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Amyris, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMRS)
Q2 2018 Earnings Conference call
Aug. 6, 2018, 8:30 p.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Welcome to the Amyris second-quarter 2018 conference call. This call is being webcast live on the events page of the Investors section of Amyris' website at amyris.com. This call is the property of Amyris, and any recording, reproduction, or transmission of this call without the expressed written consent of Amyris is strictly prohibited. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. You may listen to a webcast replay of this call by going to the Investors section of Amyris website. I would now like to turn the call over to Peter DeNardo, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications.
Peter DeNardo -- Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications, Amyris, Inc
Thank you, George. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. With me today are John Melo, our Chief Executive Officer, and Kathy Valiasek, our Chief Financial Officer. Please note that on this call you will hear discussions of non-GAAP financial measures, including gross margin figures. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures is contained in the summary financial information slides of the accompanying presentation, or the news release distributed today, which is available at investors.amyris.com.
The Current Report on Form 8-K, furnished with respect to our press release, is also available on our website as well as on the SEC's website at sec.gov. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements about events and circumstances that have not yet occurred, including projections of Amyris' operating activities and their anticipated financial impact on our business and financial results for 2018 and beyond.
These statements are based on management's current expectations, and actual results and future events may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties, including those detailed from time to time in filings Amyris makes to the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Annual Reports on Form 10-Q, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and Current Reports on Form 8K. Amyris disclaims any obligation to update information contained in these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Please refer to the Amyris SEC filings for detailed discussion of the relevant risks and uncertainties. Before we begin today, I'd like to note that included in our webcast is a slide presentation we will refer to in today's presentation. I'll now turn the call over to John Melo. John?
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
Thanks, Peter. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. We've completed a very good first half in comparison to the first half of 2017 and a strong second quarter. We delivered much better revenue in the first half of 2018, much stronger gross margin, lower cost, and continued our improvement in net income. Our strategy of delivering strong, profitable growth is working, and we expect a very strong second half to build on the momentum of the first half. During our call, I will cover our year-to-date and second-quarter business performance, progress on the execution of our strategic initiatives, and provide an outlook for the second half. Kathy will provide a financial update and then we will both take your questions.
Let me start with our business performance. We delivered 8% revenue growth over the first quarter of 2018, and 15% growth over the second quarter of 2017 when you adjust for the vitamin E product sales that are now produced and supplied by DSM -- no longer supplied or in the Amyris portfolio. Our first half of 2018 revenue is 48% better than the first half of 2017 when adjusting our vitamin E contract sold to DSM.
This like-for-like improvement is a great example of the strong demand we are experiencing within our core product portfolio, and a great testament to the strength of our strategy of focusing on the health and beauty markets -- and the simplification of our business model and product portfolio. In addition to the strong top-line performance, our gross margins and adjusted EBITDA are also much improved over 2017. Our adjusted EBITDA is $4.7 million better in the second quarter of 2018 versus 2017. and our first half 2018 is $9.7 million better. Our gross profit has also improved significantly from the first half of 2017. First half of 2017, we had 19% non-GAAP gross margin. In the first half of 2018, we are at 84% non-GAAP gross margin, the second quarter, also at the 84% gross margin level.
We delivered most of this first-half performance on the back of our clean beauty business, the value share/royalty payments and collaborations. Most of our ingredient shipments, all of our sweetener revenue, and our new collaborations are expected in the second half of 2018. This is consistent with our business model of producing the ingredients we sell in single, annual batches and the phasing of our new collaboration agreements are also consistent with last year, predominantly in the second half of the year.
All of the expected revenue for this year is either contracted or in the final contract phase. Our royalty/value share is continuing to do well, and our clean beauty business is growing faster than expected. We are on track for our renewable product volume to be 46% higher in 2018 than we initially planned in our 2018 plan for the aggregate of all our ingredient businesses. This is unprecedented for us, and a strong indicator of the consumer shift to natural, high-performing products that are sustainably sourced.
