of the current petroleum plastic materials it will replace.

  • Now let's turn to Slide 6, trait licensing opportunities. With our increased internal focus on Camelina, we believe the best way for Yield10 to capture value from our performance trade discoveries from our GRAIN platform in the large acre commercial crops like soybean corn and canola, is through licensing to leading seed companies, who dominate this space. We currently have 4 nonexclusive research license agreements with the ag majors, to progress our traits in specific crops with the option to negotiate a commercial license.

  • The arrows on the slide indicate the term of the research license agreements.

  • In 2020, we completed certain early development work in canola and corn. But in reviewing our priorities for 2021, we decided to defer further work in these crops and plan to seek partners for development of performance rates in those crops.

  • I'll now turn the call over to Kristi.

  • Kristi D. Snell - VP of Research & Chief Science Officer

  • Thanks, Oli, and hello, everyone. Our research team made good progress with testing and deploying our traits in 2020 with our objective of using Camelina as a platform crop for the production of oil, omega fatty acids and PHA biopolymers.

  • Now let's turn to Slide 7. In the 2020 season, we planted Camelina plants containing genes to produce PHA in seeds. This work is based on technology we developed and filed through patents in 2019. In January, we announced that we achieved a proof-of-concept milestone for producing PHA and field-grown Camelina plants. We indicated that our engineered Camelina lines produced up to 6% PHA in seed. We have selected our 2 best PHA Camelina lines for scale up in the field in 2021. After harvest, we plan to extract PHA from the seed for product prototyping. Our team views the production of 6% PHA in seeds as a very exciting result. We will continue our R&D efforts to increase PHA yields in the seed. We'd like to achieve 10% and over time, get to 20%. On a technical basis, we believe this will be achievable.

  • In our 2020 field work, we conducted seed scale up for our CRISPR triple-edit E3902 Camelina line, designed to increase seed oil production. In the spring of 2020, we planted E3902 at a site in the U.S. Midwest. We harvested the seed and used some of it to conduct a second cycle of seed scale up in California over the winter. We have analyzed the seed from the spring planning and see oil content increases of 5%, consistent with prior tests. We are planning additional seed scale up with this line in spring 2021.

  • In 2020, we also focused on developing our elite, Camelina germplasm and identified the agronomic trade stack we want to build into our collections. Development is underway to deploy herbicide tolerance and disease resistance in our Camelina varieties to enable large acreage deployment. For some time, we have been scaling up our winter Camelina lines as well as spring and winter doubled haploid lines. Doubled haploid lines are varieties that will capture and sustain stable genetics and performance. We will continue work with these lines in 2021. Ultimately, we'd like to see the development of hybrid Camelina and are working through a development plan to achieve that outcome. We are building our Camelina germplasm collection through internal development, and we are open to in-licensing for suitable trades.

  • Now let's turn to Slide 8. In 2020, we continued to feel the valuation of our yield trait C3004. In our C3004 Camelina field sets, we collected data showing strong evidence that C3004 increases photosynthesis efficiency. The majority of Camelina C3004 lines produced higher seed yields and the controls of the statistical interpretation of the yield results was complicated by the variability within the trial. We also continued the valuation of one of our oil traits C3007. This is a complex target, and there are 3 versions of this gene in the Camelina genome.

  • We previously made many CRISPR knockout lines with various combination of edits in C3007. We field-tested lines in 2020 with some combinations of the C3007 edits. The trial results have enabled the selection of lines for further trait stacking and field testing.

  • Additional testing is planned in 2021 for C3004 for seed yield, and C3007 for increased oil content. These traits could complement our work on E3902, omega-3 oils or PHA. We continue to build our IP portfolio, which currently includes 21 patent families. U.S. patents were granted on December 15, 2020, for our yield trait C3003. and on January 5, 2021 for our oil trait C3007.

  • The now let's turn to Slide 9, looking forward to our R&D priorities for 2021. Permitting is underway in the U.S. and Canada for our 2021 field trials. We plan to do more scale-up of our E3902 and PHA Camelina lines. We will also continue field testing our Camelina germplasm and novel yield in oil traits. We are developing advanced commercial Camelina varieties, and we are working to incorporate herbicide tolerance, disease resistance, yield and oil content trades. We are also designing our Camelina -- our platform Camelina varieties for nutritional oils and PHA treats.