Our Biossance brand has become the fastest-growing skin care brand in North America, based on the information we have around the clean beauty market. Our collaboration revenue continues to be choppy quarter on quarter; we've always said to expect this. The collaborations are predictable for the full year, but for strategic reasons and because of the complexity of individual agreements, will not always fall in the quarter that we plan. We have this occur in the second quarter with a major collaboration in China that we decided to move into the second half, as it has strategic implications on two other deals that are now at the contract stage in China. This deferral would have resulted in an additional $10 million of revenue in the second quarter, and we now expect to realize this in the second half of the year.
These are all important collaborations for us, and the sequence of the signing of these deals has the potential to impact royalty and licensing arrangements that would have been negative to our long-term economics. We are very pleased with the progress we've made in China. We are recognized now as a leader in developing, scaling, and manufacturing high-value intermediates and ingredients for the nutritional products and generic pharma industries and have a very exciting pipeline. You'll begin to experience some of this as we complete the third quarter.
In summary, we delivered a very strong first half compared with the first half of 2017 and are on track to deliver on our business plan. And the expectations we set with investors for the full year of 2018, while doing better than we planned for product demand of our sustainable, best-in-class performing ingredients for our Biossance brand and with stronger traction for our natural zero-calorie sweetener. We are doubling the product volume, year on year, on an underlying basis.
Let me now transition to how we're doing on the execution of our strategic agenda. Our natural sweetener program is doing great. We've confirmed with three of the world's leading sweetener solution companies that we have the purest and best-performing zero-calorie, natural sweetener product on the market. Over the next three years, we have the most supply available and lowest cost performance of any high-purity natural sweetener product, and now have our supply through the end of 2020 called for by four customers that are each leaders in their respective markets. This represents over $200 million of aggregate revenue for this period and over $80 million of non-GAAP gross margin in the contract phase with these four customers.
We've been quietly executing while continuing to learn about our product's potential and are very excited to report our progress. We are making a huge difference in the taste, cost, and sustainability of product for the sweetener market. This is a game-changer. This is an excellent time to deliver the consumer with a great experience that tastes great and is healthy at the right economics for our partners. Our goal is to have the world's leading natural sweetener that has the same cost as sugar from a sweetness value equivalency. We have more work to do to achieve this goal, to be at the cost of the sugar. That target enables us to win in the sugar reduction market, and we continue to see that as our long-term objective with our natural sweetener.
Our Biossance performance has been outstanding in the first half. We are now on track to exceed $20 million of retail sales in 2018. This compares to about $5 million in retail sales for 2017. Many of our key performance indicators are best-in-class for this segment, and a great proof of the performance of our products and our ability to build a great consumer brand and engage consumers in a powerful way. We are now delivering about 300% year-on-year growth, and we believe this is the fastest-growing brand of any company in clean beauty that reports their numbers publicly. We expect this level of growth to continue for the next few years, and we have the products, channels, and consumers to support this level of performance.
We are on our way to creating a billion-dollar brand. Based on current multiples, we expect to achieve this type of valuation for our clean beauty business over the next three years. This includes our expected launches of products for the baby category, hair care, and for men. We have winning products in each of these categories that meet our clean standard and deliver on our no-compromise product promise. We are excited to finally make the world a healthy and clean place for babies. Babies don't deserve to have crude oil spread on their skin. This is wrong for our skins, wrong for the planet but really wrong for a baby that doesn't have the ability to choose. We are pleased to hear that Johnson & Johnson is adopting our level of standards for safety, and we hope they formulate for our level of performance.
Our consumers love Biossance and love our products. We only use the best-performing ingredients and only what is sustainable and healthy. This is at the heart of our no-compromise promise and our desire to lead in clean beauty. Around 50% of our purchases are from repeat customers, and 17% are from brand loyalists who are purchasing more than three times a year from Biossance. Our entry into Brazil is a great example of the performance of our products and brand. Within six weeks of entering this market, we've become one of the the top five skin care brands inside Sephora in Brazil, and several of our products are now in the top three within their categories in Brazil.
Another way to view our Biossance performance is by looking at comp sales of skews of individual products that have been selling for over a year. Our comps that have been selling for over a year is about 38% growth, with over four of these products on target to each deliver well over $1 million each in retail sales this year. We expect the end of the year with over $2 million of monthly sales as our monthly sales rate. We expect to continue very strong gross margin performance in the Biossance business, and to be profitable with this brand for full-year 2019.
We believe we are only starting at this point, and have much more to grow and deliver with Biossance and our consumer offers. Let me now end with our outlook. We expect to deliver with our prior stated target revenue range of $185 million to $195 million, and to achieve a full-year positive EBITDA of around $10 million. Our key drivers of revenue for the second half are, two major license payments, three major collaborations, continued strong growth of Biossance, our key ingredients shipments that are batch-produced and shipped in the second half of the year, our first commercial product revenue for our natural sweetener, and a great second half for the [inaudible] joint venture. That's our skin care business that's benefiting greatly from the performance of Biossance.
In aggregate, we expect these activities and our base business to deliver between a $135 and $140 million of revenue and gross profit, and gross profit in excess of $100 million in the second half. We feel very confident about the second half, and have been exceeding our plan for the areas of our business that we control.
The only area of our business that we have no control over is our vitamin E royalty. In this activity, DSM is now responsible for the supply, and we are purely a receiver of value share or royalty based on market price and the volume sold by Mentor. This is a very volatile market, and we have no control over the price Mentor sells into this market. These royalties represent between $10 million and $15 million of expected second half performance, and that is built within $135 million to $145 million of expected second half revenue.
We have been very effective at predicting market price to date, but there's no guarantee that we will always get this right. The key drivers of our growth are very strong consumer demand for natural, sustainable products that deliver great performance. This is driving our skin care and sweetener business, in addition to the large global brands wanting sustainable ingredients, we also have technology that has significantly advantage to make vitamins at the lowest costs when crude oil is above $40 a barrel. We added three businesses within our portfolio where we are now off to the races.
Clean beauty, including Biossance and our [inaudible] joint venture, natural sweetener and our vitamin portfolio. These are all businesses where we have the leading technology in the market, have the lowest cost, and are experiencing growth beyond our expectations. Our gross margin is the best indicator of our earnings power, and the quality of our strategy and product portfolio. We are at 84% non-GAAP gross margin year-to-date, and I believe we'll end the year well north of 70% in non-GAAP gross margin. We are currently generating $39 a kilo of revenue, or say that differently, $39 for every kilo of product in revenue for every kilo of product we produce, and $25 of gross margin for every kilo of product we produce.
This is by far an industry best and is becoming material enough to get noticed. Compare this against to less than $1 a kilo of revenue for commodity chemicals and renewable fuels, and less than $0.20 a kilo in gross margin for each unit sold into those markets. I believe this is the best performance of any company in our sector and a great bet for investors wanting to participate in the disruptive potential of what biotechnology can do to deliver clean, sustainable, naturally sourced products that are making sustainability mainstream for consumers throughout the world. Now, let me turn to Kathy for a detailed financial review of the second-quarter. Kathy.
Kathy Valiasek -- Chief Financial Officer
Thank you, John, and good afternoon everyone. We are about where we expected to be at this point in the year, and expect a large trajectory and revenue for the second half. This is bolstered by the many agreements we expect that John mentioned, which will fuel our business through year ends. This pipeline of business is sizable. In fact, we anticipate that our quarterly revenues in Q3 and Q4 will be at some of the highest quarterly levels we've experienced since executing the fuels business, and it much-improved profitability. This is representative of the leverage of power within our current business model that we expect will get us to profitability.