  • Our current events for PHA Camelina will allow us to scale them up, extract polymer and make pilot material for testing. We are also developing commercial events for PHA Camelina with the agronomic performance that will enable large acreage deployment. As Oli stated, the omega-3 technology is strategically important for our portfolio. We are continuing to support development of omega-3 Camelina at Rothamsted, and expect to provide an update on this program in our first quarter call in May. Our team will also continue to support our partners who are evaluating our yield traits and other commercial crops. We continue to see interest in our metabolic engineering approach to identify targets and plants, and we'll continue to seek further engagement and collaboration around our GRAIN platform.

  • Now let's turn to Slide 10. This slide summarizes the history and timeline for our E3902 line with higher oil content. In 2018, we received confirmation from USDA-APHIS that the agency did not consider this line to be regulated. This line has exhibited consistent increased oil content, agronomic performance and seed yield as we have scaled it up.

  • Getting multi-acre sites has been challenging due to higher anticipated prices for wheat and other crops, but we are working to secure a location for scale up in 2021. If we can secure the acres, we'll crush harvest and seek to produce oil for sampling and other business development activities.

  • Now let's turn to Slide 11. Our PHA lines are based on unique top technology for deploying the tree that is subject to the patent we filed in 2019. In 2020, we planted seeds for our PHA lines for the first time in the field. While the plants were a little late to emerge, but they did well during the season, producing good seed yield and up to 6% PHA by seed weight. Based on this result, we have chosen 2 lines to take forward for scale up in our 2021 field test program. PHA will be extracted from harvested seeds to produce material for product prototyping.

  • I would like to thank our team for their hard work and for staying focused on our objectives in 2020. This has positioned us to generate a range of data and proof points in the coming months to further develop our Camelina technology for specialty products.

  • Oli, back to you.

  • Oliver P. Peoples - Co-Founder, President, CEO & Director

  • Thanks, Kristi. Please turn to Slide 12, and let's cover a few financial highlights. We ended 2020 with $9.7 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. In addition, during first quarter of 2021, we raised net proceeds of $12 million from a public offering of common stock and $3.9 million from the exercise of warrants. On a pro forma basis, we started 2021 with approximately $25.6 million, which we currently estimate will take us into 2023, providing a 2-year runway. This accomplishment better aligns our balance sheet with our business strategy. We have no debt on our balance sheet.

  • Our net operating cash use was $2.3 million for the fourth quarter and $8.7 million for the full year 2020, consistent with our guidance provided in 2020. We expect our cash on hand, together with expected revenue from our current government grant will support our operations into early 2023. We estimate that our net operating cash usage for the full year 2021 will be within the range of $10 million to $11 million. This includes potential hires in seed operations, business development and regulatory affairs as we direct this investment towards executing our business plan.

  • Let's now review the fourth quarter and full year 2020 operating results. The company reported a net loss of $2.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2020 compared to a net loss of $6.8 million for the fourth quarter of 2019. Total research grant revenues in the fourth quarter of 2020 were $195,000 versus $140,000 in fourth quarter 2019. Our ability to conduct up research under the DOE grant was not affected in the significant way in fourth quarter, and we expect to be able to conduct the research as planned in the months ahead.

  • In the fourth quarter of 2020, research and development expenses were $1.4 million, and general and admin expenses were $1.4 million. For the full year 2020, the company reported a net loss of $10.2 million or $4.30 per share as compared to a net loss of $13 million or $35.50 per share in 2019. Grant revenue was $799,000 for the full year 2020 as compared to $806,000 in 2019.

  • For the full year 2020, research and development expenses were $5.4 million, and G&A expenses were $5 million. For more details on our financial results, please refer to the earnings release.

  • Let's now turn to Slide 13, upcoming milestones. In 2021, we will continue to focus on the following milestones: complete permitting for our 2021 field tests and scale-up of E3902 and PHA Camelina lines. We will continue to develop our lead Camelina germplasm collection. We will progress the business plan for Camelina products, which will include advancing the commercial launch plan for Camelina DHA, EPA, omega-3 oils. We will broaden our capabilities, particularly in regulatory affairs, seed operations and business development, either through hiring or other arrangements.

  • We plan to secure strategic initial collaborations to address market opportunities across the value chains enabled by our traits and products, securing revenue based on generating commercial trade licenses and expanding our intellectual property portfolio, which is crucial for a small company.

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

  • Lynne H. Brum - VP of Planning & Corporate Communications and Secretary

  • Thanks, Oli. Hector, we're ready for questions.

  • Operator

  • (Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Anthony Vendetti with Maxim Group.

  • Anthony V. Vendetti - Executive MD of Research & Senior Healthcare Analyst

  • I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the Rothamsted collaboration. Just Oli, if you could just give us a little more background on the progress there. And then any type of milestones we should be looking for in 2021?