Now, let me review our second-quarter of 2018 results. Q2, 2018 GAAP revenue was $24.8 million compared to $25.7 million for the second-quarter of 2017. As a reminder, this reflects over $4 million of lower farnesene sales as a result of DSM, now providing farnesene for vitamin E, offset by increased sales in clean beauty vitamin E royalties and collaboration revenue. Adjusting out the low-margin revenues from 2017, our growth is 15% on an absolute basis. Brands in collaboration revenues were $11.4 million up from $10.3 million for the same period a year ago. This increase was due mainly to activity for our human nutrition and vitamin A collaborations with flavors and fragrances partners.
Non-GAAP gross profit was $20.9 million or 84% compared with $8 million or 31% for the second-quarter of 2017. This underscores the amount of leverage in our business now and going forward with a much improved higher-margin product portfolio without the constraints of a production facility that was not designed for such product mix. For the second-quarter of 2018, selling general and administrative expenses were $20.2 million compared with $15.9 million for second-quarter 2017. This primarily reflected continued investment in our fastest-growing business activities connected with Biossance and the sweetener launch.
Research and development expenses of $15.3 million for the quarter were up from $14.2 million for the same period of 2017 due to headcount increases to support new product development. GAAP net income attributable to Amyris common stockholders for the second-quarter of 2018 was $2.6 million or $0.05 for basic share compared with GAAP net loss attributable to common stockholders for the years or periods of $10.3 million or $0.44 loss per basic share. Cash investments and restricted cash at June 30, 2018 were $15.9 million and accounts receivable of $26 million.
I will add here that with the large influx of revenue expected to Q3 and Q4, that our cash flow and cash position will be significantly elevated. To update you on our debt plans, we continue to review a number of options that have been presented to us to solve our 2019 maturities, and we are pleased to have successfully closed on non-diluted term loan of Great American Capital to cover our July 2018 maturities.
We now have no other significant debt issues to resolve through the rest of the year and plan to continue to execute on our business. So we are in a strong position to further address that at the appropriate time. I'm very very pleased with the progress we've made so far this year in simplifying our capital structure and improving our margins and profitability. We have more work to do and you can expect to see us make additional improvements over the next few quarters.
Several of the holders of the remaining warrants from last year's transactions are in active discussions to exercise these to common stock. We expect several of these will be exercised during the second half, further helping us to simplify our capital structure by removing this longer term overhang while generating over $30 million in proceeds for the company without the issuance of new shares.
In summary, consistent with our revenue plan and outlook we provided earlier this year, we expect the back-half loaded year and we are excited by the robust number of agreements in our pipeline we are pursuing to get their. Subject to final execution, these agreements will contribute significantly to our revenue and profitability for the year while expanding our geographic ability to make renewable products mainstream. I would now like to open the line for any questions you may have. George?
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question at this time, please press the star then the one key on your touch-tone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from queue, please press the pound key, as well we do ask to place your line on mute once your question has been stated to prevent any background noise during response. That is the star then one to ask a question. Our first question comes from the line of Carter Driscoll from B. Riley FBR, Capital Markets. Your line is now open.
Carter Driscoll -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst
Quite a mile from the name there. Good afternoon, I appreciate taking my questions. John, Kathy, you talk about the percentage of contracted revenue or maybe some rough parameters that gives you comfort with your back half-loaded year, and then maybe the timing of when you think what is left to be contracted, when it will be finalized? And I have a couple of follow-ups. Thank you.
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
Carter, thank you and thank you for being on the call. I'll try to give some color to your question which is, not all of the revenue comes in terms of contracts, right? So, if you think about our collaborations, licenses, our sweetener, all of that, and by the way our ingredients, all or most of that is on a contract form and I'd say that most of that is either contracted or in the final contract stage. So, well underpinned. The reason I bring the color is, as you can imagine, Biossance is something we sell to consumers, right? So, we have channels, we've got the current access to be able to achieve the revenue that we planned for, but that wouldn't be qualified or classified as contracted because every day matters. So, that's the only distinction I'd make, is the part of the plan that either is not contracted or under contract negotiation, is the retail piece with Biossance. And, in that part of the business we've been actually doing as good or better than planned. So, we feel good about that.