  • Oliver P. Peoples - Co-Founder, President, CEO & Director

  • Yes. So we are very fortunate to have secured the commercialization rights to that technology. That technology has really been developed by what we believe is the world scientific leader in the field of omega-3 production and crops. And he has actually developed Camelina to produce high levels of both EPA and DHA to essential omega-3 fatty acids. That's pretty unique in the crop space.

  • And so he has filed patents on that. He has executed 4 years of field trials at 3 different geographies. And they've done extensive, obviously, product testing both in aquaculture feed, but also in -- here in clinical studies with very interesting results. So there's still a lot of upside in what he is doing, and Yield10 is supporting that ongoing research. As he looks to further improve that technology, targeting essentially the gold standard of fish oil, which is Southern Hemisphere fish oil. There, we are targeting achieving somewhere around 30% of the total oil being EPA and DHA fatty acids, split roughly 15% each. And hopefully, he'll make good progress on that.

  • But as we see Camelina today, we look at it as really the gold standard potentially of a vegan aquacultural feed for increasing salmon production globally. And so we're very excited about this platform, and we're very fortunate that Professor Napier, the scientist behind us, also joined our Scientific Advisory Board.

  • On milestones going forward this year and what's going on, there's a significant ramp-up in business development activity, particularly outreach in South America, where we see Chile as a likely initial market. It's about 30% of global farm salmon production today. It has a goal to expand that further. And they've also got a goal to essentially replace harvested fish oil meal with essentially a sustainable renewable replacement. And we feel Camelina is just tremendously well positioned for that. And so we're very busy on the business development side.

  • The scientists at Rothamsted are still dealing with some COVID issues because they're just north of London, in the U.K. So they've had some challenges beyond what we've had. But we couldn't be more excited to be working with a great team there and a great leader, and it's a very exciting platform for us.

  • Anthony V. Vendetti - Executive MD of Research & Senior Healthcare Analyst

  • Okay. Great and then just on the PHA bioplastics, what should we be looking for in 2021 on that front?

  • Oliver P. Peoples - Co-Founder, President, CEO & Director

  • Yes, same thing. I mean, basically, now that we have -- Kristi and the team have just done a tremendous job of getting to that kind of first key step down the commercialization path with the first successful field trial with the new technology. Obviously, beginning the process of scaling up that seed with the best lines we have available will allow us to not only scale even further in the subsequent year, but also to begin doing some product prototyping.

  • Unlike the sort of space for traits, for commodity crops where you're really dealing with 2 or 3 major companies, when you look at the whole bioplastic space, you look at the water treatment space, and the areas where Camelina-based PHA bioplastics could be incredibly valuable, the number of prospective partners or collaborators in terms of the business, is magnified by hundredfold. So we're very excited about it. It's a great result by the science team. And as you know, Yield10 has a very deep history in PHAs, including the entire value chain.

  • We're certainly well aware of the tremendous investor interest out there driven by companies like Danimer Scientific and others who really have done very well in recent public market offerings. So we're well aware of the excitement, but we also have a tremendous history in this space, and we feel that we've got what will ultimately be a large-scale low-cost answer.

  • Anthony V. Vendetti - Executive MD of Research & Senior Healthcare Analyst

  • Okay. Then lastly is just on the research license partners for corn or any of the other food ending up to be feed or food products.

  • Oliver P. Peoples - Co-Founder, President, CEO & Director

  • Yes. So that -- I mean work is still ongoing with all of them. I mean, basically, I would say, the only update I can probably provide you is that we are getting more interest. I think it's largely driven by -- I think the industry has now been consolidated for 2 or 3 years. And what we're seeing is generally more interest in new gene targets for improving crop performance and productivity. So we have some conversations going on for access to other genes.

  • And we just have to let that business development activity take its course. But certainly, with a very clear vision for our Camelina products business under Yield10's control, we are very open to providing access to our discovery tool and to treat genes that we've identified and any of these crops under research license agreements, it's the best way to capture value from that, allowing us to focus internal resources on the PHA Camelina products business.

  • Operator

  • Your next question comes from the line of Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright.

  • Amit Dayal - MD of Equity Research & Senior Technology Analyst

  • With respect to the 2020 data from the 2020 field test program, was this data publicly shared in some fashion? Or if not, could you maybe give us some color on what kind of improvements were achieved?

  • Oliver P. Peoples - Co-Founder, President, CEO & Director

  • Do you want do it?

  • Kristi D. Snell - VP of Research & Chief Science Officer

  • Sure. So we publicly announced the PHA data of 6% PHA in the field. For the other traits that we grew in the field last year, C3004, we saw nice increases, statistically significant increases in photosynthesis and we also saw a trend of increased yield in the lines. One of the other traits that we trialed last year was our increased oil trait C3007. And there, this is a complex trait. There are 3 genes that are components of this trait, and we're working to figure out what the best combination is to implement in Camelina.

  • But one thing we've been very encouraged about, there are third-party university results that have demonstrated that knocking out C3007, some combinations of C3007, really has a great increase on significantly increasing oil content and especially for novel oils. So that's pretty much a summary of what we obtained in the field last year.

  • Oliver P. Peoples - Co-Founder, President, CEO & Director

  • Yes. And I think the one final point would be that I think the E3902, which is the first high-oil line, we're seeing consistent performance as compared to last year. We're also seeing the same oil content increase, which is very encouraging. So it's -- I think one of the things we have learned is that the compositional changes are a lot easier to get data on statistically than on yield, which is obviously a very challenging trait, subject to the variation of every growing season.

  • Amit Dayal - MD of Equity Research & Senior Technology Analyst

  • Okay. Understood. And with respect to sort of the 2021 outlook, we were modeling for really modest revenues, mostly from the product side, materializing this year. Do you think that's still possible? Or will those potentially depend on how some of these efforts...

  • Oliver P. Peoples - Co-Founder, President, CEO & Director

  • Yes. I think, as you know, we haven't really provided much in the way of guidance on that. I mean, I think we've been pretty clear about what our goals are, is to go down that path and to begin to start securing revenues, in addition to the grant that we already have. But we haven't really provided additional guidance on that. I mean, I think we'll be -- we'll have a lot more clarity on that as we ramp up the business development activities around the Camelina products and where we're at with that. Right now, we are planning to scale up seed for larger scale production. And obviously, the intent there would be to sell that product from that seed. So we're -- be able -- I think we'll be able to provide a lot more color on that as we go forward into Q2 and Q3, and we plan to.

  • Amit Dayal - MD of Equity Research & Senior Technology Analyst

  • Right. Understood. And then for the 2021 field trials, are we pursuing similar sort of metrics and improvement efforts, et cetera? As previously, is there anything different you may be looking for with respect to the trials this year?

  • Kristi D. Snell - VP of Research & Chief Science Officer

  • Well, we are scaling up some lines to larger acreage than we have before. We're scaling up the 2 PHA lines that we talked about that we've selected, and we're also scaling up E3902 and then another line that we're working on.

  • Oliver P. Peoples - Co-Founder, President, CEO & Director

  • Yes. So I think this year, what we've got to do is we've got -- we'd also have to manage our resources fairly carefully. So we've decided those things that are most crucial for the business to progress the business strategy now, and we're focusing on those initially. And we've also, I think, recognized as a company that, ultimately, for large acreage deployment, we will need essentially to provide the farmer with convenience, which comes in the form of herbicide tolerance traits. So Kristi and her team are -- have shifted resources to have a large focus on what we call elite germplasm incorporating herbicide tolerance, disease resistance in addition to our yield and oil contact traits. So we've shifted the technology resource to meet the business goals that we're now pursuing in the product side.

  • Operator

  • Your next question comes from the line of Ben Klieve with Lake Street Capital Markets.

  • Benjamin David Klieve - Senior Research Analyst

  • So I got a few. The first one is in regards to the soybean research agreement with Monsanto. I want to make sure I'm reading that slide correctly. Does the 3003 agreement end in kind of mid-2021? Or has that extended to 2022, kind of along the same time frame as the 3004?

  • Oliver P. Peoples - Co-Founder, President, CEO & Director

  • Yes. So we basically -- when we initially got into a relationship with what was then Monsanto, now Bayer, it was just the C3003, and that would have ended essentially mid this year. However, as part of the C3003 research program, we discovered C3004, and we did obtain some interesting data in Camelina with C3004. And essentially, based on that, we were able to extend the relationship with Monsanto, who then, of course, wanted to test both to see which one obviously works better. And so that's where that's at. They both go out into 2022 now. And quite frankly, we're very pleased with the interaction we have with the folks at Bayer. And as I said, as part of the overall -- obviously, growing interest in the ag space, we are definitely hearing about interest in additional gene targets, with many companies, not specifically Bayer.

  • Benjamin David Klieve - Senior Research Analyst

  • Got it. Okay. That's helpful. Next question, on the trials from 2020 that, Kristi, you just commented on, outside of the PHA biomaterials, I'm specifically wondering about the canola trials. It sounds like you're not looking to provide specific numbers, but I'm wondering if directionally, you can compare the trials from 2020 versus the trials from 2018. Did the results see improvement? Did they decline? Were they in line? Can you give us a bit of clarity there?