Carter Driscoll -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst
Yes, actually it's very helpful. So, essentially, it's your direct, and everything else is either contracted or in final stages or close to it. All right. If I heard you correctly, John, the collaboration revenue, you said, it was approximately $10 million that you pushed or slid into 3Q because there were some other sensitive contracts or discussions you had. First of all, is that correct that $10 million roughly was pushed from 2Q to 3Q, and then could you just address maybe either that particular collaboration or the geographic areas and its effects?
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
Yes, it is specifically the China market. It is $10 million, so it is a specific impact of $10 million. And we know that because we're in the process of working three deals, three different partners and the three different partners actually have a slightly different structure. One of them has a slightly different structure than the other two. Two of them are very consistent with our current collaboration structure, and these are a combination of additional vitamins and/or other ingredients that we're adding to our portfolio. So, very exciting. Exactly the kind of stuff that we like to add. Another one has a broader relationship, and that broader relationship actually connects to some of our future business there, which is why we are really focused on closing the first two collaborations and keeping them separate from the broader relationship, which is where the $10 million is deferred.
Carter Driscoll -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst
Got it. Okay, that's helpful. Maybe switching gears to sweeteners. So it sounds like you're very excited about the trials that are ongoing, the feedback you've been getting and consistently been on message that you will have a commercial launch with at least one customer in the back part of the year, is that correct from what I heard?
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
Yes, we'll actually have four customers in the back-half and at least three will receive product during this year. So, that's where what the status is, and I would say we're behold trial and that several of these customers will actually be using products and applications this year.
Carter Driscoll -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst
Got it, OK, it's good to hear. You did call out table sugar, I think it was one of the things that you highlighted during your Analyst Day as a common ingredient. Just trying to take a swing for the fences here, is that something potentially you're working on for what you had mentioned during the Analyst Day?
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
Yes, what I can tell you, I'm giving a lot more color because at the Analyst Day where we offered tasting, I was asked, "So, you don't seem to be playing this up as much as you had been in the past, does that mean that you're not as keen on it?" And I think I said during the Analyst Day that, really, it had nothing to do with being keen or not; it had really to do with I wanted to get more traction in the business before I brought it back to the highlight. Now that we've done that, I feel very good about where we are and I'm happy to discuss it again in its fullest color.
Regarding the consumer, we have decided to make an entry in one of the largest and best-performing sweetener markets in the world selling directly to the consumer. We'd like to surprise, so we're not going to really describe to you where that market is, but it's one of the largest for sugar and it's definitely the fastest-growing in sweetener. It's a market that actually does not really have a good consumer offer. We've done a lot of consumer work in that market and have realized that consumers are really desperate for a great-tasting, zero-calorie product, and we think we have the answer for them.
So, we will have a consumer offer. All of the comments I made in my formal remarks during the call were to do with our B2B, our Business-to-Business supply of the sweetener, not the consumer part. I look at the consumer as being all icing on the cake. We are launching there, we think it's a very interesting market. We think it'll lack critical mass in our consumer focus, and we look forward to telling you more about it later this year. I would like to, probably in New York and likely in Brazil, actually have a couple of Analyst Days and Market Days where we're actually providing samples of our consumer products to investors and to analysts in the market. Again the more -- the closer we've gotten and the more distinctiveness we think we have, the more we want to get it in the hands of people. So, we will do that as a way to get people just more familiar with what we're doing.
Carter Driscoll -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst
I just want to hear. You're anticipating, maybe some time later in 2018, to able to do this?
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
Yes. I'd say before 2018 is out, we will do some testings, and we will do it by either open houses or investors/customer days, one in New York and one in Brazil.
Carter Driscoll -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst
Okay. In terms of the kind of category expansion within Biossance, the hair care, the grooming and the baby products, is there a laddered rollout you're thinking if they're going to be done in conjunction, are there target areas that you're hoping to launch in first like U.S., Canada, Brazil you did last time? Just trying to get sense on how you're going to expand and direct the consumer.