  • Oliver P. Peoples - Co-Founder, President, CEO & Director

  • So Ben, on that issue, we weren't actually trialing the C3004 canola and -- we were just scaling them up for trials next year to get sufficient field-growing seed. However, as part of our focusing our resources on Camelina products going forward, we are essentially starting to look for partners for canola. We decided that it's a more productive use of our resources to invest in Camelina, where we have full control over the business. And we also recognize that we need partners with stronger capabilities in canola than we have. So we are looking for partners in canola.

  • Benjamin David Klieve - Senior Research Analyst

  • Okay. Got it. Yes. Right. Yes. No, and I take that point, for sure. Last question for me on the omega-3 Camelina initiative and specifically incorporating herbicide tolerance. Are you looking to -- are you looking to incorporate tolerance to glyphosate/glufosinate? Or is this something else? And in doing so, are you going to be able to maintain a non-GMO structure? Or is that going to require GMO designation?

  • Oliver P. Peoples - Co-Founder, President, CEO & Director

  • It's already a GMO trait. So the way we -- there's 2 things, I think, to be perfectly clear. First of all, I think the whole question around GMO, given that we're all getting GMO-ed using a COVID-19 vaccine, whether it's in the form of transient messenger RNA expression from Moderna and others or through a genetically engineered virus in the case of AstraZeneca and J&J.

  • Quite frankly, what we are seeing is I think there's a general change in thinking around the whole use of genetic engineering technologies. Now we'll have to see how that plays out. But the big issue in aqua feed is really 2 things. One, a dwindling supply of feed to support the growing demand for high-quality omega-3 oils, and of course, that's having tremendous negative repercussions all around the coast of Africa, Peru, all the way through Asia as well, especially where you've got these massive factory operations, literally harvesting every fish in the ocean.

  • Unfortunately, along with harvesting all the fish, they're harvesting tremendous amounts of mercury, PCBs and now increasingly plastic microparticles of all things. Because basically, society has been using the ocean as a dumping ground. So when you look at farmed salmon and if you measure the mercury levels, you'll find there roughly 1/3 of the mercury levels are present in essentially harvested salmon fish. So clearly, tremendous drivers there. I think the big driver is health and wellness. We believe that the society as a whole is more interested in sustainability and health and wellness benefits, which is what's going to come from what we see is our omega-3 basis for what will ultimately be a dedicated aqua feed supply system based on engineered Camelina.

  • So it's going to be GMO. And because it's going to be GMO, we're going to take all the advantages of all the other GMO technologies to enable the farmer to adopt this rapidly and get the best productivity with the lowest carbon footprint possible.

  • Benjamin David Klieve - Senior Research Analyst

  • Got it. And I guess, let me ask one quick follow-up question and then I'll get back in line. My question on that was in the context of -- kind of from a regulatory time frame. So I guess, as a follow-up, then integrating herbicide tolerance into this crop, do you think this is going to have a meaningful push to the right here from a regulatory perspective? Or because these traits are -- do exist in a regulatory manner, are you going to be able to stack them in relatively efficiently?

  • Oliver P. Peoples - Co-Founder, President, CEO & Director

  • I think we could -- our current view is that we -- and based on the conversations with the regulatory folks, Kristi, I mean we believe that if we use things that are well known, well understood, that have been approved or other crops, that the path forward for those may be a lot simpler, depending on the geography you're in.

  • Obviously, we don't plan to grow this in France. But I think in North America and South America, (inaudible) with us.

  • Operator

  • Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session, and I would like to turn the call back to Lynne Brum.

  • Lynne H. Brum - VP of Planning & Corporate Communications and Secretary

  • Okay. Thanks, Hector. I'll now turn the call back to Oli for closing remarks.

  • Oliver P. Peoples - Co-Founder, President, CEO & Director

  • So I would like to personally thank all of you for joining us on the call tonight, and especially our shareholders for your continued support. With the agreement in place with Rothamsted for the omega-3 oils technology and promising first field data on the PHA bioplastic Camelina and (inaudible) progress on our GRAIN platform, we're very excited about the prospects for our business.

  • I want to thank everyone at Yield10 for setting us on track to reach our goals in 2021. Have a nice evening, everyone.

  • Operator

  • Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

  • Lynne H. Brum - VP of Planning & Corporate Communications and Secretary

  • Thank you, Hector.