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
Yes. I know, Carter. Good question and I will tell you that the U.S. first, and then we'll roll out beyond the U.S. We obviously expect to be beyond the current geographies by the end of this year. So, we have geographic expansion underpinning our revenue, and have a pretty good sense of channels we'll use for that as we go through the end of the year, but for the new categories, they will all be U.S. first.
I can tell you, baby and men are in strong competition for first. We haven't quite decided which one of them, but it will either be baby or men, and it will depend really on our channel and branding strategy, and where we are for those. I'd expect both of those or one of them in the first half of '19. So, baby and/or men first half of '19, and then hair care we would expect for later in '19. Again, both of those are U.S. based, and then once we get the traction we expect in the U.S., then we'll take it out through our channels outside the U.S.
Carter Driscoll -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst
Okay. Just a couple of quick ones for me. Any update on brought us too, either revise cost estimates over down, timing, so hoping for or shooting for the end of '19 for completion of construction for 2020 wrap?
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
Yes. End of '19 is still on track, we've made a lot of progress which we'll hopefully be able to talk about at the end of the third-quarter. Still expect end of '19, from a cost perspective, it's come down but it's a bit of a fiddle luck, it's really because of currency. Regarding the project itself, it's really steady as it should go, there is no big change.
Carter Driscoll -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst
Okay. Maybe only throw a curveball out there. What did you not do well in the second quarter that you wish you could have improved upon?
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
I would tell you that if I could have done anything differently in the second quarter, it would have been to be about a quarter ahead of the Chinese deals. I think the phasing we did would not have changed, we would have had to have done that for a lot of technical reasons around the agreements restructuring, but if we could have gotten them further advanced in the first-quarter, we may have been in a place to actually pull one of them through in the second-quarter. So, that's where I have a bit of frustration and wish we could have done differently.
I think across the rest of the business, whether it's what we're doing in Brazil with production, how our sweetener is developing, and a lot of the insight we have now gained around our differentiation, Biossance both in talent, expansion, and success of the product with consumers, and our ingredients business, we are hitting on all cylinders. I just wish that timing would have been about a quarter better on how we did our China development. At the end of the day, we're going to end up with a business in China, that's going to be a very material part, but that's really what I would've done differently.
Carter Driscoll -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst
I appreciate taking all my questions. We'll take the rest offline. Appreciate it.
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
Great Carter, Thank you.
Operator
Thank you, and as a reminder ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please press the star then the one key on your touch-tone telephone. Our next question comes from the line of Amit Dayal from H.C. Wainwright. Your line is now open.
Amit Dayal -- H.C. Wainwright -- Analyst
Thank you. Good afternoon, Kathy. Hi John. Just going back to the guidance, it is good to see everything maintained for the year, how should we expect this to sort of play out in terms of Q3 and Q4 contribution relative to what's remaining?
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
Great question Amit, and by the way, thank you for being on the call. I think what we're learning is, the pattern we had last year is probably not a very different pattern to how to think about this year, and actually interesting enough for all the same reasons. We batch manufacture last year, we had a big ramp in the second half of the year for Biossance, and our big strategic deals came together in the fourth-quarter. Not that we started working with them into fourth, but that's how they face through the year and how the contracts evolve. When I look at our current pipeline, all of our current activity and the level of maturity that each one of those conversations are, they're slightly better than we were last year. So it gives me a very good confidence, but I don't think the revenue phasing will be very different than last year.
Amit Dayal -- H.C. Wainwright -- Analyst
Understood. Is the guidance dependent on any one or two larger deals?
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
No. I mean, unlike last year, there's actually, I'd say, the mix of the sweetener deals, three collaborations, and one big production deal. So, call it eight deals in total spread across three different aspects of our portfolio that really make up the big ramp in the second half of the year. So, no one deal is driving the full or no one deal has more than 20% of what we're looking for in the second half of the year.
Amit Dayal -- H.C. Wainwright -- Analyst
Got it. Good to hear that. With this guidance and all of the traction you're seeing in China, will 2018, will we see sort of more than 50% revenues coming from China, and is this a trend that we should be potentially thinking about over the next few years as well?
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
Let me think about that for for a second and then I would tell you. I would say that a third of our revenue in the short to medium term from China is not a wrong expectation to have. I think that's consistent even going forward, because if I think about how these deals work in China, there like our collaboration deals except their markets that are significantly bigger than what we do in flavor and fragrance.
So, when you think about the revenue potential in the vitamin markets and the margin that comes out of these collaborations, I'd expect that once the products reach commercialization, which the first one, we think will be beginning of 2020, that you'll start to see a pretty good chunk of revenue to offset the early collaboration and license fees that we get.
So, I think thinking of it as maybe even giving you a range of 25% to 30% of our revenue is Chinese based companies in three categories: no. 1 in biggest, vitamins, no. 2, intermediates for generic pharma, and no. 3, traditional Chinese medicine. The third being the smallest, that's kind of how you think about our portfolio in China, and initially with three in total about four of some of the better companies in China to do this kind of activity with.
Amit Dayal -- H.C. Wainwright -- Analyst
That's great. Regards to the licensing and royalty revenue, I don't know if you can provide some additional granularity, but how much is coming from new products versus the legacy products. Or are there any one or two that are accounted for most of this royalty revenues right now?
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
Yes. Great question. I can tell you that all the licensing which are the early bigger chunks of revenue that come out of China, all the licensing is for background IP that enables the development and production of new products, so none of them are existing products that are being transferred, they are about background IP in our platform being used to make new products. The products we're making exist so we're not inventing anything new, we're just developing a new path that use a sustainable feed stock and has lower cost and higher purity in the existing source of these products.
There is not one product we're developing for China that does not exist and the partners we're working with are all leaders in the production of these products. So, it's not like we're entering with somebody who doesn't make or sell these products currently for the major collaborations that we're working through in China.
There are parallel or I'll say ongoing discussions beyond the products that are at the contract phase with one of these companies that would like to represent squalane, specifically our Biossance ingredient, they are a very large, the largest actually, sales channel to the dermatology channel in China. In other words. They have about 20,000 salespeople that sell skin care products to dermatologists in China and they are interested in representing some of our Biossance products specifically made with the squalane ingredient for the Chinese market. So, we are in active discussions about that but that's not part of the licensing, that's literally the parallel deal that we're working with one of these potential partners.
Amit Dayal -- H.C. Wainwright -- Analyst
Got it. I really appreciate on the product, that's what I'm asking. Thank you so much.
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
Thanks Amit.
Operator
Thank you and as a reminder, ladies and gentlemen. If you have a question at this time please press the star then the one key on your touch-tone telephone. Again, that is a star then one to ask a question. One moment for questions. There's still no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to John Melo, President and CEO for closing remarks.
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
Thanks George, I appreciate your help on the call. I would like to thank everybody for their support and listening to our call. We're happy with the traction we have. We're continuing to focus on what drives profitable growth and we're excited about that transition from not really knowing what to expect that our gross margin to seeing a good, strong margin coming from the products we're focusing in the markets we're focusing on.
We'll be participating in the Jefferies 2018 Global Industrial Conference tomorrow and look forward to further updating you on our progress over the coming weeks as anticipated agreements are currently finalized. Which we believe will have a good impact, very good impact on our 2018 revenue. I look forward to seeing many of you show up for our tasting events and hopefully becoming long-term Biossance customers. Thank you and really have a good afternoon and thanks for joining us again.
Duration: 43 minutes
Call participants:
Peter DeNardo -- Director, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications, Amyris, Inc
John Melo -- Amyris President & CEO
Kathy Valiasek -- Chief Financial Officer
Carter Driscoll -- B. Riley FBR -- Analyst
Amit Dayal -- H.C. Wainwright -- Analyst
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